Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo | Hacker News Reader

Waymo will bring autonomous vehicles to Tokyo

waymo.com

187 pointsEvgeniyZh121 comments

This will be interesting. As an aging nondriver living in Yokohama, I’ve been both hoping that self-driving cars become available here before I develop mobility issues and wondering how feasible they will be. Since I don’t drive, I don’t have a sense of what the roads here are like from the vehicle’s perspective. But many of the streets, including in the neighborhood where I live [1], are narrow, have no sidewalks, and are shared by cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Very different from, say, Phoenix.

[1] https://maps.app.goo.gl/CVDYknAXeeA6u4DP8

Waymo is doing alright in San Francisco as well. That's not directly comparable to Tokyo, either, but I expect it's a much less distant of a comparison than Phoenix.

I saw a video of a bunch of Waymos backed up on each other being too hesitant to make a turn. Kinda reinforced a fear I have of these things. Not to mention I would hate to try and wave one of these things to turn before me... or wink my headlights.

IDK, like I get the appeal for driverless cars, I just still don't like them.

Seeing something once doesn’t make it a real phenomenon.

Besides, if that is common, Waymo will have data on it and if it’s common enough, they’ll fix it.

I’ve sat in Waymos on 2 occasions, each on a separate ride, in which the car avoided collisions that would have happened due to bad human drivers. Your fear is worth examining closely as it’ll hold you back from enjoying this amazing technology.

I think you may mean something other than phenomenon ("an observable fact or event"). Seeing anything more than zero times makes it a phenomenon by definition.

That… doesn’t sound like such a bad thing to me. I’d rather have my driverless car hesitate (in a safe location) than be too agressive.

Can't wait to get locked in a waymo in a bad part of town.

In SF you still have clearly delineated sidewalks with curbs and crossing lights. Japanese side streets are basically equivalent to alleys and cars are guests. There aren’t too many streets like that in the US at all.

That's wider than the streets near me in San Francisco :). Lots of our "two way" streets, are only one vehicle wide, because we allow parking on both sides of the street, too.

I admire Japanese taxis for mounting mirrors on the bonnet so they dont stick out. I'm Indian and I'm glad I had a choice of 170ish cm wide Japanese sedans meant for Asia and hate the new 180ish cars. The Jaguar is 213 cm wide.

Don't fall on the trap of self-driving cars will make our lives better. They won't. Building cities for people first is what will improve our lives.

Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=040ejWnFkj0

The city where I live—Yokohama—is very different in layout and density from the U.S. cities shown in that video. My neighborhood consists of many small plots of land, each with a different owner, separated by narrow streets. Unless it all gets wiped out by a tsunami, it’s never going to be rebuilt or have its layout changed—the landowners, many of whom live on their plots of land, would not stand for it.

My house is on the side of a steep hill. If in a few years—I am now 67–I become unable to walk up that hill, the only way I will be able to go anywhere is by calling a taxi. (No one in my family here knows how to drive.) Because of demographic trends, there is a shortage of human taxi drivers now and that shortage is likely to get worse. If I do become significantly less mobile five or ten years from now, I will be able to keep living in my home only if self-driving taxis are available.

So for me, in that very likely scenario, self-driving cars would make my life better. In Japan, there are millions of people in similar situations to mine.

You raise a very valid point, and it is a point that I do not see expressed very often.

While it is "easy" (and, I think, proper) to build new areas of cities to be walkable at some point in the future, the fact remains that today cities already exist as they stand and many of them may not be very walkable.

Even in already-walkable cities, it is important to consider the fact that all of us will eventually (hopefully!) live long enough to be considered old.

Looking forward to when I myself may become old, I think I'll still like to be able to get from A to B (and back) with a minimum of fuss and at a time of my choosing.

So it is my hope that by the time I reach that point, the world will have options for me and other old people that are better than old people have today.

And that's just me, some day.

But many people are old right now. They can benefit from things like self-driving cars right now, even in walkable cities.

Cars are the most age discriminatory mode of transport of all: only 18+ and not too old can use it, and most disabled cannot use it. A

Bicycles work to all ages, all abilities.

