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

California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

cpuc.ca.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 424 posts

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#331

Post by xw390111 »

aetherson wrote: post #327
bigyikes wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are extremely cheap compared to their drivers.

I don't think that Waymo cars are.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/johanmoreno/2021/01/22/waymo-ce...

"Krafcik made the point, as some analysts predict autonomous vehicle technology will be too expensive to adopt en masse. Waymo uses LiDAR sensors in its vehicles, which previously retailed for as much as $75,000. In 2019, Krafcik signaled that its Honeycomb LiDAR units now cost around $7,500."

And price is only going to come down over time.

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#332

Post by barbazoo »

gretch wrote: post #203
barbazoo wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Waymo is public transport Is it? Doesn't "public transit" at least somewhat imply that it's a business that has to operate under the rules of some democratically elected institution? Waymo will ban you, price you differently based on who/where/when you are, etc. I wouldn't expect any of that from "public transit".

>price you differently based on who/where/when you are, etc public transit already does this https://www.bart.gov/tickets/discounts -Seniors 65 and over get 62.5% off -Youth 5-18 years old get 50% off

I was thinking more of individual pricing

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#333

Post by rukuu001 »

marssaxman wrote: post #308
cj wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto as a motorcyclist. Making eye contact with drivers makes riding a lot easier. You know they see you.

When I'm on a motorcycle, I assume they are never seeing me - but it's still useful to see them , and I can often tell what they are about to do before they've started doing it. I have not yet had the chance to share the road with a robot, but I wonder whether that feeling for traffic will still work.

Yeh, the only time I assume a driver has really seen me is when we make eye contact.

(But - twice in 20 years I’ve had the chilling experience of a driver making eye contact and pulling out in front of me anyway.)

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#334

Post by mlyle »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #292
1024core wrote: post #277

Just yesterday, walking in the inner sunset neighborhood of SF, I saw an old lady in a 1980s Volvo come to a 4-way stop. She looked really old, as in probably even 90+. She wasn't sure about the rules of the stop sign: she came to the stop and was hesitating to go. Other cars were waiting for her and some of them started just going through, creating a very dangerous situation. Eventually she mustered the courage to j…

Safer, maybe. cost effective, I don't see it. especially compared to this aforementioned fleet of transport vehicles.

You don't think fleets without drivers will be cheaper than fleets with drivers?

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#335

Post by [deleted] »

alistairSH wrote: post #274
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we're just going to let the robots be the only thing we see all day long This is an uncharitable reading of someone wanting peace and quiet from time to time.

Going downtown on Super Bowl night isn’t exactly peace and quiet. But yeah, taxis and Ubers can suck sometimes.

[deleted]

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#336

Post by JumpCrisscross »

SoftTalker wrote: post #313
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve wanted a lay-flat ride between San Francisco and the South Bay for ages.

Crash safety and the need for seatbelts will limit what can be done with the interior. There won't be any lay-flat seating.

> won't be any lay-flat seating

If crash rates go down, and you have a flat surface that you’re strapped onto that is angled and has an airbag-like system to ensure as many G’s as eyeballs in or out, sure we could.

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#337

Post by rufus_foreman »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #268
rufus_foreman wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> An affordable mid size car costs roughly $6k per year Show your math.

Really? do you want to see every little receipt from the GP? I'll give a rough cost with my small sedan pre-pandemic - Gas every 2 weeks (30 mile commute to work), fillin up the car is about $60. so $120 for gas. 120/month is 1440/year - DMV costs are $150 a year - car wash every few months. Let's make it monthly and more expensive than my actual washes. $50/month, 600 a year - oil change every 3 months or so (probab…

>> oil change every 3 months or so

That's just plain stupid.

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#338

Post by [deleted] »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #337
johnnyanmac wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? do you want to see every little receipt from the GP? I'll give a rough cost with my small sedan pre-pandemic - Gas every 2 weeks (30 mile commute to work), fillin up the car is about $60. so $120 for gas. 120/month is 1440/year - DMV costs are $150 a year - car wash every few months. Let's make it monthly and more expensive than my actual washes. $50/month, 600 a year - oil change every 3 months or so (probab…

>> oil change every 3 months or so That's just plain stupid.

[deleted]

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#339

Post by duped »

pjs_ wrote: post #97

I speak to VCs quite a bit and recently I was hanging around with a bunch of them, they were all making fun of the state of self-driving cars, ah, stupid industry, will never work, whatever. But to me it's strange, if you go to San Francisco today you can see cars driving around with nobody inside. They drive around, they pick people up, they mostly don't crash into shit. There's nobody behind the wheel. I know that…

> they were all making fun of the state of self-driving cars, ah, stupid industry, will never work, whatever.

As Sinclair said, "it is difficult to get a man to understand something on which his salary depends on him not understanding."

The road to self driving cars is a capital intensive and entrenched in regulatory quagmire. Those two things are enough to keep VCs away.

But if you think about it, every trip that someone takes in a self-driving vehicle is a trip that they didn't take their own car or a taxi. Most trips are not complex, and most problems are with other human drivers. As the market grows the difficulty of the problem domain will shrink. If you can reach critical mass, infrastructure can be adjusted to specialize for self-driving cars.

That said, the illusion of self driving cars is that you can provide mass transit at affordable prices using existing infrastructure and specialized hubs/depots/fuel/roads for the vehicles. But we already have that, they're called busses. But busses are for poor people, so we don't invest in them.

Re: California Approves Waymo Expansion to Los Angeles and SF Peninsula [pdf]

#340

Post by johnnyanmac »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #337
johnnyanmac wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? do you want to see every little receipt from the GP? I'll give a rough cost with my small sedan pre-pandemic - Gas every 2 weeks (30 mile commute to work), fillin up the car is about $60. so $120 for gas. 120/month is 1440/year - DMV costs are $150 a year - car wash every few months. Let's make it monthly and more expensive than my actual washes. $50/month, 600 a year - oil change every 3 months or so (probab…

>> oil change every 3 months or so That's just plain stupid.

How is an oil change every 3 months stupid? Every 3000 miles I get a change, and I had to commute a minimum of 70 miles a day. Comes out to 42 days per milestone, or 8-9 weeks if only counting weekdays. I felt like I always put it off and the math checks out.

My driving went way down during the pandemic, but it's probably a better normal metric to measure my routine before a global anamloly.

>600 a year on car washes?

I was being very generous there to prove a point. I don't do a car wash monthly and I don't get the highest tier of car wash either.

Even the "stupidest" spending on my car for daily travel and I don't come within a stone's throw of justifying taxis, financially speaking save on.

Post reply on HN