6th-generation Waymo Driver | Hacker News Reader

6th-generation Waymo Driver

waymo.com

82 pointspanarky70 comments

I really like Waymo, and compared to Uber/Lyft the experience is just strictly higher quality. The ride is smoother, the cars have a consistent quality, the driver is consistent, you get the car to yourself, etc.

However, I have three major complaints.

a. In Phoenix, where Waymo has been operating for nearly 4 years, I can still only visit a third of the city[1] - I can't take a Waymo to my dentist, to the vet, etc. and these are places that are <15 minutes from the city center.

b. Waymo doesn't go on highways, only backstreets, so trips take 2x longer - and takes you through some sketchy alleyways and streets.

c. For some damn reason they refuse to let you connect to the car's speakers using Bluetooth or Airplay. Instead, you need to download the Google app, then use voice input to 'hey Google, play <xyz>' - and argue with the AI to play some music. Then it can't play music from your Apple Music or local files, because they only integrate with Google's music provider and Spotify or whatever. It's terrible and the worst music experience you could have for Apple users.

Hopefully they address some of these with their new platform.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40756191

Agreed on all three points!

1 and 2 I know they’re working on, and 3 hopefully this gets it on their radar!

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I don't know why, but I find it fascinating that, here's this relatively brand new technology that we're still ironing out a shitload of kinks in, yet options A and B are "complaints".

I dunno, if I step back and look at it through the lens of, say, the year 2000 or even earlier, it's pretty neat that we're even at this stage already.

We can put on different hats, one for consumers and the other for technologists. As technologists the future is looking very exciting. As consumers we are right to judge products relative to the competition.

Forgive my ignorance, but... what competition? As far as I'm aware, the only robotaxi company offering rides to the public at this time is Waymo.

In the mind of the consumer, all conventional transportation is on the table for discussion, including Uber & Lyft at often lower prices. The customer is not an investor narrowing in on the self driving taxi space.

Of course it's natural for the customer to wonder why Waymo can't go on the highway. Of course it's natural for the customer to feel frustrated at the limitations of service area.

Then it's ignorance on the part of the customer - they're griping that, "This round fruit doesn't taste like this other round fruit," without realizing they're comparing apples and oranges. Just because the customer perceives them to be "the same thing" doesn't mean that they are, nor does it magically make it OK to compare the two.

Edit: And with regard to this specific comment chain, OP almost certainly knows the difference between the two.

The customer is trying to solve a problem. Uber and Lyft are absolutely on the table for discussion.

Also, the limitations discussed above are not inherent to self driving. We have good reason to expect eventual parity or even general superiority to conventional taxis. This is not an apple and orange comparison. If Waymo brings their prices down and can take highway routes, Uber and Lyft will experience serious existential crisis unless they can innovate hard.

If Waymo brings their price down and can take better routes, customers will also wonder why even choose Uber or Lyft, and it won't be due to ignorance that they make this vice versa comparison.

>The customer is trying to solve a problem.

The customer is trying to solve a problem by signing up for something that is, essentially, a beta program and complaining that it's not capable of doing things that a non-beta program with ostensibly different functionality, and different federal/state regulations, is capable of doing.

>Also, the limitations discussed above are not inherent to self driving. We have good reason to expect eventual parity or even general superiority to conventional taxis.

... that's great and all, but "eventual" is doing some heavy lifting there, to the point where I just want to go, "... so?". You then follow it up with a strong "If" statement and talk more about a potential future state. Right now, they are functionally different products even though the customer need they're trying to service is the same. That is an apples/oranges comparison - apples and oranges both provide sustenance and nutrition (read: getting a car-less individual from point A to point B), but the experience of eating them (read: riding Uber vs Waymo) is different from one another.

>The existence of apples does not put oranges into existential crisis.

It's at this point that I'm starting to get the suspicion that you're taking my comments a bit further than I've intended them to be taken. I've made no argument about the long-term existence of Waymo here, just a quick observation about how it's odd to "complain" about brand new technology that is still being ironed out.

>If Waymo brings their price down and can take better routes, customers will also wonder why even choose Uber or Lyft, and it won't be due to ignorance that they make this vice versa comparison.

Again, "if" something happens in the future. I'm talking about current state.

Maybe in the US. There are a number of companies offering robotaxi rides to the public in China.

Hedonic adaptation is one hell of a drug. It's the same with generative AI too, humans (in general) quickly adapt to novel technologies and paradigms.

c is them trying to get you to buy YT premium

I wonder if C is a security thing.

In January Waymo began testing on highways in Phoenix.

