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Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

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Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#91
post #80
post #77

I'm happy for Waymo and hope they continue to expand. I do expect Tesla to still win out on "robotaxis" in the nearish term, e.g. I expect them to have given way way more rides than Waymo by say 2030

Tesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability. A human ready to intervene in long tail scenarios (which is the hard part of the problem) does not constitute autonomous capability, no matter what the marketing material says.

they have demonstrated autonomous driving capability. the main difference between them and Waymo is miles per intervention, of which Tesla is about 10x behind where Waymo was when they started giving rides. but soon they will be equal and Tesla will have millions more cars and built out service centers ready to activate

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo was not doing public rides in 2015. It was invite only and you had to sign an NDA

They were doing rides for members of the public. That's a public ride.

No, public means accessible to the ~whole public, not a tiny subset.

Invite-only is quite literally the opposite of public. It's private.

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#93

I wish they would test going back to point-to-point pick-ups and drop-offs. I can easily see reasons to move to a designated pick-up and drop-off location model, but I feel it weakens the value proposition for people with mobility issues if they have to walk a few blocks.

I don't think that's up to Waymo, it's a legal thing mostly. The city has to allow that.

The funny thing about self-driving cars is that they're designed to obey laws to the letter, which real drivers never do. I think we're going to see a lot of laws necessarily getting updated to allow real-life driving behavior, such as double-parking during pickup and dropoff.

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#94
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4.) Introvert coming from a social event needing to recharge batteries

I take a lot of ride shares and I’ve always been able to recharge. 9/10 times I say nothing to the driver the whole time Not trying to play devil’s advocate, just my experience

Mark Pincus (Zynga founder) tweeted that he wanted an option not to talk to drivers.

He got a huge shit storm for not wanting to talk to poor people.

Definitely don't advertise that you don't want to talk to drivers. Progressive politics is weird.

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#95
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Have you seen Waymo? Even with 12.5, you have to keep your eyes on the road, and at least once or twice a week, it’s going to do something that would likely cause an accident. If it does, Tesla will blame you for not paying attention. In a Waymo, you sit in the back seat and scroll your phone and it gets you safely to your destination every time. These are not even remotely comparable products.

They're not remotely comparable problem sets. Tesla's generalized driving algorithm vs Waymo's cherry-picked routes and ideal weather. Tesla is winning. And the gap is getting wider.

Waymo does not have cherry picked routes - it has a defined ODD inside which is ANY route can be driven fully unsupervised.

This necessarily involves some kind of generalized driving algorithm but more usefully, it gives you a clear goal and distribution to measure against.

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#96
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability. A human ready to intervene in long tail scenarios (which is the hard part of the problem) does not constitute autonomous capability, no matter what the marketing material says.

> Tesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability I'm betting on Waymo, too, but Tesla has chutzpah in a way Google and GM do not. That might permit them to take more risks (and incur more costs on the public) earlier. In the end, avoiding a monopoly is always good.

I would love it if there was a working autonomous vehicle outside of Waymo. Google's monopoly in search engines has stifled innovation in that space for long enough. The problem is that Tesla just hasn't demonstrated they are capable of doing it. My bet is that achieving autonomous driving with only RGB vision + sensors that are not LIDAR is just too hard.

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#97
post #91
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability. A human ready to intervene in long tail scenarios (which is the hard part of the problem) does not constitute autonomous capability, no matter what the marketing material says.

they have demonstrated autonomous driving capability. the main difference between them and Waymo is miles per intervention, of which Tesla is about 10x behind where Waymo was when they started giving rides. but soon they will be equal and Tesla will have millions more cars and built out service centers ready to activate

> soon they will be equal

That's a prediction, one that I hope comes true. However, I have to be realistic and given the track record I am not too hopeful.

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#98
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freeways have some of the same challenges as streets, but not all of them. Treating the environment as if anything can happen at any time is just an "abundance of caution" thing. To use a real example, you don't get people walking up and throwing an egg at the side of your vehicle on controlled access freeways.

Rocks, not eggs, and top of vehicle, not side: https://cphpost.dk/2016-08-26/news/more-rocks-being-thrown-f...

Yeah, that's a different thing.

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Correction: Ram is at the top, while Dodge is fairly low down. Ram is exclusively trucks (formerly Dodge Ram) and was spun off in 2010, and is now owned by Stellantis. No muscle cars, just oversized pickup trucks with a high rate of DUI (second to BMW).

Thanks, I missed that

Re: Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take a lot of ride shares and I’ve always been able to recharge. 9/10 times I say nothing to the driver the whole time Not trying to play devil’s advocate, just my experience

Mark Pincus (Zynga founder) tweeted that he wanted an option not to talk to drivers. He got a huge shit storm for not wanting to talk to poor people. Definitely don't advertise that you don't want to talk to drivers. Progressive politics is weird.

maybe this is different in SF, but NYC taxi/uber drivers never say anything besides confirming you are the actual person and the destination, and maybe asking where you want to be dropped off
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