14 ms·

Next stop: Miami

225 points by ra7 2y ago

indigo0086 2y ago
Waymo, south American and Caribbean drivers. South American and Caribbean drivers, Waymo. If there's any stress test for auotmated cars it's driving in Miami
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
timmg 2y ago
I wonder when they will be able to provide service in northern cities (that get snow). Once they can do that -- and (I guess) can prove profitable -- they could expand non-stop across the country.
- mavhc 2y ago
  Assuming they stop relying on hd maps, or map everywhere
  - fragmede 2y ago
    We're worried that Google, the company that brought us Google street view, can't map the entire world, when they've already done it once?
    - mavhc 2y ago
      Can they map it to cm accuracy and cope with the millions of changes that happen every day?
      - fragmede 2y ago
        seems to be working in San Francisco, Phoenix, LA, and Austin, so I'm guessing yes
- schiffern 2y ago
  Anyone know the timeline for Waymo expanding to northern areas outside urban centers? Or are these underserved populations forever stuck waiting hours for an Uber that still cancels half the time?
  - comte7092 2y ago
    At the end of the day that isn’t a technical problem but a unit economics one. Removing the driver from a taxi doesn’t bring down costs that much. Self driving cars aren’t going to change the uber/taxi model at a fundamental level. They have a finite fleet that they need to deploy. Urban centers mean that fleet utilization is high, and relatively less time and miles are spent driving with no one on board. In rural areas with little demand they will sit empty or have to drive empty for many more miles to their pickups. It just isn’t profitable to use your fleet that way no matter what you do.
    - Philpax 2y ago
      Hmm, I'm not sure about that - fully autonomous taxis wouldn't be subject to the limitations of human drivers in terms of availability / reliability / endurance. You could ostensibly leave a few taxis around to service otherwise underserved areas and have them run without having to secure a driver each time. That being said, there is still the cost of maintenance and cleanup, but that can be mitigated (the taxis for five towns could drive to one centralised depot, maintenance can be scheduled to maximise operational time, and eventually all of this can be automated, too) I don't know if that's how things will work out just yet, but it seems like a possible future based on Waymo's current operational strategy.
      - comte7092 2y ago
        > You could ostensibly leave a few taxis around to service otherwise underserved areas and have them run without having to secure a driver each time. I think you’re dramatically overestimating how much of a barrier obtaining a driver is here. The primary cost is opportunity cost of the capital that isn’t being utilized. Not having to have a driver doesn’t somehow make it so you can infinitely provision a fleet.
- IshKebab 2y ago
  Based on what I saw in SF they're still pretty limited to noob-level driving. I expect driving difficulty will be way more of a barrier than snow.
  - AlotOfReading 2y ago
    If twin peaks and downtown are your definition of "noob-level driving", what's normal difficulty? Mumbai rush hour? An active war zone?
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      I don't think there's a "normal". It's a scale with SF at the very bottom, Mumbai at the top. North West Europe in the middle, etc. I'm not sure what the point of your comment is. Are you disagreeing that SF is very easy driving? There's very little traffic. The roads are a perfect grid. Nothing ever blocks the lanes. The roads are all very wide so finding a place to stop is easy. Etc. etc. Most driving in the world is not like that.
      - AlotOfReading 2y ago
        Have you ever driven in SF? None of those are true. Here's a random street in the twin peaks neighborhood I mentioned: https://maps.app.goo.gl/XnGpwPN7YH24YJGQ7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/XnGpwPN7YH24YJGQ7 Double parked vehicles are also a regular occurrence in SF, and even triple parked vehicles happen frequently enough to be a problem at fleet scale.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    strong disagree
    - IshKebab 2y ago
      Where is it easier to drive than SF?
      - 2y ago
- asdasdsddd 2y ago
  They've been testing in Michigan for a while. I guess the only problem is that you can only test this stuff in a third of the year.
  - jitl 2y ago
    They should test year round so they can drive year round.
simpleintheory 2y ago
I think the most interesting part is that the article says that Waymo's handing its operations to Moove. It seems like Waymo's trying to become a software provider while having other companies handle the capital-intensive parts.
- Workaccount2 2y ago
  Compared to software, hardware sucks. Mother nature OS is by far the worst to develop for.
  - lnsru 2y ago
    It does not suck! Hardware just barely works. I design motherboards for industrial computers for living. Last gem: radio module draws 5 amps while transmitting instead of specified 2 amps. Trust nobody!
- ra7 2y ago
  The pivot has already happened. They’re handing over Austin and Atlanta to Uber, and now Phoenix and Miami to Moove. The only places they will continue to own operations for at least the next year are SF and LA.
  - bloomingkales 2y ago
    Pivot to what exactly?
    - ra7 2y ago
      To owning just the self driving stack and not the physical operations of running a robotaxi service.
- taneq 2y ago
  Capital-intensive, or labour-intensive? If I were a provider of 'special smart sauce' that goes on a common piece of equipment, I'd be trying to focus on making it so I could provide the sauce rather than dealing with all the real-world issues that come with all the real-world people using the saucy equipment.
seeingfurther 2y ago
Miami probably has some of the worst, most lawless drivers in the country — it's like a free-for-all out there. Makes me wonder if Waymo picked Miami as a kind of stress test for their self-driving tech. If they can handle the chaos there, they can probably handle just about anything.
- bpodgursky 2y ago
  Miami car insurance fraud rings are going to have a fun trying to trick Waymo into rear-ending them. Wonder if it will work.
  - rwmj 2y ago
    Would you want to commit insurance fraud against a vehicle that is covered in cameras?
    - bpodgursky 2y ago
      Yes. The game is that you start to pull out for a right turn, and then brake unexpectedly and get the person behind you to tap your bumper, while they are looking for oncoming traffic to the left. Then you take your car to a "friendly" repair shop that overcharges for a new bumper (or claims to replace it) and split the payout. There's nothing illegal about braking suddenly, the collision is always the fault of the person behind you legally, so there's no personal risk.
      - Rebelgecko 2y ago
        When I've been in Waymo, they've never drove so fast that they don't have time to brake if the car in front of them does. And they can multitask - while looking for oncoming traffic to the left they can still watch the car in front of them
- itchyouch 2y ago
