[HN Gopher] Waymo expands its rider-only territories
___________________________________________________________________
Waymo expands its rider-only territories
Author : edward
Score : 164 points
Date : 2022-12-18 14:35 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.waymo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.waymo.com)
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Having tried Tesla FSD many times, I'm very bearish on self
| driving technology. Genuinely alarmed how Waymo was able to get a
| permit for rides without human supervision. If I had not
| intervened multiple times when I tried FSD in a Model S for just
| a 30 minute trip, I certainly would have crashed.
| rmorey wrote:
| Waymo Driver and Tesla FSD are leagues apart
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| This would be like saying "I refuse to eat all leafy greens
| because of one poorly managed farm didn't stay up on its health
| standards and had E Coli"
|
| Waymo's approach is so different from Teslas in both tech and
| safety I'm not even sure you could compare or generalize.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| You can't compare Tesla FSD with Waymo, they are using
| fundamentally different techniques. Specifically, Tesla decided
| to do everything based on video images, while Waymo uses LIDAR.
|
| Additionally, there's a cultural difference where Tesla doesn't
| care about quality/safety as much as Waymo does.
| readonthegoapp wrote:
| Tesla FSD is just fraud.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| If your only sample has been Tesla "FSD", your bearishness is
| appropriate. However, Tesla's level of development is infantile
| compared to Waymo's.
|
| It's clear that Waymo has run into some costs/limits in
| physically scaling their operations, as the software side of
| things appears to already be "good enough" and is not the
| limiting factor.
| ipsum2 wrote:
| I heard a 3 year old play the violin once, I'm very bearish on
| music.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Tesla FSD should be illegal.
|
| It's a complete joke that should really tarnish the brand value
| of a company.
|
| Doesn't mean other companies with better sensors and better
| data don't have a FAR, FAR, FAR better experience.
| gibsonf1 wrote:
| This will not end well as ml/dl has no intelligence, and given
| the ever changing world we live in, intelligence is needed for
| safe driving. Phoenix has less variation than many places, but
| statistics on the past won't help when something unexpected
| arises as it always will in time. My guess is they are only doing
| this now to convince investors (or google itself) that the
| technology is viable, when in fact, is simply is not. Best to
| just shut all these companies down until machine intelligence has
| been achieved rather than waste so many resources.
| moeris wrote:
| > intelligence is needed for safe driving... won't get when
| something unexpected arises as it always will in time
|
| I don't think that's true. While unexpected situations do
| arise, I don't think people use much "intelligence" to handle
| them. When an elephant falls out of the semi truck in front of
| you, your response is to hit the breaks. You don't spend a
| minute thinking about the likelihood of the event, or question
| whether allowing the elephant to hit your car might improve the
| likelihood of it surviving (and whether that justifies
| sacrificing yourself.)
|
| The fact is that most accidents aren't very atypical. They're
| everyday things that happen, and people aren't paying
| attention, or they make a mistake. Handling just these
| scenarios will result in net saved lives. In other words,
| autonomous driving doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
| foruhar wrote:
| Have Waymo announced which cities they will work on in 2023/2024?
| One of the comments in here mentions their vehicles in Los
| Angeles. Any guesses on when they may start service in New York
| City?
| mabbo wrote:
| Many years ago, as an intern at Google, one of my mentors said to
| me "Google found a hose that money pours out of, and it's name is
| 'online advertising'. All we do now is improve that hose and
| desperately search for another one".
|
| I would love to see Waymo become another hose. I'd love to see it
| launch in my city (whenever the laws are amended to allow such
| things).
|
| (Yes, I know arguably they've had a few other successes.)
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The current Google is not good at inventing world changing
| tech.
|
| The rational thing would be to keep doing what they're best at.
|
| But somehow that's not how things work.
| visarga wrote:
| I believe that the current ad revenue model is facing a
| challenge due to the shift from a search-based approach to a
| dialogue-based one. People are more likely to use a local
| model to filter the web and communicate in a Q&A format. This
| means that fewer ads will be visible, making it more
| difficult for businesses to generate revenue in this new
| paradigm. Why search when you can ask directly for the
| answer?
|
| BTW, local models underperform GPT-3 but they can still
| perform decently (eg. FLAN T5, GPT NeoX)
| warkdarrior wrote:
| And you think AI models could not provide answers
| appropriately biased towards an advertiser? Organic ad
| content is the future.
| inglor wrote:
| Google has YouTube, Android, gmail, GCP and a bunch of other
| big businesses.
|
| I have a ton of criticism about Google but they've been able to
| diversify a lot better than I expected and I totally understand
| why companies with big cash "hoses" like you describe are
| making these sort of 'long shot but highly profitable'
| investments.
| scarface74 wrote:
| YouTube is thought to only break even as far as profits.
|
| Android makes very little money in the grand scheme of
| things. It came out during the Oracle trial that Android only
| had made $17 billion between 2011-2017. On the other hand,
| they pay Apple $18B+ to be the default search engine on iOS
| devices. Apple makes far more from Google paying them in
| mobile than Google makes from Android.
|
| GCP is still losing money.
|
| Google has no successful _profitable_ business besides
| advertising and has the focus of a crack addles flea.
| gok wrote:
| Android and GCP both hemorrhage money
| Grazester wrote:
| Android does not. That changed a while ago too.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| They bought YouTube and Android.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| You could reasonably argue that only things Sergey and
| Larry didn't buy is whatever they implemented personally.
| chaosite wrote:
| How is that relevant? They also bought DoubleClick (the
| online advertising "hose")
| jccooper wrote:
| They bought DoubleClick with revenues from paid search.
