It’s easy to say Chandler is just “easy suburban streets”, but for a computer to drive by itself it’s completely non-trivial. In any case, they are already givi

It’s easy to say Chandler is just “easy suburban streets”, but for a computer to drive by itself it’s completely non-trivial. In any case, they are already giving private beta rides in SF, so you will soon see how they tackle dense urban streets. They recently started mapping NYC, so I assume that’s coming in the near future too. Waymo (and others) are very clear that geofencing and prior knowledge of roads are necessary for safe operations. Their safety standards are extremely high because there’s no driver for fallback — the vehicle is responsible end-to-end. Geofencing allows them to validate extensively and that means when they say it works, it really does. I think the mapping argument is pretty overblown at this point. Most of them have figured out how to do it efficiently and keep it up-to-date.