This sounds familiar. Here's an article from 2 years ago saying the same thing:
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-drivi...
Hopefully this time it's the real deal. I remain skeptical.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/7/16615290/waymo-self-drivi...
Hopefully this time it's the real deal. I remain skeptical.
This announcement is just a repeat of what they've said before. If they actually do it this time then that's great, but they haven't actually said anything new here.
This just reinforces my point. Waymo can announce anything with vague terminology of things happening "soon" but we still don't have any verification of anything happening.
Note that while that risk remains true of every transportation journey you take, there is a lot of press generated when an autonomous vehicle takes a life or causes injury, which plays a part in a lot of peoples decision making.
Also note recent articles about automatic stop detection failing >50% of the time. This may or may not be relevant to AVs, but I personally would definitely not want to be in an AV that hit a child. That (theoretical) child's life is worth more than pushing driverless cars into the world before they're potentially ready.
Waymo is still Waymo whether they're running rides on their own behalf, or under the Lyft name. Someone who's ridden Waymo in an early adopter program may make their decision on whether to ride Waymo under Lyft based on that experience.
Get it?
Sorry you felt that was disingenuous! You're right, it's not public in that anyone can take a ride, your account has to be approved.
FTA:
> "are on the way"
> "soon you may experience"
Vague promises without any concrete dates attached make this seem like output from PR rather than engineering
> since mid-October, the company has been operating its autonomous minivans on public roads in Arizona without a safety driver
The difference is that those were without any users inside. This new article is saying that the public offering, with real customers inside, will get rides with no one inside.
It is unfortunate that it took 2 years to get to the point where they felt safe putting people customers in the car, but it's very misleading to equate the two and use is as a way to imply they lied last time around.
Except they're not at that point yet, and even when they are they will still have a Waymo employee on board "initially".
I don't think that anybody is accusing anybody of lying, just making the point that predictions of the marketing team aren't really something you would want to set your watch by.
I think you're confused. They've been having customer rides with employee in the car for almost a year now. The email sent to customers today is saying that they will soon find rides with no employee inside.
And again, rides without employee inside have been happening also since 2017, just not with customers inside.
https://www.wired.com/story/designated-driver-teleoperations...
> But those cars won’t be operating completely unmanned — at least for now. Under these regulations, driverless cars being tested on public roads must have a remote operator monitoring the car, ready to take over as needed. That remote operator — who will be overseeing the car from a location outside of the car — must also be able to communicate with law enforcement as well as the passengers in the event of an accident.
That being said, the way Waymo does it is different from other companies. As HN can understand, adding the ability to remote access a car is very very risky. Waymo on the other hand has the ability to suggest a path to the car, and the car will itself locally evaluate to see if the suggested path is safe before executing it. So it's not quite a "remote control" access.
[0] https://www.vox.com/2018/2/26/17053898/driverless-cars-self-...
If the goal is to have the car be able to ask for help when it's confused though, it would likely be fine.
The point is that "soon" is meaningless in this context and Waymo very clearly states that "a Waymo employee would likely be present in the vehicle initially."
1. Waymo has been having rides with no one in the car for 2 years now.
2. Waymo has been having rides with real customers inside for 1 year now.
3. Waymo has told said customers in #2 that they may soon see rides with no employee inside
I agree that the soon in #3 doesn't mean much, but at the same time, this wasn't a press call, it was a private email sent to users, so it's not like they're showing off.
But 1 and 2 have already been happening for a long time.
Of course. Companies tell their customers about new products in the hope that they will keep that info secret.
I think the salient point about your list is that while 1 and 2 have been done separately for some time, the only timeline we have for them happening concurrently is "soon"
Your belief that the GP thinks they lied may be rooted in your own biases than in her or his words.