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Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

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Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#281

Post by gamblor956 »

mperham wrote: post #94
enahs-sf wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has minted a fortune on broken promises and vaporware. As someone who purchased FSD, would be glad to see them lose their shirts on this one.

The funny thing is that I've owned Gen 3 FSD for five years now and only in the last few months has it gotten noticeably better. It's actually respectable at driving around my city now, can handle roundabouts, make turns, etc.

The funny thing is that just this weekend FSD was in the news for a crash that put a young man in a coma.

But when the usual outcome is death, i suppose a coma is an improvement.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#282

Post by brenns10 »

chrisguilbeau wrote: post #251
chrisguilbeau wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine drove me from my house to the airport without my ever touching the steering wheel so what exactly do you mean?

All I’m saying is that starting FSD from park in my driveway and having it drive to my destination with my hands on my legs and then having it park itself when it gets there seems reasonable to call “full self driving” to me. I pay for the subscription and I would continue paying if it never got any better. I do live in a rural state, so maybe that’s why it works so well.

Having used cars that had that "supervised" driving feature.... Gosh, I hope you were paying 100% attention the whole time of that driving experience you described. Even the smart cruise control features I've used allowed my mind to drift, and I was glad for the beeping from the steering wheel telling me to pay attention. I don't use those features anymore.

If it's full self driving, then I assume that Tesla is paying for your insurance and taking all responsibility for any crashes it causes in your car?

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#283

Post by hnburnsy »

owyn wrote: post #190
zetazzed wrote: post #86

Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase: "Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development..." reads a bit like a parody of corporate speak about a project nowhere close to happening. Did they agree to deploy? Or reach an agreement to collaborate? No, that's too strong. They will EXPL…

Yeah, that's pretty amazing corporate speak. And the development time lines are long. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains, there is a Taxi/Van in Japan called the Alphard and it's pretty nice! Toyota also has the e-pallete, which is a self driving bus for their new Woven City project. It would be great to see a new vehicle platform co-developed for those purpose…

>Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains

Does the Waymo brain need all the Waymo hardware?

>With 13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs), our new sensor suite is optimized for greater performance...

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#284

Post by slg »

acdha wrote: post #280
iknowstuff wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fell for Mercedes’ marketing so that’s hilariously ironic

I’m sure that sounded more clever in your head but an actual legal agreement is more than marketing.

No, they really are no different. A legal guarantee doesn't actually mean the car is safe, it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail. Those fees paid out can just be considered a marketing expense to make the car appear safer.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#285

Post by floxy »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #87
jes5199 wrote: post #8

Toyota has been way, way behind on electrification. I suspect they’ve been Innovator’s Dilemma’d are are in a death spiral that they haven’t even noticed yet

Actually, we should also realize that they've been super wildly successful at getting people to move towards clean energy vehicles. Prius is the world's highest selling Hybrid car, and it's been that for more than a decade now. This means Toyota has helped cut down emissions from consumer automobiles by a significant degree. It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicle…

>It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars.

It seems like hybrid sales are pretty comparable to EV sales in the U.S., at least according to this source anyway.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63904

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#286

Post by porphyra »

smt88 wrote: post #133
porphyra wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

O3 can now play geoguessr better than master level human players. It can also beat master level Codeforces competitive programmers. I wouldn't discount the ability of AI to make sense of images far better than humans possibly could, all the while beating them at logical thinking, especially in a restricted domain like driving.

AI can't make cameras see in the dark. LIDAR produces light, so it doesn't matter if there isn't enough of it in a particular environment.

headlights can make cameras see in the dark

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#287

Post by kadushka »

slg wrote: post #284
acdha wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure that sounded more clever in your head but an actual legal agreement is more than marketing.

No, they really are no different. A legal guarantee doesn't actually mean the car is safe, it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail. Those fees paid out can just be considered a marketing expense to make the car appear safer.

it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail

Tesla will not - it will blame the human driver for not paying attention. That's the difference.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#288

Post by slg »

jcranmer wrote: post #274
prhn wrote: post #226

The future of (public) transportation absolutely is driverless cars. Every time I'm stuck in traffic on an LA highway with 5+ lanes and I see the horrendously inefficient use of space this future becomes clearer. Waymos are also really confidence inspiring. They drive more safely and cautiously than any Uber/Lyft driver I've ridden with. If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each o…

> If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each other and at much faster speeds. This would optimize road space, decrease congestion, and reduce transit times. That's not going to happen, not in our lifetimes. It's not safe to do this unless you have a critical mass of cars on the road capable of doing it. Given the average age of cars, it'll take ~10-15 years from such tech being man…

> It's not safe to do this unless you have a critical mass of cars on the road capable of doing it.

You could always give those cars their own section of the road like HOV lanes. EVs were granted access to HOV lanes in California as an incentive to increase EV adoption. A similar thing could happen with a dedicated autonomous lane that has a much higher speed limit.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#289

Post by floxy »

hnav wrote: post #250
decimalenough wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota has invested very heavily in hydrogen cars, which is an actual "dead-end technology that ends up losing out". Sure, numerous EV startups will bite the dust, but the actual tech of putting a battery on wheels and spinning the wheels with motors isn't going anywhere.

Toyota invested heavily into the R&D which is distinct from tooling up to produce 70kwh battery packs by the millions. They've sold maybe 20k hydrogen cars, globally over the course of a decade as a pilot. They also sold 4k RAV4 EVs, are working on EVs with BYD and CATL, which means that they're keeping their finger on the pulse of the industry while also staying out of the lithium/neodymium pissing contest which the…

>They also sold 4k RAV4 EVs

Toyota has sold over 33,000 BZ4Xs in the U.S..

https://electrek.co/2025/01/03/toyota-bz4x-sales-finally-pic...

https://insideevs.com/news/755382/bz4x-solterra-sales-increa...

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#290

Post by slg »

kadushka wrote: post #287
slg wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they really are no different. A legal guarantee doesn't actually mean the car is safe, it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail. Those fees paid out can just be considered a marketing expense to make the car appear safer.

it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail Tesla will not - it will blame the human driver for not paying attention. That's the difference.

This is misinterpreting what I'm saying. I'm not arguing for the safety of Tesla's system. I'm saying that judging the safety based off of corporate marketing decisions is a mistake and putting a guarantee on a product is a marketing decision.
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