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Next stop: Miami

waymo.com

201–210 of 319 posts

Re: Next stop: Miami

#201
post #85

Waymo is cool, but I have no idea how it is going to compete with the tsunami coming that is CyberCab. Tesla will be mass producing this smaller, cheaper vehicle like nothing else. Covering the entire country with self driving vehicles. I don’t know how Waymo can possibly compete with that. Their deployment by city is slow, their hardware is expensive, slown to produce, and not purpose built for self driving.

Sure, right, it should be operational by 2017 at the latest, according to the Tesla CEO.

Re: Next stop: Miami

#202
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol the idea isn't to make money off transit, it's to save money on roads roads cost more than transit - a LOT more, and motorists aren't paying anywhere near the cost of road construction and maintenance, they're (quite literally) free-riding subsidized trips on the taxpayer traffic also destroys productivity, public health, life expectancy etc etc so costs money in many more ways than motorists not paying for them

> and motorists aren't paying anywhere near the cost of road construction and maintenance, they're (quite literally) free-riding subsidized trips on the taxpayer So are public transit riders. And to a worse degree. What's your point? We should magically spawn mass transit systems overnight and force everyone to ride them? By the way, I'm a fan of mass transit, and live somewhere in the US - specifically - where that'…

> So are public transit riders. And to a worse degree. What's your point?

that this is wildly incorrect. roads cost more than transit. a lot more. and road users are wildly more subsidized than transit users.

> We should magically spawn mass transit systems overnight

yes

> and force everyone to ride them?

you won't have to when the choice is between sitting hours in traffic vs a fraction of the time on efficient transit and greenways. people are not stupid.

> It just isn't a viable option in ~80% of the US

this is Miami, not middle of nowhere Iowa

> Rome wasn't built in a day

so it's correct of Miami to continue to "invest" in even more roads to nowhere, like yet another new highway bridge across the bay? that will take decades to complete and cost billions, and cause MORE traffic?

like no lol just build the effing transit and greenways and traffic will go down and the government and people alike will save billions instead (and their time, and lives)

Re: Next stop: Miami

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the problem is efficiently moving people around in a city; well to be honest I find this premise a bit ridiculous. Call me a European, but I find the idea that moving 1-2 people in private vehicles on roads being superior than public transit -preferably on rail- simply absurd. Much of the US like Huston and Miami is extremely lacking in public transit, and will likely never build the infrastructure. > Ride-haili…

*50% of your fare goes to the driver, as well as paying for fuel, vehicle maintenance and depreciation, insurance, etc. Without a driver those other costs don’t go away.

It's ~75% going to the driver if you count the driver's expenses as money that goes to the driver: https://www.hyrecar.com/blog/how-much-does-uber-take-from-dr...

Re: Next stop: Miami

#204

I'm so curious about how the internal dev teams feeling about all this scaling. Four cities across 3 states -- surely there are differences in road signs, lane markings, emergency procedures, etc. Let alone the sheer volume of data of doing hundreds of thousands of miles ever week! Massive kudos to them if they are able to do all this without things being aflame on the inside...

My understanding is they have to make extremely detailed maps of where they operate and at great expense, and everything sort of breaks when anything changes. So lots of work indeed!

Your understanding is wrong. They work perfectly well when road features change and the cars are able to update maps in real time. See https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-map...

Re: Next stop: Miami

#205
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger question is, how can Tesla with it's non-working "full self driving" compete with Waymo's working actual self-driving.

[flagged]

Literally the company selling FSD doesn't think that it's actually fully self driving. They strongly imply that it is in their consumer marketing, and have done so for many years, but any time Tesla interacts with regulators or the legal realm they are adamant that the system isn't level 4 or 5, and the human driver is 100% responsible for handling any and all mistakes.