In your case an ebike, trike (etrike?) or even mobility scooter might be a much lighter, cheaper, scalable option.

Hey why not a self-driving e-scooter? Why does it have to weight 2 tons in the first place?

Bike infrastructure is not only for bicycles: its for trikes, wheelchairs, mobility scooters, ebikes.

Watch:

* Who else benefits from the Dutch cycling infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSGx3HSjKDo

* 8 to 80, people of all ages cycling in the Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swqaAIkGtpA

Have you ever interacted with a person over 70 that has mobility problems? Do you really expect an 80 year old to ride a scooter up a hill in the rain/snow? Getting into the car is difficult enough.

I'm not saying to ban cars, just to de-prioritize them The use case for bicycle-and-similars is way more than the use case for cars specially urban places (also outside urban places)

Dunno - check out old guy on mobility scooter video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2028301917230649

I'm a little like that myself - not as old at 60 but have switched to an ebike to still go fast.

...that's a meme post of a guy in a mask. It's not an old guy.

Ah so it is! Still I was looking at getting a mobility scooter for my dad, about 85 at the time, though I don't think he would have pulled wheelies.

Or move to a flatter area ?

Let's give that self driving e-scooter four seats, oops that's a kei car... They weigh almost exactly one ton too, before adding four adults and a suitcase or two.

Just take see how roads in Tokyo already look like[1]. Cars are already driven like factory floor robots[2]. Actually automating those hurts nothing.

1: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=factory+agv

2: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=driving+tokyo

I know what you're getting at here and I agree with you in spirit, but:

A lot of life-alteringly physically disabled people can drive cars. For example, lower-body paraplegics and double amputees can use hand throttle and brake controls. Single leg amputees can drive with a single leg, single arm amputees can drive with a knob on the steering wheel, and so on.

And bicycles do not work to all ages in the same way that cars don't. When you can't make safe decisions in traffic a bike can't work. Heck, a tumble off a bike could be the end of mobility for an elderly person.

(I wonder how many places expect mobility scooters to be on the sidewalk vs. allowed on a bike path?)

That video was rather thoughtful. Almost makes me want to short SDC companies, buuut lobbying.

Tokyo doesn’t need to be built for people. It already is.

Self-Driving cars will make roads safer and open up cheap travel for millions of people.

Who says self driving cars will need to pertain their existing form? Hopefully that fact that you wont own the vehicle will lead to companies building more minimal form factors since in most cases it's a single rider and they'll incentivised by keeping costs as low as possible.

I watched part of "Watch: How Self-Driving Cars will Destroy Cities (and what to do about it)" and the arguments seemed pretty weak. A lot of it was along the lines of current cars cause problems in cities and self driving cars are still cars so self driving cars bad. But there's a lot of flexibility as to how they get used and regulated.

Just thinking about one city issue local to me - I live near Oxford Street in London which is currently overcrowded with thousands of people plus buses and taxis and the like. They've wanted to pedestrianize it for ages and probably will but there are problems with accessibility for the handicapped and delivery of stuff to the stores. That could maybe be sorted with slow moving self driving evs picking those up? I'm not sure but at least it's another option.

Almost all of these "cars bad" arguments fall for the trap of focusing solely on the disadvantages of cars while completely ignoring the huge upsides that make them by far most popular form of transport in rich countries in the first place: Long distance transport directly from your home to the front door of your destination in a private, climate-controlled cabin with zero transfers or unnecessary stops.

Self-driving will make our lives better because it takes that already very successful form of transportation and makes it significantly safer and more efficient without compromising any of its advantages.

I have no desire to educate but I have to indicate that there is plenty of research on why people prefer cars and that’s not it.

Still, assuming that walking from home to a train / metro station is a problem has to come from a car centric place. It’s ridiculous. In many cities that is the best part of the day for many people. You rarely hear from people driving that car commute is the best part of their day.

In very specific situations (in the summer on a sunny day in a low-crime area when its just you commuting with no small children or excessive cargo and no time pressure) walking a few blocks to and from a train station could indeed be a pleasant experience. Take away a few of those points though and cars start to look pretty attractive again. Even more so if we're talking about a hypothetical self-driving future where several of the few remaining disadvantages of cars have been mitigated.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they just avoid those difficult cases. The algorithm is biased to be safe over assertive so people will just cut it off on foot and it will sit there.

