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Really love what waymo have been achieving with a relatively small team, but more importantly, they’ve had their heads down working and solving hard problems instead of opting for attention-seeking behavior, making ridiculously pompous claims and false promises (e.g. delivering robotaxies that make you $30k/yr by next year!), getting into ideological (sensor) wars, etc. (How many people know the name of their CEO? An…
CEOs (plural)
The 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…
Advantages over Uber/Lyft:
- Privacy - having the car to yourself is nice!
- Safety - My friends who are women have almost universally said they feel uncomfortable taking Ubers/Lyfts at night and would prefer the Waymo
- Ride matching happens almost instantly
- Estimated pickup times are consistently accurate
- Trunk is open for use and the car will prompt you to grab your items and open the trunk at the end of a ride
- Extra legroom in backseat because there's no driver
- No driver/car confusion - you can set your initials to be displayed on top of the car at pickup
- Drives surprisingly confidently/well - can handle complex urban traffic, pedestrians, cyclists without doing anything obviously "dumb"
- First-class native app experience
- Rides are priced upfront
- Rides can be multi-stop
- Driving is conservative - nothing above the speed limit
- Driving is sometimes a little bit jerky (e.g. at stop signs, while inching on a right turn at a red light)
- Routes can sometimes be odd / longer (usually within 25% of the most direct route)
- Rarely (Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> There are options to solve problems that don't require a change in the outcome you desire. 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. So the job market can be unaffected. Essentially removing most economic incentive to deploy self-driving cars at all?
Is money to goal or is it a better society? Less pollution, less waste, more social interaction, and increased safety. Less colored paper.
Surely the government has an interest in financially incentivising this development. Especially given a decrease in road wear and tear, lower climate impact and surely any number of other benefits.
Really love what waymo have been achieving with a relatively small team, but more importantly, they’ve had their heads down working and solving hard problems instead of opting for attention-seeking behavior, making ridiculously pompous claims and false promises (e.g. delivering robotaxies that make you $30k/yr by next year!), getting into ideological (sensor) wars, etc. (How many people know the name of their CEO? An…
The general problem has insane amounts of edge cases, and is basically trying to do a pole-vault-height high jump; if you succeed, you own the world (or at least can automatically drive anywhere on it), but until then, you and your customers have lots of problems.
Meanwhile, the approach of map-everything-down-to-the-centimeter and keep it updating is making real practical progress. The question is whether it'll ever get out of cities? While storage is constantly getting cheaper, but is it feasible to map and update the maps sufficiently for a cross-country trip?
Still, there's an awful lot of city territory that can be covered with genuinely useful service.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
act as the social aspect that will be missing. To act as a local for a traveler. To recommend locations To do nothing but sit there and look at their device or read Or perhaps the answer is a tax on automation and everyone can sit at home perpetually online. Im not claiming to have answers to this rapidly approaching problem. It's definitely a problem though. Even if it doesn't impact myself whatsoever at this time.…
Nobody I know wants this. I’ve had great Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers. But they’re far from the norm. I’d much prefer to be able to play my own music, or take back-to-back phone calls, or snore loudly.
If this is genuinely the service, there is booming business in tour guiding.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those of us not located in areas where Waymo is available, do you mind elaborating on why this is your favorite way to get around? As compared to Uber, Lyft, etc.
- The cars are very safe, very conservative drivers - The interiors are nice, well air conditioned and don't smell - You don't have to talk to a person, which I don't always hate but have had some bad experiences. This just removes the roll of the dice from the equation entirely. - They are currently at par or cheaper with Uber/Lyft prices and typically it's faster for the car to arrive - You get to play your own mus…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
- The cars are very safe, very conservative drivers - The interiors are nice, well air conditioned and don't smell - You don't have to talk to a person, which I don't always hate but have had some bad experiences. This just removes the roll of the dice from the equation entirely. - They are currently at par or cheaper with Uber/Lyft prices and typically it's faster for the car to arrive - You get to play your own mus…
> You don't have to talk to a person My partner has been propositioned and harassed over a dozen times by Uber drivers. I think for many this is going to be a killer feature.
Earlier 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 feel like this is a nonsense study. They used a 2013 study that measured gas cars and then just extrapolated that out based on weight for EVs and did nothing to account for regenerative breaking, specialty EV tires, etc. Also the numbers are from the Simons 2013 study seem to be dubious as well. Anyone who has been to Oslo understands EVs are a huge benefit for urban air quality.
What does this mean? It can recognize pedestrians making hand gestures?