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NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

nytimes.com

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Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#131

Post by taurath »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #99
olyjohn wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does having no driver suddenly enable this? You can do all this now, you just need a driver. Why is that the part that needs to be eliminated before you can do all these things? All it is, is route planning based on demand. Uber, etc should be able to do all this now. Isn't that what Uber Pool was supposed to deliver? Nobody uses that shit for anything but a commute. Nobody wants to sit in a car with other random…

> Why does having no driver suddenly enable this? No-driver will make it more economical eventually because: 1. There is no hourly wage to pay a driver. 2. The car can be utilized 24/7 (or most likely 16/7 based on demand, but much better than 8/5 of a typical shift driver). > What is it about having no driver that suddenly makes cars green, free up space on the road, etc? A confluence of things: electric cars, the c…

These efficiencies could be getting born out by the existing ride share apps but the promised efficiencies haven’t come to fruition at all yet. All subscription services like this have had high promises of cheaper and more economical service but they struggle to stay on par with legacy things they replace. Streaming services are rapidly approaching cable. Uber and Lyft are often more expensive than a yellow cab.

There will be a very, very long time before a $80,000 self driving car and all the technology and services to make it self driving and service it automatically can undersell a driver making $35/hr after expenses in a $10,000 car that she owns, or a driver for a fleet making $25/hr.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#132

Post by seanmcdirmid »

davidgay wrote: post #42
dekhn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? """The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its latest projections for traffic fatalities in 2022, estimating that 42,795 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes. """ """The number of vehicle-miles traveled on all roads in the United States decreased by some 1.55 percent to approximately 3.17 trillion in 2022. " Ignoring some important details, that means americans drive 75 million…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... The US is #5 (of 26 countries for which the statistic is available) in fatalities / km. That's only "awfully damn good to me" if your goal is to kill more people.

Why ignore the other columns? Is it just because that one statistic leaves out most undeveloped and developing countries? Having lived in China before, not one of the 26, I know traffic can be much more fatal than in the states.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#133

Post by taurath »

abhayhegde wrote: post #94
jsnell wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there's not one on-duty staffer per car. You'd only need that many people if all rides required human support at exactly the same time. But in reality, most rides wouldn't require it at all. Even if there's likely to be some correlation between support requests, it'd be all cars on one street or block needing help at the same time, not all cars in the same city. > Also, is there any path to profitability gi…

> That works out to 16 hours / day $15 / hour * 365 days/year = $87600/year.* True, but they also have to pay the staff who is monitoring the cars. Maybe 10 cars have one staff? For 250 cars, there should be a team of 25. Maybe they earn a year as much as one car saves? i.e. nearly 90k/year. So, that still works out profitable.

Staff to clean the cars. Staff to refuel the cars. The cars themselves. The administrative and technology teams to ensure the cars work, logistics work. Teams to handle incidents.

Replacing that $35/hr driver gets pretty difficult unless a lot of things are all in place at once.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#134

Post by LeanderK »

zdragnar wrote: post #39
barbariangrunge wrote: post #21

But… why couldn’t we just build more and better trains?

Trains aren't a panacea for transportation. They work well in some areas, less well in others, and not at all in many. You still have to get to and from the stations themselves, and the dependability of transportation arriving on time and proximity to your destination plays a big factor. The metro area I went to college in had a light rail train that ran from downtown to a popular tourist destination. To get there, t…

I actually see autonomous cars complementing trains very well because they can be used for the last mile problem (getting people from the train station to the destination they actually want to arrive at). They are also available for areas poorly served by transit/inconvenient connections.

But I don't see them making more impact on somebody who's already driving. Traffic will still be traffic and walkable cities will have to limit that. It's the same car after all, just driven by a computer. All those current issues for heavy car-dependence won't be solved by autonomous driving.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#135

Post by mrweasel »

olyjohn wrote: post #88
quickthrower2 wrote: post #23

A concept I look forward to is not just a driverless car, but driverless "various size vehicles" from a 1-person car to a 100-person bus. In this future we could get the advantages of public transport and car-free living into rural and suburban areas, while in the city these systems could adjust and use AI to find optimal routes that are a lot less slower than current buses (or even trains that require 2 or 3 connect…

Why does having no driver suddenly enable this? You can do all this now, you just need a driver. Why is that the part that needs to be eliminated before you can do all these things? All it is, is route planning based on demand. Uber, etc should be able to do all this now. Isn't that what Uber Pool was supposed to deliver? Nobody uses that shit for anything but a commute. Nobody wants to sit in a car with other random…

For me it's more to possibility to have the ideal car for each situation. Going to the dentist, order a one person car, pick up the kid, order a two person car or order a truck if I need to pick up something large. Utilizing smaller vehicles when ever possible will use less energi.

Some one like me who lives in a small village could also opt to share a car with someone else if me and my partner wants go to the city for night out. A few of my coworkers live close to me, I wouldn't mind sharing a car with them if we happen to leave the office at the same time.

There's small changes that will eventually yield pretty big results. Some German road scientists have a study that show that it's only a few percent difference in the number of cars on the road that leads to traffic jams for instance. Eliminate 5 - 10% or cars and traffic jams goes away, for the most part.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#137

Post by mrweasel »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #21

But… why couldn’t we just build more and better trains?

Because it's a very expensive way to move relatively few people?

Trains great if you need to move a large number of people between few destinations, less so if you have a smaller number of people or many different destinations. The city next to where I live cancelled their light-rail project, because it's insanely expensive and yields no benefit over busses, in fact busses are more flexible. If your distances are short enough trains again make no sense.

You also still need to get people from the stations to where they actually need to go. It's rare that a train station is your end destination. Busses work, but they are a little slow, taxis are faster because they normally go direct.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#138

Post by Mashimo »

imiric wrote: post #120
unyttigfjelltol wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a kind of Rube Goldberg contraption for getting around town..... The most complex gizmo possible for the most mundane of tasks.

Driving is far from mundane. Operating a multi-ton machine at deadly speeds, surrounded by other human-operated speeding machines, engages most of our senses and requires total concentration. It's a miracle that it works as well as it does, and it's still the most dangerous activity humans perform on a daily basis. We take it for granted everytime we step into a vehicle that we'll make it out alive. The only reason t…

Getting the taxi ride is the mundane thing.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#139

Post by mrweasel »

zdragnar wrote: post #39
barbariangrunge wrote: post #21

But… why couldn’t we just build more and better trains?

Trains aren't a panacea for transportation. They work well in some areas, less well in others, and not at all in many. You still have to get to and from the stations themselves, and the dependability of transportation arriving on time and proximity to your destination plays a big factor. The metro area I went to college in had a light rail train that ran from downtown to a popular tourist destination. To get there, t…

> It is a 15 minute trip by car, but an hour by bus+train

I have the same issue. Due to location and geography I'm looking at a 90 minut bus ride, with at least one change of bus. If I need to drop the kid of at daycare, you can add 30 minuts, because I have to get of and wait for the next bus.

So I'd have to leave at 6:00 to be at work at around 8:00, I then need to leave no later than 15:30, pick up the kid at 17:00 and be home at 17:30, assuming that everything lines up perfectly. There's nothing left of the day and my child has spend 10 hours in daycare... and I haven't worked a full eight hours. It's a 15 minute drive to the office.

Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF

#140

Post by jfoster »

> I wondered what would happen if I touched the wheel, so I grabbed it as the Waymo merged from one lane to another. The car ignored me and drove on.

Surprised they admit to this, considering earlier in the article they mention being instructed not to touch the wheel.

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