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Waymo closes $5.6B investment round
- lopkeny12ko 2y agoTelling that this comes right on the heels of the Robotaxi unveil. Google sees a threat.
- jqpabc123 2y agoWaymo is currently providing over 100K driverless rides a week. Tesla has "concepts of a plan" to do something similar --- about where Waymo was in 2016. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2024/10/11/tesla-offers-little-information-on-robotaxi-heres-the-deeper-scoop/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2024/10/11/tesla-...
- fellowniusmonk 2y agoIt's crazy that when I walk to the taco stand down the street in my sleepy little neighborhood I'll see waymos just hanging out waiting for a ride, and if I wanted I could just hop in one and be robot chauffeured around the city. It's funny how the future arrives and intermingles with the present. Stuff I could only dream of as a kid, things that seemed impossibly far off are here right now. I'll probably have a Rosie in my house before I die and that's pretty incredible.
- stormfather 2y agoAre the cars still teleoperated though?
- bryanlarsen 2y agoThey never were. They get occasional labeling / decision making support from humans.
- atopal 2y agoIf you mean "driven or steered remotely": They were never teleoperated. I'm assuming that would be completely reckless given the nature of radio networks and possibly because of regulations. The car will call a service once it can't make a decision (this is only when the car is fully stopped), and a human will decide to send out a driver or make a decision in the moment.
- sixQuarks 2y agoIt’s funny, my Tesla drove me 30 miles yesterday and I didn’t have to do a thing. People in this thread have no idea how good FSD has gotten
- ra7 2y agoYou're still in the driver's seat ready to intervene. Others are doing it every 13 miles: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/09/tesla-full-self-driving-requires-human-intervention-every-13-miles/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/09/tesla-full-self-driving...
- lopkeny12ko 2y agoWaymo's remote operators are still sitting in an office intervening and as a passenger you don't even know that it's happening
- ra7 2y agoExcept they can't make the kinds of safety critical interventions Tesla driver's in the seat can make i.e. prevent accidents. That's just physics. We know exactly how their remote operation works: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
- minwcnt5 2y agoIf my Tesla swerves into oncoming traffic with no warning and I get in a crash, who is responsible? If my Waymo ride does the same, who is responsible?
- sixQuarks 2y agoYeah, so? You don't think they're going to keep improving it until supervision isn't required?
- ra7 2y ago13 miles per intervention after 8 years of development suggests it’s not happening anytime soon.
- cal5k 2y ago> In reality Tesla FSD is still in very primitive shape. From the article. Have the people saying this actually tried the most recent FSD build? I used it yesterday, and it reacted flawlessly to road construction that blocked a lane, then had cones demarcating a lane that didn't follow existing road markings. Then it saw that a driver wanted to turn left from parking lot while approaching a stop light and made space for the driver to turn out. It also flawlessly executed a merge involving turning into a suicide lane and waiting for traffic to pass. It's very good at adapting to changes and can work on roads its never seen before. There is no other production car that can do what FSD can do currently. Does this mean it's ready for full autonomy tomorrow? No, but I could use supervised FSD today if I wanted to drive 1600 miles from Austin to Toronto with hands mostly off the wheel. The pace at which FSD is now improving is quite remarkable. In the long run it's clear that this approach is going to be WAY more flexible than Waymo's, because Tesla has so many more vehicles on the road collecting so much more data, and throwing vast amounts of compute at vast amounts of data is basically the best way to see rapid improvement for the foreseeable future. But sure, "concepts of a plan".
- jqpabc123 2y agoNo, but I could use supervised FSD today if I wanted ... Musk has invented his own oxymoron --- "supervised Full Self Driving" --- which means not really full self driving at all. Your car is ready to be a robotaxi --- as long as you are behind the wheel to supervise it. If a driver is required, it's not a robotaxi is it?
- cal5k 2y agoIt drives itself with zero control input from me, hands literally off the wheel and feet off the pedals. That's the definition of "full self driving". It's bizarre how people are so adamant about this when they haven't even tried it. Every passenger I've shown this to have had their minds blown.
