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Waymo teams up with Jaguar to intro a new, premium self-driving car

353 points by kaboro 9y ago

coding123 9y ago
Probably should have waited a little longer - I know they're trying to catch the glow around Waymo's supposed safety in light of the Uber incident, but probably should hold off - the general public isn't on top of this like HN is. I mean - I think all this talk of going live in 2018 should be stopped by officials until they create a TEST for SDVs. Also, it wouldn't be a bad thing for SDVs to run an internal offline unit test given a fake lidar scenario and make sure it doesn't kill people (every time before the car leaves the parking spot).
- agumonkey 9y ago
  On the other hand, I don't think the general public is targetted by this.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  It seems pretty unlikely that the timing of this has anything to do with the Uber crash. Why do you think it is obvious that it is related?
  - lawlessone 9y ago
    >It seems pretty unlikely that the timing of this has anything to do with the Uber crash. He/She is not saying that. They're saying that the bad PR around Ubers accident means they should have moved this event to a later date.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      I know they're trying to catch the glow around Waymo's supposed safety in light of the Uber incident ???
- treis 9y ago
  The problem is that as soon as you define a test then these companies will put an emphasis on making sure their cars work for the test instead of the real world. Then, when something happens in the real world they say well it passed the driving test. It's one of the perpetual problems of regulation. As soon as you define a test or requirement companies will start gaming the system to meet them instead of addressing the purpose behind the regulation.
  - simion314 9y ago
    You can have some required tests but those tests will be a part of the approval process, not all that pass the test get the approval but anyone that fails the test goes hope in shame. The test could have basic things like a car stopped in the middle of the road, a fake person that is fallen on the ground, a tree on the road, a big stone on the road, a big hole in the road and other similar tests. You can change the obstacle types and sizes so tests differ. The company will not be allowed to use a different software fort this tests so at least you can test that the sensors are good enough and that the software can handle basic things. This tests would be like the medical tests a driver must pass before starting the driving school, we can trust Uber like companies to perform this tests inside before putting the cars on the road for public road testing. If the tests are too basic I am sure clever people can find even better tests to stress the sensors and software before allowing the dangerous tests on public roads.
  - coding123 9y ago
    It still makes sense to have a test. We put every citizen through a driving test. Those are gamed too, but at least they learned a lot of basics... and they are probably better drivers than people not required to take a test. After that, market forces will hopefully go the rest of the mile. I mean heck, this latest incident wouldn't have passed the original Darpa challenge that got us here.
    - s17n 9y ago
      Pretty sure that driving tests for humans do absolutely nothing - if you eliminated the whole process (and replaced it with a simple age requirement) it wouldn't show up in safety stats at all On the other hand, any self driving company is running an extremely complicated and extensive test suite on their code. Developing these tests is a core engineering challenge to making a sdv and any test developed by a regulator will be a joke by comparison (unless we give the regulator billions of dollars to essentially replicate the work.)
- ComradeTaco 9y ago
  At the very least states should have a threshhold of X number of miles driven without an accident, x number of miles without a fatality, out of tens to hundreds of millions of miles of testing. Move fast and break things works fine when the at risk subject is someone's vacation photos from 2015 rather than a kid in a crosswalk.
  - aaronblohowiak 9y ago
    America has a lot of long wide open stretches of road; the point is that things can still be gamed
  - astrodust 9y ago
    Or, you know, democracy and Western society as a whole, but hey, cat photos!
- zerostar07 9y ago
  These cars can't come soon enough for some people - the disabled, the old etc. Even if they are slow and have cheap plastics, for some categories of people they are life-changing.
- akgerber 9y ago
  We should have a program to report dangerous driving by AVs, as there is a system to report dangerous driving by NYC cabs: http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/sub_consumer_compl.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/sub_consumer_comp... http://reported.cab http://reported.cab
sparrish 9y ago
Jaguar doesn't say "premium" to me. With all their electrical issues in the past, I'll be staying far away from an electric Jaguar.
- nugi 9y ago
  A self driving jag or land rover is high up on my 'eff it, I'll just walk' meter.
- _ph_ 9y ago
  You cannot compare Jaguar back then with today. Both Jaguar and Land Rover have been owned by Tata for a while now and today both companies produce state of the art vehicles with proper electrics. They mostly carry the name and a bit of the company tradition over from the past, but little else.
