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Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

waymo.com

561–570 of 651 posts

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

#561

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.

This makes me wonder why this shouldn't become the default mode of public transport — i.e., subsidized by the local govt in the same way as busses/trolleys. It seems they could actually replace the busses and provide better service with a sufficient inventory of cars. Could even provide Waymo-style vans on regular++ routes, with the "++" being ability to divert to nearby residences, especially for the mobility-impaired.

Why? Why Not?

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

#562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo doesn't have to convince its vehicle owners to let strangers ride in their car unsupervised. Yes there can be cleaning fees and vetting, but all it takes is one or two people puking in your Tesla, and you'll have no interest in providing a Robotaxi for Musk's Mission.

Tesla is rather good at mass producing their own vehicles so they are not reliant on existing Tesla owners providing their vehicles for the fleet. If the rumor mill is to be believed, they will also be making a dedicated robotaxi vehicle with no steering wheel so there isn't a wasted empty driver seat. > Yes there can be cleaning fees and vetting, but all it takes is one or two people puking in your Tesla, and you'll…

> Plenty of Tesla owners (and owners of all sorts of other vehicles including high-end sports cars and luxury vehicles) already rent out their vehicles to strangers on Turo. Listing them on Tesla's platform instead won't be a large change. A lot of owners might actually prefer it if it allows more fine-grained options (eg. no rides past 9pm, no rides more than 50 miles from home) instead of renting it out for 24 hour periods.

The entry bar for renting a vehicle on Turo is quite a bit more substantial than hailing an Uber. I looked at making my cars available.

You can restrict the age of the driver (anything vaguely high end I see required you to be 30+), require substantial deposits ($750), proof of your own insurance, mileage and location limitations, and more. Versus "Downloaded the Robotaxi app and put in a credit card number".

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

#563
post #38

The app is not available in my region (EU). But I visit SF from time to time. What should I do?

Alternative Apple ID / Google account with region set in US. Always useful to have! For Android it's much easier, I have a bunch (for every country I've lived in) set up on my phone simultaneously and I can just switch in the Play Store.

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

#564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do hotels, I guess that’s why no hotel room has ever been trashed.

I guess that's why no hotel lets you pay cash.

I've never been to a hotel that didn't require a valid credit card as a hold for security when checking in.

Sure you can pay in cash at the end if you want.

But you can't get a room in the first place without a credit card, even if they never charge it.

(I mean I'm sure there are some exceptions somewhere, but generally speaking, no, cash isn't sufficient.)

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

#565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

computers can't smell

VOC sensors are pretty good

“Massive fart detected. Initializing ejector seat in 3, 2…”

I’m not sure how you could make that work. People that eat Indian food step in and it might get set off, so people will cry racism. You drive next to a particular industrial plant, etc..

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

#567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A loaded question is a trick question, which presupposes at least one unverified assumption that the person being questioned is likely to disagree with.

Can you quote my question back to me and point out the presumption that the person is likely to disagree with?

I'll take that as a "no".

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

#568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove that. Because last time I checked in there wasn't a self-driving system in play that wouldn't faceplant into wet cement, blow through crosswalks, or find itself trapped in a cleverly deployed ring of salt. Additionally, by their own admission Waymo is nowhere near level 5 autonomy, which means they still haven't reached parity with what a mediocre human driver is capable of.

Well they just announced that they are doing tens of thousands of rides per week. That either works or it doesn't. And they seem pretty comfortable doing that. Also there's a distinct lack of horror stories involving Waymo cars. And I assume that they don't have thousands of mechanical turks wielding a joystick somewhere, which means these things are mostly working as advertised (i.e. autonomously) with the very occa…

Idgaf if they're round-tripping the equivalent to mars and back weekly, the fact of the matter is their tech cannot perform at the level of a human driver who's had their license for a week, by their own admission. No amount of argle-bargle changes that as the autonomy levels are very well-defined and Waymo self-reports as L4 under optimal conditions and no clear path to L5 in sight in the next decade. Let's not confuse a legislative fuckup on the part of cdot with actual technical prowess yeah?

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

#570
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prove that. Because last time I checked in there wasn't a self-driving system in play that wouldn't faceplant into wet cement, blow through crosswalks, or find itself trapped in a cleverly deployed ring of salt. Additionally, by their own admission Waymo is nowhere near level 5 autonomy, which means they still haven't reached parity with what a mediocre human driver is capable of.

Not only will safety take a long time for technical reasons, but its extremely predictable under what financial conditions corporate execs sweep safety issues under the carpet. If Alphabet has a few tricky quarters good luck to everyone.

Oh sure yeah. It'd take exactly one legislative push to place full liability in the case of accidents onto the vehicle manufacturer (where it clearly belongs) to fold up every autonomy division in the industry like a wet towel. What galls the shit out of me is there's apparently enough dumb money afoot to float R&D spend equivalent to the GDP of a middle of the road 3rd world country just to make cabbies lives even more miserable.
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