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Why is it always Cruise in these incidents? From afar, it seems that Waymo is generally safer & more methodical in their rollout while Cruise keeps announcing n

Why is it always Cruise in these incidents? From afar, it seems that Waymo is generally safer & more methodical in their rollout while Cruise keeps announcing new cities before they've quite solved things. I get that they need to be bold if they're going to try to compete, but is it worth injuring people and creating negative press for the industry? ...Ultimately I'd love to see multiple players in this market, but I feel like Cruise has jumped the gun a bit here, and I am afraid there will be wider backlash.

jeffbee 3y ago
I've ridden both and Cruise just sucks. Riding in their car is terrifying.
- spankalee 3y ago
  Full, disclosure: I work at Google but... I rode in a Waymo and a Cruise in the same week recently, and terrifying is exactly how I would describe the Cruise ride. It often couldn't find it's lane and kept making abrupt swerves and corrections in the road. It would hesitate all the time, then seem to try to make it for it by gunning it forward when it made up its mind. Then five our so Cruises at an intersection near Market St couldn't figure out how to get through the light more than one car at a time, backing the whole street up. People were pissed. My friend who had the Cruise app thought it was normal and kind of fun :/ The Waymo ride, on the other had, was kind of boring. The worst part was it circled the block picking me up because it didn't see a good spot to stop right away (and I think I moved a bit from the pin). Other than that it was a very smooth ride, it showed me on a screen where all other cars and pedestrians it knew of were, it gave pedestrians enough room, it even handled a two-lane street where there were stopped cars blocking each way and it had to zig-zag across the double yellow, and yield to cars from the other direction doing the same. I will not be riding in a Cruise again for a while, and I'm kind of scared to be on the street with them.
  - hot_gril 3y ago
    I'm imagining sitting in the passenger seat of a Cruise car and getting involved in a road rage incident directed at the empty driver's seat.
jfim 3y ago
I'm not going to comment on Cruise specifically, but keep in mind that AV companies have an insane burn rate in the order of 9 figures yearly or more, without any meaningful revenue at this point in time. They're under a lot of pressure to show some kind of growth, especially considering the current environment in which money isn't as easy to get anymore.
hiddencost 3y ago
There's a risk/reward trade-off to be made. Waymo had a huge head start, a ton of advantages, and more cash to burn. So they chose one operating point, under the theory that public perception and trust were vital to get right. Later entrants chose a different operating point, because they had to catch up and had more limitations. This is why Tesla rolled out autopilot before it was ready and killed a bunch of people; getting data collection running at scale was the only way for them to compete. Keep in mind that Musk promised a million robotaxis within a year of their roll out. That didn't happen.
saalweachter 3y ago
So both Cruise and Waymo are subsidiaries of giant corporations rather than VC funded and needing to push tempo before they collapse. I don't think GM is particularly less risk adverse than Google. Maybe the depth of the respective corporate coffers and the power of the executives backing the respective subsidiaries? I'm pretty sure that Waymo is supported directly by the Google founders, and I don't even think there's an equivalent person at GM to guarantee Cruise's continuation if they don't show results.
zetazzed 3y ago
Yes, if I were Waymo I would be so pissed. It looks like protestors and regulators want to lump the two together. I'm pretty supportive of careful public testing of AV, but even I look at these recent Cruise incidents and find it very understandable that a city would want to kick out these AVs.

jeffbee 3y ago

I've ridden both and Cruise just sucks. Riding in their car is terrifying.

spankalee 3y ago
Full, disclosure: I work at Google but... I rode in a Waymo and a Cruise in the same week recently, and terrifying is exactly how I would describe the Cruise ride. It often couldn't find it's lane and kept making abrupt swerves and corrections in the road. It would hesitate all the time, then seem to try to make it for it by gunning it forward when it made up its mind. Then five our so Cruises at an intersection near Market St couldn't figure out how to get through the light more than one car at a time, backing the whole street up. People were pissed. My friend who had the Cruise app thought it was normal and kind of fun :/ The Waymo ride, on the other had, was kind of boring. The worst part was it circled the block picking me up because it didn't see a good spot to stop right away (and I think I moved a bit from the pin). Other than that it was a very smooth ride, it showed me on a screen where all other cars and pedestrians it knew of were, it gave pedestrians enough room, it even handled a two-lane street where there were stopped cars blocking each way and it had to zig-zag across the double yellow, and yield to cars from the other direction doing the same. I will not be riding in a Cruise again for a while, and I'm kind of scared to be on the street with them.
- hot_gril 3y ago
  I'm imagining sitting in the passenger seat of a Cruise car and getting involved in a road rage incident directed at the empty driver's seat.

jfim 3y ago

I'm not going to comment on Cruise specifically, but keep in mind that AV companies have an insane burn rate in the order of 9 figures yearly or more, without any meaningful revenue at this point in time. They're under a lot of pressure to show some kind of growth, especially considering the current environment in which money isn't as easy to get anymore.

hiddencost 3y ago

There's a risk/reward trade-off to be made. Waymo had a huge head start, a ton of advantages, and more cash to burn. So they chose one operating point, under the theory that public perception and trust were vital to get right. Later entrants chose a different operating point, because they had to catch up and had more limitations. This is why Tesla rolled out autopilot before it was ready and killed a bunch of people; getting data collection running at scale was the only way for them to compete. Keep in mind that Musk promised a million robotaxis within a year of their roll out. That didn't happen.

saalweachter 3y ago

So both Cruise and Waymo are subsidiaries of giant corporations rather than VC funded and needing to push tempo before they collapse. I don't think GM is particularly less risk adverse than Google. Maybe the depth of the respective corporate coffers and the power of the executives backing the respective subsidiaries? I'm pretty sure that Waymo is supported directly by the Google founders, and I don't even think there's an equivalent person at GM to guarantee Cruise's continuation if they don't show results.

zetazzed 3y ago

Yes, if I were Waymo I would be so pissed. It looks like protestors and regulators want to lump the two together. I'm pretty supportive of careful public testing of AV, but even I look at these recent Cruise incidents and find it very understandable that a city would want to kick out these AVs.