  - kylec 9y ago
    Tata's not exactly premium either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Nano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Nano
    - _ph_ 9y ago
      They are an industry giant (e.g. large steel production). Since they took control over Jaguar and Land Rover, both companies have produced quite high quality cars.
- falcolas 9y ago
  As a counter point from someone not in the car scene - Jaguar represents high speed luxury to me. And if shown a Jaguar and a Tesla, I'd gravitate towards the Jaguar on looks alone. My (possibly incorrect) thinking being "how can I trust a car which can't even get the panel gaps even to provide a safe ride at high speeds?" FWIW.
  - astrodust 9y ago
    EV E-Type anyone?
Ajedi32 9y ago
Here's Waymo's official blog post on the subject: https://medium.com/waymo/meet-our-newest-self-driving-vehicle-the-all-electric-jaguar-i-pace-375cecc70eb8 https://medium.com/waymo/meet-our-newest-self-driving-vehicl...
- Gustomaximus 9y ago
  > We’ll add up to 20,000 I-PACEs to Waymo’s fleet in the next few years — that’s enough to drive about a million trips in a typical day. This sentence feels marketing more than informing. Whats the initial release volume? Where etc. Up to 20k cars doesn't mean much and they think it will average 50 trips per car per day - seems hopeful. A little disappointed in this announcement.
  - kyrra 9y ago
    The same reason that Uber's deal with Volve is for up-to 20k vehicles. It's a combo of marketing and dealing that if things go well, the tech companies may order a lot of vehicles.
  - adrianmonk 9y ago
    I wouldn't be surprised if "up to 20,000" just means Jaguar said they can't build more than that because it would interrupt their ability to meet their regular orders and/or it would require too much investment / hiring to expand their factories. Although, if 10,000 were definitely enough, they might not have made an agreement for 20,000, so maybe it does sort of tell you something.
givinguflac 9y ago
“A self-driving car that won’t make you sick and kill you.” Edit: ok I’m sorry I made one joke comment referencing arrested development. Sue me.
Fricken 9y ago
20,000 robtotaxis, a million trips a day, my oh my. Go big or go home. Uber and Lyft do an estimated 170,000 trips a day in San Francisco, so if Waymo dumps just 1/5th of their fleet on SF, the rideshare companies may as well pack their bags and go home.
- jfoster 9y ago
  They've already clocked up a lot of California time from their earlier days. Seems pretty likely that they will put some of that fleet into SF. By the way, that's 20k from Jaguar. Don't forget the thousands of Chrysler minivans that they ordered.
  - scarmig 9y ago
    Interesting question: does a mile in CA four years ago equal a mile today? Not in the sense that roads change (though they do!), but because I worry about regressions and new bugs. You can mitigate it a bit by simulating many rides in virtual reality--which Waymo is absolutely doing already--but add enough cities and that would get really expensive really quickly, even by Google standards. And you probably couldn't run that world suite of tests for every code submission, or even on a nightly candidate.
    - londons_explore 9y ago
      This is a solved problem. You have a neural network which inspects the code change, and predicts which tests/scenarios might be affected (a change in the vision system is unlikely to affect the handbrake tests for example). You run only the most likely to fail tests. A test which hasn't been run for a long time is more likely to fail, since more code changes were done since it was last tested, so all tests end up being run on a semi-random schedule. When any test fails, you then run back through time, bisecting every revision till you find the code commit which caused the failure. At that point, depending on your engineering workflow, you either create a ticket to an engineer to fix this commit to pass the test before the next release, or you auto-revert that commit.
gwern 9y ago
Compared to the rumors yesterday that the big Waymo announcement was going to be announcing expansion to NYC, this is a big letdown. Who cares what manufacturer they use? The only interesting part is the 20k number.
- jvolkman 9y ago
  A big knock against Waymo so far has been that it won't be able to scale its service by retrofitting Pacificas, and that it needs to find OEM partners to help build vehicles (i.e., install the hardware at the factory). So that's what they announced.
- Alex3917 9y ago
  > Who cares what manufacturer they use? The fact that they're trying to market premium self-driving cars is interesting, because as you say there is no obvious reason to care. After all if they're all going to be driven exactly the same way and have an almost identical safety profile, what difference does it make?
  - wcarron 9y ago
    Potentially, high class events (e.g. the Academy Awards). I can certainly see the massive value of having a luxury self-driving car shuttle celebrities to an event millions of Americans watch every year. It's marketing for Jaguar and Waymo. And also, Uber has premium categories, too. Its got virtue signaling potential for the users. And, to be fair, people have aesthetic preferences. I do. If you said to me, "this cardboard box will autonomously take you anywhere you want to go without ever crashing. Or you can take this Audi S7 will do the same but there's a 5% chance you'll crash", I'd take the Audi. Personal preferences can't just be ignored, especially in the auto industry.
