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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#191

Post by baldeagle »

choxi wrote: post #165
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.

There are a few other things they could compete on: - Availability. Who has the largest network and highest availability? - Car Design. Who has the most comfortable or fully featured cars? - Safety. Who has the safest car? Who has the safest track record? It might eventually become a race to the bottom, but I think there's still plenty of opportunity to compete on other fronts for at least the next five years.

Ability to clean / autonomously clean itself. I think this will be the next big thing for car ride fleets.

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

#193

Post by rb808 »

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. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff.

I really dont agree with this. Cars a so cheap now and I'd much rather use my own than some dirty shared car.

Already renting a car is annoying as you never know if you'll get charged for some damage that you didn't cause, I can't imagine having the same issue every day.

Having the car drop me off then go away and autopark is something that I'd value though. :)

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

#194

Post by hsod »

tedajax wrote: post #181
cortesoft wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the change that did it for you? I didn't notice that much different, at least in how i use it.

It became very difficult to override the position of the pin after the GPS decided it just had to know where I was instead of me. Also the tracking you for 5 minutes after a ride is completely unforgivable.

They changed the UX, you now drag the pin after setting your general location and choosing your destination. I think this is because they want to suggest more efficient pickup locations instead of just wherever you happen to be standing. Felt a little weird at first but I'm already used to it.

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

#195

Post by rorykoehler »

rubicon33 wrote: post #189
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.

Here's a crazy business idea: You know how a person nowadays can register for uber and drive people around? In the future, maybe people will register their CAR (which can drive itself). So they sit at home, getting work done, while their car is off autonomously driving itself and picking people up. When you want it to come home, just call it home.

Which is exactly what Musk announced Tesla will be doing.

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

#196

Post by manmal »

DrScump wrote: post #147
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…

About the sixth sense - does this not also apply to good doctors? And yet, they are easily outdiagnosed by many ML implementations. I can imagine deep learning to also gain this sixth sense. E.g. a cyclist in front of you looks to the left - a proficient driver predicts that cyclist might turn left very soon. Why should a self driving car/truck not learn the same?

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

#197

Post by bertil »

There is an announcement today too that Google will not be operating that technology, but focus on selling self-driving to car manufacturers.

Does this mean that Alphabet will keep on working on building their own cars but under a different company? The association between the two is a little confusing at the moment.

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

#198

Post by rorykoehler »

_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?

https://www.urbi.co/en/ same same but for car sharing services.

Ediy: seems to also include ride sharing now.

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

#199

Post by computerphage »

oppositelock wrote: post #151
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, the…

Otto did that test, not Freightliner.

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

#200

Post by 946789987649 »

rb808 wrote: post #193
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. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff. I really dont agree with this. Cars a so cheap now and I'd much rather use my own than some dirty shared car. Already renting a car is annoying as you never know if you'll get charged for some damage that you didn't cause, I can't imagine having th…

I disagree on the damage thing purely because this would be the same situation as Boris Bikes, which actually work really well.
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