  I'd imagine NYC to be worse than Miami. Miami seems to share enough similarity in warm weather to SF to be a similar enough use case to expand while providing slightly different driving conditions to be able to dip ones toes in to the driving habits of a different city.
foobarian 2y ago
Not from Miami, so I wonder (based on news etc.) if flooding is ever an issue for traffic in and around the city?
- jitl 2y ago
  It is during and after a hurricane. I wouldn’t recommend taking a robotaxi during a storm though.
- Quinner 2y ago
  Flooding is absolutely an issue, during the rainy season (third of the year) localized flooding is quite common. Some streets are partially flooded on an almost daily basis, something human drivers are used to but I imagine will pose a new challenge to waymo.
lopkeny12ko 2y ago
Jaguar discontinued the I-PACE and presumably does not manufacture them anymore. It must be the case that Waymo is cannibalizing their fleet capacity from other markets for every new city launch.
- jitl 2y ago
  Waymo has a zillion I-PACE vehicles in storage/prep and 2 new models in the pipeline.
- dangus 2y ago
  I can’t imagine that they would have any major difficulties installing their equipment on any other vehicle. And they also probably have every little default finding I-PACE vehicles that have gone unsold or are unwanted.
- poniko 2y ago
  Waymo is changing to a Hundai iqonic 5, especially made for them. In the meantime they have brought up all Jaguar they could.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  Jaguar did not manufacture the I-Pace at all. It was made by Steyr, who also built a ton of them for Waymo.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    TIL Magna Steyr is the largest contract manufacturer of automobiles worldwide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Steyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Steyr)
fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
This is important if nothing else because Miami sees much more rain than SF and Phoenix: Miami: 57 in. (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&timeframe=30&station=USW00092811 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... SF: 25 in. (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&timeframe=30&station=US1CASF0004 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset...) Phoenix: 7 in. (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&timeframe=30&station=US1AZMR0313 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset...)
- bbor 2y ago
  Good point! Though also worth mentioning that they're already in Atlanta, which gets ~50in (and 59in so far this year, despite the mind-bending "first October without rain in recorded history")
  - newfocogi 2y ago
    I think they've announced they're headed to Atlanta in early 2025. So they may be testing there, but I don't believe they are at GA in GA :)
    - creaghpatr 2y ago
      They are frequently spotted but not yet available in ATL.
  - fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
    Good point, I guess I missed when that happened. Looking at some news sites and Waymo's blog, it seems that they are testing in Atlanta and will start accepting customers in 2025.[0] >It currently operates fleets of driverless cars in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Phoenix. It also plans to launch a robotaxi service in Atlanta in an exclusive partnership with Uber.[1] [0] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partnership/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partner... [1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/5/24313346/waymo-miami-robotaxi-moove-2026 https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/5/24313346/waymo-miami-robo...
mg 2y ago
our service – which already provides over 150,000 trips per week across Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin Interesting. That's about 8 million rides per year. I wonder how close they are to being profitable? As soon as they are getting close to being profitable, they will probably scale this up super fast. I don't know how much Google invested into Waymo so far. Something like $10B? If they at some point make $10 per ride, they would only need something like 50 million rides per year to justify that investment with a p/e ratio of 20. To go from 8M rides to 50M in 5 years they would have to increase their capacity by 50% per year. Might be possible?
- ezfe 2y ago
  Profitable from an operations perspective? Surely close since they charge the same order of magnitude as an Uber/Lyft and have fewer than one driver per vehicle (monitoring the vehicles).
  - mg 2y ago
    We have to add the deprecation and maintenance of the car. Plus I guess they need high resolution maps? Not sure if that is a significant cost factor.
    - ezfe 2y ago
      Since they're using entirely electric cars that they will likely never sell so depreciation and maintenance will be favorable. There is the up-front cost of equipping the cars with equipment though, which I imagine is substantial. For the high resolution maps, that cost is fixed per market area. It could limit a rollout to new markets by driving area.
    - bbor 2y ago
      I mean, they're Google -- I'm guessing they're pulling out their "pointcloud of the entire world" for this one. The first point is a great one, tho; rideshare companies exist by offloading as much cost as possible onto their employees, and even then barely make it work. Plus, at least some of the Waymos are super-fancy Jaguars -- tho it looks like roughly 20K Jaguars to 65K Chrysler minivans, according to Wikipedia. Still, they're all brand new vehicles; even with bulk discount, that can't be cheap.
jeffbee 2y ago
There were three things in Waymo's latest CPUC filing that interested me. First, through the end of August, Los Angeles still irrelevant. Over 85% of their California rides were still in SF. Second, ridership in SF doubled in 90 days without a significant expansion in either vehicles or trips per service hour, but they had the cars out on the road more hours every day. Third, the geographic concentration of their rides is extreme, with a large fraction of trips starting near either the Ferry Building or Fisherman's Wharf, which suggests that it is popular with and useful to tourists.
deadbabe 2y ago
It will be a showdown of man vs machine in the city with the worst drivers in the nation. Interesting times.
- xnx 2y ago
  LendingTree says Massachusetts is the worst: https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/best-worst-drivers-study/ https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/best-worst-drivers-stu...
- timerol 2y ago
  Did you know that almost every city believes this about their local drivers? I've gotten it in LA, Boston, NYC, DC, SF, Philly, Atlanta, and Austin. Adding Miami to the list.
  - BWStearns 2y ago
    Having lived in most of those cities and in Miami I can say Miami is definitely the most dangerous driving I've seen. And my car insurance company certainly seems to agree.
    - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