  - King-Aaron 9y ago
    > there is no obvious reason to care. After all if they're all going to be driven exactly the same way and have an almost identical safety profile, what difference does it make? The same difference that makes people buy a Jaguar over a Chevy Cruze in the traditional sense... There are consumers who expect a high quality of service for their dollar.
r00fus 9y ago
For those who are interested in specs of the I-PACE, I had to do a bit of seperate searching [1] for those. Hopefully the specs are somewhat similar. 300mi range isn't too shabby and it looks decent. "As standard the car comes with a 90kWH battery pack which produces a total system output of 400PS and 696 NM. It is powered by two electric motors which produce 200PS and 348Nm each and are mounted to both the front and rear axles, enabling four-wheel drive. Due to the instant torque of an electric powertrain the car will be able to sprint from 0-60mph in just 4.5 seconds and on to a top speed of 124 mph. The car will be able to travel up to 298 miles of range on a single charge." [1] https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/937715/Jaguar-Waymo-self-driving-I-Pace-car-deal https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/937715/Jaguar-Waym... (edit: link)
- gervase 9y ago
  Were you able to determine if the car is capable of being manually driven as well? Or is it self-driving only? I chuckled a bit trying to imagine a situation where the SDC logic would conclude that it was necessary to floor the accelerator up to 124MPH.
  - GoToRO 9y ago
    Yes. One thing that will happen is that people will not care anymore about how fast it accelerates but more about how smooth it goes. You don't want to spill that wine glass on you.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    The I-PACE is being by Jaguar sold to consumers (at 64k quid a pop, not cheap) so the answer must be yes, manually driven. It's in the article.
    - B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
      > not cheap Well, if every Tom, Dick and Rajiv thinks it's being driven by a computer and they can cut it off ...
  - 9y ago
a9a 9y ago
This is a bit of a let down and suggests to me that either they are not confident in the tech arriving at scale any time soon or they are not serious about directly challenging Uber. These are expensive vehicles and not custom-designed for a self-driving transportation service. I would be surprised if they were much cheaper per ride than Uber in cheap markets. If they were serious about taking on Uber/Lyft soon I would expect them to be willing to make a bet on a long-life, extremely cost-focused custom vehicle. Maybe this is a stop gap to keep proving the tech until someone else (Uber?) gets impatient, licenses their tech, and spends the vehicle capital.
- sauwan 9y ago
  Why can't they have both low cost and premium versions? Even if going high end first is the strategy here (I'm not sure it is considering them getting deals for outfitting Pacifica's), Tesla focused on the premium market first and was able to create a luxury image that makes the mass market crave it.
- stocktech 9y ago
  It read as a positive to me. Uber is losing in Asia and here's Google partnering with Jaguar who's owned by Tata Motors. This sets Google up for North America, Europe, and Asia. For a self driving taxi, I don't understand the need for a cost focused option.
- jonknee 9y ago
  The cost of the kit Waymo will add to the cars is surely more than enough to make any vehicle choice quite expensive by conventional standards. It shouldn't matter too much though, drivers are very expensive compared to cars. Not paying a hypothetical Uber driver $100 a day could easily finance a supercar, let alone a Jaguar. And the autonomous car can work triple shifts.
- notahacker 9y ago
  Google are going to scope out basic partnership agreement frameworks with the companies interested in making partnership agreements with them, and if that happens to be a premium vehicle manufacturer then so be it. If they wanted to invent a new kind of "long life, extremely cost-focused vehicle" it would take them much longer anyway, and be entirely unnecessary to successfully challenge an app company making a loss in most markets and running out of runway. What really matters is if, when and where Waymo have self driving tech adequate and legal for commercial operations. In the unlikely event of Waymo actually ordering 20k Jags, the economies of scale they'd get would be enormous even compared with non premium Uber vehicles bought on finance at dealer prices even before the driver gets paid, and many taxi markets use premium vehicles by default.
amelius 9y ago
This seems silly. With self-driving cars, it doesn't make sense to own a car. Instead, transportation will become a service. And a luxury product doesn't fit in this space. Unless, of course, they want to serve rich people first.
- rhinoceraptor 9y ago
  If you're rich and would buy a Jaguar, you probably don't want a car that 1000 other people have ridden in, and probably eaten in and got crumbs all over the place.
- adrianmonk 9y ago
  Their blog post says "built for Waymo’s transportation service". To me that sounds like they won't be available for regular people to buy.
