11 ms·

Next Stop for Waymo One: Los Angeles

123 points by alphabetting 4y ago

ElijahLynn 4y ago
Very exciting news, as more people use autonomous vehicles, the less parking needs there will be and hopefully more parking lots can be reclaimed with plant life, that benefits the whole earth with better air and calming energy.
- melling 4y ago
  Especially in Los Angeles where 14% of land is for parking. https://la.curbed.com/2015/11/30/9895842/how-much-parking-los-angeles https://la.curbed.com/2015/11/30/9895842/how-much-parking-lo... The air quality is particularly bad in LA too. If more people used WayMo EV’s there would be a noticeable difference. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/local-2/report-says-la-has-most-polluted-air-in-united-states/2853463/?amp=1 https://www.nbclosangeles.com/local-2/report-says-la-has-mos...
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    That's surprisingly low. Houston is ~64% streets and parking: https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street-area.html https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-a...
    - melling 4y ago
      “Houston, TX Surface parking: 21.3% Garage parking: 3.7%” Parking is 25%, which is a more apples to apples comparison. More garages in LA?
      - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
        I'm assuming "surface parking" is mainly parking lots - and not counting street parking - which is close to half of all street & sidwalk surface area.
        sokoloff 4y ago
        It doesn’t seem likely that parking is even half of street surface let alone street plus sidewalk. That would require more parking width than travel lane width on any given segment with parking (to account for areas where parking is not permitted plus intersections). Few streets have less travel width than parking. Many have a multiple.
        wrywring 4y ago
        >That would require more parking width than travel lane width on any given segment with parking Not sure about Houston, but that is the case in many dense US city-suburbs. They'll have two-way roads with parking on both sides, and the roads will be about three cars wide. The result is cars parked on both sides, with drivers sharing the middle lane for both directions of travel. When you see someone driving towards you, it's a game of chicken to see who will temporarily pull off into a vacant parking spot. It seems to happen because the lots aren't big enough for 2-4 car garages and driveways. And for our friends across the ponds, yes: US households really do demand space for at least 2-4 cars per family.
  - moralestapia 4y ago
    >air quality [...] If more people used WayMo EV’s there would be a noticeable difference. How come? A car's emissions shouldn't change drastically whether it has a driver or not.
    - cgrealy 4y ago
      I think the emissions drop comes from the fact that they are EVs, not that they are autonomous.
    - matthewowen 4y ago
      > EVs
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      I believe you'll find that the difference between a machine and a human driving the same car can be dramatic. A lot of humans just drive like complete dicks. Switching the throttle map on my car to "eco" and driving in a sensible way gets me +50% MPG compared to setting the throttle map to "sport" and driving like a teenager.
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Imagine a jogging track and a cycling track that runs all through the city. I'd never get inside a car!
  - peytoncasper 4y ago
    You should take a look at the Atlanta Beltline project. It’s led to so many pockets of restaurants and small businesses that pop up along side it.
- moocow01 4y ago
  Parking lots, especially in cities like LA, are not going to be repurposed into green spaces if this comes to fruition
  - jdlshore 4y ago
    It’s not impossible. Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square used to be a two-story parking garage.
- rgmerk 4y ago
  Or more housing. Or virtually anything else would be a better use of land than parking lots. The amount of valuable land that widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles could unlock is just staggering. Not to mention the avoided costs of building undercover garages.
- tuatoru 4y ago
  > the less parking needs there will be Why do you believe that? These taxis will increase the number of vehicles on the road, because > more people use autonomous vehicles Those "more people" will be bus riders and the housebound, and extra trips by people who already use cars in one form or another. The latter's own cars will be parked somewhere. Everyone commutes at the same time of day, no-one wants to share with randos.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
whalesalad 4y ago
people are going to light these things on fire
- bergenty 4y ago
  Then they get recorded and dealt with by the law just like burning any random parked car.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    There's some precedent for other unattended things like rental scooters. If it becomes a nuisance for the police, they may choose to ignore self-driving car vandalism.
    - alphabetting 4y ago
      Scooters are like $150 a piece. These six-figure cars. Doubt that gets ignored.
      - tyingq 4y ago
