Waymo: Google's self-driving car company • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#141

Post by sf_rob » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

bdrool wrote: post #57

joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff. Or, if everyone has a self-driving car of their own (or one that can be converted to self-driving), people will rent out their cars AirBnB-style when they aren't using them. I mean, why not? You've already got a garage, a driveway, etc. Might…

This seems more likely.

So far sharing economy companies don't want to vertically integrate their whole service stack down to physical goods. It requires capital raising, and is low margin compared to the value that they provide by scaling their main services. Maybe they will once they've achieved full market penetration and are struggling to increase their profit, but that's decades away IMO.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#142

Post by _spoonman » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #95

stormbrew wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber is literally all over the world, though. Google can barely launch a keyboard app outside the US. Or a payment system. Lyft is still constrained entirely to the US and a handful of large Asian cities. I think people severely underestimate Uber's worldwide push in preparing themselves to be a force to be reckoned with when the autonomous vehicle takes off.

It won't be worth anything because autonomous ride-sharing will be a pricing game. Anyone who undercuts Uber, and there will be plenty of willing and able companies, will beat them.

An app that books the cheapest ride for you out of all the ride-sharing companies. Like Kayak but for ride-sharing. This comment is the same as a patent, right?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#143

Post by yessql » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

Fricken wrote: post #100

yessql wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla will have 100,000 prototypes being trained in shadow mode for a billion miles per year across the globe within a year. Tesla will compare quite favorably

One can scale up the first 99% of an autonomous driving os pretty fast just using pattern recognition, but the devil is in the edge cases. We haven't heard much from Google because they've been programming and validating all the unglamorous little problems that training data and a neural net can't solve alone. 4 way stops, passing motorcyclists and stuff like that, where old fashioned hand coded features are necessar…

That's the benefit of having 100,000 cars with all the sensors but humans performing all of the edge cases. Tesla can take data from all the cases where there was a deviation between what the car calculated it should do and what the driver did.

I don't think hand coded features are necessary. No one hand codes humans to drive.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#144

Post by tedajax » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

stormbrew wrote: post #59

joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

Uber is literally all over the world, though. Google can barely launch a keyboard app outside the US. Or a payment system. Lyft is still constrained entirely to the US and a handful of large Asian cities. I think people severely underestimate Uber's worldwide push in preparing themselves to be a force to be reckoned with when the autonomous vehicle takes off.

You know it's funny though because I stopped using Uber with the most recent update that completely screwed up the UX. There's a billion variables that will go into which companies succeed and fail.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#145

Post by Florin_Andrei » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

chiph wrote: post #45

visarga wrote: post #6

At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.

I have friends that live in one of the neighborhoods they're testing in, here in Austin (Mueller, if you're curious). And they've said the vehicles have been performing well, with no issues at intersections or dealing with pedestrians or cyclists. It's a new-urbanism style neighborhood, with the houses positioned close to the streets, with lots of on-street parking. I imagine it's a challenging environment for the ca…

I live almost in the backyard of their facility in Silicon Valley. No issues here either, the vehicles are very well behaved. Of course, how much is that an indicator of their progress, I don't know.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#146

Post by celticninja » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

mschip wrote: post #87

joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

Uber will continue to hold a lot of the chips in this race. Consider the Tesla or GM examples - a regression in revenue will not be acceptable. So if they're currently selling x cars at y $ a year they will need to continue that revenue without actually selling cars. This means they'll have to get really good at understanding how many rides over the span of a vehicle will continue that revenue and provide just the ri…

I dont see how that is the case. User is currently burning through more eyes to maintain their market position and that is without a fleet of vehicles to operate and maintain. Moving to autonomous vehicles may cut their staff costs\remove drivers from their costs column, but this cost is moved to vehicles and in many jurisdictions at least for the medium term a human driver will be required even if it is just paid to sit there.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#147

Post by DrScump » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:15 PM UTC

arijun wrote: post #116

I still don't understand why every company doing self driving cars is focusing on consumer cars while no major player is doing interstate trucking. Interstate trucking could pretty much be done now, and has several advantages. Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc. And there is a great monetization scheme--no driver me…

"Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc."

Yes, it's easy and safe if competing traffic is only fellow truckers or other level-headed, observant drivers.

It's when you mix in the distracted, newbie, or skittish drivers that things get difficult. Long-haul truckers (the majority, the good ones) develop a sixth sense about such risks; I can't imagine thoroughly coding a software replacement.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#148

Post by DrScump » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:16 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #138

emmett wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think it hasn't occurred to WayMo/Google that maybe they should test their cars in snow/rain/sleet/fog/confetti?

Well, they only tested in US cities, so it's unclear what has occurred to them. How will it work in small crowded streets in India, China, or just Italy?

Or Boston?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#149

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:16 PM UTC

Mz wrote: post #127

Retric wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often you need a car to get to the subway which does not take that long. Slug lanes also become more useful with self driving cars. Combine the two and you get a self driving car to central location > car or public transit to city center > self driving car in the city. Remember parking is often 10+$ a day due to land value, so two ~4$ trips can be a net savings. Finally, even a 20-30% drop in demand would be huge in…

Remember parking is often 10+$ a day. And can be more of a hassle or less conveniently located than a transit stop.

[deleted]

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#150

Post by randomdata » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:16 PM UTC

goseeastarwar wrote: post #89

heywire wrote: post #55

On days like today, when there are several inches of snow on the ground and more to come, I always wonder how autonomous vehicles will handle such situations. What happens when snow (or mud, etc) accumulates on the camera or sensors? I don't doubt that a computer can react quicker and with more precision in an "event", but what about when it simply can't "see"? I don't see a steering wheel in these videos, so I guess…

Presumably the cars won't continue driving if their systems are inoperable or unsure how to proceed. One could also argue that riding around in several inches of snow is a bad idea regardless of who's driving, human or computer.

That's a little concerning. Especially to the lee of the lake, snow storms can pop up out of nowhere and can last for days at a time. Usually, with care, a human driver can traverse to the nearest shelter to weather the storm. But if the car just stops out of the middle of nowhere, with limited energy to keep the cabin warm in the harsh cold, that seems like a recipe for disaster.