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Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#261

Post by freejazz »

SilverBirch wrote: post #2

This is fascinating, obviously it makes a tonne of sense for uber as a platform to offer waymo's autonomous vehicles. The first question I had though was "who extracts value here". Does Waymo get to demand human-driver level prices and therefore capture loads of value or does Uber actually capture the value because they're where the customers are. But then I realised... it doesn't matter. Waymo is part of Alphabet, a…

> has all the customer service infra

Have you used Uber? It's impossible to speak to someone

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#262

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

smt88 wrote: post #189
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's VERY few population centers in the US where it's raining heavily >10% of the time. The vast majority of rides in the US - and even in a place like Florida that's a swamp where it rains literally every day - happen under just fine conditions for Waymo. This is fine for a taxi service. If you make 10x as much profit in the vast majority of cases - you'll let someone else pick up the scraps in the edge cases. It…

> There's VERY few population centers in the US where it's raining heavily >10% of the time. First, you're utterly wrong about how rainy cities are[1]. Most of the population of the US lives in a place that has more than 100 rainy days per year. The Northeast Corridor by itself has 50 million people and 120+ annual rainy days. It also doesn't need to be "raining heavily". It can also be raining lightly, snowing, fogg…

> First, you're utterly wrong about how rainy cities are[1]. Most of the population of the US lives in a place that has more than 100 rainy days per year. The Northeast Corridor by itself has 50 million people and 120+ annual rainy days.

First, you are utterly wrong with your facts.

100 rainy days per year does not equal 2400 hours of rain per year.

It's closer to 500 hours of rain per year = 5.7% of the time.

Realistically, you're looking at the VAST majority of cities Uber being able to operate in 99% of the time.

Additionally - "rain" does not equal downpour. Waymo can drive in light rain.

And guess what - when it's downpouring, people crash MUCH MORE (fun fact - my father almost killed my hyrdoplaning in a downpour to get to my brother's basketball game).

Maybe it's not the worst thing in the world if people aren't on the roads nearly dying in the middle of The Perfect Storm (<1% of the time) to get places they probably don't really need to get to in the first place...

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#263

Post by freejazz »

panarky wrote: post #207
xyst wrote: post #198

Yea let’s just kick people to the streets and let the “autonomous drivers” take over. Any “value” spent on humans is then gobbled up by a mega corporation. The ultra wealthy get wealthier. Will anybody please think of the shareholders!!!!1 The optics on this are totally not absolute dog shit.

Yea let's just keep workers in such a precarious state that they not only must sell their labor for pennies, but incredibly they must now supply the capital to the corporation, all to do a job that isn't even necessary for a human to do, is hazardous for the worker and the public, and generates tremendous amounts of pollution. Why the "optics" aren't already absolute dog shit is left as an exercise for the reader.

This is a strawman. He's advocating that things shouldn't become worse than they are, you are ignoring that point and instead just talking about how bad things are now (without any regard to how worse this would make it).

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#264

Post by freejazz »

mbesto wrote: post #17
SilverBirch wrote: post #2

This is fascinating, obviously it makes a tonne of sense for uber as a platform to offer waymo's autonomous vehicles. The first question I had though was "who extracts value here". Does Waymo get to demand human-driver level prices and therefore capture loads of value or does Uber actually capture the value because they're where the customers are. But then I realised... it doesn't matter. Waymo is part of Alphabet, a…

> The first question I had though was "who extracts value here". Uber can't be profitable without autonomous vehicles, so the answer IMHO here is simple. For Alphabet, the answer is similarly simple - they'll partner with literally anyone to get distribution.

> Uber can't be profitable without autonomous vehicles, so the answer IMHO here is simple.

says who?

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#265

Post by ketzo »

sofixa wrote: post #96
wg0 wrote: post #81

At the moment - self driving technology is as good as LLMs are. When they work, they work wonderfully and when they don't, they don't but the problem is that there's no sure shot way of knowing when they'll work and when they won't. Isn't it or something has changed lately?