- jqpabc123 2y agoSo sit in the back seat and let the car drive and my mind will be blown --- if you don't get arrested either before or after the crash. Waymo actually does this today. Musk has plans to do this --- someday. It's mind blowing that you can't see the difference.
- ra7 2y agoThis was first announced in July: https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/alphabet-to-invest-another-5b-into-waymo/ https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/23/alphabet-to-invest-another... Pretty sure Waymo sees very little threat from Tesla, who don't even have a single driverless mile on public roads.
- gmm1990 2y agoaverage miles between intervention in similar driving scenarios would be a better metric. I’m struggling to understand how anyone thinks the robotaxi thing is competition though
- VikingCoder 2y agoThere's a few other metrics people should care about: "As of June 2024, there have been forty-four verified fatalities involving Autopilot and hundreds of nonfatal incidents." Have there been any for Waymo? None that I can find.
- sublimefire 2y agoYou are being disingenuous, "summon" could be considered as fully driverless, so there are a couple of miles. They are getting there for sure, just not at the similar level, which is expected because customers do not care about it that much.
- devmor 2y agoDisingenuous would be trying to counter an argument that Tesla has no driverless operations on public roads with a suggestion that a parking lot party trick counts.
- ra7 2y agoThis is silly. The conversation is about L4 autonomy. Summon isn't fully driverless by any stretch of imagination. It requires the driver to be within a few feet and hold down a button in the app (essentially a kill switch). Moreover, the liability is still with the driver.
- Ragnarork 2y agoThe Robotaxi is a PR stunt which doesn't look remotely close to be a threat to Waymo right now.
- misiti3780 2y agolol ... right
- echelon 2y agoRobotaxi hasn't deployed anywhere. There are lots of other startups ahead of them in terms of progress. Waymo isn't afraid of a threat. Waymo is dominating the market they created. This is just another chess play to lock up the TAM.
- cal5k 2y agoRobotaxi will use the same stack as other Tesla vehicles, which is deployed on millions of vehicles. The <$30k price point and lack of controls/supervision are the only things that truly differentiate it from a Model 3.
- Fricken 2y agoWaymo is patronized by Alphabet for as long as it needs to be. This has been good, as it takes off a lot of pressure to virtue signal fake progress to impatient investors; a fate many of Waymo's potential competitors haven fallen victim to. When Uber and Tesla were acting like cowboys and creating plenty of drama for the media Waymo (under the sensible and boring leadership of non-techy car industry vet John Krafcik) was quietly structuring itself to be in the game for the long haul, following the whole "Fuck You Money" episode that saw most of the Google Self Driving Car Project's original talent leave for easy Venture Capital elsewhere. Waymo is very tight lipped about their operational costs, I would really love to know how close they are to being revenue positive. Recent moves by Waymo suggest they believe they are getting close.
- devmor 2y agoConsidering just how many of their cars I see driving around Atlanta covered in sensor arrays every day, I would certainly hope they’re making real progress.
- sanderjd 2y agoYep, I look forward to reading good books about it in a decade or so. I think there are lots of lessons to be learned here for how to do a certain kind of difficult new thing.
- laddershoe 2y agoI'd like to read that book too... but "how to do a certain kind of difficult new thing" in their case involved more than solid execution. It also needed an owner/investor with extremely deep pockets and technical capabilities that vastly accelerated their work, who was willing to throw huge amounts of money at the problem for years, along with favorable economic conditions (zero-percent interest rates) for long periods of time, at the right period of time. I give Waymo tons of credit for their work here, but the conditions that enabled it aren't easily repeatable IMO.
- minwcnt5 2y ago
- bsaul 2y agoAnyone knows whether there are fundamental differences in the approach waymo took vs tesla, or are they following the same algorithms and techniques, with more polishing or experience in the "small details that makes all the difference" ?