      Most Americans don't understand that Miami is full of expats from the caribbean and latin america, some of whom may be here illegally, and so can't get a driver's license. They also may have grown up in places where they didn't get a drivers license or learn the rules. So they literally aren't supposed to be driving and never learned how. Because they can't legally drive a car, they buy a beater second-hand for cash, and it's never inspected, and of course falls apart and causes accidents. Add to that the crime in general, and yeah, insurance is $$$$$, and lots of crazy driving. (It's a minority of people, but enough that it creates more extreme outlier events than in most states) Not to mention The Ticket Clinic, a private service to pay a small fee to get out of traffic court. I probably had 10 different traffic violations thrown out, for $80 a pop, when I grew up there in the 00's.
jmyeet 2y ago
That's an interesting choice for several reasons: 1. Literally nobody in Florida can drive. Nobody indicates. People run red lights. They speed on the hard shoulder to overtake someone else who is speeding slightly less; 2. There's a lot of things that come down to timing, like when the bridges are up on the Venetian and over the Miami River. You can also get trains blocking the entire of downtown; 3. It seems like there's constant rerouting for closed roads, typically due to contruction; 4. Inclement weather. High winds and flooding. Biscayne Boulevard is often called Lake Biscayne. 30 minutes can be the difference between Miami Beach being dry and every road being 1 foot deep in water (not an exaggeration); and 5. What will be the covered area? I guess Phoenix and LA sprawl too but what constitutes "Miami" goes south, west and north pretty far. I mean there's no break between Miami, unincorporated Miami-Dade County and Fort Lauterdale.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  Yeah, I dunno if the team understands just how crazy Miami driving is. Maybe they'll restrict it to Downtown, Miami Beach, the Grove, etc to limit the chaos?
  - NickC25 2y ago
    That won't limit the chaos. FWIW I went to whole foods downtown today and nearly got hit twice. I live in Midtown, so it's quite literally a 27-block trip. Some of the worst driving (save for on 95) I've seen here has been either 1. idiots on the Beach 2. idiots in Brickell or 3. idiots in downtown. People here suck at driving.
BWStearns 2y ago
I am morbidly curious to see how Waymos interact with the Good Vibes Only crazies. Miami is definitely going to be hard mode for self driving.
- tsunamifury 2y ago
  Haha that’s nothing compared to its hometown of San Francisco. People attack, destroy, burn waymos here. Let alone extreme hills and visibility issues. Miami will be comparably far simpler.
entropi 2y ago
I feel like at this point someone needs to take a step back and think about the general vision and overall goals of this whole fully automated ride-hailing service thing. I mean, what is the exact problem that's being solved here? I don't mean "problem" like "solving the technical problem of making a car move autonomously in a chaotic city" sense. I mean what is the need that's being addressed here, exactly? Ride-hailing workers were already often working for less than minimum wage. They were also handling most of the maintenance and customer relations aspects of the work, for basically free. Are these sexy cutting edge tech firms with eye-watering budgets and even more eye-watering valuations really going after whatever these people were making? If the problem is efficiently moving people around in a city; well to be honest I find this premise a bit ridiculous. Call me a European, but I find the idea that moving 1-2 people in private vehicles on roads being superior than public transit -preferably on rail- simply absurd. Is the idea of living and moving around in a city full of autonomous vehicles actually appealing to anyone? I personally find the whole idea completely disgusting for a number of reasons. What is the goal here? Am I missing a grand vision? What is there to get excited for? Sorry if this post has been a rant-y one. I feel like I am really missing the point of most of these things.
- falcor84 2y ago
  As I see it, the biggest goal is safety - self-driving cars seem to reduce accidents per distance driven by at least one order of magnitude.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    Citation needed. I've seen claims like that, but none of them from a source that stands up to scrutiny. Most such claims come from the people promoting self driving cars and so they have reason to "lie with statistics". Those who have unbiased data (ie governments) are not talking about it from what I can see. I personally am significnatly safer than the average driver. This comes solely down to me not drinking alcohol and thus I never drive while drunk. The typical driver also isn't under the influence and thus is significantly better than the average. (I also try to follow other safety practices, but I'm not sure if I'm really better - I'm aware of and pay attention to one thing which makes me better - but what am I not aware of that others are doing?)
bedobi 2y ago
Imagine if instead Miami built MetroRail extensions to the beach and everywhere else it should go, increased TriRail frequency and express services, built a real network of fully segregated greenways etc etc. It would turn transport nightmare into transport heaven. We don't need more cars on the streets of Miami or the I95...
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  Well that would cost Miami taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and this costs Miami taxpayers nothing. It would also take decades. This will be happening next year. Build all the transit you want. You need something for the next 30 years while you're doing that.
  - bedobi 2y ago
    no it would save miami and the state and the federal government billions trirail frequency increases can be done overnight a greenway network can also be built quickly and cheaply metrorail extension would cost more but still less than it costs to build and maintain roads but they are too busy spending billions building even more car infra which will only make traffic and congestion even worse
    - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
      > no it would save miami and the state and the federal government billions Have you ever looked at the local budget of a US transit authority? They typically lose $2+ per passenger trip, and get bailed out by the federal government. Mass transit is not going to save Miami any money for decades until ridership approaches Hong Kong levels. Unless you count passing on expenses to the Federal government as savings, and even then, it's still decades out.
      - kemotep 2y ago
        With car usage on most roads free of charge at use and maintenance also footed largely by the Federal Government, it probably comes out cheaper long term to invest in rail. And every car off the toad makes driving more pleasant for everyone who stays.
fixprix 2y ago
Waymo is cool, but I have no idea how it is going to compete with the tsunami coming that is CyberCab. Tesla will be mass producing this smaller, cheaper vehicle like nothing else. Covering the entire country with self driving vehicles. I don’t know how Waymo can possibly compete with that. Their deployment by city is slow, their hardware is expensive, slown to produce, and not purpose built for self driving.
