[HN Gopher] Waymo is opening its driverless service to more peop...
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Waymo is opening its driverless service to more people in Phoenix
Author : klintcho
Score : 191 points
Date : 2020-10-08 16:22 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.waymo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.waymo.com)
| almost_usual wrote:
| So the self-driving argument has always been winner take all.
| Does this mean competitors now have an existential threat unless
| they catch up immediately? I'm thinking Uber, Lyft, Cruise, etc.
| angryasian wrote:
| I always thought it was pretty clear that Waymo wanted to
| license out the tech.
| drfuchs wrote:
| Can anyone knowledgeably speak to what these gizmos can and can't
| do? Can I tell it to "please back into the driveway on the left
| side, but not so close that I can't open the garage door, and
| open the trunk, so I can easily load a box of my stuff"? Or
| "please go around to the back entrance where they deliver the to-
| go orders"? "No, down there where that guy is standing." Etc.
| holidayacct wrote:
| I know everyone loves the idea of self-driving cars but the
| reality of self-driving cars is really ugly. We need repetitions
| driving vehicles in order to operate them effectively. If you
| don't have enough repetitions driving a vehicle when something
| goes wrong you're not going to be able to operate the vehicle at
| all.
|
| Furthermore, I'm skeptical that driverless vehicles can factor in
| all the ways in which someone might maliciously cause accidents
| or damage to these vehicles. I want to see what happens when
| someone figures out how to provide false input to the sensors on
| the vehicle.
| angryasian wrote:
| I don't buy this repetitions argument at all. A computer and
| machine learning go through billions of driving scenarios more
| than any human could if the data is available.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I think they are worried about driving skill atrophying among
| the human population if they ride exclusively in FSD
| vehicles.
| twmahna wrote:
| >> I'm skeptical that driverless vehicles can factor in all the
| ways in which someone might maliciously cause accidents or
| damage to these vehicles
|
| You're probably right, but as long as it doesn't happen
| frequently and there's no way to mislead sensors en masse, it's
| not a big deal.
|
| There are malicious ways to cause accidents with current-day
| technologies also. e.g. Park a car in front of a train, fly a
| drone into a plane, etc.
| donor20 wrote:
| Fantastic. The reality is that good mapping and some level of
| lidar (which is getting cheaper faster for low res/angle sensors)
| is somewhat game changing in terms of self driving vehicle
| reliability.
|
| Tesla will miss out I think by not taking advantage of doing even
| the cheapest possible one sensor lidar to augment their existing
| system.
|
| $500 -> in the future $100 for the data lidar gives you is gold.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| I imagine you're correct that lidar is a huge leg-up in the
| race to self-driving.
|
| However, I can see a scenario where, despite that, it is not
| the right choice for Tesla. It's important to remember that
| self-driving technology will be commodity at some point (like
| the lidar units themselves). Whoever offers the most affordable
| option meeting some baseline performance will dominate the
| market and licence to every self-driving fleet. It wouldn't
| surprise me if Waymo ended up meeting that criteria first and
| licensing the tech to everyone from Uber to Toyota.
|
| Once that tech is out, anyone else that succeeds in developing
| comparable tech effectively has an uphill battle ahead of them
| trying to sell their new, less proven version at a price and
| volume that can recoup their R&D investment. I think we'll see
| a lot of players leave the race once the first licensable
| product hits the market. In fact, I think we've seen a bit of
| that already.
|
| Which brings me back to Tesla. My guess is their strategy is
| not just to develop self-driving - they'd lose on equal ground
| (due to not being first) - but to develop "2nd gen" self-
| driving which has a specific competitive advantage of not
| requiring lidar and thus having lower total cost per unit. This
| allows them to enter the market late but still have a
| significant edge in that market.
|
| If a company lets their engineer's use lidar to develop self-
| driving tech, then the tech they build will be 100% dependent
| on lidar. That's Parkinson's law. If, on the other hand, the
| company adds a strict constraint that lidar is not an option,
| then the engineers might fail to build something that works -
| or else they will produce something with a unique advantage.
| echelon wrote:
| > Which brings me back to Tesla. My guess is their strategy
| is not just to develop self-driving - they'd lose on equal
| ground (due to not being first) - but to develop "2nd gen"
| self-driving which has a specific competitive advantage of
| not requiring lidar and thus having lower total cost per
| unit. This allows them to enter the market late but still
| have a significant edge in that market.
|
| They'll be able to drive in the rain and snow.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Who foots the bill when a pedestrian inevitably gets run over?
| twmahna wrote:
| Based on the precedent set by Uber, Waymo will be held
| financially responsible, but won't face criminal charges. I'd
| be interested in reading more about the liability insurance
| coverage Waymo has for its self-driving program, but can't find
| info anywhere.
|
| Source: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/08/uber-got-off-
| the-hook...
| flokie wrote:
| I know the community is generally very negative/skeptic on this
| (at least based on the 21 comments so far below), but this is an
| amazing technical & business accomplishment. Congratulations!