- duped 2y agoiirc the big thing is they use LIDAR/RADAR in addition to camera sensors, Tesla is hellbent on only using cameras. Also, Waymo works.
- sixQuarks 2y agoSo you’re going to ignore all the data Tesla is collecting, and it’s purely AI approach? Very biased comments here, I get it, everyone hates Elon, but let’s not lie to ourselves.
- tracerbulletx 2y agoNo one's ignoring it. They're saying that Waymo currently works, and Tesla Self Driving does not currently work.
- lopkeny12ko 2y agoMy Tesla drives me around the city autonomously every day and you're telling me it doesn't
- sixQuarks 2y agoWaymo is restricted to very specific pre-mapped areas. It is not a scalable solution.
- fragmede 2y agoFor all their faults, one thing you can't say about Google is they don't know how to scale. Prior to Google Maps, Street View would have seemed impossibly expensive, but now we take it for granted. If they need to do a LIDAR run with a car over every public road in the US for them to deploy it, it seems like they could just do that. All they'd have to do is add LIDAR sensors to the existing Street View imaging fleet and continue running them.
- sidcool 2y agoHappy to see self driving companies raising rounds. Waymo is a leader, no doubt.
- martythemaniak 2y agoBig Tech is largely set of interlocking duopolies. * Ads: Google/Meta * Cloud: Amazon/MS * Mobile: Google/Apple * Desktop: Apple/MSFT * VR: Apple/Meta There's also smaller players and sometimes strong third players (eg GCP), but by and large there are no single winners. Waymo and Tesla are looking like a good bet on the self-driving duopoly. I think a lot of people are skeptical on Tesla because "LIDAR", but lidar is largely irrelevant. It is only used in 3D scene reconstruction, it has nothing to do with actual driving which is the hard part.
- candiddevmike 2y ago> lidar is largely irrelevant. It is only used in 3D scene reconstruction Source? AIUI lidar is actively used as a sensor/input to detect absolute distance between things, which seems like 80% of what you need to drive safely.
- martythemaniak 2y agoLidar produces a monochromatic 3D scene, which you can also extract with cameras using SLAM techniques. But these scenes simply do not carry the information needed to navigate the world - you only get one colour, so you cannot see signs, markings, lights, anything. LIDAR is thus a small, secondary input to the problem of "perception". Once you've accurately perceived the world, the hard part is the action, and the judgement needed to drive safely. It doesn't matter how you got your labeled 3D scene (LIDAR or SLAM), you have to figure out how to navigate it safely and this is more like 90% of the self-driving challenge. If you look at videos of the latest FSD in action (12.5) perception is not an issue. Teslas see everything just fine, they don't disengage because they didn't see a car, but because their judgement is not human level yet.
- m_fayer 2y agoIsn’t lidar how you avoid driving into the side of a white truck on a bright day when the sun is positioned just so?
- bko 2y agoWhat's the exit here? They've raised over $10 billion at VC multiples, valuation around $50 billion. Do they expect this to be a $1 trillion company, even then the return would be a modest 20x. I feel when that much money is at stake and such a high exit is expected, this could distort incentives. I feel like investors would prefer to set their money on fire for some tiny probability of that 20x+ return rather than look to actually make a modest profitable business
- onion2k 2y agoDo they expect this to be a $1 trillion company, even then the return would be a modest 20x. The ideal end game for self-driving taxis is replacing personally-owned cars. Instead of anyone having a car of their own they'd just order one for any journey they make. If ordering a taxi is easier and cheaper than owning a car, and potentially faster and safer because it's self-driving, it's a no brainer for anyone who sees a car as a cost rather than a recreational vehicle. If they manage to do that then Waymo will be significantly more valuable than a trillion dollars.
- 05 2y agoAs long as US keeps the Chinese manufacturers out.. Baidu Apollo now has a $28K self driving vehicle [0], I doubt Waymo is ever getting close to those numbers. They might replace some US personal cars, but they won't be able to compete globally. edit: Waymo wanted to use Zeekr vehicles before, I guess that ship has sailed now - they will have to get by with their new Hyundai contract [1] [0] https://cnevpost.com/2024/05/15/baidu-apollo-launches-6th-gen-robotaxi/ https://cnevpost.com/2024/05/15/baidu-apollo-launches-6th-ge... [1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partnership/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partn...
