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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

#371

Post by xnx »

kemotep wrote: post #323
mike_d wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I challenge anyone who seriously proposes this to first spend a month in a wheelchair. You quickly discover that your sense of scale and freedom of movement is largely a function of your physical capability and financial comfort.

I’m confused by this. Making public infrastructure people first, not car first, in your opinion would make things more difficult and expensive for handicap people? The town I live in has many streets without sidewalks, and even the ones with sidewalks, many of those are entirely unsuitable for wheelchairs. Designing the streets to have pedestrian needs prioritized over cars would make the streets more handicap access…

> Making public infrastructure people first, not car first

What does this mean? People ride in cars.

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

#372

Post by xnx »

acdha wrote: post #350
kajecounterhack wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/

> Tire noise is still quite substantial

100% I live near a bus route and their tires and engines are a huge disturbance.

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

#373

Post by xnx »

jcranmer wrote: post #278
spiderice wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a joy for people who live near commuter trains

Maybe we should build more commuter trains so that more people can live near them, then.

A self-driving vehicle is like a commuter train that operates on your own schedule and goes between any two points and doesn't require billions of dollars of new tracks to be built and runs on clean electric power instead of diesel.

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

#374

Post by jcranmer »

xnx wrote: post #373
jcranmer wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should build more commuter trains so that more people can live near them, then.

A self-driving vehicle is like a commuter train that operates on your own schedule and goes between any two points and doesn't require billions of dollars of new tracks to be built and runs on clean electric power instead of diesel.

Moving self-driving vehicles requires billions of dollars of new roads to be built.

The statistic I like to use is that the train tunnels underneath the Hudson River into Manhattan move more people than all of the road crossings into Manhattan combined. It's probably cheaper in the long run to invest in better regional rail systems than it is to to keep widening highways; people drastically underestimate the costs of highway construction.

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

#375

Post by ac29 »

standardUser wrote: post #367
brummm wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Explain how a car with a human driver will be cheaper or have price parity with a car that requires no paid human driver. The driver is the most expensive part of every ride. And that's before tip.

A Waymo has something like $100k of sensors and other hardware on top of the cost of the vehicle.

That cost will almost certainly come down, but at the moment it is cheaper to just pay a human to drive a car with $0 of AV hardware.

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

#376

Post by xnx »

jcranmer wrote: post #374
xnx wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A self-driving vehicle is like a commuter train that operates on your own schedule and goes between any two points and doesn't require billions of dollars of new tracks to be built and runs on clean electric power instead of diesel.

Moving self-driving vehicles requires billions of dollars of new roads to be built. The statistic I like to use is that the train tunnels underneath the Hudson River into Manhattan move more people than all of the road crossings into Manhattan combined. It's probably cheaper in the long run to invest in better regional rail systems than it is to to keep widening highways; people drastically underestimate the costs of…

> Moving self-driving vehicles requires billions of dollars of new roads to be built.

I haven't heard this. Wouldn't self driving cars use the same road infrastructure we already have?

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

#377

Post by JumpCrisscross »

scarface_74 wrote: post #140
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo has shown itself more than capable of going D2C [1]. It’s actually the one case where Google’s customer service beats the competition’s. Waymo customer service is still somewhat trash. But you need it so infrequently compared with Uber, and Uber and Lyft somehow manage to make Google look like a people company, that I find myself almost exclusively taking Waymo when I’m in a city where it is an option. (Via the…

Wow one whole city of tech bros? I was able to get an Uber in Manuel Antonio Costa Rica coming from an airport whose terminal is literally a hut ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quepos_La_Managua_Airport ). There is a reason even taxi companies are now partnering with Uber in places like DC. I travel a lot between business (not as much now) and personally. I know I can land in any airport domestically and most airport…

> It isn’t financially viable to have enough Waymo cars on the road that will be able to handle peak demand and just sit there during low demand

Sure. Waymo can absorb the usual base load. Uber and Lyft can be peakers. This is how it works in Phoenix, LA and Miami, cities one can’t dismiss as cities “of tech bros,” I assume, given during peak hours the wait time surges to 30+ minutes.

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

#378

Post by jcranmer »

xnx wrote: post #376
jcranmer wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving self-driving vehicles requires billions of dollars of new roads to be built. The statistic I like to use is that the train tunnels underneath the Hudson River into Manhattan move more people than all of the road crossings into Manhattan combined. It's probably cheaper in the long run to invest in better regional rail systems than it is to to keep widening highways; people drastically underestimate the costs of…

> Moving self-driving vehicles requires billions of dollars of new roads to be built. I haven't heard this. Wouldn't self driving cars use the same road infrastructure we already have?

The same infrastructure that people often complain is inadequate to the task?

Self-driving vehicles are also going to come with the innovation of having zero occupants as they navigate somewhere to park. And if people want to replace existing mass transit systems with self-driving vehicles, that's going to require a lot more infrastructure.

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

#379

Post by mullingitover »

daedrdev wrote: post #62
throwaway48476 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rare earth's aren't rare.

China processes ~90% of rare earth raw materials into actual rare earths

This.

Yes, 'rare earths aren't rare,' and I hear that, and then I also hear that everyone is screwed if China won't sell theirs.

It can't be both. The key reasons I've heard for China owning this market are a) they have large deposits, b) they heavily invested for decades, and c) they aggressively dump and undercut in an anticompetitive fashion to ensure they keep the market cornered.

Seems like the only way out of this is to stop being religiously opposed to state subsidies in an industry of clear national security importance, combined with maybe a Herbert Dow-style jiu-jitsu move of countering any dumping by stockpiling and then re-selling the below-market product.

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

#380

Post by kemotep »

xnx wrote: post #371
kemotep wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m confused by this. Making public infrastructure people first, not car first, in your opinion would make things more difficult and expensive for handicap people? The town I live in has many streets without sidewalks, and even the ones with sidewalks, many of those are entirely unsuitable for wheelchairs. Designing the streets to have pedestrian needs prioritized over cars would make the streets more handicap access…

> Making public infrastructure people first, not car first What does this mean? People ride in cars.

People. As in people walking. My town is not designed in a way that is conducive towards walking. It isn’t safe, there is either no sidewalks, the sidewalks are in disrepair, are not wide enough for two people to pass each other, or set back far enough from the road to not feel like someone could run you over.

But the roads and dozens upon dozens of acres of parking lots? Perfectly fine. Millions spent every year maintaining them while sidewalks are neglected, there are no bike lanes or paths, and it could take twice as long to take a bus as it would be to just walk on the dangerous roads.

I just would think I should be able to walk to a restaurant or the library with my kid safely but I guess because I can do it in a car I should shut up and stop worrying about everybody getting excited about autonomous vehicles making infrastructure even more car centric.

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