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Waymo to begin testing on San Francisco freeways this week
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 2y agoAbout time, hope it goes well.
- xnx 2y agoThe gap between Waymo and all other competitors in the self-driving space continues to widen.
- saddlerustle 2y agoAutoX and Pony.ai in China have been been offering rides to the public with no safety driver for much longer than Waymo
- neom 2y agoSouth Korea has some stuff going on too, but not longer than Waymo. http://www.smobi.ai/ http://www.smobi.ai/ - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68823705 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68823705
- dyauspitr 2y agoWith zero public releases/data on crash information.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoWaymo has been doing public rides (2015) since before either company was founded (2016). Pony.ai also got their permit suspended twice in California for different safety-related reasons, so the comparison says more about the different regulatory environment in China than it does about their relative maturity.
- saddlerustle 2y agoWaymo was not doing public rides in 2015. It was invite only and you had to sign an NDA
- AlotOfReading 2y agoThey were doing rides for members of the public. That's a public ride.
- crazygringo 2y agoNo, public means accessible to the ~whole public, not a tiny subset. Invite-only is quite literally the opposite of public. It's private.
- aantix 2y agoHave you seen FSD 12.5.1.3?
- EcommerceFlow 2y agoHe obviously hasn't. The tech community is in for quite a shock with Tesla robotaxi's come out in a year or so and blow out the competition. One factor not discussed often is how much smoother FSD is compared to all other self driving. Especially noticeable when going from FSD to the free AutoSteer or GM Supercruise.
- kibwen 2y ago> The tech community is in for quite a shock with Tesla robotaxi's come out in a year or so FSD has been set to come out in a year or so since 2014. At this point nobody should be foolish enough to give Tesla the benefit of the doubt; if they have a self-driving car, then they'll take legal liability for its actions, and if they won't take legal liability for its actions, they don't have a self-driving car. This is as true for any company as it is for Tesla, although Tesla is the only one who's seen fit to lie about it for a decade.
- aantix 2y ago12.5.1.3 is pretty incredible. Their innovation in this space is accelerating rapidly. I encourage you to watch some of the videos on Twitter. It's here. It's now.
- Glant 2y agoJust watched the first video that shows up on YouTube when searching "12.5.1.3" and it starts with a small compilation of the driver having to take back control before the car hits things. https://youtu.be/TLUdxdS8bcM https://youtu.be/TLUdxdS8bcM
- glaucon 2y ago>The tech community is in for quite a shock with Tesla robotaxi's come out in a year or so I, for one, will be surprised ... in fact put me down for "very surprised".
- andrewmcwatters 2y agoComma has given up on self-driving cars and they're downplaying it now.
- nojvek 2y agoComma is phenomenal at highway driving. Better than Tesla. They should keep on doing what they're doing. Make ~$1000 gadget that makes driving less of a chore. Doubtful they'll get to driverless in next 10 years. There can be many players in the market at different offerings and price points. Comma is a sweet spot where they are handsomely profitable, don't need to raise another round and get incrementally better. Waymo has unlimited money from Google. Cruise, Zoox, e.t.c will have to face reckoning at some point. It was smart of Uber to get out of self-driving car billion dollar money burning pit. They can always enter the race again. They have market size advantage.
- andrewmcwatters 2y agoBetter than Tesla is not a high bar. Openpilot regularly slams on the brakes.
- SkyPuncher 2y agoI was deeply unimpressed with Tesla’s highway driving when I test drove one. I found both Ford and Hyundai/Kia to be at or above the level of the Tesla. Frankly, I didn’t see any benefit of Tesla over most of the lane centering and adaptive cruise solutions in the market. It felt so unpredictable that I preferred to simply drive by hand.
- hakfoo 2y agoI can't fathom how "makes driving less of a chore" can work from a regulatory standpoint. For me, that's the end-all-be-all of self driving promises. It doesn't matter whether they call it level 3, 4, 5, or 420, what the branding and promo copy says, it matters how it gets handled from a legal standpoint. Unless you can get the vendor to accept liability, you're either hands-on-the-wheel driving, or sitting there tensing and waiting for the "you must jump back to hands-on-the-wheel driving in the next 3 seconds or we plow into the side of a lorry" alarm. In a way, this is the same heuristic as "the company that offers a long warranty can't make crap." No company will willingly put themselves on the hook from the estate of pedestrians and other drivers until they know they've solved it to a statistically high level.
