Earlier quoted context omitted.
> - The cars are very safe, very conservative drivers So great to hear. Seeing videos of self-driving Tesla made me fear for the worst.
Here's one concrete example -- these cars almost never take left hand turns. They'll route multiple right hand turns to get somewhere, which makes it feel much less risky when pulling onto a busy street from a neighborhood, for example.
Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
61–70 of 520 posts
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which jobs are you thinking? Bus drivers? Taxis? Car production? Which loss of freedom are you referring to? I can’t help thinking that the potential upside will far out-way the cost. London streets are littered with dormant vehicles. Most just sit there taking up room and dominating the city. It would be a whole other city if we could change that dynamic.
Truck drivers mainly. There are LOTS of truck drivers. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-...
If they get over-the-road trucking automated, that also trickles down to many roadside workers...gas stations, restaurants, motels, and so on. Then, some back office functions associated with routing, driver compliance, hiring drivers, etc. I'm sure there's more. It would be a big adjustment.
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference is that the variable costs are much lower - just recharging the EV + any other incidentals, as opposed to having to pay a driver for every ride. That's why Uber never became profitable, because they had to share the fare. Waymo has higher up front costs, but if the cars are there, they have much more profitable fares.
Maybe - Waymo has to recharge, clean and maintain a fleet of cars that they own (and which are depreciating and likely have no resale value, at least at the moment) - Uber's drivers effectively use their wages to cover all of those costs. I'm curious how Waymo is handling all of the fleet maintenance, recharging, cleaning, etc, and how they plan to scale that infrastructure. I also wonder how Waymo plans to handle 's…
I would bet on technology being able to handle peak demand better than a non-tech solution. They could pre-position vehicles better, incentivize pooling and transit connections, etc. And just like Ubers they could repurpose vehicles for other tasks (delivery, getting cleaned) in low demand times. But I'm sure there will still be surge pricing as you can't avoid demand spikes completely.
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
In one instance, a left-turning Muni bus was unable to complete the turn due to a Cruise vehicle coming from that direction. The Cruise vehicle had entered too far into the intersection before stopping. There's paint on the intersection to indicate that cars need to stop further back, and the Cruise had failed to obey this. Yeah that tracks. My last run in with Cruise was towards the end of April when their vehicle (…
In their defense, this is how human-operated vehicles act on Market too. :)
Well, at least in this instance, the traditional vehicles were all stopped in the appropriate place.
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
10,000 trips in electric vehicles. Self-driving EV’s in all major cities would be a big win for the climate and the air quality.
Climate yes, but air quality not by as much as you'd think. Multiple studies have come out showing that the weight of EVs puts more pressure on tires and breaks, which in turn increases the particles they dump in the air. > As a result, total PM10 emissions from EVs were found to be equal to those of modern ICEVs. PM2.5 emissions were only 1–3% lower for EVs compared to modern ICEVs. Therefore, it could be concluded…
This is the wrong way to think about it since there's little that suggests AV-taxis also need to be larger than the cars already on the road. When I'm renting a car or taking a taxi I know exactly what my needs are and can decide to not pay for luggage space if I don't need that for instance. Further you can just put a smaller battery in AV-taxis since you can optimise the charging schedule. And lastly, when we've gotten rid of air pollution from tailpipe emissions air pollution from tires would be the next problem to fix and it intuitively seems that all electric, digital cars could have their pollution reduced via a software update.
And obviously the technology making these cars possible also make self driving busses possible, which would allow new ways for urban mobility.
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Climate yes, but air quality not by as much as you'd think. Multiple studies have come out showing that the weight of EVs puts more pressure on tires and breaks, which in turn increases the particles they dump in the air. > As a result, total PM10 emissions from EVs were found to be equal to those of modern ICEVs. PM2.5 emissions were only 1–3% lower for EVs compared to modern ICEVs. Therefore, it could be concluded…
I wonder if it would make sense to program robotaxis to use only regenerative braking, maybe with a more powerful regenerative braking system, and using real brakes only for emergencies.
That's how most electric cars are set up already
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which jobs are you thinking? Bus drivers? Taxis? Car production? Which loss of freedom are you referring to? I can’t help thinking that the potential upside will far out-way the cost. London streets are littered with dormant vehicles. Most just sit there taking up room and dominating the city. It would be a whole other city if we could change that dynamic.
I grew up in foster care. One of my guardians made a living driving a taxi. The guy was an absolute wreck of a human and I probably wouldn't break if he was crossing. It was what he used to survive though, and surely not all cab drivers would be the same. My brother in law drove Uber when he was illegally canned from his factory work and is the reason he got to eat. There are options to solve problems that don't requ…
> Mainly something along the lines of forcing the companies profiting from this to pay a person a reasonable wage to act as the social aspect that will be missing.
Force them to hire someone to sit in a car all day and do absolutely nothing?
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#68The Waymo approach has proven itself. Targeted testing, running the driver in hard mode as much as possible, is better than the Tesla approach. Tesla’s plan was essentially “machine learning underpants gnomes”. Collect ten billion miles of data from guys driving down 280 -> ??? -> profit. Didn’t work and now Tesla is recognized as being dead last in the game, behind dozens of no-name Chinese players. Now what I wonde…
The baby steps makes sense, but you gotta admit Phoenix has to be thr easiest metro area to test with: Little inclement weather, little terrain change, newer infrastructure, streets mostly laid out in an east-west, north-south grid with consistent naming and numbering.
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#69The Waymo approach has proven itself. Targeted testing, running the driver in hard mode as much as possible, is better than the Tesla approach. Tesla’s plan was essentially “machine learning underpants gnomes”. Collect ten billion miles of data from guys driving down 280 -> ??? -> profit. Didn’t work and now Tesla is recognized as being dead last in the game, behind dozens of no-name Chinese players. Now what I wonde…
> Collect ten billion miles of data from guys driving down 280 -> ??? -> profit. It's actually Profit -> Collect ten billion miles of data from guys driving down 280 -> ???
Yes why build a technology when you can sell just the promise of that technology to your stans.
Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF
#70I can't for the life of me figure out how to sign up for the waitlist in SF. The app just says "you'll receive updates about San Francisco." Anyone been successful with this?
I believe that's what the app shows if you have already signed up.