|
| The blog post is relatively clear that ramp up will take a few
| weeks - "we'll start with those who are already a part of Waymo
| One and, over the next several weeks, welcome more people
| directly into the service through our app"
|
| before you comment watch:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBLkX2VaQs4
| cyrux004 wrote:
| People are dissatisfied because of the vageuness around the
| start date for general public; not at the state of self
| driving. By Waymo's own timeline; they were supposed to deliver
| this atleast 3 years back. This seems to be a much bigger
| problem than anybody anticipitated
| neil_s wrote:
| Thank you for voicing some sanity here. This comment thread has
| all the standard HN cynicism (Google killed Reader omg), but
| criticism over a gradual rollout over a few weeks for a
| physical service is new to me.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The HN discussion around Waymo is always overwhelmingly
| negative because Waymo doesn't fit into the HN cosmology of
| innovation. Self-driving will come to pass when we force an AI
| to watch us play Pole Position for a million years, is the HN
| timeline. HN is comfortable with this Tesla narrative. Less
| comfortable is the idea that self-driving will be brought to
| market by lots of control theory PhDs and a really large number
| of unit tests.
| bsaul wrote:
| You seem to know a lot about the difference of approach
| between waymo and tesla. Do you have any links that would
| give more on that ?
| nickik wrote:
| HN is one of the most negative about Tesla of any place I
| have seen, including car forums. The hate against Tesla and
| their approach is about 10x more aggressive then the
| skepticism of Waymo.
|
| Also, I'm pretty sure Tesla has a lot of PhDs and probably
| about 100x more unit tests then Waymo as they have an
| gigantic amount of strange real-world corner cases that they
| have converted to unit-tests. There is no way Waymo has
| anything like that database, as they simply have never
| encountered all the strange scenarios Tesla see daily on the
| roads of China and all the other places they drive around in.
| revscat wrote:
| I've noticed this as well. Tesla here is treated like
| Microsoft was on Slashdot in the 2000s.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| A lot of sites/people/institutions are very negative about
| Tesla, and a lot are devotional to Tesla. If you're reading
| social media, keep in mind that
| negative/controversial/strong opinions are upvoted/elevated
| relative to moderated/reasonable stances.
| dang wrote:
| This is an extreme case of the notice-dislike bias leading
| to false feelings of generality: https://hn.algolia.com/?qu
| ery=notice%20dislike%20by:dang&dat....
|
| I assure you that people on the other side of this "Yay
| $Bigco" vs. "Boo $Bigco" death match feel that HN is
| extremely biased in exactly the reverse way, and make just
| as grandiose claims.
| jowday wrote:
| The reality of Tesla's data pipeline is nothing like what
| Elon presented during autonomy day. If you wanted to be
| generous, you could describe that presentation as a very
| forward looking vision of what they want their pipeline to
| look like at some point in the future.
|
| A bunch of hobbyist reverse engineers have explored how
| Tesla's data pipeline works in practice. @greentheonly does
| great work.
| nsgi wrote:
| Why did their group of early riders need to be under NDA?
| tych0 wrote:
| Presumably in case the car did something weird/bad, so they
| wouldn't tell anyone.
| leetcrew wrote:
| on the flip side, if you can find enough riders that are
| willing to sign one, why not?
| RivieraKid wrote:
| To protect against bad PR.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Given Waymo was recently the victim of a high-profile case of
| IP theft used to start a competitor, I imagine they're being
| vigilant on this front.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You think passengers would make off with the IP?
| twmahna wrote:
| Just a few months ago, I recall many skeptics on HN claiming that
| full driverless technology was 10-20 years away.
|
| Do those people still think that it's going to take 10-20 years
| for this tech to reach say, New York, now that it's live in
| Phoenix?
| chubot wrote:
| Yes, because this announcement is a lot like their previous
| announcements -- fudging the language to make it sound like
| it's more available than it is.
|
| It's not even generally available in Phoenix yet. I'm sure
| someone on HN lives in Phoenix, and has never used Waymo
| before. Tell us if you can get a driverless ride.
|
| It's got a long way to go before it's something like Uber in
| Phoenix. It's got even longer to go before it's something like
| Uber in NYC (10-20 years still sounds right).
|
| ----
|
| The funny thing is that the pandemic should have been HUGE for
| self-driving cars... Most people I know haven't taken rideshare
| in 6+ months because they don't want to ride with somebody, and
| I only did so in the last few weeeks.
|
| But it was a non-event. I didn't hear anyone talking about
| self-driving in the last 6 months. If it really worked, and was
| really available, then there would be certainly some people who
| would pay 2-5x the price of Lyft/Uber for no driver. (Not most
| people, but some people.)
| pb7 wrote:
| I don't see the relationship between COVID and increased
| demand for self-driving. You're still sharing the same
| vehicle with potentially hundreds of people a day that are
| touching all the same surfaces. The driver is only a vector
| if they become infected. Other than that, the highest risk is
| touching doors and such.
| vernon99 wrote:
| This is an scientific take and most of the casual folks
| don't see it this way.
