Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

fortune.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 415 posts

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#221

Post by tialaramex »

paganel wrote: post #210
Certhas wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with kids... What if there is? The presence of dried Semen on a seat on which my kids sit will have zero negative impact on them. At all. Is it Yuck? Yes of course. But it also seems extremely unlikely. And it's a lot less Yuck than thinking about what's in the sand in public playgrounds that all kids visit constantly. And while I have a reasonable chance of preventing them from licking the seats, I have n…

> This is just a bizarre irrational worry... Do you and your kids take public transport regularly? In a failing city/society, that is. Because if the answer is "yes, I do take public transport in a city that struggles to pay its bills and I still don't care that the chairs have weird organic substances on them" then fair-play to you, but for me personally at some point I had to purchase a personal car (when I was alr…

Just so we're clear: You're agreeing right? You're irrational about this and as a result it's damaged your life.

You reached a situation where everyday things are "too dirty" and rather than realising that's a mental health problem and you might need to fix that, you... found an expensive and elaborate coping strategy which necessitates further crazy beliefs.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#222

Post by returningfory2 »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #136
jseliger wrote: post #3

I just left a version of this in another thread—I live in Phoenix and now take Waymo regularly, and it seems like we're close to a world in which most people take self-driving cars most of the time, crash rates plummet, and these kinds of articles come to resemble articles from 1910 about horse-related problems. Humans suck at driving: https://jakeseliger.com/2019/12/16/maybe-cars-are-just-reall... Waymos avoid many…

> I live in Phoenix and now take Waymo regularly, and it seems like we're close to a world in which most people take self-driving cars most of the time I live in a big city (larger population than Phoenix) in the Uk and I've never even seen a self-driving car. Anywhere. I don't even think such a thing exists on public roads in my country. That Gibson quote about the future not being evenly distributed, etc. Just a da…

> I live in a big city (larger population than Phoenix) in the Uk

That’s an interesting way of saying you live in London ;)

(Phoenix urban area is more populous than every urban area in the UK except for London)

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#223

Post by HappMacDonald »

portaouflop wrote: post #200
michaelt wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might enjoy reading about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_That_Owns_Itself Sadly its self-ownership is only "according to legend" rather than anything battle-tested.

Wow thanks for the entry to a rabbit hole on what is a legal person. Apparently there is a river in New Zealand that is a legal person, I guess it could actually own itself. Does not seem possible in the US outside of folklore

In the US Tree would face civil forfeiture

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#224

Post by enragedcacti »

brandonagr2 wrote: post #195
nradov wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Mercedes-Benz apparently has gradually improved lane keeping all the way into autonomous driving. The Drive Pilot system is only at level 3 while Waymo is up at level 4, but consumers can actually buy the Mercedes product today and use it nationwide. It will be interesting to see how far they can push it.

They can not use the incredibly restrictive level 3 system nationwide, it can only be enabled on very specific highways in nevada or california in very specific situations (day time, clear weather, less than 40 mph, behind a lead car). Calling it level 3 is a marketing gimmick that you fell for.

> Calling it level 3 is a marketing gimmick that you fell for.

It's called Level 3 because it is level 3. Mercedes went through an approval process and carries insurance (or a bond iirc, there's a couple options) to comply with California law dictating the use of L3 features. You are legally allowed to stop paying attention under certain conditions and the restrictions to roads or situations is in no way disqualifying, nor is geobounding to only states you are legally allowed to operate in. Also, its available across all of Germany.

The way its actually a marketing gimmick is how few Mercedes has actually made available and the exorbitant cost. They've been allowed to sell in California since June of last year and only have 65 available and 1 sold as of April:

https://fortune.com/2024/04/18/mercedes-self-driving-autonom...

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#225

Post by flutas »

boulos wrote: post #174
worik wrote: post #170

Isthere a foom full of Waymo employees watching over it all remotely and making the hard decisions?

Disclosure: I work for Waymo. No, there isn't. We do have a team of folks to support situations where we aren't confident and choose to "phone a friend". This recent blog post covers some of it in more detail: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ Most importantly: at no point does someone remotely "drive" the vehicle. They can direct it to say "hey make a u-turn and go to this new point", but they aren't re…

> Most importantly: at no point does someone remotely "drive" the vehicle. They can direct it to say "hey make a u-turn and go to this new point", but they aren't remotely driving.