- galdosdi 9y ago
  Why not get all the people, poor, middle, rich, all at once? Why leave any money on the table if you don't have to? That's business.
boxcardavin 9y ago
The big signal will be whether or not they launch this in a city that experiences a lot of rain, and what they do during bad weather.
- xeromal 9y ago
  The first gas car only had one gas station to use. Progress is made in small steps. We don't have to have the whole framework ready before anyone can use it.
  - boxcardavin 9y ago
    I wasn't commenting on feasibility or logistics, more on the state of their progress and if they can fully replace current services in cities or if it will augment them. If, for example, they don't work during heavy rain, then they cannot replace Uber/Lyft in most East Coast or Northern US cities.
    - scarmig 9y ago
      A world where Google owns transportation services on the West coast and Sunbelt, and Uber/Lyft owns the East Coast and Northern cities, is a world where in 5 years Google owns transportation services everywhere. Knocking out many of Uber's most profitable markets makes its runway even shorter.
    - ramses0 9y ago
      Actually, interestingly, perhaps that is "right-sizing" the cost of Taxi service? Humans only at the beck and call of self-driving cars who cannot see well in the rain. Instead of "surge pricing" for high demand, it would be "human pricing" to pay for the "skilled" driver in the rain and snow. ie: $1/mi during sunny days, $10/mi during snow days, instead of $7/mi every day of the year. Very interesting to consider, and honestly a bit scary thinking of so many people I've met who are using Uber to make a living. :-S
      - mertd 9y ago
deleted 9y ago
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nepotism2018 9y ago
Premium title is misleading, self-driving car capability isn't something "already" available on a "budget" fiat 500
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Waymo has several SDCs in its fleet, this is premium relative to those.
angel_j 9y ago
Why would you choose an auto maker known to produce vehicles with high maintenance costs?
- galdosdi 9y ago
  Because the target market is luxury customers who are not price sensitive and are willing to pay a bunch for what they perceive as the cool feeling of being in a cool car? Listen, I don't understand why Gatorade comes in flavors other than orange, but if I was Gatorade, I wouldn't discontinue all the other flavors. Some people seem to like them for some reason.
  - lulmerchant 9y ago
    I own an F-Pace, and it's all for the luxury, not the coolness. Riding in it and driving it is simply a luxury experience. I'd consider buying one of these, except it's quite ugly and has the same dumb wheel aesthetic that BMW put on their even uglier electric cars.
- notatoad 9y ago
  Car makers aren't exactly lining up to work with waymo. I wouldn't interpret this as waymo "choosing" to work with anybody.
ungzd 9y ago
Isn't Jaguar considered "racing" car? How about not just automatic driving, but automatic racing?
- jonah 9y ago
  Sure thing! The Darpa Grand Challenges which really kickstarted the modern self-driving car era were races.[0,1,2] Also, there's a grassroots community around self-racing cars.[3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge [1] http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ [2] https://www.wired.com/story/darpa-grand-urban-challenge-self-driving-car/ https://www.wired.com/story/darpa-grand-urban-challenge-self... [3] http://selfracingcars.com/ http://selfracingcars.com/
- ams6110 9y ago
  The whole point of racing is seeing which driver and crew is best. Watching self-driving cars race would be boring. It would be like watching a video game in demo mode.
- khalilravanna 9y ago
  Not really. It's really a luxury car brand. They have sporty fast cars (I'd kill for a manual F type) but they're by no means a race car company. They had an F1 team but it wasn't very successful and it looks like they only dabble in motorsports a little bit as of recent according to wikipedia. If I'm looking for really performance-focused cars I'm not looking at Jaguars. I'm looking at Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, AMG Mercedes, M BMWs, etc. With Jags you're really spending a lot of $$$ for comparable performance from something like an M3 or a Z06 Corvette (an admittedly difficult to compete with package). I think the primary allure of the Jaguar brand is that dignified, beautiful, English car exemplified by the old XJ (the car from Shaun of the Dead is an XJ). It's allure is not "I'm gonna hoon in this thing and hit 0-60mph in under 4 seconds."
  - spitfire 9y ago
    Well they had a history of dominating at le mans in the 1950's. Then they had the E-type in the 1960's and 1970's which Enzo Ferrari called the most beautiful car in the world - it was also tough competition for a Ferrari at 1/5th the price. So they had a sporting history which like other car companies they're now resting on. They also had a history as being the car for the self made man. The MkII was the car for bank and train robberies at the time. You'd meet a lot of Jag owners in jail...
dingo_bat 9y ago
I wish Uber hadn't failed like they did. Right now it seems waymo will be the only player in robo taxis for some time to come. Not good for me as a consumer.
- on_and_off 9y ago
  Other companies that Uber and Waymo are working on this, and most don't have Uber's toxic culture.