| chubot wrote:
| The car can be cleaned either way -- with a driver or
| without. That's what happens in grocery stores and hotels
| now. They wipe down the shopping carts, and they seal the
| doors.
|
| But there's only one way remove the possibility of getting
| sick from the driver. We've been talking about that for 15
| years, but it doesn't work yet.
|
| I don't think the risks are equivalent on a per-person
| basis either. The "viral load" apparently matters, so using
| the same car as 1 person is not the same as riding with a
| sick driver for say 30 minutes. It could be that the driver
| risk is great than that of 30 passengers combined.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Will you cease to be a skeptic once Waymo One is open to
| anyone?
| chubot wrote:
| Weird question :) My claim is that it won't be open to
| "anyone" in a useful way any time soon.
|
| And you need to define "anyone" -- that's precisely what's
| being fudged here (and what's been fudged in previous
| announcements).
|
| To be clear: I think Waymo will fold or be wound down
| before this happens.
|
| In a previous comment, I said that IF we get economically
| feasible self-driving cars in the next 10-20 years, then it
| will not be from Waymo. It will be from a breakthrough out
| of left field. In other words, "we" will have thrown out
| millions of lines of code and billions of dollars of
| investment, and started over.
|
| Obviously, if they roll it out, then I'll be wrong! But if
| I thought that was possible now, then I wouldn't bother
| calling them out on it.
|
| Previous comments:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22632588
| jryle70 wrote:
| > Weird question :) My claim is that it won't be open to
| "anyone" in a useful way any time soon.
|
| Seems pretty clear it will be available to public in the
| next few weeks, unless you're saying "general access to
| anyone who chooses to download the app" isn't about
| general public.
|
| "Beginning Thursday, any existing Waymo One customer can
| hail a driverless minivan from a fleet of more than 300.
| The vehicles will be operating in a smaller, roughly
| 50-square-mile service area. Passengers are free to
| invite friends and family and to share their experiences
| on social media. Waymo plans to open the service to new
| customers within a few weeks. "At that point, we'll have
| general access to anyone who chooses to download the
| app," Krafcik said." - [0]
|
| [0] -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-08/waymo-
| one...
| twmahna wrote:
| Interesting take! Why does this perspective make you
| bullish on Uber/Lyft?
|
| Isn't a large portion of their FCF tied to reducing labor
| costs by substituting drivers with self-driving tech?
|
| AB5 and Democrats potentially gaining unified control of
| Washington don't bode well for their cost structure
| either.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I will cease to be a skeptic when it can actually drive
| anywhere but one, small geofenced area. When we're doing it
| in places with rain, and other poor weather and where roads
| are not all flat and in a perfect grid... And when we have
| to interface between old and new infrastructure.
| pb7 wrote:
| It might actually. Phoenix suburbs are different than the
| densest city in the US in a region that sees the worst of
| weather. Saying this as someone that hopes Waymo succeeds.
| air7 wrote:
| Imo not even in 20. Driving occasionally requires an AGI level
| understanding of humans and physics which is out of reach
| currently.
| WhompingWindows wrote:
| I'd say Waymo has taken a measured, conservative approach and
| their lack of major incidents is a huge advantage. They're taking
| it slow because they're far ahead of their competitors, they
| already have SDCs up and carrying passengers in exchange for
| payment. Yes, it's an easy geographic region, but it's hard to
| deny their tech and business is ahead of their competitors.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Is Phoenix because self driving cars can't handle any kind of
| inclement weather? Or is there some other reason to choose
| Phoenix over Denver or Milwaukee?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Notoriously lax regulations.
|
| https://www.12news.com/article/news/local/arizona/ducey-to-u...
| duffpkg wrote:
| Arizona in general and the metro phoenix area have
| extraordinarily diligent road maintenance. Surface street
| speeds are higher and larger road sizes are also very favorable
| for something like robot cars.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Both the geophysical climate and the regulatory climate are
| favorable in AZ.
|
| https://azdot.gov/motor-vehicles/professional-services/auton...
| kfarr wrote:
| And the roadways are homogenous with relatively new, large
| simple grids enabling large roadways, clear signage and
| striping, etc. Unlike a dense complicated old grid style
| city.
| dmd wrote:
| Or, say, Boston. https://i2.wp.com/geoffboeing.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/09...
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Phoenix has a TON of retired and disabled residents who can't
| or shouldn't drive (spread out over suburbs), so it was easy to
| get political support for comfortable transit options that
| improve their mobility (and don't cost the city anything).
