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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#711

Post by apendleton »

aetherson wrote: post #523
mypalmike wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of variations that you propose is a fast geometric progression. Only if you're an engineer. To a marketing person, you bundle groups of features together and price them at various tiers.

Er, I wasn't talking about pricing complexity, I was talking about the ability to actually get the vehicle that meets your needs. It doesn't do you any good to know that "a vehicle with three or more constraints costs $1.50/mile" if you get a vehicle whose three constraints are "4WD, Bike rack, Dog area" when what you wanted was "carseat1, carseat2, large storage area." And if the fleet can successfully meet arbitrar…

But the fleet is heavily overprovisioned now. We're just used to absorbing the costs of the overprovisioning. But the vast majority of Uber rides (or of passenger vehicle travel generally, really) don't require five seats, don't require trunk space, etc. We just equip cars standard with these configurations for the small fraction of trips that actually require them. In some sense self-driving cars should actually reduce overprovisioning by letting single-occupant trips use smaller vehicles (and hey, in a pinch, cars with bike racks on them work just as well carrying people without bikes, just like five-person cars can carry a single person alright).

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

#712

Post by piyush_soni »

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…

> and have existed for several decades

Except that they are not really cheap, safe, or convenient. They are not door to door. Public bus/trains run at their own scheduled time, not at my desired time. Even services like Uber involve humans who are more concerned about their profit than my schedule or preferences, so they cancel rides when I need them the most because some other ride is more profitable for them. Moreover in countries like India where road accidents are the highest in the world, rash and unsafe driving is a big problem (government run bus, car drivers or private ones). This can just wipe that out! So personally, I'm super excited about this future.

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

#713

Post by semi-extrinsic »

bambax wrote: post #559
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sleep comfortably Have you ever been in a car? I've gotten plenty of sleep in cars, but never has the word "comfortable" crossed my mind when I woke up afterwards. I reckon it's something about that whole annoying safety thing requiring you to sit still upright strapped to your seat that ruins the comfort factor for me. YMMV though.

Self-driving cars of the future don't need to look / be shaped like a conventional car. Not all of them at least. The ones designed for slow night travel don't need to be air efficient, they could be shaped like a big square with almost real beds (like on a train).

That would be hilariously unsafe in case of a crash. Look, we already have big square cars with beds in them, called RVs, and it's illegal and highly unsafe to sleep in those beds while driving.

It doesn't matter how slow and safe the autonomous car is, as long as it's traveling on the same roads as other cars, some of which are fast and driven by humans, crash safety is very much an issue.

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

#714

Post by semi-extrinsic »

joeguilmette wrote: post #625
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. is never happening. If you want a proper safe car seat for a 1-3 year old, it's going to weigh 30-40 lbs no matter what sintered pixie dust you build it from. And it has to be pretty huge since a small person has to fit almost inside it. Even the ones for babies, that people for some reason I can't fathom like to carry around in the supermarket, are actually also 20+ lbs, you've just left 15 lbs remaining in the c…

I don't have kids, but friends who do have strollers where the seat is a removable car seat. Would Ubering with something like this work?

Like I said, assuming your friends have a proper high-safety Isofix seat, those removable car seats are only 1/3 of the whole seat, 2/3 are left permanently in the car.

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

#715

Post by deepGem »

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 own a car in India, because there are no other means to get to where I want to, when I want to. I now live in Singapore and I absolutely don't feel the need for a car. That said, I am not incredibly happy with the public transportation here. It's still slow - takes about 35-40 mins to cover 10 km door to door. It's not possible to haul kids and luggage in public transit. Self driving cars address these shortcomings. They are door-to-door. I rent a seat when I am travelling alone, or rent the entire car when I"m traveling with family. I'm dead certain that traditional car companies are screwed. Just look at the driving license stats in the US. The number of millenials getting a driving license is dramatically decreasing.

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

#716

Post by nojvek »

arghbleargh wrote: post #702
nojvek wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's do some rough math here. Say initial cost of the electric self driving car is $50,000. It has life of 20 years. After 20 years, value will go to 0. Per year: $2500 Service per year: $2500 (HN mechanics, is this reasonable?) Miles travelled/ year: 50,000 (5x human utilization) Miles/Kwh: 3 (based on tesla efficiency) Avg electricity cost in US: 12c / Kwh Cost to drive 50,000 miles: $2000 Total / year: $7000 Cost…

50,000 miles/year * 20 years = 1,000,000 miles does not seem reasonable...

1 million miles is unreasonable for humans driving gas guzzlers.

Not for electric self driving cars which optimize for safety and wear and tear. They have less moving parts too.

There are plenty of trucks, buses and taxis that have done a million miles in 20 years.

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

#717

Post by Corrado »

Unklejoe wrote: post #458

It’s going to be interesting watching how local police departments and municipalities handle the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles. In my town (a suburban town with a low crime rate), the police spend the majority of their time enforcing traffic laws. The municipal courthouse is always filled with people, and if I had to guess, I’d say that 80% of the people are there as a result of a traffic violation, whil…

Of course, the flip side to this is the notion that autonomous vehicles will free up the existing police force to do more important things. In most cities there is a distinct lack of officers on the street, usually due to budget constraints. Now they can take all of those officers used for monitoring roads and highways and have them do other, more important things; all without increasing the number of officers or budget.

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

#718

Post by refulgentis »

mtgx wrote: post #48
hellcow wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/optoelectr...

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

#719

Post by 5ersi »

xyzzyz wrote: post #430
awful wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't add anything profound, but I will say that 40+ years ago I camped at Disney's Ft. Wilderness campground, with all my many brothers and sisters. The electric trams had a routine schedule that came around and stopped almost in front of your campsite, all of kids would simply jump on, go to anywhere in the park like the stores, the showers, the outdoor theater, and hop off again. It was incredibly liberating and…

> No, not really as buses don't go where all the people live. They do, though, you just haven't been to places where this is standard. Try finding a place that's more than 10 minutes walk from public transit: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Warsaw,+Poland/

On a first try: https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Ruczaj+40,+02-997+Warszawa,+...

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

#720

Post by taneq »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #536
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.

1. is never happening. If you want a proper safe car seat for a 1-3 year old, it's going to weigh 30-40 lbs no matter what sintered pixie dust you build it from. And it has to be pretty huge since a small person has to fit almost inside it. Even the ones for babies, that people for some reason I can't fathom like to carry around in the supermarket, are actually also 20+ lbs, you've just left 15 lbs remaining in the c…

> Even the ones for babies, that people for some reason I can't fathom like to carry around in the supermarket, [...]

These are awesome because you can take your sleeping baby out of the car, carry them with you without waking them up, and put them back in the car without waking them up. Shopping is 10x faster this way than when you have to spend most of your time comforting/distracting an awake and fussy baby.

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