Autonomous Car Progress

[Bladerskb]

Things seem to be progressing. I am pleased to say I am surprised at the rate, I did not think it would. Then again I did not post constantly in a didactic manner and have an inability to say ...hey I was wrong.

Waymo and cruise pushing it all along. Funny stuff. Baidu too I guess.

Do you guys think this is going to be an issue for Tesla ?

I’m glad you are able to be honest about your previous statements.

It’s funny to see others try to wiggle around their statements after claiming that Lidar and HD maps slows you down and prevents you from scaling. Then when presented with the exact same statements in the midst of scaling, they then claim it’s irrelevant or was “true” at that time.

By not admitting when they are wrong but rather trying to deflect. It lets them continue disparaging Waymo/Others and allows them to keep hyping Tesla FSD. This is unfortunately what 99% of Tesla community discourse on ADAS/AV consists of lead by the YouTube experts

“Tesla is 10 years ahead”
“Lol ???” Fill in the blank.

 

[Knightshade]

It’s funny to see others try to wiggle around their statements after claiming that Lidar and HD maps slows you down and prevents you from scaling. Then when presented with the exact same statements in the midst of scaling, they then claim it’s irrelevant or was “true” at that time.

It's both true at the time AND true now.

Waymo began testing self-driving cars in San Francisco in 2009- and didn't begin offering public rides until 2021. And despite expanding the scope since still is limited.

Waymo first offered driverless rides in part of the phoenix area in 2017 (and had been testing for years there prior)- and is only recently expanding that to more, but still not all, of it.


That's pretty unimpressive "scaling" to (parts of) a whole TWO cities... over nearly 15 years now.

 

[Bladerskb]

It's both true at the time AND true now.

You: "The reason Warriors will never win a championship is because the sky is blue"
Me: "No Its because they are building their team and they are not mature and good enough yet, when they get good enough, they will win multiple championships"
You: "No its because the sky is blue!"

8 years later, Warriors wins 4 championships.

Me: "See they won 4 championships"
You: "Yeah but i was right then"
Me: "Lol no, it had nothing to do with the sky being blue."

Waymo began testing self-driving cars in San Francisco in 2009- and didn't begin offering public rides until 2021. And despite expanding the scope since still is limited.

Lmao at-least get your dates straight.

Waymo is opening its fully driverless service to the general public in Phoenix

Five years ago this month, Steve Mahan, the retired director of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, who lost his sight years before, took the world's first ride in a self-driving car on public roads. This little car, called Firefly, had a top speed of just 25 mph, and used a combination of...

blog.waymo.com

Can't wait for the excuses when they go driverless in LA (Santa Monica) in a-couple months. And then when they go driverless in the next announced city 3-4 months after announcement. And when they are launching 16-20 cities per year in 2026, you will still be throwing out that 2009 date to help you cope.

 

[Knightshade]

You: "The reason Warriors will never win a championship is because the sky is blue"
Me: "No Its because they are building their team and they are not mature and good enough yet, when they get good enough, they will win multiple championships"
You: "No its because the sky is blue!"

8 years later, Warriors wins 4 championships.

Me: "See they won 4 championships"
You: "Yeah but i was right then"
Me: "Lol no, it had nothing to do with the sky being blue."

I'm not saying that's the most nonsensical analogy in the history of the internet... but it should at least be honored to be a nominee.

Waymo STILL HAS NOT SCALED after almost 15 years of testing self driving cars.

It's still only offered in parts of two cities.


Which part are you confused about, specifically?

 

[nativewolf]

@Knightshade I believe you are wrong.

My understanding is that they will offer service throughout all of San Francisco. They have a permit for all of CA for that matter. In addition to San Fran they will offer robotaxi in much of Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and other adjacent towns. These are towns, not part of San Fran. It would be like calling Chapel Hill NC part of Raleigh. It's not. 33 miles from center to center. What is cool is that it can do this and get on the freeway to the home. That's cool.

LA (and a handful of adjacent towns) will also be served within a few months.

Uber has found that really only a handful of cities produce most of the revenues; shockingly just 10 cities produce almost 30% of worldwide revenues if I remember correctly (go fact check...I know you want to). By end of 2023 Waymo will have service in 2 of the top 20 in the USA. How will Waymo scale the automobile fleet is a good question. How will they service them? How will Cruise service them? Lots of good questions and things to watch for in 2023. Should be fun. LA in particular is one of Ubers best cities for revenue. Lets see what happens.