- oblio 2y ago
  > Waymo is cool, but I have no idea how it is going to compete with the tsunami coming that is CyberCab. Tesla will be mass producing this smaller, cheaper vehicle like nothing else. Covering the entire country with self driving vehicles. Don't fall for the hype.
  - fixprix 2y ago
    This is fundamental. Waymo doesn’t make cars. They can’t scale like Tesla can. Waymo vehicles are way more expensive and not optimized at all for FSD, it’s all bolt on. If nothing changes, when CyberCab comes around Waymo will be screwed.
    - oblio 2y ago
      It's not fundamental. We know how to make cars. Other companies are also adding sensors to their existing cars. Waymo is partnering with existing car companies and those have a lot more production capacity than Tesla. I had also hoped you Teslabros would chill with the Tesla hype when Model 3 was supposed to cost 35k but the cheapest model is about 45k, the cheapest Cybertruck was supposed to also be about 35k but instead it's about 100k, the Semi isn't doing much, the Roadster is still vaporware, FSD is nowhere near FSD...
      - fixprix 2y ago
        Again, Waymo sensors are expensive. Waymo cars are also expensive, 4 seaters with lots of other parts included for manual driving. Unless Waymo is working to design their own car for self driving they’re not going to be able to compete with a much cheaper self driving vehicle. Tesla will flood the market. Also ‘partnering’ you think legacy auto is going to let a middle man like Waymo ‘use’ their cars once self driving taxi services are here. They will cut out Waymo middle man fast. People will be buying subscriptions to Honda and Ford taxi services, not Waymo. I think you forgot to factor in 10 years of inflation into your prices. A factory for Semi is being built in Nevada as we speak. And FSD is incredibly good, it can drive today in far more places than a Waymo can. Personally it drives me 90% of the time, and the next update with auto parking support it’ll be up to 99%.
danielvaughn 2y ago
I’m sure they know much more than me and have thought this through, but it feels like Miami is an absolutely awful choice. Traffic is notoriously chaotic there. I’ve driven in LA, Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia, SF, Miami, etc. It’s by far the worst place to drive, moreso even than Manhattan.
- 1024core 2y ago
  But have you driven in Boston?
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    boston driving is so much better than SF+LA driving because at least what the drivers do there makes sense
  - mankyd 2y ago
    Nah. I live in Boston. I strongly prefer public transit, but I'll take driving here over most other cities, any day of the week. The _road layout_ is awful, but drivers are pretty cooperative on the whole. Certainly more than my years driving in DC, for instance. Granted, you need to be commmital here: if you put on your turn signal, drivers will generally make space for you to get in - briefly - but you need to be quick to take advantage of the gap. I could see Waymo being too slow to the draw for this, based on what I've seen online.
- oblio 2y ago
  It's probably based on where public administrations are supportive. Isn't Florida notorious for being car centric? One more lane, bro, one more self driving car company, bro... :-)
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  Why do you think that makes a bad market for a driverless car? If driving is miserable, that means lots of people that dont want to do it. If traffic is chaotic, that means a good place to improve their software.
- 2y ago
simonw 2y ago
"... we’ll work to open our doors to riders in 2026". I guess it takes a while to set up for a new city!
oblio 2y ago
Reminder that cars reshaped urban environments and generally for the worse, and self driving cars have a very solid chance to do the same thing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 If you have an hour, highly recommended video. A bit too doomerist but the threat is there. Keep in mind that it's not just about tech (which can be amazing), but also about social aspects, money and politics (which can be atrocious and generally override morality and technology).
SubiculumCode 2y ago
Question: Do Waymo rides ever get on a freeway within their operating territory?
- ra7 2y ago
  Not yet. Freeway rides are open to employees only for now, so I'd imagine it's pretty close to being available to the public.
Rebuff5007 2y ago
I'm so curious about how the internal dev teams feeling about all this scaling. Four cities across 3 states -- surely there are differences in road signs, lane markings, emergency procedures, etc. Let alone the sheer volume of data of doing hundreds of thousands of miles ever week! Massive kudos to them if they are able to do all this without things being aflame on the inside...
- whamlastxmas 2y ago
  My understanding is they have to make extremely detailed maps of where they operate and at great expense, and everything sort of breaks when anything changes. So lots of work indeed!
  - threeseed 2y ago
    Waymo doesn't rely on the maps to operate. It just helps with redundancy in case it's unable to see. And it's just a matter of the cars driving through each of the streets and working with local authorities.
  - dyauspitr 2y ago
    >everything sort of breaks when anything changes What is “your understanding” based on?
  - ra7 2y ago
    Your understanding is wrong. They work perfectly well when road features change and the cars are able to update maps in real time. See https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-mapping/ https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-map...
    - whamlastxmas 2y ago
      Why does it only operate in such tiny areas?
      - ra7 2y ago
flkiwi 2y ago
The sheer number of these things that are going to get shot by angry Miami drivers ...
drcwpl 2y ago
Come to Europe please
- BryanBeshore 2y ago
  Why do I feel like a regulator would immediately file a suit for $1B+ if Waymo did this?
dartos 2y ago
Let’s see how they do with Miami drivers.
nextworddev 2y ago
This is terrible. Driving Uber is an important source of income for recent immigrants from LatAM countries.
- crowcroft 2y ago
  We should have cut things off back when we had the chance and never let the stocking frame do this to us.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
l-birdy 2y ago
[flagged]
twobitshifter 2y ago
How is Waymo going to continue with the iPACE? Jaguar has ceased production of all cars and they are trying to reinvent themselves as an electric Rolls Royce brand.
- aembleton 2y ago
  They have a contract for 20k cars, so I expect that will continue and will help to fund Jaguar's transition: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/27/waymo-self-driving-taxis-jaguar-land-rover https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/27/waymo-sel...
deleted 2y ago
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treetalker 2y ago
The real question is how it will handle Miami drivers making right turns from three lanes over, or refrigerators falling off of pickup trucks with no railing on one side of the bed while cruising through Hialeah.
CHB0403085482 2y ago
Relevant doomer prophecy ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0