353 points by kaboro 9y ago

Probably should have waited a little longer - I know they're trying to catch the glow around Waymo's supposed safety in light of the Uber incident, but probably should hold off - the general public isn't on top of this like HN is. I mean - I think all this talk of going live in 2018 should be stopped by officials until they create a TEST for SDVs. Also, it wouldn't be a bad thing for SDVs to run an internal offline unit test given a fake lidar scenario and make sure it doesn't kill people (every time before the car leaves the parking spot).

agumonkey 9y ago
On the other hand, I don't think the general public is targetted by this.
maxerickson 9y ago
It seems pretty unlikely that the timing of this has anything to do with the Uber crash. Why do you think it is obvious that it is related?
- lawlessone 9y ago
  >It seems pretty unlikely that the timing of this has anything to do with the Uber crash. He/She is not saying that. They're saying that the bad PR around Ubers accident means they should have moved this event to a later date.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I know they're trying to catch the glow around Waymo's supposed safety in light of the Uber incident ???
treis 9y ago
The problem is that as soon as you define a test then these companies will put an emphasis on making sure their cars work for the test instead of the real world. Then, when something happens in the real world they say well it passed the driving test. It's one of the perpetual problems of regulation. As soon as you define a test or requirement companies will start gaming the system to meet them instead of addressing the purpose behind the regulation.
- simion314 9y ago
  You can have some required tests but those tests will be a part of the approval process, not all that pass the test get the approval but anyone that fails the test goes hope in shame. The test could have basic things like a car stopped in the middle of the road, a fake person that is fallen on the ground, a tree on the road, a big stone on the road, a big hole in the road and other similar tests. You can change the obstacle types and sizes so tests differ. The company will not be allowed to use a different software fort this tests so at least you can test that the sensors are good enough and that the software can handle basic things. This tests would be like the medical tests a driver must pass before starting the driving school, we can trust Uber like companies to perform this tests inside before putting the cars on the road for public road testing. If the tests are too basic I am sure clever people can find even better tests to stress the sensors and software before allowing the dangerous tests on public roads.
- coding123 9y ago
  It still makes sense to have a test. We put every citizen through a driving test. Those are gamed too, but at least they learned a lot of basics... and they are probably better drivers than people not required to take a test. After that, market forces will hopefully go the rest of the mile. I mean heck, this latest incident wouldn't have passed the original Darpa challenge that got us here.
  - s17n 9y ago
    Pretty sure that driving tests for humans do absolutely nothing - if you eliminated the whole process (and replaced it with a simple age requirement) it wouldn't show up in safety stats at all On the other hand, any self driving company is running an extremely complicated and extensive test suite on their code. Developing these tests is a core engineering challenge to making a sdv and any test developed by a regulator will be a joke by comparison (unless we give the regulator billions of dollars to essentially replicate the work.)
ComradeTaco 9y ago
At the very least states should have a threshhold of X number of miles driven without an accident, x number of miles without a fatality, out of tens to hundreds of millions of miles of testing. Move fast and break things works fine when the at risk subject is someone's vacation photos from 2015 rather than a kid in a crosswalk.
- aaronblohowiak 9y ago
  America has a lot of long wide open stretches of road; the point is that things can still be gamed
- astrodust 9y ago
  Or, you know, democracy and Western society as a whole, but hey, cat photos!
zerostar07 9y ago
These cars can't come soon enough for some people - the disabled, the old etc. Even if they are slow and have cheap plastics, for some categories of people they are life-changing.
akgerber 9y ago
We should have a program to report dangerous driving by AVs, as there is a system to report dangerous driving by NYC cabs: http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/sub_consumer_compl.shtml http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/passenger/sub_consumer_comp... http://reported.cab http://reported.cab

sparrish 9y ago

Jaguar doesn't say "premium" to me. With all their electrical issues in the past, I'll be staying far away from an electric Jaguar.

nugi 9y ago
A self driving jag or land rover is high up on my 'eff it, I'll just walk' meter.
_ph_ 9y ago
You cannot compare Jaguar back then with today. Both Jaguar and Land Rover have been owned by Tata for a while now and today both companies produce state of the art vehicles with proper electrics. They mostly carry the name and a bit of the company tradition over from the past, but little else.
- kylec 9y ago
  Tata's not exactly premium either https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Nano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Nano
  - _ph_ 9y ago
    They are an industry giant (e.g. large steel production). Since they took control over Jaguar and Land Rover, both companies have produced quite high quality cars.
falcolas 9y ago
As a counter point from someone not in the car scene - Jaguar represents high speed luxury to me. And if shown a Jaguar and a Tesla, I'd gravitate towards the Jaguar on looks alone. My (possibly incorrect) thinking being "how can I trust a car which can't even get the panel gaps even to provide a safe ride at high speeds?" FWIW.
- astrodust 9y ago
  EV E-Type anyone?