For example in LA, waymo is geofenced away from some of the hilly neighborhoods where there are narrow switchbacking roads shared with pedestrians due to a lack of sidewalk. It also does not go on freeways.

Going to be very interesting to see how the Japanese people react to this. The service the taxi drivers provide when you take the taxi in Japan is on another level, such as waiting for you with the open door and closing the door for you as you enter. A driverless car will never be able to copy that. Japan also has very good public transportation reducing the need for a car for day to day travel so cost might be less of a factor.

Plenty of cars with electric doors, including Tesla.

But true, even Uber is kinda flash with driver wearing white gloves.

> waiting for you with the open door and closing the door for you as you enter

I know you meant more than this, but I'm sure automating opening and closing the doors will be a lesser challenge then developing autonomous self driving?

I don't think that would elicit the same feeling as a driver doing it

Taxis in Tokyo already have automated doors. The Toyota Crown's rear doors can open and close without the Cab driver getting out.

Taxi doors already automatically open and close in major Japanese metro areas.

There is a certain romance around good service, but the good service is not the reason why people use taxis here.

One could make a similar argument that self service restaurants serving revolving sushi, or tablet ordered sushi miss the good service of a great restaurant. Yet these places are wildly popular, because one goes there to eat.

Old Japanese sedan style taxis universally had a handbrake-like lever around front driver side door sill that opens rear passenger side door through a mechanical linkage.

Toyota JPN Taxi[1] replaced most sedan cabs, and it has electric sliding doors which is nicer than swing-out doors. Already opens and closes with electronic commands from driver seat. No big deal.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_JPN_Taxi

> such as waiting for you with the open door and closing the door for you as you enter

Most taxis in Japan have driver-controlled doors. The driver doesn't have to get off the seat at all. Given it is already automated, it is trivial for a driverless car to do.

What I've read is that some/most taxis in Japan have an automatic back door for the passenger. https://musa4trip.wordpress.com/2014/04/04/taxis-in-japan-do...

Searching, I see references to automatic doors preventing robberies but no explanations as to how that would be. Perhaps the barriers between the back seat passengers and driver prevent knife threats? I wouldn't expect robbers in Japan to have guns, like they would in the US.

Oh, maybe you mean the automatic doors are "waiting for you with the open door"? A lot of cars have hatchbacks that close using a remote, either on the dash or on a fob. It was big news that people were demonstrating the CyberTruck cutting carrots or hot dogs because people are used to hatchbacks closing and opening safely. It seems a lot simpler to automate doors opening and closing safely than autonomously driving in Tokyo.

It’s for liability reasons. The driver is responsible for any damage caused to property or vehicles by passengers opening their door

The classic implementation used mechanical link rods, which no one knew how to operate against driver's will. So there used to be occasional comedic stories around that, like attempted free rider taken to police or man fleeing scene tripping on the door.

Look, there is a lot of profit on the table. None of the employment or societal concern matter at all.

Last time I took a cab in Japan the driver pushed a button to open the door and pressed a button to close it. It was surreal actually.

I agree on the taxi experience being next level. I just wonder how the aging population will replace them. Have you ever seen a 20 something cab driver in Japan? I been many times and never have so wonder if there is a job shortage coming

Means it’ll eventually get more expensive no?

also, wearing white gloves, and actually helping you with luggage

It is unbelievably expensive though, a 40 minute ride from Osaka city to KIX airport could cost you 30k yen.

I did a hours ride from my home to the airport for 10k. How do you get to 30k?

Japan loves its robots, i'm expecting they'll love these robots.

Eh, spent two weeks in Japan in mainly Tokyo and Kyoto a couple weeks ago, and I can safely say that the quality of taxi service varies a lot. Fantastic ride from and to the airport with the driver handling all our luggages. But, taxi drivers who didn't speak English and who couldn't read romanized addresses were common. It was a problem because Google Maps defaulted to romanized addresses on our phones due to our phone language being English.