- TulliusCicero 2y agoFor context, they announced that they were starting freeway testing with employee passengers in Phoenix back in January.
- someonehere 2y agoI continue to use them instead of Lyft or Uber. Same price practically for me when I commute around SF. I love it.
- SoftTalker 2y agoWhy do they use Jaguars? Seems an unnecessary expense.
- soramimo 2y agoThey're spending a lot on the sensors anyway, so they might as well invest in a super nice experience all around to make it worthwhile.
- erikaww 2y agoOvercoming stigma perhaps? Making it seem bougier
- dyauspitr 2y agoMinimal markup compared to the equipment already on there.
- striking 2y agoThey got a good deal on EV Jags that weren't selling.
- jeffbee 2y agoIt's because the car is contract-manufactured by Magna and they came to a convenient agreement to get thousands of white cars with extra holes.
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoHaven’t jaguars always been a mixed bag? Kind of low quality luxury, so I can imagine them getting some kind of deal. The irony is that jaguar used to be know for its really bad electrical wiring back in the 70s.
- leesec 2y ago
- tomblomfield 2y agoI’m a big Waymo fan. Some of my thoughts; Waymos are one of the first things that my visitors to SF want to try. It feels like living in a science-fiction future. The ride and navigation feels very smooth - after the novelty of having no driver in the front seat wears off, you become accustomed to the experience surprisingly quickly. In comparison, I found the Cruise driving experience pretty uncomfortable and stress-inducing. The app and software inside the vehicle is really well-designed. Which is unusual for a google consumer product! And my female friends, in particular, far prefer Waymo to Uber or Lyft because they don’t have to engage with a creepy driver trying to hit on them. I, for one, welcome our new self-driving overlords.
- firloop 2y agoAs I've mentioned on another thread, I just wish Waymo drove faster. They often don't keep up with the pace of traffic.
- tomblomfield 2y agoYeah I think you have to change the traffic laws for that to happen. AFAIK, they strictly follow the speed limit, which feels too slow when everyone else is speeding.
- soramimo 2y agoIMHO we should start enforcing speed limits.
- amanaplanacanal 2y agoAs they say, if you have to tell people to slow down, you designed your road wrong.
- callalex 2y agoMaybe it is the traffic that is wrong? Vehicle-induced injury and death is still a huge issue, and marginal speed increases make no difference to overall trip times.
- etaioinshrdlu 2y agoExpecting this to go well generally because freeways are pretty much always easier to self-drive than city streets!
- SECProto 2y agoFreeways are much, much less forgiving of abrupt speed changes and braking, which is something waymo (used to) have quite an issue with. Moving to freeways shows they are confident that won't be an ongoing issue.
- SoftTalker 2y agoYes I was driving on a freeway last week and traffic went from 80mph to dead stop about as fast as I could stand on the brakes. I didn't hit the car in front of me with only a few feet to spare, and fortunately the driver behind me was also paying attention. The jam eventually cleared, and there was absolutely no indication of what caused it.
- tanseydavid 2y ago>> and there was absolutely no indication of what caused it That's the Accordion Effect. With enough cars on the road, one little tap of someone's brakes flashes their brake lights and it ripples upstream until the 80mph column of cars is forced to go to down to zero ASAP.
- greenthrow 2y agoLike many people, you are focusing too much on the easy case and neglecting the many, many edge cases.
- xnx 2y agoI thought this as well, but I think it emerged in an Waymo interview that any weird thing that can happen on city street can also happen on a freeway and the reaction time is lower and the consequences higher on a freeway.
- Sad90sNerd 2y agoI don't understand why people are so eager to give up autonomy. I doubt the software is certified in any meaningful way (see DO-178B), the algorithms are unknown, and the NHTSA sits on its hands whenever these vehicles have accidents. Here is a litmus test: would you allow Waymo to drive schoolbuses with your children? I know I certainly will never allow my family or myself to get into a metal box going 80 mph without a driver.
- gosub100 2y agothink of the children!
