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Waymo does over 150k paid trips and over 1M autonomous miles every week
- dyauspitr 2y agoIt sure looks like they’ve solved it.
- nobunaga 2y agoThey have and Tesla Fanboys cant accept it.
- amelius 2y agoWaymo uses different sensors.
- nobunaga 2y agoYes I am aware. Whats your point? Waymo is actually doing fully autonomous miles, what are Tesla's doing? An intervention every 13 miles on avg. But Elon says they will be deploying fully autonomous Tesla's in 2025. Yeah ok. Ill be waiting.
- melling 2y agoElon said a camera is all you need. Waymo decided to solve the problem using whatever they deemed necessary.
- mewpmewp2 2y agoStill it's good to have multiple approaches going on at once.
- nobunaga 2y agoExcept one is bound to fail considering the solutions required for the problem at hand. Its obvious which one that is.
- dmix 2y ago> Waymo decided to solve the problem using whatever they deemed necessary. Solving the technical side is only half the problem, otherwise we'd all be flying in Concorde jets. I'm curious to see if Waymo can scale up to mass production of their sensor suite and maintain them economically, where it makes sense as a business. There may be a big business in LIDAR factories and repairmen soon.
- melling 2y agoThe Concorde is not permitted to fly supersonic over land because of the sonic boom. That means very limited routes. That is a technical problem. Hopefully, NASA solves the technical problem and commercial supersonic flight returns https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/taming-the-boom/ https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/armstrong/taming...
- dmix 2y agoThat was mostly a social/policy problem which destroys the economics of it because you're limited to a very small amount of airports. Waymo is currently limited to a small amount of towns for a mix of economic, policy, and social reasons. Probably in that order. Just being sufficiently better than human drivers was never the entire barrier to entry for this to be a real business for Google, at least one that becomes nation-wide or global.
- melling 2y agoHow about making a prediction and we will follow up in 5 years. To me it sounds like you’re just being sort of vague. Yes, absolutely everyone knew there were social issues too. Where will self driving be in 5 or 10 years?
- dmix 2y agoPredicting it on a macro level is a boring question IMO, the influence of policy interference and social outrage every time there's an accident - which is never fully connected to the realities on the ground of true capabilities/potential - is basically a black box. Like betting on elections. My interest atm is mostly the economics question of whether LIDAR will scale widely in near term combined with the social risks (ie, millions of cars with $30-50k in sensors, which atm cost as much as the car itself, so basically only e-taxis, no personal ownership + high cost of maintenance) vs cameras being good-enough... that's a far more interesting question. It's pretty obvious LIDAR/ultrasonic or a combination with cameras is superior. So maybe some ambitious person will find some mass-producible middle ground within <5yrs shrug
- ryandvm 2y ago> Elon said a camera is all you need. This was when I really started to doubt that guy's genius. That was a phenomenally stupid assertion. I can drive with 2 eyes because I have a bunch of other sensors as well as an entire world model in my head with 30 years of driving experience. Is it Halloween tonight? Better drive extra slowly. Did that white semi with the bright background sky just disappear? Probably not. Is that deer going to bolt in front of the car coming the other way? Maybe. Is the road slick because it recently rained here? etc.
- minwcnt5 2y ago"640k ought to be enough for anybody" vibes.
- metadat 2y agoThough to be fair, in my area Waymo charges 2x the price of Uber and Lyft for the same service. Still pretty cool.
- dyauspitr 2y agoThat’s not true, having taken quite a few I would say they are about 5-10% higher. I also don’t have to tip a Waymo.
- rdoherty 2y agoI've ridden a few times and their prices seem close to Lyft. I would happily pay a premium for the service they are providing right now. New, clean cars that drive very smoothly and lower rates of accidents than an 'average' driver. No weird smells, distracted drivers, inexperienced drivers, etc. I think in a few more years with the amount of training their AI will have Waymo will be a truly incredible taxi service. It can only get better!
- dmix 2y ago> New, clean cars that drive very smoothly.. No weird smells. One concern I had is that once self-driving cars are widespread people might take advantage and treat them poorly with no human driver watching. Where a human would likely notice and deal with weird smells or things added by the past customer. Waymo-type service probably rely on reporting by passengers once the car already arrives, no? (I've never driven in one) People might be treating them nice today because Waymo is a fancy new service in Jaguars that people treat as a novelty. Once those e-taxi services are under aggressive economic demands I'm curious to see how it plays out.
- xnx 2y agoWaymo's have interior cameras on their vehicles. Any rider that leaves mess will get a strike and probably be banned for repeated infractions. You're right, some problems will only be noticed by the next rider.
- dmix 2y agoTech-wise it seems that way.
- lopkeny12ko 2y ago[flagged]
- nobunaga 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ckemere 2y agoWhat fraction are driven by a remote safety driver???
- nobunaga 2y agoZero. Remote drivers cannot control/drive the waymo vehicles.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago0%. Waymo's sometimes call home for human decision making, but are never remotely driven.
- buzzert 2y agoThey're called "Fleet Response Agents". I'm not sure it's honest necessarily to say that it's 0%: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/
- ahahahahah 2y agoIt is completely honest. The question was "What fraction are driven by a remote safety driver???". Fleet response agents do not have the ability to remotely drive the vehicles. From your own source: "The Waymo Driver [...] is in control of the vehicle at all times".
- biomcgary 2y agoPhoenix was the first place that Waymo offered service, which the selected for the weather, IIRC. The video highlights the spinning lidar sensors. How does that do in freezing rain? How long until a solid state lidar is a practical replacement (and would it be any better)?
- unsnap_biceps 2y agoI would presume at this point they don't drive when the weather is near freezing. icy conditions are going to be a huge issue for the cars. LIDAR and Cameras don't help with black ice.
