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

fortune.com

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

#381

Post by telotortium »

slyall wrote: post #193
mike_hearn wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These comparisons are never quite apples-to-apples because the heavy rail line assumes only a few passengers have any luggage and that the entire line is used only for passengers, whereas the capacity rating for a road allows everyone to take large amounts of luggage and freight is always mixed in as well. You also have to take into account all the other factors that make roads preferable, for example, that rail capa…

You are moving the goalposts here. However if you want to compare mixed freight and passenger lines then rail equals many, many lanes. Plenty of rail cars have room for luggage too or even baggage cars. Usually we are talking about people going to/from work however hence most people are not carrying lots. Are you really saying your roads don't have shutdowns for maintenance? Or other problems? Also it is pretty rare…

Rail can support freight of course and complements trucks very well. Rapid transit can’t really support freight if it wants to operate at any reasonable frequency - you just can’t load any real quantity of freight in a few minutes. Even baggage is stretching it a lot of the time on busy lines. And the slow acceleration times and length of freight trains severely conflicts with the needs of passenger rail. Therefore, freight and passenger rail need to be separated for either to perform well. On the other hand, cars and trucks are a lot more similar in performance and size, so they can share the same roads just fine - it’s only an issue if the road is completely choked with trucks.

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

#382

Post by moomin »

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…

Question is: who’s liable for the accident in these circumstances? Because to date the legal circumstances are such you would be heavily advised to keep your autopilot off.

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

#383

Post by paganel »

tialaramex wrote: post #221
paganel wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is just a bizarre irrational worry... Do you and your kids take public transport regularly? In a failing city/society, that is. Because if the answer is "yes, I do take public transport in a city that struggles to pay its bills and I still don't care that the chairs have weird organic substances on them" then fair-play to you, but for me personally at some point I had to purchase a personal car (when I was alr…

Just so we're clear: You're agreeing right? You're irrational about this and as a result it's damaged your life. You reached a situation where everyday things are "too dirty" and rather than realising that's a mental health problem and you might need to fix that, you... found an expensive and elaborate coping strategy which necessitates further crazy beliefs.

Nothing like being psychoanalized by some tech people who have most probably not taken public transport in a long time.

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

#384

Post by f1refly »

moomin wrote: post #382
CharlieDigital wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Question is: who’s liable for the accident in these circumstances? Because to date the legal circumstances are such you would be heavily advised to keep your autopilot off.

Mercedes takes liability for it. That's their marketing pitch for the feature.

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

#385

Post by 1oooqooq »

asoneth wrote: post #230
1oooqooq wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's cool. until it's not. it's very easy to release an upgrade of stopping less on stop signs and see data increasing profit and not increasing accidents. same with code updates that will make cyclist life worse, unless there's actual change in a kpi they track. you're not really their main concern, specially after they ipo and get acquired by Apollo or billionaire du jour

In the United States there are few legal repercussions when a human driver kills someone as long as they are sober and utter the phrase "I didn't see them". Therefore, biking on US roads means trusting in the inherent goodness (and attentiveness) of the drivers around you. Driverless cars run by a company protecting itself from reputational and legal risk seems less dystopian than the status quo.

how can you read my comment and infer that killing someone is a metric they don't care about??? that's musk level shit.

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

#386

Post by wrboyce »

amelius wrote: post #156

Side question: when Tesla finally gets FSD working, will I be able to use my Tesla to make money by using it as a taxi? Or will there be licensing issues? In other words, will I own it or not?

https://web.archive.org/web/20161129012459/https://www.tesla...

> Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.

Of course that was in 2016 and as far as I’m aware we are still awaiting those details.

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

#387

Post by mech422 »

netsharc wrote: post #189
zellyn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’m really looking forward to is when autonomous taxis can run a net profit —- including maintenance and upgrades —- at which point, instead of letting Waymo take all the vehicle profit in the world, I want to start an autonomous taxi company and then find an appropriate legal construction/shenanigan to give ownership of the company to the cars! The philosophical dilemmas would easily make the initial investment…

Can LLMs pass the bar yet? Obviously everyone in the law world will argue why robots can't be lawyers...

EDIT: Hmm - I'm actually having a problem finding anything saying ROSS actually passed the bar. Maybe my memory is faulty...

IBM had an AI (Ross) pass the bar years ago...I believe it was actually 'hired' as an attorney at a firm in London for routine paperwork..

0) https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ibms-artificially-intelligent...

1) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3589795/Your...

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

#388

Post by snowpid »

brandonagr2 wrote: post #195
nradov wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Mercedes-Benz apparently has gradually improved lane keeping all the way into autonomous driving. The Drive Pilot system is only at level 3 while Waymo is up at level 4, but consumers can actually buy the Mercedes product today and use it nationwide. It will be interesting to see how far they can push it.

They can not use the incredibly restrictive level 3 system nationwide, it can only be enabled on very specific highways in nevada or california in very specific situations (day time, clear weather, less than 40 mph, behind a lead car). Calling it level 3 is a marketing gimmick that you fell for.

Mercedes works in others countries, Wayno in the Bay area

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

#390

Post by rcxdude »

zellyn wrote: post #112
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…

What I’m really looking forward to is when autonomous taxis can run a net profit —- including maintenance and upgrades —- at which point, instead of letting Waymo take all the vehicle profit in the world, I want to start an autonomous taxi company and then find an appropriate legal construction/shenanigan to give ownership of the company to the cars! The philosophical dilemmas would easily make the initial investment…

I think you'll find it difficult, given the general attitude the legal system has had to AI anything: lots of things are defined to require a human (see the various attempts to assign copyright or patents to AIs).
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