225 points by ra7 2y ago

Waymo, south American and Caribbean drivers. South American and Caribbean drivers, Waymo. If there's any stress test for auotmated cars it's driving in Miami

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timmg 2y ago

I wonder when they will be able to provide service in northern cities (that get snow). Once they can do that -- and (I guess) can prove profitable -- they could expand non-stop across the country.

mavhc 2y ago
Assuming they stop relying on hd maps, or map everywhere
- fragmede 2y ago
  We're worried that Google, the company that brought us Google street view, can't map the entire world, when they've already done it once?
  - mavhc 2y ago
    Can they map it to cm accuracy and cope with the millions of changes that happen every day?
    - fragmede 2y ago
      seems to be working in San Francisco, Phoenix, LA, and Austin, so I'm guessing yes
schiffern 2y ago
Anyone know the timeline for Waymo expanding to northern areas outside urban centers? Or are these underserved populations forever stuck waiting hours for an Uber that still cancels half the time?
- comte7092 2y ago
  At the end of the day that isn’t a technical problem but a unit economics one. Removing the driver from a taxi doesn’t bring down costs that much. Self driving cars aren’t going to change the uber/taxi model at a fundamental level. They have a finite fleet that they need to deploy. Urban centers mean that fleet utilization is high, and relatively less time and miles are spent driving with no one on board. In rural areas with little demand they will sit empty or have to drive empty for many more miles to their pickups. It just isn’t profitable to use your fleet that way no matter what you do.
  - Philpax 2y ago
    Hmm, I'm not sure about that - fully autonomous taxis wouldn't be subject to the limitations of human drivers in terms of availability / reliability / endurance. You could ostensibly leave a few taxis around to service otherwise underserved areas and have them run without having to secure a driver each time. That being said, there is still the cost of maintenance and cleanup, but that can be mitigated (the taxis for five towns could drive to one centralised depot, maintenance can be scheduled to maximise operational time, and eventually all of this can be automated, too) I don't know if that's how things will work out just yet, but it seems like a possible future based on Waymo's current operational strategy.
    - comte7092 2y ago
      > You could ostensibly leave a few taxis around to service otherwise underserved areas and have them run without having to secure a driver each time. I think you’re dramatically overestimating how much of a barrier obtaining a driver is here. The primary cost is opportunity cost of the capital that isn’t being utilized. Not having to have a driver doesn’t somehow make it so you can infinitely provision a fleet.
IshKebab 2y ago
Based on what I saw in SF they're still pretty limited to noob-level driving. I expect driving difficulty will be way more of a barrier than snow.
- AlotOfReading 2y ago
  If twin peaks and downtown are your definition of "noob-level driving", what's normal difficulty? Mumbai rush hour? An active war zone?
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    I don't think there's a "normal". It's a scale with SF at the very bottom, Mumbai at the top. North West Europe in the middle, etc. I'm not sure what the point of your comment is. Are you disagreeing that SF is very easy driving? There's very little traffic. The roads are a perfect grid. Nothing ever blocks the lanes. The roads are all very wide so finding a place to stop is easy. Etc. etc. Most driving in the world is not like that.
    - AlotOfReading 2y ago
      Have you ever driven in SF? None of those are true. Here's a random street in the twin peaks neighborhood I mentioned: https://maps.app.goo.gl/XnGpwPN7YH24YJGQ7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/XnGpwPN7YH24YJGQ7 Double parked vehicles are also a regular occurrence in SF, and even triple parked vehicles happen frequently enough to be a problem at fleet scale.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  strong disagree
  - IshKebab 2y ago
    Where is it easier to drive than SF?
    - 2y ago
asdasdsddd 2y ago
They've been testing in Michigan for a while. I guess the only problem is that you can only test this stuff in a third of the year.
- jitl 2y ago
  They should test year round so they can drive year round.

simpleintheory 2y ago

I think the most interesting part is that the article says that Waymo's handing its operations to Moove. It seems like Waymo's trying to become a software provider while having other companies handle the capital-intensive parts.

Workaccount2 2y ago
Compared to software, hardware sucks. Mother nature OS is by far the worst to develop for.
- lnsru 2y ago
  It does not suck! Hardware just barely works. I design motherboards for industrial computers for living. Last gem: radio module draws 5 amps while transmitting instead of specified 2 amps. Trust nobody!
ra7 2y ago
The pivot has already happened. They’re handing over Austin and Atlanta to Uber, and now Phoenix and Miami to Moove. The only places they will continue to own operations for at least the next year are SF and LA.
- bloomingkales 2y ago
  Pivot to what exactly?
  - ra7 2y ago
    To owning just the self driving stack and not the physical operations of running a robotaxi service.
taneq 2y ago
Capital-intensive, or labour-intensive? If I were a provider of 'special smart sauce' that goes on a common piece of equipment, I'd be trying to focus on making it so I could provide the sauce rather than dealing with all the real-world issues that come with all the real-world people using the saucy equipment.

seeingfurther 2y ago

Miami probably has some of the worst, most lawless drivers in the country — it's like a free-for-all out there. Makes me wonder if Waymo picked Miami as a kind of stress test for their self-driving tech. If they can handle the chaos there, they can probably handle just about anything.

bpodgursky 2y ago
Miami car insurance fraud rings are going to have a fun trying to trick Waymo into rear-ending them. Wonder if it will work.
- rwmj 2y ago
  Would you want to commit insurance fraud against a vehicle that is covered in cameras?
  - bpodgursky 2y ago
    Yes. The game is that you start to pull out for a right turn, and then brake unexpectedly and get the person behind you to tap your bumper, while they are looking for oncoming traffic to the left. Then you take your car to a "friendly" repair shop that overcharges for a new bumper (or claims to replace it) and split the payout. There's nothing illegal about braking suddenly, the collision is always the fault of the person behind you legally, so there's no personal risk.
    - Rebelgecko 2y ago
      When I've been in Waymo, they've never drove so fast that they don't have time to brake if the car in front of them does. And they can multitask - while looking for oncoming traffic to the left they can still watch the car in front of them
itchyouch 2y ago
I'd imagine NYC to be worse than Miami. Miami seems to share enough similarity in warm weather to SF to be a similar enough use case to expand while providing slightly different driving conditions to be able to dip ones toes in to the driving habits of a different city.

