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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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there no freeways inside the geofence? Someone in the thread mentions that they will be adding freeways soon, so I understand it can't do those now.

There are freeways within the geofence in SF. My understanding is that Waymos will not drive on those freeways without a safety driver for now.

Freeway driving is easier than surface streets. Maybe merging in is the hard part.

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

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so confident that AGI, or a human brain, is necessary to be able to drive a car with only cameras? I get annoyed with statements like this because technology changes and advances so quickly, and Tesla has made substantial technical leaps in this field of machine learning. They have the state-of-the-art vision -> voxels/depth models and are only improving.

Tesla, who use cameras only, have not demonstrated full self driving, despite trying for a decade. Elon Musk has stated "It is increasingly clear that all roads lead to AGI. Tesla is building an extremely compute-efficient mini AGI for FSD" [1] Waymo, who use additional sensors like lidar, have a driverless taxi service which needs no safety drivers. The evidence kinda speaks for itself, IMHO. [1] https://twitter.com…

Waymo does have safety drivers, they're just driving the vehicle remotely when it's in certain areas instead of being in the vehicle. So it isn't "full" self driving either.

> Tesla, who use cameras only, have not demonstrated full self driving

There are entire youtube channels with hours of continuous video showing Teslas driving around SF, but also other parts of California, with no human intervention.

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

#243
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a function of the filtered population. The cars are at full capacity day and night so the increased number of users won't affect a single car's cleanliness nearly as much as the type of people that will be riding in them.

What do you mean by the type of people who will be riding in them?

Drunk party goers on a Friday night, people smoking in the car on their way to Dolores, petulant teenagers…

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

#244

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.

> These cars are literally unsupervised.

Unsupervised in what sense? There's internal cameras that are periodically checked. Weight and seatbelt sensors that give alerts if a passenger is or puts objects in the drivers seat, or if too many individuals get in the car.

I'd be shocked if a similar or greater level of observability doesn't also exist outside the car.

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

#245
post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Yes, but SF seems to have some truly reckless pedestrians, often presumably under the influence of substances. There are graduations between "cross at a red light when you think it's safe to do so" and "barge into a 4 lane street in the middle of a block because the voices in your head tell you to".

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

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tesla is willing to sell to people who will pay $$$ for a self driving car. Waymo isn't. That's probably more important for now. Taxi drivers don't earn that much, and have some advantages AI can't easily replace (able to help with luggage, use petrol stations etc). Replacing them requires undercutting them which in turn means you can't generate a ton of revenue from that. Yet Waymo's business model, such that it is,…

> Tesla is willing to sell to people who will pay $$$ for a self driving car

The very low take-up rate of FSD during the trial period indicates that most people are buying Tesla's because they are arguably the best EV with the best charging network.

Not because of FSD.

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

#247
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…

> is Tesla actually in a position to win here due to their manufacturing capability / current deployment of Tesla's?

Tesla has much lower costs. If they can beat Waymo on customer experience (better driving primarily, but also better in-car entertainment, better mobile app, and match Waymo's pricing) they'll win.

Waymo might have a regulatory advantage since a lot of politians don't like Musk.

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

#248

They solved the wrong problem. I still have to sit in a car for 30 minutes after work. If instead they made a robotic chef cook, that would actually save me 30 minutes every day.

Best we can do is include a small kitchen in the back seat of the waymo so you can cook while you would have been driving.

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

#249
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The rate at which these systems are improving makes it almost useless to compare even six months ago.

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

#250
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo's have cameras inside the car to make sure the vehicles are clean: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9190819

Yeah they probably pipe that video to an algorithm that does background subtraction so they're able to assert that the vehicle is clear of foreign objects, but those cameras don't detect smell. If someone defecates and wipes it somewhere the camera doesn't see, then what?

The rider reports an issue and Waymo sends a new car while they send the dirty one back to the depot back to be cleaned? Offending previous rider is charged a fee and then banned for life.

Hard for me to imagine this being a widespread problem. Probably about as much problem as there is with something similar happening in the elevator of a private building.

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