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> 2) $2.25B is a big round, and speaks to the level of confidence in Waymo as well as the massive cost to get to market It's a lot of money, but self-driving c

> 2) $2.25B is a big round, and speaks to the level of confidence in Waymo as well as the massive cost to get to market It's a lot of money, but self-driving cars are notoriously overhyped. As someone who used to work in the industry and has worked at more than one of the "top" companies (Waymo, Zoox, Cruise, Argo, Nuro, etcetera), you don't have to talk to many engineers to realize there is a looooong way to go before a meaningful product is ready for market. I'm not saying it'll never happen, but it's not going to happen before my kid is old enough to drive - and I don't have a kid yet. Before people bring up "we overestimate 1 year out and underestimate 10 years out," I was actually working on self-driving cars over a decade ago.

immy 7y ago
Your decade of experience doesn't support your projection. 10 years ago, AI didn't show a clear path toward meaningful products either. IMO product innovation isn't on a curve, it's a staircase.
- outworlder 7y ago
  > 10 years ago, AI didn't show a clear path toward meaningful products either That's not entirely correct. It's just that, as techniques become mainstream, they tend to fall out of what's considered to be "AI". As an example, speech recognition used to be firmly in the AI camp. Now that it is commonplace, it is only ever mentioned in the AI context if it is paired with ML. Regardless, there are lots of useful products using that technology. Same goes for many others.
tim333 7y ago
People underestimate how the exponential improvements in computing hardware creep up though. It's like computers were rubbish at facial recognition, chess, go and the like for years until suddenly they were not.
bryanlarsen 7y ago
Waymo is already doing rides without a safety driver to passengers who have signed their NDA. Which means they're confident of their behaviour on some really difficult problems, like pedestrians. Sure, it'll be at least a decade (if ever) before they can do everything a human driver can do, but a "meaningful product" they pretty much already have. They don't have to support driving in blizzards or on unmapped roads to be a meaningful product. Uber is useful even though it's only available in large Metro areas, Waymo can be a meaningful product even if it doesn't work in many places.
- BigBubbleButt 7y ago
  > Waymo is already doing rides without a safety driver to passengers who have signed their NDA. Which means they're confident of their behaviour on some really difficult problems, like pedestrians. If they were confident they'd lift the NDA. I really can't say much more, other than I disagree. > Sure, it'll be at least a decade (if ever) before they can do everything a human driver can do, but a "meaningful product" they pretty much already have. As per the blizzards, I'm not talking about a driverless car that can do anything a person can do. I'm talking about a driverless car in any environment (let's say Phoenix) that can compete with Uber or Lyft and possibly maybe someday somehow make a profit. Another question to ask yourself - why is turnover so high if things are going so well? Nobody wants to stick around to become filthy rich and work on an awesome product that can change the world? Or maybe reality is a little different from the blog posts you read every few months.
  - anoncareer0212 7y ago
    > If they were confident they'd lift the NDA. I really can't say much more, other than I disagree. Please say the little more you can (and thank you for sharing what you have already!) - there's been something overhanging Waymo for nearly 2 years and no one seems to want to even hint at what it is (also, if you feel comfy, I wonder when you were last privy to the internal narrative there) > why is turnover so high if things are going so well? There's _so_ little external information other than Urmson saying this is far away, Cruise is pumping near-production status, Waymo (confusingly) is in production yet if they were, then they wouldn't been doing what they're doing now. Yet all the ride reviews in the latest PR round sounded awesome!
    - 0xB31B1B 7y ago
      He’s said what matters. I’m adjacent to the field and agree. The main issue is that getting to 5 nines of reliability in SDC is extremely challenging AND it isn’t good enough. There are infinite random issues to deal with from a simulation/modeling perspective (construction, weather, rain/snow/mud/dust weirdly shaped vehicles, random Uber eats cars stopping in the middle of the street etc) then you also have issues with vehicle and sensor maintenance, maintaining enough bandwidth/compute to support a larger network of SDCs, change management in the vehicles that sees challenges w scale, HD map issues etc. All of these problems are solveable but there are a lot of them.
adrr 7y ago
Both Waymo and Cruise have received California’s approval to remove the safety driver. Both can go tens of thousands of miles without driver intervention from the safety driver. Sounds like it’s right around the corner for level 4. Throw in remote drivers for the extremely rare scenarios where the car can’t figure it out. It’s less than 5 years away for city driving in the major city areas that have lidar maps. 10 years for nationwide.
- BigBubbleButt 7y ago
  You realize you're talking to a guy who's actually seen the internal deadlines, all of the secret data, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And you're telling me the PR talking points as if it's something I don't already know to be complete and utter bullshit. So how about this: wanna bet?
  - anoncareer0212 7y ago
    Needs more data, you're asking us to go with the antagonistic anon account saying ~nothing new versus $3.5 bil of new money. Something is happening in the next decade or you have the responsibility to blow the whistle, and you gotta pick one
    - BigBubbleButt 7y ago
      > Something is happening in the next decade or you have the responsibility to blow the whistle Blow the whistle? There's nothing unethical here - I'm just saying it won't make money. It's not like children are being exploited for slavery and it's my moral duty to raise awareness to this issue. Why would I, or anyone, open myself to getting sued into bankruptcy over this? There's a big difference between making some vague comments about how I know this won't work, and releasing trade secrets. I don't have to release any more data than I am comfortable with (not to mention it would be illegal), and you don't have to take me seriously if you don't want to. But if you think I'm full of shit, you have the opportunity to make a bet with me and make some money.
      - 7y ago

immy 7y ago

Your decade of experience doesn't support your projection. 10 years ago, AI didn't show a clear path toward meaningful products either. IMO product innovation isn't on a curve, it's a staircase.