| (Google's market share was about 50% at the time.) The
| acquisition certainly helped them establish display
| marketing, though.
| [deleted]
| kyledrake wrote:
| My learned experience with mergers/acquisitions is that it
| is a genuine skill to pull them off correctly.
|
| In YouTube's case it's more likely that they saved it, IIRC
| the bandwidth bills and legal threats were getting pretty
| existential around the time of the purchase. Inheriting
| those legal problems was a chance they took that could have
| sunk the entire company in a slightly dumber legal outcome
| for the status quo of the web, which was still very much in
| limbo at the time.
|
| Being able to pull off being the only company to
| successfully do self-driving is a similarly masterful
| execution and I'm not sure how long it's going to take for
| competitors to catch up to them at this point. More likely
| they'll just be licensing any tech/patent use to
| competitors and taking a cut off of that too.
|
| Google has screwed up plenty of projects but this isn't one
| of them. The upsides to human mobility are substantial and
| well worth the effort and I hope everyone involved is
| ultimately rewarded for it.
| ghaff wrote:
| >Inheriting those legal problems was a chance they took
| that could have sunk the entire company in a slightly
| dumber legal outcome for the status quo of the web, which
| was still very much in limbo at the time.
|
| Yeah. Smartphones were barely a thing when Google bought
| YouTube and, more broadly, user-created video wasn't very
| widespread generally. YouTube's money-losing business,
| such as it was, mostly consisted of users violating
| copyright by uploading TV and movie clips.
| menage wrote:
| Google bought the seed that became Android. The startup had
| only been working on the mobile phone OS concept for about
| a year when Google acquired it in 2005 (originally they'd
| planned a camera OS). The first public Android phone wasn't
| released until 2008.
| pcurve wrote:
| I agree but ultimately those are still advertising :)
| phh wrote:
| All those businesses (except GCP) boils back down to ads.
| They still manage to diversify better than Facebook, because
| they diversified where they show ads, but it's still pretty
| much just ads.
| [deleted]
| jamesliudotcc wrote:
| GCP loses money.
| wpietri wrote:
| Their top 3 revenue sources are ads, ads, and ads.
| (Respectively ads on their own properties, "Google Network"
| ads, and YouTube ads.) That's more than 80% of their revenue.
| GCP is 7.5% of their total revenue. Details here:
| https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/how-does-google-make-money
|
| One of the interesting questions for me is where the profits
| come in. Android definitely started as a loss leader so that
| they didn't get shut out of the mobile advertising market.
| But I could believe that it's in the black now due to the
| Apple-like model of charging a slice of everything that goes
| through the phone. Google Cloud is definitely not profitable
| yet, but they claim they will get there:
| https://accelerationeconomy.com/cloud-wars/google-cloud-
| has-...
| wongarsu wrote:
| Android probably pays for itself right now. But its primary
| purpose is forcing about 70% of phones sold globally to
| have Google apps pre-installed. And mobile ads, as you
| said.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Google pays Apple $10B a quarter as search revenue sharing.
| Chrome/Android are good deals on an alternative analysis
| basis.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| This is like people saying all Apple does is sell iPhones.
|
| AirPods would be a fortune 50 business by themselves...
| scarface74 wrote:
| The difference is that Apple's delineated businesses are
| extremely profitable. Google not so much aside from ads.
| WilTimSon wrote:
| YouTube may be a business but, if you take away online
| advertising there, it wouldn't be a successful one. In fact,
| one of the first things people bring up when discussing
| YouTube from that standpoint is how much money it loses. If
| Google wasn't one of the richest corporations in the world,
| YouTube would have been killed off a long time ago. I'm
| frankly not even sure that the advertisements are enough to
| sustain it even now, would have to check the recent data.
| [deleted]
| mbesto wrote:
| > I would love to see Waymo become another hose.
|
| Waymo is just another way to add more water to the hose.
|
| More leisure time not focusing on the road = more eyeballs.
|
| _What percent of our lives do we spend driving?[0]
|
| "Our best guess? Six percent of our waking hours are spent in a
| car, en route. There are 4.12 million miles of road in the
| United States, and that's a lot of ground for the 222 million
| drivers in this country to cover."_
|
| [0] - https://short-facts.com/how-many-hours-does-the-average-
| amer...
| dougmwne wrote:
| I disagree. There's a ton of profit margin on the table
| selling driverless rideshares and licensing the tech to other
| automakers. While Google will be able to serve a few ads
| during the ride, that will amount to a few cents of ad
| revenue vs. several dollars of transportation services. Tesla
| is already setting a price for full self driving that does
| not even work or exist at 15k, so the actual retail price
| could easily be tens of thousands, absolutely dwarfing the 5
| year ad revenue per user, let alone the incremental increase
| from a few extra hours of screen time a week.
| Beaver117 wrote:
| I'm not an expert but I doubt there's really a ton of
| profit in rides. Uber, Lyft, even taxi companies are barely
| profitable after many years. With the amount of money and
| time spent on making self driving work I'm not sure they'll
| ever make their money back.
| brianwawok wrote:
| You realize like 60% of the Uber / lyft fee goes to the
| driver? Now imagine there is no driver... the math sure
| changes
| neon_electro wrote:
| I'm begging you to read up on the actual experiences of
| drivers for Lyft & Uber - there are dedicated subreddits.
|
| Lyft and Uber are not leaving 60% of the money on the
| table to the drivers.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/lyftdrivers/
| https://www.reddit.com/r/uberdrivers/
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| It's both.
