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Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#621

Post by mbesto »

dheera wrote: post #549
rhacker wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an engineer's thing at all. The classifications are very specific differences in the overall system. From an engineer's point of view they are just creating a fully autonomous car. L4 -> L5 is more about how many scenarios is that fully autonomous car been tested through. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#Classificatio...

> L4 -> L5 is more about how many scenarios is that fully autonomous car been tested through. Not really. L5 is impossible, period. What I think will happen is L4 with 99.999% cases covered and have it come to a safe stop for the 0.0001%, assuming there was a way to safely stop. L5 which means 100.000% covered, will not happen, but the PR people will continue to use the term.

> Not really. L5 is impossible, period.

Agreed.

> L5 which means 100.000% covered, will not happen, but the PR people will continue to use the term.

Which is precisely why so many people are critical of the term "fully autonomous".

> 99.999% cases covered

What cases? The point is that edge cases are the issue with autonomous driving. I can fall asleep on a train or a plane because I know there is human conductor who can handle the edge cases. This doesn't exist with L4. Everything else that doesn't let me fall asleep (read a book, look at my phone, etc.) is only marginally better.

> assuming there was a way to safely stop.

That's a pretty damn strong assumption.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#622

Post by mbesto »

pbreit wrote: post #89
espadrine wrote: post #47

Waymo is currently the only SAE Level 4[0] self-driving car in use, right? The wheel must not be used. Even though it is limited to two cities. Their technology seems an order of magnitude above the rest, although factoring in its cost could make it look worse. (Can it turn a profit, when including the development costs?) Tesla FSD is at best SAE level 3 (can need human fallback), and at worst level 2 (needs constant…

Most of the commercial value is achieved at Level 4. I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking?

> Most of the commercial value is achieved at Level 4.

There are two markets:

- Level 4 driverless taxis (~$500B market)

- Level 5 driverless cars for every human being (~$10T+ market)

So, most of the commercial value for Uber, Lyft, etc. is from L4, but L5 is where the most overall economic value is.

But L4 has to be achieved in all locations, otherwise that TAM is highly variable.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#623

Post by nnadams »

sjcoles wrote: post #78
espadrine wrote: post #47

Waymo is currently the only SAE Level 4[0] self-driving car in use, right? The wheel must not be used. Even though it is limited to two cities. Their technology seems an order of magnitude above the rest, although factoring in its cost could make it look worse. (Can it turn a profit, when including the development costs?) Tesla FSD is at best SAE level 3 (can need human fallback), and at worst level 2 (needs constant…

FSD is still technically level 2. In Tesla's eyes and the law's eyes you are driving and in liable for what happens.

In the automotive industry we called this "level 2.999." I've moved on from automotive now, but in my experience nearly all of the new vehicle features in development, big or small, are developed at that level.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#624

Post by kart23 »

ren_engineer wrote: post #239
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix. Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being…

Would it be easier to just build a "futuristic" test city built around the idea of self-driving cars to make it easier for them to work? If self-driving cars are so great people will move there naturally due to improved quality of life. Trying to make self-driving cars work in current cities is like building around crippling technical debt Seems like Google and a few other tech companies could easily bootstrap a smal…

A futuristic city would have public transport and bikes. 5,000 pounds of metal for transporting one person is horribly inefficient.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#625

Post by TheDong »

notatoad wrote: post #517
Larrikin wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of people on here who have invested in Tesla

also a lot of people on here who have actually experienced tesla's self-driving. certainly a lot more than have experienced any other self-driving product (at least above a "lane-keeping" system)

Are there a lot of people who have experienced tesla's self-driving?

As I understand it, if you pay for FSD, you don't actually get anything like self-driving, you just get lane-changes on the highway in addition to the lane-keeping. Effectively, you get lane-keeping, which you have if you don't pay too.

All the videos of "FSD driving" are from a small number of beta-testers, and there's no way to opt into the beta.

Because of that, my assumption would be very few people on here have experienced tesla's self-driving. It's only open to a small number of beta testers, whether you have purchased it or not.

On the other hand, waymo is available for the general public to use, though only in specific geographic areas.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#626

Post by rpmisms »

pqs wrote: post #324
sandworm101 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Middle steps: (1) Board members use product to travel to board meetings. (2) Board members use product as replacement for personal vehicles. (3) Board members demand pay increases. Back in 1999 the Chinese government announced that airline execs would be airborne at the changeover as reassurance that aircraft were safe from Y2K. Like or hate them, the incentive logic was sound. https://www.wired.com/1999/01/y2k-in-ch…

Skin in the game. Nassim Taleb would agree with this measure!

Always makes me happy to see some good philosophy poking its head up. Great choice too, since the AV problem is fundamentally about Black Swans.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#627

Post by s1artibartfast »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #605
cgrealy wrote: post #603

I feel like people here are missing the other factor that will drive adoption of self driving vehicles: economics. Safety is obviously important, but we already accept a decrease in safety over money and convenience (otherwise, we would have a 30kph speed limit everywhere). But most people use their car for commuting, groceries, dropping the kids to sports, etc. They may make one or two road trips a year for vacation…

I'm confused why many people automatically assume robot taxis will be cheaper. Financial Times (Alphaville Blog): The questionable economics of autonomous taxi fleets: https://www.ft.com/content/aa05823d-e58f-33ee-a99c-d50f2fd0c... ... quotes this Harvard/MIT study: Autonomous Taxis and Public Health: High Cost or High Opportunity Cost?: https://psyarxiv.com/6e94h >> I can imagine that as the world grows more urbanis…

Notably, your 2nd paper puts the cost of a traditional taxi at $3.50 per mile. At the low end of the autonomous price range, it is still a half price taxi.

For the autonomous taxi calculation they also include a 250k medallion plus interest paid off over 5 years, but don't include this for regular taxis. They also include a 200K/year to supervise the auto taxi for the high end ($6/mile).

With all that said, Auto taxis are unlikely to be a cost effective replacement to owning a car for distance commuters. Even with lower costs than traditional taxis, taxis are horribly cost ineffective way to get to work and back for any significant distances.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#628

Post by rpmisms »

mike_d wrote: post #515
arsome wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen of Tesla's solution at least - even busy city centers and complex parking lots are very difficulty for present day autonomous driving technologies. The understanding level necessary just isn't there. These things are excellent - undeniably better than humans at the boring stuff, highway driving, even major roads. They can rightfully claim massive mileage with high safety levels in those circumstan…

That is like trying to judge modern supercomputing by your experinces with a 6 year old Dell desktop. Waymo drove 29,944.69 miles between "disengagements" last year. That is an average California driver needing to touch the wheel once every 2.3 years. Tesla by comparison is classed as a SAE Level 2 driver assist system and isn't even required to report metrics to the state. While they sell it to consumers as self-dri…

> That is an average California driver needing to touch the wheel once every 2.3 years

From my experience of California driving, that doesn't sound too bad. Compared to the entire Eastern seaboard, y'all have great roads and better drivers.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#629

Post by rpmisms »

boc wrote: post #353
VelkaMorava wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder where "a country road with no lanes which barely fits 1.5 car in winter in the Czech republic" is on your scale... Something like this, just imagine the snowdrifts around it https://www.google.com/maps/@49.080269,16.4569252,3a,75y,307...

Believe it or not there are tons of two-way roads like that just 30 minutes from Silicon Valley that self-driving cars could practice on. Here's an example: https://goo.gl/maps/1CVb7Mpiwv1VL2sd7

Just have them drive up to the Lick Observatory and back.
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