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Waymo One is now open to all in Los Angeles
- ugh123 2y agoNeither LAX nor the valley (san fernando valley) are covered. Still excited
- moralestapia 2y agoVery nice, really hope to see them on mi city eventually and give them a try. Anyone here has used Waymo already? My only real concern before boarding one would be not being able to stop and exit vehicle at any time I wanted to, for whatever reason. Is this something they already address? Like a big red "STOP" button somewhere in the dashboard?
- biosboiii 2y agoI am pretty sure that this emergency stop button is a regulatory requirement.
- Molitor5901 2y agohttps://www.vice.com/en/article/one-star/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/one-star/
- breck 2y ago[dead]
- simonw 2y agoYes, there's a "pullover now" button on the dashboard at all times. Apparently you can always open the door from inside even if the vehicle is in motion, but I've not tried that myself!
- krisoft 2y agoAnd Muldon from The Jurassic Park softly whispering "I told you! How many times? We needed locking mechanisms on the vehicle doors!"
- fragmede 2y agoIt freaks out at you if you open the door while it's moving, but it only drives on city streets (for now), so it's not like you have to try it at speed. The "pullover now" button takes a while to kick in, it doesn't just stop in the middle of traffic so opening the door is sometimes more effective.
- simonw 2y agoHere's the detailed area coverage map for LA: https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9059119#LA https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9059119#LA
- sillyfluke 2y agoAssuming increasing number of waymo cars for the next four years, I wonder how this is going to affect the so called "Car-Free LA" goal for the 2028 olympics. Maybe it'll just be a tweak in a marketing of what it means to be "car free."
- twelve40 2y ago> As of August 2024, Waymo's fleet is under 1,000 vehicles > Los Angeles County there are 7.67M registered automobiles and trucks what are you even talking about
- jeffbee 2y agoThey mean a car-free Olympic games, not an entirely car-free Los Angeles.
- NovemberWhiskey 2y agoIf there's a plan for the Olympics to be car-free then its success or failure is surely unrelated to the size of the (presumably tiny) fraction of cars which are self-driving by that time, though? In other words, if people are reliant on cars for transport for the Olympics then whether they're Uber / taxi / Waymo doesn't really make a difference.
- jeffbee 2y agoIts failure is virtually guaranteed because the effort is being run by the city of Los Angeles. They started working on it 7 years ago and have done almost literally nothing. They haven't even completed all of the environmental impact statements. All actual indicators are going the wrong way: bus ridership is down, service hours are down, capital and operating expenses are way, way up, much of the capital is being spent on freeway carpool lanes, widening, ramp widening, and other car junk, and consequently car vehicle miles traveled are way up.
- josefritzishere 2y agoWaymo has had the move crashes of any autonomous driving system so obviously the thing to do is expand their reign of terror. https://www.govtech.com/transportation/how-many-waymo-cruise-driverless-cars-have-crashed https://www.govtech.com/transportation/how-many-waymo-cruise...
- bagels 2y agoDon't they have a lot more miles than anyone else?
- phrenq 2y agoYeah, number of crashes is absolutely useless as a data point without something like miles driven as a denominator. Not to mention, even without that, this data is apparently suspect: > The agency notes that the listed crashes may be higher than the actual number of incidents due to several factors, including multiple sources for the same crash, multiple entities reporting the same crash, and multiple entities reporting the same crash but with varying information.
- jeffbee 2y agoMiles driven is also a quite useless denominator. Nobody benefits, nobody learns anything when a mid-level ADAS system drives 300 miles down I-5.
- bagels 2y agoI can just imagine the waste involved in trying to game that statistic. Fleets of driverless cars caravaning back and forth across Nevada just to increase the denominator.
- phrenq 2y agoI will grant there are better denominators, but I wouldn’t say it’s useless, especially if we could assume we’re comparing similar services to each other (e.g. city rideshares), and particularly when there’s no denominator at all currently provided. But sure, if we could get data broken out by road type, location, weather conditions, time of day, who’s at fault, etc. then we can obviously build a much more robust comparison.