|
| Moving people and things (Waymo Via[1] is their autonomous
| trucking and delivery subdivision) via roadways is worth (in
| revenue) hundreds of billions of dollars in the U.S. alone.
| Even capturing a fraction of that market, and carving out
| profit (by displacing expensive, accident-prone and sleep-
| needing humans), is a money hose on its own.
|
| [1] https://waymo.com/waymo-via/
| coolspot wrote:
| Just couple days ago I have seen Waymo white Jaguar in Los
| Angeles driving on I-10 towards Santa-Monica.
|
| I hope they will open service here soon.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I took a Waymo in Phoenix the other night. Works like magic. I'm
| honestly fine waiting four times as long for one because it's
| fun, and it's cheaper. Even when they had to send out a manual
| driver, the experience was smooth and fast.
| verdenti wrote:
| mcrady wrote:
| I also had a magical autonomous ride when I visited Phoenix a
| couple years ago.
|
| I asked a friend who works at waymo why it's taking forever to
| build up a critical mass of vehicles to get the wait times down
| to a more reasonable level.
|
| He said the issue was cost. I guess all those sensors are
| actually more expensive than the cost of a human driver at this
| point?
| judge2020 wrote:
| High quality LIDAR suitable for autonomy is still pretty
| expensive, and it's tough to take claims of "the price is
| coming down" at face value.
| hwillis wrote:
| > I guess all those sensors are actually more expensive than
| the cost of a human driver at this point?
|
| Waymo inhoused their sensors and claimed a 90% cost
| reduction, but before that they were at $200k+.
|
| Still, even at $200k+ that's not _terribly_ high compared to
| a human driver once you amortize it over 8+ years. Higher
| than minimum wage, but really it 's probably a matter of the
| upfront cost more than anything.
|
| I'll also point out that even if they 100% solved self
| driving... somebody has to fill the things up with gas in
| most states, lol.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Or they use electric vehicles and the cars just park on top
| of charging pads. But there's always _some_ kind of
| maintenance in involved
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the issue was cost_
|
| It has to be deeper. Google has deep pockets. Even it doesn't
| want to touch them, one could sell interests in individual
| cars' cash flows, a quasi-debt which neither dilutes the
| company's equity nor puts its survival at risk.
| toast0 wrote:
| They're spending a bunch of money on this already. Deep
| pockets doesn't mean infinite pockets. Google Fiber over
| promised, and the infinite pockets evaporated.
|
| It makes a lot of sense to roll something like this out
| slowly. Taxi service is a commodity, putting out a bunch of
| cars that are have negative ROI doesn't get you much over
| having a few cars.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| I think they're still in learning mode.
|
| You _don 't_ want huge numbers of cars on the road until
| you're sure they're incredibly safe.
| zizee wrote:
| Is it possible that he was talking about a different cost
| than that of vehicle parts? Even at a million dollars a
| piece, I'd imagine google would be happy to spend a hundred
| million or two to get dozens/hundreds of higher visible
| vehicles out in aive environment.
|
| Perhaps the expense he was talking about is that it would be
| super expensive to create a factory to be able to increase
| the volume whilst the vehicles are still rather custom built.
|
| I will say that I have very little knowledge about anything
| here, just that Google has already spent billions on this
| effort and it would seem strange that they are shying away
| from spending a few hundred thousand per vehicle.
| wpietri wrote:
| Could you say more about the "they had to send out a manual
| driver" bit?
| IshKebab wrote:
| I'm curious too. I assumed they'd just use manual remote
| control for situations that the AI can't handle. Actually
| sending out a driver sounds anything but smooth and fast.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| I find it funny imagining an army of ex-tuktuk drivers
| working from home on a simulator and using their expertise
| to get the world's self-driving cars out of tricky
| situations. If the AI ever learns their ways, it will be
| terrifying but we will get to work 30% faster.
| toast0 wrote:
| > If the AI ever learns their ways, it will be terrifying
| but we will get to work 30% faster.
|
| Only if they don't stop off at a tourist trinket store.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| I'd much prefer that as the failure scenario instead of
| someone trying to operate my vehicle through a computer
| screen.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Would VR goggles make you feel better?
| IshKebab wrote:
| I wasn't imagining someone clicking "forwards" in a web
| browser. You would have full driving simulator style
| control systems.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Waymo's remote support can't drive the car. I'm surprised
| by how many people seem to have assumed that would be a
| good idea. What happens when, inevitably, there's a
| communication fault while driving in this way ?
| zug_zug wrote:
| Uh, it switches back to self driving?
| wpietri wrote:
| I honestly think that's a reasonable reply.
|
| It's pretty clear that with Waymo the first response is
| to fail safe: when in doubt, pull over and ask for help.
| I was expecting that the help could include a semi-
| assisted remote override mode. The remote support would
| not be turning the wheel and pressing the gas, but giving
| it higher-level overrides, like "do a u-turn here". So in
| that case if it loses touch it's reasonable to resume
| traveling if it now can or once again pull over and ask
| for help.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Remote Waymo support can reach into the car's model of
| the world to a limited extent to resolve problems, but if
| the situation is just screwed then it makes sense to have
| a human driver take over rather than waste the
| passenger's time while somebody futzes with the model for
| an unknown length of time.
