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Comment by azan_ | Hacker News Reader

I think Waymo has huge potential for being much larger than Uber - people are willing to pay more compared to ordinary uber drive just to avoid dealing with taxi drivers and tech will only get cheaper.

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More than that, I think the ride-hailing business is just the fist volley in the self driving vehicle space. It’s a short jump from there to self driving trucks, self driving package delivery, self driving private vehicles, and on and on.

All of those spaces are actively being explored by various companies.

Can any of those companies catch up on self-driving faster than Waymo can pivot to their niche? Cruise seemed to be a distant second, but did themselves in with an attempted cover-up.

There are already self-driving trucks on the roads. Their pilots came earlier, because the problem space is much smaller.

They don't need to "catch up" to Waymo, because of the niche.

https://bigrigs.com.au/2024/04/18/driverless-trucks-trial-be...

> There are already self-driving trucks on the roads.

2 trucks?! I suppose that's the minimum number required to make your pluralization correct.

I will stand on my earlier statement regarding this particular outfit: they'll need to catch up because Waymo started class 8 variants in 2021 https://waymo.com/blog/search/?t=Waymo%20Via

That article also mentioned previous trials from other companies that are ongoing, from previous years.

And Volvo rolled a class 8 as well.

And plenty have failed. Perhaps a smaller problem space but still really, really hard. Some self driving freight company failures: Starsky, TuSimple, Embark, Ghost, among others.

One promising self driving truck startup, Aurora, was forced to put a safety driver back in the driver's seat after testing in May.

https://www.ttnews.com/articles/aurora-driver-back-in-seat

"Forced" by the truck maker, who was forced by their insurance company. All these companies will face that hurtle. I suggested to my girlfriend, who is a corporate defense attorney, that she get involved in this area of legal practice. It's a legal minefield.

It does seem very messy! Will be some interesting precedents set over the next few years I imagine.

I see Australia in the article and pardon my rampant scepticism, simply don't believe it.

Lo and behold:

>A six-month trial of driverless trucks on public Victorian roads has been put on hold just hours before it was meant to begin after the transport union labelled it “shambolic” and “sneaky”

> "the futures of our truck drivers are jeopardised due to this poorly executed plan."

> “It’s unacceptable that these trials are being pushed by corporations that continue to disadvantage our hard-working mums and dads that work day in, day out to carry Victorians.”

Now this sounds far more like the Australia I know.

Looks like the entire trial was scrapped due to union pressure and never resumed. Same reason we can't even have Driver-Only Operation on NSW trains, despite specifically purchasing DOO trains that operate safely worldwide.

https://ia.acs.org.au/article/2024/-shambolic---victorian-dr...

Probably not.

Cruise was nixed by GM execs, whom I believe were looking for whatever excuse they could find to shut the operation down. They simply couldn't afford to stay in the game for the long haul. Cruise was under pressure to appear more capable than they were, and they took risks.

Waymo is distinguished in that it doesn't need to pander to nervous investors to keep getting money. The company is Sergei and Larry's baby. Google's founders will ensure that Waymo is patronized until it can stand on it's own.

> ...I believe were looking for whatever excuse they could find to shut the operation down

Cruise's self driving license was suspended because humans displayed poor judgement by omitting from the official report details of their stopped car dragging a knocked-down accident victim under the car for dozens of feet. They took "risks" alright, and their harebrained cover-up was discovered by chance by the oversight body.

I believe any driver who covers up the details of injuries in an accident permanently lose their license, because they'll definitely do it again. What good is a self-driving subsidiary that can't operate on public roads?

I agree which is why I love that this is technically bait about various techs that want to claim/market to be 'Full Self Driving'.

