Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

Compared to "FSD this year", every year for the past five years, I honestly find the approach pretty refreshing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding

Concepts of a plan

"In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs)."

(Submitted title was "Waymo partners with Toyota to bring autonomous driving to personal vehicles")

I do wish they’d make a plug in hybrid Sienna…

Wow, you’re more right than I thought. Ford is way higher than I would have thought too.

They’re Toyota. They can buy their way onto the winner’s table later.

For most of America, EV'S and the associated infrastructure aren't QUITE there yet.

Prius is the world's highest selling Hybrid car, and it's been that for more than a decade now. This means Toyota has helped cut down emissions from consumer automobiles by a significant degree.

It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars. It becomes obvious when we look at the total emissions generated by that pool of 100k cars.

If there's anyone to blame, I'd look at the luxury division - Mercedes, Audi and BMW (and also Genesis/Acura) - all late to the party, and still haven't been successful at meaningfully replacing the vehicles they would sell to their customers yet.

Not noticed, because they're printing money with their hybrids that all have year-long waitlists in the US. Gas stations are alive and well, and until the housing crisis is fixed (not happening in our lifetime), people will be reliant on gas vehicles because you can't charge at most apartment complexes.

They gotta supplement mass transit for dense cities, not replace it.

Currently it’s got to be worth sitting at the wheel or paying a delivery driver… but if my robot says “6 hours to drive 10 miles”, I’ll think, “wow traffic is bad, whatever, it’ll get there when it gets there, beep, off you go! siri, text mom that the paint chip is on its way”, oh hmm actually maybe teal is better… “hey siri, get me another toyotaymo”

There can still exist space for cars but they need to be last in priority rather than the first, second, and third consideration cars have today when it comes to infrastructure.

That's not going to happen, not in our lifetimes. It's not safe to do this unless you have a critical mass of cars on the road capable of doing it. Given the average age of cars, it'll take ~10-15 years from such tech being mandatory in new cars to think about doing this. Being mandatory is of course itself over 10 years from it being available. And it's not available yet.

We're now a decade out from people starting to say "stop investing in public transportation because driverless cars will obsolete it," and so far driverless cars have only managed to provide a limited taxi service in a couple of cities, a far cry from deprecating public transit.

(Actually, I personally hew to the belief that driverless cars will make traffic worse, since it will probably increase the number of empty cars running around because traffic tends to be dominated by unidirectional bursts of traffic.)

So like a train?

For every bus you can take ~50 cars off the road.

(L4 iirc is hands-off but someone in the driver's seat (which must therefore exist) in a fit state to take over if necessary - no sleeping on the way in, no drinking on the way home.)

Let me use my phone or watch videos on the highway. I’m okay with taking over with a small amount of warning. I’m also okay doing all non-highway driving.

I just want something that can keep me in my lane and avoid ramming the vehicle in front of me. If I need to drive at the start and end of my trip, that’s okay.

In what way would self driving cars incentivize not owning your own car?

Here's another vision of the future - gradually everyone's cars become self-driving, and now cars are more accessible to a wider range of people. 30% of the population currently can't drive due to age or disability, but if cars drive themselves the elderly, disabled, and even children can now own and operate vehicles. And now you have 30% more cars on an already congested road system. That should be enough to make traffic jams the norm everywhere.

But in case that wasn't bad enough, consider this - now people can do other things while they travel, because they don't have to be driving. So, in turn, they can live further and further away from their workplaces in cheaper, larger houses and do more of their work on the go. And while they do this they're spending more time on the roads, and - you guessed it - causing more congestion.

And because parking will always be expensive and hard to find in busy city centers, people will set their cars to loiter while they visit, rather than parking. Just going round and round while their owners shop. Causing - you guessed it - even more congestion.

TL;DR - the most likely result of autonomous vehicles is out of control congestion.

...no.

This statement doesn't seem to track with reality. The Prius was one of the first major hyrbids and it sold like hotcakes. You see them everywhere. Their current offerings include more hybrids than ever, in fact it seems a majority of their vehicles have a hyrbid option today, including the Tacoma and Tundra.

Uber made it ok for regular drivers commit road violations with impunity.

I sure do, because it sounds like you aren't driving at safe speeds, and I'd like you to not hit me with your car please.

Source? Not just another Elon "next year" promise though right?

Wonder if there's any breakup clauses when the manufacturers want to do autonomy with other companies outside of Waymo and this is Alphabet casting a conflict-of-influence net across the industry, almost like a desperate man calling every divorce lawyer in the tristate area to deny his wife proper justice.

What year is it?!

This is why Tesla's "actuals" are delivered so many years after the dates of the initial pronouncements (for those few things that have so far been delivered at all).