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

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

#321

Post by doug_durham »

willsmith72 wrote: post #269
arconis987 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in SF, and I take it daily. It's cheaper than paying for the parking garage near the office. And it's cheaper than Uber: the base rate is similar to Uber's, but there is no need to add a tip. Waymo sometimes does weird, unexpected things - but safely. Once it seemed to change its mind about the optimal route a few times over the course of 10 seconds, switching safely between two lanes back and forth a few time…

why are we tipping uber drivers?

Because they are humans who need to eat.

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

#322

Post by jeffbee »

m348e912 wrote: post #315
zellyn wrote: post #107

This seems silly. It’s been obvious even to casual observers like myself for years that Waymo/Google was one of the only groups taking the problem seriously and trying to actually solve it, as opposed to pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla), or trying to move fast and break things (Uber), or pretending you could gradually improve lane-keeping all the way into auton…

>pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla) I have watched enough recent Tesla self-driving ride along videos on YouTube to suspect you might be mistaken on this point. Tesla intends to launch a cybertaxi fleet and their software looks like it will be good enough to get them there without lidar or additional sensors.

There are no Teslas that have ever taken a trip without an operator behind the wheel. The idea that there will be a near-future discontinuity after which a Tesla will be able to serve as a robotaxi is pretty ridiculous.

I just watched the latest video from AIDRIVR on YouTube. AIDRIVR is a TSLA pumper-and-dumper who has dedicated their channel to uncritical praise of FSD. In the first third of the video FSD v12 runs two stop signs, once directly into oncoming traffic in a 1-way traffic control and once at a stop where the cross traffic does not stop. This stuff is not even a little bit ready for fully supervised operation. https://youtu.be/fpoXr_z_6a4?t=565

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

#323

Post by fourseventy »

E39M5S62 wrote: post #319
m348e912 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla) I have watched enough recent Tesla self-driving ride along videos on YouTube to suspect you might be mistaken on this point. Tesla intends to launch a cybertaxi fleet and their software looks like it will be good enough to get them there without lidar or additional sensors.

Tesla 'intends' to do a lot of things, but rarely seems to be able to actually DO them.

Ya, other than becoming the best selling EV company and revolutionizing the entire EV industry...

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

#324

Post by rurp »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #84
codexb wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if you're under 25 and have always lived in a dense city this seems like a valid take. Taxis aren't new, they have always existed. Just because they're driven by computers now isn't going to magically change all the reasons that people didn't use them before (hint: it wasn't because they were driven by humans). No one with kids wants to ride in taxis with kids all the time. Ditto for anyone with hobbies that re…

I used to live in China where taxi usage was much more ubiquitous, and…you really live to live in a world where you aren’t expected to live in a car, be it with public transit (Europe, Japan) or public transit + lots of taxis (China) or tuktuks or whatever. But yes, your hobbies tend to be different and adapted, bikes, for example, get you places, and are not taken places, or you get them on the train which actually…

This will work for some people in some sports, but it's hardly a universal solution. Many activities like rock climbing or backcountry hiking/skiing, will never have good public transport access.

Renting gear is fine for casual users, but serious practioners in almost every sport are very particular about their gear.

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

#325

Post by choppaface »

michaelt wrote: post #197
upwardbound wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't make the tech look bad, but to me it makes the safety driver & the other executive look callous and uncaring. > They didn’t go back to check on the other driver or to see if anyone else had been hurt They should have made sure the driver was okay.

> It doesn't make the tech look bad, but to me it makes the safety driver & the other executive look callous and uncaring. The safety driver was Anthony Levandowski, who left Google for Uber, taking with him a bunch of stolen IP, at Uber ran a cowboy self-driving car division that got pedestrians killed, Levandowski got sued by Google, ended up in prison and Uber laid off the entire division. Later he was pardoned by…

Larry Page knew about the crash and tried to retain him

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

#327

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #310
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's still plenty that can go wrong in a hurry even if you are just streaming along in lane. All it takes is for something non-routine to happen such as a car ahead reacting to an animal, or swerving as the driver reaches for something or spills coffee on themself, or a wheel come off a car (I've seen it happen to a car in front of me), or a car crosses the center median in opposite direction (which left my ex-bos…

> All it takes is for something non-routine to happen such as a car ahead reacting to an animal, or swerving as the driver reaches for something or spills coffee on themself, or a wheel come off a car (I've seen it happen to a car in front of me), or a car crosses the center median in opposite direction (which left my ex-boss hospitalized for 6 months) Inherent in this statement is the assumption that in such types o…

It depends how quickly it happens, and how well they are paying attention. We all know those accident prone drivers who are never "at-fault" - just very bad at avoiding them!