Tesla has not scaled yet either despite having sold a service they could not deliver and then replacing contract language to avoid legally offering FSD while still holding self driving out there. They have a really neat assisted driving tool.

By the time Tesla integrates the radar back into the cars and radar vision merge back into the software stack I think Waymo could have had a 2-3 year head start in building a robotaxi ecosystem. Maybe Mobileye is there too, maybe Cruise, maybe Baidu.

I think Tesla will make a ton of money selling FSD licenses to people so their car will drive them home and I think that it's a very compelling product but much remains to be done. They may enter and compete with others in the Robotaxi space but when they do they will be competing. That competition should make for a much better consumer experience.

 

[stopcrazypp]

You: "The reason Warriors will never win a championship is because the sky is blue"
Me: "No Its because they are building their team and they are not mature and good enough yet, when they get good enough, they will win multiple championships"
You: "No its because the sky is blue!"

8 years later, Warriors wins 4 championships.

Me: "See they won 4 championships"
You: "Yeah but i was right then"
Me: "Lol no, it had nothing to do with the sky being blue."

Lmao at-least get your dates straight.

Waymo is opening its fully driverless service to the general public in Phoenix

Five years ago this month, Steve Mahan, the retired director of the Santa Clara Valley Blind Center, who lost his sight years before, took the world's first ride in a self-driving car on public roads. This little car, called Firefly, had a top speed of just 25 mph, and used a combination of...

blog.waymo.com

Can't wait for the excuses when they go driverless in LA (Santa Monica) in a-couple months. And then when they go driverless in the next announced city 3-4 months after announcement. And when they are launching 16-20 cities per year in 2026, you will still be throwing out that 2009 date to help you cope.

He makes a fair point though, for people in other cities, the progress in terms of cities doesn't seem like much given they are still in cities they have been testing in for years. If they really start launching in a new city with full service every single 3-4 months, then that really would mean they actually have a chance of experiencing one anytime soon (something they have not demonstrated yet, let's not count eggs before they hatch, as had been done in the past).

Note for LA, Waymo claims they have been mapping since 2019, and they will not start out driverless yet:
"The company has been mapping Los Angeles using human drivers since 2019. Next, a spokesman said, trained drivers will test out Waymo’s robot taxi service on L.A.-area highways and neighborhood thoroughfares, with runs downtown, along the Miracle Mile and in Koreatown, Santa Monica and West Hollywood."
Waymo says it's bringing robotaxis to L.A.

 

[Knightshade]

@Knightshade I believe you are wrong.

My understanding is that they will offer service throughout all of San Francisco.

How does that make me wrong?

I said that at the time of my post, and still today, they only offer it in 2 cities, and only limited parts of those 2 cities.

That is factually correct.

They certainly have PLANS to do more.

They always have.

But I never said they don't HOPE to scale their service- just pointed out the fact they've done an incredibly slow and narrow job of it so far, having started in 2009.

They have a permit for all of CA for that matter.

What permit are you thinking of here?

They have limited/testing permits.

They do not, yet, have one to sell rides in all of CA. Or ANY of CA.

Waymo seeks permit to sell self-driving car rides in San Francisco

Alphabet Inc's Waymo has applied for the final permit it needs in California before it can sell fully autonomous rides, the company told Reuters on Tuesday.

www.reuters.com

That's from a few days ago, saying they just applied for it, and it may take months for a decision. Currently nobody but Cruise has such a permit.


But of course having a permit doesn't say anything about them being ABLE to provide rides in all of CA (or even all of SF)

 

[stopcrazypp]

@Knightshade I believe you are wrong.

My understanding is that they will offer service throughout all of San Francisco. They have a permit for all of CA for that matter.

Not exactly, the CPUC permit for commercial operation only approves a given rollout plan with specified geographic area, it does not approve entire state at once. See Cruise permit (the first one) for example (it even limits hours of operation and weather):
CPUC Issues First Driverless Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service Deployment Permit
But for manned testing, the general DMV permit does allow operation throughout the state.

In Arizona however, AFAIK their permit is not as specific, and they can launch with much more freedom (so the choice to expand is up to the companies).

In addition to San Fran they will offer robotaxi in much of Sunnyvale, Palo Alto, and other adjacent towns. These are towns, not part of San Fran. It would be like calling Chapel Hill NC part of Raleigh. It's not. 33 miles from center to center. What is cool is that it can do this and get on the freeway to the home. That's cool.

