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It seems to me that Waymo has actual robo-taxis operational in a few cities now. No one else does! I feel that this refutes you point "This is opposed to every
by etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
It seems to me that Waymo has actual robo-taxis operational in a few cities now. No one else does!
I feel that this refutes you point "This is opposed to every other self driving startup in the space which has no practical driving experience and no commercial product to deploy on."
- twobitshifter 6y agoCruise has operated taxis in SF
- grandmczeb 6y agoNo they haven't. They've been testing driverless vehicles, but do not offer a taxi/ride-hailing service.
- infamia 6y agoWaymo has been offering a driverless Taxi service to the public since October 2020. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/waymo-finally-launches-an-actual-public-driverless-taxi-service https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/waymo-finally-launches-...
- grandmczeb 6y agoSure, but Cruise hasn't.
- nexuist 6y agoYou are correct that Waymo does operate taxis on cities, however Autopilot collects data on highways and rural roads as well. The Waymo model currently depends on 3D mapping entire cities down to the centimeter and then augmenting that point cloud with LIDAR (ideally in the future they don't need to 3D map every operating city). However, Waymo is using outfitted consumer minivans, not custom built vehicles. You can imagine that if the system becomes popular enough Honda and Toyota are going to want their slice of the pie once they realize that they can rent out self driving models rather than selling once at a dealership. It will be easier for a car maker to work with existing software rather than for a software company to build a vehicle. Tesla here owns the full vertical stack, much like Apple does with smartphones. That doesn't mean that they will control the entire market, however they will be able to squeeze much more value out of the market than competitors.