        The solve rate for grand theft auto is almost always the lowest rate across felony crime types, just below other property theft. The highest solve rate is for murder, and LA hovers around 50% for that.
      - tomjakubowski 4y ago
        The scooter companies pay $150 a piece? Dang, the retail markup is crazy.
  - j_kao 4y ago
    To be frank, especially for anyone who hasn't lived in LA, the LAPD doesn't do anything for the public unless it's something involving guns and/or gangs. It's not unlike how developers mark most bugs as "won't fix". I've seen active break-ins and robberies in LA, and called the police only to have nothing being done in those situations. While anecdotal, I'm afraid this is a really common experience that has only gotten worse with COVID-flation.
jhgkjhlkhjkljk 4y ago
I hope they gain enough xp from this and other cities to test out harsher cities. Additionally, if this offering becomes attractive enough more challenging cities like NY and Chicago may themselves get involved in this process.
stirlo 4y ago
A big move for sure. The LA demographics are much less tech heavy than other cities. Hopefully they succeed and have a model where transportation become cheaper and more efficient and an individual owning a car becomes an option rather than a necessity.
- tmpz22 4y ago
  > have a model where transportation become cheaper Multiple billions have been spent on developing this technology, its hard to imagine they won't squeeze out maximum profit with a multitude of dark patterns if they do become mainstream.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Replacing the millions of professional drivers with low marginal cost software can both makes boat loads of money and make transportation cheaper.
    - mechagodzilla 4y ago
      But you're replacing low-paid drivers that supply their own cheap cars with very high marginal-cost cars and sensors (and low marginal cost software). Its hard to imagine them turning a profit from owning and operating a fleet of cars - it seems like a business model closer to Hertz than Uber, and neither are terribly profitable.
      - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        On a per mile basis they might not be expensive per car. Hertz and Uber struggle because of competition, not business model. If Waymo is the only self driving player and hence lowest cost mode of transportation, they'll make a fortune. If there are several players, they won't.
        mechagodzilla 4y ago
        They have plenty of competition though - if Waymo is operating a taxi service, they are explicitly competing with Uber/Lyft/traditional taxis/bikes/buses/all the other ways to move around - generally pretty low-margin businesses where their competitors set a pretty strict ceiling on the price you can charge (who would pay a lot more for a waymo ride vs a competitor? maybe some, but not many). Waymo would have high capital costs for the cars, plus still need centralized service infrastructure (re-fueling, re-charging, who cleans a waymo when a drunk person throws up in it?). It would also still have the same problem other companies have - lots of people might want to travel to/from work, and on weekend evenings (or to big events), but not much the rest of the time. An uber vehicle might serve double duty as a personal vehicle during off-peak times (where the driver might even have a different job), but a waymo car needs to pay for itself, so it needs to be driving a lot. I could see them licensing their software to other companies like android auto or something, but that also doesn't seem like a way to print money (how much does android auto earn for google?). It just seems like a very hard business to transition from 'fun software project' to 'clearly profitable independent business.'
bergenty 4y ago
This is fantastic news. I’ve watched a bunch of the unedited videos of waymo in San Francisco and it seems to be pretty robust.
j_kao 4y ago
This will be interesting to see if they can crack LA - drunk and overly aggressive drivers, crack addicts running around the streets, and vandalism. You can already see this "tragedy of the commons" type of behavior with the unusable public transport system (it's a nightmare to use the trains between Koreatown and DTLA, especially for women) and in the private sector with Lime and Bird scooters. Very exciting if it works out, but I don't have high hopes.
- porphyra 4y ago
  Regarding crack addicts, LA isn't that much worse than SF where they have been testing for a while. Yes, LA is bigger and has more crack addicts, but the density of crack addicts per square kilometer is about the same between the Tenderloin and Skid Row. Waymo will probably just geofence out the worst areas anyway.
  - j_kao 4y ago
    That's true, there are definitely ways to make this work if we're confining these to very restricted spaces with active monitoring. I look forward to a future LA where car ownership is optional. There's a lot of aggressive urban planning that needs to happen and implemented for it to work. Downtown Culver City is a good example.
- dangus 4y ago
