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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#331

Post by hehheh »

flexie wrote: post #325
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

Why would anyone own a house when they can rent an apartment? Why don't we share bathrooms with the neighbors? Why have a small garden that needs maintenance when there is a huge park nearby? Why did I just buy a printer when I need it so rarely and there is a copy shop downstairs? Why do people have washers when laundromats exist? I think ownership means more to most people than just convenience or being the cheapes…

A lot of people do choose to rent. Most people get food from stores, not gardens. Roads themselves are shared resources. Why did you buy a printer?

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

#332

Post by ucaetano »

yessql wrote: post #210
ucaetano wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not talking about the number of cars sold, talking about that translating into self-driving capabilities. And in that sense, it is a very aggressive prediction, given that Google has had fully-autonomous, no-backup-driver, public-road-testing for over a year. So you can say that Tesla is at least 1-years behind. More like 4-5.

Tesla is definitely behind Google now, but I'm saying their trajectory is orders of magnitude better, because they are collecting real world training data much faster. Humans show the minimal set of sensors needed for driving, and Tesla have a superset of that being delivered to customers today, which is being used to train their model. They get a lifetime of real world driving experience on those sensors every day.

Your prediction is only good as your assumptions: that Tesla can achieve human-like levels of intelligence in under 10 years.

That is extremely aggressive. Getting data is the easy part of self-driving.

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

#333

Post by dragonwriter »

jmilloy wrote: post #322
dragonwriter wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, if there are enough cars for peak hours, then demand for new cars will not fall that much (although the structure of ownership may in fact change). Initially, no, but long-term you can move much parking to cheaper places around the periphery of the urban area rather than needing a parking spot where people live, one where they work, and fractions everywhere else they might go. So sustainable density of everythi…

So all the cars also drive back out of the city around 9am and back in again around 3pm? That sounds like more cars on the road (over the course of a day) rather than less.

It's more cars on the road per car trip, but fewer car trips per person per day for the reasons already explained upthread.

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

#334

Post by umeshunni »

ksrm wrote: post #93
boxcardavin wrote: post #32

Google's commitment to SDCs has always seemed half hearted so I wonder if this indicates that they are getting more serious about it. Moonshots at X have been getting the axe, the SDC stuff seems to be the only obviously viable one right now. To the surprise of many folks (myself included) it has turned out that SDC tech is probably for existing manufacturers to develop versus software guys learning how to build cars…

I haven't been in either. What differences do you mean?

Not the OP, but I assume they mean fit and finish, quality of interiors etc are superior in the Mercedes than in the Tesla.

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

#336

Post by timdavila »

jcranmer wrote: post #312
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…

> 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. I've seen this sentiment so many times now that I have to ask a serious question to anyone who echoes this sentiment: Do you own a personal car right now? If so, why? All of this... excitement over the transformations that self-driving vehicl…

I think this claim is making the assumption that self driving cars will be much more accessible and available than taxis/Ubers today. Where I live (in the suburbs) I can't rely on an Uber being available at any time I would want to go somewhere, and taxis only exist at the airport. If I could count on a car showing up at any time, anywhere I might go after a short but predictable wait time, I would definitely ditch my car. But the current options available to me don't allow for that. I don't want to own a car - I feel like I have to.

Also, cost is another big factor. I would also assume that taking a self driving car would be a smaller expense than owning for the average user.

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

#337

Post by tim333 »

DennisP wrote: post #277
Animats wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five years from now: * All the big auto manufacturers are shipping self-driving cars. Volvo is the first to ship a Level 3 system to real customers. * Tesla is doing OK, but the big electric car brand is Chevy. * Waymo is a Tier I supplier to Fiat/Chrysler. * GM and Ford are using their own self-driving technology. * Uber is still around, but is out of investor cash, and has to be profitable to pay back its loans. Th…

Why Volvo?

"Level 3: Within known, limited environments (such as freeways), the driver can safely turn their attention away from driving tasks"

Volvo have announced shipping that in 2017. I don't think anyone else has. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q00jIBhkq4)

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

#339

Post by walrus1066 »

It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example:

- communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block the road, allowing just one car through. Or traffic light out of action, so you negotiate with other cars using hand gestures, light flashes etc

- endless roadworks, that change what lane you're allowed to go on, turn a two way road to one way road.

- random debris on road. Plastic bag - safe to drive through, wooden plank - safe, plank with nail - not safe.

- loss of GPS, mobile data, or both (again, surprisingly frequent)

- making way for emergency vehicles (sometimes need to drive into lane you're not normally allowed to go, I.e. Bus lane, pavement)

- policeman coordinating traffic

So far, I haven't found any evidence of autonomous cars dealing with the above. If anyone has, please post.

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

#340

Post by tintor »

stillworks wrote: post #168
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…

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…

You would call a car on your phone (with maybe a ski rack or whatever you need). Car will drive itself to you and you can drive it manually or in automated way over the weekend. When you return back home, car drives itself away. No hassle with maintenance, repair, parking.
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