outworlder 7y ago
> 10 years ago, AI didn't show a clear path toward meaningful products either That's not entirely correct. It's just that, as techniques become mainstream, they tend to fall out of what's considered to be "AI". As an example, speech recognition used to be firmly in the AI camp. Now that it is commonplace, it is only ever mentioned in the AI context if it is paired with ML. Regardless, there are lots of useful products using that technology. Same goes for many others.

tim333 7y ago

People underestimate how the exponential improvements in computing hardware creep up though. It's like computers were rubbish at facial recognition, chess, go and the like for years until suddenly they were not.

bryanlarsen 7y ago

Waymo is already doing rides without a safety driver to passengers who have signed their NDA. Which means they're confident of their behaviour on some really difficult problems, like pedestrians. Sure, it'll be at least a decade (if ever) before they can do everything a human driver can do, but a "meaningful product" they pretty much already have. They don't have to support driving in blizzards or on unmapped roads to be a meaningful product. Uber is useful even though it's only available in large Metro areas, Waymo can be a meaningful product even if it doesn't work in many places.

BigBubbleButt 7y ago
> Waymo is already doing rides without a safety driver to passengers who have signed their NDA. Which means they're confident of their behaviour on some really difficult problems, like pedestrians. If they were confident they'd lift the NDA. I really can't say much more, other than I disagree. > Sure, it'll be at least a decade (if ever) before they can do everything a human driver can do, but a "meaningful product" they pretty much already have. As per the blizzards, I'm not talking about a driverless car that can do anything a person can do. I'm talking about a driverless car in any environment (let's say Phoenix) that can compete with Uber or Lyft and possibly maybe someday somehow make a profit. Another question to ask yourself - why is turnover so high if things are going so well? Nobody wants to stick around to become filthy rich and work on an awesome product that can change the world? Or maybe reality is a little different from the blog posts you read every few months.
- anoncareer0212 7y ago
  > If they were confident they'd lift the NDA. I really can't say much more, other than I disagree. Please say the little more you can (and thank you for sharing what you have already!) - there's been something overhanging Waymo for nearly 2 years and no one seems to want to even hint at what it is (also, if you feel comfy, I wonder when you were last privy to the internal narrative there) > why is turnover so high if things are going so well? There's _so_ little external information other than Urmson saying this is far away, Cruise is pumping near-production status, Waymo (confusingly) is in production yet if they were, then they wouldn't been doing what they're doing now. Yet all the ride reviews in the latest PR round sounded awesome!
  - 0xB31B1B 7y ago
    He’s said what matters. I’m adjacent to the field and agree. The main issue is that getting to 5 nines of reliability in SDC is extremely challenging AND it isn’t good enough. There are infinite random issues to deal with from a simulation/modeling perspective (construction, weather, rain/snow/mud/dust weirdly shaped vehicles, random Uber eats cars stopping in the middle of the street etc) then you also have issues with vehicle and sensor maintenance, maintaining enough bandwidth/compute to support a larger network of SDCs, change management in the vehicles that sees challenges w scale, HD map issues etc. All of these problems are solveable but there are a lot of them.

adrr 7y ago

Both Waymo and Cruise have received California’s approval to remove the safety driver. Both can go tens of thousands of miles without driver intervention from the safety driver. Sounds like it’s right around the corner for level 4. Throw in remote drivers for the extremely rare scenarios where the car can’t figure it out. It’s less than 5 years away for city driving in the major city areas that have lidar maps. 10 years for nationwide.

BigBubbleButt 7y ago
You realize you're talking to a guy who's actually seen the internal deadlines, all of the secret data, and a whole bunch of other stuff. And you're telling me the PR talking points as if it's something I don't already know to be complete and utter bullshit. So how about this: wanna bet?
- anoncareer0212 7y ago
  Needs more data, you're asking us to go with the antagonistic anon account saying ~nothing new versus $3.5 bil of new money. Something is happening in the next decade or you have the responsibility to blow the whistle, and you gotta pick one
  - BigBubbleButt 7y ago
    > Something is happening in the next decade or you have the responsibility to blow the whistle Blow the whistle? There's nothing unethical here - I'm just saying it won't make money. It's not like children are being exploited for slavery and it's my moral duty to raise awareness to this issue. Why would I, or anyone, open myself to getting sued into bankruptcy over this? There's a big difference between making some vague comments about how I know this won't work, and releasing trade secrets. I don't have to release any more data than I am comfortable with (not to mention it would be illegal), and you don't have to take me seriously if you don't want to. But if you think I'm full of shit, you have the opportunity to make a bet with me and make some money.
    - 7y ago