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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

#341

Post by chipgap98 »

sorcerer-mar wrote: post #56
chipgap98 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is acting as an aggregator for all types of rides. Customers have the direct relationship with Uber. Unless Waymo completely runs away with autonomous driving then I think Uber has a lot of leverage.

I would bet it takes literally one ride in a Waymo for 90%+ of users to be ready to download a different app to access that service again, if Waymo and Uber were to part ways. Uber is buying time, Waymo is buying velocity

I think it is likely that people order Waymo's through Uber in the future

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

#342

Post by tzs »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #275
tzs wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that if your hybrid is a plug-in hybrid then you might get the best of both worlds. On long road trips you get the fast re-energizing of a gas car. For regular use if your plug in every night there is a good chance you can do most of your driving in EV mode. Current plug-in hybrids often have EV mode ranges of 40+ miles. This is what someone I know with a RAV4 Prime reports. They plug in at night and it seems to…

But you don’t really. You get a weak drive train as many moving parts as an ICE plus a non-trivial size battery that is expensive to replace. Your maintenance costs potential are as a bad as an ICE plus an EV. EVs are way more elegant solutions, simpler, better performance. Also, EVs are improving rapidly, charging speed and range keep getting better.

Hybrids done well actually have fewer moving parts than ICEs. They eliminate some systems (alternator and starter motor for example) and greatly simplify others (transmission).

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

#343

Post by sorcerer-mar »

porphyra wrote: post #143
janalsncm wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI isn’t magic. If there isn’t enough information in the inputs, you can’t expect reliable results. It’s the same principle in all of software: garbage in, garbage out. If there simply isn’t enough visual information, vision-only will fail. https://youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ

This Mark Rober video has been debunked several times: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzZhIsGFL6g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cxTO8g47_k

That is not a debunking... That's someone running a similar experiment and getting a different result. That would debunk the claim that Teslas can never detect a painted wall. It does not debunk the claim that Teslas will sometimes fail to detect a painted wall.

And in a safety-critical system, the distinction is not mere pedantry.

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

#344

Post by sorcerer-mar »

chipgap98 wrote: post #341
sorcerer-mar wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet it takes literally one ride in a Waymo for 90%+ of users to be ready to download a different app to access that service again, if Waymo and Uber were to part ways. Uber is buying time, Waymo is buying velocity

I think it is likely that people order Waymo's through Uber in the future

That's exactly what we're talking about... that's already happening and probably will continue to happen for as long as it's convenient for Waymo.

Margin will never accrue to Uber in that relationship because they have no leverage.

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

#345

Post by acdha »

slg wrote: post #298
acdha wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they are different. The degree depends on the company and if they have a history of trying to weasel out, but a legal agreement makes it harder to dodge liability in court. Tesla would love to offer the reassurance to buyers but there’s a reason they haven’t done so: they’d lose money on it.

You are failing to understand what I'm saying. They don't have to weasel out of legal liability in court. They just bake the legal settlements they know they will have to pay into their marketing budget. Has no one watched Fight Club and heard the anecdote about how a company will only recall a car if the cost of the recall is lower than the cost of settling all the lawsuits? All this guarantee tells us is that Merce…

Yes, we know that companies exist to make money. My point is simply that when they are willing to make a stronger legal commitment in a country famous for litigation it suggests that they have a higher confidence level in their system.

Think about it like this: company A says “our government product is military-grade. We have a 1 year warranty.” while company B also says their product is tough but offers a 5 year warranty. Which one do you think has better data supporting the durability of their product?

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

#346

Post by brummm »

zik wrote: post #215
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 th…

Yeah, I'd expect many cities passing laws to forbid empty driverless cars on the road unless they're a taxi.

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

#347

Post by brummm »

standardUser wrote: post #191
brummm wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's already possible and called taxis/uber/etc. In what way would self driving cars incentivize not owning your own car?

Cost, accessibility, convenience, reliability, safety. You can get all of that with a human driver too, if you're rich.

Waymo is not cheaper than Uber. I don't buy the cost argument tbh.

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

#348

Post by saalweachter »

lmz wrote: post #177
loeg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PHEVs (hybrids with large battery packs) are the worst of both worlds -- weight penalty of a big EV pack, but the complexity/maintenance of an ICE engine. Additionally, rarely used gas can go bad sitting in the tank. Just get a regular hybrid if you're concerned about EV range or don't like the current limited offerings.

I thought those were programmed to run the engine once in a while regardless of necessity - to prevent the gas from going bad?

Yes -- it's happened once or twice with my Chevy Volt. Full charge, and it pops up a dialogue and runs the engine for a mile.

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

#349

Post by acdha »

gonzobonzo wrote: post #321
Auracle wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger difference is that Mercedes’ system only works on highways, under 40 mph, and you need a car in front of you that it essentially follows. It’s for traffic jams, and only usable in them. There’s not a big legal liability when the biggest risk is probably a fender bender.

> The bigger difference is that Mercedes’ system only works on highways, under 40 mph, and you need a car in front of you that it essentially follows. And geofenced to specific highways, only during the day and during good weather. It's still cool (to me at least). But it's bizarre seeing people dismiss FSD as being the same as adaptive cruise control while touting Mercede's Drive Pilot. Drive Pilot is a lot closer t…

People are interested because Drive Pilot is L3 while FSD is L2. People are naturally more interested in the more advanced systems, but that would include FSD if Tesla can improve it to perform closer to the way it’s been marketed. Exaggerating the capabilities for over a decade juiced their share price but it also gave them a reputation for failing to deliver which is going to need hard data to shake: putting their money on the line would be one way to do that.

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

#350

Post by acdha »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #259
iknowstuff wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love AVs, but It would do jack shit for traffic and the horrible use of space until they become autonomous buses on dedicated bus lanes, or trains. You still gotta have spaces for pedestrians, and cars still make cities ugly and unpleasant. Even electric autonomous ones. Tire friction still makes noise and pollutes the air with microplastics. They gotta supplement mass transit for dense cities, not replace it.

> They gotta supplement mass transit for dense cities, not replace it. Full agreement here. AVs are great for last-mile transit. > horrible use of space until they become autonomous buses on dedicated bus lanes, or trains This is where we disagree. The whole point of AV TaaS is that they can go where bus lanes and trains can't. Last mile transportation. I also wouldn't say they do "jack shit" for traffic in the sense…

Tire noise is still quite substantial - use the NIOSH noise meter app on your phone to compare the sound levels on a city block when an EV goes by compared to just bikes and people – and there’s a growing body of evidence that noise levels correlate with worse health and sleep for residents. EVs help, but it’s only partial.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11297122/

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