- ipnon 2y agoThe quality of app drivers in LA is wanting. I’ve been proselytized, informed of imminent apocalyptic civil wars, asked if I know any guys who want to buy copper in bulk. And how can I forget the driver asleep at the wheel of a Tesla with regenerative braking on max, with each doze into slumberland jolting the whole carriage into alert with a smart ping of the battery charging, all the long way from downtown to the airport? I don’t care if it’s double the price and I occasionally get stuck behind an errant traffic cone for an hour, I will gladly take Waymo.
- librasteve 2y agoyeah - the killer app is you can bring your own music
- fragmede 2y agoThe Waymo integration is weird and through a different app, and not just "Bluetooth from my phone".
- post-it 2y agoYour writing style is very reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. I'm a fan.
- dageshi 2y agoI doubt there's ever going to be a big bang moment where self driving just works everywhere. Instead it's going to be a slow rollout of self driving taxi's in increasingly different environments.
- dilap 2y agoDepends on if Tesla succeeds or not. I'm betting they will.
- chippiewill 2y agoIt still won't be a big bang moment. There might be a moment you can go hands off on highways, and a moment you can go hands off in urban environments. But it's still going to be gradual overall.
- ghaff 2y agoI've been a bit surprised that no one (well GM was mildly pushing in this direction at one point) has really gone after autonomous driving on selected highways within some weather parameters. I know urbanites get all worked up about robotaxis but a system that lets me chill for the next 100 miles of highway driving seems far more interesting if it's reliable/safe.
- chippiewill 2y agoHighways is this weird thing where building the L2/L3 capability is comparatively easy (Which is why Tesla autopilot has been halfway decent for a long time now, and BMW have a true L3 system in restricted areas where you can take eyes off the road), but L4 is really hard because a true L4 system has to always be safe even if the driver doesn't take over. You could be tens of miles between highway exits, and just stopping on a highway isn't exactly safe by default. An L4 system therefore needs to handle anything between its current position and the next exit which massively ramps up the number of possible situations it needs to be able to handle compared to the L2/L3 equivalent. L4 in an urban environment is weirdly feasible by comparison, even though we still don't have examples of extremely good L2/L3 systems yet (there's far more complexity by default compared to highways: lights, pedestrians, complex lane decisions, more visual noise, higher average relative speeds) we already have these L4 Taxis being rolled out. The reason is that if a driver doesn't take over it's much easier to find a "safe" place to stop. Apart from getting stuck in the middle of a junction, you can feasibly park up anywhere that has speeds <=40mph.
- laluser 2y agoLooks like Waymo will be the first Alphabet moonshot that will reach 100B valuation in the not too distant future. Just need to hit the most profitable cities and Uber will have to compete at lower prices, while they're a public company. The nest egg will will be kept full as it's the only working autonomous ride solution out there making any money.
- rwmj 2y agoI think it's great we finally have self-driving cars, but why the huge valuation? Waymo has the enormous capital cost of owning the cars. Unlike taxi companies they don't push that capital cost to their drivers.
- zachthewf 2y agoGinormous market, 10x better product, no competition is currently close. Plus although they have the capital cost of owning the cars they don't have the COGS of paying the drivers so presumably much higher margin per ride.
- valval 2y agoYou’re right that Tesla’s product is so far ahead that it can’t really be called competition.
- zachthewf 2y agoI love Tesla, I own the stock, but I don't think they can be considered comparable until they have a live autonomous taxi service that regular people can call from their phones and regularly rave about.
- valval 2y agoOn one hand, Tesla could roll out a Waymo competitor in all the necessary cities in a matter of months if they wanted to. On the other hand, Waymo will cease to exist as soon as Tesla cracks their robotaxi problem.
- simonw 2y agoIf you have the chance to try out a Waymo (you own a credit card and smart phone and find yourself in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix or Austin if you can get through that waitlist) I thoroughly recommend it. Right now it's the most exciting tourist attraction in San Francisco. The first few minutes are pretty terrifying... but the ride is so smooth that you very quickly settle into it. It's absolutely worth experiencing.
- underseacables 2y agoI'd like to but how do you overcome the slight powerless feeling? Like when those guys surrounded a vehicle and made it to stop with people helplessly inside. You're kind of stuck.
- lesuorac 2y agoSame as when you're in an uber?
- Frederation 2y agoYou have control in that instance. Apples and oranges.
- fragmede 2y agoWhat control over the human Uber/Lyft driver, whom you've never met before, do you have?
- barbazoo 2y agoSelf preservation.