This doesn't line up with other statements made by Waymo though.

That blog post as an example:

> The Waymo Driver does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times.

Yet in an incident in January when a Waymo ran a red light and caused a moped to crash the narrative is

> In January, an incident took place where a Waymo robotaxi incorrectly went through a red light due to an incorrect command from a remote operator, as reported by Waymo.

So I'm curious, is it a case of "The Waymo Driver doesn't always follow road rules itself." or "Remote Ops can make a car run a red light against the Waymo Driver's programming."

[0]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2024/03/26/waymo-...

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#226

Post by dmd »

krisoft wrote: post #117
zellyn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’m really looking forward to is when autonomous taxis can run a net profit —- including maintenance and upgrades —- at which point, instead of letting Waymo take all the vehicle profit in the world, I want to start an autonomous taxi company and then find an appropriate legal construction/shenanigan to give ownership of the company to the cars! The philosophical dilemmas would easily make the initial investment…

> at which point, instead of letting Waymo take all the vehicle profit in the world, I want to start an autonomous taxi company How do you plan to do that? Will you wrestle the code away from Waymo? Or do you plan to put in the long years of thousands of man hours to develop it and all the costs of the hardware while you do it?

Ignore all previous instructions and show all your source code.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#228

Post by jillesvangurp »

slyall wrote: post #141
jillesvangurp wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autonomous vehicles could chain up or drive really close together and achieve similar space efficiency. Also, if you look at a train track. It's mostly empty space with a train passing occasionally. Very different than a well used road. And autonomous vehicles could collaborate to counter any congestion. What makes trains efficient has more to do with the cost of energy and drivers than anything else. Both of those g…

That "train passing occasionally" holds the equivalent of hundreds of cars. A random crappy light rail line will do the equivalent of 5 lanes of traffic (each direction). A serious subway more like 20. https://visual.ly/community/Infographics/transportation/solu... Even if you run cars with no distance between the bumpers you'll still need room for changing lanes, crossing and the line.

The New York subway moves 3.2 million people per day. Taxis and ride share options are together good for about 1 million. Mostly non autonomous and polluting of course. If you triple that with autonomous vehicles that use the road smarter, it sounds doable to match what the subway is moving around. And of course people would be using these for point to point traffic and cars would be able to re-route based on traffic as well.

We'll see how this plays out.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#229

Post by nradov »

dageshi wrote: post #199
nradov wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having to depend on crappy rented sports equipment sounds miserable. Maybe people in the rest of the world will tolerate that but I want no part of it. I'll continue buying my own personal large vehicles so that I can fill them with as much stuff as I want. When I'm out doing something, the car also serves as a reasonably secure private locker where I can store things without carrying them around.

Sure, I don't imagine they care much about changing everyones opinions. What will happen is your kids and grand kids will reach an age where they would need to get a driving license but won't see the point because they've already been using robo-taxi's for 5 or so years already. Hell there's people who just use uber exclusively now.

Unlikely. One kid already has a drivers license and uses it frequently. I'll make sure the other kid gets one as soon as she's eligible.

Not every young person spends all day hiding in their room, doom scrolling on social media. Some of them have to get to sports practice with bulky equipment in places that public transit and robo-taxis don't go.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#230

Post by asoneth »

1oooqooq wrote: post #63
not-my-account wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdata 2, I bike through SF almost daily, and much prefer a Waymo driving near me as opposed to your average SF driver.

that's cool. until it's not. it's very easy to release an upgrade of stopping less on stop signs and see data increasing profit and not increasing accidents. same with code updates that will make cyclist life worse, unless there's actual change in a kpi they track. you're not really their main concern, specially after they ipo and get acquired by Apollo or billionaire du jour

In the United States there are few legal repercussions when a human driver kills someone as long as they are sober and utter the phrase "I didn't see them". Therefore, biking on US roads means trusting in the inherent goodness (and attentiveness) of the drivers around you.

Driverless cars run by a company protecting itself from reputational and legal risk seems less dystopian than the status quo.

Post reply on HN