5 ms·
I think Waymo still has a solid shot
by dickeytk 7y ago
I think Waymo still has a solid shot
- celeritascelery 7y agoHow much money is waymo making?
- rreichman 7y agopeople asked the same thing about facebook in 2008
- anonytrary 7y agoFacebook in 2008 had a singularity of users, so people were more comfortable with the answer.
- celeritascelery 7y agoFacebook was started by one college kid 4 years prior. Waymo has had the resources of one of the largest companies in the world for the last 10 years.
- Ragib_Zaman 7y agoAnd their core goal of truly autonomous vehicles is a technical challenge that at this point seems like it will take at least several years more than what they originally thought 3 years ago. Their situation is not similar to FB in 2008 at all.
- chrischen 7y agoEven if they overcome this the bigger question is whether the market opportunity is worth the R&D costs, and whether or not bulky self driving vehicles are the best and most lucrative solution to mass transit.
- kendallpark 7y agoSpeaking of market opportunity, are there SDVs being tested in outside of California and Arizona? The rest of the US gets its fair share of rain, snow, and ice. Even if the Bay Area can manage self-driving cars, when would we expect a rollout in places like Minneapolis or Boston?
- tsimionescu 7y agoI think the CEO of Waymo has already said that that driving in bad weather is likely much farther away.
- bart_spoon 7y agoThat seems like a huge problem. Even places with idyllic weather like California can have bad days. I'm skeptical of anything purporting to be a revolution in transportation when it will largely limited to a few select areas and is prone to catastrophic failure based on something as common as snow or rain.
- jeffreygoesto 7y agoOr Mumbai? Or Jakarta?
- Godel_unicode 7y agoEven if the answer there is "never", so what? Do we really need to set the bar at "replace all vehicles everywhere in all situations" for it to be a success?
- rjvir 7y agoIt's a money sink right now, but has an obvious path to becoming a juggernaut.
- kamaal 7y agoTime will tell. But the more you sit on it, the more easy it gets for other people to catch up. By now even companies like Tesla and Volvo can do most of what any one can do. And they actually have usable cars. Google inventing AGI will be a great deal though.
- jacquesm 7y agoAnybody inventing AGI would be a big deal, but (1) don't hold your breath and (2) it could just as easily be a negative for Google and for the rest of us.
- raisedbyninjas 7y agoTBF, doing most of what a Waymo car can do is the easy part.