Note those are areas they have been testing for years with safety drivers, and driverless at least since 2018:
Driverless cars OK'd for local streets

LA (and a handful of adjacent towns) will also be served within a few months.

It appears it will have safety drivers for initial launch (and according to their spokesperson they have been mapping the area since 2019), it'll be interesting to see how long it will take before they launch driverless.
Waymo says it's bringing robotaxis to L.A.

Uber has found that really only a handful of cities produce most of the revenues; shockingly just 10 cities produce almost 30% of worldwide revenues if I remember correctly (go fact check...I know you want to). By end of 2023 Waymo will have service in 2 of the top 20 in the USA. How will Waymo scale the automobile fleet is a good question. How will they service them? How will Cruise service them? Lots of good questions and things to watch for in 2023. Should be fun. LA in particular is one of Ubers best cities for revenue. Lets see what happens.

Yes, the city choices likely will be similar to Uber, where they choose the places with the most potential revenue. As it relates to some of the posters here however, Uber launched in limited way in Seattle in 2011, the same year they launched in SF (full UberX launch was in late 2013). Lyft launched in SF in 2012, in Seattle (and LA) only a year later in 2013. So far Waymo and the others have not taken nearly as aggressive a launch plan as Uber or Lyft.
Spotted! Secret Ubers On The Streets Of Seattle
It's been a great 5 years, Seattle

Tesla has not scaled yet either despite having sold a service they could not deliver and then replacing contract language to avoid legally offering FSD while still holding self driving out there. They have a really neat assisted driving tool.

By the time Tesla integrates the radar back into the cars and radar vision merge back into the software stack I think Waymo could have had a 2-3 year head start in building a robotaxi ecosystem. Maybe Mobileye is there too, maybe Cruise, maybe Baidu.

I think Tesla will make a ton of money selling FSD licenses to people so their car will drive them home and I think that it's a very compelling product but much remains to be done. They may enter and compete with others in the Robotaxi space but when they do they will be competing. That competition should make for a much better consumer experience.

In terms of capabilities, Tesla is quite far behind, but in terms of reach, it's a lot more area. For a lot of people, the Waymo and Cruise operations are cool to see in a video, but it'll be a long wait before they can experience it (simply due to geography), while for FSD Beta they are already using it every day, even if they are in a less populated area.

 

[nativewolf]

Not exactly, the CPUC permit for commercial operation only approves a given rollout plan with specified geographic area, it does not approve entire state at once. See Cruise permit (the first one) for example (it even limits hours of operation and weather):
CPUC Issues First Driverless Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service Deployment Permit
But for manned testing, the general DMV permit does allow operation throughout the state.

In Arizona however, AFAIK their permit is not as specific, and they can launch with much more freedom (so the choice to expand is up to the companies).

Note those are areas they have been testing for years with safety drivers, and driverless at least since 2018:
Driverless cars OK'd for local streets


It appears it will have safety drivers for initial launch (and according to their spokesperson they have been mapping the area since 2019), it'll be interesting to see how long it will take before they launch driverless.
Waymo says it's bringing robotaxis to L.A.

Yes, the city choices likely will be similar to Uber, where they choose the places with the most potential revenue. As it relates to some of the posters here however, Uber launched in limited way in Seattle in 2011, the same year they launched in SF (full UberX launch was in late 2013). Lyft launched in SF in 2012, in Seattle (and LA) only a year later in 2013. So far Waymo and the others have not taken nearly as aggressive a launch plan as Uber or Lyft.
Spotted! Secret Ubers On The Streets Of Seattle
It's been a great 5 years, Seattle

In terms of capabilities, Tesla is quite far behind, but in terms of reach, it's a lot more area. For a lot of people, the Waymo and Cruise operations are cool to see in a video, but it'll be a long wait before they can experience it (simply due to geography), while for FSD Beta they are already using it every day, even if they are in a less populated area.

Thanks for the thoughtful and informed reply!

 

[stopcrazypp]

I'm happy to say I was wrong. I did not think Waymo would open downtown Phoenix to the public so soon, nor expand the service area this quickly. They're only doing it in response to Cruise, but a last-minute response is better than nothing!

Most interesting to me is the airport service. That's actually a workable business model, if they market it.

San Francicso is the better market, of course, at least in the near-mid term. They still trail Cruise in deployment there, but it's early and one Cruise misstep would leave the door wide open.