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Hope grandma has good life insurance!
| bpodgursky wrote:
| That is neither accurate not constructive.
| yowlingcat wrote:
| Constructive? Maybe not. But accurate [1]? I think it is
| a valid concern and one which Tesla is facing. For all
| intents and purposes, driverless vehicles present a
| potential public health hazard and a moral dilemma. Do
| you not agree with that?
|
| [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2020/05/16/la
| wsuit-a...
| javagram wrote:
| Tesla sells a driver assistance system comparable or a
| bit better than competing technologies from MobileEye or
| GM.
|
| Their innovation is branding this ADAS as "self driving"
| and claiming they will eventually release a software
| update that makes it more like Waymo's existing
| technology. They also have avoided safety features like
| eye tracking that prevent misuse of the ADAS as if it
| were a self driving system.
|
| Waymo and Tesla really aren't facing the same issue
| because the high-profile Tesla crashes are blamed by
| Tesla on the driver not properly overseeing the ADAS,
| while Waymo cars are on the road with no safety driver
| and have never had a major accident, and won't be able to
| blame the non-existent driver if they do.
| twmahna wrote:
| Let's place skepticism aside for a second and assume that full
| driverless tech will be fully operating in major metros soon.
|
| What does that mean for the rideshare business? Are Uber/Lyft
| basically dead if they are years behind Waymo?
| angryasian wrote:
| I don't think so at least not in the short term. Demand in
| major metros is much higher than supply. Google will never be
| able to expand fast enough, in terms of getting approvals from
| cities, getting the tech right to be able to handle cities, and
| just the amount of cars on the street. We are probably looking
| at awhile before it is an actual threat to these other
| services. Who knows what will happen in that time.
| vernon99 wrote:
| This actually seems to me like a much easier problem to solve
| than scaling a two-sided marketplace in a lot of places. This
| is purely a capital + regulation problem and Google has a lot
| of capital and regulation will catch up as soon as first
| cities show promise.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| If driverless taxis are cheaper - which is likely in the "fully
| operating in major metros" scenario, then the answer is
| obviously yes.
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from
| https://twitter.com/Waymo/status/1314235663248699393, which
| points to this.
| ilaksh wrote:
| > Later this year, after we've finished adding in-vehicle
| barriers between the front row and the rear passenger cabin for
| in-vehicle hygiene and safety, we'll also be re-introducing rides
| with a trained vehicle operator, which will add capacity and
| allow us to serve a larger geographical area.
|
| Makes it sound like the pandemic was a significant factor in
| expanding this to people who are not under NDA. Because if they
| were doing 5-10% before fully driverless and it was working, then
| there is a big issue with needing to retrofit the cars with
| infectious disease barriers, its going to make a lot more sense
| to just reduce the number of drivers entirely if you can.
|
| But one thing that might be a little misleading is that I am
| reading this announcement as saying that they are actually only
| letting in Waymo One people now which have had to apply and be
| accepted, and then in a non-specific number of weeks the public
| can try to get in via the app. But you still basically have to be
| on a wait list in the app.
|
| So the real difference today is letting people in the program
| already who are not under NDA ride without the safety driver.
|
| But it's very exciting. And necessary to have some wait-list
| because it is actually possible that the thing could become viral
| (sorry) and turn into driverless ride tourism and then you could
| have 30,000 tourists standing around at the same time cussing at
| an app that says "Service at capacity" all day.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Pretty misleading title, but I think this is not an expansion of
| Waymo to the general public, but a getting rid of the safety
| drivers for some people participating in the closed-invite only
| preview but no longer under NDA. Seems like another incremental
| step forward. Google turned off the PR firehouse on Waymo over
| the past year, so I think many were starting to think the tech
| had hit a wall and wasn't ever going to be able to get rid of the
| safety driver. I suppose this makes me cautiously optimistic. I
| don't think self driving needs to handle all roads in all
| conditions to be economically useful.
| actuator wrote:
| I am looking forward to Waymo Via. From an economic
| profitability standpoint, that looks like the best option at
| this time.
| adenozine wrote:
| This is easily the most outrageous title ever to be on HN. Jesus,
| this is just so blatantly overreaching.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr...
|
| > We'll start with those who are already a part of Waymo One and,
| over the next several weeks, welcome more people directly into
| the service through our app
|
| So...this is just an extension of what they currently do where
| it's not really open to the public? Waymo One is something you
| have to apply for and almost nobody gets in. It's not clear to me
| what "welcome more people directly into the service through our
| app" means.
|
| Waymo is terrible at PR. I can't even tell what they're trying to
| say here. But there is no date. There is no definitive statement.
| It's just another vague press release about how they're going
| driverless "soon"
| nemonemo wrote:
| > We expect our new fully driverless service to be very
| popular, and we're thankful to our riders for their patience as
| we ramp up availability to serve demand.
|
| I think this explains the reasoning behind the gradual ramp-up.
| Even at the product launch like new iPhones, the demand is
| difficult to estimate, so IMO it seems more responsible to give
| a reasonable expectation to the public like this, than just
| saying bravely "the service is fully public from today".
|
| I think the take-away from this announcement is their
| commitment for wider rollout over time from this point on.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Nope. It's a poor press release because that is not what
| "general public" _means_.
|
| You shouldn't have to analyze the takeaways of what Waymo
| _really_ meant when they used the extremely common phrase
| "general public."