Buy a Comma.ai and install it in a supported vehicle, and just try it out. It doesn't talk to GPS, but it handles left right gas brake on the freeway well enough, and that's with two fairly shit optical cameras and a radar system. Granted, geohot helped start the company, and he's no slouch, but if their system is that good, a couple things are true. A) Lidar isn't necessary b) Extensive mapping that Waymo does also isn't necessary c) that last 10% gonna take 500% of the time to get to L3/4/5 autonomous, and that last 1% is maybe never. The other day I was in a Waymo, and there was a semi totally blocking the street, backing into a loading dock. The Waymo correctly identified that there was an object in the way, and stopped and did not plow into it. At first it crept up to the semi, blocking it from making progress as well. It might have started backing up, I've seen them do that, but I was already on the customer support line as soon as I saw the semi blocking the road.

Comma.ai is probably the purchase I'm most happy with this year (to be fair though, I buy a lot of crap off Temu). Drives are now just "get on the freeway, and just chill." Pay enough attention because it's not collected to GPS and just in case something goes wrong. So to be clear, Comma.ai is not autonomous driving, it's classified as an ADAS, advanced driving assistance program. It just makes driving suck that much less, especially in stop and go traffic, for $1,000, and compatible with recent vehicles that have built-in lane guidance features. Waymo's got to be light years ahead of them, given how much money they've spent, so it's my belief that Waymo's taking it very slow and cautious, and that their technology is much more advanced than we've been told.

How does self-driving package delivery work? Who delivers the package?

The slaves obviously.

But to be serious, there may be a way of doing it, it just seems very far off unless you're talking about Amazon hub or something like that, where it would be more feasible (but still difficult to achieve).

There are several “last meters” delivery robots developed.

Short range drones are being used in Australia.

And I heard of at least one company working with apartment architects to standardize a “port” on the building exterior to which a truck/robot would connect to “inject” packages to the inside.

Like some sort of "mail chute"?

This was just an acquaintance some years ago in SF, but I recall it was fancier with conveyor belts and a protocol for the robot to communicate the size and weights of the packages being delivered.

> "Short range [delivery] drones are being used in Australia."

Last I read (late 2023 IIRC) these were being cancelled in various areas, if not everywhere? People in neighborhoods were getting annoyed by the noise of drones buzzing overhead.

Tiny catapults. It's the only correct answer.

Sadly, this would still be an improvement on many smaller delivery services that especially Amazon is fond of using.

Think of Waymo Driver as the equivalent of Android for vehicles. It's an operating system and a suite of cloud services for both autonomy and ride hailing.

What about all the expensive hardware, gpus, lidars? That’s like having iOS on your phone and if you want android you need to buy extra things that are worth same price as your phone.

It might be like that if a Tesla Robo taxi could actually operate like a Waymo

The long history of "First mover advantage" being a myth implies they are more likely Nokia or Blackberry than Android

Statistically Waymos are more expensive than Uber rides, but practically as an individual they are often cheaper than Uber, its very easy for the stated price to be lower

So its not even about willingness to pay more

Gig drivers are cooked

Driving in a car that doesn’t smell like driver just farted right before picking you up is worth the premium.

A lot of times the Waymo is only a few bucks more, so if you were going to tip the uber driver it balances out anyway.

I'd still choose Waymo if it was 100% more than Uber, the experience is so much better and I feel so much safer.

You might, but most people wouldn't, and more to the point, overwhelming more people will choose to drive their own car (or take transit) vs either Uber or Waymo.

If Waymo can drop its price by 50%, it could steal a lot of demand from normal cars and transit, but that doesn't seem like it's even on the conversation right now.

And the Waymo can't be a creep or sexually harass you.

PS nice name.

And costs should be lower in the long run if you don't have to share the ride fee with a driver (not case yet because seems like they still have alot of staff to manage the cars)

Ehhhhh maybe in some spaces...

I would need to see Waymo be able to handle something like Southeast Michigan before I could even get comfortable with trusting it to get me ubered t/o from home for maintaining the vehicle I need to commute when I can take a remote day or two...

And then also delivering that for a good cost.

I put it that way because, I do tip Uber drivers well (unless they cray cray) and they would need to properly 'undercut' uber with whatever model they serve up in more complex areas.