| davidcbc wrote:
| If it was in a position where it could safely self drive
| it already would be
| IshKebab wrote:
| It wouldn't need to be able to safely drive itself, just
| safely pull over.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| Leaving a passenger in a stopped car in the middle of an
| intersection is not safe. And your logic is circular, the
| car hypothetically fails and calls for remote assistance,
| and the link gets cut, the car "safe stops" and youre
| right back at square one and need to send someone out
| still. I dont think its as easy as youre characterizing
| TexanFeller wrote:
| Remote control sounds unsafe because radio signals are so
| easily disrupted?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Could you say more about the "they had to send out a
| manual driver" bit?_
|
| Car encountered an unmarked dead end and got confused turning
| around (there was a badly-parked car on the narrow road). Car
| called for help and we were told a person was en route. A few
| minutes later, a guy arrived in a truck and manually drove us
| to our destination.
| wpietri wrote:
| Thanks! That's very interesting.
|
| Toyota lost a lot of money the first few years they sold
| the Prius, but they were happy to do it because they
| believed they'd work out the production cost issues over
| time. And they were right. Clearly Waymo's going for a
| similar strategy here. But one difference is that Toyota at
| that point had decades of experience wrangling the cost
| curve for cars. It'll be interesting to see if they can get
| capital cost plus mapping cost plus operational cost down
| low enough so that they can at least break even on a ride.
| tjoff wrote:
| I thought remote drivers were supposed to handle such
| issues?
| pifm_guy wrote:
| Remote drivers can only override some things. They can do
| things like telling the car that the lane goes to the
| left or right of a cone.
|
| Or they can mark a vehicle as parked so the car won't
| wait for a stationary vehicle it thinks has right of way.
|
| But they can't directly drive the vehicle. The whole
| software and Comms stack is far too slow to do that
| safely.
| pifm_guy wrote:
| I personally think they should just update the stack so
| they can do realtime control.
|
| Pay 5G networks to have priority data feeds for video,
| and send all the data back to an operator with 50ms glass
| to glass latency. Then have the remote operator drive.
|
| Always have the car in a position to take over and stop
| incase the comms link gets cut. Usually that will involve
| either slamming the brakes on hard or gently, depending
| if there is an obstacle ahead or someone following
| behind.
|
| That means they no longer need to handle 99.9999999999%
| of cases, but instead just handle 99.9% and detect the
| rest for a human to do.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| > 50ms glass to glass latency.
|
| You are potentially overlooking application level
| latency, just because the packets arrive in 50ms time
| does not mean the video latency is upper bounded to that.
| I think 100-200ms is more realistic.
|
| If your one way network latency is 50ms, it takes 150ms
| minimum to send a packet on 1.5x round trips which is
| necessary to confirm round trip connectivity and notify
| the other party. If you can assume clocks are
| synchronized you can send packets one way in 50ms to
| confirm connectivity and latency.
|
| > Usually that will involve either slamming the brakes on
| hard or gently, depending if there is an obstacle ahead
| or someone following behind.
|
| you're specifically in a situation in which the car has
| failed, so im not sure how you can assume the car will
| make these kinds of decisions correctly.
|
| > I personally think they should just update the stack so
| they can do realtime control.
|
| Lets assume video latency of 100-200ms can be achieved,
| its still potentially dangerous. There are however some
| companies i am aware of in certain countries that are
| doing it anyway!
|
| Even if glass to glass latency was 1ms, perhaps its not a
| technological issue but a PR issue. Maybe they don't want
| news headlines about people driving cars with mario kart
| steering wheels or it's easier to get regulatory approval
| by reassuring the public they will do the safest thing
| possibly.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| It took four times as long to get it, you had to endure
| this also and you still liked it?!
|
| I think you may be an outlier and early adopter type person
| and may not represent the average customer.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _took four times as long to get it, you had to endure
| this also and you still liked it?_
|
| Yup! It as far more forgivable than an Uber driver taking
| the wrong turn half a dozen times in a row. It was half
| the cost, before tip. And it was up to four times as long
| a wait, not always four times as long. All of that more
| than makes up for the fun.
|
| It's not ready for mass roll-out. But there is a massive
| beachhead to grab.
| slaw wrote:
| Did you tip robot?
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Hey I'm cheap, that might be the killer app feature for
| me too if I used ride sharing services.
| wetpaws wrote:
| Dude, it's a freaking self driving car from the future.
| wpietri wrote:
| That is exactly how an early-adopter outlier would feel
| about that. And I'm not saying you're wrong; those are
| valid feelings. But if you look at the distribution of
| people like that [1], it's not representative. Imagine
| how most people would feel if a taxi driver did that to
| them: "Oh, sorry, I'm scared to turn the car around;
| please wait until a supervisor can pick you up." They'd
| be annoyed at the delay and would be less likely to rely
| on the service again.
|
| Props to Waymo for what they've accomplished; they've
| been very clever in working around the limitations of the
| tech. But it sounds like it has a long way to go before
| they're ready for general-audience usage.
|
| [1] E.g., the Crossing the Chasm model, although this is
| more the behavior of the "visionary" segment than what he
| calls "early adopter"; scroll down to the first big graph
| here: https://thinkinsights.net/strategy/crossing-the-
| chasm/
| ghaff wrote:
| I'd do it once for the experience. I doubt there's any
| real appreciable actual personal danger. But, with that
| experience, I probably wouldn't do it again anytime soon.
| dslowell wrote:
| It's interesting how different the rollout of autonomous cars has
| been from what people were expecting a decade ago. Not just the
| speed of things, but also the way they're being adopted. So far,
| we don't seem to be anywhere close to the nationwide mass layoffs
| of truck and taxi drivers that people were predicting would
| happen when self-driving cars started to take of.
|
| Instead, current trends seem to be for an additional form of
| transportation within limited geographic areas. One can imagine a
| scenario where, for instance, we have a number of cities where
| self-driving cars are the dominant form of transportation in the
| center, but traditional cars are still owned and operated by the
| people who live on the periphery, and most cities don't have
| self-driving networks at all. Something similar to how the subway
| functions in Manhattan New York, perhaps.
|
| Or maybe not. But I think this all shows that it's not just
| difficult to predict which pieces of future technology we will
| have, but also how a particular piece of technology will actually
| be implemented and impact society.