A taxi we called up using Uber (Uber can only call taxis in Japan) even delayed cancelling our ride passive-aggressively long enough that we missed other rides and lost a lot of time.

My friends had even met with a rude taxi driver (I know impossible, in Japan, right?) that refused to take them to a place that he deemed too close in Kyoto.

We also had numerous great experiences with taxis too: accomodating our stops, having lovely conversations, giving out touristic information and they tried really hard to go accross the language barrier. Great people overall. But, having said that, as a tourist, I'd take a Waymo any day over a taxi in Japan just because I think it would be less friction for me.

That’s such a show of confidence! It’s an entirely different driving world over there. Particularly in terms of what is expected outside of what is mandated. Looking forward to trying it.

Can you elaborate on what is expected outside of being mandated?

In my experience the cars are highly regulated and very predictable on the main roads. Marked out lanes, low speed limits, many red lights.

But pedestrians and bikes are everywhere, and they don't always obey the rules. I wonder how well collision detection handles sharing lanes with bikes without suddenly braking in the middle of the road.

I was in a Waymo last week in San Francisco that had a bicyclist cut in front of us, no hard breaking or jerk just a gradual decrease in speed. I would've hit the break relatively fast myself but Waymo handled it without issue in a very smooth way.

Also see https://x.com/dmitri_dolgov/status/1868778679868047545

I don't know how it'll handle significantly more pedestrians, but I assume that they're confident enough in the models and have run enough simulations to expand to Tokyo.

I bike in SF regularly and I actually cut in front of Waymos intentionally since I know they will slow down gracefully vs regular drivers who might not see me for a number of reasons or trigger road rage. Several months ago a Waymo would over correct but now they're so good at anticipating where I'm heading.

I live in rural Japan, and in my experience, drivers are also crazy:

* They stop on the side of roads and streets whenever they feel like it without worrying about blocking the traffic.

* They don't turn the lights on no matter how bad the weather is. Super fun to be in the middle of a snow storm and people are driving white cars with the lights off.

* Whenever someone wants to turn right at an intersection, the cars behind will pass it on the left, without worrying if someone is coming the opposite direction, which is really dangerous. I am not sure about the Japanese law, but in my home country (Spain) that is highly illegal.

* Many people watch TV or anime while driving. I even saw one guy reading a book while driving, somehow holding it open over the driving wheel.

Add to this the awful state of most streets and roads, and I can see more accidents here in one year that I saw in 33 years in Spain.

How would passing on the left would risk a collision with a car coming from an opposite direction? The opposite lane is on the right hand side (in Japan)?

I assume they mean: Given turning/waiting car A, passing car B that is going straight and car C coming from right going straight. Car B likely has right of the way as they are going straight and they are on the left from viewpoint of car C, but car C may not see behind car A (like due to it being truck for example). Both B & C might think they have right of the way. B due to fact they should normally only need to avoid people coming from left and he can see there is no one there, C due to fact he entered intersection when he only saw A who is waiting to turn. I don't know Japan law so I don't know actually has right of the way here (in Finland A would actually have right of the way in mirrored situation as you always need to yield those coming from right in equal intersection, even if they are turning left).

Yes, it is a question of visibility. You have two cars coming from opposite directions, both want to turn right (Japan drives on the left), and both think they can do it safely, but all of sudden another car pops from behind.

I have seen many near accidents due to this. That's why such a maneuver is forbidden in many countries.

>* They stop on the side of roads and streets whenever they feel like it without worrying about blocking the traffic.

To be fair, that's also true of pedestrians in this country.

True. It doesn't help that most streets don't have sidewalks and you are forced to walk on the road. And even when there are sidewalks, people ignore them...

Oh, I mean — that's a thing even in the densest parts of Tokyo, people (and not just tourists!) just have no concept of moving aside to not block the flow, frequently walk like 3/4-abreast and block the entire width of the stairs/sidewalk ;P

Kinda surprising considering how everyone can do it perfectly on the escalator. To the point of ignoring the signs that tell them to stand two abreast.

> I wonder how well collision detection handles sharing lanes with bikes without suddenly braking in the middle of the road.

I would say that is the easy problem.

> In my experience the cars are highly regulated and very predictable on the main roads. Marked out lanes, low speed limits, many red lights.