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| Yup, "available to general public" or "generally available"
| in product terms usually mean anyone can go sign up for it.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've shrunk the general public to "more people" in the
| title above.
| jkinudsjknds wrote:
| Sounds pretty clear to me that you can download the app and, in
| several weeks, be allowed to use the service?
| wetpaws wrote:
| Pretty sure this is intentional. Waymo had an insane (decades)
| head start in regards to self driving technology and was
| notably quiet about it.
|
| While Uber and other folks are all boasting about their self
| driving project and collecting the lion share of controversy
| and unwanted attention, waymo is quietly, step by step, heading
| towards it's total dominance, staying completely off the radar.
| nmstoker wrote:
| I think you're spot on here. Whilst I suspect they've a long
| way to go, it seems likely to mirror the situation Google had
| with early search growth where the more they had people use
| it the better it got, quickly feeding a cycle the competitors
| could not compete with.
| lhorie wrote:
| Would it be too cynical to assume this whole thing is going to
| get shutdown after a few years due to failing to gain enough
| traction (due to people being wary of Google's track record of
| doing so with their in-google properties)?
| vkou wrote:
| Do you really care about the longevity of the taxi company
| whose cars you are riding in? Half the time, I don't even
| know which company that is. Or the longevity of the
| particular farm from which your grocery's tomatoes have been
| sourced from?
|
| This isn't e-mail. The cost and hassle of switching to a
| competing service is nearly zero.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _Or the longevity of the particular farm from which your
| grocery 's tomatoes have been sourced from?_
|
| Some people care. They buy directly from the same families
| for many decades.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Do you really care about the longevity of the taxi
| company whose cars you are riding in?
|
| Not that particular company no, but the longevity of taxi
| service in general, yes. Although, it depends on why I'm
| riding in a taxi. If it's an occasional ride, it's not a
| big deal if taxi service disappears, I can pay for long
| term parking at the airport, or call a friend, or
| something. If it's an everyday ride, loss of service means
| a big change.
|
| The danger of using a Google service is two-fold. The
| obvious part is, you might get used to it, only for it to
| be dropped. But also, they may run competitors out of
| business before dropping it, leaving you without any
| options.
| lhorie wrote:
| > Do you really care about the longevity of the taxi
| company whose cars you are riding in?
|
| I mean, look at McDonalds and Coca-Cola, for example. I'm
| skeptical about the idea that simply having the SDV
| technology somehow also translates to being in a leadership
| position in terms of regulation, customer support,
| branding/marketing/being-installed-on-peoples-phones, etc
| etc.
|
| Uber already had to fight uphill regarding regulation in
| many places so it definitely has some moat now (see, e.g.
| Uber and Ola in London). Waymo is on completely uncharted
| territory, regulation-wise.
|
| I'm also curious about how the economics and logistics will
| play out. One criticism of existing ride sharing is not
| accounting for vehicle depreciation and wear and tear (and
| this on mass produced vehicles). Waymo vehicles have a lot
| more expensive technology on board, so I'm curious how that
| balances out in terms of lidar/etc shelf-life + specialized
| tech inspections vs ROI.
|
| Also, cost of switching goes both ways. If this forces the
| hand of the other players to roll out SDV (via Cruise
| partnerships for example), Waymo doesn't necessarily stand
| to dominate the market, since it's already so crowded w/
| well-funded/well-positioned players from all sorts of
| directions.
| petra wrote:
| Yes. There are other important factors.
|
| But at least for the next few years, technology is the
| barrier. So Google can partner with Lyft, for example, to
| get a good brand, app, customer service, regulation, etc.
|
| But on top of that, the brand in this market is the
| promise "our cars are safe". Google is in a distinct
| place to own that, because of all the press they had,
| they press they will have, and by really leading
| technologically.
|
| As for this being a commodity ? I believe we're really
| far from that.
| actuator wrote:
| Waymo was started in 2009, they have existed for half of
| Google's existence. The amount of research and money that has
| gone into it is not comparable to things like Google Reader.
|
| Also, they seem to have the lead over most and the market
| opportunity is huge.
| fullshark wrote:
| I'd argue Tesla has the lead. Perhaps their approach has
| technical limitations that make full self-driving
| impossible so it's moot but they have the lead.
| minwcnt5 wrote:
| I might have missed some news, has Tesla already deployed
| completely empty cars on public roads?
| a_t48 wrote:
| Tesla is not in the lead, nobody I've talked to in self
| driving even thinks about Tesla.
|
| Disclosure: I work at a self driving company that is
| neither Tesla nor Waymo.
| gmadsen wrote:
| on what grounds? They in no way shape or form have a lead
| on autonomous capability. It is literally not even close
| dbt00 wrote:
| I own a Tesla model 3 with the V3 hardware and FSD
| package.
|
| They are not even close to being able to do what Waymo
| does.
| nickik wrote:
| And Waymo is not close to what Tesla does. Different
| strategy coming at it from different sides.
|
| The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public
| road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of
| autonomous taxis and make money.
|
| Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if
| you assume their autonomy works, many people have made
| arguments that the businesses case is really not very
| solid at all. Waymo has incredibly few ours driven on
| public roads outside of a limited area.
