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Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

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Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#111

Post by k99x55 »

keiferski wrote: post #103
k99x55 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are the most age discriminatory mode of transport of all: only 18+ and not too old can use it, and most disabled cannot use it. A Bicycles work to all ages, all abilities. In your case an ebike, trike (etrike?) or even mobility scooter might be a much lighter, cheaper, scalable option. Hey why not a self-driving e-scooter? Why does it have to weight 2 tons in the first place? Bike infrastructure is not only for…

Have you ever interacted with a person over 70 that has mobility problems? Do you really expect an 80 year old to ride a scooter up a hill in the rain/snow? Getting into the car is difficult enough.

I'm not saying to ban cars, just to de-prioritize them The use case for bicycle-and-similars is way more than the use case for cars specially urban places (also outside urban places)

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#112

Post by numpad0 »

k99x55 wrote: post #96
tkgally wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city where I live—Yokohama—is very different in layout and density from the U.S. cities shown in that video. My neighborhood consists of many small plots of land, each with a different owner, separated by narrow streets. Unless it all gets wiped out by a tsunami, it’s never going to be rebuilt or have its layout changed—the landowners, many of whom live on their plots of land, would not stand for it. My house is…

Cars are the most age discriminatory mode of transport of all: only 18+ and not too old can use it, and most disabled cannot use it. A Bicycles work to all ages, all abilities. In your case an ebike, trike (etrike?) or even mobility scooter might be a much lighter, cheaper, scalable option. Hey why not a self-driving e-scooter? Why does it have to weight 2 tons in the first place? Bike infrastructure is not only for…

Let's give that self driving e-scooter four seats, oops that's a kei car... They weigh almost exactly one ton too, before adding four adults and a suitcase or two.

Just take see how roads in Tokyo already look like[1]. Cars are already driven like factory floor robots[2]. Actually automating those hurts nothing.

1: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=factory+agv

2: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=driving+tokyo

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#113

Post by numpad0 »

klausa wrote: post #83
numpad0 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are late night fees, and taxis in general are 3-10x expensive relative to trains. Trains in Japan cease operations during nights, and last stops of trains move progressively towards core Tokyo to position vehicles for morning operations. This means you can't just stay at the table until stations close and catch the very last one, but people have varying time limits for train rides home. So binge drinking train…

One thing to add, which is the thing that surprised me: not only the trains stop; _there are no replacement bus services_. Where I'm from, where the rail services when they stop for the night, have _some_ replacement — you might need to wait 30 minutes for a bus, and then ride it along the U-Bahn tracks and the trip will take 45 minutes instead of 15; but there is _a_ way to get home before the trains resume.

Interesting, I naively assumed that's how it is everywhere... Maybe Tokyo is such a giant mess that it isn't going to make sense serving all needed routes all night.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#114

Post by tim333 »

k99x55 wrote: post #87
tkgally wrote: post #8

This will be interesting. As an aging nondriver living in Yokohama, I’ve been both hoping that self-driving cars become available here before I develop mobility issues and wondering how feasible they will be. Since I don’t drive, I don’t have a sense of what the roads here are like from the vehicle’s perspective. But many of the streets, including in the neighborhood where I live [1], are narrow, have no sidewalks, a…

Don't fall on the trap of self-driving cars will make our lives better. They won't. Building cities for people first is what will improve our lives. Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0

I watched part of "Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)" and the arguments seemed pretty weak. A lot of it was along the lines of current cars cause problems in cities and self driving cars are still cars so self driving cars bad. But there's a lot of flexibility as to how they get used and regulated.

