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Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

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Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#211

Post by kccqzy »

pelagic_sky wrote: post #188
thehappypm wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are just describing the chicken-and-egg problem. Without enough EVs there aren't incentives to build more chargers; without enough chargers EVs aren't sold in enough numbers. That's why the EV adoption curve in the United States is still in the early adopter phase. And clearly you aren't enthusiastic about being an early adopter.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#212

Post by valenterry »

brummm wrote: post #182
standardUser wrote: post #180

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?

In a few ways, no.

Taxis/uber etc. are all built as "regular cards". It requires at least 2 people in there. How often is actually more than 1 person in a car? Wasn't that like 2/3 of all drives?

Now let's assume we have specialized cars for just a single person - that saves a lot of material, fuel, and also (parking) space.

But that only works if you don't OWN the car, because if you own it, you might sometimes have to have passengers right? So you always get a big car that is not needed in 2/3 or so of the drives.

That aside, having another driver is annoying for various reasons (e.g. privacy).

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#213

Post by adrr »

aantix wrote: post #174
lxgr wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Progress would be get certified for self driving. For comparison, Mercedes, BMW, Honda etc have L3 cars on the market. Mercedes just got approved full highway speeds in EU and working on L4 certification.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#214

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

vachina wrote: post #189
lxgr wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

What you're buying is not driving, by itself, fully.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#215

Post by zik »

standardUser wrote: post #180

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 one vision, but it's probably not the most likely one. People like privately owning cars, and as long as they're more convenient than hiring taxis it'll probably stay that way.

Here's another vision of the future - gradually everyone's cars become self-driving, and now cars are more accessible to a wider range of people. 30% of the population currently can't drive due to age or disability, but if cars drive themselves the elderly, disabled, and even children can now own and operate vehicles. And now you have 30% more cars on an already congested road system. That should be enough to make traffic jams the norm everywhere.

But in case that wasn't bad enough, consider this - now people can do other things while they travel, because they don't have to be driving. So, in turn, they can live further and further away from their workplaces in cheaper, larger houses and do more of their work on the go. And while they do this they're spending more time on the roads, and - you guessed it - causing more congestion.

And because parking will always be expensive and hard to find in busy city centers, people will set their cars to loiter while they visit, rather than parking. Just going round and round while their owners shop. Causing - you guessed it - even more congestion.

TL;DR - the most likely result of autonomous vehicles is out of control congestion.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#216

Post by decimalenough »

hnav wrote: post #204
Retric wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hybrids are a dead end. There’s already EV’s doing 1MW charging. That’s practically gas pump speeds while also being able to charge at home, and the underlying technology keeps improving. 8% of new cars in the US, 14% in the EU, and 27% in China are EV’s. Toyota’s EV sales are anemic by comparison.

Toyota does not want to sell a lot of EVs, because that could mean investing heavily to scale up the manufacturing of a dead-end technology that ends up losing out. Meanwhile they've been iterating on their hybrid tech and are selling 50 MPG vehicles by the millions. When the dust settles, a lot of EV companies will be out of business and their products will be e-waste with 0 spares anywhere. Toyota on the other hand…

Toyota has invested very heavily in hydrogen cars, which is an actual "dead-end technology that ends up losing out".

Sure, numerous EV startups will bite the dust, but the actual tech of putting a battery on wheels and spinning the wheels with motors isn't going anywhere.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#217

Post by spiderice »

brummm wrote: post #182
standardUser wrote: post #180

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?

Simple. Not having a driver in the car. The driver is the only part of Uber I don't like. I feel like if I make them wait 20 seconds they could ding my rating. If I have kids with me, I hate having to get their carseat buckled, knowing the driver probably doesn't want kids in their car anyway. I hate the awkward silence. I hate listening to their shitty music. At no fault of their own, they are the only weak link in the Uber chain. Everything gets better for me if there just isn't a person waiting on me the whole time.

I'd sell my cars in a heartbeat if "Uber minus the driver" existed and was cheaper than owning a car.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#218

Post by senordevnyc »

UmGuys wrote: post #167

I would believe Elon about the robotaxi stuff if they partnered with Waymo. This is a smart partnership.

As someone who never wants to give Elon a cent and is 100x more interested in Waymo’s tech than Elon’s trust-me-bro FSD bullshit, this would have been devastating.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#219

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

aantix wrote: post #174
lxgr wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

They edit their videos to remove the mistakes. It's all a lie if it only works 90% of the time and you don't know when it's going to fail after being lulled into inattention.
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