Ajedi32 9y ago

Here's Waymo's official blog post on the subject: https://medium.com/waymo/meet-our-newest-self-driving-vehicle-the-all-electric-jaguar-i-pace-375cecc70eb8 https://medium.com/waymo/meet-our-newest-self-driving-vehicl...

Gustomaximus 9y ago
> We’ll add up to 20,000 I-PACEs to Waymo’s fleet in the next few years — that’s enough to drive about a million trips in a typical day. This sentence feels marketing more than informing. Whats the initial release volume? Where etc. Up to 20k cars doesn't mean much and they think it will average 50 trips per car per day - seems hopeful. A little disappointed in this announcement.
- kyrra 9y ago
  The same reason that Uber's deal with Volve is for up-to 20k vehicles. It's a combo of marketing and dealing that if things go well, the tech companies may order a lot of vehicles.
- adrianmonk 9y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if "up to 20,000" just means Jaguar said they can't build more than that because it would interrupt their ability to meet their regular orders and/or it would require too much investment / hiring to expand their factories. Although, if 10,000 were definitely enough, they might not have made an agreement for 20,000, so maybe it does sort of tell you something.

givinguflac 9y ago

“A self-driving car that won’t make you sick and kill you.” Edit: ok I’m sorry I made one joke comment referencing arrested development. Sue me.

Fricken 9y ago

20,000 robtotaxis, a million trips a day, my oh my. Go big or go home. Uber and Lyft do an estimated 170,000 trips a day in San Francisco, so if Waymo dumps just 1/5th of their fleet on SF, the rideshare companies may as well pack their bags and go home.

jfoster 9y ago
They've already clocked up a lot of California time from their earlier days. Seems pretty likely that they will put some of that fleet into SF. By the way, that's 20k from Jaguar. Don't forget the thousands of Chrysler minivans that they ordered.
- scarmig 9y ago
  Interesting question: does a mile in CA four years ago equal a mile today? Not in the sense that roads change (though they do!), but because I worry about regressions and new bugs. You can mitigate it a bit by simulating many rides in virtual reality--which Waymo is absolutely doing already--but add enough cities and that would get really expensive really quickly, even by Google standards. And you probably couldn't run that world suite of tests for every code submission, or even on a nightly candidate.
  - londons_explore 9y ago
    This is a solved problem. You have a neural network which inspects the code change, and predicts which tests/scenarios might be affected (a change in the vision system is unlikely to affect the handbrake tests for example). You run only the most likely to fail tests. A test which hasn't been run for a long time is more likely to fail, since more code changes were done since it was last tested, so all tests end up being run on a semi-random schedule. When any test fails, you then run back through time, bisecting every revision till you find the code commit which caused the failure. At that point, depending on your engineering workflow, you either create a ticket to an engineer to fix this commit to pass the test before the next release, or you auto-revert that commit.

gwern 9y ago

Compared to the rumors yesterday that the big Waymo announcement was going to be announcing expansion to NYC, this is a big letdown. Who cares what manufacturer they use? The only interesting part is the 20k number.

jvolkman 9y ago
A big knock against Waymo so far has been that it won't be able to scale its service by retrofitting Pacificas, and that it needs to find OEM partners to help build vehicles (i.e., install the hardware at the factory). So that's what they announced.
Alex3917 9y ago
> Who cares what manufacturer they use? The fact that they're trying to market premium self-driving cars is interesting, because as you say there is no obvious reason to care. After all if they're all going to be driven exactly the same way and have an almost identical safety profile, what difference does it make?
- wcarron 9y ago
  Potentially, high class events (e.g. the Academy Awards). I can certainly see the massive value of having a luxury self-driving car shuttle celebrities to an event millions of Americans watch every year. It's marketing for Jaguar and Waymo. And also, Uber has premium categories, too. Its got virtue signaling potential for the users. And, to be fair, people have aesthetic preferences. I do. If you said to me, "this cardboard box will autonomously take you anywhere you want to go without ever crashing. Or you can take this Audi S7 will do the same but there's a 5% chance you'll crash", I'd take the Audi. Personal preferences can't just be ignored, especially in the auto industry.
- King-Aaron 9y ago
  > there is no obvious reason to care. After all if they're all going to be driven exactly the same way and have an almost identical safety profile, what difference does it make? The same difference that makes people buy a Jaguar over a Chevy Cruze in the traditional sense... There are consumers who expect a high quality of service for their dollar.

