Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#121

Post by shadowgovt » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

ra7 wrote: post #91

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix. Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being…

> Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being level 5 Because they are not even trying to be level 5. They've made it very clear that will only ever be a level 4 company and level 5 is not feasible.

Level 5 isn't feasible as much for legal reasons as technical ones.

I don't think any company wants to sign off on the notion that their software will handle all classes of problem, even ones they have no data for at all.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#122

Post by Ftuuky » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

noneeeed wrote: post #79

As someone who lives in Bath, an old european city with roads (and other drivers) that can give experienced human drivers a nervous breakdown I'm rather more interested in how they do in SF than their current deployment in Phoenix. From what I've heard repeatedly, SF sounds much more irregular and messy than Phoenix, so it should be something of a stepping stone to making them usable more widely if they can crack it.…

Same with Coimbra, Portugal. Would love to see a Waymo car trying to navigate those old intricate roads.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#123

Post by sschueller » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this.

It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#124

Post by lifekaizen » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #16

Why did they pick Jaguar for the platform? That seems like an obscure choice.

Most likely Jaguar is involved financially and it's not a straight purchase. From Wired:

"Jaguar, for its part, gets a large chunk of guaranteed sales and a chance to look like it’s at the forefront of this emerging technology."

- Waymo Expands Its Robo-Fleet with Electric Jaguar SUVs, https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-buys-jaguar-suvs/

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#125

Post by afavour » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:56 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #89

espadrine wrote: post #47

Waymo is currently the only SAE Level 4[0] self-driving car in use, right? The wheel must not be used. Even though it is limited to two cities. Their technology seems an order of magnitude above the rest, although factoring in its cost could make it look worse. (Can it turn a profit, when including the development costs?) Tesla FSD is at best SAE level 3 (can need human fallback), and at worst level 2 (needs constant…

Most of the commercial value is achieved at Level 4. I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking?

> I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking?

What is the "this" you're talking about here? I don't think there were many skeptics out there saying that it'll be decades before a taxi service will be able to launch a small, manned trial in a single municipality. Given that it's manned it still isn't quite at Level 4.

The cynicism (and I'd consider myself a mild cynic I guess) was and is around the notion that the vast majority of us would be sat in self-driving cars by now. That was always wildly optimistic. We're making progress and that's great! But there were a lot of breathless predictions years back that have not come to fruition.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#126

Post by hn_go_brrrrr » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #107

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #85

I wonder if the cars will always have a human chaperone. Not as a safety driver, but to prevent riders from trashing the car.

There are plenty of rail-based transports that have no driver (Vancouver's SkyTrain is the largest iirc). They seems to get by without being ripped apart by passengers.

The other passengers serve as the social discouragement in that instance. Most human-driven rail transit isn't monitored by rail employees.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#127

Post by mosdl » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

noneeeed wrote: post #79

As someone who lives in Bath, an old european city with roads (and other drivers) that can give experienced human drivers a nervous breakdown I'm rather more interested in how they do in SF than their current deployment in Phoenix. From what I've heard repeatedly, SF sounds much more irregular and messy than Phoenix, so it should be something of a stepping stone to making them usable more widely if they can crack it.…

Yeah SF is very messy configuration wise and is more "european" in that way.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#128

Post by martinald » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

aaroninsf wrote: post #98

gfodor wrote: post #27

Kind of interesting to consider how this adjusts priors on these outcomes: - Self driving is not possible - Self driving is not possible anytime soon - Self driving is possible, but requires LIDAR - Self driving is possible, and can be done with normal cameras I've engaged with a lot of people who presume self-driving reduces onto AGI, therefore it will not be achieved anytime soon if ever. I wonder which of their as…

I am in the AGI camp, but have wondered and still wonder, Why are efforts not focused primarily on interstate/highway travel, specifically, collaboration with DoT for mesh/distributed/coordinated long-term travel? I don't need a self-driving taxi. I would pay 20K for a car which participated in a federally-regulated framework which let me let go of the wheel when I get on a highway and let teh emergent cloud determin…

I agree. I think the problem has been the ride hailing companies shifting all the attention to being self driving taxis.

For 95% of people I think the value is in letting them do other stuff while driving long distances/times instead of stuck behind the wheel. This seems many orders of magnitude easier than trying to tackle inner city driving.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#129

Post by pvarangot » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

pbreit wrote: post #89

espadrine wrote: post #47

Waymo is currently the only SAE Level 4[0] self-driving car in use, right? The wheel must not be used. Even though it is limited to two cities. Their technology seems an order of magnitude above the rest, although factoring in its cost could make it look worse. (Can it turn a profit, when including the development costs?) Tesla FSD is at best SAE level 3 (can need human fallback), and at worst level 2 (needs constant…

Most of the commercial value is achieved at Level 4. I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking?

AFAIK no one recently claimed level 4 with a safety driver was decades away, and I was working on self driving until a few months ago so I was kinda "plugged" into the news. A handful of serious companies have plans and funding to deploy L4 taxi fleets or L4 features to consumer cars in 4/5 years.

There's no commercial value at L4 whatsoever if you still pay a safety driver. It's usually even more expensive per hour than a normal human driver and the cars don't work under adverse weather conditions.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#130

Post by notyourwork » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 4:57 PM UTC

noneeeed wrote: post #79

As someone who lives in Bath, an old european city with roads (and other drivers) that can give experienced human drivers a nervous breakdown I'm rather more interested in how they do in SF than their current deployment in Phoenix. From what I've heard repeatedly, SF sounds much more irregular and messy than Phoenix, so it should be something of a stepping stone to making them usable more widely if they can crack it.…

100% Phoenix is basically a big grid with a relatively flat elevation. SF is quite contrary to that organization with elevation changes, more dense traffic and irregular roads being common.