foobarian 2y ago

Not from Miami, so I wonder (based on news etc.) if flooding is ever an issue for traffic in and around the city?

jitl 2y ago
It is during and after a hurricane. I wouldn’t recommend taking a robotaxi during a storm though.
Quinner 2y ago
Flooding is absolutely an issue, during the rainy season (third of the year) localized flooding is quite common. Some streets are partially flooded on an almost daily basis, something human drivers are used to but I imagine will pose a new challenge to waymo.

lopkeny12ko 2y ago

Jaguar discontinued the I-PACE and presumably does not manufacture them anymore. It must be the case that Waymo is cannibalizing their fleet capacity from other markets for every new city launch.

jitl 2y ago
Waymo has a zillion I-PACE vehicles in storage/prep and 2 new models in the pipeline.
dangus 2y ago
I can’t imagine that they would have any major difficulties installing their equipment on any other vehicle. And they also probably have every little default finding I-PACE vehicles that have gone unsold or are unwanted.
poniko 2y ago
Waymo is changing to a Hundai iqonic 5, especially made for them. In the meantime they have brought up all Jaguar they could.
jeffbee 2y ago
Jaguar did not manufacture the I-Pace at all. It was made by Steyr, who also built a ton of them for Waymo.
- 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
  TIL Magna Steyr is the largest contract manufacturer of automobiles worldwide (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Steyr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Steyr)

fngjdflmdflg 2y ago

This is important if nothing else because Miami sees much more rain than SF and Phoenix: Miami: 57 in. (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&timeframe=30&station=USW00092811 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset... SF: 25 in. (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&timeframe=30&station=US1CASF0004 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset...) Phoenix: 7 in. (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset=normals-annualseasonal&timeframe=30&station=US1AZMR0313 https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/us-climate-normals/#dataset...)

bbor 2y ago
Good point! Though also worth mentioning that they're already in Atlanta, which gets ~50in (and 59in so far this year, despite the mind-bending "first October without rain in recorded history")
- newfocogi 2y ago
  I think they've announced they're headed to Atlanta in early 2025. So they may be testing there, but I don't believe they are at GA in GA :)
  - creaghpatr 2y ago
    They are frequently spotted but not yet available in ATL.
- fngjdflmdflg 2y ago
  Good point, I guess I missed when that happened. Looking at some news sites and Waymo's blog, it seems that they are testing in Atlanta and will start accepting customers in 2025.[0] >It currently operates fleets of driverless cars in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Austin, and Phoenix. It also plans to launch a robotaxi service in Atlanta in an exclusive partnership with Uber.[1] [0] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partnership/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/09/waymo-and-uber-expand-partner... [1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/5/24313346/waymo-miami-robotaxi-moove-2026 https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/5/24313346/waymo-miami-robo...

mg 2y ago

our service – which already provides over 150,000 trips per week across Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Austin Interesting. That's about 8 million rides per year. I wonder how close they are to being profitable? As soon as they are getting close to being profitable, they will probably scale this up super fast. I don't know how much Google invested into Waymo so far. Something like $10B? If they at some point make $10 per ride, they would only need something like 50 million rides per year to justify that investment with a p/e ratio of 20. To go from 8M rides to 50M in 5 years they would have to increase their capacity by 50% per year. Might be possible?

ezfe 2y ago
Profitable from an operations perspective? Surely close since they charge the same order of magnitude as an Uber/Lyft and have fewer than one driver per vehicle (monitoring the vehicles).
- mg 2y ago
  We have to add the deprecation and maintenance of the car. Plus I guess they need high resolution maps? Not sure if that is a significant cost factor.
  - ezfe 2y ago
    Since they're using entirely electric cars that they will likely never sell so depreciation and maintenance will be favorable. There is the up-front cost of equipping the cars with equipment though, which I imagine is substantial. For the high resolution maps, that cost is fixed per market area. It could limit a rollout to new markets by driving area.
  - bbor 2y ago
    I mean, they're Google -- I'm guessing they're pulling out their "pointcloud of the entire world" for this one. The first point is a great one, tho; rideshare companies exist by offloading as much cost as possible onto their employees, and even then barely make it work. Plus, at least some of the Waymos are super-fancy Jaguars -- tho it looks like roughly 20K Jaguars to 65K Chrysler minivans, according to Wikipedia. Still, they're all brand new vehicles; even with bulk discount, that can't be cheap.

jeffbee 2y ago

There were three things in Waymo's latest CPUC filing that interested me. First, through the end of August, Los Angeles still irrelevant. Over 85% of their California rides were still in SF. Second, ridership in SF doubled in 90 days without a significant expansion in either vehicles or trips per service hour, but they had the cars out on the road more hours every day. Third, the geographic concentration of their rides is extreme, with a large fraction of trips starting near either the Ferry Building or Fisherman's Wharf, which suggests that it is popular with and useful to tourists.

deadbabe 2y ago

It will be a showdown of man vs machine in the city with the worst drivers in the nation. Interesting times.

xnx 2y ago
LendingTree says Massachusetts is the worst: https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/best-worst-drivers-study/ https://www.lendingtree.com/insurance/best-worst-drivers-stu...
timerol 2y ago
Did you know that almost every city believes this about their local drivers? I've gotten it in LA, Boston, NYC, DC, SF, Philly, Atlanta, and Austin. Adding Miami to the list.
- BWStearns 2y ago
  Having lived in most of those cities and in Miami I can say Miami is definitely the most dangerous driving I've seen. And my car insurance company certainly seems to agree.
  - 0xbadcafebee 2y ago
    Most Americans don't understand that Miami is full of expats from the caribbean and latin america, some of whom may be here illegally, and so can't get a driver's license. They also may have grown up in places where they didn't get a drivers license or learn the rules. So they literally aren't supposed to be driving and never learned how. Because they can't legally drive a car, they buy a beater second-hand for cash, and it's never inspected, and of course falls apart and causes accidents. Add to that the crime in general, and yeah, insurance is $$$$$, and lots of crazy driving. (It's a minority of people, but enough that it creates more extreme outlier events than in most states) Not to mention The Ticket Clinic, a private service to pay a small fee to get out of traffic court. I probably had 10 different traffic violations thrown out, for $80 a pop, when I grew up there in the 00's.