r00fus 9y ago

For those who are interested in specs of the I-PACE, I had to do a bit of seperate searching [1] for those. Hopefully the specs are somewhat similar. 300mi range isn't too shabby and it looks decent. "As standard the car comes with a 90kWH battery pack which produces a total system output of 400PS and 696 NM. It is powered by two electric motors which produce 200PS and 348Nm each and are mounted to both the front and rear axles, enabling four-wheel drive. Due to the instant torque of an electric powertrain the car will be able to sprint from 0-60mph in just 4.5 seconds and on to a top speed of 124 mph. The car will be able to travel up to 298 miles of range on a single charge." [1] https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/937715/Jaguar-Waymo-self-driving-I-Pace-car-deal https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/cars/937715/Jaguar-Waym... (edit: link)

gervase 9y ago
Were you able to determine if the car is capable of being manually driven as well? Or is it self-driving only? I chuckled a bit trying to imagine a situation where the SDC logic would conclude that it was necessary to floor the accelerator up to 124MPH.
- GoToRO 9y ago
  Yes. One thing that will happen is that people will not care anymore about how fast it accelerates but more about how smooth it goes. You don't want to spill that wine glass on you.
- r00fus 9y ago
  The I-PACE is being by Jaguar sold to consumers (at 64k quid a pop, not cheap) so the answer must be yes, manually driven. It's in the article.
  - B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
    > not cheap Well, if every Tom, Dick and Rajiv thinks it's being driven by a computer and they can cut it off ...
- 9y ago

a9a 9y ago

This is a bit of a let down and suggests to me that either they are not confident in the tech arriving at scale any time soon or they are not serious about directly challenging Uber. These are expensive vehicles and not custom-designed for a self-driving transportation service. I would be surprised if they were much cheaper per ride than Uber in cheap markets. If they were serious about taking on Uber/Lyft soon I would expect them to be willing to make a bet on a long-life, extremely cost-focused custom vehicle. Maybe this is a stop gap to keep proving the tech until someone else (Uber?) gets impatient, licenses their tech, and spends the vehicle capital.

sauwan 9y ago
Why can't they have both low cost and premium versions? Even if going high end first is the strategy here (I'm not sure it is considering them getting deals for outfitting Pacifica's), Tesla focused on the premium market first and was able to create a luxury image that makes the mass market crave it.
stocktech 9y ago
It read as a positive to me. Uber is losing in Asia and here's Google partnering with Jaguar who's owned by Tata Motors. This sets Google up for North America, Europe, and Asia. For a self driving taxi, I don't understand the need for a cost focused option.
jonknee 9y ago
The cost of the kit Waymo will add to the cars is surely more than enough to make any vehicle choice quite expensive by conventional standards. It shouldn't matter too much though, drivers are very expensive compared to cars. Not paying a hypothetical Uber driver $100 a day could easily finance a supercar, let alone a Jaguar. And the autonomous car can work triple shifts.
notahacker 9y ago
Google are going to scope out basic partnership agreement frameworks with the companies interested in making partnership agreements with them, and if that happens to be a premium vehicle manufacturer then so be it. If they wanted to invent a new kind of "long life, extremely cost-focused vehicle" it would take them much longer anyway, and be entirely unnecessary to successfully challenge an app company making a loss in most markets and running out of runway. What really matters is if, when and where Waymo have self driving tech adequate and legal for commercial operations. In the unlikely event of Waymo actually ordering 20k Jags, the economies of scale they'd get would be enormous even compared with non premium Uber vehicles bought on finance at dealer prices even before the driver gets paid, and many taxi markets use premium vehicles by default.

amelius 9y ago

This seems silly. With self-driving cars, it doesn't make sense to own a car. Instead, transportation will become a service. And a luxury product doesn't fit in this space. Unless, of course, they want to serve rich people first.

rhinoceraptor 9y ago
If you're rich and would buy a Jaguar, you probably don't want a car that 1000 other people have ridden in, and probably eaten in and got crumbs all over the place.
adrianmonk 9y ago
Their blog post says "built for Waymo’s transportation service". To me that sounds like they won't be available for regular people to buy.
galdosdi 9y ago
Why not get all the people, poor, middle, rich, all at once? Why leave any money on the table if you don't have to? That's business.

boxcardavin 9y ago

The big signal will be whether or not they launch this in a city that experiences a lot of rain, and what they do during bad weather.

