As Uber and Tesla struggle with driverless cars, Waymo moves forward
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
The frequently-repeated caveats certainly apply -- they'll only be operating in limited geographies with ideal weather; there will probably be roads, conditions and maneuvers that are restricted. But having actual autonomous vehicles on the road performing commercially useful tasks is by far most important step. The rest will come incrementally.
Exciting times.
https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/31/waymo-orders-62000-fiat-c...
While there are all sorts of funky technological and regulatory factors to consider, unimpaired this is enough to displace the entire rideshare/taxi industry across the southwestern United States.
First, I came to a 4-way stop here where a Waymo car had arrived and stopped maybe 1-2 seconds prior. Waymo was on 15th heading East, I was on San Bruno heading north. Nobody else was at the intersection: https://goo.gl/maps/S2GmNTuWNDq
I stopped fully and gave it about 2 seconds to start moving since it had right-of-way. It made a one or two false starts, then I just gave up and went through the intersection because it was clearly having issues. Looking back in the rear view I saw it did the same thing with the next car. Maybe it didn't think it was a 4-way stop or something?
A few minutes later, I was on Bryant just past 7th outside the Hall of Justice in dense traffic that was moving quickly (as people do on that street). A Cruise Automation car (I think?) was in one of the right lanes next to me and, for whatever reason, decided it wanted to get over to the left quickly. When it didn't get a good opening after a couple seconds, it more or less stopped in the middle of the road to wait for an opening. Unsafe and almost caused an accident with the cars behind it.
Of course human drivers do stuff like this or worse all the time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's going to be interesting to adjust to all the ways these things behave unpredictably (relative to what we'd expect from human drivers).
> A few minutes later, I was on Bryant just past 7th outside the Hall of Justice in dense traffic that was moving quickly (as people do on that street). A Cruise Automation car (I think?) was in one of the right lanes next to me and, for whatever reason, decided it wanted to get over to the left quickly. When it didn't get a good opening after a couple seconds, it more or less stopped in the middle of the road to wait for an opening. Unsafe and almost caused an accident with the cars behind it.
If you asked me ten years ago what a future with self-driving cars would look like, it would be exactly this. I wouldn't have believed that we'd have the hubris to put them in situations in which someone could be hurt or injured, however.
Are Waymo somehow much better at handling corner cases, identifying obstacles and their trajectories correctly and not having to disable emergency breaking to stop the car from randomly breaking at speed? Or are they just more careful/skilled with their marketing and publicity? Are they only planning to deploy the vehicles in specific, fairly controlled conditions, rather than claim general self-driving capabilities?
The main point is that Waymo had a 4-6 year head start over virtually everyone else in this industry. So it's not surprising that their technology seems significantly better! Obviously we don't yet know how much better, or if it's good enough to improve on the average human driver. But they seem to be pretty close.
The upside is that they had the very best, most passionate and talented roboticists in the field working on it, as nobody else was hiring at the time. For every company entering late in the game, securing top tier talent is the biggest hurdle.
But they’ve certainly been much more cautious and mature. I imagine they recorded street view driving for years and used that as additional training data. It seems pretty clear they’re not pushing the envelope of their own abilities nearly as far as Uber, sticking to what they’re confident they can do as they keep trying to learn more.
Assumptions:
* $100k / car
* 250k miles / car before replacement (I'm assuming these aren't fleet vehicles which could go for longer)
* $3 / gallon for gas
* 30mpg
* 10k car / year of opex
* 250k miles / car / year
* $0.10 for gas
* $0.40 for capex
* $0.04 for opex
If the cost structure is accurate, then this could really take a way the need for a second car for most people, and maybe even a primary car for folks that are ok with renting for their occasional weekend jaunt.
If they can get significantly higher mileage out of each car and/or reduce the cost of LIDAR too, then that will make a large improvement in profitability / car.
I suspect Uber/Lyft/Zipcar/etc.have already significantly cut into the second car in a lot of greater urban area households--or will when the next refresh cycle comes around. Anything that further reduces on-demand costs just increases the effect. (Though it's probably worth at least noting that current rideshare (where available) pricing is <= 2-3x base operational costs. That's not nothing obviously but it's not a difference between a luxury and too cheap to meter.)
Cheapest ZipCar is $8/hr and has the same cost structure (i.e. ZipCar also pays for car, insurance, gas, maintenance etc.).
So let's generously assume it's $10/hr.
That's 3x cheaper than taxi or Uber so they instantly kill taxi/Uber where they operate.
Assuming an average in-city trip of 15 minutes, that's comparable to $2.5 ticket for a bus in SF.
Obviously, an autonomous car can take up to 4 passengers, so if you agree to share, the price can be 2-3x cheaper. That kills buses where they operate.
And long term (5-10 years out) when they operate at scale, they should be cheaper than ZipCar (say $5-$6 per hr).
Why?
Because their cars will have higher utilization.
Because they'll all be electric and electricity is 3x cheaper per mile than gas even if you buy for utilities (as opposed to building your own solar farm nearby to supply most of the electricity)
Because insurance cost will be dramatically lower (near zero).
Because they'll buy them in millions so cost savings due to manufacturing scale.
Because they'll be constantly re-designing cars to make them cheaper to make and more reliable as opposed to trying to guess what color or form factor will be popular tomorrow with humans or making high-performance version.
They’ve bought 82k vehicles recently. They’re clearly up to SOMETHING soon.
That was a large chunk of the article.
And it's actually doing quite well, though given human psychology any crash is going to be turned into "doing a lot of harm to its brand". Alas, we can't automate away knee-jerk conservatism.
> Your Tesla won't stop in front of a brick wall if your life depended on it.
You folks are going to come after Waymo with your hatchets too, once a few juicy wrecks show up on Twitter.
It isn't going well - they're actively harming the future of self driving in the world.
Uh... what Tesla is "telling people" (or what they are "calling" their product) is the very definition of a semantic distinction. The point was that the technical problem being solved is the same one Waymo is working on.
> Some growing percentage of them die.
Are you kidding me? (See what I did there?) That statement isn't remotely true. There have been two fatal accidents involving Tesla autopilot. Sales are growing rapidly quarter after quarter. How exactly do you support that?
That kind of fake analysis (driven by your personal feelings about the company or its owner, presumably, and not numbers) is what's harming the future of self driving in the world.
How many fatal accidents involving Waymo vehicles are there? Sales aren't even remotely associated. I support it based on "autopilot" versus true self driving systems. Which is safer?
"Fake analysis" won't matter when the NTSB bans all self driving systems because a few companies keep screwing it up. My hope is that they only target the egregious offenders - Tesla and perhaps Uber.
Pilots don't let planes on autopilot take off and land. They don't just turn it on and go for a beer. Same with boats - there's still a human despite the fanciest autopilot on a ship, especially when navigating a harbour.
However the term is overloaded - consumers think it means something different. In the consumer understanding, autopilot means "go to sleep I've got this."
But it's never been that. Tesla's mistake is using a term people might misunderstand, not misusing rhe term themselves.
If you're in Phoenix, you can even apply: https://waymo.com/apply/
That's something I'm not sure is even on the horizon for any self-driving car effort other than Tesla.
I’m sure there are a lot of details in the above, and a lot of stuff I’m missing, but I’m not convinced it’s something a group of good engineers couldn’t do in a few months or a year. Certainly not something that is not even on the horizon for most companies.
I would say it’s the opposite. If anything I would say their autopilot tech is weighing the stock down due to its constant liabilities.
I'm sure softbanks $2.2 billion investment recently is worth a confidence boost in their technology.