  I’m really disappointed at the kind of generalizations and misconceptions you’re using here to describe a vast and diverse metropolitan area. You’re essentially blaming “elements of sin:” it’s all about the crackheads and the crazies. You’re magnifying a very small portion of the population while diminishing and disrespecting the mostly-normal law-abiding citizens who actually live in LA. You want to know why LA has drunk drivers and scary bad transit? It’s not because of all of the vague sin of the “city problems” you describe. It’s at least in part because of LA’s unsustainable car-focused development. (In that respect, Waymo might act as a welcome band-aid, but it’s still a band-aid). Why are there drunk drivers? Because you can’t walk or take a train/bus to the bar. Why is transit scary? Because only the truly desperate actually use the barely-useful mass transit in LA, because LA was built for cars. Why are the crackheads out vandalizing stuff? Maybe because car-focused development exacerbates wealth inequality [1] by encouraging the development of socioeconomically segregated communities, and by gating economic opportunity behind the most expensive form of transportation, requiring everyone to buy and maintain personal vehicles at high rates (at least one vehicle per person). Don’t have your own car? Hope someone can drive you to work! Want to interview for that job? It’s far away, hope you can pay for gas! Disabled? Elderly? Guess you’re not going anywhere! [1] https://inequality.org/research/public-transit-inequality/ https://inequality.org/research/public-transit-inequality/
hervature 4y ago
> When we think about our next cities, Los Angeles jumps out,” said Waymo’s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. “LA is a remarkable, vibrant place – and Waymo’s experience leaves us best positioned to tackle its driving complexity. That's a funny way to say the next biggest place with 300 days of sun per year.
- TotoHorner 4y ago
  > That's a funny way to say the next biggest place with 300 days of sun per year. Why does that matter?
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Self driving cars don’t work in rain/snow
    - 988747 4y ago
      ...yet. I think Waymo's approach of launching the service in the cities when it is easy first, and over time expanding to more troublesome climates is much more sensible than Tesla's "humans can do it, so AI should be able to, with just cameras".
      - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
        > Waymo's approach of launching the service in the cities when it is easy first, and over time expanding to more troublesome climates is much more sensible Is there a fundamental answer to this question? Start with low-hanging fruit and then build up? Or begin with the most challenging bits before gliding forward? The risk with the former is you end up in a dead end. The risk with the latter, finding the hard problems intractable without the experience of solving the easier ones.
        danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        From a business perspective it's probably not even close. Start with the easiest + biggest. Scale matters here so you can't leave big easy markets there for the taking.
ra7 4y ago
Great news! It does seem like the 5th gen hardware will enable scale and real revenue generating operations for Waymo. The videos coming out of driverless rides in SF [1][2] and Downtown Phoenix [3] (both employee-only currently) look very impressive. So I don’t doubt they can crack LA. It will be interesting to see how Waymo progressively reduces deploy time in a new city. [1] https://youtu.be/ZBvce_eC28A https://youtu.be/ZBvce_eC28A [2] https://youtu.be/qPDkKUXkQYk https://youtu.be/qPDkKUXkQYk [3] https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE
- boulos 4y ago
  Downtown Phoenix riders (currently Trusted Tester) are allowed in rider-only / driverless [1]: > Downtown Phoenix: Now offering paid rider-only trips to Waymo employees and Trusted Testers. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/29/23323593/waymo-driverless-vehicles-passengers-downtown-phoenix https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/29/23323593/waymo-driverless...
- aeternum 4y ago
  Employee-only with strict TOS so it's hard to tell how cherry-picked these videos are.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
jeffrallen 4y ago
Great, more autonomous murder bots. Maybe when there are enough of them, society will say "enough is enough".
- ausbah 4y ago
  in a similar line of reasoning, cars by humans are a much larger problem that's already here
  - TremendousJudge 4y ago
    I completely agree. And autonomous vehicles solve none of the issues of regular cars, except maybe injury rate. The rest is the same -- emissions, inefficiency, expense, noise, traffic congestion, unwalkable cities, and so on.
    - eklitzke 4y ago
      In some trite sense what you're saying is true, but if autonomous vehicles are widely available and cheap they'll drastically reduce vehicle ownership rates, which will help improve the status quo for most of the problems you listed.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      They're electric, so that solves the emissions and noise problems. Once self-driving cars are common people will figure out that it's safe to jaywalk in front of them, and nobody minds inconveniencing a robot, so I expect jaywalking to rise substantially too. A self-driving hire car isn't idle 23 hours a day like a normal car so that should solve some of the inefficiency and expense issues. All I'm left with on your list is congestion, and that'll remain, even if the self-driving cars start communicating with each other to allow closer spacing. Making something cheaper and/or easier inevitably increases usage.
      - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
        > All I'm left with on your list is congestion, and that'll remain Smart car sized AEVs, rather than Hummer sized AEVs. Individual "pods" the size of motor cycles, rather than cars. Today we all buy "peak usage cars". i.e. "Once a quarter I drive 300+ miles", "Once a week I drive my whole family to the park/hike/...", "I'm not yet an off-roading type of person, but might as well spend the extra $10k just incase I wanna get into it. (never gonna get into it)", "What about something that will go fast on the track, just incase I need that". Then 99% of the miles this giant 5+ person car with storage will ever drive is 1 person trips to and from work bumper to bumper. When the car isn't owned, you don't need to buy "peak usage cars". You can order a car sized for the usecase. This will reduce a lot of congestion!
Animats 4y ago
When does SF get actual Waymo service? Only the Phoenix AZ area has open to the public Waymo ride service. SF is still at the "Trusted Tester" phase.
aantix 4y ago
Surprised that no one has done a covert challenge of Waymo vs FSD 10.69.2.3 in a side by side comparison? Does that video exist?
- ra7 4y ago
  Probably not as it’s not a meaningful comparison. One is completely driverless (L4) and the other requires a driver with hands on the wheel ready to take over (L2). Removing the driver (safely and reliably) is like 99.99% of the problem in self driving. That means FSD has to work only once for a YouTube video, but a Waymo has to work every single time as there’s no driver to rescue when things go wrong. So apples to oranges.
  - aantix 4y ago
    That's still a meaningful comparison as it would highlight the disparity between FSD and Waymo.
    - jeffbee 4y ago
      The difference is that Waymo works and FSD does not work, so it's going to be a short video. FSD cannot take a trip without a man behind the wheel, full stop. It is not any more "self driving" than any other car.
      - GaylordTuring 4y ago
        But the person can just sit there and not continue to drive after an intervention. I don’t see why this video wouldn’t be possible or interesting.
        jeffbee 4y ago
        My Honda Civic also proceeds in a more or less forward direction between driver interventions, but it is not self-driving.
dameyawn 4y ago
They mention unprotected left turns. I'm really curious how this will be handled in LA because there are a lot, and if you aren't at least a little aggressive, you will miss lights constantly. And some lights are miserable if the cars turning left in front of you are passive, and only one makes it through per light change.
- sneak 4y ago
  Missing lights isn’t a problem when your time and attention isn’t consumed by the pointless toil of driving. It’s just the same 2 minutes it takes to microwave some popcorn.
  - dameyawn 4y ago
    Yea, that's a fair point. Though I'd still be upset if I'm waiting in a line of Waymos turning left that go once per light change when I'm not in a self-driving car.
  - mechagodzilla 4y ago
    That’s the same experience as being in a taxi though, and plenty of people get frustrated by slow taxi rides. Nobody wants to spend more time than they have to in a taxi, whether driven by a human or computer.
- xenospn 4y ago
  UPS trucks generally avoid left turns whenever possible. They can do the same thing.
solarkraft 4y ago
I expect the cultural impact of launching in the world's media capital to be high. If they're good it'll be strong advertising and everyone will want it. If there are prominent things to criticize you can be sure they'll be criticized heavily. I assume (hope) they're now reasonably sure the service doesn't suck and preparing for further expansion.
Goosey 4y ago
Can confirm having seen Waymo vehicle's driving in my hood several times this past week. I'm concerned that Waymo will never be able to drive "the LA way" and ultimately cause congestion. For example it's standard in LA that when the light turns yellow then two cars are able to make a left turn in time to not back up the perpendicular Lane. Or if you are turning left you should try to make room on your right, so that those going straight can get around you. No way Waymo vehicles will be doing that. All in all there are certain behaviors that are necessary in a city with traffic like LA that would certainly be outside the strict safety parameters that (I assume) Waymo operates under.
- fragmede 4y ago
  San Francisco driving's got it's own challenges but they have unprotected lefts as well.
- minwcnt5 4y ago
  > Or if you are turning left you should try to make room on your right, so that those going straight can get around you. No way Waymo vehicles will be doing that. Why do you say that? In this video you can see it doing exactly that, pulling to the side a bit to make room on the left for a vehicle doing a weird u-turn inside an intersection: https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE?t=442 https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE?t=442 If anything, common behaviors should be among the easiest for an AI system to learn.
Ptchd 4y ago

