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

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

#151

Post by oppositelock » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:16 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…

Otto, Freightliner, and others are working on this.

Freightliner recently did a PR stunt where a self driving truck delivered a load of beer: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3134879/car-tech/self-d...

We'll see commercial self driving trucks before we see consumer self driving cars. Self driving trucks will first connect depots outside of cities, with humans solving the local driving problem, but eventually, they'll just completely drive themselves.

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

#152

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

ucaetano wrote: post #50

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

That's a prediction, not a comparison.

That's a super conservative prediction which has zero growth from current sales numbers in it. Tesla grows has historically grown at about 50% per year.

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

#153

Post by DrScump » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:17 PM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #145

chiph wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some issues, like the at-fault collision with a bus on El Camino Real near Castro.

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

#154

Post by dazc » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:17 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.

Plus the damages. In 20 years I have suffered many thousands worth of damages and every time it's when I'm not in the car.

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

#155

Post by DamnYuppie » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

celticninja wrote: post #134

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.

User is ubiquitous only because of its ability to burn an astonishing amount of money. Their bet is that they am do this long enough to make themselves the market leader. I am not convinced that they can continue to lose money at the rate they currently are for the future potential as a monopoly provider. At some point investors are going to ask for a return or bail on the company.

I don't disagree with you but people said the same thing about amazon for over a decade....

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

#156

Post by tedajax » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:18 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #107

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…

> Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive But how is this going to work? In cities, everyone uses their car at exactly the same time: roughly, between 8-9 in the morning and 5-7 in the evening. If you don't own a car, chances are you won't get one when you need it to get to work on time. Or, if there are enough cars for peak hours, then demand for new cars will…

Fully autonomous fleets of cars will push societal changes we can't yet predict. Right now everyone shows up to work at about the same time. Is that a fixed position society will always uphold? I don't know, there's a lot of things I don't know. The only thing I can predict is that in the same way the personal automobile upended the social structures of the day, autonomous vehicles will likely do something similar.

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

#157

Post by pg314 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:19 PM UTC

melling wrote: post #76

The hardest problem to solve will be the humans who bully the polite self-driving cars: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/17/humans-will...

It seems that could be easily solved with regulation. The self-driving cars could even automatically send a video of incidents to the police.

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

#158

Post by pera » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

Google seems to like logos with a W shape (Wallet, Wave, now Waymo). I wonder if that's on purpose, as in making a reference to WWW in some way.

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

#159

Post by web007 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:20 PM UTC

_spoonman wrote: post #142

rorykoehler wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Arbitrage for cars - Carbitrage.

Someone already had the domain registered the last time I checked.

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

#160

Post by googthrwwy1234 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 7:21 PM UTC

Throwaway. They spun off to let it die in peace without causing a PR disaster for Google or other companies under Alphabet umbrella. Now watch them wind it down and let someone else take over this lost cause in the next 2-3 years. The reason why this is a lost cause is because the remaining 10% of the problem (inclement weather, bad pavement, unpredictable behavior of non-autonomous vehicles, etc) is exponentially hard and no one has a foggiest clue how to tackle it. Google rode the PR train for as long as it could, but now it's time to get off.