- Dylan16807 2y agoYou control someone else's self preservation? That doesn't make sense to me unless you're suggesting the passenger also threaten the driver. Did you answer the question they actually asked?
- ranger_danger 2y agoWaymo cannot recognize threats and drive away from them. Instead it stops indefinitely to let people harass you all they want.
- redeux 2y agoThieves recognize an easy mark in Waymo cars, paralyzing them. Police dispatch autonomous drones to address the situation. The drones, unable to identify which is the threat, decide to destroy both the people surrounding the car and the car. Is this not the future you want?
- moralestapia 2y agoIf we are fair, this isn't a problem with Waymo ...
- fragmede 2y agoA human driver, especially one that owned the car, can gauge the threat and drive off if they're being carjacked, even if it physically endangers someone outside the car. The autonomous vehicle is timidly not going to run someone over, even if they're threatening the vehicle. The other thing is the Waymo will just let you off where it thinks is good and not right in front of the address you selected, even if it's a sketchy neighborhood. Still, especially if it's late night, I'd rather send a woman home in a Waymo than a Uber/Lyft, after one of my friends was assaulted by one of their drivers. That's not possible in a Waymo.
- moralestapia 2y agoI really cannot parse if you're for/against Waymo, lol.
- fragmede 2y agoHaha why do I have to be for/against Waymo like it's a sports team and blindly cheer for the local one? It's a technology with good and bad things about it
- kjkjadksj 2y agoThe title is a little bit wrong, they only serve 80 square miles of LA county not all in Los Angeles.
- owlninja 2y agoI believe they are saying open to all, as in the general public.
- tayo42 2y agoOn a recent SF trip except for the airport I used waymo the entire time. About the same price as uber/lyft, cheaper if you tip human drivers. Very cool to see how fast we went from taxis, to the app based rides to app based self driving cars like this. After working in silicon valley tech companies for almost 10 years, ive been become really cynical about it all. This is one of the few things that actually seems really cool. I actually looked up to see if their hiring but they don't hire remote.
- AlotOfReading 2y agoWaymo followed the rest of the alphabet companies in the back to office drama post-covid. You can still get remote positions if they want you badly enough to grant an exception. Cruise did remote, but they're not the best choice lately. Zoox thinks remote work is a sin of the highest order because they're owned by Amazon.
- archagon 2y agoIt makes me sad that people get more excited about Waymo than public transit. Our Muni trains are clean, modern, and efficient, and the BART is an infrastructural marvel of sorts. I’d much rather criss-cross the city with light rail than add more expensive Waymos.
- creer 2y agoThere is a /s missing in there. Muni is painfully slow, the entire system including BART dangerous, and the timetable a joke.
- litoE 2y agoSo that's why a Waymo car cut me off yesterday at an intersection in West Los Angeles. The two streets intersect at a 60 degree angle. Waymo had a Stop sign. I didn't. It just rushed out of the intersection going fast, as if it hadn't seen me.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoHow does waymo prevent homeless sleeping in the cars?
- qgin 2y agoProbably similar to Uber
- jsnell 2y agoI appreciate thinking about abuse vectors ahead of time, but that particular one doesn't seem like a super hard thing to deal with? You can't just step into one at will, you need to actually order the car with the phone app and a valid credit card. Most homeless people don't, I would think, have credit cards. And after doing it once, they'd be banned from ordering another car ever again. If the Waymo detects that the passenger has not left the car, I'd imagine it would first issue annoying notifications about how the trip is over, and eventually call the ops center who would order it to drive back to home base.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoYou just open the door a bit, park a cone, sleep all day, free cabin. Ops center gives up on the car
- fragmede 2y agoThe doors are locked and you have to unlock them with the app before you can get in.
- Axsuul 2y agoThey are monitored
- sangnoir 2y agoIf someone manages to break into a vehicle without an active account with payment details on record, it can drive them right to the police (or shelter).
- 2y ago
- qaq 2y agoIf this thing can reliably drive in SF and LA it pretty much means they nailed self driving.
- pier25 2y agoWe'll see if they ever start operating in Mexico or India. It's not only because of the chaos but also that maps aren't accurate enough.
- creer 2y agoGoogle and Waymo have been working on that problem for a while. And starting a Waymo service area involves letting loose a fleet of them there. You should expect the map quality to improve fast in serviced areas.