123 points by alphabetting 4y ago

Very exciting news, as more people use autonomous vehicles, the less parking needs there will be and hopefully more parking lots can be reclaimed with plant life, that benefits the whole earth with better air and calming energy.

melling 4y ago
Especially in Los Angeles where 14% of land is for parking. https://la.curbed.com/2015/11/30/9895842/how-much-parking-los-angeles https://la.curbed.com/2015/11/30/9895842/how-much-parking-lo... The air quality is particularly bad in LA too. If more people used WayMo EV’s there would be a noticeable difference. https://www.nbclosangeles.com/local-2/report-says-la-has-most-polluted-air-in-united-states/2853463/?amp=1 https://www.nbclosangeles.com/local-2/report-says-la-has-mos...
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  That's surprisingly low. Houston is ~64% streets and parking: https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-at-street-area.html https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-a...
  - melling 4y ago
    “Houston, TX Surface parking: 21.3% Garage parking: 3.7%” Parking is 25%, which is a more apples to apples comparison. More garages in LA?
    - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
      I'm assuming "surface parking" is mainly parking lots - and not counting street parking - which is close to half of all street & sidwalk surface area.
      - sokoloff 4y ago
        It doesn’t seem likely that parking is even half of street surface let alone street plus sidewalk. That would require more parking width than travel lane width on any given segment with parking (to account for areas where parking is not permitted plus intersections). Few streets have less travel width than parking. Many have a multiple.
        wrywring 4y ago
        >That would require more parking width than travel lane width on any given segment with parking Not sure about Houston, but that is the case in many dense US city-suburbs. They'll have two-way roads with parking on both sides, and the roads will be about three cars wide. The result is cars parked on both sides, with drivers sharing the middle lane for both directions of travel. When you see someone driving towards you, it's a game of chicken to see who will temporarily pull off into a vacant parking spot. It seems to happen because the lots aren't big enough for 2-4 car garages and driveways. And for our friends across the ponds, yes: US households really do demand space for at least 2-4 cars per family.
- moralestapia 4y ago
  >air quality [...] If more people used WayMo EV’s there would be a noticeable difference. How come? A car's emissions shouldn't change drastically whether it has a driver or not.
  - cgrealy 4y ago
    I think the emissions drop comes from the fact that they are EVs, not that they are autonomous.
  - matthewowen 4y ago
    > EVs
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    I believe you'll find that the difference between a machine and a human driving the same car can be dramatic. A lot of humans just drive like complete dicks. Switching the throttle map on my car to "eco" and driving in a sensible way gets me +50% MPG compared to setting the throttle map to "sport" and driving like a teenager.
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Imagine a jogging track and a cycling track that runs all through the city. I'd never get inside a car!
- peytoncasper 4y ago
  You should take a look at the Atlanta Beltline project. It’s led to so many pockets of restaurants and small businesses that pop up along side it.
moocow01 4y ago
Parking lots, especially in cities like LA, are not going to be repurposed into green spaces if this comes to fruition
- jdlshore 4y ago
  It’s not impossible. Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square used to be a two-story parking garage.
rgmerk 4y ago
Or more housing. Or virtually anything else would be a better use of land than parking lots. The amount of valuable land that widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles could unlock is just staggering. Not to mention the avoided costs of building undercover garages.
tuatoru 4y ago
> the less parking needs there will be Why do you believe that? These taxis will increase the number of vehicles on the road, because > more people use autonomous vehicles Those "more people" will be bus riders and the housebound, and extra trips by people who already use cars in one form or another. The latter's own cars will be parked somewhere. Everyone commutes at the same time of day, no-one wants to share with randos.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

whalesalad 4y ago

people are going to light these things on fire

bergenty 4y ago
Then they get recorded and dealt with by the law just like burning any random parked car.
- tyingq 4y ago
  There's some precedent for other unattended things like rental scooters. If it becomes a nuisance for the police, they may choose to ignore self-driving car vandalism.
  - alphabetting 4y ago
    Scooters are like $150 a piece. These six-figure cars. Doubt that gets ignored.
    - tyingq 4y ago
      The solve rate for grand theft auto is almost always the lowest rate across felony crime types, just below other property theft. The highest solve rate is for murder, and LA hovers around 50% for that.
    - tomjakubowski 4y ago
      The scooter companies pay $150 a piece? Dang, the retail markup is crazy.
- j_kao 4y ago
  To be frank, especially for anyone who hasn't lived in LA, the LAPD doesn't do anything for the public unless it's something involving guns and/or gangs. It's not unlike how developers mark most bugs as "won't fix". I've seen active break-ins and robberies in LA, and called the police only to have nothing being done in those situations. While anecdotal, I'm afraid this is a really common experience that has only gotten worse with COVID-flation.

