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Waymo in Dallas

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Re: Waymo in Dallas

#711

Post by klaff »

Fogest wrote: post #244
porphyra wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Waymo I-Pace is much less efficient than the regular roadgoing I-Pace. One X user posted a pic of the dashboard of a Waymo with 111,000 miles on the odometer, and it averaged 1.0 kWh per mile [1][2]. This is about 2.5x worse than the EPA rating of a normal Jaguar I-Pace. Probably the difference is because the Waymo has tons of compute and the sensors have a surprisingly large impact on aerodynamic efficiency. I w…

Referring to the example from the Twitter post you cited, wouldn't the KWh per mile simply be a lot higher because these vehicles are engaging in much less efficient travel overall? City driving itself is often pretty inefficient because of all the stopping and going, and these vehicles likely are driving in a lot of the rush hour traffic and high density areas everyday. Not to mention they probably idle around a lot…

Depending on conditions, heat or AC can consume up to 5 or 6 kW in extreme weather and a small fraction of that in milder conditions. The most efficient speed of an EV is hard to pin down. If all fixed loads could be turned off, it would be most efficient at the slowest possible speed but with HVAC and compute loads present, the most efficient speed is around where the aerodynamic load is equal to the fixed load. That's still likely to be rather slow but the idealized math that gives this optimum is for steady-state operation. There is a round-trip loss for regen, so there is still an advantage to steady operation even if it is not as big as with ICE cars where no kinetic energy is recovered.

My guess for the poor reported number is excessive idle time w/ HVAC and compute stuff on within the trip interval.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#712

Post by DiscourseFan »

bluGill wrote: post #675
DiscourseFan wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a root is only serving a smaller number of people, why have an entire bus? Busses make sense for thoroughfares, but I often board nearly empty express busses that are only running because of state/city appropriations. If we could modulate form to meet demand precisely, like Uber but for all transit, it would be far quicker and more efficient.

Even in the suburbs it is not hard to get a bus that is half full during off peak if the service is good. Most service in the US is not good so perhaps you are only looking at one of the many bad examples and incorrectly thinking it must be that way - it doesn't. > . If we could modulate form to meet demand precisely, like Uber but for all transit, it would be far quicker and more efficient. Efficiency is not the onl…

You must not live in a place suffuse with Waymos. At 3am anywhere in the coverage area you will get a car coming within 2 minutes, often for at least 20% less than an uber/lyft, and sometimes up to 50% cheaper. There is no way a bus can be that efficient, be that quick, or, in a large network, as coordinated. You could even set up basically a series of pods that merge to share energy and split up depending on where they need to go. Every person could have their own autonomous modular form of transport that is always ready at hand. How is that slower/better than traditional public transport? As I said, the only technology that supersedes it, and only because you cannot overcome friction, is maglev trains.

If only we could build a network of high speed, maglev trains covering the span of the entire planet, from the southern tip of Chile, through the Darien Gap, across the Bering Strait, all the way up to Paddington Station and down past the Suez Canal all the way to Johannesburg; that, plus airplanes and modular autonomous transit, should cover 90% of transit needs, and anything more than that will be served by older technologies, off-road vehicles, horseback/camel, and of course for the most treacherous environs, on foot is still best. But I cannot imagine a world where a traditional bus system would be superior to a highly coordinated system of autonomous modular transportation.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#713

Post by culi »

xnx wrote: post #690
preommr wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's Not Just Bikes. I used to be frustrated at their poorly thought-out arguments until I realized none of it matters. The videos are made for a certain demographic to jerk off about their special interests. The real world is going to move on and stuff is going to get implemented. These people and their opinions have no real world impact and don't matter outside of their niche little social groups. Self dr…

Agree. Like many movements, "urbanism" stopped being about safe, convenient, affordable transportation and became primarily about catering to anti-car absolutists and self-promotion.

Urban studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines the history, culture, politics, and economy of cities and urban spaces

Yes, studying a specific thing can commonly produce particular perspectives but that doesn't inherently discredit the discipline.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#714

Post by SR2Z »

Lammy wrote: post #279
SR2Z wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what to tell you. The subpoena system has been around for a VERY long time before Google even existed. You seem to be unfamiliar with it so I'd encourage you to read up before you call it a "formality." This is not some newfangled shiny thing. If you hold records that are important to a court case you can be forced to give them up by court order. This is true regardless of who "you" happens to be. If pol…

Why are you conflating “valid legal request” with subpoena? If they meant ”in response to subpoena” then they would say subpoena lol The linguistic ambiguity is always where the creepy extrajudicial shit seeps in. See also: ‘We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers’ RE: Snowden/PRISM

> Why are you conflating “valid legal request” with subpoena? If they meant ”in response to subpoena” then they would say subpoena lol

Because they also comply with warrants and court orders, and it's easier to say "valid legal request" than that. Probably the vast majority of data requests are subpoenas.

