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A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

waymo.com

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Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#91

Post by cyberax »

NicuCalcea wrote: post #88
xnx wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People take their salaries and buy food, clothes, heating and air conditioning, cars and fuel, and plane tickets, and furniture. All of those things generate emissions in their production and/or transportation. This is why dollars is such a good proxy for co2 emissions.

Surely a person driving 18 people will emit less than each person driving themselves? I can see how dollars can be a proxy for macroeconomic stuff, for example by comparing countries, but it doesn't make much sense for comparing individual units of transport. I don't understand why we have to do napkin maths to guess what's more polluting. There is countless research showing buses emit less than individual cars per p…

> Surely a person driving 18 people will emit less than each person driving themselves?

No. A person driving themselves does not create any _incremental_ CO2 emissions. They don't need a dedicated full-time position to do the driving.

> There is countless research showing buses emit less than individual cars per passenger per km, self-driving or not.

Care to share it? I actually read through most of highly cited articles in this area, and it's not at all so clear-cut. For example: https://ourworldindata.org/travel-carbon-footprint

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#92

Post by phoghed »

derektank wrote: post #51
rootusrootus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bus was just fine in Portland Yes, if you live within about 1 mile of downtown and also work there. If you live downtown and your job is in Beaverton, you're likely in for a 90 minute commute. Or if you live in Beaverton and your office is downtown. Portland's mass transit is adequate for a subset of people and completely impractical for most. Source: I've lived in and around Portland for 50 years. Worked downtown…

Okay, but clearly there’s a difference between, “the bus makes sense if you live or work near downtown,” and, “people only ride the bus when there is no other option,” as the GP said.

Yeah theres a couple spots that it’s fine for people that have never experienced what’s actually possible.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#93

Post by fragmede »

I've been wanting to start the hashtag #gohomewaymoURdrunk for when it gives me stupid routes like circling the block pointlessly or when dropoff is stupidly far from my destination. (firstworldproblems except for when I sprained my ankle). Anyone else on board?

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#94

Post by fragmede »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #63
lanstin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just took a Waymo in San Jose, having taken a few from San Francisco - it dropped me off in a place that would have made sense in SF (across the street from my destination at a light, avoiding a U turn) but was terrible in the suburban streetscape where the road was literally 10 lanes 4 / 4 / 2 turning and no one would ever drop someone off like that instead of U turning so they didn't have to cross scary giant tra…

Fwiw the accessibility options have a setting to avoid across the street dropoffs

I'd settle for "on the same block" pick up/drop off. For some reason, Waymo has decided my street is a busy street in the middle of the night when it isn't, so even if I override it to stop down the street where there's plenty of space for traffic to go around the Waymo, it only gives me a short 2 minutes or else it'll drive off. Which would be less of a problem if it didn't decide to also change the location of the pickup last minute as well. It's enough of a problem that I've switched back to Uber/Lyft if I'm not feeling like dealing with it.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#95

Post by fragmede »

xnx wrote: post #5

Apologies for repeating myself, but it's hard to convey how far ahead Waymo is in every area: sensors, vehicles, training data, markets served, simulation, infrastructure, operations, regulatory. They're growing fast, but I do wonder what they see as the bottlenecks: municipal approval, training, manufacturing? It's really unfortunate that lobbying is slowing self-driving rollout in some of the biggest and most impor…

> it's hard to convey how far ahead Waymo is

What are you comparing it to though? Tesla Robotaxi service is fine, there's a safety driver that isn't really supposed to talk, and I'd say that Zoox is better than Waymo, except getting rides on that is very limited so I have less experience with it. I like the Zooclx vehicles way more than even the new Waymo Ohai vehicles. I think there's a fourth competitor in this space currently active but I can't remember their name off the top of my head. Cruise is defunct though they were mostly fine as well.