- qaq 2y agoMost western drivers would not be able to drive on bzy street in India so that might be a very high bar :)
- seanmcdirmid 2y agoThe Chinese techs have already launched self driving taxis in China. And China traffic can be really chaotic, although I'm not sure if they aren't launched in any old urban areas yet (e.g. not new towns with better roads and less chaotic traffic).
- obroc 2y agoLA and SF in no way encapsulate the whole of global cities. No snow, easily navigable grid systems, wide American lanes, English road signs, best google maps coverage, etc. Once they are operating in Rome, Lahore, Seoul, etc. then I’d be more convinced.
- zachthewf 2y agoCan't wait for them to move up to Seattle. We're basically San Francisco with slightly easier hills and more rain/occasional ice, so seems like a good candidate.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Molitor5901 2y agoThis wonderful short story from Terraform is about a self-driving taxi service. It is well worth the read before getting into any self driving taxi service. Basically, it can turn against you, and you're locked inside with no recourse. https://www.vice.com/en/article/one-star/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/one-star/
- fragmede 2y ago(2015); Terraform in this case is vice.com’s “home for future fiction”, in case anyone was wondering.
- Molitor5901 2y agoVery good! Yes indeed, future fiction, which we are sort of living in. Thanks for contributing.
- fragmede 2y agoTerraform in this case has nothing to do with the product from Hashicorp, but just saying that would have been less informative. Thank you for the link to the made up story!
- Axsuul 2y agoAnyone have any insight on how Waymo handles the tight roads? Wonder when it will be coming to the hilly areas of Los Angeles.
- abeppu 2y agoI think the problem now is that individual waymos are ok on relatively narrow streets, streets with hills, being cautious about pedestrians and cyclists, etc. The most frequent issues I notice in SF now are around waymos interacting with other waymos. This particularly involves deadlocking when trying to navigate around each other in tight areas. I've seen this with multiple waymos trying to get around a double-parked delivery van, where a waymo trying to go around blocked a waymo in the oncoming lane and they both stopped. I think this is also related to the issue of waymos honking at each other in their own private parking lot because they were getting in each other's way.
- Axsuul 2y agoThat sounds promising! What about when needing to do a dance when there's an oncoming car on a tight street in the hills? Does it find a gap or even backup to let the car by? Waymos honking at each other is hilarious.
- harmmonica 2y agoThey don't operate yet in the hills around LA, but I trot this example out when talking about Waymo. In LA a lot of the streets in central LA are not marked, have cars parked on both sides and are not wide enough for two cars to drive in opposite directions at the same time (ie they're extremely tight where you have to wait for a car to pass before you can proceed). Waymo has no problem waiting its turn and then going when it's clear. One thing I've noticed, though, is that Waymos have gotten more aggressive in these situations than they used to be (note that they seem to have gotten more bold/aggressive in other circumstances as well). In fact they were so aggressive pulling away from a curb on one of my last rides that I wrote to Waymo support telling them I thought it was too aggressive. Still a very big Waymo fan. Btw, that sense that they're being more aggressive may be entirely in my head, but I'd bet money that it's true, which begs some questions about our robot overlords adapting their behavior to the behavior of the humans around them. Interesting if true.
- almost_usual 2y agoCan’t wait for them to expand into the Peninsula and South Bay.
- panick21_ 2y agoWell worth to watch 'Not Just Bikes' new video 'How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0
- drewr 2y agoIt's long, but well worth an hour of your time. He even states in the comments that he set out two years ago to make a positive video about AVs: What was most surprising to me was that when I began researching this video (two years ago!) it was going to be about some of the technical challenges that would need to be overcome in order to make self-driving cars a reality, but the conclusion was going to be that ultimately, AVs would be a good thing. By the time I was done researching this topic I was absolutely horrified of our future self-driving dystopia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0&lc=UgzN9fnItjm2bwVpEfp4AaABAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0&lc=UgzN9fnItjm2b... The future he illustrates seems mostly plausible, except that it depends on all of the technology functioning flawlessly. I have a hard time believing that streets full of high-speed AVs functioning in perfect synchrony is likely. However, that doesn't change my general agreement with the conclusions he draws in that video and the rest of his channel.