jhgkjhlkhjkljk 4y ago

I hope they gain enough xp from this and other cities to test out harsher cities. Additionally, if this offering becomes attractive enough more challenging cities like NY and Chicago may themselves get involved in this process.

stirlo 4y ago

A big move for sure. The LA demographics are much less tech heavy than other cities. Hopefully they succeed and have a model where transportation become cheaper and more efficient and an individual owning a car becomes an option rather than a necessity.

tmpz22 4y ago
> have a model where transportation become cheaper Multiple billions have been spent on developing this technology, its hard to imagine they won't squeeze out maximum profit with a multitude of dark patterns if they do become mainstream.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Replacing the millions of professional drivers with low marginal cost software can both makes boat loads of money and make transportation cheaper.
  - mechagodzilla 4y ago
    But you're replacing low-paid drivers that supply their own cheap cars with very high marginal-cost cars and sensors (and low marginal cost software). Its hard to imagine them turning a profit from owning and operating a fleet of cars - it seems like a business model closer to Hertz than Uber, and neither are terribly profitable.
    - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
      On a per mile basis they might not be expensive per car. Hertz and Uber struggle because of competition, not business model. If Waymo is the only self driving player and hence lowest cost mode of transportation, they'll make a fortune. If there are several players, they won't.
      - mechagodzilla 4y ago
        They have plenty of competition though - if Waymo is operating a taxi service, they are explicitly competing with Uber/Lyft/traditional taxis/bikes/buses/all the other ways to move around - generally pretty low-margin businesses where their competitors set a pretty strict ceiling on the price you can charge (who would pay a lot more for a waymo ride vs a competitor? maybe some, but not many). Waymo would have high capital costs for the cars, plus still need centralized service infrastructure (re-fueling, re-charging, who cleans a waymo when a drunk person throws up in it?). It would also still have the same problem other companies have - lots of people might want to travel to/from work, and on weekend evenings (or to big events), but not much the rest of the time. An uber vehicle might serve double duty as a personal vehicle during off-peak times (where the driver might even have a different job), but a waymo car needs to pay for itself, so it needs to be driving a lot. I could see them licensing their software to other companies like android auto or something, but that also doesn't seem like a way to print money (how much does android auto earn for google?). It just seems like a very hard business to transition from 'fun software project' to 'clearly profitable independent business.'

bergenty 4y ago

This is fantastic news. I’ve watched a bunch of the unedited videos of waymo in San Francisco and it seems to be pretty robust.

j_kao 4y ago

This will be interesting to see if they can crack LA - drunk and overly aggressive drivers, crack addicts running around the streets, and vandalism. You can already see this "tragedy of the commons" type of behavior with the unusable public transport system (it's a nightmare to use the trains between Koreatown and DTLA, especially for women) and in the private sector with Lime and Bird scooters. Very exciting if it works out, but I don't have high hopes.

porphyra 4y ago
Regarding crack addicts, LA isn't that much worse than SF where they have been testing for a while. Yes, LA is bigger and has more crack addicts, but the density of crack addicts per square kilometer is about the same between the Tenderloin and Skid Row. Waymo will probably just geofence out the worst areas anyway.
- j_kao 4y ago
  That's true, there are definitely ways to make this work if we're confining these to very restricted spaces with active monitoring. I look forward to a future LA where car ownership is optional. There's a lot of aggressive urban planning that needs to happen and implemented for it to work. Downtown Culver City is a good example.
dangus 4y ago
I’m really disappointed at the kind of generalizations and misconceptions you’re using here to describe a vast and diverse metropolitan area. You’re essentially blaming “elements of sin:” it’s all about the crackheads and the crazies. You’re magnifying a very small portion of the population while diminishing and disrespecting the mostly-normal law-abiding citizens who actually live in LA. You want to know why LA has drunk drivers and scary bad transit? It’s not because of all of the vague sin of the “city problems” you describe. It’s at least in part because of LA’s unsustainable car-focused development. (In that respect, Waymo might act as a welcome band-aid, but it’s still a band-aid). Why are there drunk drivers? Because you can’t walk or take a train/bus to the bar. Why is transit scary? Because only the truly desperate actually use the barely-useful mass transit in LA, because LA was built for cars. Why are the crackheads out vandalizing stuff? Maybe because car-focused development exacerbates wealth inequality [1] by encouraging the development of socioeconomically segregated communities, and by gating economic opportunity behind the most expensive form of transportation, requiring everyone to buy and maintain personal vehicles at high rates (at least one vehicle per person). Don’t have your own car? Hope someone can drive you to work! Want to interview for that job? It’s far away, hope you can pay for gas! Disabled? Elderly? Guess you’re not going anywhere! [1] https://inequality.org/research/public-transit-inequality/ https://inequality.org/research/public-transit-inequality/