|
| Self driving is mostly a software problem, and to solve
| general driving, a gigantic learning problem. How is gone
| solve that first and scale it, is open.
|
| I would put my money on Tesla, and I wouldn't invest in
| Waymo if I could.
| dmode wrote:
| I am also a Tesla owner, and you can talk to Tesla owners
| and get their perspective on Tesla's autopilot
| capabilities. I have owned Tesla for 5 years, and also
| have a 2018 Model 3. Tesla is nowhere close to full self
| driving capability, and cannot still handle basic uses
| cases like driving on well marked freeways within lanes
| without randomly phantom braking.
| almost_usual wrote:
| > The question is not, who has the first taxi on any
| public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of
| autonomous taxis and make money.
|
| Probably Waymo
|
| > Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if
| you assume their autonomy works, many people have made
| arguments that the businesses case is really not very
| solid at all. Waymo has incredibly few ours driven on
| public roads outside of a limited area.
|
| and Alphabet / Google is a money printing machine, if
| they get to self driving first it's pretty much over for
| their competition.
|
| > many people have made arguments that the businesses
| case is really not very solid at all
|
| So self driving technology isn't a solid business model?
| Why are so many companies trying to do this?
|
| What's stopping Waymo from patenting this after they get
| to an acceptable threshold and selling it to their
| competitors?
| nickik wrote:
| > Probably Waymo
|
| Waymo has spend 10+ years and they can now barley driven
| in possibly the easiest location in the world, a location
| where they have logged millions of miles. Waymo focuses
| on the easiest thing first. The technology on their car
| is incredibly expensive both now and to scale it to 10k,
| 100k, 1M vehicles is a huge challenge, both capital and
| manufacturing.
|
| They are like a rocket company who says, we have this
| amazing air-frame, launch pad, software we only need to
| figure out the engine, then we are gone make money.
|
| I place my bets on the company that has million of cars
| on the road, seeing every corner case possible in every
| location, because that is the real challenge to overcome
| if you actually want to have many 1000s of cars in every
| city. Plus the sensor suit and compute power in a Tesla
| maybe cost a few 1000$, scalable to 10s of millions of
| vehicles.
|
| I don't think either of them is really close to self
| driving, but at least Tesla is focusing on the right
| problem with a scalable solution.
|
| > What's stopping Waymo from patenting this after they
| get to an acceptable threshold and selling it to their
| competitors?
|
| If their technology actually works they would want to
| dominate the self driving taxi market and not sell it to
| the competition.
|
| Their competitors would then have to install this whole
| Waymo hardware suit, making it not very practical for
| OEMs and normal cars. Uber or Lyft might be costumers,
| but why would you sell it to them if you could just
| replace them.
|
| Waymo has burned money for 10+ years, signing a few
| licensing deal for a slightly better Mobile Eye will not
| give the return they are hoping for.
| scotth wrote:
| ...so in what way do they have the lead?
| imtringued wrote:
| You can buy it and get your hands on it today.
| jfoster wrote:
| I would argue that the most significant way in which
| Tesla have the lead is simple but a bit unintuitive. It's
| that their customers pay for the cars.
|
| Think about how much capital will be required to put a
| million Waymo vehicles on the road. How many zeros are
| there on that number? Who is going to be paying that
| bill?
|
| Given this, even if Waymo are first to driving 100%
| perfectly, I expect that Tesla will eventually leapfrog
| them.
| fullshark wrote:
| It's not a certainty
| fullshark wrote:
| I think I misunderstood your comment initially and you
| were merely curious what the argument is. The argument
| has been made elsewhere in the thread but basically they
| have a real product with real usage / data creating a
| positive data feedback loop that will lead to incremental
| improvements. The question is whether it will improve
| along an asymptote far from full self driving (what most
| people believe) or some leap occurs in the future or some
| technology can be added to their capabilities to achieve
| full self driving at some point. The latter is possible
| imo even if highly unlikely.
|
| The fact remains they are out there, and you can buy
| them, and they can do some sort of self-driving. Waymo is
| an impressive tech demo at this point.
| lozaning wrote:
| They certainly have the largest corpus of data to train
| their models on. All their cars reporting back all that
| data is an extremely valuable moat.
| nmstoker wrote:
| Just a small nitpick point: data is collected in the
| order of a GB per minute so there's no way they're
| reporting back even a fraction of the data gathered.
| agildehaus wrote:
| Yet their cars still crash into huge stationary objects
| and pedestrians.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVgkWii5JdM
| karpierz wrote:
| Is unlabeled video data in limited supply? My impression
| was that the limiting factor was labeled data, especially
| labeled video + lidar data.
| jrockway wrote:
| I guess they have the lead in the sense that you can
| drive to a Tesla dealership today and buy a car that will
| kind of sort of drive you home. That's something!
