Next Stop for Waymo One: Los Angeles
blog.waymo.com
blog.waymo.com
That's a funny way to say the next biggest place with 300 days of sun per year.
Why does that matter?
Is there a fundamental answer to this question? Start with low-hanging fruit and then build up? Or begin with the most challenging bits before gliding forward? The risk with the former is you end up in a dead end. The risk with the latter, finding the hard problems intractable without the experience of solving the easier ones.
It's not like there aren't hard problems to solve self-driving a car in fair weather, that also have to be solved before you can drive in bad weather.
Cruise is slightly better than FSD, but not by much. It's prone to driving really slowly and phantom braking, but at least it doesn't swerve into light poles or oncoming traffic like FSD does.
Waymo works in rain.
> With approximately 13 million residents, the Los Angeles metropolitan area is one of the largest ride-hailing service areas in the world and the third largest in the U.S., with an estimated market opportunity of $2 billion in 2022. As a commercial opportunity, Los Angeles is the equivalent of a dozen smaller U.S. ride-hailing market opportunities combined.
You also made me think deeper about the unusual situations where I've seen co-leads at a FAANG. Honestly? I think it helped.
There's a very strong "bullshit" culture that can set in. It is a mere step beyond your average upper class Americans cultural mileu, so its underrated how degenerate it turns with that one more step: suddenly, leadership is never leading, and being extremely territorial about general subject matter while never doing anything ambituous enough to fail can leads to cylical ineffectiveness.
With two leads, there's two people to appeal to, and two people who need to argue and agree eventually. They can't sidestep that conflict is a crucial part of polishing.
The videos coming out of driverless rides in SF [1][2] and Downtown Phoenix [3] (both employee-only currently) look very impressive. So I don’t doubt they can crack LA.
It will be interesting to see how Waymo progressively reduces deploy time in a new city.
[1] https://youtu.be/ZBvce_eC28A
> Downtown Phoenix: Now offering paid rider-only trips to Waymo employees and Trusted Testers.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/29/23323593/waymo-driverless...
I assume (hope) they're now reasonably sure the service doesn't suck and preparing for further expansion.
https://la.curbed.com/2015/11/30/9895842/how-much-parking-lo...
The air quality is particularly bad in LA too. If more people used WayMo EV’s there would be a noticeable difference.
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/local-2/report-says-la-has-mos...
Houston is ~64% streets and parking: https://oldurbanist.blogspot.com/2011/12/we-are-25-looking-a...
Surface parking: 21.3%
Garage parking: 3.7%”
Parking is 25%, which is a more apples to apples comparison. More garages in LA?
That would require more parking width than travel lane width on any given segment with parking (to account for areas where parking is not permitted plus intersections). Few streets have less travel width than parking. Many have a multiple.
Not sure about Houston, but that is the case in many dense US city-suburbs. They'll have two-way roads with parking on both sides, and the roads will be about three cars wide. The result is cars parked on both sides, with drivers sharing the middle lane for both directions of travel.
When you see someone driving towards you, it's a game of chicken to see who will temporarily pull off into a vacant parking spot. It seems to happen because the lots aren't big enough for 2-4 car garages and driveways.
And for our friends across the ponds, yes: US households really do demand space for at least 2-4 cars per family.
How come? A car's emissions shouldn't change drastically whether it has a driver or not.
I'd never get inside a car!
The amount of valuable land that widespread deployment of autonomous vehicles could unlock is just staggering. Not to mention the avoided costs of building undercover garages.
Why do you believe that? These taxis will increase the number of vehicles on the road, because
> more people use autonomous vehicles
Those "more people" will be bus riders and the housebound, and extra trips by people who already use cars in one form or another. The latter's own cars will be parked somewhere. Everyone commutes at the same time of day, no-one wants to share with randos.
Multiple billions have been spent on developing this technology, its hard to imagine they won't squeeze out maximum profit with a multitude of dark patterns if they do become mainstream.
Hertz and Uber struggle because of competition, not business model. If Waymo is the only self driving player and hence lowest cost mode of transportation, they'll make a fortune. If there are several players, they won't.
And yes you can contrast that with a $25K Uber vehicle, but the average US Uber driver makes $42K a year, and since taxis are traditionally split into 3 shifts, we can assume the cost of a 24-hour driver is closer to $100K. In NYC, Uber drivers make something like $30/hr, which means $263K/yr for a 24/7 driver.
