7 ms·

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 coul

by 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.
    - skybrian 2y ago
      They won’t have to pay for the driver when idle, but owning cars ties up capital and the fewer rides they do, the longer it takes to pay off. This isn’t specific to cars - all capital equipment works that way. Lower utilization is sometimes unavoidable, but it still means less revenue which can be the difference between a profit and a loss. How much this matters depends on the price of the car. We don’t know how much a Waymo costs, but they’re probably not cheap. To be profitable with lower utilization, they’ll need to work on reducing how much each car costs somehow.
      - xnx 2y ago
        > To be profitable with lower utilization, they’ll need to work on reducing how much each car costs somehow. Definitely. Their custom vehicle had optimizations for cost, but seems to be on hold due to tariffs. Waymo also has the option to drop prices lower than Uber/Lyft when vehicles are unutilized, though they still need to stay above their per-mile depreciation and operating costs.
- mlyle 2y ago
  It's got to be the lowest priority; population density improves economics and utilization. Not to mention that it's hard enough to drive in a city with snow, compared to all the other kinds of situations that can manifest outside of urban centers.
  - schiffern 2y ago
    It sounds like what we need is a program akin to rural electrification and rural free mail delivery, which (despite obvious unprofitability in the "small picture" sense) were both subsidized by forward-thinking government programs.
- timerol 2y ago
  SF in 2015 (with passengers 2021), Phoenix in 2022, Miami in 2025. Northern urban centers are probably a decade out, let alone areas outside urban centers. There are a lot of cities in the Sun Belt to expand to first.
- duped 2y ago
  I think ultimately the solution to this problem is the same as it was for electrification and telco: government funded mandates to provide service to populations where it's otherwise uneconomical. One interesting thing today is that CoL can be as high in rural areas as urban areas in the same state, partly because the additional costs of things that don't scale (mostly transportation and healthcare). But we've given up on government helping people, apparently.
  - ndileas 2y ago
    That is indeed one solution to this "problem". However, maybe people who live in the sticks should just accept the tradeoffs that come with rural life? If you want next day delivery and taxi service maybe you should live in a place that has those? Not every service has to serve all people in all places and times equally. The government should absolutely not be mandating service levels across the whole US.
    - allturtles 2y ago
      Some people need to live in "the sticks" to produce the resources (food, ores, oil, timber) that the rest of society relies on. Subsidizing the availability of services for those people doesn't seem unreasonable, and it is certainly something the federal government has historically taken responsibility for (for mail, electricity, telephone).
      - ndileas 2y ago
        Sure, although I think there's room for reasonable people to disagree where to draw the line for various services. But taxi service? Seems way way out there in terms of costs and of minimal benefit.
        duped 2y ago
        State governments already operate special rural transportation services, like busses or even volunteers. Think people who are sick/injured and can't get to healthcare services because they can't drive. It's not unreasonable to me that they would subsidize robo-taxis for those services since they are already funding services that are expensive or inadequate. Especially if there is some give and take to be had with regulatory overhead for the taxi service.
- asdasdsddd 2y ago
  People are clowning on you, but I think rural airport rides would be huge for waymo.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    No one's saying it wouldn't be huge, it's that there are so many other places to solve for first.
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.

by 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.
  - skybrian 2y ago
    They won’t have to pay for the driver when idle, but owning cars ties up capital and the fewer rides they do, the longer it takes to pay off. This isn’t specific to cars - all capital equipment works that way. Lower utilization is sometimes unavoidable, but it still means less revenue which can be the difference between a profit and a loss. How much this matters depends on the price of the car. We don’t know how much a Waymo costs, but they’re probably not cheap. To be profitable with lower utilization, they’ll need to work on reducing how much each car costs somehow.
    - xnx 2y ago
      > To be profitable with lower utilization, they’ll need to work on reducing how much each car costs somehow. Definitely. Their custom vehicle had optimizations for cost, but seems to be on hold due to tariffs. Waymo also has the option to drop prices lower than Uber/Lyft when vehicles are unutilized, though they still need to stay above their per-mile depreciation and operating costs.
mlyle 2y ago
It's got to be the lowest priority; population density improves economics and utilization. Not to mention that it's hard enough to drive in a city with snow, compared to all the other kinds of situations that can manifest outside of urban centers.
- schiffern 2y ago
  It sounds like what we need is a program akin to rural electrification and rural free mail delivery, which (despite obvious unprofitability in the "small picture" sense) were both subsidized by forward-thinking government programs.
timerol 2y ago
SF in 2015 (with passengers 2021), Phoenix in 2022, Miami in 2025. Northern urban centers are probably a decade out, let alone areas outside urban centers. There are a lot of cities in the Sun Belt to expand to first.
duped 2y ago
I think ultimately the solution to this problem is the same as it was for electrification and telco: government funded mandates to provide service to populations where it's otherwise uneconomical. One interesting thing today is that CoL can be as high in rural areas as urban areas in the same state, partly because the additional costs of things that don't scale (mostly transportation and healthcare). But we've given up on government helping people, apparently.
- ndileas 2y ago
  That is indeed one solution to this "problem". However, maybe people who live in the sticks should just accept the tradeoffs that come with rural life? If you want next day delivery and taxi service maybe you should live in a place that has those? Not every service has to serve all people in all places and times equally. The government should absolutely not be mandating service levels across the whole US.
  - allturtles 2y ago
    Some people need to live in "the sticks" to produce the resources (food, ores, oil, timber) that the rest of society relies on. Subsidizing the availability of services for those people doesn't seem unreasonable, and it is certainly something the federal government has historically taken responsibility for (for mail, electricity, telephone).
    - ndileas 2y ago
      Sure, although I think there's room for reasonable people to disagree where to draw the line for various services. But taxi service? Seems way way out there in terms of costs and of minimal benefit.
      - duped 2y ago
        State governments already operate special rural transportation services, like busses or even volunteers. Think people who are sick/injured and can't get to healthcare services because they can't drive. It's not unreasonable to me that they would subsidize robo-taxis for those services since they are already funding services that are expensive or inadequate. Especially if there is some give and take to be had with regulatory overhead for the taxi service.
asdasdsddd 2y ago
People are clowning on you, but I think rural airport rides would be huge for waymo.
- fragmede 2y ago
  No one's saying it wouldn't be huge, it's that there are so many other places to solve for first.

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.