I am confused. Was there some news today that they wouldn't have their own car, and instead would use their tech with existing car companies?
Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
211–220 of 769 posts
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#212I'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.
Uber's ride sharing model is fine for the major markets around the world (that have accepted it), but I think they're going to have to stretch quite a bit to successfully operate elsewhere.
Uber's autonomous trucking model is likely to aid in the complete change of that industry, though.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#213I 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…
True, the controls challenges to a self driving truck may be easier than a personal car, but the stakes in the event of an accident are an order of magnitude greater in an autonomous truck. As proof, let's napkin-math some kinetic energies using 0.5mv^2.
If we are riding along in the current heaviest production car, the Rolls Royce Phantom Extended-wheelbase[1], which weighs in at 6000 pounds, and we are moving at 70 miles per hour, we have a kinetic energy of 1.33 Megajoules. [2]
Now, let's hop in the heaviest federally allowed tractor-trailer, which weighs 80,000 pounds, and get ourselves to 60 mph, a more reasonable speed for such a massive object. This comes to 13 Megajoules. [3]
The upshot is, one fully loaded truck moving at 60mph could cause the same amount of damage as 10 passenger cars all moving at 70mph. This means that as a firm, your liability is 10 times greater per vehicle. Insurance is 10 times more expensive. Regulation is 10 times as strict. At that level of risk, it'd be stupid to not put a human in the cab of your autonomous truck right? Just in case, and to shield yourselves from legal issues. But wait, why not just get him to drive and save yourself a lot of R&D money?
I work in the commercial trucking industry and real-world challenges mean this self-driving equation is not as lucrative as people believe. And we haven't even touched the Jobs Problem. Hence the focus on passenger vehicles. I do think autonomous trucking will become popular eventually, but this industry moves at a glacial pace for a reason.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automotive_superlative...
[2]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.5+*+6000+pounds+*+70...
[3]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=0.5+*+80000+pounds+*+6...
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the "How it works" Google self driving car page: "Sensors Lasers, radars and cameras detect objects in all directions" It uses many kinds of sensors. Yes I know about clutter, I've spent quite a lot of time in the radar industry. But by combining data from radars of multiple wavelengths, it becomes pretty feasible. Though yes, difficult. https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/how/
It strikes me as curious that someone who spent a lot of time in the radar industry would make the original statement you made, at least in that fashion. Also, radar is subject to interference as well. In addition, there are many things that act as "natural" corner reflectors that would pose more challenges, I can only think of some mountainous snowy / icey nothern US/Canadian routes and just thinking No way Light se…
The original comment was hasty, I admit. But there are a lot of ways to tackle these issues.
Radar clutter, attenuation, penetration, etc are all affected by wavelengths. By using multiple frequencies, you can get a better idea of what is and isn't really there. As far as interference, there are ways to filter out noise. The car presumably knows how fast it is going. Therefor, it can do doppler filtering on the received waves. IE... car knows it sent waves at 50 GHz and is traveling at 60 mph. It knows to expect a response at ~54 GHz from the front and 50 GHz from the side.
For tracking objects, you can use a pulse-doppler radar [0] to get both range and rate information.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#215Earlier 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
And how many of those miles are in conditions like: * that road with the one-foot deep pothole (it's more like a sinkhole at that point, though) in the middle of a lane * the perpetual construction zone where there are five layers of lane markers, only one of which is the actual layer of lane markers * the 10% grade two-lane winding road in the dark with 2 inches of snow on the road and more coming * open highway wit…
This is why Tesla's strategy is better than Google's. Tesla will get the data on those situations, because their data comes from every driver of their cars. Google gets data on Mountain View and downtown Austin.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#216Earlier 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
And how many of those miles are in conditions like: * that road with the one-foot deep pothole (it's more like a sinkhole at that point, though) in the middle of a lane * the perpetual construction zone where there are five layers of lane markers, only one of which is the actual layer of lane markers * the 10% grade two-lane winding road in the dark with 2 inches of snow on the road and more coming * open highway wit…
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Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#217Earlier 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?
Uber attempts to keep control of what clients connect to its API for exactly this reason.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Retooling" sounds like such a great idea when you're a 20-something urban male single software engineer, you've got nothing to lose, and the world is yours to take. It also sounds like a great idea when you're independently wealthy and you don't have to work for a living, so you can afford to bloviate from your ivory tower. Most other demographics have very a different perspective on that concept, and for good reaso…
I'm with you entirely. I have no idea how to solve this problem. My cousin's husband is a truck driver. He makes a six figure income running between Indy and Chicago (bang, bang). He's going to retire before they can get rid of him, but this is a huge issue. I tried to explain this problem to my father, who's a CPA. I've pointed out that his firm can get by with a dramatically smaller office than it use to due to tec…
A UBI should be universal, so you can't lose benefits - it's only as bad as how you become slightly less rich when your income goes up under progressive taxation.
The closest real problem I can think of is not being able to move to a $15/hr minimum wage city from a poor area because you don't have the starting capital to buy the basics there.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
I stopped using Uber because it completely stopped working once I set location access to "only while in use".
AFAIK, Uber doesn't even allow to set location access to "while in use". It's either "always" or "never".
For the latest version, those are the only two location-services options.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Retooling" sounds like such a great idea when you're a 20-something urban male single software engineer, you've got nothing to lose, and the world is yours to take. It also sounds like a great idea when you're independently wealthy and you don't have to work for a living, so you can afford to bloviate from your ivory tower. Most other demographics have very a different perspective on that concept, and for good reaso…
I'm with you entirely. I have no idea how to solve this problem. My cousin's husband is a truck driver. He makes a six figure income running between Indy and Chicago (bang, bang). He's going to retire before they can get rid of him, but this is a huge issue. I tried to explain this problem to my father, who's a CPA. I've pointed out that his firm can get by with a dramatically smaller office than it use to due to tec…
> I'm not a huge fan of UBI since I think that makes people slaves of their State. We've seen such enslavement in the US under welfare programs. We've set the program up to lock people in. If they try to get out, they will lose benefits (donut hole issue). I think UBI is like that, but worse.
Bad policy structuring, because welfare programs are legacy programs and were designed when Economics was still in its infancy.
Also keep in mind that the welfare population is a minority. It's similar to the bank anecdote - if you owe the bank $1000, you have a problem, if you owe the bank $10,000,000, the bank has a problem.
When tens of millions of people in a country with gun ownership depend on UBI - any government structure that tries to reduce benefits or eliminate it will become a target of the masses.