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Just don't take 101 S bound near the 85 S on ramp on your
| way home and you might live to do it again
| olyjohn wrote:
| Big deal. You can do this in a Honda Fit for crying out
| loud.
| pb7 wrote:
| Tesla has the lead in marketing only, which may be why
| you think they have the lead, because marketing works.
| angryasian wrote:
| getting from where Tesla currently is to where Waymo is,
| is a big leap.
| lhorie wrote:
| Well, they might have a "lead" in the sense that they have
| technology to avoid having a driver, but there's still
| chicken-and-egg problems like demand vs availability and
| wait times (two of the criticisms lashed out at taxis, in
| comparison to Uber). I'm also curious about how driverless
| plays out in the real world (e.g. is there an equivalent of
| "oh shoot, I accidentally put the wrong address, can you
| drop me off over at X instead?", what's going to happen
| with drunk passengers, etc)
|
| I'm also wary because ride sharing is a customer service
| intensive industry, an area Alphabet isn't exactly strong
| at.
| bsder wrote:
| > problems like demand vs availability and wait times
| (two of the criticisms lashed out at taxis, in comparison
| to Uber).
|
| These were never my problems with taxi service.
|
| _Tracking_ is the thing that makes the rideshare
| services better--and taxis could apply that, if they
| wanted to.
|
| Tracking solves most bad things about taxis. "Is it
| _actually_ coming? How long until it gets here? Did they
| hit something unexpected? etc. "
| johncena33 wrote:
| Every Google related thread is infested with comments like
| this. We get it. Google shuts down products. How many times
| we have to have this discussion? Can we now discuss something
| new?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Well we can discuss something new when google stops axing
| products or releasing competing products all the time
| gostsamo wrote:
| Well, not everyone is like Google, ready to stop doing
| something just because it has been around for long enough.
| :)
|
| Serious now, no, Google does not get a break because they
| wish so. They have the right to shutter products and we
| have the right to bitch. Freedom at its best.
| jowday wrote:
| They state the date pretty clearly in the article.
|
| >Beginning today, October 8, we're excited to open up our fully
| driverless offering to Waymo One riders. Members of the public
| service can now take friends and family along on their rides
| and share their experience with the world.
| fullshark wrote:
| So Waymo One riders can now get a ride without a safety
| driver if they want to? Sounds like the OP has a point.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| "Members of the public service" is different than "members of
| the public". This is still a closed beta. But now it seems
| you are allowed to have your friends along for the ride. I
| wonder if these friends and family persons are subject to any
| NDA.
| polishTar wrote:
| Waymo One doesn't use NDAs and users are allowed to bring
| friends with them, but Waymo also has an "early rider"
| program that's more restrictive and does use NDAs.
| jowday wrote:
| Sure, I was addressing the date specifically.
| neil_s wrote:
| > "I wonder if these friends and family persons are subject
| to any NDA"
|
| According to the article: "take friends and family along on
| their rides and share their experience with the world"
| coolspot wrote:
| In metro Phoenix only, but still a step up from "by invitation
| only".
| nwsm wrote:
| I don't think it will even be close to general availability in
| Phoenix.
| advisedwang wrote:
| What is the actual advantage to consumers over an Uber? Novelty
| will wear off, and so to survive Waymo will actually need to be
| better in some way.
|
| Can anyone in Phoenix answer if Waymo is cheaper?
|
| Is Waymo hoping people will choose Waymo for safety?
| jeffbee wrote:
| Let's see: you won't get raped by the driver, a professionally-
| maintained vehicle is likely to be more safe than a Prius with
| 500k miles and no windshield wipers, you won't be cyberstalked
| by "God View" gawkers at Uber HQ, ...
| executive wrote:
| But will you be able to run over rioters when they attack
| your vehicle?
| RivieraKid wrote:
| If you can take a ride with or without a random person
| travelling with you, what would you choose? Some people will
| prefer the latter, because of introversion, social anxiety,
| etc.
|
| In the long-term, the obvious benefit is the price. In the next
| 5 to 10 years I don't expect it to be cheaper than Uber, even
| if their cost is half of Uber's.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I mean, if they can make this work well then you cut out the
| driver - which is very cost-saving.
|
| It also lets you a. optimize exactly where cars are driving to
| maximize ride share revenue, b. have the cars ready to pick
| someone up 24/7.
|
| It's going to be a much more efficient use of car capital than
| hiring a person to drive it.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| But it's a very different business model to ride share, which
| is based on externalising the costs of the car to the
| drivers.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I agree that it is a very different model, but it's a bit
| much to say that externalizing car repair costs is what the
| business model of Uber/Lyft is "based on"
| vernon99 wrote:
| These costs are still included in your ride cost though
| evanlivingston wrote:
| Is it though? will autonomous vehicles ever get to point
| where there is even close to less than one engineer for each
| vehicle? Engineering salaries are substantially larger than
| driver's salaries. Also, there is the cost of years and years
| of extremely expensive research that needs to be offset,
| cloud infrastructure costs, hardware costs + costs of
| retooling factories for integrating the large numbers of
| sensors + compute. I can't imagine (without doing any actual
| math) that there's a cost savings within 200 years
| drivebycomment wrote:
| It's a good question.
|
| https://investor.uber.com/news-events/news/press-release-
| det... shows Uber generated $65B gross booking in 2019, and
| we know substantial fraction of that goes to the driver.
