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> I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking? What is the "this" you're talking about here? I don't think there were many sk

> I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking? What is the "this" you're talking about here? I don't think there were many skeptics out there saying that it'll be decades before a taxi service will be able to launch a small, manned trial in a single municipality. Given that it's manned it still isn't quite at Level 4. The cynicism (and I'd consider myself a mild cynic I guess) was and is around the notion that the vast majority of us would be sat in self-driving cars by now. That was always wildly optimistic. We're making progress and that's great! But there were a lot of breathless predictions years back that have not come to fruition.

Olreich 5y ago
We look right on track for my prediction of 2050
fnord77 5y ago
flimflam man Musk stated in 2015 that their robotaxis would be up and running by the end of 2015... and he made similar claims each year after that. You can thank him for the hype and cynicism
pbreit 5y ago
This is the 2nd market and the other is unmanned.
- marcellus23 5y ago
  Okay... let me know when their market is the contiguous United States.
  - ra7 5y ago
    That's the point of this comment chain. They don't have to make it work everywhere in the contiguous United States to have a useful product. The (robo)taxi market is concentrated in big metro areas and that's what their focus is.
    - vidarh 5y ago
      The thing is, with apps providing start and end point, they don't even need to be able to handle a full city to get a benefit. They can geofence really aggressively, and the moment they can ditch the safety drivers from a sufficient subset of journeys based on routes requested, they have an advantage.
      - pbreit 5y ago
        They can cherry-pick the easiest routes. Discussing the entire "contiguous USA" is pointless.
        vidarh 5y ago
        Exactly. They can outright ignore really hard markets,. and be present in markets that have a decent percentage of routes they can handle and fall back to dispatching regular cars on routes their full automation can't handle.
  - bobsomers 5y ago
    Surely this is just moving the goal posts. If they can launch in Chandler and in San Francisco then a huge amount of the contiguous United States is on the table.
    - fnord77 5y ago
      many places have fairly strong summer storms. SF does not. Also it looks like it almost never rains in Chandler. we won't have all-weather reliable level 4/5 until an onboard computer has the equivalent power of a human brain
    - jsight 5y ago
      I completely agree. I was pretty critical of them when they were just a tiny slice of Arizona, but going from n to n+1 is really major progress. The fact that the +1 is a city as complex as SF is a really good sign as well. If they can handle SF, they can handle Charlotte, Atlanta, LA, and many other major metros just as "easily". I'm a lot more optimistic for their rollout now.
    - TameAntelope 5y ago
      Nope, not even close. There's a very specific reason they've picked Chandler, and it's that there's relatively little weather and the roads are fairly simple (among many other things specific to Chandler). The vast majority of the contiguous United States is decidedly not "on the table" as of now. "The contiguous United States" is still a decade (or more) away. It may literally never happen.
      - bobsomers 5y ago
        > The vast majority of the contiguous United States is decidedly not "on the table" as of now. So the vast majority of the US has either significantly worse weather than SF, or a significantly harder ODD than SF? Could you elaborate on that?
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  This market is manned and a serious challenge. The trial is Arizona is in an extremely quiet, predictable suburb as well as being small scale; unmanned but not as serious a challenge. Each of these is different but neither's existence by itself proves unmanned in challenging locations is right around the corner. It's kind of an exercise in Baysian statistic, how much more likely this makes one think unmanned taxis in serious location is depends on what one thinks the initial probability is.
  - darawk 5y ago
    SF seems like a pretty serious location to me. Granted, its still manned, but it makes sense that they'd start out manned in any new environment out of an abundance of caution. It seems likely that we could see a switch to unmanned in SF in the next 1-2 years if things go well. I have to think at least Waymo believes this is likely, otherwise they wouldn't be doing this.

Olreich 5y ago

We look right on track for my prediction of 2050

fnord77 5y ago

flimflam man Musk stated in 2015 that their robotaxis would be up and running by the end of 2015... and he made similar claims each year after that. You can thank him for the hype and cynicism

pbreit 5y ago

This is the 2nd market and the other is unmanned.

marcellus23 5y ago
Okay... let me know when their market is the contiguous United States.
- ra7 5y ago
  That's the point of this comment chain. They don't have to make it work everywhere in the contiguous United States to have a useful product. The (robo)taxi market is concentrated in big metro areas and that's what their focus is.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    The thing is, with apps providing start and end point, they don't even need to be able to handle a full city to get a benefit. They can geofence really aggressively, and the moment they can ditch the safety drivers from a sufficient subset of journeys based on routes requested, they have an advantage.
    - pbreit 5y ago
      They can cherry-pick the easiest routes. Discussing the entire "contiguous USA" is pointless.
      - vidarh 5y ago
        Exactly. They can outright ignore really hard markets,. and be present in markets that have a decent percentage of routes they can handle and fall back to dispatching regular cars on routes their full automation can't handle.
- bobsomers 5y ago
  Surely this is just moving the goal posts. If they can launch in Chandler and in San Francisco then a huge amount of the contiguous United States is on the table.
  - fnord77 5y ago
    many places have fairly strong summer storms. SF does not. Also it looks like it almost never rains in Chandler. we won't have all-weather reliable level 4/5 until an onboard computer has the equivalent power of a human brain
  - jsight 5y ago
    I completely agree. I was pretty critical of them when they were just a tiny slice of Arizona, but going from n to n+1 is really major progress. The fact that the +1 is a city as complex as SF is a really good sign as well. If they can handle SF, they can handle Charlotte, Atlanta, LA, and many other major metros just as "easily". I'm a lot more optimistic for their rollout now.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    Nope, not even close. There's a very specific reason they've picked Chandler, and it's that there's relatively little weather and the roads are fairly simple (among many other things specific to Chandler). The vast majority of the contiguous United States is decidedly not "on the table" as of now. "The contiguous United States" is still a decade (or more) away. It may literally never happen.
    - bobsomers 5y ago
      > The vast majority of the contiguous United States is decidedly not "on the table" as of now. So the vast majority of the US has either significantly worse weather than SF, or a significantly harder ODD than SF? Could you elaborate on that?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
joe_the_user 5y ago
This market is manned and a serious challenge. The trial is Arizona is in an extremely quiet, predictable suburb as well as being small scale; unmanned but not as serious a challenge. Each of these is different but neither's existence by itself proves unmanned in challenging locations is right around the corner. It's kind of an exercise in Baysian statistic, how much more likely this makes one think unmanned taxis in serious location is depends on what one thinks the initial probability is.
- darawk 5y ago
  SF seems like a pretty serious location to me. Granted, its still manned, but it makes sense that they'd start out manned in any new environment out of an abundance of caution. It seems likely that we could see a switch to unmanned in SF in the next 1-2 years if things go well. I have to think at least Waymo believes this is likely, otherwise they wouldn't be doing this.