Car enthusiasts, what's the car make and model displayed in the new waymo car? They've switched from the Jaguar e-pace after Jaguar announced that line was discontinued.

Edit: looks like a custom made zeekr? I don't see a minivan-esque model on their website.

Edit2: Found it. CM1e, no steering wheel (where regulations allow). https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45711737/zeekr-cm1e-waymo...

Modern day Johnny Cab from Total Recall.

"The CM1e concept does not have a steering wheel, but until that setup is permitted by local regulations, a production version would be equipped with one; steering and braking are by-wire. All the self-driving hardware is by Waymo."

And being Chinese EV it means tariff, 25% today i think and planned 100% end of the year or something. So, cost control on sensors while tariffs rise the total cost.

Were there laws prior to self-driving vehicles that cars were required to have a steering wheel? Or that something added since?

Tried Waymo in SF. Didn't take a single cab/Uber after and only used Waymo during my trip.

Putting my own music and not having to interact with anyone is pretty great.

> not having to interact with anyone is pretty great.

Bleak.

And then questions get asked of how techies have become so despised by part of the general population and why they feel so out of touch in comparison to said general population. We’ve become averse to even holding the proverbial chat with the proverbial taxi driver.

It's the exact same benefit as having your own car. It's a common reason people have to avoid shared transit.

The main benefit of having a car is that it's right there the moment you need it, you can take it as far as you need to and you can load it up with whatever you need - none of this applies to waymo or a taxi without getting too expensive.

And saying taxis are like public transportation, because another person is driving you, is going in favor of OPs point out people here being out of touch.

Yes, the benefit of a car is it's there when you need it. But, in cities it comes with the challenge of having to find parking.

So, if you have to wait 5mins for Waymo (as they scale up) vs 10 mins circling around to find a parking spot, which is better?

There is still a slight difference between having to take a packed subway between A’ and B’ (while you’re trying to do A->B) and doing A->B in a car of your own with a driver you don’t know.

I'm not sure that reason is all that common. People like cars primarily for the flexibility I think.

> not having to interact with anyone is pretty great.

Anecdotally, most of my female friends here in LA prefer Waymo over Uber for this reason (safety), especially when leaving bars late at night.

> how techies have become so despised by part of the general population

Mostly because a bunch of stereotypical socially maladjusted nerds is an easy target to manufacture and then blame for social issues adjacent to tech products, despite the fact that almost all the evil is not in tech per se, but in business models around it, despite the fact that it's all commissioned and funded and driven by the much more gregarious business types.

I guess this is America: business sharks are the lambs that do no wrong, even if they eat their customers, competition and environment alive. Let's blame literally anyone else than those directly responsible.

"I was just following orders."

Oh don't give me Nuremberg defense bullshit. In WW2, superiors were also blamed and charged. They weren't instead praised for their military acumen, like the business class is.

Oh, I'm perfectly happy to agree that a lot of the bullshit starts with the "gregarious business types", but I'll never say that it automatically allows everyone else responsible for whatever bullshit to be completely absolved of their sins just because, "Boss said so".

Life's grey areas and nuances tend to be like that.

Edit to respond to your own edit: If you think the business class is without criticism these days, then I'm a bit shocked and very curious to know where you're getting your news. I see it everywhere, even here on HN.

> And then questions get asked of how techies have become so despised by part of the general population and why they feel so out of touch in comparison to said general population. We’ve become averse to even holding the proverbial chat with the proverbial taxi driver.

Ever consider that maybe some of those "techies" were maybe mistreated and abused by so-called "normal" folks purely for their interest in technology and science topics? Bullied, hated, insulted, phyiscally attacked even? Not for any valid reasons, nor even because they were "out of touch", but became out of touch and averse to interacting with others due to all the ongoing abuse over their interest in a topic that dirtbag bully types consider "nerdy"? Reading bad! Learning bad! Trying to better one's self BAD! Absuing others GOOD! Maybe after many years of that kinda treatment, some of us are more comfortable with machines than we are with humans because so many humans are just literal monsters, and not worth trying to interact with.

Bro, I beg, go outside and touch some grass

So now being an introvert is something to be despised? Sounds a bit unempathetic.

Not wanting to engage in the same small talk with different random people isn't bleak.

Get off your incredibly high horse.

Also safer than human drivers.

Statistics after hundreds of millions of miles driven are compelling.

But my own subjective confidence in how it drives and the decisions it makes in very challenging and ambiguous situations allow me to trust it far more than most Uber drivers.

With Uber, I feel uneasy to moderately frightened probably three rides in ten. With Waymo I've never felt at risk.

I'm pretty sure Waymo is a safer driver than I am.

> I'm pretty sure Waymo is a safer driver than I am.

