[HN Gopher] Waymo the Leapfrog
___________________________________________________________________
Waymo the Leapfrog
Author : loeber
Score : 51 points
Date : 2024-06-22 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (loeber.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (loeber.substack.com)
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I don't get why Tesla keeps touting that they're going to have
| FSD taxis... in a few years. And their stock goes up when they
| (usually it's Musk, let's be clear) tout this. Waymo already has
| this (in limited areas). Why wouldn't Musk just partner with
| Waymo on this? Isn't this a situation where the more people using
| the tech will make it better faster than trying to have a dozen
| different companies chasing it essentially duplicating effort and
| training? Self driving seems like an area where it would be
| beneficial to share training data as much as possible.
| Detrytus wrote:
| Musk's ego is just too big at this point for partnering with
| anyone on anything. He'd rather just "show them how it's done".
| vinni2 wrote:
| I guess fundamental difference is that Waymo uses a lot of
| sensors while Tesla FSD is relying on AI and computer vision.
| mupuff1234 wrote:
| More sensors doesn't mean waymo doesn't rely on AI and
| computer vision.
| blerb795 wrote:
| This feels a little pedantic; I assume the commenter means
| that Tesla relies _exclusively_ on vision, whereas Waymo
| additionally has sensors (i.e. lidar)
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Parent should have said "on only AI and vision, no lidar."
| xnx wrote:
| Not sure Waymo has anything to gain from a partnership with
| Tesla.
| opinion-is-bad wrote:
| At some point Waymo is going to want a lot of cars if things
| go well. Those cars need to be electric, due to the power
| draw of the computer and sensors. A partnership doesn't
| necessarily make sense between these companies, but I can see
| possible synergies.
| xnx wrote:
| > At some point Waymo is going to want a lot of cars if
| things go well.
|
| Definitely. Waymo has partnered with Zeekr to produce
| purpose-built taxi vehicles:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ew32ydR2O3c
| cjsplat wrote:
| Lots of surplus power in any ICE vehicle.
|
| 1 HP is over 700 watts.
|
| A few extra HP to generate power isn't any big deal.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's funny how poorly people understand the huge amount
| of energy it takes to move a car.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Those cars need to be electric, due to the power draw of
| the computer and sensors.
|
| They don't need to be electric. You can make electricity
| out of gasoline with an ICE engine. This is not a problem
| in reality.
| ilaksh wrote:
| I think within X decades, any viable car company will have self
| driving or have to license the technology. Companies would
| rather develop their own than license it for the same reason as
| they have their own anything.
|
| But I think that as AI continues to improve and more sensors
| are manufactured, the cost goes down and feasibility goes up
| for more companies to implement self-driving.
| amacneil wrote:
| It's a bit like asking why Google doesn't just partner with
| Apple on phones since Apple is clearly better at it. The reason
| is that they are building competing products, with competing
| teams, competing software stacks, and different business
| models. Competition is good for innovation.
|
| Tesla prioritized building a highly generalized stack that can
| offer incremental improvements from L2+ on all roads (today) to
| L3/L4 some time in the future. Waymo is prioritizing building a
| tightly geofenced L4 system and gradually expanding the
| operating domain.
|
| Neither is more of a "correct" approach, since they have
| different design goals, and it's hard to even directly compare
| them at this stage of development.
| modeless wrote:
| > And their stock goes up when they (usually it's Musk, let's
| be clear) tout this
|
| The stock is down 55% in the past three years.
|
| > Why wouldn't Musk just partner with Waymo on this?
|
| Because they sell cars worldwide, not just in San Francisco and
| Phoenix. Because Waymo's required sensor suite is far too
| expensive and maintenance heavy for a consumer-owned vehicle.
| Because what they have is already far better than any other car
| manufacturer's system. Because they have a huge head start in
| data collection over anyone else including Waymo.
|
| > Isn't this a situation where the more people using the tech
| will make it better faster than trying to have a dozen
| different companies chasing it essentially duplicating effort
| and training
|
| No, because many different companies are trying different
| approaches with incompatible hardware and it's not certain
| which approach will ultimately have the best tradeoffs in the
| real world. Centralization is not the way to produce
| innovation.
| mdasen wrote:
| There are a bunch of reasons why Tesla doesn't partner with
| Waymo.
|
| The practical issue is t hat Waymo uses more advanced sensors
| than Tesla vehicles use. Partnering with Waymo would mean
| telling Tesla owners and Tesla shoppers "your vehicles won't be
| self-driving."
|
| If Tesla partners with Waymo, they're telling investors that
| their self-driving technology won't cut it. It's not just about
| ego. If Tesla is worth 10x more than GM or 100x more than Mazda
| because of a self-driving/AI/robo-taxi future, then partnering
| with Waymo is essentially saying "we'll provide the easily
| replaceable piece of the self-driving system."
|
| Let's say that this works by Waymo buying Tesla vehicles for
| its self-driving fleet. That leaves all the power in Waymo's
| hands. Maybe they ink an exclusive deal for a few years. When
| that deal is up, Waymo is going to be pitting
| Tesla/GM/Volkswagen/Toyota/etc. all against each other on
| price. Waymo has the thing they don't have. They all have
| mostly comparable substitutes.