The problem is that, unlike with LLMs where a human always can and should fact check/reword before using, there is no such option with self driving. People's lives are literally directly at stake if things go wrong. For limited scenarios such as geofenced to a city with good weather, it seems that self driving cars (at least Waymo's tech) is good enough, baring some small lapses which are more funny than dangerous. A…

I mean, Waymo is doing hundreds of regular trips throughout all of San Francisco. I think the technology is getting pretty good.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#266

Post by slushh »

lukeschlather wrote: post #194
andruby wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name recognition and installed user base in a 2-sided marketplace. That's huuuge. Google owns the action "to google something". Uber owns the action to "get an Uber". Also, don't underestimate the value of a working business. Google has only ever been successful with a search engine and an ad platform. They've never been success in a consumer product/service. I don't think their corporate structure and business cultu…

The idea is to make it a 1-sided marketplace. Uber's entire business model is focused around squeezing vendors - now they think they can squeeze Google if Google becomes their vendor instead of a bunch of independent contractors who are legally inhibited from collective bargaining? Uber has no idea how to be successful when the seller side of their marketplace is organized and plays hardball at the negotiating table.

The car companies will do everything to prevent Google from having that monopoly. E.g. Google could be forced to license their software. Then, Uber gets their 2-sided marketplace back.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#267

Post by endtime »

VanillaCafe wrote: post #254
riskable wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spinning up the legal structure, figuring out all the local regulations and getting permits (it's not 2010 anymore! Many countries and cities regulate ride sharing pretty heavily) in a sane timeline is close to impossible. This is nonsense. Google has more than enough legal resources to handle this. So much so that it would be nothing more than a regular 3-6 month project that would be assigned a small team of lawy…

Evidence suggests that none of this is true. Just look at how Google Fiber wasn't able to navigate the myriad regional regulatory roadblocks thrown up by local governments when lobbied by incumbent ISPs. It's reasonable to expect exactly the same scenario to play out if Google tries to make a competitive ride sharing service from scratch.

That's a pretty good example. But in the case of Fiber, part of the problem was that other ISPs own/control infrastructure (like poles) to which they're legally obligated to give competitors access...and they would just not comply, or drag their feet on it. Fiber physically couldn't execute because of this. Of course there was corruption involved, as you pointed out, but in the case of ride share apps I can't immediately think of anything analogous, where Uber could physically prevent Waymo from competing with them.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#268

Post by mrguyorama »

minwcnt5 wrote: post #224
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automotive EE here, I could not disagree with you more on the state and expectations of self-driving vehicles. I can tell you with confidence they have not really put effort into weather and it’s a problem “to be solved later”. It’s all a joke. If we actually wanted this, it would be long haul A to B routes. Turning semi trucks into rail. Self-driving was already slowing down before the era of free money. So I expect…

"I can tell you with confidence they have not really put effort into weather" Ah, the Internet, where people who know absolutely nothing about a topic make bold assertions about it with 100% confidence. https://blog.waymo.com/2022/11/using-cutting-edge-weather-re...

That blog is a great example about how they have no solution to the weather problem. Their heading image is a light drizzle, and they talk about "predicting" the weather, as if their cars being unable to manage an unpredictable situation is an okay product.

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#269

Post by dang »

xyst wrote: post #198

Yea let’s just kick people to the streets and let the “autonomous drivers” take over. Any “value” spent on humans is then gobbled up by a mega corporation. The ultra wealthy get wealthier. Will anybody please think of the shareholders!!!!1 The optics on this are totally not absolute dog shit.

Can you please make your substantive points without fulmination or flamewar? That's always possible, and we're trying for something else on this site.

I know these topics are important and the feelings are understandable but the problem is that on an online forum, this kind of rhetoric becomes just-more-internet-drama-noise, which doesn't do anybody any good and drowns out the quieter, more curious conversation we're hoping for here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Waymo and Uber partner to bring autonomous driving technology to Uber

#270

Post by deepzn »

I've only seen 2 comments about Tesla on this thread. But, it seems people underestimate Tesla on here (I'm not the biggest fan). Though they are having great progress in their FSD beta- one way to mark this is by the number of users with access to it, which has increased significantly. This allows them to collect a lot more real world data then their competitors. Once this gets better and is able to prove better driving than a human, which seems possible in certain metros at least as Waymo is doing, then they can do an autonomous Uber network of their Teslas.

But I think this is a smart move to join forces, and will give the consumer healthy competition in this space.

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