Waymo: Google's self-driving car company • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by ajross » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

walrus1066 wrote: post #378

larrik wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your point is. Fully autonomous is still in progress, and still has work to do.

That people are talking as if it's just round the corner, that taxi drivers and truckers are about to become obsolete. Whereas I understand the technical challenges are much greater than is stated, it may even be they won't be all overcome.

But so what? Full autonomy needn't even be a business goal of Waymo. They just want full deployment. Having a system in place which reduces or eliminates many/most of the accident root causes would be worthwhile to install on any vehicle on the road even if it technically had a human driver.

The "goal", such as it is, is to have a technology worth using. It's not to transcribe whichever comic book utopia someone has in mind.

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

#382

Post by woofyman » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

walrus1066 wrote: post #339

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 th…

And that's just a partial list: deep pot holes, construction zones, standing water an inch deep or is it a foot deep?

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

#383

Post by walrus1066 » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

iraklism wrote: post #376

walrus1066 wrote: post #339

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 th…

I get that we have to be open with tech. After all most tech seemed "impossible" "unrealistic" and "unfeasible" even a couple of years before they go mainstream. But you have touched some use cases that are more frequent than most people think. London is a great example. My hometown Athens is much more closer to London as far as driving is concerned as opposed to LA or NY. I guess many other metropolis also. How will…

I can see communication with other autonomous cars happening, but with humans is another question altogether. We enter the realms of 'general ai' here, which is way out of scope of our ML tools.

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

#384

Post by aetherson » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

robszumski wrote: post #356

robbiemitchell wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two kids. They need car seats. We often haul stuff between home and the in-laws. This makes perma-Ubering infeasible. We need a radically new car seat design, either: 1. Super portable and quick to install/remove, or 2. Built into the car, safe for all ages, easily extended/retracted.

With a huge fleet of self-driving cars, there would be enough capacity to have permanently configured cars for child seats, bike racks, dog areas, etc. eg. "I need a 4wd vehicle for 2 adults and 2 bikes to take me to X park at 10am tomorrow."

Not without seriously increasing the costs for car rental.

The cost savings for car rental are predicated on increased utilization. Increased utilization is predicated on each car having more people using it on any given day. And these things don't scale infinitely -- each car can only serve a particular locality.

The number of variations that you propose is a fast geometric progression. Kids 0-12 months or so need different car seats from kids 12mo to about 3y need different car seats for older kids. The idea that you could support high utilization on "I want a car that has already installed a carseat for a 1-2year old + a carseat for a 5 year old plus a bike rack" is nuts.

(Regardless, also, parents carry a mountain of stuff that's THEIRS. The heck with a car seat, I need board books, toys, snacks, and wipes in the car.)

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

#385

Post by agildehaus » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

timdavila wrote: post #336

jcranmer wrote: post #312

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. 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 m…

Ridesharing currently requires human drivers which limits them to where the drivers want to be and limits them to how many drivers are in your area.

When human drivers are not required you have neither of these problems. It will be significantly easier for ridesharing companies to provide availability in non-dense areas.

Hell, they'll be able to control where these vehicles go by algorithm, so it will simply be a matter of adding more vehicles to their fleet and the algorithm will take care of minimizing response time for everyone.

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

#386

Post by londons_explore » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

arijun wrote: post #116

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…

inter-state.

Ie. you're gonna have to get new laws in place allowing empty vehicles in not just one, but many states.

Current driverless carpool plans might well only allow use when someone is in the vehicle, and they will likley only operate in a single state. The people-transport industry is also worth more than the goods transport industry.

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

#387

Post by ghaff » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:25 PM UTC

cmontella wrote: post #329

jcranmer wrote: post #312

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. 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…

Most of the cost of a taxi service is in wages to the human driver. With an autonomous car, you don't have the driver, so the service can be cheaper (especially with electric cars). I lived for about a year without a car, using Uber instead. But when I tallied my Uber usage, it ended up being about $600 per month. So I got a car instead and saved a lot of money. If this could be reduced to $200 - $300 per month, it w…

I think you're basically agreeing with the parent. Like Zipcar and Uber, autonomous vehicle technology when it's eventually available will almost certainly be one more incremental step toward enabling reduced personal car ownership in edge cases.

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

#388

Post by aetherson » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #295

ssharp wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Every morning I sit with many strangers in a train car for about an hour commuting to work. Sure a car is not quite the same, but I don't think it's that much different either. Society will adapt.

It's way different to be on a train car with a bunch of strangers than it is to be in close quarters with one or two strangers. There's a reason that a cliche way to meet someone like an online date is in a public location and not, say, a car.

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

#389

Post by imh » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

NolF wrote: post #245

pg314 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Tesla executes perfectly they might stand a chance. They don't have much margin of error though. One lost lawsuit because of an accident caused by a bug in their software, and they are out of business...

I find that notion very frustrating. 30,000 people die on the road in the US every year and no one seems to bat an eye, a self driving vehicle has one and it's the end of the world. The expectations seems rather unrealistic and the media seems to love creating a controversy.

On their webpage, waymo breaks down that 30k into smaller pieces. 94% of those deaths were due to human choice or human error. At least 71% were due to speeding, alcohol, distraction, and drowsiness. It's probably safe to say that driving like those 94% during your DMV driving test would mean a human wouldn't even get licensed. Why lower the bar to just being better than them? I want my autonomous car to be better than a good human driver.

The trouble with just throwing the statistics around and saying "it's fewer deaths!" is that it has to be fewer deaths in comparable situations. A tesla having fewer deaths per mile in perfect driving conditions shouldn't be compared to a possibly-drunk person in possibly-awful weather. This isn't the media creating controversy, it's people expressing skepticism when a corporation's incentives are to let a couple people die, and trying to maintain a high bar.

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

#390

Post by londons_explore » Tue, Dec 13, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

guimarin wrote: post #317

zubspace wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The industry will change/disappear overnight. Trucking will be 4x cheaper with 2x the transportation capacity when you remove the trucker. Doesn't matter how much unionized, etc. the industry is now. No group survives that.

How are costs divided between fuel, driver, vehicle capital?

I'm not sure the driver is the most expensive part...