xeromal 9y ago
The first gas car only had one gas station to use. Progress is made in small steps. We don't have to have the whole framework ready before anyone can use it.
- boxcardavin 9y ago
  I wasn't commenting on feasibility or logistics, more on the state of their progress and if they can fully replace current services in cities or if it will augment them. If, for example, they don't work during heavy rain, then they cannot replace Uber/Lyft in most East Coast or Northern US cities.
  - scarmig 9y ago
    A world where Google owns transportation services on the West coast and Sunbelt, and Uber/Lyft owns the East Coast and Northern cities, is a world where in 5 years Google owns transportation services everywhere. Knocking out many of Uber's most profitable markets makes its runway even shorter.
  - ramses0 9y ago
    Actually, interestingly, perhaps that is "right-sizing" the cost of Taxi service? Humans only at the beck and call of self-driving cars who cannot see well in the rain. Instead of "surge pricing" for high demand, it would be "human pricing" to pay for the "skilled" driver in the rain and snow. ie: $1/mi during sunny days, $10/mi during snow days, instead of $7/mi every day of the year. Very interesting to consider, and honestly a bit scary thinking of so many people I've met who are using Uber to make a living. :-S
    - mertd 9y ago

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nepotism2018 9y ago

Premium title is misleading, self-driving car capability isn't something "already" available on a "budget" fiat 500

dragonwriter 9y ago
Waymo has several SDCs in its fleet, this is premium relative to those.

angel_j 9y ago

Why would you choose an auto maker known to produce vehicles with high maintenance costs?

galdosdi 9y ago
Because the target market is luxury customers who are not price sensitive and are willing to pay a bunch for what they perceive as the cool feeling of being in a cool car? Listen, I don't understand why Gatorade comes in flavors other than orange, but if I was Gatorade, I wouldn't discontinue all the other flavors. Some people seem to like them for some reason.
- lulmerchant 9y ago
  I own an F-Pace, and it's all for the luxury, not the coolness. Riding in it and driving it is simply a luxury experience. I'd consider buying one of these, except it's quite ugly and has the same dumb wheel aesthetic that BMW put on their even uglier electric cars.
notatoad 9y ago
Car makers aren't exactly lining up to work with waymo. I wouldn't interpret this as waymo "choosing" to work with anybody.

ungzd 9y ago

Isn't Jaguar considered "racing" car? How about not just automatic driving, but automatic racing?

jonah 9y ago
Sure thing! The Darpa Grand Challenges which really kickstarted the modern self-driving car era were races.[0,1,2] Also, there's a grassroots community around self-racing cars.[3] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge [1] http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ http://archive.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/ [2] https://www.wired.com/story/darpa-grand-urban-challenge-self-driving-car/ https://www.wired.com/story/darpa-grand-urban-challenge-self... [3] http://selfracingcars.com/ http://selfracingcars.com/
ams6110 9y ago
The whole point of racing is seeing which driver and crew is best. Watching self-driving cars race would be boring. It would be like watching a video game in demo mode.
khalilravanna 9y ago
Not really. It's really a luxury car brand. They have sporty fast cars (I'd kill for a manual F type) but they're by no means a race car company. They had an F1 team but it wasn't very successful and it looks like they only dabble in motorsports a little bit as of recent according to wikipedia. If I'm looking for really performance-focused cars I'm not looking at Jaguars. I'm looking at Porsches, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, AMG Mercedes, M BMWs, etc. With Jags you're really spending a lot of $$$ for comparable performance from something like an M3 or a Z06 Corvette (an admittedly difficult to compete with package). I think the primary allure of the Jaguar brand is that dignified, beautiful, English car exemplified by the old XJ (the car from Shaun of the Dead is an XJ). It's allure is not "I'm gonna hoon in this thing and hit 0-60mph in under 4 seconds."
- spitfire 9y ago
  Well they had a history of dominating at le mans in the 1950's. Then they had the E-type in the 1960's and 1970's which Enzo Ferrari called the most beautiful car in the world - it was also tough competition for a Ferrari at 1/5th the price. So they had a sporting history which like other car companies they're now resting on. They also had a history as being the car for the self made man. The MkII was the car for bank and train robberies at the time. You'd meet a lot of Jag owners in jail...

dingo_bat 9y ago

I wish Uber hadn't failed like they did. Right now it seems waymo will be the only player in robo taxis for some time to come. Not good for me as a consumer.

on_and_off 9y ago
Other companies that Uber and Waymo are working on this, and most don't have Uber's toxic culture.