I was looking for the article from a few months back that relates to this point and found it as below.

The reason for the latest activity in this space is it seems the patience of investors and management in Cruise has run thin, so they are launching it even with known problems (more examples of which have happened since this report, which demonstrates they are not rare isolated incidents):
"employees generally do not believe we are ready to launch to the public, but there is fear of admitting this because of expectations from leadership and investors."
Whistleblower Says GM's Cruise Isn't Taking Safety Seriously Enough

Waymo is feeling the same pressure most likely (Google is known to suddenly cut projects if progress doesn't seem to be made), even though generally Waymo seems to take a much more cautious approach than Cruise and also seems to have the more capable system.

 

[nativewolf]

How does that make me wrong?

I said that at the time of my post, and still today, they only offer it in 2 cities, and only limited parts of those 2 cities.

That is factually correct.

They certainly have PLANS to do more.

They always have.

But I never said they don't HOPE to scale their service- just pointed out the fact they've done an incredibly slow and narrow job of it so far, having started in 2009.




What permit are you thinking of here?

They have limited/testing permits.

They do not, yet, have one to sell rides in all of CA. Or ANY of CA.

Waymo seeks permit to sell self-driving car rides in San Francisco

Alphabet Inc's Waymo has applied for the final permit it needs in California before it can sell fully autonomous rides, the company told Reuters on Tuesday.

www.reuters.com

That's from a few days ago, saying they just applied for it, and it may take months for a decision. Currently nobody but Cruise has such a permit.


But of course having a permit doesn't say anything about them being ABLE to provide rides in all of CA (or even all of SF)

Here you go

CPUC Approves New Driverless Autonomous Vehicle Service Under Pilot Program Designed To Transform State’s Transportation System

www.cpuc.ca.gov

Have fun

 

[diplomat33]

It's both true at the time AND true now.

Waymo began testing self-driving cars in San Francisco in 2009- and didn't begin offering public rides until 2021. And despite expanding the scope since still is limited.

Waymo first offered driverless rides in part of the phoenix area in 2017 (and had been testing for years there prior)- and is only recently expanding that to more, but still not all, of it.


That's pretty unimpressive "scaling" to (parts of) a whole TWO cities... over nearly 15 years now.

Saying it took Waymo 15 years just to scale to parts of 2 cities is disingenuous IMO. First of all, Waymo did not exist in 2009. That is when Google first started their self-driving project to build a self-driving prototype. Second, self-driving tech was still very early in 2009. ImageNet was only in 2006. And lidar was super low res too. Just doing perception was a challenge. So yes, it took Google and then Waymo many years just to get the first robotaxi in Chandler because self-driving tech barely existed and they had to build a first prototype from scratch. Waymo launched their first early rider robotaxi service in Chandler in 2017. So really it has taken Waymo 5 years, not 15 years, to scale their robotaxis to where they are now.

Now, you might argue 5 years is still too long just to scale from one geofence to two cities. But scaling always takes longer in the beginning when you are just starting. People don't understand how difficult autonomous driving is. Just because Waymo had driverless in Chandler, did not mean that the tech was solved yet. In 2017, Waymo still had a lot of work to do before they could scale. Just one example, Waymo needed much better prediction to handle dense urban driving. That is why it has taken them 5 years because they had a lot more autonomous driving problems to solve before they could scale. But if you look at the recent ML work, Waymo has made incredible progress.

Think of an exponential curve. It looks flat at first but the pace gets faster and faster. From 2009 to 2020, we were in the flat part of the exponential curve because we were just developing self-driving tech from scratch. So yes, scaling was very slow in the beginning. But now that Waymo has reliable autonomous driving, they are starting to scale much faster now. We are already seeing more scaling in the last year than in the last 15 years combined!

 

[stopcrazypp]

Here you go

CPUC Approves New Driverless Autonomous Vehicle Service Under Pilot Program Designed To Transform State’s Transportation System

www.cpuc.ca.gov

Have fun

He's talking about a different permit. That permit you linked only allows public passengers, it does not allow paid rides, like the Cruise permit does. As the article he linked said, that permit is still pending approval.