I’ve seen people claim, I need to say Waymo working In NYC, Chicago and other places but never Southeast Michigan. What’s so unique about that area?

Waymo works in SF Chinatown btw, which is probably the most complicated locality in its driving zone.

Why is southeast Michigan difficult to drive in? I don't know anything about the area but I would guess if GPS navigation works and it's less dense than SF/LA, most of the major issues are solved?

Waymo doesn’t own manufacturing of vehicles.

*for now

Who are these people?

There is no downside to having someone drive you Uber has homogenised the experience.

Checkout this thread for who those people are: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44258139

That TC article doesn't substantiate its overly broad claim. "People" aren't paying more, in general, across its US markets; it only shows that a subset of its customers in what is already the top-5 most expensive cities (SF) in the world are prepared, and at that, only 10-27% are prepared to pay significantly more ($5-10). Still fewer than the 40% who would pay “the same or less.”

Quoting: "Perhaps even more striking is how people answered a question about whether they would be willing to pay more for a Waymo. Nearly 40% said they’d pay “the same or less.” But 16.3% said they’d pay less than $5 more per ride. Another 10.1% said they’d pay up to $5 more per ride. And 16.3% said they’d pay up to $10 more per ride."

There are going to be lots of causal factors: number of rider(s), time of day, safety, gender, wait time, price estimate, predictable arrival. Let's see an apples-to-apples comparison/regression breaking out each.

Women. Turns out, Uber/Lyft can't really do anything about drivers assaulting passengers.

The words women and woman appear exactly once each on this thread. If there's one thing tech product management needs, it is to ask a woman. This is the most obvious blind spot in tech.

Anyone who's taken enough Ubers and/or has had bad enough luck to have gotten a terrible Uber driver. Pretty much everyone I know, along with myself have had multiple awful Uber driver experiences.

I think waymo actually has a better km/accident ratio than the average driver. Plus if you haven't done it before, it'll be a cool experience to ride in a car with no driver!

But in the long term I think the point of waymo is that it'll be cheaper: no need to pay the driver if there isn't one!

Did uber/lyft get radically better in the last 12 months?

I had one rapidly cycle their prius between 50 and 70 on the freeway because regenerative brakes save gas (I felt carsick for hours after arriving at my destination), and another actually get an angry mob to tap on the windows and berate their driving. (The mob was justified.)

Since then, I’ve given up on using them whenever possible.

> rapidly cycle their prius between 50 and 70 on the freeway because regenerative brakes save gas (I felt carsick for hours after arriving at my destination)

Weird take to me, unless you were on a lot of hills; at least in my Maverick [0] 55-65 is 'ideal' MPG range for long trips, going between speeds tends to trip things up and actually -avoid- the weird 'battery has enough juice where we just kinda lug the engine' mode.

Doing regenerative 'braking' compared to using physical brakes, absolutely can give energy for momentum/acceleration and save on the physical brakes wear and tear, OTOH any normal cyclist would say it's better to 'maintain' a given output power vs allowing deceleration and then going back up to speed.

As for why, well I'm not a physics person, but in general it's that you are having to overcome the rotational mass/etc of the wheels (i.e. tires, axles, etc), and no regenerative braking within the current laws of physics will make slowing down and speeding back up more efficient, at least on a flat road.

[0] - OK It ain't quite a prius but it works fairly close aside from overall drag...

Put more succinctly:

Regenerative braking has < 100% round trip efficiency, so repeatedly speeding up and slowing down hurts gas mileage.

The driver thought it had > 100% efficiency. If that were the case, then the car would be a perpetual motion machine, and they’d save a ton on gas.

Maybe with the HN readership, but in general the public don’t want to drive in driverless vehicles and don’t want them on the streets. It’s going to be a long uncertain road for them to be accepted.

https://newsroom.aaa.com/2025/02/aaa-fear-in-self-driving-ve...

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