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You're not. At least for a good few decades more. Anyone committed to self driving cars needs to be a road building company and own the road network that will

by weego 5y ago

You're not. At least for a good few decades more. Anyone committed to self driving cars needs to be a road building company and own the road network that will manage these mostly-automated efficiency lanes, with car provision (more likely tech/compatability licensing) as a secondary income stream.

Retric 5y ago
Waymo is currently successfully handling extreme edge cases on city streets via a call center. Which is a viable option as their cars average 30,000 miles completely autonomously. Worst case come to a complete stop and then ask a human to take over is perfectly reasonable option. Google running this as a pure Taxi substitute is seemingly a completely viable option today. They don’t need to be 100% autonomous as long as one person can handle a dozen or more cars that’s easily good enough to out compete traditional taxis or ride sharing services. Granted this is limited to a 50 square mile area, but collecting more data isn’t the difficult part.
- lumost 5y ago
  Including all the expense of r&d, call center training, liability insurance etc. Is this a viable business in a 50 square mile area? Is it scalable nationwide? Is it price competitive with traditional taxi and ride share? The overnight use case is compelling as it opens entirely new transit options. Cars could be made competitive with air travel for the overnight use case. And traffic wouldn’t be nearly as large of a concern for most if they weren’t driving.
  - Retric 5y ago
    > Is it scaleable nationwide? Is it price competitive with traditional taxi and ride share? Yes to both, critically you can use a hybrid approach for outlying areas and cities lacking regulatory approval. By comparison DC is only 61 square miles and San Francisco is 47 square miles so this is plenty of area for local service and a reasonable benchmark for expansion. What’s not mentioned is the cars do need someone to clean them and fill up the tank etc, but that’s hardly an additional expense.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

by weego 5y ago

Retric 5y ago

Waymo is currently successfully handling extreme edge cases on city streets via a call center. Which is a viable option as their cars average 30,000 miles completely autonomously. Worst case come to a complete stop and then ask a human to take over is perfectly reasonable option. Google running this as a pure Taxi substitute is seemingly a completely viable option today. They don’t need to be 100% autonomous as long as one person can handle a dozen or more cars that’s easily good enough to out compete traditional taxis or ride sharing services. Granted this is limited to a 50 square mile area, but collecting more data isn’t the difficult part.

lumost 5y ago
Including all the expense of r&d, call center training, liability insurance etc. Is this a viable business in a 50 square mile area? Is it scalable nationwide? Is it price competitive with traditional taxi and ride share? The overnight use case is compelling as it opens entirely new transit options. Cars could be made competitive with air travel for the overnight use case. And traffic wouldn’t be nearly as large of a concern for most if they weren’t driving.
- Retric 5y ago
  > Is it scaleable nationwide? Is it price competitive with traditional taxi and ride share? Yes to both, critically you can use a hybrid approach for outlying areas and cities lacking regulatory approval. By comparison DC is only 61 square miles and San Francisco is 47 square miles so this is plenty of area for local service and a reasonable benchmark for expansion. What’s not mentioned is the cars do need someone to clean them and fill up the tank etc, but that’s hardly an additional expense.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]