- Sad90sNerd 2y agothink of yourself! the point of the analogy is to replace yourself (which you might not regard if you are a risk taker) with someone you care about.
- timmg 2y agoAren’t many/most airline flights auto-landed? (Certainly autopiloted.) Does that bother you?
- id00 2y agoThey also have two highly trained proffessionals ready to take control and tight SoPs for everything.
- bumby 2y agoAvionics software has a much more stringent and regulated software process (and pilots still there just in case). Are you advocating the same for cars?
- Sad90sNerd 2y agoIt does actually, my father was a pilot for Delta and he saw the automation come thru and there are horror stories there too. On top of this, the software quality is certified, built over decades, and continuously tested on each plane regularly - and of course the pilots are still there ; )
- dventimi 2y agoI wish they would test going back to point-to-point pick-ups and drop-offs. I can easily see reasons to move to a designated pick-up and drop-off location model, but I feel it weakens the value proposition for people with mobility issues if they have to walk a few blocks.
- crazygringo 2y agoI don't think that's up to Waymo, it's a legal thing mostly. The city has to allow that. The funny thing about self-driving cars is that they're designed to obey laws to the letter, which real drivers never do. I think we're going to see a lot of laws necessarily getting updated to allow real-life driving behavior, such as double-parking during pickup and dropoff.
- dventimi 2y ago> I don't think that's up to Waymo, it's a legal thing mostly. The city has to allow that. Did the SFPUC make a change to disallow that then, because point-to-point is how Waymo worked in SF as recently as a month or so ago? Perhaps they did, as a condition of allowing expansion.
- matthewfelgate 2y agoThis is great news. I expect this will open up many more routes. And hopefully more profit.
- jacobjjacob 2y agoI don’t understand how Tesla is continuing to ride so high on a borderline-vaporware robotaxi when Waymo is so far ahead.
- KoolKat23 2y agoIt's not a zero sum game.
- jacobjjacob 2y agoNo, but I don’t think its clear that Tesla deserves its valuation at its current rate. They aren’t demonstrating any competitive advantage or particular skill in the space vs Waymo
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- KoolKat23 2y agoAll that means is people are paying too much for their shares in the business on the market, it doesn't mean Tesla don't have the financial or technical ability to deliver self driving cars
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThey’re solving different problems. Waymo works in only some areas and requires all sorts of hardware. Tesla FSD is trying to do something more generalized.
- imtringued 2y agoI don't know what you are talking about. Tesla FSD is trying to do exactly the same thing, but they are struggling to do get it to work at all.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
- leesec 2y agoI'm happy for Waymo and hope they continue to expand. I do expect Tesla to still win out on "robotaxis" in the nearish term, e.g. I expect them to have given way way more rides than Waymo by say 2030
- typon 2y agoTesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability. A human ready to intervene in long tail scenarios (which is the hard part of the problem) does not constitute autonomous capability, no matter what the marketing material says.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago> Tesla has yet to demonstrate autonomous driving capability I'm betting on Waymo, too, but Tesla has chutzpah in a way Google and GM do not. That might permit them to take more risks (and incur more costs on the public) earlier. In the end, avoiding a monopoly is always good.
- typon 2y agoI would love it if there was a working autonomous vehicle outside of Waymo. Google's monopoly in search engines has stifled innovation in that space for long enough. The problem is that Tesla just hasn't demonstrated they are capable of doing it. My bet is that achieving autonomous driving with only RGB vision + sensors that are not LIDAR is just too hard.
- leesec 2y agothey have demonstrated autonomous driving capability. the main difference between them and Waymo is miles per intervention, of which Tesla is about 10x behind where Waymo was when they started giving rides. but soon they will be equal and Tesla will have millions more cars and built out service centers ready to activate
- typon 2y ago> soon they will be equal That's a prediction, one that I hope comes true. However, I have to be realistic and given the track record I am not too hopeful.
- Moon_Y 2y agoWaymo's continuous advancement and expansion in the field of autonomous driving technology. The plan to test fully autonomous vehicles without human safety drivers on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area is a significant milestone. By having employees as the first testers, Waymo demonstrates confidence in its system.
- onetokeoverthe 2y ago[dead]