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/For-a
| -... says driver takes about ~60% of the booking.
|
| So this is a question of whether the capital cost / the
| engineering cost / operating cost for autonomous vehicle is
| higher than $65B * 0.6 = $39B per year for the same number
| of rides.
|
| The engineering cost will be amortized over long enough
| time that it's likely not a significant factor in the long
| run. So, the limiting factor will be the capital cost (for
| vehicles and its support infra) and the operating cost. As
| you say, at this point we don't know for sure - one thing
| we know is that the capital cost and the operating cost
| likely will see significant reduction thanks to the economy
| of scale.
| leetcrew wrote:
| > will autonomous vehicles ever get to point where there is
| even close to less than one engineer for each vehicle?
|
| if FSD actually ends up working on most roads, I don't see
| why not. there's no inherent reason why engineer headcount
| would scale linearly with the number of cars.
|
| as for the cost savings, they don't necessarily have to
| beat uber's pricing today. they could alternatively try to
| drive _uber 's_ costs up by lobbying hard to get drivers
| classified as employees and catch some PR points at the
| same time.
| xtracto wrote:
| I hate interacting with that random person, it is awkward and
| unnecessary. Also, hopefully this will decrease the cost. This,
| in addition to the lower maintenance needed for electric cars
| might make my dream com true of not having to own a car and
| travel only by driverless-Uber (i.e. it might become available
| and affordable at last!).
|
| My take is that this will become widely available in the next 5
| years. The future is bright!
| [deleted]
| klmadfejno wrote:
| * You don't need to pay drivers
|
| * You don't need an army of marketers/hr/legal/support staff
| for your drivers
|
| * You don't need to dodge ambiguous contractor vs. employee
| laws
|
| * You don't have any risk about individual drivers being bad
| actors or acting fraudulently
|
| * You can predict, with great accuracy, how many cars will be
| available at any given time, whether or not they'll want to do
| another drive after (they will), and where they want to end up
|
| * Your cars meet a minimum level of safety (if it works) that
| humans can't guarantee, especially in regards to distracted,
| tired, drunk, or whatever driving
|
| Given how much effort is spent on attracting and retaining
| drivers, I'd say Waymo has many competitive advantages lined
| up. If it works.
| kevincox wrote:
| There is also a direct benefit from riders who don't want to
| interact with a driver. Or want to have conversations that
| they would be uncomfortable subjecting a driver to.
|
| I mean sure, there is a camera. But that is hugely different
| than a person (both positive and negative)
| adoxyz wrote:
| I would assume cheaper and more reliable service.
|
| With Uber/Lyft, you never know who you're going to get and what
| the experience will be like, and as someone that easily took
| 200-300 Uber rides per year pre-covid, I've seen some shit.
| chris_st wrote:
| For example, we were taking an Uber through a part of a
| nearby city I'd never been in before, and approaching a
| confusing bit of roundabout, the driver leaned over to me and
| asked me which way to go :-(
| crazcarl wrote:
| Just the other night my driver turned too wide and started
| going the wrong way down the divided street. He u-turned
| and fixed it without any issue thankfully, but then he
| blamed it on the construction workers "moving the road" -
| which they definitely didn't.
| toast0 wrote:
| I mean, that's not great, but I would take that over my
| SuperShuttle experience. At least your driver wasn't
| falling asleep repeatedly, despite apparently regularly
| spaced prompts from the company app to confirm he was
| awake.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In the case of Uber/Lyft the driver has another function
| besides being the driver: they are on the hook for the
| capital invested in the vehicle or their ability to lease
| one. That's a lot of money per vehicle and utilization is the
| responsibility (and risk) of the driver.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| This is true, but note that for a self-driving vehicle,
| utilization is only bounded by demand and maintenance. An
| Uber driver can get tired or busy with other things, but a
| self-driving car can go 24 hours a day minus re-
| fueling/charging.
| nwsm wrote:
| Why does Waymo need to prove viability but Uber does not? Uber
| cannot lose $8B/yr forever.
|
| The obvious advantage will be price, if Uber even still exists.
| ch33zer wrote:
| It's possible that in the long term because Waymo doesn't need
| to pay drivers their overhead will be lower, which could mean
| lower prices for riders. Of course, Waymo cars have very
| expensive computers in them, and maintenance might be
| expensive, and the AI used to drive the cars is expensive, and
| they might need to have backup safety drivers (at least at
| first), so whether they're actually cheaper remains to be seen.
| ilaksh wrote:
| For the moment one advantage is you can't catch anything from a
| driver since there isn't one.
|
| Long term it should be possible for the service to be cheaper
| than manned since they don't have to pay a driver.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| But you can catch something from the previous rider, and
| there isn't any driver to sanitize things for you.
| wartijn_ wrote:
| Direct link to the announcement:
| https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr...
| [deleted]
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