A city without this is the harder problem.

I wait for the day Waymo comes to Italy or better yet India.

In San Francisco, pedestrians and bikes can appear anywhere around your car, at any speed in any direction. Including wearing all black, no light and taking 2 steps forward then turning around and taking 2 more steps forward (repeat but vary everything randomly). Or doing lasso circles with something heavy at the end of a rope in the middle of the street (last weekend). Just because this is not 100% of the time is not a license to run over ANY of them.

This is a kind of environment that human drivers are NOT made for. All the more not while clicking around on their Uber app or changing the music track or trying to read street signs or understand a Nissan dashboard map. In San Francisco, computers with multiple sensors have a gross advantage over humans.

Behave super-correctly, over-optimized and extra-cooperative as to minimize any negative effects for everyone.

I guess the biggest challenge is gonna be not to get stuck in those narrow alleys that they call streets in Japan. Some of them can hardly take a kei car, let alone a sedan

I can already see in my imagination all the jijis swearing when they see those cars stuck :)

The average motorcar still operating in japan is approximately 2/3rd the mass, and presumably volume, of the average personal vehicle in america. They also don't allow street parking on those "alleys".

Effectively they can be between 1/6th (2-lane) and 2/9th (1-lane) the width of a typical one-way american street and still have room for pedestrians along the side.

They can barely change lanes: https://youtu.be/spw176TZ7-8?t=88

...and are completely flummoxed by a couple of traffic cones closing off a lane: https://youtu.be/fMFzs0NZ_Mc?t=56

These videos are from three and six years ago, lol.

Not a full rollout, just initial test drives. Still a big step. Good to see Waymo scaling up over time.

I wonder how much this service costs. If it is as expensive as taxi services in Tokyo, it could fail. While I don’t think it’s possible for the cost to match that of a train, if this service materializes successfully, it could become the most disruptive innovation in Japan.

How about California or Phoenix?

I think the killer feature for this will be if it's readily available at night, for reasonable prices.

I love living here, but the "do we go home or stay out all night?" decision at ~23:30 when out sucks.

If I could get across town for ~3000 JPY at 2AM without having to wait 50 minutes for a cab around Shinjuku, I'd be ecstatic.

Taxis are readily available, but the price after hours is why people don't take them. I doubt waymo will be able to bypass taxi pricing.

My experience trying to get home from around 二丁目 says otherwise re/ availability, but I'll admit I might have given up too quickly.

Can you elaborate for those less informed? Is there a higher fare after the trains stop?

There are late night fees, and taxis in general are 3-10x expensive relative to trains.

Trains in Japan cease operations during nights, and last stops of trains move progressively towards core Tokyo to position vehicles for morning operations. This means you can't just stay at the table until stations close and catch the very last one, but people have varying time limits for train rides home.

So binge drinking train riding bar goers has to know the absolute latest time they must give up their mugs, which they're going to miss anyway, but will still try anyway, to be stuck mid-way to queue up for a taxi. Or they can be smarter and get stuck at Shinjuku, queueing for a taxi. The smartest ones hit 24/7 places like McD, karaoke, or internet cafe. Or get couples of cans at 7-11 and raid a friend's apartment. None of them are smart, they're all drunk.

I've never taken a taxi in that kind of situation, but I imagine the experience wouldn't be great. Waymo at midnight is certainly going to be a game changer to them.

One thing to add, which is the thing that surprised me: not only the trains stop; _there are no replacement bus services_.

Where I'm from, where the rail services when they stop for the night, have _some_ replacement — you might need to wait 30 minutes for a bus, and then ride it along the U-Bahn tracks and the trip will take 45 minutes instead of 15; but there is _a_ way to get home before the trains resume.

Even in the US, every major city has overnight bus services. I live in Seattle and have taken the half hourly to hourly bus home at 3am before. It's wild to me that Tokyo has none.

I will say that there are businesses that has stepped out to fill this void: there are numerable “Internet/manga cafes”, that have private rooms where you have reclining chairs where you can nap; you can just rent a karaoke room for a couple of hours, some onsens have overnight options (including the same reclining chairs etc) - if you just want to have a semi-private space to nap, there are plenty of options.

