Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 769 posts

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

#41

Post by the8472 »

meterplech wrote: post #26

Obviously this vision is compelling. I'm confused by the decision of their prototype car to not have manual control overrides (e.g steering wheel or something similar). Air travel has been revolutionized with autopilot, but there are clear overrides for safety in case systems crash. I don't think we need to be wed to the pedal + wheel paradigm - but having a manual override option seems critical to safety.

a big red emergency switch telling it to pull over and shut down may be useful.

Anything more than that would mean your system is not fully autonomous, because the driver would have to pay attention all the time. What good is manual override if there's nobody paying attention? It would also mean you need a qualified driver, you couldn't use it to ferry around children, disabled people or simply people without a license.

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

#42

Post by yessql »

meterplech wrote: post #26

Obviously this vision is compelling. I'm confused by the decision of their prototype car to not have manual control overrides (e.g steering wheel or something similar). Air travel has been revolutionized with autopilot, but there are clear overrides for safety in case systems crash. I don't think we need to be wed to the pedal + wheel paradigm - but having a manual override option seems critical to safety.

The argument is that if you aren't paying attention 99% of the time, that you wouldn't be capable of dropping whatever you are doing in order to take control. Also, these are meant to enable transportation for people incapable of driving.

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

#43

Post by mabbo »

aoeu345 wrote: post #39

This repels me for a few reasons: - Instead of talking about their car's capabilities on the front page, they include a pathos about drunk driving. I feel embarrassed how Google doesn't have more things to say about the car. - It looks really unattractive, I could hardly call it cute. - It's not in production, it's in testing. These companies are sitting on mountains of cash! And they still fail to do things effectiv…

They've told you exactly what matters to them: not sexy cars, not the kinds of technology used, but the goal they have in mind. Tesla, by comparison, is building sexy fast cars that happen to be self-driving.

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

#44

Post by pookieinc »

This is really exciting! I see these cars all over the place in the Bay Area, so it's nice to see that they're at least one step closer in making it into a product and thus bringing it to reality.

I wonder about the internationalization of this product, especially if (or when?) it's brought to other countries and regions, such as the Middle East. In some of those countries, women aren't allowed to drive and men drive with extreme speed (and park in the most horrible of ways). While this will cut down on things like speeding / drinking / etc, it may also potentially impact social norms as well.

I'm hoping to keep a level-head about this project, but any step forward in this endeavor is worth being excited about.

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

#45

Post by chiph »

visarga wrote: post #6

At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.

I have friends that live in one of the neighborhoods they're testing in, here in Austin (Mueller, if you're curious). And they've said the vehicles have been performing well, with no issues at intersections or dealing with pedestrians or cyclists. It's a new-urbanism style neighborhood, with the houses positioned close to the streets, with lots of on-street parking. I imagine it's a challenging environment for the car.

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

#46

Post by msie »

joezydeco wrote: post #12

Interesting that this very same day, the US Government is looking into proposals to require vehicle-to-vehicle communication in passenger cars to enhance safety. http://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-call-on-cars-to-chat-...

Now we can have car trolling! Seriously, I always thought honking was a crude way to send a message. Also people resort to flicking of headlights.

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

#48

Post by mtgx »

hellcow wrote: post #31
visarga wrote: post #6

At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.

Tesla has lane-assist, adaptive cruise control and a few other goodies. Many auto manufacturers have those things. You still have to manually follow GPS directions. Google/Waymo is actually piloting a car from origin to destination without a steering wheel or pedals. That's a much more difficult challenge. Put another way, no blind person is going to sit behind the wheel of a Tesla and tell the car to take him/her to…

Tesla already seems to have that, too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3DbrYx-SN4

The issue is Google is doing it with (prohibitively) expensive hardware, so we don't know yet if Google's self-driving system works with cheaper Autopilot 2.0-level hardware that the other car makers are going to use as well.

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

#49

Post by joeguilmette »

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 hoping for consumers to still want to own a vehicle rather than just pay $1 to get a ride

So: How much is Uber's market share worth? I suspect it'll evaporate overnight in every market where another service has autonomous vehicles and they don't.

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 predict blood on the walls.

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

#50

Post by ucaetano »

yessql wrote: post #30
ucaetano wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"how they compare to Tesla" Given that Tesla doesn't even have emergency braking and auto-steering, I'd guess they compare quite favorably...

Tesla will have 100,000 prototypes being trained in shadow mode for a billion miles per year across the globe within a year. Tesla will compare quite favorably

That's a prediction, not a comparison.
Post reply on HN