Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#91

Post by aresant » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:05 PM UTC

Genuine question ->

- Elon (and his pro-analysts) heavily weight the future of the co's valuation on their ability to deploy a taxi network and has been promising it just around corner for years

- Alphabet via Waymo seems to have "solved" robotaxis for city-proximity driving and has deployed as a business.

Beyond the obvious "reality distortion field" argument is Tesla actually in a position to win here due to their manufacturing capability / current deployment of Tesla's?

Disclaimer - I am an Alphabet & Tesla shareholder

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#92

Post by greenthrow » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:06 PM UTC

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #89

Is much known about the science behind Waymo? I am impressed that the cars can operate autonomously in real life when I see them around me. At the same time, they have an enormous number of sensors like multiple spinning LIDARs (?). I also read that they have to map everything ahead of time to be able to operate in an area. That seems a bit like cheating to me. It may work and may even be valuable to customers, but i…

Nobody knows the details, e.g. how many humans are monitoring per car. It came out at one point that Cruise was using >1 human per car. What is Waymo doing? We dunno, we just keep seeing these absurd puff pieces.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#93

Post by jessriedel » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:08 PM UTC

hypeatei wrote: post #85

I can't imagine this turning out well if there is any social media movement around these cars. It's reminding me of that one robot travelling across the country which ended up getting destroyed by some people.

They have been slowly expanding service in SF for several years. Tens of thousands of people have taken a ride. Actually, they give more than 10k rides a week, so probably over a hundred thousand people. Scaling up to the whole city (pop: 800k) is not that big of a jump.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#94

Post by greenthrow » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:09 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #91

Genuine question -> - Elon (and his pro-analysts) heavily weight the future of the co's valuation on their ability to deploy a taxi network and has been promising it just around corner for years - Alphabet via Waymo seems to have "solved" robotaxis for city-proximity driving and has deployed as a business. Beyond the obvious "reality distortion field" argument is Tesla actually in a position to win here due to their…

1) Waymo has not "solved" robotaxis as a business. They are not profitable and the vehicles are not truly autonomous (the humans monitoring the vehicles are merely remote. We don't know how many humans are needed per vehicle.)

2) Tesla has zero even remotely monitored, let alone autonomous, miles driven. So no, there is no reason to believe Tesla is close to true robotaxis.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#95

Post by Heliosmaster » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:10 PM UTC

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #89

Is much known about the science behind Waymo? I am impressed that the cars can operate autonomously in real life when I see them around me. At the same time, they have an enormous number of sensors like multiple spinning LIDARs (?). I also read that they have to map everything ahead of time to be able to operate in an area. That seems a bit like cheating to me. It may work and may even be valuable to customers, but i…

But...they are a company, their goal isn't to make breakthroughs. Their goal is (eventually?) to make a profit. They'll simply use the technology and breakthroughs that allow them to get there faster. That's not cheating.. that's business

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#96

Post by JumpCrisscross » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:11 PM UTC

kungito wrote: post #77

dventimi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be any different from Uber? Doesn't Uber also want to cut costs?

Uber has partner drivers which have their own companies, their own rating, and can be punished for their behaviour. Once a company completely vertically integrates (like Google would like), meaning they have their own cars, they no longer want to punish themselves for bad behaviour/cars. Since they have to choose between short term cost of higher maintenance fee or long term cost of loss of quality of service their m…

Waymo is posiionting itself as a premium product. Defending that brand precludes letting the cars go to shit.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#97

Post by kajecounterhack » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:11 PM UTC

greenthrow wrote: post #90

MichaelNolan wrote: post #86

While it’s still a drop in the bucket compared to human driven taxis, it’s remarkable that Waymo will like reach 50 million passenger only miles this year. And will surpass 100 million passenger only miles sometime in 2025. With that much data the safety case should become very clear.

Except that they have remote humans monitoring every vehicle so the whole thing is an illusion and we don't know the truth of how safe truly autonomous vehicles are (since they don't exist.)

1:1 remote human monitoring would not scale from a unit economics perspective, and even if they did that, the remote operators can't drive the car, only offer small feedbacks. So the car is really driving itself.

The safety story is an interesting one. Companies like Cruise and Waymo are not forthcoming with their incident data. They share infrequently and through spreadsheets that do not capture every incident. It's pretty ass, and I'd be wary of trusting their self-reported data. I imagine their insurance companies have slightly better data than the gov't, but even then maybe not.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#98

Post by zooq_ai » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:12 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #91

Genuine question -> - Elon (and his pro-analysts) heavily weight the future of the co's valuation on their ability to deploy a taxi network and has been promising it just around corner for years - Alphabet via Waymo seems to have "solved" robotaxis for city-proximity driving and has deployed as a business. Beyond the obvious "reality distortion field" argument is Tesla actually in a position to win here due to their…

as a Alphabet and Tesla shareholder, this is what is important.

The rate of innovation at Tesla > Waymo

The cost of building Tesla FSD = 1/100 * cost of building Waymo FSD

The cost of delivering Tesla FSD = 1/10 * cost of delivering Waymo FSD

Tesla has economies of scale. Waymo has all the details figured out. Waymo can never get to the scale of Tesla (it can never buy 5 Million FSD cars, while Tesla is delivering them every 2 years)

Mathematically, Tesla has an upper hand over Waymo and it'll play out as that.

Larry, Sergei are extremely poor capital allocators. Musk is brilliant (despite him being a narcisstic a*hole).

Larry/Sergei left Waymo at a limbo state because they don't think in terms of economics, just coolness.

Waymo is successful enough to not kill it, but also not a cash-flow positive to scale it up

Edit : Tch, Tch expected HN anti-Musk hate showing up in downvotes.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#99

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:12 PM UTC

choppaface wrote: post #81

pengaru wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So smooth they apparently opt to blow red lights instead of stopping abruptly. source: I commute by skateboard in SF daily. Just yesterday an empty Waymo cruised straight through a fresh red, narrowly missing my entry into the crosswalk. But don't get me started on what I've seen human drivers do on the same streets. Just annoyed that Waymo's aren't better.

Have also nearly been hit as a pedestrian by a Waymo. I also last week saw a Waymo blow through a yellow-red very aggressively, so I think the downvotes on above comment are intensely biased.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#100

Post by notyourwork » Tue, Jun 25, 2024, 7:12 PM UTC

aresant wrote: post #91

Genuine question -> - Elon (and his pro-analysts) heavily weight the future of the co's valuation on their ability to deploy a taxi network and has been promising it just around corner for years - Alphabet via Waymo seems to have "solved" robotaxis for city-proximity driving and has deployed as a business. Beyond the obvious "reality distortion field" argument is Tesla actually in a position to win here due to their…

Alphabet is far ahead of Tesla in the category of "deploying a taxi network". No one can dispute that. They also use a different technology. What I don't know today is how fast can Waymo scale to more cities. I assume if Tesla cracks the "taxi network nut" they can scale faster and will catch up to Alphabet.