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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#251

Post by derwiki »

Eridrus wrote: post #172
bdrool wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also: 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. Or, if everyone has a self-driving car of their own (or one that can be converted to self-driving), people will rent out their cars AirBnB-style when they aren't using them. I mean, why not? You've already got a garage, a driveway, etc. Might…

I tried renting out my car for a month in Oakland; it routinely smelt like weed and McDonald's fries, which got annoying enough that I stopped renting it out. A fleet would be able to handle these sorts of things better.

Counter anecdata: I've been renting out my car in SF for 6 months and it's been great; pulls in $600-1000/month.

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

#252

Post by burkaman »

user837387 wrote: post #177
DamnYuppie wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you but people said the same thing about amazon for over a decade....

Amazon can collapse really fast. My bet is that if it does it will be almost overnight and everybody will claim that nobody saw it coming. The reason I believe that it may collapse is because now when I want to buy something online I rather go to Walmart,Target or to the specific brand store. When I think of Amazon the picture that comes to mind is of shady people trying to scam me out of my money. My perception, eve…

Do you have any reason to believe that many other people share your perception?

Also, doesn't Amazon have unique defenses against this possibility? If sales suddenly fall off a cliff, Amazon has AWS and lots of B2B products that could keep them afloat for a time while they tried to recover. If people en masse decided to stop shopping at Walmart, they would have nothing to fall back on.

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

#254

Post by slapshot »

Kalium wrote: post #236
bambax wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive But how is this going to work? In cities, everyone uses their car at exactly the same time: roughly, between 8-9 in the morning and 5-7 in the evening. If you don't own a car, chances are you won't get one when you need it to get to work on time. Or, if there are enough cars for peak hours, then demand for new cars will…

If your average car occupancy count goes from one-point-something to two, it would be a huge change in number of cars required and traffic congestion.

It could. It could also go from one-point-something to zero-point-something. Until now, the floor for car occupancy was 1. It's now zero. There is the possibility of empty trips (repositioning for next shuttle run, driving to distant parking lot, etc) adding rather than subtracting traffic.

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

#255

Post by maxerickson »

baldeagle wrote: post #191
choxi wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you are competing on price for commuters the obvious thing is a waterproof interior and some high pressure nozzles in the ceiling. Car drives up to machine with hose, hose attaches, water sprays.

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

#256

Post by jasonlotito »

cortesoft wrote: post #167
tedajax wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know it's funny though because I stopped using Uber with the most recent update that completely screwed up the UX. There's a billion variables that will go into which companies succeed and fail.

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

For me, it was when they required to know my location even when I wasn't using them. Always? Really? Nope.

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

#257

Post by TulliusCicero »

user837387 wrote: post #177
DamnYuppie wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with you but people said the same thing about amazon for over a decade....

Amazon can collapse really fast. My bet is that if it does it will be almost overnight and everybody will claim that nobody saw it coming. The reason I believe that it may collapse is because now when I want to buy something online I rather go to Walmart,Target or to the specific brand store. When I think of Amazon the picture that comes to mind is of shady people trying to scam me out of my money. My perception, eve…

I'm the opposite, Amazon is a bajillion times more convenient for me to use than other online stores. And judging from how their business keeps growing, I'm guessing more people are like me than you.

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

#258

Post by scarmig »

randomdata wrote: post #229
scarmig wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't get these questions. "How will the car drive in whiteout conditions where the road is frozen over and not at all visible?" Same way a (smart) human drives: it will pull over. For substantially less crazy conditions, you can infer where the lanes would be by (a) looking at the spots of the road you can see, (b) prior knowledge of the road from experience, and (c) looking at oncoming cars and the flow of…

> Same way a (smart) human drives: it will pull over. You mean carefully get to the nearest settlement as soon as possible? Some of these storms can last for days at a time. Stopping to wait it out in the middle of nowhere, especially if you don't have a full tank of fuel to keep the car warm for extended periods, is a pretty scary situation.

Hmmm. If the car decided, before your trip started, that it's too dangerous for anyone to drive where you want to go because of possible weather and environmental conditions mid-route, would that be useful or enraging?

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

#259

Post by jackgolding »

hsod wrote: post #194
tedajax wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which is fair enough, but nearly every driver I've spoken with hates the pin and a reasonable percentage get lost unless you put a landmark in as the address.
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