So a "low-paid driver" costs as much in a year as one or two single autonomous vehicles. In which case, it's hard to imagine Waymo not turning a profit. The reason Hertz and Uber aren't particularly profitable is because they have tons of competition, there's no real competitive moat. While Waymo is going to undercut driver-based rideshare drastically. It's going to make tons of money once the R&D is recouped.
If this is a service people spend $500/yr on then they'll recoup it pretty quickly I think.
Of course they'll squeeze out maximum profit, like every other company does. Fortunately, you can just check out the Wikipedia article on "profit maximization" to understand why maximum profit doesn't come from maximum prices, but generally comes from a middle price that attracts more customers.
In any case, it's always going to be cheaper than a ride with a human driver, so I don't know what you're being so negative about.
I think you're improperly informed; let me present you just one of many instances that prove my point [0].
[0]: https://www.extremetech.com/internet/330907-google-accused-o...
I remember moving off of Google Fi a couple years ago and it being incredibly easy to cancel and move my number. I didn't even have to call anyone. A few clicks and it was done. If you've ever tried to do anything with another phone service, you'll know that's unheard of.
They absolutely use all means necessary to preserve the data feeds and tracking that enables their core advertising business, such as the fact that incognito mode, well, isn’t incognito.
But its good that people expect something else and that there is more variety in types of people
This is very subjective and depends heavily on the definitions of “desirable” and “LA”.
aside from such a wide range of parts, there is also a wide discrepancy in what LA natives do and care about, compared to what transplants do and make reference to. almost no overlap.
I think we can correlate what I'm referring to with the monthly rent though
(Besides the point - LA does have a large tech industry. Along with the startups, video game developers and megaco satellite offices, there's also aerospace and the film business. https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/documents/areas/ctr/forecast/r... )
For example it's standard in LA that when the light turns yellow then two cars are able to make a left turn in time to not back up the perpendicular Lane.
Or if you are turning left you should try to make room on your right, so that those going straight can get around you. No way Waymo vehicles will be doing that.
All in all there are certain behaviors that are necessary in a city with traffic like LA that would certainly be outside the strict safety parameters that (I assume) Waymo operates under.
Why do you say that? In this video you can see it doing exactly that, pulling to the side a bit to make room on the left for a vehicle doing a weird u-turn inside an intersection: https://youtu.be/rGfV_3HPnYE?t=442 If anything, common behaviors should be among the easiest for an AI system to learn.
Does that video exist?
That means FSD has to work only once for a YouTube video, but a Waymo has to work every single time as there’s no driver to rescue when things go wrong. So apples to oranges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdKCQKBvH-A
Nobody has time for shenanigans like that.
It's not unlike how developers mark most bugs as "won't fix".
I've seen active break-ins and robberies in LA, and called the police only to have nothing being done in those situations. While anecdotal, I'm afraid this is a really common experience that has only gotten worse with COVID-flation.
This is not an LA phenomenon.
You can already see this "tragedy of the commons" type of behavior with the unusable public transport system (it's a nightmare to use the trains between Koreatown and DTLA, especially for women) and in the private sector with Lime and Bird scooters.
Very exciting if it works out, but I don't have high hopes.
Waymo will probably just geofence out the worst areas anyway.
I look forward to a future LA where car ownership is optional. There's a lot of aggressive urban planning that needs to happen and implemented for it to work. Downtown Culver City is a good example.
You’re essentially blaming “elements of sin:” it’s all about the crackheads and the crazies.
You’re magnifying a very small portion of the population while diminishing and disrespecting the mostly-normal law-abiding citizens who actually live in LA.
You want to know why LA has drunk drivers and scary bad transit? It’s not because of all of the vague sin of the “city problems” you describe.
It’s at least in part because of LA’s unsustainable car-focused development. (In that respect, Waymo might act as a welcome band-aid, but it’s still a band-aid).
Why are there drunk drivers? Because you can’t walk or take a train/bus to the bar.
Why is transit scary? Because only the truly desperate actually use the barely-useful mass transit in LA, because LA was built for cars.
