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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

>San Francisco and then expanding last year to Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta.

"The Waymo Ojai Will Soon Offer Autonomous Rides Around the Southern U.S. in areas where there is no snow."

That's just because they wanted to eliminate variables. But they are adding snowy/icy places now.

And given how hard it is for humans to drive safely in the snow/ice, I wouldn't be surprised if they outperform humans in the snow just like they do in their current markets. Especially given that their radar sensors can "see" better in the snow than a human.

I've followed the research a little bit. The general sense I get is that, specifically vehicle control at the edge of traction, software in the lab has far outperformed normal humans for over a decade. The problem is that delivering the "boring" point A to B reliably in all conditions is still unsolved. Relative safety is also a moving target because all the advances in the first bucket are directly applicable to human-driven cars as driver aids.

Yeah, my non-autonomous Toyota can already see the lane lines better than me in the rain. However, that's not too beneficial when no other driver can see the lanes and everyone is just driving to not crash into each other.

It gets real hard when the entire road surface is covered with snow for weeks at a time (like after small 1" snowfalls that might not get cleared immediately like a heavy snow would). Or when snow buildup on the road edges change road edge location and cars parked on the side project well into the "nominal" GPS derived lanes. Lanes which human drivers won't be using. They'll be using emergent lanes defined by flocking behavior. I haven't seen any evidence that autonomous vehicles can detect or navigate such emergent, non-marked except by tracks and human gut feeling lanes.

Being "better" than human in these situations will cause crashes. The real goal is to drive like a human.

> A series of 13 cameras, six radar sensors, and four lidar sensors dot the Ojai's exterior, and are fitted with onboard heaters to reduce ice buildup and small wipers and fluid to clear away dirt. These features will be critical as Waymo expands beyond warm-weather cities and into gnarlier climates in the northeast United States.

The whole point of this article is that the new vehicle is better suited to more climates.

All the cities above already have service, the expansion in the title refers to the new markets that should (hopefully) be unlocked with this new vehicle.

https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/creating-an-all-weather-drive...

They are testing in Detroit.

And NYC. Just saw one this morning

Glad to hear it and I wish them luck! I was just clearing up the current status of self-driving vehicles re: the headline. For now they do not work in areas where road surfaces and edges get covered by and location changed by snow. They do not work "Around the US".

That sounds reasonable enough. If we can do this in areas that are less likely to suffer inclement weather, does it not make sense to realize the benefit?

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