- lisp2240 2y agoI refuse to trust my personal safety with an anonymous driver located in a datacenter on the other side of the world
- ahahahahah 2y agoLucky for you, waymo does not use remote drivers.
- petters 2y agoNot all. Not us Europeans who come to visit sometimes. :(
- iso8859-1 2y agoWhat makes you think it doesn't work for Europeans?
- petters 2y ago"This app isn't available on Google Play in your region"
- ugh123 2y agoWhat if you downloaded from a US wifi network?
- ra7 2y agoIt doesn't work. You need to set your App Store or Play Store region to US. The Waymo app itself requires a US credit card for payment, but apparently works if you have a non-US credit card setup in your Apple/Google Pay.
- iso8859-1 2y agoIn Phoenix, you can use the Uber or Uber Lite apps per https://www.uber.com/newsroom/waymo-on-uber/ https://www.uber.com/newsroom/waymo-on-uber/ Uber Lite: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ubercab.uberlite https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ubercab.ub... Next year you will be able to use this in Austin and Atlanta: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partnership/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partner...
- petters 2y agoUber Lite is also not available, but I'll have to try a Uber next time!
- lfmunoz4 2y agoWhy do we have self driving cars but someone can't make a completely automated McDonald's?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- aaroninsf 2y agoWARNING: never try to take Waymo to the Hollywood Bowl. Their app lets you book a ride to the entrance... then stops and makes you exiut, in front of a motel, blocking its driveway, a mile from the venue. There is an invisible "exclusion zone" there that is not marked on maps, and not communicated to you in any way. You just get dumped somewhere other than the displayed destination and there is no ability to "add a stop" or otherwise modify the ride. Ask me how I know when trying to make a show... or ask the people in the other Waymos we watched pull up as were frantically trying to get a Lyft.
- harmmonica 2y agoNot sure how long ago you did this, but just opened the app and tried to book one there and it says I can't because it's outside the service area (it shows Hollywood Bowl but in the greyed out "Results outside of service area." I've taken a Waymo to several large events recently and usually for those it tells you when booking how far from your destination you're actually going to be dropped off or picked up. Maybe a bunch of those folks, including yourself, complained and they fixed this issue for the Bowl.
- _ea1k 2y agoThis is going to be another one of those things where most people underestimate it for a while. Growth in 2025-2027 will be absolutely incredible! The sharpest part of the exponential growth curve is just ahead.
- uberdru 2y agoWhat happens when the car starts making the decisions about where you're headed, or not headed? Oddly, "autonomous" now refers to he machine, not to the human. Palantir just started training Anthropic against secret government data. Isn't it easier to have your cybertaxi drive you to the authorities than for them to have to track you down?
- yalogin 2y agoDoes google report the quarterly numbers for Waymo separately? It will be interesting to see how these taxi services are producing. Feels like they have finally found a path to monetizing their investments in this space but cannot help but also think it’s a net negative because of the cost of each car
- harmmonica 2y agoI think this is against the site guidelines but will try and phrase it so that it's compliant because I'm curious if others have noticed this. Waymo threads seem to always end up on the HN front page, but then the last few ones quickly end up off of it (I assume because of downvotes?). There's so much investment in a company like Tesla where they've hitched their wagon to self-driving cars that my knee-jerk reaction is that folks are downvoting because "good press" for Waymo is not great news for Tesla (at least until Tesla releases a comparably or better-performing robotaxi). I might also be that I'm in some odd Waymo bubble because I'm impressed with their performance and also incredibly hopeful it will greatly help usher in the era of self-driving vehicles more broadly, which I think is a net positive for humanity (I get it if folks find that thought ridiculous, but just the amount of brain damage (literal and figurative I guess!) we spend driving when we could be doing other things, how cars have been such a driving force for our built environment, etc., etc., etc.).
- jsnell 2y agoPosts with more comments than upvotes trigger the HN flamewar detector, and are penalized. This thread is at 300 comments for 200 upvotes. There's no downvotes for submissions. There's flags, but it'd be quite hard to coordinate a submission to be flagged just enough to get it off the front page but not enough to actually mark it as flagged.
- harmmonica 2y agoAh, appreciate the info. I didn't know about the flamewar detector, nor that you couldn't downvote submissions.
- CHB0403085482 2y agoThe end result of self-driving? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0