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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

#311

Post by asvitkine »

NewMountain wrote: post #111
threeseed wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I had an Uber driver in upstate New York who was trying to get me to agree or at least not disagree with the superiority of the white "race". I had another driver in Oakland California who would not relent until I acknowledged God is real and I should be thankful for his love. I felt massive cognitive dissonance afterwards feeling both the requirement to report these drivers but also massive guilt at the non-zero cha…

Wouldn't such cases result in bad ratings for the drivers?

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

#312

Post by sidibe »

redox99 wrote: post #249
jeffbee wrote: post #48

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…

Proven in what way? As a way to lose money? It's no surprise that it's easier to get to Level 4 if you have a 50-100k sensor suite, HD maps and a geofence. However, I wouldn't be shocked if, even if Tesla robotaxis arrive many years later, Tesla achieves profitability before Waymo does.

Tesla's FSD had been very profitable for a long time already. To most of us that is not as impressive as operating actually robotaxis at whatever cost

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

#313

Post by surfpel »

gamblor956 wrote: post #272
ilaksh wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Tesla's advanced-driving systems (AP and FSD) lead the world in terms of deaths. It's not even close: Tesla has more fatalities than every other advanced-driving system in the world, combined. Even massaging the data in the light most favorable for Tesla, a Tesla is still 3x more likely to be in an accident resulting in injuries than the next worst advanced-driving system, and is more than 50x more likely to be in an…

Do you have a source for these claims?

> Toyota's or GM's advanced driving systems

What advanced driving system? Do you mean lane assist with adaptive cruise control? That’s not even remotely comparable.

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

#314

Post by surfpel »

bdcravens wrote: post #240
amacneil wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> relatively small team 2,800 employees on Linkedin > instead of opting for attention-seeking behavior, making ridiculously pompous claims and false promises Waymo and Jaguar announced in 2018 plans to build up to 20,000 vehicles in the first two years of production [0] Cheap shots, I know (they did say "up to" 20,000 vehicles, after all). Waymo have been making great progress lately, and it's nice to see the AV indu…

2,800 employees is small, when you consider what they are trying to accomplish. Tesla has 130k.

Waymo is the autonomous driving division of Alphabet. Alphabet has 190k employees

Tesla’s autopilot team has ~300 people.

Both teams have done incredible work.

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

#315

Post by surfpel »

fastball wrote: post #287
unionpivo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because humans can generally do it without lidar and other sensors, does not mean that lidar and other sensors, would not improve human driving, if we could somehow integrate them seamlessly (and well reduce their price). A car equipped with more sensors, will always be better at handling more situations, than the one without them, no matter how "smart" their drivers become.

I think the overlooked part is "seamlessly integrate". Signal to noise ratio is important, and it is not trivial to "just add sensors". I think the analogy of "too many cooks in the kitchen" applies here.

Indeed. Ultimately humans do it remarkably well with just vision, too, when they’re not intoxicated, distracted, or falling asleep.

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

#316

Post by windowsrookie »

rwmj wrote: post #271
drusepth wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the fourth passenger sit in the "driver's" seat, or is it a three-packed-in-the-back kind of situation? Never seen a self-driving-car in person, but I assume it's the standard 4-seater sedan layout, right?

I wonder if there's some regulation behind why they haven't got rid of the traditional front-facing layout entirely and replaced it with train carriage style seats around a table?

These cars still have to meet all federal crash safety standards. Modifying the seating position would also require modifying the airbags, seat belts, seat belt pre-tensioners, etc. Then the vehicle would have to be crash tested again to ensure it is safe for the passengers.

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

#317

Post by surfpel »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #244
fallingknife wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last based on what metrics? I've never seen anything better than the Tesla FSD except for the LIDAR robo taxis, but they are solving a very different problem with different constraints. Most recent cost estimate I can find shows a cost per vehicle of $130-150K for Waymo vs the Tesla system that needs to go in a vehicle costing $40-50K which makes using a Waymo style sensor suite impossible. Would be interesting to se…

Your numbers are very outdated. Exact figures and targets aren't usually announced, but both Waymo has talked about their upcoming vehicle being designed around a cost/mile ratio lower than consumer vehicles. That's not possible without very reasonable production costs. Cruise has also announced a target production price for their vehicle of $50k at scale, which is around the price of a new Tesla. That's not apples t…

Tesla announced a 25k car. All of the numbers so far from every company are just speculation, though. We’ll see how things actually pan out.

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

#318

Post by kypro »

threeseed wrote: post #55
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…

> 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.

Yeah, as a guy I personally quite enjoy interacting with my driver (if I feel like it anyway). But basically every young female I know has been spoken to or treated inappropriately by taxi drivers here in the UK.

I think Uber has solved this to some degree with their rating system, but it's still a big problem.

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

#319

Post by [deleted] »

zamnos wrote: post #255
gonehome wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cruise’s “entire city” coverage is currently only for employees. The beta coverage is sunset to pacific heights and only 10pm to 530am - making it effectively useless.

More specifically, it excludes the night club district which is when the 10pm to 5am service time would actually be in demand.

[deleted]

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

#320

Post by gonehome »

fastball wrote: post #287
unionpivo wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because humans can generally do it without lidar and other sensors, does not mean that lidar and other sensors, would not improve human driving, if we could somehow integrate them seamlessly (and well reduce their price). A car equipped with more sensors, will always be better at handling more situations, than the one without them, no matter how "smart" their drivers become.

I think the overlooked part is "seamlessly integrate". Signal to noise ratio is important, and it is not trivial to "just add sensors". I think the analogy of "too many cooks in the kitchen" applies here.

Yeah, adding sensors can sometimes make things worse.
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