Why are the crackheads out vandalizing stuff? Maybe because car-focused development exacerbates wealth inequality [1] by encouraging the development of socioeconomically segregated communities, and by gating economic opportunity behind the most expensive form of transportation, requiring everyone to buy and maintain personal vehicles at high rates (at least one vehicle per person). Don’t have your own car? Hope someone can drive you to work! Want to interview for that job? It’s far away, hope you can pay for gas! Disabled? Elderly? Guess you’re not going anywhere!
[1] https://inequality.org/research/public-transit-inequality/
Once self-driving cars are common people will figure out that it's safe to jaywalk in front of them, and nobody minds inconveniencing a robot, so I expect jaywalking to rise substantially too.
A self-driving hire car isn't idle 23 hours a day like a normal car so that should solve some of the inefficiency and expense issues.
All I'm left with on your list is congestion, and that'll remain, even if the self-driving cars start communicating with each other to allow closer spacing. Making something cheaper and/or easier inevitably increases usage.
Smart car sized AEVs, rather than Hummer sized AEVs. Individual "pods" the size of motor cycles, rather than cars.
Today we all buy "peak usage cars". i.e. "Once a quarter I drive 300+ miles", "Once a week I drive my whole family to the park/hike/...", "I'm not yet an off-roading type of person, but might as well spend the extra $10k just incase I wanna get into it. (never gonna get into it)", "What about something that will go fast on the track, just incase I need that". Then 99% of the miles this giant 5+ person car with storage will ever drive is 1 person trips to and from work bumper to bumper.
When the car isn't owned, you don't need to buy "peak usage cars". You can order a car sized for the usecase.
This will reduce a lot of congestion!
In fact, if real self driving ever becomes widespread, it's likely to induce demand (sure, why not live a 2 hour drive from work if you can relax the whole drive home?) which will lead to increased tire emissions.
Past a certain speed, the majority of noise is coming from the tires, which also result in emissions. An EV is certainly better than an ICE, but there's no way to make a vehicle per person more efficient than a vehicle per tens/hundreds/thousands of persons.
60% [1] of the electricity in the US is produced by burning fossil fuels (21% coal!), and this will not change in a long while. In California specifically it's a bit better, with ~40% fossil fuels [2]. Also, battery production specifically is a tremendously energy intensive industrial process that also involves a lot of emissions [3]. Factoring in efficiency losses it results that electric cars, while maybe better than ICE cars, are inferior to biking, walking, and electric trains.
As for the noise, as other commenters pointed out, at average city speeds most of the noise a regular car makes comes from the tires rolling, not the engine.
>Once self-driving cars are common people will figure out that it's safe to jaywalk in front of them, and nobody minds inconveniencing a robot, so I expect jaywalking to rise substantially too.
If this starts to happen, congestion will only get worse as the average speed of roads goes down. Cars suddenly stopping in the middle of the road isn't good for traffic flow. It also doesn't address the fact that most people in LA can't leave their homes and be anywhere just by walking.
>A self-driving hire car isn't idle 23 hours a day like a normal car so that should solve some of the inefficiency and expense issues.
I concede that this is strictly true -- having a single shared vehicle is more efficient than several privately owned. However, most people need to use their cars at the same time for their commute. Demand still peaks in the morning and in the afternoon, and if you have enough vehicles to cover that, during the rest of the day they will be idle, same as now.
>All I'm left with on your list is congestion, and that'll remain, even if the self-driving cars start communicating with each other to allow closer spacing. Making something cheaper and/or easier inevitably increases usage.
So poor people still don't have access to transport, and the congestion is even worse than before? Why would this be a good solution to the car problems of LA?
[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 [2] https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo... [3] https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-much-co2-emitted-manufac...
If that's true, cars are driving too fast. EV's are silent to about 30mph, and any speeds above 20mph are lethal to pedestrians.
> So poor people still don't have access to transport,
Poor people are the population most reliant on taxis & Ubers. Because they don't own a car, they take taxis for emergencies. They can't afford to do it often but it is a key mode of transportation for poor people.
> and the congestion is even worse than before? Why would this be a good solution to the car problems of LA?
Because it solves the problem for rich people. If a robo-taxi is the best way of getting around for rich people, then some rich people will ditch their cars. And once you've ditched your car you stop using a personal car for everything and start choosing the best option based on circumstance. And sometimes that option will be the train, or walking and not necessarily a robo-taxi.