 

[stopcrazypp]

Saying it took Waymo 15 years just to scale to parts of 2 cities is disingenuous IMO. First of all, Waymo did not exist in 2009. That is when Google first started their self-driving project to build a self-driving prototype. Second, self-driving tech was still very early in 2009. ImageNet was only in 2006. And lidar was super low res too. Just doing perception was a challenge. So yes, it took Google and then Waymo many years just to get the first robotaxi in Chandler because self-driving tech barely existed and they had to build a first prototype from scratch. Waymo launched their first early rider robotaxi service in Chandler in 2017. So really it has taken Waymo 5 years, not 15 years, to scale their robotaxis to where they are now.

Now, you might argue 5 years is still too long just to scale from one geofence to two cities. But scaling always takes longer in the beginning when you are just starting. People don't understand how difficult autonomous driving is. Just because Waymo had driverless in Chandler, did not mean that the tech was solved yet. In 2017, Waymo still had a lot of work to do before they could scale. Just one example, Waymo needed much better prediction to handle dense urban driving. That is why it has taken them 5 years because they had a lot more autonomous driving problems to solve before they could scale. But if you look at the recent ML work, Waymo has made incredible progress.

Think of an exponential curve. It looks flat at first but the pace gets faster and faster. From 2009 to 2020, we were in the flat part of the exponential curve because we were just developing self-driving tech from scratch. So yes, scaling was very slow in the beginning. But now that Waymo has reliable autonomous driving, they are starting to scale much faster now. We are already seeing more scaling in the last year than in the last 15 years combined!

I think someone pointed this out also up thread, but while certainly we are seeing much more progress in the last year than the previous years, assuming exponential growth probably isn't that wise (Elon was pointed out to have been burned on the same thing).

We haven't seen demonstration of sustained expansion yet (all of the recent cities are in areas they have tested already for years, including LA), so there are still very few data points. Judging from Uber expansion plans, I would guess next major cities would be New York, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, and D.C. It'll be interesting to see how many months (or years) it will take to expand to those (some of which they already announced they are mapping, for example Waymo started in November 2021 for New York). Then there would be a better baseline to judge expansion speed (and whether it accelerates, stays at the same pace, or gets slower).

 

[nativewolf]

I know @stopcrazzypp I'm just funning with ol mr knightshade. He has an inability to admit he's wrong and instead resorts to disingenuous fact nitpicking. He's wrong. He knows it. That's why he is fact nit picking.

The question was: Is Waymo scaling rather quickly. The answer is yes. They are expanding the phoenix footprint and will be offering services in ALL of San Fran and the surrounding towns within weeks. LA in another few weeks, then Seattle. That will be 4 of the largest Metro areas in all of the West Coast and likely that creates a service map covering 1/2 of the revenue from west of the Rockies for Uber by the end of the 2023. So yes, that's scaling. There's not a lot of money, yet, in shared services in rural and hard to service areas. At that rate they'll have figured out how to rollout driver teams in new regions, how to staff that up and then down. How to have a service responder team, how to clean vehicles at scale, etc. Cruise will desperately follow. Mobile eye will dive into things in 2025. Baidu is not to be discounted. The big cities will be swarming with robotaxis. That's what you want to compete with?

How long before Waymo is in the east coast?

I think that robotaxis will become a commodity service and there is little value in it. Some, just not this deep well of monies that many many posters on the investment thread assume. I believe Cathy Woods team is off their rocker. Literally just bizarre predictions.

 

[diplomat33]

I think someone pointed this out also up thread, but while certainly we are seeing much more progress in the last year than the previous years, assuming exponential growth probably isn't that wise (Elon was pointed out to have been burned on the same thing).

I am using the exponential curve as an analogy. I am not saying scaling will literally fit an exponential curve. I am simply making the point that we seem to be seeing faster progress than in past years. And if progress is accelerating then we can't use the rate of progress in the past to predict the rate of progress in the future.

We haven't seen demonstration of sustained expansion yet (all of the recent cities are in areas they have tested already for years, including LA), so there are still very few data points. Judging from Uber expansion plans, I would guess next major cities would be New York, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, and D.C. It'll be interesting to see how many months (or years) it will take to expand to those (some of which they already announced they are mapping, for example Waymo started in November 2021 for New York). Then there would be a better baseline to judge expansion speed (and whether it accelerates, stays at the same pace, or gets slower).

It's probably fair to say that we don't have enough data points to really measure scaling yet. But certainly looking at the times between first driverless testing and public commercial driverless, it would seem to be moving faster.

