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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

#91

Post by ra7 »

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…

> Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being level 5

Because they are not even trying to be level 5. They've made it very clear that will only ever be a level 4 company and level 5 is not feasible.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#92

Post by nradov »

ra7 wrote: post #19

It's fantastic to see Waymo's progress. SF is a real nightmare to drive. If they can nail it there, that's 2/2 for busy, urban street driving (SF) and "boring" suburban driving (Chandler, AZ). They've been quietly very confident of their tech, but this is a real test. Tangentially, I've also noticed that Waymo has picked up pace ever since the recent leadership changes. They are publishing more blog posts, offering m…

SF is hardly a nightmare to drive. Try Boston during a winter storm.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#93

Post by judge2020 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #54

Why does Waymo use a niche British luxury car for their platform? Must be very expensive and what are the benefits?

- They likely were able to get a commercial volume purchase discount

- if that's the car their devs are testing on, it's going to be the fleet car, at least at first

- Alphabet has $135B cash on hand[0]

0: https://abc.xyz/investor/static/pdf/2021Q2_alphabet_earnings...

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#94

Post by dotBen »

enahs-sf wrote: post #40

I guess all that driving around the avenues in the middle of the night paid off.

Yes and the marketing copy that says "grab a bite in Sunset or visit Golden Gate Park" kind of implies the Ave's will the service area. I don't think it's going to be downtown and Soma, yet.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#95

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

morpheos137 wrote: post #90
BugsJustFindMe wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are enough people in the developed world who are physically unable to drive or use public transportation in their area and who also don't want to be homebound that the economics could still work out even if they were the only market, which they aren't. > Just keeping sub meter scale 3d street maps up to date has a massive cost. True, but probably not actually necessary.

You seem to assume there is unmet demand that you can meet cheaper with automation than with human drivers. I agree there may be unmet demand but I don't see you get automation to be cheaper than a $10 an hour cab driver. I mean if automation was cheap and easy then our factories would all be automated before something quixotic like a car. It is frankly absurd.

> a $10 an hour cab driver

Well, for one thing, I don't want anyone in populated parts of the US to live on $10 an hour, not even a cab driver. What happens when we double that? Cost of living goes up over time, but cost of technology goes down. When do we reach the tipping point? Have we already?

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#96

Post by ericye16 »

tshaddox wrote: post #76
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…

Those SAE levels apparently don’t specifically mention the geographic range the vehicle can operate in [0], but at some point that’s pretty important. Having “full automation” on a very tiny section of roads is hardly what I would call “orders of magnitude above the rest.” [0] edit: that's incorrect, L4 and L5 are primarily defined by differences in geography range.

The difference between SAE level 4 and 5 is explicitly whether the autonomy is geographically limited or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#SAE_Classific...

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#97

Post by XorNot »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #85

I wonder if the cars will always have a human chaperone. Not as a safety driver, but to prevent riders from trashing the car.

You wouldn't achieve any scaling benefits there. But also - trashing an autonomous car (aka a car full of cameras and sensors, which you charged to your credit card) seems like one of those self-limiting problems as the people who do it go bankrupt or to jail.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#98

Post by aaroninsf »

gfodor wrote: post #27

Kind of interesting to consider how this adjusts priors on these outcomes: - Self driving is not possible - Self driving is not possible anytime soon - Self driving is possible, but requires LIDAR - Self driving is possible, and can be done with normal cameras I've engaged with a lot of people who presume self-driving reduces onto AGI, therefore it will not be achieved anytime soon if ever. I wonder which of their as…

I am in the AGI camp, but have wondered and still wonder,

Why are efforts not focused primarily on interstate/highway travel, specifically, collaboration with DoT for mesh/distributed/coordinated long-term travel?

I don't need a self-driving taxi. I would pay 20K for a car which participated in a federally-regulated framework which let me let go of the wheel when I get on a highway and let teh emergent cloud determine how best to move my car and all the others on dedicated/reserved lanes in coordinated "trains" for hours.

The wins here seem like no-brainers. Sidestep all jurisdictional nonsense; optimize commerce and personal travel; automatically handle emergency vehicles and other unusual conditions; etc ad infinitum.

All my car needs to be able to do other than existing lower-tier self-driving/driver assist basics, is join the borg.

Coordination for traffic flow management seems like an unbelievable win.

But no, all we seem to be getting is cyclist-terminating taxis which cost $250K each and are, IMO, doomed in target-rich environments like SF to not forseeably adequately the last 8% of anomalous novel cases.

Just don't get it.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#99

Post by loganlinn »

jeffbee wrote: post #3

Last week Waymo said they are driving 100,000 miles per week in San Francisco. That figure is just bonkers. SF MTA only operates about 450,000 miles per week, and that was before COVID-19 shut them down. When one is on the streets of San Francisco does a Waymo Jaguar just drive by every couple of minutes? I honestly haven't been over there in a few months.

The are everywhere. I'm fairly certain that I encounter them more often than SFMTA.

My car was broken into over the weekend and I couldn't help but think about whether a Waymo captured the vandalism... Not like it would help, but like all mass data collection campaigns, the potential implications are strange.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#100

Post by marcellus23 »

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?

Did anyone claim _this_ was decades away? The claim is usually about when self-driving cars will actually be viable for anyone to use in arbitrary areas, not when experimental pilot programs are launched in individual cities.
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