Just thinking about one city issue local to me - I live near Oxford Street in London which is currently overcrowded with thousands of people plus buses and taxis and the like. They've wanted to pedestrianize it for ages and probably will but there are problems with accessibility for the handicapped and delivery of stuff to the stores. That could maybe be sorted with slow moving self driving evs picking those up? I'm not sure but at least it's another option.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#115

Post by tim333 »

keiferski wrote: post #103
k99x55 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are the most age discriminatory mode of transport of all: only 18+ and not too old can use it, and most disabled cannot use it. A Bicycles work to all ages, all abilities. In your case an ebike, trike (etrike?) or even mobility scooter might be a much lighter, cheaper, scalable option. Hey why not a self-driving e-scooter? Why does it have to weight 2 tons in the first place? Bike infrastructure is not only for…

Have you ever interacted with a person over 70 that has mobility problems? Do you really expect an 80 year old to ride a scooter up a hill in the rain/snow? Getting into the car is difficult enough.

Dunno - check out old guy on mobility scooter video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2028301917230649

I'm a little like that myself - not as old at 60 but have switched to an ebike to still go fast.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#116

Post by keiferski »

tim333 wrote: post #115
keiferski wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever interacted with a person over 70 that has mobility problems? Do you really expect an 80 year old to ride a scooter up a hill in the rain/snow? Getting into the car is difficult enough.

Dunno - check out old guy on mobility scooter video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2028301917230649 I'm a little like that myself - not as old at 60 but have switched to an ebike to still go fast.

...that's a meme post of a guy in a mask. It's not an old guy.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#118

Post by Ajedi32 »

k99x55 wrote: post #87
tkgally wrote: post #8

This will be interesting. As an aging nondriver living in Yokohama, I’ve been both hoping that self-driving cars become available here before I develop mobility issues and wondering how feasible they will be. Since I don’t drive, I don’t have a sense of what the roads here are like from the vehicle’s perspective. But many of the streets, including in the neighborhood where I live [1], are narrow, have no sidewalks, a…

Don't fall on the trap of self-driving cars will make our lives better. They won't. Building cities for people first is what will improve our lives. Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0

Almost all of these "cars bad" arguments fall for the trap of focusing solely on the disadvantages of cars while completely ignoring the huge upsides that make them by far most popular form of transport in rich countries in the first place: Long distance transport directly from your home to the front door of your destination in a private, climate-controlled cabin with zero transfers or unnecessary stops.

Self-driving will make our lives better because it takes that already very successful form of transportation and makes it significantly safer and more efficient without compromising any of its advantages.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#119

Post by AlotOfReading »

travisporter wrote: post #117

Is anyone working on autonomous busses or vans for public transport?

Yes, beep is probably the most well known of them, having two test locations in Contra Costa county you can ride if you're in the bay area. They're much less sophisticated than Waymo vehicles though, and the unit economics are much less favorable.

Re: Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

#120

Post by dragonwriter »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #38
GoatOfAplomb wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo is doing alright in San Francisco as well. That's not directly comparable to Tokyo, either, but I expect it's a much less distant of a comparison than Phoenix.

[flagged]

Since this has been updated with a link to info about the “barred from expansion” that was referenced, note that the arricle with actual detail notes that it was an “up to 120 days” suspension by CPUC in February of this year (which would have expired in June at the latest), but CPUC actually approved a major expansion in March (and, after a challenge to that decision and demand for a rehearing, approved it again on a rehearing in June.) [0]

So, the idea that they are fleeing to Japan because they’be faced some kind of permanent, or even significant, barrier to expansion in California is wildly incompatible with the facts.

> How are things going in Arizona? So badly they pulled their fleet (before state regulators could) and a federal investigation was announced right after:

They didn’t pull their fleet, and the article you posted to support this doesn't say they did. It says they did a safety recall to fix an apparent software error; the service is still in operation, and the implication that they ran away in fear of state regulatory action is as baseless as the idea that they have been blocked from further expansion in California. For someone who is accusing everyone who disagrees with you of being an astroturfer or dupe of Waymo propaganda, you seem to be very fond of promoting arguments that twist what is in the notionally-supporting sources to the limit of what would be plausible taking them entirely out of context,and which rely on ignoring every other piece of information ine existence, as if you were not presenting good faith arguments but desperately constructing anti-Waymo propaganda of the same type you accuse your opponents of doing in support of Waymo.

[0] https://www.autobodynews.com/news/california-commission-appr...

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