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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 vehicl
by 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 agoThis 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...)
- dheera 5y agoUgh I hate the name "Caltrans". They market themselves as a transit company except they provide everything but the transit. I would have hoped a company called "Caltrans" to provide 100 train routes and 1000 bus routes around California.
- dheera 5y ago> For the 4.4 mile drive I could have completed in 11 minutes, I was charged $11.30. Shit, that's expensive. I would have imagined autonomous cars to be 1/4 the price of a human taxi or less.
- jmpman 5y ago$0.50/mile is likely the low end of what’s possible for the base vehicle costs. $0.50/mile + autonomous hardware costs/expected vehicle lifetime would be the total costs. 200k miles is generous for a Pacifica. I’ve read the autonomous hardware is $250k (could the hardware outlast a vehicle and be transferred?) $0.50 + $250k/200k mi = $1.75/mi $1.75/miles * 5.4 miles actually driven = $9.45, very close to what I paid. If Google can get the autonomous hardware package down to $50k, then this trip would have been $4.05. At $5k (the absolute lowest possible?), the trip would cost $2.85. At that point, this becomes exciting.
- dheera 5y agoEven at $4.05 it's not bad, that's about the level that the autonomous taxi is twice the cost of a city bus.
- xyzzyz 5y agoThat would be much cheaper than a city bus, if you account for heavy subsidies the public buses get — the ticket revenues typically cover less than a half of operational cost of running buses, and if you include capex, it gets even worse.