Live data from Hacker News

Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

waymo.com

351–360 of 651 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are starting to obstruct bike lanes just like Ubers, I’ve seen this happen 3-4 times and it’s documented here: https://sfba.social/@SafeStreetRebel/112634004752866771 Years ago they were very respectful and conservative of basic road markings but clearly they have now ‘expanded capabilities’

California law says vehicles can enter the bike lane whenever they feel it is safe to do so.

They definitely cannot enter a protected bike lane as shown in the tweet.

And they can't just park in bike lanes, obviously.

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

#352
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.

Tesla definitely has lower costs, but what they don't have is a car that can drive itself.

They only have a car that can drive with a human partner behind the wheel who's ready at any second to take over and prevent it from crashing.

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

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just work in your car using a mobile hotspot and leave work 30 mins earlier. Works for any white collar job assuming you have a reasonable employer.

Then why go to office in the first place? :P

Because, employers are mandating a certain amount of office time.

Silly and sad, but real :(

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

#354
I dont get why anyone cheers shit like this. It just takes jobs away from more people. You will just get more homeless and drug addicted people. And more rich techies. And it will make no difference to the rider - they get where they need to be either way. It's just another bit wealth transfer from poor to rich. Yet this is cheered.

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

#355
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if they're wildly different at this point. Sitting in the shotgun seat, comparing the latest FSD vs the latest Waymo, on the same pickup and dropoff in San Francisco, I couldn't tell much difference. On the one hand, Waymo definitely chooses slower, quieter roads, and weird pickup/dropoff points - which means it's a slower ride. On the other hand, most people don't have access to actually try FSD so they…

> Sitting in the shotgun seat, comparing the latest FSD vs the latest Waymo, on the same pickup and dropoff in San Francisco, I couldn't tell much difference. Well, except for the fact that one is doing it completely driverless. And it has to do that every single time without having the luxury of a driver to prevent accidents. Big difference in reliability, which makes them wildly different.

There were no interventions, so both of them were doing it completely driverless.

We can't make an apples to apples comparison until Tesla also has a robotaxi product, but even then there will be questions around the role of remote operators.

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true that not all of them would be crashes, but many would be, because, well, the car was about to crash. The car isn't just joking around when it swerves towards some parked cars. > The only way to get a true comparison of data is to compare robotaxis with robotaxis. 100% agreed. And so far, Tesla hasn't taken the step of actually letting the cars be driverless.

Older versions of Tesla FSD tended to make steering adjustments that were short in duration, but at a higher turn angle. Human drivers in a similar situation would turn the wheel slightly but keep it turned for longer before returning to centerline. People saw the steering wheel turn and perceived it to be the system going haywire, or thought that "the car was about to crash" as you put it, and intervened. The newer…

Yes, every year Tesla fans talk about how much it's improved, and every year it's still failing on basic driving tasks.

And there's definitely cases where the Tesla in question just tries to run into parked cars or similar for no apparent reason, but Tesla fans always have some excuse about why that's irrelevant, especially if it's not on whatever the absolute latest version is.

Then they accuse the people horrified at Teslas making basic errors and trying to crash of being "anti-Musk".

The reality is that their progress has been slowly incremental and often mixed: https://insideevs.com/news/724479/tesla-fsd-12-4-1-real-worl...

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

#357
post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sitting in the shotgun seat, comparing the latest FSD vs the latest Waymo, on the same pickup and dropoff in San Francisco, I couldn't tell much difference. Well, except for the fact that one is doing it completely driverless. And it has to do that every single time without having the luxury of a driver to prevent accidents. Big difference in reliability, which makes them wildly different.

There were no interventions, so both of them were doing it completely driverless. We can't make an apples to apples comparison until Tesla also has a robotaxi product, but even then there will be questions around the role of remote operators.

> There were no interventions, so both of them were doing it completely driverless.

Well, no. A Tesla doesn't operate without a driver's supervision, so it can't be driverless. It did that particular drive without intervention, that's it. The stats [1] clearly show it's nowhere near capable of doing it without a driver in the seat. Community tracker puts them at 30 miles per disengagement.

[1] https://www.teslafsdtracker.com

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

#358
post #17

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…

Wouldn't the Ubers potentially be cleaner? Who's cleaning the Waymo between rides?

One of the worst parts of the Uber experience is the smell of the driver. Especially those that put on heavy cologne or perfumes.

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

#359

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 wonder if the cleanliness will be maintained over time? Presumably this requires humans to physically clean periodically, and it seems like this would suffer when the company starts to squeeze costs to improve margins.

I think eventually they’ll just make a car (like Zooks is) without all the messy crud (steering wheel etc) and with fixed, waterproof seats and such. It will be designed for automatic cleaned by driving into a depot and being hosed down.

Think of those self-cleaning toilets.

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

#360
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Unsupervised in what sense?

Unsupervised in the sense that there's no driver there to clean the car when it gets dirty. At the same time, presumably part of the odor of an uber comes from the driver, so that helps. I wonder if waymos roll down the window (weather permitting) between riders, to air it out. Might be dangerous at a red light, since people could throw stuff in or even dive in through open windows.

Post reply on HN