hervature 4y ago

> When we think about our next cities, Los Angeles jumps out,” said Waymo’s co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana. “LA is a remarkable, vibrant place – and Waymo’s experience leaves us best positioned to tackle its driving complexity. That's a funny way to say the next biggest place with 300 days of sun per year.

TotoHorner 4y ago
> That's a funny way to say the next biggest place with 300 days of sun per year. Why does that matter?
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Self driving cars don’t work in rain/snow
  - 988747 4y ago
    ...yet. I think Waymo's approach of launching the service in the cities when it is easy first, and over time expanding to more troublesome climates is much more sensible than Tesla's "humans can do it, so AI should be able to, with just cameras".
    - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
      > Waymo's approach of launching the service in the cities when it is easy first, and over time expanding to more troublesome climates is much more sensible Is there a fundamental answer to this question? Start with low-hanging fruit and then build up? Or begin with the most challenging bits before gliding forward? The risk with the former is you end up in a dead end. The risk with the latter, finding the hard problems intractable without the experience of solving the easier ones.
      - danielmarkbruce 4y ago
        From a business perspective it's probably not even close. Start with the easiest + biggest. Scale matters here so you can't leave big easy markets there for the taking.

ra7 4y ago

Great news! It does seem like the 5th gen hardware will enable scale and real revenue generating operations for Waymo. The videos coming out of driverless rides in SF [1][2] and Downtown Phoenix [3] (both employee-only currently) look very impressive. So I don’t doubt they can crack LA. It will be interesting to see how Waymo progressively reduces deploy time in a new city. [1] https://youtu.be/ZBvce_eC28A https://youtu.be/ZBvce_eC28A [2] https://youtu.be/qPDkKUXkQYk https://youtu.be/qPDkKUXkQYk [3] https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE

boulos 4y ago
Downtown Phoenix riders (currently Trusted Tester) are allowed in rider-only / driverless [1]: > Downtown Phoenix: Now offering paid rider-only trips to Waymo employees and Trusted Testers. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/29/23323593/waymo-driverless-vehicles-passengers-downtown-phoenix https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/29/23323593/waymo-driverless...
aeternum 4y ago
Employee-only with strict TOS so it's hard to tell how cherry-picked these videos are.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

jeffrallen 4y ago

Great, more autonomous murder bots. Maybe when there are enough of them, society will say "enough is enough".

ausbah 4y ago
in a similar line of reasoning, cars by humans are a much larger problem that's already here
- TremendousJudge 4y ago
  I completely agree. And autonomous vehicles solve none of the issues of regular cars, except maybe injury rate. The rest is the same -- emissions, inefficiency, expense, noise, traffic congestion, unwalkable cities, and so on.
  - eklitzke 4y ago
    In some trite sense what you're saying is true, but if autonomous vehicles are widely available and cheap they'll drastically reduce vehicle ownership rates, which will help improve the status quo for most of the problems you listed.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    They're electric, so that solves the emissions and noise problems. Once self-driving cars are common people will figure out that it's safe to jaywalk in front of them, and nobody minds inconveniencing a robot, so I expect jaywalking to rise substantially too. A self-driving hire car isn't idle 23 hours a day like a normal car so that should solve some of the inefficiency and expense issues. All I'm left with on your list is congestion, and that'll remain, even if the self-driving cars start communicating with each other to allow closer spacing. Making something cheaper and/or easier inevitably increases usage.
    - yazaddaruvala 4y ago
      > All I'm left with on your list is congestion, and that'll remain Smart car sized AEVs, rather than Hummer sized AEVs. Individual "pods" the size of motor cycles, rather than cars. Today we all buy "peak usage cars". i.e. "Once a quarter I drive 300+ miles", "Once a week I drive my whole family to the park/hike/...", "I'm not yet an off-roading type of person, but might as well spend the extra $10k just incase I wanna get into it. (never gonna get into it)", "What about something that will go fast on the track, just incase I need that". Then 99% of the miles this giant 5+ person car with storage will ever drive is 1 person trips to and from work bumper to bumper. When the car isn't owned, you don't need to buy "peak usage cars". You can order a car sized for the usecase. This will reduce a lot of congestion!