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. "We tend to over-estimate the impact of a phenomenon
| in the short run and under-estimate it in the long run."
|
| I think part of what's going on here is that the actual pattern
| of technology use is heavily dependent on technical and
| economic details that can't be known up front. It turns out
| that SAE level 5 autonomy is much harder than a lot of people
| expected, so the thing that disrupted the cab industry is not
| the long-anticipated robo-cab but a mechanical-turk version of
| that. Or consider mass adoption of flying cars and/or personal
| helicopters. It has been technically possible for a while, but
| the economics and practicalities don't work out.
| rafaelero wrote:
| Only the optimists were thinking we would have something like
| Waymo already in 2022.
| jchw wrote:
| It feels like there's always an imminent threat of computers
| and technology replacing more human jobs, but it might wind up
| being harder than it looks for one reason or another.
|
| I think in the past, technology _mostly_ threatened to replace
| and eliminate jobs nobody really wanted, or merely assist
| people in their jobs to make them more effective. AI is really
| doing a number on us, though. I really like programming, and I
| have plenty of friends who really like drawing. It would be a
| shame if the main incentive to be good at those things in
| society were to disappear due to the job market being partially
| eaten, but it does seem like that 's what is going to happen
| eventually. Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth fighting it,
| as it seems like it's just another inevitable mess that winds
| up the same either way because people with more money than I
| can fathom have a pretty good incentive to make it so.
|
| Either way, driving seems somewhere down the middle. I think
| automating driving would be great, but I also assume plenty of
| truckers do enjoy the job, and would be lost without it.
|
| It's good that this transition is taking a while. I don't think
| we're equipped to handle it.
| colordrops wrote:
| If what you are describing turns out to be true in the long
| term, it would have to mean that there is something
| fundamentally different and harder about self-driving outside
| of cities.
| ghaff wrote:
| If anything, I would think the opposite was true, at least
| with respect to major roads. To be honest, I'm surprised
| there hasn't been more of a push to get to something like
| fully hands-off Super Cruise [1] system. I'm not sure I'm
| that unusual in not generally caring that much about door-to-
| door self-driving but would love something to take over on
| boring highway drives.
|
| [1] https://www.cadillac.com/world-of-
| cadillac/innovation/super-...
| noneeeed wrote:
| I think a lot of people thought it would be exactly as hard as
| it has turned out to be but were dismissed as being luddites or
| lacking imagination.
|
| I think it's always been apparent that self driving is one of
| those problems where the first 90% is hard but solvable, but
| where the difficulty just keeps increasing in the last 10%.
|
| When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s I was constantly
| seeing coverage of cars driving themselves around circuits and
| even handling skids in a skid pan better than any human. I
| fully expected to never have to drive. Sadly I was very wrong.
|
| I've never wanted more to be wrong about my cynicism about a
| technology than with self driving.
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| _I think a lot of people thought it would be exactly as hard
| as it has turned out to be but were dismissed as being
| luddites or lacking imagination._
|
| There may have been a lot of people like that, but there were
| very few _knowledgeable_ people who were making such
| predictions in public. The only one I know of is Rodney
| Brooks, and even he went public for the first time only in
| 2017 [0].
|
| [0] https://rodneybrooks.com/edge-cases-for-self-driving-
| cars/
| ghaff wrote:
| John Leonard of MIT said something similar around the same
| time.
|
| "Taking me from Cambridge to Logan Airport with no driver
| in any Boston weather or traffic condition -- that might
| not be in my lifetime," Leonard told Bloomberg. (2018) (I
| think he actually said the "not in my lifetime" thing
| originally a few years earlier.)
| ilaksh wrote:
| And yet here there is an article about expanding the service
| area of a working self driving system and you are still
| implying that you believe it's impossible.
| ghaff wrote:
| In a limited area in cities with good weather. It would be
| foolish to bet that we'll never have fully autonomous
| driving on most roads in most conditions. It's probably
| also foolish to bet that kids growing up today can
| generally get by without ever learning to drive. (Yes, some
| cities are better than others and some just accept they
| can't easily go many places or pursue certain activities
| but that's not the general case.)
| ansgri wrote:
| It's just US implementing proper public transportation via
| contemporary means. I've always thought US has the advantage of
| a genuine need for robotaxis compared to other advanced
| economies where public transport already works well.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| Tokyo, Seoul, Tapei, Bangkok, Singapore, Hongkong, Jakarka,
| Kuala Lumpur would all greatly benefit either by safer or
| cheaper taxis.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Even in Europe public transport generally only works well in
| the biggest handful of cities.
| tialaramex wrote:
| If you squint inhumanly hard you can argue I live in my
| country's sixth biggest "city" (ie a contiguous area of
| urban and semi-urban development - but under such a view
| the city's "name" doesn't make sense to the people who live
| in it and _that_ city doesn 't have good public transport
| as a whole because it's not really a city)
|
| But the city I actually live in (the one whose residents
| recognise its name) is only a couple hundred thousand
| people, and it has good enough public transport that I
| lived here for almost thirty years now with no desire to
| own a car. Have I gone in somebody else's car to an event?