Just coming home is difficult.

Difference is that if you don’t go drinking extremely far from home you can generally just walk back. Sure, may be more sensible to just drink a few hours longer and take the first train, but it’s never impossible to get home.

Seriously, if I stay out drinking past 1 I don’t generally care any more whether I stop at 2 or 5am.

That only works if you drink alone and your friends live close-by (or you're willing to host overnight them if you have the space.).

Living in Asakusa, meeting up with friends that live in Tanashi; and drinking in Shinjuku — nobody is able to walk home. We either stay out all night, say goodbyes at ~11PM, or the party moves to Asakusa (we have a relatively larger place).

Interesting, I naively assumed that's how it is everywhere... Maybe Tokyo is such a giant mess that it isn't going to make sense serving all needed routes all night.

It's +20% between 10PM-5AM; which I think is fairly standard across the world?

At least where I live in Japan (not Tokyo), a huge portion of taxi drivers quit over COVID, and it can be impossible to get a taxi during many times of the day. This wasn't a problem at all 5 years ago.

> If it is as expensive as taxi services in Tokyo, it could fail.

You mean cheap? How are taxi services in Tokyo expensive?

I'll be a self-driving believer when Waymo brings autonomous vehicles to New Delhi.

edit - This wasn't ment as disparaging, but perhaps it came across that way. The traffic situation in New Delhi is NUTS. I wouldn't trust myself to drive there, a local driver is a requirement and not a convenience. Crossing major streets as a pedestrian is hard enough, they key is to make eye contact with the driver about to run you over and exchange your intentions through microexpressions. Repeat that 30 times until you reach the other side of the road. Viewing a major intersection from above is like viewing two schools of fish seemlessly swiming through each other. And some of those fish are animal-drawn carts.

I'm in awe of the traffic situation on the subcontinent (as well as many other Indian things - like the word prepone!).

That explains a black Audi sedan and Toyota? SUV I've seen. I thought it didn't like an Autoware setup, and also that an euro car is an odd choice as they tend to be harder to rig for an SDC.

Makes sense. High-tech country, robot-friendly, declining young population.

Curious whether they will open doors automatically. It's a faux pas to try opening a taxi door yourself in Japan.

As someone mentioned in a comment up the chain, it's for liability reasons - if a passenger damages something with the door, the driver is on the hook.

Seeing how an autonomous vehicle is similarly liable for its impact on the environment it stands to reason this can and will be easily dealt with.

Is anyone working on autonomous busses or vans for public transport?

Yes, beep is probably the most well known of them, having two test locations in Contra Costa county you can ride if you're in the bay area. They're much less sophisticated than Waymo vehicles though, and the unit economics are much less favorable.

This gives me hope WayMo might come to the UK after Japan.

Yeah that should be wonderful for the traffic over there...

Luckily public transit is amazing there.

Yes it does. And there's still a lot of traffic. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

The public transportation is not relevant for the discussion of personal vehicle transportation though.

Are you implying that Tokyo already has a lot of car/truck traffic? (It does not.) Or implying that Waymo meaningfully increases traffic? (I doubt it.)

Are you kidding me? I lived there for 5 years. Tokyo has an immense amount of traffic.

And yes Waymo increases traffic. People in SF were putting cones on them to disable them because of it, there's tons of videos of them causing traffic jams.

They are famously overly cautious and often stop and do strange maneuvers.

Recently one held up Kamala Harris' motor brigade for quite a while until a cop moved it.

Individual autonomous cars will solve all transportation issues. What's that? Trains? Trams? Efficient urban fabric? Things that Tokyo, gasp, already has? Bull.

/s.

In my opinion Individual autonomous vehicles will solve most transportation issues not Individual autonomous cars. Currently to transport 60-70 kg person we are moving 2 mton machines ie cars. And those 2 mton machines are in use for just 30-60 min a day.

There are about 50,000 taxis in Tokyo. What are they doing there?

I don't know but Tokyo doesn't need more cars on the road, that's for sure.

Trains close at midnight. Taxis are mainly used after then and for more affluent people or people in emergencies / special occasions.

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