However, the human has the major advantage of having a brain and being able to understand the consequences and potential outcomes of something in real-time as it is unfolding. I doubt most autopilots would understand the situations I mentioned - certainly not unless they were specifically pre-programmed/trained into the system. Would an autopilot even see what is going on inside a car if a driver is bending down below dashboard, or fighting with passenger, for example?

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

#328

Post by donut_rider »

m348e912 wrote: post #315
zellyn wrote: post #107

This seems silly. It’s been obvious even to casual observers like myself for years that Waymo/Google was one of the only groups taking the problem seriously and trying to actually solve it, as opposed to pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla), or trying to move fast and break things (Uber), or pretending you could gradually improve lane-keeping all the way into auton…

>pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla) I have watched enough recent Tesla self-driving ride along videos on YouTube to suspect you might be mistaken on this point. Tesla intends to launch a cybertaxi fleet and their software looks like it will be good enough to get them there without lidar or additional sensors.

Just a timeline of how Musk predicts that FSD will be solved in the next year every year since 2015: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/.

It is one thing to cherry-pick flawless drives on a sunny day and upload it to YouTube while having someone behind the wheel ready to take over the glorified driving assistant system. It is another to run a commercial driverless service open to the public 24/7 in one of the biggest urban areas, knowing that riders will record everything, assuming accident liability, and keeping a nice safety record without someone behind the wheel.

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

#329

Post by choppaface »

xnx wrote: post #188
choppaface wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo has notably escaped any investigation of the "Prius vs Camry" crash induced during unsafe testing done in pursuit of a demo https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/22/did-uber-steal... > The car went onto a freeway, where it travelled past an on-ramp. According to people with knowledge of events that day, the Prius accidentally boxed in another vehicle, a Camry. A human driver could easily have handled the s…

Levandowski stole Waymo trade secrets, and only escaped the full consequences of his actions because of a Trump pardon. He is not representative of anything about Waymo in 2024.

Larry Page was an ardent supporter of Levandowski and this evidence illustrates Waymo’s core safety culture: that they’re above regulation and above the law. Same mindset illustrated in Google’s anti-trust trials.

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

#330

Post by martythemaniak »

cjensen wrote: post #267
martythemaniak wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people have uncritically been repeating Waymo's marketing talking points for so long they've started mistaking it for "consensus" or even worse "truth". Waymo's tech is impressive and it works, but that doesn't mean it is the only way to make it work. The Tesla/Waymo approaches are far far more alike than they are different, so the whole debate is about very little. The question of Camera vs LIDAR+Ca…

Camera vs Lidar+Camera is not a narrow question. Cameras lack sufficient dynamic range to work in many situations, and therefore cannot alone be used for a real self-driving solution where the driver naps. Your example of needing to read a stop sign isn't a great example. At least in North America, a hexagonal sign is always a stop sign. A better example of your point would be a speed limit sign.

Please re-read this part of my post:

> Say you're driving down the road and there's a bit of construction, there's a guy holding SLOW/STOP sign directing traffic.

Here's a picture of a guy holding a hexagonal SLOW sign. They are very common. https://nj1015.com/how-slow-should-you-go-through-constructi...

LIDAR cannot tell you what's on that sign. It cannot read any sign, nor any road markings, nor streetlights, blinkers, stop lights, etc. If you believe that cameras are not capable of being used as input due to dynamic range or any other reason, then that's fine, you just believe that self-driving is impossible (lidar or not). But to believe that one can safely drive using nothing but a completely blank and unlabeled 3D scene (ie, LIDAR-only)? That's pretty crazy.

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