301–310 of 769 posts
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Do you really think it hasn't occurred to WayMo/Google that maybe they should test their cars in snow/rain/sleet/fog/confetti?
Well, they only tested in US cities, so it's unclear what has occurred to them. How will it work in small crowded streets in India, China, or just Italy?
The hardest problem to solve will be the humans who bully the polite self-driving cars: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/17/humans-will...
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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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Wait five years. It'll almost certainly happen. The technology is solvable and lots of very big companies are spending billions to make it happen.
That's what people said five years ago. I am sure something will happen eventually, but it will take longer than people expect and the results will never be as good as people are currently fantasizing that they might be. We'll get to "good enough" but never to "great".
Now we actually have working software and hardware, and real people are experiencing self driving. I live in the bay area, but not a month goes by that I don't see a self driving vehicle at some point. And that's not counting the Teslas that are autopiloting their way down the highway next to me that I don't even know about.
I 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…
It's obvious that truck driving will be the automated sooner or later. But it will be a tough fight. How will the industry react/adapt? Take a look at the distribution of current jobs [1]. What perspective can you give people working as a truck driver right now? I believe, america first has to find an answer to this question before there will be automated trucks. [1] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/38266…
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It's much easier to coordinate ride sharing when there's an interested third party in place. ad-hoc ride-sharing for a reduces cost could result in the average car traveling at much closer to full capacity much of the time. If you set it up ahead of time, it could even optimize a route that picks up and drops off along an optimal route. Don't think of it as replacing what historically was walking outside and hailing…
I think you overestimate how willing someone is to sit in a small car with 3 other strangers during their morning and evening commutes. I don't see a huge impact on ownership at least in the first decade or two of autonomous cars. Lots of people still have relatively specific needs, e.g. requiring car seats of various sizes for their young children, needing to pick-up or drop-off kids at school, sports practice, etc.…
Everyone has their own door as well so there isn't as much jostling past and touching and being touched by strangers even in a full car.
The only time I've ever taken an Uber or Lyft and I not have my own door and/or I've had to scoot past people is in large party situation and those other people were my friends.
I've talked to women and they seem to prefer an Uber or Lyft over taking the train and/or the bus. Also, being dropped off at your destination rather than walking a few blocks from a metro stop to where you are going also makes a massive difference.
The benefits really outweigh the drawbacks. Especially if this is cheaper than owning one's own car. In theory, a private automated car service (calling a car and being the only rider) would still be cheaper than owning a private car and still have the same conveniences. It's just that eventually it will basically just be 4x cheaper to share a ride.
This is such a minor nitpick, but I'm bothered by it because I see so much performance-shaming coming from some Googlers: The site loads large pictures for all viewport widths (ideally they'd load downscaled images for smaller viewports — it's wasteful to load a large image for small devices) and the image files are PNGs when they should be jpeg or webp (example: http://waymo.com/static/images/journey/streets.png )
I think autonomous transport will be very popular but shared vehicles will be hardly more popular than Uber / taxis are now. If you think that shared autonomous vehicles will be significantly more popular than shared conventional vehicles are today, I'd be interested to hear why. Is it primarily cost savings?
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> 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…
This is an interesting thought experiment. What do people feel about recreational driving or weekend leisure driving ? For commuting, I am totally in favor of autonomous vehicles. But for a weekend or leisure drive I may not want to bother with shared ownership. I am not from U.S. but the experience I have had with using local air travel (with Southwest) in the U.S. I am prepared to caffine up and drive up to 400mi r…
Having the right car helps: trips made in my almost-busted Honda Civic were much less enjoyable than the ones in my brand-new-custom-ordered Mini Cooper. :) The right soundtrack, the right weather, and the right caffeine vehicle are major factors as well.
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It's much easier to coordinate ride sharing when there's an interested third party in place. ad-hoc ride-sharing for a reduces cost could result in the average car traveling at much closer to full capacity much of the time. If you set it up ahead of time, it could even optimize a route that picks up and drops off along an optimal route. Don't think of it as replacing what historically was walking outside and hailing…
I think you overestimate how willing someone is to sit in a small car with 3 other strangers during their morning and evening commutes. I don't see a huge impact on ownership at least in the first decade or two of autonomous cars. Lots of people still have relatively specific needs, e.g. requiring car seats of various sizes for their young children, needing to pick-up or drop-off kids at school, sports practice, etc.…
The self-driving vehicle needn't be a small car.