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Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

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

#231

Post by shkkmo »

greenthrow wrote: post #94
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.

You are correct, Waymo has not solved the economics of robotaxis yet. However Waymo does have a huge head start on the solution. Waymo has been able to manage their scale growth to manage the cost of finding these solutions. It seems like a competitor that hasn't had that will have to pay a lot more to catch up.

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

#232

Post by Swizec »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #175
Swizec wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competing anecdata: Yesterday I was running downtown and a Waymo stopped for me at a green light because it wasn't sure if I was gonna jaywalk (jayrun?). Only once I stood still for a few seconds did it continue to make its turn. This was in a turn-left-only intersection with a separate pedestrian light. Maybe the Waymo got confused and thought I also had green.

Could also be that they're taught to be overly cautious to avoid suicidally stupid humans

It's pretty normal for people running in densely populated cities with 15mph average traffic speeds to ignore red lights. Nothing suicidal about it :)

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

#233

Post by rd »

mlboss wrote: post #205
ModernMech wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say the same, maybe. But yesterday I had an Uber with a guy that had a degree in history and a love for SF lore, and told me about the tomb of Starr King, and then I went on a quest to find it with my friend. Just saying that there’s magic out there that’s not technological.

Not so difficult to add this feature with the help of human like voice and LLM backend.

Put a tone monitoring system to tell if the person is getting annoyed, and have a fallback that reroutes you to a warehouse of offshore comedians.

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

#234

Post by amelius »

taylorlapeyre wrote: post #3

Living here for the last 10 years, it's been jarring how just in the last few years, driverless taxis went from "it'll never happen" to "is this the default now?" The Waymos are genuinely good drivers. I look forward to taking them every time.

Good LiDAR makes the problem considerably easier.

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

#235

Post by Keyframe »

itsoktocry wrote: post #215
prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I love how we've gone from "Taxis are gross and dirty, that's why I love Uber!" to "Ubers are gross and dirty, that's why I love Waymo!" in the span of 5 years. What do you think comes next? These cars are literally unsupervised.

Organic, manual, hand-driven authentic vintage driving experience (before it was cool, of course).

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

#237

Post by im3w1l »

mlboss wrote: post #205
ModernMech wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say the same, maybe. But yesterday I had an Uber with a guy that had a degree in history and a love for SF lore, and told me about the tomb of Starr King, and then I went on a quest to find it with my friend. Just saying that there’s magic out there that’s not technological.

Not so difficult to add this feature with the help of human like voice and LLM backend.

You're not wrong, but I think part of point of storytelling is about connecting people with each other and creating a sense of community.

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

#238

Post by kajecounterhack »

mike_hearn wrote: post #206
mlyle wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cameras we are talking about have poor angular resolution, worse dynamic range than the human eye, and don’t do any direct depth sensing either.

Are we talking about Tesla's cameras or the "best" cameras? There are smartphone cameras that do depth sensing and HDR, and cameras are cheaper than eyeballs so composing them to get more angular resolution seems OK.

> There are smartphone cameras that do depth sensing and HDR

Depth sensing is again, estimated or using time of flight sensors which is pretty much short-range lidar. HDR is used already in AV perception, but still loses to your eyeballs in dynamic range and processing time.

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

#239

Post by sushid »

itsoktocry wrote: post #215
prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I love how we've gone from "Taxis are gross and dirty, that's why I love Uber!" to "Ubers are gross and dirty, that's why I love Waymo!" in the span of 5 years. What do you think comes next? These cars are literally unsupervised.

Well it's because as Uber expanded and had to desperately fight for its margins, it started to lower its standards for UberX. Before, cars had to be fairly new and in a relatively good condition. Now it's no longer the case.

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

#240

Post by Fatnino »

bragr wrote: post #158
prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I got access to Waymo in LA a few weeks ago and have taken it 4 times. It's capabilities are impressive for sure, but I'm not sure I'd go as far as "smooth and sure ride". The car's skills seems to vary between impressive and "nervous new driver". It drives like someone that got randomly stuck into a much bigger car than they are used to.

When I rode in one, admittedly a long time ago when cruise was still operating in sf too, the waymo car pulled over for a firetruck. However, the firetruck was merely crossing the road we were on and it was 3 streets away. And the waymo pulled into a bus stop to do this. The safety driver had to nudge it back into traffic.
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