| Yeah, maybe a few times per year. But day-to-day and week-
| to-week I don't need a car. I have a license, I own a car
| parking space, I could easily afford a car, but it makes no
| sense to buy one, so I don't.
| rwmj wrote:
| If you can do self-driving cars safely then it's probably not
| a massive step to do self-driving buses and trains.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Trains are a completely different beast: they can't stop in
| line-of-sight so the complexities are mostly in engineering
| a safe (and failsafe) path for the train, rather than the
| driver watching for obstacles. There are self-driving
| systems, but they look quite different from self-driving
| cars and likely have zero AI.
|
| Buses, on the other hand, maybe.
| rwmj wrote:
| Right, disproving my own point, this is a good article:
| https://www.londonreconnections.com/2021/the-political-
| myth-...
| xnx wrote:
| With work fromn home and the efficiency, its worth asking if
| billion-dollar right-of-way public transiy makes sense
| anywhere. Waymo is to rail as packet-based networking is to
| dedicated copper analog phone lines.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Yes, a car can bring people point to point, however it
| still isn't space efficient. Each traveller in their own
| vehicle is read of a compact bus or train. Still requiring
| broad roads and space in the attractive areas.
| ghaff wrote:
| Given autonomous driving, computer-dispatched and
| scheduled mini-buses and vans could make sense for a lot
| of scenarios where there's reasonable demand and no
| transit.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| Yes, cars are less space efficient. However, what is the
| objective line of "too space inefficient", and are cars
| over that line? If not, why should one care? We aren't
| optimizing for "most space efficient as possible", there
| are other factors in the mix.
|
| Despite all the complaining, Western society seems to
| generally be accepting of the space inefficiency of cars
| as it currently stands. And computer modelling has shown
| that, all other things being equal, autonomous vehicles
| are expected to increase the capacity of existing
| roadways.
|
| Also, don't forget that a lot of people want to get
| around in a car, regardless of bus/train availability,
| despite what your personal feelings on the subject might
| be. However, don't get me wrong here, a lot of people
| also want to get around on foot, by bike, and by bus.
| Admittedly these options are lacking in most Western
| urban environments. We should also be building up these
| options for the people who want to use them.
| Transportation doesn't have to be a winner-take-all, one-
| solution-for-everyone fight. Different people want
| different things, and there's no reason that
| transportation options shouldn't reflect this.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Because of global warming? The idea is fairly
| straightforward:
|
| - less space efficient means less fuel efficient which
| means heavier carbon footprint
|
| - less space efficient means more vehicles which means
| heavier carbon footprint
|
| - less space efficient encourages suburban sprawl which
| means lower city service efficiency which means heavier
| carbon footprint
|
| - less space efficient encourages suburban sprawl which
| means more efficient alternatives like public transit are
| more costly and less convenient which means heavier
| carbon footprint
|
| You say transportation doesn't have to be a winner-take-
| all fight but that completely ignores market/political
| forces shaped by city planning. You handwave it away by
| saying "admittedly these options are lacking in most
| Western urban environments" but why do you think that is?
| It's a consequence of American city space-inefficiency
| which makes efficient public transit worse and favors
| inefficient cars. It doesn't have to be winner-take-all,
| winner-take-most is enough to change climate change
| outcomes significantly.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Once robocars are clearly about ready to scale up,
| there'll be a variety of designs including one- or two-
| passenger cars.
|
| Conversely, buses usually go mostly empty except during
| rush hour.
|
| Finally, small on-demand robocars should be a great way
| to conveniently connect to a local train station and then
| to your ultimate destination, _raising_ demand for
| complementary mass transit.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| I've also had a variation of this thought, and have
| received mostly revulsion from my fairly technical social
| circles.
|
| When most people think of "public transit", they only
| picture busses, trains and multi-billion dollar corruption-
| laden mass transit projects. However, in many cases, it is
| far far cheaper to (as a municipal government) purchase and
| operate fleets of self-driving electric vehicles. Don't get
| me wrong, there are still cases where dedicated rights-of-
| way for trains make more sense, but we should be using the
| optimal solution for each given situation, and the optimal
| solution is not always "trains and busses".
|
| "Public transit" can also be "publicly owned electric self-
| driving vehicles, making use of the roads that already
| exist". However, a lot of people have an entrenched opinion
| of "CAR BAD NO MATTER WHAT", with no objective basis of
| what "bad" is.
| Animats wrote:
| _" For those of you in San Francisco, join the waitlist today."_
|
| Aw. Not quite yet. But getting steadily closer. What's pricing?
|
| When the service turns on as a commercial service in San
| Francisco, autonomous vehicles will really be here. Phoenix is
| the easy case. SF is moderately hard. NYC will be tough.
| snug wrote:
| In SF, It's the same price as a Lyft or Uber. About $11 for a
| 12 minute ride
| notatoad wrote:
| without knowing phoenix, it's hard to get a sense of how much
| area is actually covered from this blog post. is this just an
| expansion to a couple neighbourhoods, or is this getting towards
| covering most of the city?
| nosefrog wrote:
| Has anyone gotten off the wait-list in SF? I've been able to ride
| a Cruise taxi, but not Waymo.
| snug wrote:
| Yes, I got on the trusted riders list. I usually only use ride
| shares to go to the airport, and sadly it doesn't go there yet,
| so I've only used it a few times
| renewiltord wrote:
| Nope. Cruise, yes. Waymo, no. I'm off the waitlist in Phoenix,
| but can't book one here.