|
| Let's say it works by Tesla licensing Waymo's technology and
| ditching their own AI plans. Again, it leaves the power in
| Waymo's hands. A few years out when the deal is set to be
| renewed, Waymo has a dozen car companies clamoring for its
| technology. Waymo knows it can seek a very high price,
| especially if Tesla wants to keep it exclusive. If Tesla
| doesn't want to keep it exclusive, then Tesla's valuation needs
| to be a lot lower like all the other car companies.
|
| And what's in this for Waymo? They could partner with any
| number of car companies. What is Tesla bringing to the table? A
| CEO likely to damage Waymo's reputation and blame them for
| anything that goes wrong?
|
| In terms of sharing things vs. not: you're kinda getting down
| to a fundamental inefficiency in our whole society. If all the
| car companies worked together on engines, we could get better
| engines faster. If all the drug companies worked together, we
| could accelerate research. But there are problems to that idea
| too. Having a single way of doing data collection can lead to
| blind spots, having a single hierarchy can mean that different
| things don't get tried, etc. There's also the issue of whose
| work gets deemed worthy of compensation.
|
| If you've ever worked at a large enough company, you'll have
| seen instances where people with entrenched ideas stymie
| progress. If everyone partnered on self-driving, who decides
| what sensors are going into the vehicles? Maybe I come up with
| a new sensor and SelfDrivingPartnership says "nah, we don't
| think it's worth the cost," and I can never test whether I'm
| right or not.
|
| In some ways, open source tries to solve some of this: everyone
| can still compete to make something better with the freedom to
| do so, but you can just take other people's code so you don't
| have to duplicate efforts. Of course, the problem there can be
| that companies don't want to share the pieces that are worth a
| lot of money. If self-driving tech is worth a trillion dollars,
| I might rather get that trillion dollars for myself and you can
| wait another 2, 5, 10, 20 years for it to be available.
| shreezus wrote:
| I have been riding Waymo around LA for over a year with no
| issues. To me, it's just an Uber with an invisible driver, and
| more predictable experience.
|
| Riding it is now a mundane experience, and that's a marvel in
| itself. Every time I'm forced to get an Uber in another city (or
| do airport rides as Waymo doesn't do pickups/dropoffs in LAX
| _yet_ ), I feel like I went 5 years back in time.
|
| My Tesla has FSD and that has gotten progressively better the
| last few updates, however Waymo still feels ahead. I can truly
| "relax" in a Waymo, where FSD still makes me uneasy at times,
| like I'm supervising a teenage driver.
| panarky wrote:
| It's been a consistently excellent experience for me in both SF
| and LA.
|
| The cars are well maintained and clean inside and out.
|
| They are very careful and considerate drivers.
|
| They navigate complex and ambiguous situations with unprotected
| turns, pedestrians, bicyclists, double-parked cars,
| construction zones and narrow streets.
|
| They're better than Uber in every respect.
|
| And I dare say I think they're now a safer and more capable
| driver than I am, at least within their designated operating
| territories.
| thefounder wrote:
| I heard Tesla has no real FSD. Just a broken prototype with
| customers used as Guinea pigs.
| dvt wrote:
| I've been taking Waymo in LA for about half a year now, and I
| love it and it's a great party trick (always pick up my dates
| in one lmao), but a handful of times it's (a) accidentally
| blocked traffic and gotten incessantly honked at (kind of
| hilarious considering there's no driver), and (b) went the
| wrong way on a one-way back alley and got stuck when a lady was
| going the opposite direction lol. Again, kinda funny when she
| started honking, got out of the car, and realized there's no
| driver. In the latter case, we actually had support call us in
| the car.
|
| I think if there's something weird/bad going on, someone
| manually takes over (but not sure if that's confirmed or not).
| Still a cool experience, but the real world is a lot more
| complicated than it first seems.
|
| Even with all that, it definitely feels like the future.
| petters wrote:
| > They're commercially available. Anyone can download the app and
| hail one
|
| Alas, not if you're from Europe it seems. I'd love to try one
| when I'm in the Bay area
| ghaff wrote:
| It's very limited geographically at this point. It's pretty
| clear it's going to be a long time before it's something near-
| universal and something you can just do with your own car--at a
| similar price point--today.
| vinni2 wrote:
| I am from Europe and managed to try Waymo in SF recently. Not
| sure why you couldn't.
| Angostura wrote:
| I think you misread. If they go to the Bay Area they would
| like to try it.
| fooker wrote:
| Most new tech takes about 5-8 years to be available in Europe
| nowadays.
|
| For good reason sure, but might as well accept it.
| xnx wrote:
| Credit to the author for pointing out the public transit aspect
| of Waymo. In the same way that mobile phones and solar are
| allowing the developing world to skip a big middle step of fixed
| infrastructure, Waymo could allow cities to skip (or eliminate)
| expensive and limited use rail networks.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Skip the efficient transit and go straight to jammed up roads.
| Doesn't seem like a good move.