- xnx 2y agoTo be fair, almost no one should be out driving in freezing rain. No amount of being a "good driver" can make tires hold on to slick ice. Waymo was doing winter testing in Buffalo, NY in February of this year: https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/inside-the-self-driving-cars-youve-been-seeing-around-buffalo https://www.wkbw.com/news/local-news/inside-the-self-driving...
- Havoc 2y agoStill a bit confused about how we got urban taxis before we got highway only long haul cargo (i.e. point to point depot outside of city).
- boberoni 2y agoMy guess is that getting local permits is easier to get for Waymos (never faster than 45mph, only within bounds of a single city) than long haul cargo (on highways faster than 65mph, crossing multiple city boundaries).
- runnr_az 2y agoThat’s true in AZ. Waymo is not allowed to operate on freeways yet
- xnx 2y agoWaymo is doing rides with employees (not yet the public) in AZ now. https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freeways-safely-expanding-our-rider-only-testing/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/01/from-surface-streets-to-freew...
- orwin 2y agoIsn't that a train? Except more expensive and less durable?
- dyauspitr 2y agoMy guess is we don’t have any current infrastructure for outside the city depots. Right now trucks pick up the cargo after long distance shipping and take them straight to their final destination. Setting up what you’re talking about would require a paradigm shift in how the trucking industry works.
- xnx 2y agoHighways are simpler on paper, but it turns out that any crazy thing (pedestrians, obstacles, etc.) that happens on a city street can happen on a highway, so you have to be ready for that. Energies are many multiples higher at highway speed, so "contact" events are much more serious.
- harmmonica 2y agoJust trying to back into the economics... A ride takes 15 minutes. Costs $20. 15 minutes, on average, of downtime between rides (late-night offsets shorter during day/evening)? So $20 per 30 minutes. 24 hours in a day. 48 rides per day. $960 per car per day. Holidays/weekends probably fewer riders so say 300 days per year to keep it conservative. $288,000 revenue per year. Car costs $150,000 per year (costs are going to drop dramatically as they scale up, I would think. And I'm assuming that after driving 300,000 or so miles per year that the car will be cooked, but that's probably overly conservative). Still, though, good gross margin (or at least the margin on the vehicle cost alone; maintenance is going to cost something but tires and a few other things are not going to be material relative to the cost of the car itself). Note that a quick Google (eh) search shows Google overall gross margin of 58% so this wouldn't be too far off of that. That is to say, pedal to the metal on the roll out if these numbers are even marginally accurate. Please pick apart at your leisure. I'm most interested in knowing the truth, but just thinking through this and how it might look internally at Waymo/Google. If anyone has actual numbers (maybe they talked about on earnings call?) would love to hear them.
- dilyevsky 2y agoCar costs considerably more than your 150k figure. Probably by something like 2-3x
- harmmonica 2y agoLike I said in another reply, there seems to be a good bit of debate about whether that cost, which was cited several years ago, is still accurate (or ever was). That said if it is then 2x would drop the margin in half. Still a healthy margin and I do wonder what the Geely car cost will be. Note when I say "car" I mean everything for the car to drive itself, which is the car, the sensor suite, etc. I did not figure on the operational staffing as another comment pointed out. edit: changed thread to reply in first sentence
- RivieraKid 2y agoThe best source for the price is what the ex-CEO said in January 2021: > Let me paraphrase it like this: If we equip a Chrysler Pacifica Van or a Jaguar I-Pace with our sensors and computers, it costs no more than a moderately equipped Mercedes S-Class. So for the entire package, including the car - today, So I think the $150k is a good estimate.
- BXlnt2EachOther 2y agoIf Alphabet/Waymo leadership were more theatrical... I wonder if the Tesla event delay could have given them time to expand 3 miles up the 101, across the Cahuenga Pass, so they could offer fully-autonomous Waymo rides through LA traffic to and from Musk's WB lot Tesla demo. though it's not at all their style. And realistically I'm glad they're being methodical and prioritizing safety.
- cameldrv 2y agoI heard it speculated that maybe Tesla chose that location for their event specifically because it was outside of the Waymo area and they didn’t want a bunch of journalists showing up in Waymos to the Tesla robotaxi event.
- nobunaga 2y agoThe other thread on HN about the funding waymo received just went to show how little Tesla and their fans know about Autonomy and that it cannot be solved with their hardware stack. They talk a lot but wouldnt dare put their money where there mouth is and sit in the backseat and take a ride across town with supervised FSD (which is an oxymoron). It is such a clear stock pumping scheme by Elon to maintain their Market cap and people fall for it. Im long Uber and Goog on this and when Tesla fanboys finally get struck with reality its going to be hilarious.
- eskatonic 2y agoI took my first Waymo trip this past weekend. I will be using it every time from now on. I try to take an actual taxi (Flywheel) whenever possible, because Uber and Lyft feel... I dunno, exploitative to me. But my last 3-4 cab rides have been annoying and/or terrifying. One cabby stopped in the middle of a busy intersection to check directions. Another cabby got lost the minute I got into the cab, and I had to guide him. Then he kept peppering me with personal questions. Another cabby tried to convert me to Islam... Waymo was quiet. Obeyed traffic signals. Took a rather tricky backroad to get to my apartment, and navigated it flawlessly. Tried to convert me to the Cylon god. I'm gonna root for the robots on this one, I'm afraid.
- rinnith 2y agoA few weeks ago I was driving down Santa Monica Blvd in West LA during rush hour and a Waymo was stopped with its hazard lights on in the middle of the road blocking traffic right by the 405 entrance. I finished my errand like 40 minutes later and it was still in the same spot blocking traffic, so idk I’m not super confident in these things yet.