221–230 of 520 posts
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Maybe "U-ey" or "U-ee"?
https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/tsvbh2y > U-ie n. > also U, U-ee, U-ey, U-turn, youie > (orig. Aus.) a U-turn; thus chuck/bang a U-ie, to make a U-turn.
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Not OP, but I work in the industry. It's not as simple as opening the tap for three primary reasons: 1) localization, 2) operations, 3) cost. Localization means that you cannot generally (with current-state tech) ship a bunch of cars to a new city and turn them loose. You have to do a large amount of detailed mapping, characterization, and training in every area you want to launch. That's why you see all the self-dri…
Good summary! (I was away for a bit) I would only caution that people shouldn't overindex on mapping costs. When you're talking about entering a major metro area, you need lots of vehicles and depots and so on anyway just to provide the eventual service. So the upfront initial map build out is certainly a component of starting in a new geography, but I think people assume it is somehow dominant. It's not. The current…
- Is the initial mapping effort very high and expensive? How long does it take, on an average, to fully map a city the size and complexity of San Francisco?
- How much of the mapping process is automated?
- How are the maps kept up-to-date? We know from Waymo's blog post a while ago [1] that the cars map continuously. But is human intervention required to verify an update (like a new construction zone that was encountered)?
- How much of the country have you already mapped? Waymo says they are testing in 25 cities, so I'm assuming the number is at least 25 cities.
- What does a vehicle do if it detects a mismatch of road conditions vs the onboard map? (I already know the answer, but this is one of the most frequent points of misinformation where people say it stops working)
Anything you can share without revealing your secret sauce is appreciated!
[1] https://blog.waymo.com/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-map...
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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.
Could you pick a worse example?
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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.
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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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…
Staying in the overtaking lane is against the rules in Britain; is that the case in California too?
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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?
Not OP, but I work in the industry. It's not as simple as opening the tap for three primary reasons: 1) localization, 2) operations, 3) cost. Localization means that you cannot generally (with current-state tech) ship a bunch of cars to a new city and turn them loose. You have to do a large amount of detailed mapping, characterization, and training in every area you want to launch. That's why you see all the self-dri…
When you take a hard look at exactly how to get the costs down to the point where that price is profitable, that must be a monumental challenge. The cars must cost maybe $100-150k more? Maintenance on the sensitive custom-fit equipment, software and operations costs, yikes.
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…
I have always been a huge proponent of Waymo and obviously Tesla doesn't have something comparable to them now. But if you look at videos of recorded Tesla autopilot drives on Youtube you will see a huge amount of success in terms of getting people to their destination without crashing or killing anyone. And there is constant gradual improvement. If Tesla can get another 2-3% improvement, they may actually be able to…