The real quandary is for the cars to freak out if something happens and just stop and sit there, while a human driver is going to drive off if you're getting eg carjacked.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#96

Post by fragmede »

jerlam wrote: post #57
derektank wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's really a shame that they aren't the one capturing all the media spotlight This does seem at least a bit intentional on Waymo’s part. They appear to have adopted an under promise, over deliver mindset (unlike some other robotaxi alternatives that come to mind). They’ve seen a lot of their competitors (Uber, Cruise, etc) capture a lot of ultimately negative attention and folded as a result; I would probably try t…

Every Waymo on the street is already an advertisement, especially since they're so distinctive with their LIDAR units and now they're driving Chinese cars. Every time a Waymo is remotely associated with anything bad, the media jumps on them anyway, like the times they've "hit" a pedestrian but literally after a human driver hit that same pedestrian. Tesla Robotaxis need to hog the media spotlight because they're tryi…

How many times have you ridden a Tesla Robotaxi? They work fine, in my limited but actual real world experience, the problem is they don't like you giving rides to other people, vs Waymo you can call them for other people and they're fine with that. Tesla Robotaxis hog the media spotlight because it's Tesla and every tiny thing they do gets blown up because in the attention economy, a Tesla mention is a giant shiny distraction to go off and everyone piles on their opinion of Elon because blah blah blah lidar Elon stupid no he's not and media sites get all that rage engagement and that juicy ad revenue. Who outside of the industry can name Waymo's co-CEOs off the top of their head? I can't.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#97

Post by fragmede »

mschuster91 wrote: post #73
phoghed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different 30 people in the US. I’d drop my car if Waymo was around and financially made sense. You’ll never catch me wasting my time on a bus though. We’ll never even be close to Europe or elsewhere wrt where public transit was even decades ago in those places. People here only ride the bus when there’s no other option for them. Waymo could make a bus too anyway, especially after they’ve been in an area a while and h…

> Waymo could make a bus too anyway Oh hell no. Cars are bad enough from the damage they can cause by kinetic energy, but a bus? Especially a bus where people don't wear seatbelts or, worse, are standing?

Well, you'd need to crash for that too be an issue. We have to wait for the data to prove it out, but I much prefer a Waymo driver than a human one, especially if I'm walking home right after the bars close.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#98

Post by ButlerianJihad »

fragmede wrote: post #96
jerlam wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Waymo on the street is already an advertisement, especially since they're so distinctive with their LIDAR units and now they're driving Chinese cars. Every time a Waymo is remotely associated with anything bad, the media jumps on them anyway, like the times they've "hit" a pedestrian but literally after a human driver hit that same pedestrian. Tesla Robotaxis need to hog the media spotlight because they're tryi…

How many times have you ridden a Tesla Robotaxi? They work fine, in my limited but actual real world experience, the problem is they don't like you giving rides to other people, vs Waymo you can call them for other people and they're fine with that. Tesla Robotaxis hog the media spotlight because it's Tesla and every tiny thing they do gets blown up because in the attention economy, a Tesla mention is a giant shiny d…

[dead]

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#99

Post by fragmede »

laurencerowe wrote: post #49
xnx wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No contest when the bus is full, but the overall efficiency (/"greeness") of the system is much less clear considering: buses are rarely full, most buses are diesel, heavy buses tear up the pavement on their routes (especially near stops), and buses don't take riders directly to/from their destinations.

Most of the city buses in my UK home town are now battery electric double deckers. These carry up to 85-90 people (with 25 standing), weigh 11 tonnes, and is 10.5m long. A typical jaguar Waymo usually carries up to 4 people (usually just one), weighs 2.1 tonnes and is 5.2m long. So the double decker bus should be more environmentally efficient with maybe 5 passengers making independent journeys, though operational co…

The real question is what's the optimal size for a bus if you don't have to pay a human to drive it? Once the technology is proven, there's no reason you can't put the Waymo or other self-driving technology in a bus. A bus designed for a dozen people instead of 30, and a fleet of them that did point to point rides instead of a fixed route, just all booked via the app so you share rides with other people. I dare say that would be the best of both worlds.

Re: A look under our trunk: what's in our compute

#100

Post by fragmede »

rootusrootus wrote: post #46
malnourish wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bus was just fine in Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco.

> Bus was just fine in Portland Yes, if you live within about 1 mile of downtown and also work there. If you live downtown and your job is in Beaverton, you're likely in for a 90 minute commute. Or if you live in Beaverton and your office is downtown. Portland's mass transit is adequate for a subset of people and completely impractical for most. Source: I've lived in and around Portland for 50 years. Worked downtown…

That 90 minute commute by bus isn't one where you're driving though. A strict time comparison ignore the fact that the bus or train ride merely requires you to get out when you reach your destination. You don't have to sit in stop and go traffic driving. Sitting in traffic driving sucks unless you have comma.ai or equivalent. Mentally it's just exhausting by the time you get home/to work. If you have to drive and can shitpost HN for those 90 minutes, vs trying to do that while driving (don't do that), then who cares if it takes a bit longer? There's obviously too much longer, but still.
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