| xnx wrote:
| In the US (outside of possibly NYC) existing rail transit
| isn't especially money or time efficient. Trains require
| expensive dedicated right of way and don't take you directly
| from where you are to where you want to be. Trains are also
| highly susceptible to delays because they can rarely
| circumvent obstructed tracks. A single sick or disruptive
| passenger can delay hundreds of people. Waymo vehicles take
| you from exactly where you are to where you want to be on
| existing roads and can alter their route in the case of
| obstacles.
| kredd wrote:
| How cheap Waymos have to get to actually make a dent on the
| amount of people who drive or use public transport on a
| daily basis? It's definitely an upgrade over hailing an
| Uber though, hope it ramps up and we eventually see it up
| here in Canada as well.
| jayroh wrote:
| If Waymo could operate in downtown Boston? Safely, reliably?
| Then, at that point, color me impressed!
| cjsplat wrote:
| SF is worse, except for the snow.
|
| You can complain about Boston drivers, but they are pretty
| predictable compared to SF tourists.
|
| Snow is an issue, but they'll get that done.
| tempest_ wrote:
| They don't tend to operate anywhere it might snow.
| pm90 wrote:
| > In fact, this might bring American public transportation to a
| leapfrog moment. Many pundits have lamented that developing
| cities elsewhere have "leapfrogged" the US on public
| transportation -- building subways and rail networks that put
| ours to shame. Over a hundred years ago, we built first-
| generation public transit.15 Over the last forty years, other
| countries built second-generation public transit. Now we have the
| opportunity as a nation to lead the world on third-generation
| public transit, and in that course develop products and expertise
| that can be exported.
|
| This is quite the stretch. Even in the best case scenario, Waymos
| won't beat well run public transit lines in dense cities,
| especially in east and south asia.
|
| This piece is way too optimistic about Waymo. They've mastered a
| couple of cities over many years. To do that for more cities
| would require just as much time. It's conceivable that ride share
| will continue to exist until that happens, which is likely
| several decades.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree with this. Autonomous cooperative cars
| would convoy in dynamic flocks in a way that does point to
| point transit with a lot of the advantages of trains (in that a
| major advantage of trains is they don't congest). This would
| actually have a significant advantage over every other type of
| transit. Even having a modest percent of all cars on the roads
| cooperative autonomous vehicles using basic control theory to
| relieve congestion would aid the entire cities traffic (there
| have been several studies proving this).
| rqtwteye wrote:
| Makes me wonder what Waymo's endgame is. Become another Uber,
| become a car company or provide the tech to other car companies?
| cwillu wrote:
| What's google's endgame everywhere else? Captive audience to
| put advertising in front of.
| treflop wrote:
| Their endgame is usually to build a product that they can
| abandon.
| aPoCoMiLogin wrote:
| GCP/Gdrive/Gdocs is not putting ads anywhere, and the list
| can go on. what they are doing, they are looking for other
| streams of money
| cwillu wrote:
| Google product, and therefore mark my words: today's peaceful
| book-reading ride will be ad-infested in 20 years, if not less.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| If anything goes wrong during your ride a real person will have
| to let you out and you will be stranded . A person has been
| taking many rides with Waylon but on the other hand this is
| really an alpha or beta project. See https://youtu.be/TbEplrZ-
| uSA?si=OCZt46gfVN9EfFhz
| mafuyu wrote:
| It's exciting to see Waymo and self driving technology in general
| doing well, but the analysis on the broader implications fell
| flat for me. Claims about improving commutes or being more
| effective than mass transit need to be substantiated - there's a
| ton of stuff out there on traffic engineering, mass transit, and
| urban planning that can help perform these sorts of analyses.
|
| Some thoughts:
|
| * For the purposes of transit efficiency, self driving cars are
| very similar to Ubers. They have a low passenger density (being a
| regular car), and once the passengers disembark, they still take
| up space on the road with 0 passengers. Better experience and
| lower costs will basically just induce more demand over more
| efficient mass transit options. If you imagine everyone at a bus
| stop ordering an Uber, or have ever seen the flurry of Ubers
| after a big event, it's clear why self driving isn't really
| addressing the core issue.
|
| * You can't really make direct cost comparisons to the
| infrastructure costs of bus lanes or subways like that.
| Infrastructure is ungodly expensive in the US, yes, but there are
| very well understood reasons to make dedicated bus lanes and
| subways: they don't compete with cars on the road. They're high
| density transit options, so having more reliable service will
| impact a lot more people (and reduce car congestion on the road!)
| A rideshare service is wholly unprepared to deal with the transit
| demands of a larger city, and imagining that we'd replace
| existing mass transit options with it is silly.
|
| * I don't really understand the point about suburbs. You can
| already get that experience today by ordering an Uber to and from
| work. If there's more demand, it's just going to make traffic
| even worse while promoting more suburban sprawl.
| shrubble wrote:
| In order for a bus to actually be an efficient mass transit
| option, it has to be used.
|
| Buses on regular roads create a "shadow" that affects other
| vehicles behind it and reduces 2 lanes in one direction to an
| efficiency of much less than 2 lanes, due to stops and starts.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-06-22 23:01 UTC)