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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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

#731

Post by inimino »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #547
yessql wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peak pricing can spread out demand a bit, and also, people can use much smaller vehicles most of the time. We buy cars for worst case size or conditions. Look around the parking lot of a white collar work place that is filled up with four wheel drive all terrain vehicles and pickup trucks. Ride sharing for rush hour would use a ton of compact vehicles. Even if the number of vehicles is the same to account for peak us…

How does "spread out demand" work out with "people need to work 9-5"? As for "much smaller cars most of the time": not if you want to maintain the current safety level while also being able to travel faster than 20 mph.

The idea that everyone needs to arrive at and leave the office at the very same minute has always been idiotic. It's a holdover from assembly-line thinking. Presumably in a predominantly ride-sharing, autonomous-car world this would be reflected through pricing rather than through ridiculous commuter traffic jams.

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

#732

Post by stannol »

jedberg wrote: post #276
dboreham wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumes autonomous vehicles exist, which they don't.

Wait five years. It'll almost certainly happen. The technology is solvable and lots of very big companies are spending billions to make it happen.

For some very limited use cases five years may be realistic. For a car that can do everything and go everywhere a human driver can it's more like 50 years.

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

#733

Post by ainiriand »

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…

I have the feeling that Toyota actually is going to make it for everyone. They are incredible car makers.

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

#735

Post by norswap »

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…

The world is bigger than Silicon Valley, or even the US.

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

#736

Post by cjg »

Corrado wrote: post #717
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 bud…

Or more realistically, make a substantial proportion of them redundant.

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

#737

Post by semi-extrinsic »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #730
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…

You are over estimating car seat weights. A large, one piece, high end seat for kids up to 70 pounds like a Britax Marathon only weighs 19.5 pounds. No pixie dust needed, just plastic and styrofoam. https://us.britax.com/car-seats/marathon-70/ (see specifications) Those detachable seats you see mom's carrying in the supermarket weigh about 10 pounds, and the base will be about the same.

The one you link to is a) not ISOFIX, thus not high end, and b) discontinued from the manufacturer.

We have this one, which is what I'd consider the gold standard. It's ISOFIX, and only rearward-facing since kids under 4 should not be facing front, and it's won basically every test there is:

http://www.besafe.com/product-int/izi-kid-x2-i-size/

It weighs 40.6 lbs. Quite a bit of structural steel in there, including a full integral roll bar and a brace against being rear-ended, both of which your linked Britax seat lacks.

Also bloody expensive, but if there's one thing I won't skimp on, it's the safety of my children.

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

#738

Post by anko »

rtx wrote: post #555
agildehaus wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mat…

Why would ride sharing companies behave diffrently than human drivers. I don't think laws of economics will change.

Cause they are competing with anyone with a car. That makes margins a fair bit lower.

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

#739

Post by sobani »

gohrt wrote: post #705
zzzzzzzza wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you overestimate the percentage of people that a. work b. work 9 to 5 jobs. there's plenty of cars on the road at other times. would be surprised if load was more than 2-3x as high at those peak times (which could easily be accommodated by ride sharing)

if people have so much flexibility, why does rush hour exist?

you made a typo: it's "rush hourS"

Depending on the location there are 3-4 rush hours in the morning and 3-4 in the afternoon.

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

#740

Post by ralphhughes »

baldeagle wrote: post #191
choxi wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a few other things they could compete on: - Availability. Who has the largest network and highest availability? - Car Design. Who has the most comfortable or fully featured cars? - Safety. Who has the safest car? Who has the safest track record? It might eventually become a race to the bottom, but I think there's still plenty of opportunity to compete on other fronts for at least the next five years.

Ability to clean / autonomously clean itself. I think this will be the next big thing for car ride fleets.

We tried this with our fleet of landrovers. Each one has a waterproof interior and is plumbed with sprinkler pipe with hoze-lock connectors on the back of the vehicle so it can be plugged in to the water supply.

It doesn't work, the water spray is not strong enough, or directed enough to remove the mud and sand. We still have to have people going round with water jets to spot clean. A have my doubts a fully automatic system could ever work effectively.

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