Animats 4y ago

When does SF get actual Waymo service? Only the Phoenix AZ area has open to the public Waymo ride service. SF is still at the "Trusted Tester" phase.

aantix 4y ago

Surprised that no one has done a covert challenge of Waymo vs FSD 10.69.2.3 in a side by side comparison? Does that video exist?

ra7 4y ago
Probably not as it’s not a meaningful comparison. One is completely driverless (L4) and the other requires a driver with hands on the wheel ready to take over (L2). Removing the driver (safely and reliably) is like 99.99% of the problem in self driving. That means FSD has to work only once for a YouTube video, but a Waymo has to work every single time as there’s no driver to rescue when things go wrong. So apples to oranges.
- aantix 4y ago
  That's still a meaningful comparison as it would highlight the disparity between FSD and Waymo.
  - jeffbee 4y ago
    The difference is that Waymo works and FSD does not work, so it's going to be a short video. FSD cannot take a trip without a man behind the wheel, full stop. It is not any more "self driving" than any other car.
    - GaylordTuring 4y ago
      But the person can just sit there and not continue to drive after an intervention. I don’t see why this video wouldn’t be possible or interesting.
      - jeffbee 4y ago
        My Honda Civic also proceeds in a more or less forward direction between driver interventions, but it is not self-driving.

dameyawn 4y ago

They mention unprotected left turns. I'm really curious how this will be handled in LA because there are a lot, and if you aren't at least a little aggressive, you will miss lights constantly. And some lights are miserable if the cars turning left in front of you are passive, and only one makes it through per light change.

sneak 4y ago
Missing lights isn’t a problem when your time and attention isn’t consumed by the pointless toil of driving. It’s just the same 2 minutes it takes to microwave some popcorn.
- dameyawn 4y ago
  Yea, that's a fair point. Though I'd still be upset if I'm waiting in a line of Waymos turning left that go once per light change when I'm not in a self-driving car.
- mechagodzilla 4y ago
  That’s the same experience as being in a taxi though, and plenty of people get frustrated by slow taxi rides. Nobody wants to spend more time than they have to in a taxi, whether driven by a human or computer.
xenospn 4y ago
UPS trucks generally avoid left turns whenever possible. They can do the same thing.

solarkraft 4y ago

I expect the cultural impact of launching in the world's media capital to be high. If they're good it'll be strong advertising and everyone will want it. If there are prominent things to criticize you can be sure they'll be criticized heavily. I assume (hope) they're now reasonably sure the service doesn't suck and preparing for further expansion.

Goosey 4y ago

Can confirm having seen Waymo vehicle's driving in my hood several times this past week. I'm concerned that Waymo will never be able to drive "the LA way" and ultimately cause congestion. For example it's standard in LA that when the light turns yellow then two cars are able to make a left turn in time to not back up the perpendicular Lane. Or if you are turning left you should try to make room on your right, so that those going straight can get around you. No way Waymo vehicles will be doing that. All in all there are certain behaviors that are necessary in a city with traffic like LA that would certainly be outside the strict safety parameters that (I assume) Waymo operates under.

fragmede 4y ago
San Francisco driving's got it's own challenges but they have unprotected lefts as well.
minwcnt5 4y ago
> Or if you are turning left you should try to make room on your right, so that those going straight can get around you. No way Waymo vehicles will be doing that. Why do you say that? In this video you can see it doing exactly that, pulling to the side a bit to make room on the left for a vehicle doing a weird u-turn inside an intersection: https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE?t=442 https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE?t=442 If anything, common behaviors should be among the easiest for an AI system to learn.

Ptchd 4y ago