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Comment by harles | Hacker News Reader

Waymo and Cruise have failed to scale and it doesn't look like they ever will. It's difficult to find a single article with the full context, but around 2017 as Waymo started giving limited rides to the public, everyone though the problem had been solved. There was a flood of startups hoping to be a strong second mover in the space, and then basically nothing. Expectations have shifted over time, but 7 years later and there's been only small incremental progress.

> In any case, the Mercedes system is what's known as a conditionally autonomous system.

Yes, but it's significant progress if it reaches consumer hands. This sounds like the typical Waymo marketing of "you can't get to Level 4 through Level 3". I bought into this at one point, but Waymo and Cruise have demonstrated that going straight to Level 4 with $100k+ (probably much more than that) of sensors and corresponding maintenance doesn't scale.

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Waymo is the only one actually scaling driverless taxis. They’ve gone from providing public rides in 1 city (Phoenix) to 3 cities (+SF, LA) with a 4th one (+Austin) coming soon. They’ve given more than a million rides, with the majority of them coming in the last year. No one else is doing this.

If other companies thought they’d hitch on to Waymo after they started giving rides in 2017, then that’s on them. Because Waymo has been pretty clear that their scaling is going to be methodical and not instantaneous.

"Taxi service in a congested urban area" is probably the market where it makes the most sense. Trips are pretty short, cars stay in the a local area where they have hyper-accurate mapping data, and are likely to quickly find another passenger or can return to a nearby parking/waiting area.

Waymo won't keep a monopoly on this forever. There are still high barriers to entry, but they will fall sooner or later. If there is money to be made, competition will come.

Indeed congested urban areas are their market. That's exactly why they are in two of the largest taxi markets (SF and LA) where it doesn't snow.

I'm not sure about barriers to entry lowering soon. First off, this is an incredibly hard problem no one else seems to have cracked (and even Waymo has a long way to go). Second, they could help influence regulation that requires extremely high safety records, mandatory sensors, etc. which could make it harder for others to compete. It's all very early though.

failed to scale? You can read their public operation plans which outline their plans to scale.

i also find it difficult to find data on how much they're scaling but anecdotally, i've been seeing a steady increase in waymo vehicles all year, here in tempe i encounter at least 3-4 every day it seems, driving in some pretty impressively heavy pedestrian traffic and on freeways too

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