| amelius wrote:
| LIDAR makes implementing FSD so much simpler. And you can still
| harvest data so you can use it as a stepping stone for video-only
| based FSD.
| joshribakoff wrote:
| The counter argument is lidar isn't strictly necessary (case in
| point humans use vision, and roads are designed for visual
| drivers). Furthermore, there is potential added complexity in
| fusing lidar and video data. When lidar says the path is
| blocked and video says it is not, you essentially have to
| either trust lidar and stop unnecessarily or just ignore lidar
| and go anyway (and then what was the point of the lidar?).
| Having to make a decision like this is a form of complexity and
| addressing that complexity potentially takes resources away
| from iterating on the vision part of the stack.
| swsieber wrote:
| > When lidar says the path is blocked and video says it is
| not, you essentially have to either trust lidar and stop
| unnecessarily or just ignore lidar and go anyway (and then
| what was the point of the lidar?).
|
| If it's actually blocked then decision becomes stop and
| prevent harm or go forward and hurt someone.
|
| I don't think it's a very good counter argument.
|
| Edit: without meaningful data as to which is more meaningful
| I'd lean towards LIDAR being safer because there's less info
| (depth) to infer, and to me color seems less important than
| depth, barring stuff like signs and lights. Which shouldn't
| be hard to correlate between the two.
|
| But without more meaningful data this comes off as a "you
| should x people people did x anciently and it seems like that
| worked"
| Philip-J-Fry wrote:
| Yeah, I think if we want driverless taxis in major cities ASAP,
| then Waymo is probably the way forward. It should be relatively
| easy to continuously map a city with a fleet of vehicles and
| keep them geofenced. It's will be a good revenue generator that
| can sustain the company while they work on a more general video
| based solution.
| Zigurd wrote:
| That's a very important difference. If it turns out that LIDAR
| (and maybe other sensors) are needed in addition to machine
| vision for level 5 automation, all the data Tesla cameras have
| been gathering may be worth much less than the 3D models Google
| is building.
| nradov wrote:
| Waymo is doing level 4 automation. Level 5 is still very far
| away, and will require more than just LIDAR.
|
| https://www.synopsys.com/automotive/autonomous-driving-
| level...
| rafaelero wrote:
| > Level 5 is still very far away, and will require more
| than just LIDAR.
|
| I don't think that's true. In my view, by scaling these AI
| models we will arrive there. But even if I am wrong, we
| don't need level 5 for this technology to be revolutionary.
| I am mostly interested in using Waymo as my new Uber, so if
| it can decently navigate cities costing half the price,
| then sign me in.
| darknavi wrote:
| LIDAR _and_ high resolution/detail 3D scans known ahead of
| time.
| bushbaba wrote:
| At this rate will be 2060 before waymo is profitable. Curious how
| long the shareholders are going to tolerate such a large expense
| over dividend/share repurchases
| KKKKkkkk1 wrote:
| I find it interesting how deeply downvoted this comment is.
| This is pretty much what TCI Management, a not insignificant
| investor in Alphabet, has said in a note that they published
| recently [0]:
|
| _TCI also pointed out that Alphabet 's Other Bets division -
| which houses operations including Waymo, Nest, Access, Calico
| and more - generated $3 billion in revenues in the past five
| years but incurred operating losses of $20 billion. "Other Bets
| have been unsuccessful" and operating losses estimated at $6
| billion in 2022 should be reduced by 50 percent.
|
| "The biggest component of Other Bets is Waymo," TCI added.
| "Unfortunately, enthusiasm for self-driving cars has collapsed
| and competitors have exited the market. Ford and Volkswagen
| recently decided to shut down their self-driving venture"
| saying that achieving profit in the short term was not likely._
|
| [0]
| https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/16/tci_fund_google_cut_c...
| tomatbebo wrote:
| Pressumably things will start to snowball if these smaller
| scale trials demonstrate adaquate safety
| ghaff wrote:
| One question is to what degree safety is dependent on testing
| in these specific good weather areas for literally years. And
| even the SF public self-driving area excludes what is almost
| certainly the somewhat harder area of SF for self-driving
| (though opening up much of SF is more impressive than Phoenix
| generally).
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Seems like fair weather tech at best at the moment. I just
| can't see these things working in a place like a Canadian
| winter without a few generational improvements. It starts
| with the basics, like knowing you have to start slowing
| down 3 blocks before the intersection if you don't want to
| slide through it, but also involves knowing how the driving
| culture changes during a storm.
|
| We can install like IR reflectors in the road so that they
| know where the lines are under the snow, but people don't
| know where the lines are, and so during a heavy snow day
| the lanes change and take on people's best guess and it
| becomes the new default choice as more people take the new
| paths.
|
| As is often repeated the most dangerous thing to be on the
| road is unpredictable, and I don't know if the self driving
| cars would have the ability to see the changes in lane
| positions and adjust, or if they'd be trying to follow the
| old lanes in a crowd of cars making their best guesses to
| make it home. Seems one of those "it won't work well until
| the vast majority of the cars are automated" type deals.
| Zigurd wrote:
| > _the most dangerous thing to be on the road is
| unpredictable_
|
| Google already has the biggest hive mind for predicting
| what's ahead. One reason I turn on Waze even when driving
| a familiar route is that I can see traffic and conditions
| ahead of me. Totally saved my butt when I noticed dozens
| of accidents ahead in what seemed like a light rain. The
| road had iced over. I got off at the next exit and waited
| it out, using Waze to know when traffic was moving again.
| Passed some horrifying big truck accident scenes yet to
| be cleared by tow trucks.