Re: Next stop: Miami

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the problem is efficiently moving people around in a city; well to be honest I find this premise a bit ridiculous. Call me a European, but I find the idea that moving 1-2 people in private vehicles on roads being superior than public transit -preferably on rail- simply absurd. Much of the US like Huston and Miami is extremely lacking in public transit, and will likely never build the infrastructure. > Ride-haili…

Huston is in fact building transit. They have a large spread out city which makes it a hard problem, but if you carefully choose where you look you will find people living there who don't have a car and just rely on transit and don't notice any loss of lifestyle.

Houston is adding bus routes, and even those are hotly contested in city hall. The city tried to expand the very limited light rail we have but the vote for that failed.

We live in a super walkable part of Houston and still need cars to go to many places outside of (and even within) the Inner Loop. A 10-min journey in a car takes 45+ mins by bus, and that's assuming peak schedules and buses that arrive on time.

I actually tried to do the no-car thing for a few weeks. It definitely impacted my lifestyle for the worst. The gym I go to is 10 mins away by car. It's a 45 minute journey by bus.

I needed to walk 15 minutes to the nearest bus stop (despite being next to two well-trafficked cross streets). When the bus finally arrived, I needed to pay with cash because METRO didn't have Apple Pay set up at the time (early 2024) and while you could use the Q Ticketing app, it doesn't have a Watch app and I didn't bring my phone.

The bus didn't show on two occasions. The next buses were 45 minutes away.

All of this is, again, in the most walkable, public transit covered part of Houston.

I also lived in NYC for a long time. There, getting anywhere was a 10 min walk to a train station, swiping you MetroCard (Apple Pay these days), taking the train and walking a bit to your destination. The only places that were inconvenient to get to by train alone were deep in Queens, Brooklyn or the Bronx; for those, you'd take the bus, which usually ran every 10 mins.

Re: Next stop: Miami

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems much more scaleable. Car share services (eg. Evo in Vancouver) seem like good partners as they already have the fleet management services and a recognizable (and hopefully trusted) brand. I'm not sure about other car share services work, but in the case of Evo they have existing relationships with the cities that make up Metro Vancouver. I wonder if this would ease rollout as you'd already know all the req…

B.C. in particular went out of their way to ban autonomous vehicles a few years back, so I'm sure waymo's in no rush to talk to local partners there.

That is very unfortunate. I'm confused why they wouldn't want to get involved in trials and investigate all the benefits. Do you know the rationale behind the decision?

Re: Next stop: Miami

#208
post #104
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interesting random fact: when it rains, waymo turns on the windshield wipers The jaguar i-pace does this independent of the waymo use case.

My 2011 Mazda also did this.

Cars dating back to 2008 if not earlier. It can also be annoying/doesn't work very efficiently

Re: Next stop: Miami

#209
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger question is, how can Tesla with it's non-working "full self driving" compete with Waymo's working actual self-driving.

How about this? Tesla’s latest FSD beat Waymo by 30 minutes. Same route and same time of day. https://youtu.be/CfX8Lu9MHa0?si=cOYWNXjPiYP9R6L_

This is literally just a video of getting somewhere midday in LA via highway vs surface streets? Waymos don't drive on highways in LA yet (just in the bay area, I think?)

Re: Next stop: Miami

#210
post #60

I feel like at this point someone needs to take a step back and think about the general vision and overall goals of this whole fully automated ride-hailing service thing. I mean, what is the exact problem that's being solved here? I don't mean "problem" like "solving the technical problem of making a car move autonomously in a chaotic city" sense. I mean what is the need that's being addressed here, exactly? Ride-hai…

Here are some benefits: - Lower costs in the long-term. In the future it should be cheaper than owning a car. - Lot of space that is currently being used for parking will be freed up. - Convenience. It's a better experience than Uber and it will be a better experience than a manually-driven car. One example is when I want to drive to place A, take a 3 hour hike to place B and then drive home.

Living in SF as a family of four with both adults working from home... Owning 1 car and using Waymo/uber/lyft/e-Bike is already significantly cheaper than owning 2 cars.
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