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Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#151

Post by jamiek88 »

dekhn wrote: post #147
jamiek88 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they will cross it will stop and wait until the heat-death of the universe for them to cross. There's something adorable and HHGTG about that whole thing! Reminds me of the robotic Star Liner that refused to take off because of the peanuts hadn't been delivered thus its checklist was incomplete. It had waited eons as its passengers withered to corpses securely locked into the cabin only stating that it was 'statisti…

Lemon-scented paper napkins, IIRC (I hadn't recalled corrected, so I updated it). Also Marvin spent ~millions of years in the car park for the Restaurant at the End of the Universe: ""The first ten-million years were the worst. And the second ten-million - they were the worst too… The third ten-million, I didn’t enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline. "

I deleted the Marvin bit as I was worried I was rambling! And yes it was the wipes, thanks for the correction!

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#152

Post by iudqnolq »

bombcar wrote: post #119
inferiorhuman wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, to that end my favorite Cruise anecdote stems from one of the Cruise humans forcing the car to make an illegal left turn off of Mission a few years ago. Granted Cruise's software still struggles with legal left turns, but still.

A formative experience when I was learning to drive was being pulled over to the right and watching a firetruck pull behind a car stopped at a red light, siren blaring and lights flashing, and eventually having to get on the PA and tell the person to run the red light so they could get through.

That's a mistake by the fire truck. You aren't supposed to preemptively run a red light to help them, they're supposed to order you to do it right away if that's what they want.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#153

Post by ra7 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #109
boulos wrote: post #40

For folks that are interested, the discussion at /r/selfdrivingcars [1] picked out some of the salient numbers. Brad Templeton also did his own write up at [2]. I mainly hope that people take away that this service exists now. You can download the app and just use it in Phoenix. As mentioned in the post, we're doing thousands of trips per week of non-employee rides. There are some great (and not so great!) examples p…

Does each city have an independent wait list? Or once you’re in, you’re in?

Seems to be waitlist per city. But they only have a waitlist in SF currently. Phoenix is fully open to the public and LA is employee-only so far, so no waitlist open there yet.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#154

Post by boulos »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #109
boulos wrote: post #40

For folks that are interested, the discussion at /r/selfdrivingcars [1] picked out some of the salient numbers. Brad Templeton also did his own write up at [2]. I mainly hope that people take away that this service exists now. You can download the app and just use it in Phoenix. As mentioned in the post, we're doing thousands of trips per week of non-employee rides. There are some great (and not so great!) examples p…

Does each city have an independent wait list? Or once you’re in, you’re in?

We currently only operate the public service in Phoenix and San Francisco. There isn't a wait list in Phoenix, anyone can ride, but there is in San Francisco. So... technically they're currently independent.

But our goal in any new area would be to focus on the people that live there, because they would use the service regularly. Of course, the broader goal is no waitlist anywhere :).

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#155

Post by stouset »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #104
stouset wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll contrast this with Cruise, which are driving autonomously in San Francisco. I hate them. At least in the area I'm in (the Inner Sunset), they often cruise around with no passengers while waiting for a request. While doing so, they circle around idling at 10-15mph, pausing for 30 seconds or more at stop signs. It's long enough where just when you decide they've completely stopped and start to go around, they "wak…

It seems to have recently gotten worse too. I'd never had a bad experience driving near them until recently, and all of a sudden every time I'm near one it's doing something annoying/worrying.

As far as I can tell, what changed is they got rid of the humans who were backing up the AI.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#156

Post by School-Cotton »

dangus wrote: post #137
icey wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here (downtown Phoenix area) -- the driverless Waymos have been awesome. Occasionally they get confused but it seems pretty rare. They're better than a lot of the other drivers on the road out here. I'm mostly excited that they upped the allowed passenger count from 3 to 4. Usually we take a car if we're going out to dinner with friends but the 3 passenger limit made taking one of these a pain in the ass or impo…

It blows my mind that someone living downtown in a city the size of Phoenix (relatively large) needs to use a car at all. It’s really a shameful failure of urban planning.

You’re right, but it’s a bit of a cherry-picked example. Phoenix is probably the most car-required major city in the world.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#157

Post by kpw94 »

austinkhale wrote: post #21
kccqzy wrote: post #10

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…

> The interiors are nice, well air conditioned and don't smell

If they scale, that will become a problem:

- people puking in car

- people having sex in car

- people eating greasy fries in car

These happen in public transportation too (the sex one not as often, but puking, eating smelly/gross food definitely), but the big difference here is that users won't be anonymous. The next waymo rider (or waymo staff if the car stops by some inspection checkpoint between rides, or some extra in-car sensors) will be able to report the incident, which would flag repeating bad riders over time.

Overall the experience would be as good as a Uber today, as like you said, no roll of the dice on the driver.

Another new problem specific to self driving and not seen for public transportation: muggers driving a high speed bike targeting isolated rides (they'll know how easy it is to make the car stop, smash a window, and get the rider's valuables). Basically the modern version of stagecoach robberies.

One could argue these already happens in Europe on highways with traffic jams, but I can see the muggers being more active at night, since in addition to knowing the rider can't try to escape, there's also less crowds around. It'll be very dependants on regions : In Phoenix, I'd assume less often as muggers won't know if the rider is carrying.

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#158

Post by AndrewDucker »

boulos wrote: post #40

For folks that are interested, the discussion at /r/selfdrivingcars [1] picked out some of the salient numbers. Brad Templeton also did his own write up at [2]. I mainly hope that people take away that this service exists now. You can download the app and just use it in Phoenix. As mentioned in the post, we're doing thousands of trips per week of non-employee rides. There are some great (and not so great!) examples p…

How well does this scale? At some point do you just turn on the tap, buy a million cars and cover the whole country, or are you reliant on ongoing large amounts of support for the cars which means that the costs for expansion make it currently non viable?

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#159

Post by rahimnathwani »

sprout20 wrote: post #93

I've had access in SF for the past few months and have been really impressed! The Waymo rides I've taken have been confident + a bit conservative (e.g. driving at the speed limit when traffic is flowing more quickly), but overall the team's done a great job with the experience. It's free for now so I've been using it regularly during commuting/rush hour and casual drives. Some quick thoughts: Advantages over Uber/Lyf…

"Driving is sometimes a little bit jerky (e.g. at stop signs, while inching on a right turn at a red light)"

Imagine if all (or even most!) SF drivers decided they would come to a complete stop at each stop sign and at each red light!

Re: Waymo One doubles service area in Phoenix, continues growing in SF

#160

Post by rcme »

jeffbee wrote: post #134
isubkhankulov wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for those links. This claim in the Forbes article doesn't make sense to me: " It doesn’t need the money but it does want to learn from how riders interact with a service they are paying for." Alphabet has been pressured to show more tangible financial results by activist shareholders[1]. Waymo has 2,500 employees. Waymo's annual budget for headcount alone include stock based compensation is over $1B by my esti…

Imagine believing that anyone at Alphabet gives a fuck what a 5% shareholder wants.

Apparently someone does. Activist investors are the reason for Google’s layoffs.
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