I suppose that a FISA court could try to get footage from Waymo, but it would be difficult to do so because FISA requires a reasonable suspicion that the target is outside the United States. The (terrible) decision to allow dragnet surveillance with PRISM was allowed because the government claimed that it would be targeted mostly at people outside the borders of the US.

Needless to say, data from a Waymo operating entirely inside the United States is not covered by this. Secret courts are a bad idea in general IMO, but according to the rules this should not be allowed.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#715

Post by bluGill »

infecto wrote: post #700
bluGill wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then why does public transit work in other countries with suburbs? To give a clear answer that others have beat around: it is the network. Transit works when you can get places. When you can get many places it doesn't work. The real question is how can Dallas get there - which is a hard problem is you need a massive network investment before it becomes useful to many people and so there is a lot of upfront investme…

That trivializes the problem too much, part of the equation but you also have to have a population that actually wants it along with high enough density that it makes sense. For places like Dallas I struggle with all of the above. Sure some percentage would use it if it was flawless but I think far too few would.

Dallas has plenty of density as proven elsewhere. As for wanting it, people don't want what they don't know. How they would act if something existed is very different from what they say.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#716

Post by rigrassm »

missedthecue wrote: post #485
yreg wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is a bus not fit for endless culdesac suburbia where people are commuting between the suburbs instead of to the downtown? I really don't get it. Pretty much everywhere outside of US buses work no matter the city layout. Just add some stops and run some buses.

because you can't fill the buses! 1. Cul-de-sacs and surburbia lack through-streets. So it forces heavy long buses to navigate winding narrow loops. This makes your routing complex and slow. 2. When commuters travel suburb-to-suburb instead of hub-and-spoke downtown, origin-destination pairs are too scattered to support fixed routes with meaningful frequency. 3. Low passenger volume per mile makes fixed-route bus ope…

I've seen big yellow buses driving through every neighborhood I've ever lived in picking up and dropping people off on a fixed schedule... Seems like the concept works just fine when it's not being actively fought against and sabotaged.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#717

Post by infecto »

bluGill wrote: post #715
infecto wrote: post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That trivializes the problem too much, part of the equation but you also have to have a population that actually wants it along with high enough density that it makes sense. For places like Dallas I struggle with all of the above. Sure some percentage would use it if it was flawless but I think far too few would.

Dallas has plenty of density as proven elsewhere. As for wanting it, people don't want what they don't know. How they would act if something existed is very different from what they say.

Proven where? DFW is not as dense as you might think. Last mile is an incredibly hard problem to solve when it comes to transit and you add in unfavorable weather and it’s a not go.

Good luck though! Just sharing as a member of the DFW community has taken dart and bikes a lot. The metro is absolutely not dense.

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#718

Post by [deleted] »

bryan_w wrote: post #487
fragmede wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most evil thing I heard was companies like Doordash and Uber buying up data on who has credit card debt, so they know which driver is more desperate for cash, so they can low-ball them and give them a worse offer because they're more likely to take it because they're desperate for it.

You fell for some kid's story and should feel bad for repeating it unsubstantiated.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#719

Post by fragmede »

frenchtoast8 wrote: post #428
fragmede wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most evil thing I heard was companies like Doordash and Uber buying up data on who has credit card debt, so they know which driver is more desperate for cash, so they can low-ball them and give them a worse offer because they're more likely to take it because they're desperate for it.

Where is the proof of any of this? There are too many conspiracy theories about gig work. There was a similar post on HN a few months back[1] based on some anonymous vagueposter on Reddit, again without evidence. Would I be surprised if this is true? Of course not. Should we just start believing random things without any critical thinking? No. ^1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46461563

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law

Re: Waymo in Dallas

#720

Post by jdm2212 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #458
jdm2212 wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo charges more than Uber to supply constraints, not bad unit economics. People (like me) are willing to pay extra for the product Waymo offers, and Waymo is itself supply constrained and has no direct competitors offering driverless rides, so they get to do a bit of monopoly pricing.

> Waymo charges more than Uber to supply constraints To understand this better, is Waymo limited in each location by the number of cars they are allowed to drive? Or, is Waymo too slow to expand the number of cars on their side? As an outsider, if you have very good demand for your product, why not expand? I must be missing something obvious. (Again, I don't write this to doubt your explanation.)

AIUI the issue is just scaling pain. No one has ever run a global network of first-party-owned taxis before, and they're learning by doing, at the same time as they're also solving problems in ML/robotics to make the robotaxis work more reliably in more contexts, and also figuring out how to manufacture reliable robotaxis at scale.
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