I would point out that Waymo seems to have used NYC simply for some training and data collection, not to actually launch a ride-hailing service. So I don't think we can use NYC as a data point to show "slow scaling". My evidence is that Waymo has said that NYC has given them good training data but they have not indicated any interest in a ride-hailing service in NYC. We've seen this before. Waymo did some testing in Orlando to test in rain and then stopped testing. Waymo also did testing in Detroit and then stopped. Waymo did some testing recently in Bellevue, WA to test in rain again and then stopped. So Waymo has tested in cities just to gather specific data, not to prepare to launch a ride-hailing service in that city. But if Waymo does announce a ride-hailing service in NYC, I will admit I am wrong.

 

[nativewolf]

I think someone pointed this out also up thread, but while certainly we are seeing much more progress in the last year than the previous years, assuming exponential growth probably isn't that wise (Elon was pointed out to have been burned on the same thing).

We haven't seen demonstration of sustained expansion yet (all of the recent cities are in areas they have tested already for years, including LA), so there are still very few data points. Judging from Uber expansion plans, I would guess next major cities would be New York, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, and D.C. It'll be interesting to see how many months (or years) it will take to expand to those (some of which they already announced they are mapping, for example Waymo started in November 2021 for New York). Then there would be a better baseline to judge expansion speed (and whether it accelerates, stays at the same pace, or gets slower).

Seattle would make the most sense. Lots of testing done already.

I would guess the following is taking place. They are learning how to scale up and down the driver assisted taxis (that's a learning process all by itself), they drive in the cities. They then offer test services. They then design service centers and staff those, then rollout robotaxi. It's an iterative, simple process that will scale. They don't have to offer all the cities in the USA to hit a TAM with almost all of the revenue, they just have to hit the 20 largest metro regions.

I agree that it will be interesting to watch how long it takes Waymo to start offering services in NYC. As you say, it will be telling.

 

[diplomat33]

Since we are talking about scaling, how should we measure the time it takes to scale to a new city? Do you start measuring from the first mapping vehicle? The first test vehicle with a safety driver? The first employee-only driverless ride? Or the first early rider driverless ride? And what if they pause during the process? For example, they do the mapping, stop in that city to focus on something else and then say a few months later decide to go back to testing in that city again. I don't think you can count the paused time as part of the scaling timeline.

 

[jabloomf1230]

Waymo is feeling the same pressure most likely (Google is known to suddenly cut projects if progress doesn't seem to be made), even though generally Waymo seems to take a much more cautious approach than Cruise and also seems to have the more capable system.

I agree with your point about pressure. It seems to be "put up or shut up time" for some of these AD companies. The US economy is faltering and expensive demonstration projects need to convert to some semblance of an implementation phase.

 

[Knightshade]

I know @stopcrazzypp I'm just funning with ol mr knightshade. He has an inability to admit he's wrong

Mainly because I wasn't, and both myself and Stopcrazzypp corrected you pointing out they STILL don't have a permit for offering a paid driverless robotaxi anywhere in CA, let alone "everywhere" as you, wrongly, claimed.

They recently applied for one, it's expected to be months before a decision on it is made.

They can TEST such vehicles in specific places though.

The question was: Is Waymo scaling rather quickly. The answer is yes.

Expanding from zero cities to part of one city in roughly 8 years... then expanding to part of a second (while still not even fully serving the first) 3 years later, and a full 11 years after they began mapping/testing in that city, is "quickly" to you?

They are expanding the phoenix footprint

Sure... though it's still not all of phoenix, and it's 5 years after they began offering rides there. Even then the recent news notes some cars will still have safety drivers.

I dunno how you call that "quickly scaling" unless you're on geological timescales.

and will be offering services in ALL of San Fran and the surrounding towns within weeks.

No, they will not.

As pointed out to you, it'll be months before they're allowed to charge for rides ANYWHERE in CA. They only last month got permission to start TESTING in those surrounding towns.

LA in another few weeks

Also no. Months at least- and with safety drivers (probably for years if their other 2 cities are any indication) and certainly heavily geofenced (and likely time/speed fenced) for a good while too.

Though even then, they began mapping there in 2019. So say they launch driverless hailing in 2023 (maybe, maybe not) that's still 4 years to add a city (and not nearly all of the city as always)

Again that's not really "quick" is it?

, then Seattle.

<citation required>

Last I knew they were only testing there- with safety drivers- with like 6 total cars- in a single suburb (Bellvue).

Have they announced a date for launching public ride hailing there we missed?