Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase: "Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development..." reads a bit like a parody of corporate speak about a project nowhere close to happening. Did they agree to deploy? Or reach an agreement to collaborate? No, that's too strong. They will EXPL…
> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development.
I know we Americans just love to own cars, what with the rapid depreciation, constant maintenance and massive storage requirements. Who could resist? But isn't the promise of self driving vehicles that we don't all need to own, maintain and operate a 4000lb machine? I know it's hard to resist dropping the $30k, $40k or even $50k and paying that monthly insurance we all love. But wouldn't it be better if we could just…
That's already possible and called taxis/uber/etc.
In what way would self driving cars incentivize not owning your own car?
I can order a Waymo from my phone right now and sleep in the backseat while it drives me across town.
Anywhere in the world under any conditions? (rain, snow, etc) We're at least a decade away from that.
Those goalposts moved pretty fast from "sleep while it drives me to work" which I can do today to the extreme of being able to drive "Anywhere in the world under any conditions". And I see no reason to believe "all of the nearby vehicles on the road communicating" is the solution to bridging that gap.
Just yesterday in the coffee shop the person next to me was having a conversation about his buyer's remorse over recently purchasing a full EV instead of a hybrid or plug-in hybrid. It sounded like he hadn't anticipated how much of a hassle it is to charge on road trips. Something about having to carefully plan around the locations of fast charge stations, and it really being a drag when you're just trying to get out…
This is only a problem for non-Teslas or vehicles that can't utilize the Tesla supercharger network. I don't think I have ever plugged into a supercharger more than 10/15 minutes.
He was specifically talking about getting a Tesla.
It wouldn't be the first time reality failed to live up to the promises of Tesla's marketing folks.
Took me a minute to find it, but the title seems accurate to me based on the second paragraph in the blog post from Waymo. "In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs)."
Not really. I feel that’s still a far cry from “bring[ing] autonomous driving to personal vehicles”. “Enhance next-generation POVs” could be accomplished by bringing Toyota’s autonomous driving to the same level as Tesla’s, give where they are today. And they’re not definitively “bringing” it. They’re just exploring bringing it.
bringing Toyota’s autonomous driving to the same level as Tesla’s
Toyota would not ever be getting into something to get to “Tesla-level” - like if they were hoping their kids end up C students ;)
> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development. Compared to "FSD this year", every year for the past five years, I honestly find the approach pretty refreshing.
Except there’s FSD videos everywhere on X with every minor release, demonstrating the progress.
If progress is noticable in a 20 minute video, Tesla has a long way to go.
They can pretend that hybrids are enough but many markets are going full EV regardless while Toyota only has a half baked solution.
Not everyone wants an EV, especially in America. Unless EV’s can jump to 500 mile range and ubiquitous five minute charging, a lot of people are just gonna want a hybrid.
America is massive. And has a huge portion of “wild” country. As much as I want to go EV. All my free time is in the mountains on logging roads and in sub zero temps in winter. The charging networks are not yet embedded in the small mountain towns I frequent and I can’t take that chance.
Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase: "Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development..." reads a bit like a parody of corporate speak about a project nowhere close to happening. Did they agree to deploy? Or reach an agreement to collaborate? No, that's too strong. They will EXPL…
> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development. Compared to "FSD this year", every year for the past five years, I honestly find the approach pretty refreshing.
FSD is something you can BUY and USE right now. Toyota is writing an MoU. They’re not the same.
Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase: "Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development..." reads a bit like a parody of corporate speak about a project nowhere close to happening. Did they agree to deploy? Or reach an agreement to collaborate? No, that's too strong. They will EXPL…
Yeah, that's pretty amazing corporate speak. And the development time lines are long. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains, there is a Taxi/Van in Japan called the Alphard and it's pretty nice! Toyota also has the e-pallete, which is a self driving bus for their new Woven City project. It would be great to see a new vehicle platform co-developed for those purposes because the Toyota "electrical" architecture is about 10 years behind (all CanBus). If I was them I would sort that out before building new EVs. If you look at a bz4x and pop the hood, it looks like an IC vehicle! There is no frunk, just legacy junk. It was never designed as an EV, they just put an electric motor and a battery in a Rav4 type platform and called it a day.