jmyeet 2y ago

That's an interesting choice for several reasons: 1. Literally nobody in Florida can drive. Nobody indicates. People run red lights. They speed on the hard shoulder to overtake someone else who is speeding slightly less; 2. There's a lot of things that come down to timing, like when the bridges are up on the Venetian and over the Miami River. You can also get trains blocking the entire of downtown; 3. It seems like there's constant rerouting for closed roads, typically due to contruction; 4. Inclement weather. High winds and flooding. Biscayne Boulevard is often called Lake Biscayne. 30 minutes can be the difference between Miami Beach being dry and every road being 1 foot deep in water (not an exaggeration); and 5. What will be the covered area? I guess Phoenix and LA sprawl too but what constitutes "Miami" goes south, west and north pretty far. I mean there's no break between Miami, unincorporated Miami-Dade County and Fort Lauterdale.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Yeah, I dunno if the team understands just how crazy Miami driving is. Maybe they'll restrict it to Downtown, Miami Beach, the Grove, etc to limit the chaos?
- NickC25 2y ago
  That won't limit the chaos. FWIW I went to whole foods downtown today and nearly got hit twice. I live in Midtown, so it's quite literally a 27-block trip. Some of the worst driving (save for on 95) I've seen here has been either 1. idiots on the Beach 2. idiots in Brickell or 3. idiots in downtown. People here suck at driving.

BWStearns 2y ago

I am morbidly curious to see how Waymos interact with the Good Vibes Only crazies. Miami is definitely going to be hard mode for self driving.

tsunamifury 2y ago
Haha that’s nothing compared to its hometown of San Francisco. People attack, destroy, burn waymos here. Let alone extreme hills and visibility issues. Miami will be comparably far simpler.

entropi 2y ago

I feel like at this point someone needs to take a step back and think about the general vision and overall goals of this whole fully automated ride-hailing service thing. I mean, what is the exact problem that's being solved here? I don't mean "problem" like "solving the technical problem of making a car move autonomously in a chaotic city" sense. I mean what is the need that's being addressed here, exactly? Ride-hailing workers were already often working for less than minimum wage. They were also handling most of the maintenance and customer relations aspects of the work, for basically free. Are these sexy cutting edge tech firms with eye-watering budgets and even more eye-watering valuations really going after whatever these people were making? If the problem is efficiently moving people around in a city; well to be honest I find this premise a bit ridiculous. Call me a European, but I find the idea that moving 1-2 people in private vehicles on roads being superior than public transit -preferably on rail- simply absurd. Is the idea of living and moving around in a city full of autonomous vehicles actually appealing to anyone? I personally find the whole idea completely disgusting for a number of reasons. What is the goal here? Am I missing a grand vision? What is there to get excited for? Sorry if this post has been a rant-y one. I feel like I am really missing the point of most of these things.

falcor84 2y ago
As I see it, the biggest goal is safety - self-driving cars seem to reduce accidents per distance driven by at least one order of magnitude.
- bluGill 2y ago
  Citation needed. I've seen claims like that, but none of them from a source that stands up to scrutiny. Most such claims come from the people promoting self driving cars and so they have reason to "lie with statistics". Those who have unbiased data (ie governments) are not talking about it from what I can see. I personally am significnatly safer than the average driver. This comes solely down to me not drinking alcohol and thus I never drive while drunk. The typical driver also isn't under the influence and thus is significantly better than the average. (I also try to follow other safety practices, but I'm not sure if I'm really better - I'm aware of and pay attention to one thing which makes me better - but what am I not aware of that others are doing?)

bedobi 2y ago

Imagine if instead Miami built MetroRail extensions to the beach and everywhere else it should go, increased TriRail frequency and express services, built a real network of fully segregated greenways etc etc. It would turn transport nightmare into transport heaven. We don't need more cars on the streets of Miami or the I95...

onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
Well that would cost Miami taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, and this costs Miami taxpayers nothing. It would also take decades. This will be happening next year. Build all the transit you want. You need something for the next 30 years while you're doing that.
- bedobi 2y ago
  no it would save miami and the state and the federal government billions trirail frequency increases can be done overnight a greenway network can also be built quickly and cheaply metrorail extension would cost more but still less than it costs to build and maintain roads but they are too busy spending billions building even more car infra which will only make traffic and congestion even worse
  - onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
    > no it would save miami and the state and the federal government billions Have you ever looked at the local budget of a US transit authority? They typically lose $2+ per passenger trip, and get bailed out by the federal government. Mass transit is not going to save Miami any money for decades until ridership approaches Hong Kong levels. Unless you count passing on expenses to the Federal government as savings, and even then, it's still decades out.
    - kemotep 2y ago
      With car usage on most roads free of charge at use and maintenance also footed largely by the Federal Government, it probably comes out cheaper long term to invest in rail. And every car off the toad makes driving more pleasant for everyone who stays.

fixprix 2y ago

Waymo is cool, but I have no idea how it is going to compete with the tsunami coming that is CyberCab. Tesla will be mass producing this smaller, cheaper vehicle like nothing else. Covering the entire country with self driving vehicles. I don’t know how Waymo can possibly compete with that. Their deployment by city is slow, their hardware is expensive, slown to produce, and not purpose built for self driving.

