I feel like robotaxis are just electric bikes and scooters of 2025. I very well could be wrong (I think I am) but that's the vibes I'm getting from the robotaxis industry right now.
Would you like to be more specific with your analogy?
Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
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Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#202“From immersive shows and world-class dining to major sporting events and luxury shopping, there is something special for everyone.” – an interesting way to describe Las Vegas.
Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Vegas is also good for many other reasons: year round good weather, lots of tourists in need of taxi services, too hot to walk, too drunk to drive, etc…
#1 place cabbies have tried to scam me. #2 being Boston. Uber is such a blessing
"Sorry my card reader isn't working, cash only."
"Oh, sorry, I don't carry cash. Better luck next time man!"
"Oh it just started working."
Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if there are barf bags for the backwards-facing passengers.
I routinely had 8+h drives in the rear-facing seat of my family's circa 1970 Plymouth Satellite station wagon growing up. Completely unsafe, and very boring, but I don't recall barfing. My sister and I would pass the time folding up a piece of paper and each of us got to draw part of a person without seeing what the other had drawn. Sort of like visual madlibs.
Congratulations, you don't have motion sickness. I think that post was referring to those who do.
For those people, rear-facing seats can exacerbate motion sickness. See e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00036...
Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#205Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#206This being Vegas, they should make it possible to bet that you'll - get lost - be late - collide with a moving car - collide with stationary object - run over a pedestrian (bonus for multiple!)
They could install a roulette wheel or slot machine in the cab to be in keeping with Vegas.
It should coerce you to go to a club where it can get you a special deal.
Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#207We are getting so close to the Total Recall taxi.
Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to split hairs but I think the focus on sensors misses the point. There's a lot of diversity in terms of other on-board hardware, software architecture, and the role of geospatial data in the AV system. It's a product area that is very far from being able to horizontalize. Waymo Driver is going to run on Waymo hardware for a long time to come. Toyota is supposedly trying to use Waymo technology for perso…
>There's a lot of diversity in terms of other on-board hardware, software architecture, and the role of geospatial data in the AV system I'm curious to know where you get information on stuff like this. The Google self-driving car project was fairly transparent in the early days but since things have gotten competitive everybody is pretty tight-lipped about the particulars of what they're doing.
It's a small industry and people talk. You can also infer more about the systems from the bits that are public and/or reasonable.
Unfortunately, information ages quickly. Stuff that Waymo published about their architecture only a few years ago is now wildly out of date.
That said, diversity is decreasing. Most players are standardizing on relatively similar hardware platforms using nvidia compute, with connectivity heavily focused around ethernet as opposed to older buses.
Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
there are cameras inside, and they can see who made a mess inside the car
That doesn’t do anything except let the taxi go out of service until someone cleans it - assuming that it would identify vomit without waiting for customers to complain after they sit in it.
It does one better, it holds the passenger who created the mess accountable for the cost and then drops them off the service. You get some bad actors, but you can quickly weed them out.
Doesn't change the service outage piece, but it will get better.
That being said, your key point - people can do what they want in this thing and no one can really stop them, does stand.
Re: Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
Blind people cannot legally drive, but they manage to enter/exit vehicles just fine.
Now do the people I know
Okay but OP wasn't suggesting it solves for ALL people who can't drive. Reducing human driving is a massive safety win (if they can continue to be safer than human drivers)