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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

#181

Post by sagarm »

abecedarius wrote: post #174
dymk wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good public mass transit is absolutely superior. Waymo cars don't solve traffic, it only partly solves parking and paying a human. Having (on average) a single person take up 40 square feet of space on the road for travel is horribly inefficient. You do a few orders of magnitude better with a full train car or bus.

Most buses off rush hour are sparsely populated. Look up actual energy efficiency of American mass transit systems per rider mile. https://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html Re traffic: with robot-driven cars, congestion pricing would be technically easy. This is an example of not considering possibilities created by the new tech.

Most roads off rush hour are sparsely populated; seems inefficient, let's pedestrianize them.

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

#182

Post by neuronexmachina »

StrictDabbler wrote: post #171
ajcp wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live downtown PHX (Roosevelt Row) and beyond riding in them I MUCH prefer them driving around on the streets than actual human drivers. There isn't a day goes by that I don't see drivers make up 4-way stops, disregard the 4-way stops, flip a youey in the middle of an intersection, etc. Contrast that to the ever predictable Weymo, just quietly going about their little self-driving existence. Only problem I've seen w…

I have never tried to spell the phrase "flip a youey" before. It might be the only word I use that I have never considered spelling, so I am grateful that you included it your comment. That said, I think you are wrong and it should be "uey", "uie," "u-ie," or any other spelling that emphasizes the "u" after which the term is named. Also "I do not know the answer but I am sure you are wrong" is the most internetish co…

Maybe "U-ey" or "U-ee"?

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

#183

Post by inferiorhuman »

dekhn wrote: post #149
inferiorhuman wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already bike from one part of SF to another, investment in bicycle infrastructure would make that easier and safer. Or, you know, public transit. Individual vehicles suffer from massive inefficiency compared to nearly any other form of transportation – look at Elon's fully autonomous tunnel.

SF is not really a great bikeable city; almost any location to any location involves hills, some of them really significant. The streets are also not laid out in a reasonable pattern in many locations. Getting from outer sunset to market by bike daily isn't really practical, especially during Weather.,

Well yeah, that's pretty much the point. San Francisco is not particularly walkable or bikeable by an objective standard (although it's still doable). Imagine if we sunk money into improving infrastructure instead of subsidizing autonomous vehicles.

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

#184

Post by brewdad »

jeffbee wrote: post #136
chroma wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm suspicious of that paper. The largest source of non-exhaust emissions comes from brake pad wear[1] and EVs use brakes far less than combustion vehicles. Also the amount of particulate matter put into the air is highly dependent on vehicle speed. Densely populated areas have more traffic, which means cars drive slower and create less non-exhaust pollution. And it's no longer true that EVs are heavier than comparab…

As I understand it a large component of the particulate emissions from cars is resuspended road dust, so it doesn't really matter than an EV or hybrid has little of its own brake dust. The brake dust is already on the ground.

But like CO2 emissions, the amount of brake dust available to be kicked up will decrease as more EVs take the road.

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

#185

Post by Camillo »

boulos wrote: post #154
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :).

Is the waitlist FIFO or does it prioritize? For example, suppose a Googler signed up for the waitlist, and since they already have ~all Googlers on it, they won't get access before 2026. Could they get access faster by quitting their job, deleting their Waymo account, then re-enrolling as unemployed?

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

#186

Post by eep_social »

toss1 wrote: post #95
agnosticmantis wrote: post #74

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…

Yup, I very much liked the broader approach of solving the general problem, but this actually seems to be doing better. 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-ever…

Google has a strong foundation for estimating this effort because they already do it at lower fidelity with streetview. I would assume they are considering these questions regularly as part of whatever long term planning goes into the rollout.

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

#188

Post by Waterluvian »

tedivm wrote: post #38
melling wrote: post #3

Earlier 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 sounds completely ridiculous.

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

#189

Post by fzzzy »

adrr wrote: post #83
icey wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wish my navigation supported that feature.

I just make a right turn and let it reroute.

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

#190

Post by HALtheWise »

kpw94 wrote: post #157
austinkhale wrote: post #21

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…

> 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…

Constant HD video logging of everything going on inside and outside the car doesn't eliminate these issues, but it should do a lot to minimize them. If you're looking to do stagecoach robbery, I'm not sure why you'd pick the one car that will clearly record your face and license plate, and which is networked with hundreds of other cars to watch every second of your getaway.
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