oblio 2y ago
> Waymo is cool, but I have no idea how it is going to compete with the tsunami coming that is CyberCab. Tesla will be mass producing this smaller, cheaper vehicle like nothing else. Covering the entire country with self driving vehicles. Don't fall for the hype.
- fixprix 2y ago
  This is fundamental. Waymo doesn’t make cars. They can’t scale like Tesla can. Waymo vehicles are way more expensive and not optimized at all for FSD, it’s all bolt on. If nothing changes, when CyberCab comes around Waymo will be screwed.
  - oblio 2y ago
    It's not fundamental. We know how to make cars. Other companies are also adding sensors to their existing cars. Waymo is partnering with existing car companies and those have a lot more production capacity than Tesla. I had also hoped you Teslabros would chill with the Tesla hype when Model 3 was supposed to cost 35k but the cheapest model is about 45k, the cheapest Cybertruck was supposed to also be about 35k but instead it's about 100k, the Semi isn't doing much, the Roadster is still vaporware, FSD is nowhere near FSD...
    - fixprix 2y ago
      Again, Waymo sensors are expensive. Waymo cars are also expensive, 4 seaters with lots of other parts included for manual driving. Unless Waymo is working to design their own car for self driving they’re not going to be able to compete with a much cheaper self driving vehicle. Tesla will flood the market. Also ‘partnering’ you think legacy auto is going to let a middle man like Waymo ‘use’ their cars once self driving taxi services are here. They will cut out Waymo middle man fast. People will be buying subscriptions to Honda and Ford taxi services, not Waymo. I think you forgot to factor in 10 years of inflation into your prices. A factory for Semi is being built in Nevada as we speak. And FSD is incredibly good, it can drive today in far more places than a Waymo can. Personally it drives me 90% of the time, and the next update with auto parking support it’ll be up to 99%.

danielvaughn 2y ago

I’m sure they know much more than me and have thought this through, but it feels like Miami is an absolutely awful choice. Traffic is notoriously chaotic there. I’ve driven in LA, Chicago, NYC, Philadelphia, SF, Miami, etc. It’s by far the worst place to drive, moreso even than Manhattan.

1024core 2y ago
But have you driven in Boston?
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  boston driving is so much better than SF+LA driving because at least what the drivers do there makes sense
- mankyd 2y ago
  Nah. I live in Boston. I strongly prefer public transit, but I'll take driving here over most other cities, any day of the week. The _road layout_ is awful, but drivers are pretty cooperative on the whole. Certainly more than my years driving in DC, for instance. Granted, you need to be commmital here: if you put on your turn signal, drivers will generally make space for you to get in - briefly - but you need to be quick to take advantage of the gap. I could see Waymo being too slow to the draw for this, based on what I've seen online.
oblio 2y ago
It's probably based on where public administrations are supportive. Isn't Florida notorious for being car centric? One more lane, bro, one more self driving car company, bro... :-)
s1artibartfast 2y ago
Why do you think that makes a bad market for a driverless car? If driving is miserable, that means lots of people that dont want to do it. If traffic is chaotic, that means a good place to improve their software.
2y ago

simonw 2y ago

"... we’ll work to open our doors to riders in 2026". I guess it takes a while to set up for a new city!

oblio 2y ago

Reminder that cars reshaped urban environments and generally for the worse, and self driving cars have a very solid chance to do the same thing: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 If you have an hour, highly recommended video. A bit too doomerist but the threat is there. Keep in mind that it's not just about tech (which can be amazing), but also about social aspects, money and politics (which can be atrocious and generally override morality and technology).

SubiculumCode 2y ago

Question: Do Waymo rides ever get on a freeway within their operating territory?

ra7 2y ago
Not yet. Freeway rides are open to employees only for now, so I'd imagine it's pretty close to being available to the public.

Rebuff5007 2y ago

I'm so curious about how the internal dev teams feeling about all this scaling. Four cities across 3 states -- surely there are differences in road signs, lane markings, emergency procedures, etc. Let alone the sheer volume of data of doing hundreds of thousands of miles ever week! Massive kudos to them if they are able to do all this without things being aflame on the inside...

whamlastxmas 2y ago
My understanding is they have to make extremely detailed maps of where they operate and at great expense, and everything sort of breaks when anything changes. So lots of work indeed!
- threeseed 2y ago
  Waymo doesn't rely on the maps to operate. It just helps with redundancy in case it's unable to see. And it's just a matter of the cars driving through each of the streets and working with local authorities.
- dyauspitr 2y ago
  >everything sort of breaks when anything changes What is “your understanding” based on?
- ra7 2y ago
  Your understanding is wrong. They work perfectly well when road features change and the cars are able to update maps in real time. See https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-mapping/ https://waymo.com/blog/2020/09/the-waymo-driver-handbook-map...
  - whamlastxmas 2y ago
    Why does it only operate in such tiny areas?
    - ra7 2y ago

flkiwi 2y ago

The sheer number of these things that are going to get shot by angry Miami drivers ...

drcwpl 2y ago

Come to Europe please

BryanBeshore 2y ago
Why do I feel like a regulator would immediately file a suit for $1B+ if Waymo did this?

dartos 2y ago

Let’s see how they do with Miami drivers.

nextworddev 2y ago

This is terrible. Driving Uber is an important source of income for recent immigrants from LatAM countries.

crowcroft 2y ago
We should have cut things off back when we had the chance and never let the stocking frame do this to us.
deleted 2y ago
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l-birdy 2y ago

[flagged]

twobitshifter 2y ago

How is Waymo going to continue with the iPACE? Jaguar has ceased production of all cars and they are trying to reinvent themselves as an electric Rolls Royce brand.

aembleton 2y ago
They have a contract for 20k cars, so I expect that will continue and will help to fund Jaguar's transition: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/27/waymo-self-driving-taxis-jaguar-land-rover https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/27/waymo-sel...

deleted 2y ago

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treetalker 2y ago

The real question is how it will handle Miami drivers making right turns from three lanes over, or refrigerators falling off of pickup trucks with no railing on one side of the bed while cruising through Hialeah.

CHB0403085482 2y ago

Relevant doomer prophecy ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0