| throwaway2037 wrote:
| You are right. You wrote: <<3 blocks before the
| intersection if you don't want to slide through it>> It
| sounds like road maintenance needs improvement in your
| city.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| That's funny, with that framing it seems as though it
| won't be the robot cars fault for screwing up even though
| the majority of drivers can get home safe in those
| conditions.
|
| When it's -30 for a week you end up in a situation where
| road salt doesn't work and the exhaust from cars polishes
| intersections to an icy sheen. It's hard to protect
| against that.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Humans suck in these conditions too. The solution is to
| go slower, pull over in the worst conditions, take an off
| ramp, don't drive in the first place, etc. These are all
| things humans have been known to do.
|
| Road lines are important but physical obstacles like
| other vehicles are more important.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Will the car follow through with these solutions as well?
| Are they set up to do that now? Can they make that
| assessment?
|
| Sounds like the solution here is just to not run the cars
| when people are going to be most likely to want to use
| it.
| fullshark wrote:
| Even if it's safe...what's the short term benefit for riders
| beyond curiosity? Presumably cheaper fares + more throughput
| but the math is not obvious to me that owning a fleet of
| robotaxis will be a lucrative business to be in anytime soon,
| even if you are the only robotaxi company in town.
|
| Seems like they need to license this tech to have it payoff.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| cheaper fares is a really big deal. if you can deliver the
| same service 30% cheaper with 20% higher profit margins,
| that's massive. driver pay is a significant component of
| cost so cutting it is pretty massive.
| ghaff wrote:
| Maybe? Not that I use Uber/Lyft/taxis much but, when I
| do, I of course prefer them to be cheaper but +/- 30%
| pricing pretty much wouldn't affect if I take them or
| not. It's still a significant premium relative to driving
| myself at home and, if I'm traveling, I may not have much
| of a choice.
| notatoad wrote:
| if +/-30% pricing isn't significant, then the benefit
| isn't lower fares, it's higher profits for the company
| operating the cars. either way you slice it, not having
| to pay drivers would be a significant win for a taxi
| company.
| rafaelero wrote:
| > but +/- 30% pricing pretty much wouldn't affect if I
| take them or not
|
| But it's enough to prefer Waymo over Uber and that's all
| it takes.
| fullshark wrote:
| I guess, but if I'm getting a taxi, replacing a human
| with a computer is not a huge benefit to me, as I'm
| already not driving. If I'm driving myself to work every
| day, replacing that repetitive and boring task with a
| computer is a huge user benefit and thus I'd be more
| willing to pay and at a higher price for the tech.
|
| I just think that's the only real way to make this thing
| pay off. Also potentially it might work for long haul
| trucking.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| the benefit to the user isn't the computer, it's lower
| cost. the bushes model makes sense because you can lower
| user cost while increasing profit
| [deleted]
| spankalee wrote:
| The benefit absolutely is the safer computer driver. I'd
| pay more for that.
| lozenge wrote:
| License it to who? If they prove the model then investors
| will be lining up to give them the capital to expand.
| fullshark wrote:
| Car manufacturers and trucking companies.
| Zigurd wrote:
| > _Seems like they need to license this tech to have it
| payoff._
|
| Seems like that's the plan. Volvo and some other car OEMs
| are using Android on the dashboard. A total package of
| infotainment, autonation, and the cloud services behind the
| in-vehicle systems is a likely destination for this and
| other products than can be sold into cars at the OEM or
| end-user level.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| Tesla charges $12,000 for the FSD package. Not sure what a
| Waymo package might be worth, but it could be a hell of a lot
| more lucrative business than Android.
| ben1040 wrote:
| $15,000 now.
| hedora wrote:
| There are a dozen competitors, and the price of the actual
| hardware is a few thousand dollars. I don't imagine this will
| be a high margin business. A $1000/car markup over hardware
| cost seems about right to me.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| I can name a dozen mobile operating systems as well. Some
| serious ones: Symbian, BlackBerry, Microsoft, Tizen, iOS,
| Android. The question is if there is a network effect... a
| powerful one such as "waymo doesn't manslaughter cyclists".
| WilTimSon wrote:
| From a consumer's standpoint, is that bad? I'd rather wait
| longer and know for a fact that the product is 100% safe and
| tested. This isn't something I would be willing to take a risk
| on, getting into a car crash because I was really anxious to
| try a driverless taxi seems embarrassing.
| nullc wrote:
| Does this mean that DoubleClick might finally diversify out of
| the advertising business?
| wpietri wrote:
| Does anybody know how much this is currently backed with human
| intervention? My understanding is that Waymo is bridging the gap
| between their current level and full automation with having
| humans on tap via the network. But I'd love to know more about
| the frequency and circumstances of remote interventions.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Waymo has to do SAE Level 4 because there literally is no human
| driver in the vehicle. You aren't allowed to sit in the seat
| where the pedals and wheel are, this isn't assistance, it's a
| driver, like in a taxi.
|
| Remote humans can correct the machine's model of the world, to
| a limited extent. A human looking at the data might conclude
| that's a life-size cardboard cut out of Luke Skywalker, not
| Mark Hamill stood motionless in the road in costume for no
| reason, and so it's OK for the Waymo to squeeze past it,
| whereas driving very close to humans is unacceptable.
|
| They don't have any means to remotely drive the car, if for any
| reason that's the solution to a problem, the Waymo will stop
| somewhere, a vehicle with Waymo employees in will turn up in a
| few minutes, then a human driver gets into your car and takes
| over.
|
| This does not seem to happen very often.
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