4 ms·

It doesn’t service the major bar area of downtown Chandler, much less Old Town Scottsdale, Tempe or Downtown Phoenix. Although it does service Chandler Fashion

by jmpman 5y ago

It doesn’t service the major bar area of downtown Chandler, much less Old Town Scottsdale, Tempe or Downtown Phoenix. Although it does service Chandler Fashion Center (one of the main malls in the south east valley), you can’t use it to send your 15 year old to the mall/theater, as you must be 18 to use the service alone. Intel’s Ocotillo campus appears to be in their service area, so if an Intel employee lived in the 40 square mile area, they might be able to commute with it. It doesn’t service either of the airports. The trial area effectively requires a vehicle for any practical lifestyle, and any of the use cases that I’d normally take a Lyft/Uber for, just aren’t serviced by Waymo.

ErikVandeWater 5y ago
The question isn't whether it's used much but whether it's at full capacity. Waymo might as well use it in the suburbs where there are less corner case situations if it's at full capacity. The article suggests it is not used at full capacity, but isn't clear.
crazysim 5y ago
I don't think campus is covered. At least, you could never be dropped off on campus if the system is in no-autonomous-specialist mode.
908B64B197 5y ago
> you can’t use it to send your 15 year old to the mall/theater, as you must be 18 to use the service alone. They could honestly relax that constrain. > The trial area effectively requires a vehicle for any practical lifestyle, and any of the use cases that I’d normally take a Lyft/Uber for, just aren’t serviced by Waymo. The trial area seems constrained because in case something goes wrong they still have to dispatch a human. That doesn't really scale.
- ghaff 5y ago
  >They could honestly relax that constrain. I don't know what legal constraints/tradeoffs they're operating under but I was flying in planes by myself (as an adult) by the time I was 15. So it doesn't seem unreasonable.
  - postingawayonhn 5y ago
    But you weren't by yourself. There were airline employees there the whole time.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Are you suggesting that stepping in an autonomous vehicle at home to be delivered to a museum and returning the same way is somehow more challenging than flying to a different state, taking public transportation, going to work at a McDonalds, or walking around a city--all of which are things that teens do? I assume these autonomous vehicles are monitored by humans at, at least, some level.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- draw_down 5y ago
  The piece is about what is today, not what could be
- Cilvic 5y ago
  >They could honestly relax that constrain. If I were waymo I'd keep that as long as i can because the downside of "child killed by freak accident in waymo car" probably is probably something I'd like to avoid.
jseliger 5y ago
It doesn’t service the major bar area of downtown Chandler, much less Old Town Scottsdale, Tempe or Downtown Phoenix I live in Arizona and was going to say exactly this: Waymo doesn't go to many useful places right now. If it even expanded to cover Tempe (where ASU is located) and a good chunk of Scottsdale, it would be a lot more useful. Anyone on the margin of keeping a car or selling it, or not buying it in the first place, is unlikely to be heavily persuaded by Waymo availability because the area covered is so small.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Anyone on the margin of keeping a car or selling it, or not buying it in the first place, is unlikely to be heavily persuaded by Waymo I visit Arizona frequently and I don’t drive. Waymo’s current service area is useless. It’s in an area with a uniformly rectilinear road layout, low population density and lower incomes than its surrounding. It was picked for research ease. Not product-market fit.
notatoad 5y ago
It seems really unlikely that waymo wasn't aware of all these limitations when they selected the area they were going to trial the service in, and more like they selected the trial area to purposefully minimize demand.
jmpman 5y ago
Decided I’d try it out today. Drove into the service area, parked, and summoned a Waymo for a trip to the Chandler Mall. A short 10 minute wait until the vehicle arrived, fully autonomous. For the 4.4 mile drive I could have completed in 11 minutes, I was charged $11.30. Immediately, the Waymo failed to properly merge and replanned its route through a quiet neighborhood. It avoided the fastest route, the freeway, instead opting for surface streets. It ultimately arrived after 5.4 miles and 16 minutes. Overall, the braking at stoplights was better than I do, but it drives extremely cautiously, staying behind a bus for a good quarter mile, where a human driver would have passed. On the return trip, I compared pricing to Lyft and Uber. $9.75 for Waymo, while Uber attempted to extort me for $18.25, and Lyft offered a ride for $8.99 with a 3min wait, or $7.99 with a 10min wait. Again, Waymo avoided the freeway, snaking through residential areas instead. If my Tesla Full-self driving (tried the subscription - I’d recommend against wasting money on even a single month of the subscription at this point) drove like this Waymo, and I could avoid liability for being intoxicated, I’d gladly fork over the $10k Musk is very proudly asking for his offering. I’m skeptical Tesla’s going to achieve Waymo levels in the next 5 years, or ever, without an improvement to the sensors. The Waymo experience was much better than I expected, however, the car only fits 3 adults! There’s a child seat occupying one full seat, plus the middle in the rear seat. Both front seats were unavailable. If I were offered an electric car with Waymo for $25k more than a Tesla, I’d gladly pay. It was impressive.
- WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
  This is the 1st Waymo user review I've read. Thx for the post. Did you notice if the company has install road signs/hardware that help the cars complete their trips? I would think that would be possible since they have a small service area.
  - cbhl 5y ago
    [disclaimer: my opinion, not that of my employer] Changes to road hardware for autonomous cars have been happening on civil engineering timescales. For example, Caltrans commented in 2017 that it was increasing lane line thickness from 4" to 6" and phasing out the use of Botts' Dots. (Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/07/18/caltrans-self-driving-cars.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/07/18/cal...)

by jmpman 5y ago

ErikVandeWater 5y ago

The question isn't whether it's used much but whether it's at full capacity. Waymo might as well use it in the suburbs where there are less corner case situations if it's at full capacity. The article suggests it is not used at full capacity, but isn't clear.

crazysim 5y ago

I don't think campus is covered. At least, you could never be dropped off on campus if the system is in no-autonomous-specialist mode.

