Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blog.waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 520 posts

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

#211

Post by todd8 »

stouset wrote: post #43
austinkhale wrote: post #5

I live inside the original area in Phoenix where they did their training. I have to give kudos where it's due. I originally _hated_ their cars constantly driving around our neighborhood, but I was persuaded to try one a few weeks back. It completely changed my mind. They are now my favorite way to get around. I am a very happy, frequent customer and hope they keep adding coverage and more cars. This is absolutely the…

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…

In these cases, bus vs cruise vehicles, the bus is often helpless to fix the problem, and a stalemate ensues. As I understand it, bus drivers in SF are not allowed to backup without the presence of a supervisor (it makes sense that you'd want someone watching the back of the bus) so it is up to the cruise vehicle to backtrack if they somehow meet up head-to-head. Of course the cruise vehicle is like an Uber driven by Spock--perfectly logical and without emotion--and will just is sit waiting until the path ahead is clear.

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

#212

Post by fooker »

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.

Phoenix has a population density approximately 4.4% of that of NYC.

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

#214

Post by rurp »

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.

Activist investors spur changes with that share of ownership all the time. The exact size of their current stake matters much less than their expected ability to marshall much larger amounts if desired; by buying more stock and/or convincing existing shareholders to vote with them.

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

#215

Post by zamnos »

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.

If you need a car to get around, day-to-day, it's not a city but a big suburb.

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

#216

Post by agensaequivocum »

andromeduck wrote: post #213
agensaequivocum wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arizona is a permitless state since 2010.

Even better - though I suppose it's probably against ToS

I too would be surprised if it's not like Uber/Lyft. That said, concealed is concealed.

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

#217

Post by dalyons »

ajcp wrote: post #122
austinkhale wrote: post #5

I live inside the original area in Phoenix where they did their training. I have to give kudos where it's due. I originally _hated_ their cars constantly driving around our neighborhood, but I was persuaded to try one a few weeks back. It completely changed my mind. They are now my favorite way to get around. I am a very happy, frequent customer and hope they keep adding coverage and more cars. This is absolutely the…

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…

Are you Australian originally maybe ? :)

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

#218

Post by unionemployee »

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.

Phoenix and Manhattan have about the same population, but Phoenix has five Manhattans worth of parking.

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

#219

Post by jeromegv »

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.

Good for your rich tech salary utopia to have congestion pricing and pay for it to get ahead of the rest.

People with lower income benefit from having a decent bus system that doesn’t require them to pay $10K a year on a car.

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

#220

Post by dundermuffl1n »

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 must not have walked outside in Phoenix - you can't walk a block in that weather.
Post reply on HN