5 ms·

Wut? Phoenix metro area is not the bay or Seattle or NY. Everyone out there has cars. It’s hot as hell and things are spread out. Spend any time there: there ar

by newobj 5y ago

Wut? Phoenix metro area is not the bay or Seattle or NY. Everyone out there has cars. It’s hot as hell and things are spread out. Spend any time there: there are only cars. Anyone on a bus is down on their luck. Same with bicyclists, either that or they are bike maniacs biking for political or health reasons. tldr anyone not using a car is already not in Waymos target audience because they can’t afford a taxi or are just really determined to ride a bike. Downtown Phoenix, or ASU (students), or downtown Scottsdale (drunk night life) would have been the better test locations. Chandler? Wow

crazygringo 5y ago
I'm curious who is taking the Waymos then. Senior citizens who aren't comfortable driving anymore? When other family members have taken all the cars but you still need to get somewhere? When your car's being repaired?
- ghaff 5y ago
  Those seem like valid use cases. From the numbers I saw this is only about 0.01% of the population per day.
ghaff 5y ago
I think you’ve answered your own question. They don’t want drunk nightlife for these early tests. They want as predictable and car centric as possible.
- mchusma 5y ago
  Which is fine, but if you can't use it as a designated driver, to the airport, or to most locations near you, it just isn't much of a taxi service. I think the real answer here is they clearly don't really want people to use it yet. They just want to say they are the first robotaxi.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    There's also an enormous amount of work to be done figuring out autonomous fleet operations and optimizing that.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    They presumably mostly care about running a proof of concept at limited scale in as safe and boring an environment as they can without making it totally artificial. They also presumably don't really care about it being a generally useful taxi service as long as they can get some riders, which they seem to be doing.

by newobj 5y ago

crazygringo 5y ago

I'm curious who is taking the Waymos then. Senior citizens who aren't comfortable driving anymore? When other family members have taken all the cars but you still need to get somewhere? When your car's being repaired?

ghaff 5y ago
Those seem like valid use cases. From the numbers I saw this is only about 0.01% of the population per day.

ghaff 5y ago

I think you’ve answered your own question. They don’t want drunk nightlife for these early tests. They want as predictable and car centric as possible.

mchusma 5y ago
Which is fine, but if you can't use it as a designated driver, to the airport, or to most locations near you, it just isn't much of a taxi service. I think the real answer here is they clearly don't really want people to use it yet. They just want to say they are the first robotaxi.
- shadilay 5y ago
  There's also an enormous amount of work to be done figuring out autonomous fleet operations and optimizing that.
- ghaff 5y ago
  They presumably mostly care about running a proof of concept at limited scale in as safe and boring an environment as they can without making it totally artificial. They also presumably don't really care about it being a generally useful taxi service as long as they can get some riders, which they seem to be doing.