908B64B197 5y ago

> you can’t use it to send your 15 year old to the mall/theater, as you must be 18 to use the service alone. They could honestly relax that constrain. > The trial area effectively requires a vehicle for any practical lifestyle, and any of the use cases that I’d normally take a Lyft/Uber for, just aren’t serviced by Waymo. The trial area seems constrained because in case something goes wrong they still have to dispatch a human. That doesn't really scale.

ghaff 5y ago
>They could honestly relax that constrain. I don't know what legal constraints/tradeoffs they're operating under but I was flying in planes by myself (as an adult) by the time I was 15. So it doesn't seem unreasonable.
- postingawayonhn 5y ago
  But you weren't by yourself. There were airline employees there the whole time.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Are you suggesting that stepping in an autonomous vehicle at home to be delivered to a museum and returning the same way is somehow more challenging than flying to a different state, taking public transportation, going to work at a McDonalds, or walking around a city--all of which are things that teens do? I assume these autonomous vehicles are monitored by humans at, at least, some level.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
draw_down 5y ago
The piece is about what is today, not what could be
Cilvic 5y ago
>They could honestly relax that constrain. If I were waymo I'd keep that as long as i can because the downside of "child killed by freak accident in waymo car" probably is probably something I'd like to avoid.

jseliger 5y ago

It doesn’t service the major bar area of downtown Chandler, much less Old Town Scottsdale, Tempe or Downtown Phoenix I live in Arizona and was going to say exactly this: Waymo doesn't go to many useful places right now. If it even expanded to cover Tempe (where ASU is located) and a good chunk of Scottsdale, it would be a lot more useful. Anyone on the margin of keeping a car or selling it, or not buying it in the first place, is unlikely to be heavily persuaded by Waymo availability because the area covered is so small.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Anyone on the margin of keeping a car or selling it, or not buying it in the first place, is unlikely to be heavily persuaded by Waymo I visit Arizona frequently and I don’t drive. Waymo’s current service area is useless. It’s in an area with a uniformly rectilinear road layout, low population density and lower incomes than its surrounding. It was picked for research ease. Not product-market fit.

notatoad 5y ago

It seems really unlikely that waymo wasn't aware of all these limitations when they selected the area they were going to trial the service in, and more like they selected the trial area to purposefully minimize demand.

jmpman 5y ago

Decided I’d try it out today. Drove into the service area, parked, and summoned a Waymo for a trip to the Chandler Mall. A short 10 minute wait until the vehicle arrived, fully autonomous. For the 4.4 mile drive I could have completed in 11 minutes, I was charged $11.30. Immediately, the Waymo failed to properly merge and replanned its route through a quiet neighborhood. It avoided the fastest route, the freeway, instead opting for surface streets. It ultimately arrived after 5.4 miles and 16 minutes. Overall, the braking at stoplights was better than I do, but it drives extremely cautiously, staying behind a bus for a good quarter mile, where a human driver would have passed. On the return trip, I compared pricing to Lyft and Uber. $9.75 for Waymo, while Uber attempted to extort me for $18.25, and Lyft offered a ride for $8.99 with a 3min wait, or $7.99 with a 10min wait. Again, Waymo avoided the freeway, snaking through residential areas instead. If my Tesla Full-self driving (tried the subscription - I’d recommend against wasting money on even a single month of the subscription at this point) drove like this Waymo, and I could avoid liability for being intoxicated, I’d gladly fork over the $10k Musk is very proudly asking for his offering. I’m skeptical Tesla’s going to achieve Waymo levels in the next 5 years, or ever, without an improvement to the sensors. The Waymo experience was much better than I expected, however, the car only fits 3 adults! There’s a child seat occupying one full seat, plus the middle in the rear seat. Both front seats were unavailable. If I were offered an electric car with Waymo for $25k more than a Tesla, I’d gladly pay. It was impressive.

WheelsAtLarge 5y ago
This is the 1st Waymo user review I've read. Thx for the post. Did you notice if the company has install road signs/hardware that help the cars complete their trips? I would think that would be possible since they have a small service area.
- cbhl 5y ago
  [disclaimer: my opinion, not that of my employer] Changes to road hardware for autonomous cars have been happening on civil engineering timescales. For example, Caltrans commented in 2017 that it was increasing lane line thickness from 4" to 6" and phasing out the use of Botts' Dots. (Source: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/07/18/caltrans-self-driving-cars.html https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2017/07/18/cal...)