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Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

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Re: Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

#91

Post by bri3d »

blackoil wrote: post #43
dllu wrote: post #20

Very neat. I recently went to the Waymo depot in Bayshore (Toland St) and snapped a couple of pictures of the new Zeekrs for Wikipedia. [1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waymo_Zeekr_Vehicle_... [2] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Waymo_Zeekr_Vehicle_...

How are Google allowed to get Zeekr? Are they pre tariff or they have some loophole being corporate?

They do have a loophole; they import them as kits and “build” them at a Magna facility in Arizona (similar to how early Sprinter vans were re-assembled in the US and sold as Freightliners). But, they are FMVSS compliant (besides steering wheel) and have had several NHTSA organized recalls like any other compliant car might.

Re: Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

#92

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

gniv wrote: post #76
spwa4 wrote: post #60

What amazes me about Waymo is how expensive the rides are. They're at least 20% more expensive than Uber (the much more expensive Uber of today, not the Uber of 2-4 years ago), sometimes 100-150% more expensive. If they can't be cheaper, then what's the point?

The novelty premium?

There are people that will wait for a self-checkout kiosk to be available instead of going to a cashier. There are definitely people that will pay for a solo car ride.

Re: Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

#95

Post by michaelt »

BurningFrog wrote: post #79
surajrmal wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it comes down massively in price, it's not going to displace manual driving for anything other than Uber/taxi. It's far cheaper to drive your own car in most of the us. If parking lots disappear and the parking that remains becomes similar in price to that of major cities and insurance rates skyrocket, then maybe that will change, but only by increasing the overall cost of transportation.

Self driving taxis should absolutely be cheaper to use than current regular cars. Because they don't need a steering wheel, backseat, and many other things. They can also run close to 24/7. How "massive" the price drop becomes I don't date to guess though.

> They can also run close to 24/7.

In practice, if you provide enough cars to meet the demand to travel from suburbs to city at 7am-9am and back again 8 hours later, I’d expect a large fraction of them to be idle outside of peak hours. And even at peak hours, to be spending half their time empty, as almost all the demand is in one direction.

And if you don’t provide enough capacity to meet rush hour demand? Good luck convincing people to give up their cars.

Re: Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

#97

Post by themafia »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #55

Very impressive video! What you can clearly see: If you scale this over the next years, "manual driving is over" :-D This is just the very very early beginning, like the first seconds after big bang, we haven really started this whole thing: If you put just more ressources here, we will have giant parking houses for just self-driving-cars, like "coming home over night and recharge" And this technology will come on a…

> If you scale this over the next years, "manual driving is over" :-D

I ride a motorcycle. Unless you make this illegal, then no, "manual driving" is not over anytime soon. Some people actually _like_ driving, although, none of them appear to frequent hacker news.

> there is nothing that can stop this?

We learned the lesson of over automation in aviation very quickly. The best solution is very often, turn off autopilot and autothrottles, then hand fly the plane. You don't want pilots with their heads down in a computer making changes when they can, and should, just fly the plane. It also tends to reduce over all competence and harms safety particularly during equipment failures.

> and you see already today that self-driving produces already much less accidents

The utility of these statistics are harmed by the fact that "self-driving" does not occur in all the circumstances that "manual driving" does today. They're barely past the foundation stage, in a limited operational scope (cabs), and in a limited operational area (where it never snows).

> Lets come back in 10 years! :-)

I think this technology will eventually be prevalent. I think hacker news constantly gets the time lines wrong. You're going to need 25, minimum, and possibly more like 50.

Re: Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

#98

Post by themafia »

blueblisters wrote: post #39

Surreal. Almost like an optimistic science fiction film. After all, self driving cars have some of the highest positive to negative externality ratio of any modern technology

You could build 1000 units of housing in the lot where these cars are kept. The bigger picture isn't exactly clear.

Re: Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

#99

Post by themafia »

ufmace wrote: post #71
spwa4 wrote: post #60

What amazes me about Waymo is how expensive the rides are. They're at least 20% more expensive than Uber (the much more expensive Uber of today, not the Uber of 2-4 years ago), sometimes 100-150% more expensive. If they can't be cheaper, then what's the point?

Having ridden a few of them in the area, I think they're worth it. Waymos are 100% reliable. If you book it and it says it's coming at X time, it will definitely actually show up at X time. No more of, driver cancelled at the last minute because they don't actually want to drive to destination Y but Uber etc gave it to them anyways and they get dinged if they just cancel instead of claiming not to be able to find the…

> Waymos are 100% reliable.

There is nothing in this world that is 100% reliable. The vehicles are new. Wait until they start clocking more miles.

> it will definitely actually show up at X time.

In what city and at what time of day? Waymo is just one vehicle in a sea of them. If traffic starts choking the city I don't see how they're not as vulnerable as every other vehicle.

Re: Who Watches the Waymos? I do [video]

#100

Post by BurningFrog »

michaelt wrote: post #95
BurningFrog wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving taxis should absolutely be cheaper to use than current regular cars. Because they don't need a steering wheel, backseat, and many other things. They can also run close to 24/7. How "massive" the price drop becomes I don't date to guess though.

> They can also run close to 24/7. In practice, if you provide enough cars to meet the demand to travel from suburbs to city at 7am-9am and back again 8 hours later, I’d expect a large fraction of them to be idle outside of peak hours. And even at peak hours, to be spending half their time empty, as almost all the demand is in one direction. And if you don’t provide enough capacity to meet rush hour demand? Good luck…

You're right that travel demand is impossibly uneven for a 24/7 taxi fleet.

My best answer is that they can deliver goods/packages in the off hours.

That may even end up being the main business.

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