- RivieraKid 2y ago> I doubt Waymo is ever getting close to those numbers Why? In theory, Waymo should be able to copy everything Baidu is doing, e.g. manufacture in a low-labor-cost country like India. This is mainly about the technology, that's the hard problem. Optimizing the costs is something that has been done many times before and we know how to do it.
- ronnier 2y agoGoogle controls/dominates search, much of the mobile phone market, OS on many devices, some of our programming languages, build tools, infrastructure, maps, ads, video, email, and now transportation? Anything I’m missing?
- Zigurd 2y agoGoogle (and Amazon, and probably a few Chinese players) have multiple revenue add-ons they can use with robotaxis.
- briandw 2y agoThis will cover another 4 years of R&D. They have a very long way to go before the economics of their business make sense. They are pretty far from making money on a per ride basis. They'll have to show significant per ride profitability before they can scale.
- doctorpangloss 2y agoThey could give the rides away for free, and it would not change anything. Somebody willing to risk $1b on Waymo doesn't credibly care about the kopecks they are earning on rides today. If they did, they would just sit on the sidelines, and wait until it is a public company, and buy post lockup expiry crash priced shares then.
- minwcnt5 2y agoGot a source on that? Their former CEO said they're likely already profitable in San Francisco.
- xnx 2y agoI wonder what Waymo sees as the limiting factor to expanding to the top 24 US metropolitan areas in the next 12 months: affordable vehicle availability (e.g. tariffs on Zeekr), all-weather performance in northern climates, regulatory limitations?
- minwcnt5 2y agoI've heard that just acquiring and setting up the real estate and setting up depots takes a while. After all there aren't a bunch of robotaxi hubs sitting around in cities waiting to be bought or leased. That's where Tesla could have an advantage (if they could get robotaxis working), since in theory they could bootstrap using their supercharger network.
- xnx 2y agoI haven't read much about Waymo depots, but from what I can tell they are : empty parking lot + chargers. If so, that seems like there would be ample options for this in almost any city. Amazon built a charging network in short order (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40083622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40083622). Perhaps, their peak (kWh) charging requirements are higher than I would guess.
- AStonesThrow 2y agoNope, Waymo depots are secured garages in industrial zones. I've been to two in the Phoenix area (Lost & Found FTW). They are secure facilities near freight train tracks, and their neighbors are logistics companies. I saw Waymo vehicles coming and going, but I did not spot their point of entry into the building. There was no "big parking lot" full of Waymos or chargers visible from the outside. The visitor/guest entrance is just a security desk and a waiting room with about 3 chairs. Even during business hours, the front door may be locked. You announce your purpose and the security guard admits you. I was once told that I'd need to wait outside, no problem: the weather was fine, and picnic tables were nearby. Once an employee retrieved my Lost & Found items, I was sent on my way.
- Tombradley2025 2y ago[dead]
- bluesnews 2y agoI wish this wasn't private investment. Would be great if smaller investors had more opportunities to get involved
- Kstarek 2y agothere is, $GOOGL stock
- thecompilr 2y agoI recently took a Waymo ride in Scottsdale, AZ and it was amazing, I will definitely be taking Waymo over Uber wherever available.
- iamleppert 2y agoWhat a terrible business, past, present, future, any way you want to stack it. Once whatever executive sponsors of this science experiment age out, you can expect this company to no longer exist. At this point, it's basically a redirection of wealth from Google shareholders to small group of people who are running a very expensive, medium size taxi cab company that needs a constant stream of outside capital to keep running. The fact that they decided to use expensive Jaguars for their fleet just shows they are openly laughing in the faces of Google shareholders. They know how preposterous the entire venture is. At least they have had the foresight not to kill anyone (yet).