Are multi passenger trips the next step? That is, driverless buses? And ones solving the traveling salesman problem with each new stop?
If yes, perhaps cities with fewer cars can skip the taxi step and go straight to smart buses.
How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
101–110 of 415 posts
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've said this on HN before as well, but I've turned into a full-on Waymo evangelist (Los Angeles user here). Couple of things to add to Jake's comment... The driving experience itself is on par with the "best" drivers I've ever ridden with (things like stopping at actual stop signs, for instance, and not racing from one traffic light to the next, and being courteous to bikes and pedestrians), not to mention just the…
Honest question out of curiosity, since you seem genuine and open to discussion… I agree with all of your points about Waymo vs. Uber-like ridesharing—the average Uber ride is so much less safe that it’s hard to argue for. But I also agree with your aside about the growing isolation of society—the longer term implications of every event, meal, and errand being separated by autonomous journeys are staggering. So the q…
I'm not sure if you mean about Waymo/self-driving cars or more broadly, but I'll assume you mean cars. Let me first say I'd love to create a list of all of the long-term pros and cons of self-driving cars because I'd be far better-equipped to answer, but my off-the-cuff thought: this technology, if it survives, will make it easier, safer, less stressful and less costly for people to transit, and will also make almost every place more livable (the impacts will be more profound in urban areas than rural, but both will benefit). That sounds like a great way to increase interactivity, not lessen it.
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#103I can!t overstate how depressing it is we managed to figure out private self driving car fleets before we figured out modern public transit funding.
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a human I can look at their face to see that they see me. How do I know a robot sees me? Do they have indications that say “I see you and won’t drive” like a driver looking at you in the face and waving?
Drivers can stare right at you as they run you over. Believing you have eye contact does not prevent you from being run over.
> like a driver looking at you in the face and waving
your reading comprehension sucks
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anecdata 2, I bike through SF almost daily, and much prefer a Waymo driving near me as opposed to your average SF driver.
that's cool. until it's not. it's very easy to release an upgrade of stopping less on stop signs and see data increasing profit and not increasing accidents. same with code updates that will make cyclist life worse, unless there's actual change in a kpi they track. you're not really their main concern, specially after they ipo and get acquired by Apollo or billionaire du jour
That's just being a cynic for cynicism sake. They are already owned by a billionaire company, so there is no ipo. And they still have at least a couple of decades where the game they need to play is get riders and legislators to trust them, so they are incentived to make their car very safeful so they can roll out to more cities and countries. It takes one bad accident to get the public to turn against them, and there is no technological edge that can save you if the government decides to make your entire business illegal.
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
With a human I can look at their face to see that they see me. How do I know a robot sees me? Do they have indications that say “I see you and won’t drive” like a driver looking at you in the face and waving?
With tinted windows and glare I already can't see like 75% of drivers. At least driverless cars reliably signal so I don't have to do pose estimation with the front wheels to cross the street. Also they aren't on their phones.
So answer my question, how do I know the Waymo sees me? With a human I can tell 90% of the time where I live (we have tint laws and stuff).
I can’t see trusting that a robot sees me, otherwise I guess I’m just giving deference to them now?
At least with humans I can see if they are distracted, I can yell at them to get attention, perhaps others. With a robot taxi, I can’t tell anything about it, and I’m a software dev so I absolutely don’t trust anything running software made by a corporation in search of profits, or any other software really, to operate a car in open roads. Not yet at least, maybe in a few decades.
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#107This seems silly. It’s been obvious even to casual observers like myself for years that Waymo/Google was one of the only groups taking the problem seriously and trying to actually solve it, as opposed to pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla), or trying to move fast and break things (Uber), or pretending you could gradually improve lane-keeping all the way into autonomous driving (car manufacturers). That’s why it’s working for them. (IIUC, Cruise has pretty much also always been legit?)
Don’t even get me started on the “didn’t take psych 102: Attention and Memory”-level cluelessness required to believe a human can safely pay attention well enough in a vehicle that reliably tricks you into believing it’s autonomous to take over in the split seconds before a disaster…
I find it hard to believe that the Tesla and Auto Manufacturer positions aren’t knowingly deceptive. I mean, what are they going to say? “It’s too hard so we’re just waiting for Waymo or Cruise to license their tech once it works”?
I’m gonna stop here before I start mocking geohot… I seriously can’t believe the journalists who wrote those early stories were willing to risk their lives like that…
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#108They have a fairly big weakness. If someone takes over their control these taxis are basically weapons. You have to admit that the question is not if this is possible but how will it pan out.
People can literally just go to a car rental service right now and do that as well. Or use a car service app. Or rob someone elses car.
Most people in society don't really have a desire to run amok.
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#109Robotaxis are "a real business"? Maybe in the future, but not yet. From the article: > But even the most bullish believers in autonomous transportation acknowledge the tech still has a ways to go before it’s reliable enough for widespread deployment on U.S. roads.
Fortune is where you go to buy fantasy headlines. If Fortune says it out loud, you know, it's almost certainly false, but someone somewhere really wants you to be fooled.
Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
No need to be afraid. Public transport will evolve to include small autonomous vehicles. The economies of scale you get by packing people in larger vehicles mostly have to do with the cost of fuel and staffing. Electrical autonomous vehicles don't have a need for a driver and electricity is relatively cheap. So you don't get much economies of scale by making them bigger. Most city journeys would be under a kwh. Even…
> The economies of scale you get by packing people in larger vehicles mostly have to do with the cost of fuel and staffing. Trains (and train-like options such as metros) are vastly more efficient than cars in number of people moved per unit of time per area used. That might not be a big deal in suburbia, but in dense inner cities it's one of the most important drivers of public transport.
Autonomous vehicles could chain up or drive really close together and achieve similar space efficiency. Also, if you look at a train track. It's mostly empty space with a train passing occasionally. Very different than a well used road. And autonomous vehicles could collaborate to counter any congestion.
What makes trains efficient has more to do with the cost of energy and drivers than anything else. Both of those go away if you have autonomous electrical vehicles.