Same. I don't think enough credit is given to the inexhaustible attention, superhuman reaction time, and superhuman sensing (360 lidar, etc.) of Waymo.

I tried it for the first time in SF; ironically coming from Phoenix but about 10km outside their catchment zone.

The experience was nice enough but the exact same destination I wanted was serviced by a good-enough bus at 1/5 the price.

I'm a big fan of Waymo, but this press release seems to be almost entirely content free. Is there a link somewhere that describes what is actually new in the 6th generation?

1) It's cheaper: fewer expensive sensors

2) It's better: improved range and greater redundancy

3) It handles new conditions: extended time in rain, snow and Texas bugs

Well revealing the car mfr Zeekr is a big deal, perhaps it has been done before but I hadn't seen it.

As far as I know, Alphabet has spent over $10B on Waymo so far.

That surely makes it one of the most expensive (in terms of development before reaching profitability) products of all time that were financed by the private sector?

I would love to see a list of the most expensive products the private sector developed in human history.

The rumors are that Apple spent the same and didn't manage to find a useful end product. Really wild amounts of money going on, but the end product could be worth an absolute fortune. Uber without the primary cost -- the driver.

Meta has spent $46 billion on the "metaverse" since 2021.

Uber spent something like $20B+ before they first made a profit.

Let's as a couple of waymo cars what they have to say, over here in this parking lot at night:

honk! honk!

honk! honk! honk!

honk!

Best self driving software and sensor suite packaged in a purpose built vehicle paired with large scale operations puts Waymo very far ahead of everyone else.

I took a Waymo this past weekend in SF. 8 miles, $41, and 51 minutes to cross town in light-medium traffic. It clearly has to avoid certain routes due to insufficient HD mapping -- like construction. 51 minutes is way too long, fun as the experience is with no driver...

To be fair, the entirety of SF across is around 8 miles and even if you are taking a private car, it probably takes the better part of an hour to do that voyage. 51 minutes does seem too long but not an extreme

For a brief moment, I honestly thought this title was for some satire of a character stuck in an ancestral profession. Probably in a slightly dystopic way.

Basic unanswered questions:

- How many seats?

- Is there a steering wheel at all?

If this is the model (https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a45711737/zeekr-cm1e-waymo...) then 5 passenger seats, no steering wheel (in the photos at least).

the zeekr model is indeed being tested; however it does have a steering wheel (and the article you linked mentions this.)

The steering wheel is required by law in various places, and is also needed because when Waymo's get stuck they send people out in trucks to 'complete the trip', unstuck the car manually, etc.

Too bad. The unused driver position wastes so much space inside the vehicle.

Article says yes steering wheel until regulatory approval.

There’s also a 100% tax on Chinese cars imported to the US, so hard to say if this demo is a realistic model.

From China? Does Waymo have to pay the 100% tariff on electric cars from China?

(Detroit is terrified of EVs from China. Detroit went all-in on "more crap per car" and much higher price points. Consumers didn't go for it. Meanwhile, there are good US$25,000 EVs from China from multiple manufacturers. Even Tesla says they want to make one.)

If they're using the pictured CM1e, five seats. The concept had no steering wheel but my understanding is that the laws in a lot of places require one to be present (even if they don't require a human to be sitting in the driver's seat) so the production version might have one.

When there's enough of these things, does that mean Google can launch realtime street view?

Did this Google VP write the article all by himself?

I am an executive at a faang.. and I doubt it :)

press release stamp

Why can't everyone who helped write it be credited?

Why can't he have written it? Has he got something better to do while everyone else is doing the actual work?

You can tell by the way it's written that it was formulated by a committee.

Good news must come from overlords, bad news from the foot soldiers and messengers. Rite of the MBA era.

Is Waymo profitable?

> Waymo’s approach of designing both hardware and software from the ground up has been crucial to our success

I’m sorry, what? It’s not a success. It’s a very expensive piece of R&D. Success would be widespread adoption and, you know, profit.

Well, they've been successful in that they seem to be far ahead of any other self-driving company* in putting level 4 vehicles on the road carrying paying customers. Whether that pans out as a viable business of course remains to be seen. (Although I expect it probably will be economically viable, and mainly a matter of getting the public to be indifferent to fatalities the way we are for human drivers.)

* I think maybe Mobileye is the nearest while being pretty far back, but I'm not too familiar with what's going on outside the US.

Who else has achieved what they have?

What spent a lot of money building something that doesn’t work very well and doesn’t make any money? Loads of people.

It works phenomenally well. I use it several times a week.

Waymo does 100,000 per week

Other cars / services in US : ZERO

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