Waymo

[Bladerskb]

The problem is some haters only want to see the best of Waymo and worst of Tesla.

This is not true. The reason why I and others watch as much content from all ADAS/AV companies is to be better informed.

What happens when you only watch Tesla content? You turn into these so called Youtube Tesla "AI Experts" that are absolutely clueless. People like Dr.KnowItAll, James Douma,etc.

For example In this video KnowItAll tells us how Waymo uses remote drivers with joystick steering wheel and pedals that needs to watch each car in order to intervene instantly to prevent accidents and pull the car over.

The level of ignorance is amazing and this is what they feed their audience.

He then goes on to say that Tesla is the only one using AI. The guy is the definition of clueless.
Yet all the information needed to be informed is literally at their fingertips.
Yet they refuse to take in anything that isn't Tesla then feed their audience pure rubbish and the cycle continues.

 

[aronth5]

Again we are talking about Technological capabilities and reliability for autonomous driving. Turning this into a marketing and economics argument is basically you resigning that Tesla is technologically behind in autonomous driving.

I assume you do but just wondering if you agree or disagree that there can be different solutions for different autonomous driving requirements with multiple companies thriving? I believe in this thread we get caught up in the robotaxi paradigm when many people they don't care about that solution since it's not relevant to them.

 

[Mullermn]

This makes no sense. It baffles my mind that when discussing and comparing technologies, people turn the discussion into marketing and economics.
This is like saying you can't compare two nba players (MJ, Lebron for example) because they play different positions, and one makes more money than the other.

Everything you wrote just entirely misses the point.

How far can Waymo drive outside its geofence? Nowhere. Does that mean it’s failing to do what it set out to do? Not at all.

Can a Tesla drive fully autonomously within Waymo’s geofence to the same quality level that Waymo can? Nope. Does that mean it’s failing to do what it set out to do? (Musk’s widely inaccurate time estimates aside) No.

There is zero chance that Waymo are ever going to provide a vehicle that can pick me up from my house any take me to another arbitrary location. There is a non-zero chance that Tesla will. They’re playing different games.

Your sports analogy would be more correct if you were trying to compare an Olympic sprinter with a cross country runner. Who’s the better runner? It depends what you want.

This is why the Disney monorail comparison is relevant. By your standard of ‘look, here’s a video proving they can already do it’ the Disney people mover is way ahead. It’s been doing it, for real, to the tune of many thousands of passengers for years. Of course it’s a dumb comparison because it only services one very specific route. A tiny geofence, if you like.

 

[Bladerskb]

Everything you wrote just entirely misses the point.

The game being played here is the game of driving on public roads. So no its absolutely correct.

How far can Waymo drive outside its geofence? Nowhere. Does that mean it’s failing to do what it set out to do? Not at all.

Geofence has no relevance here. Waymo has a geofence of an entire city (SF). Its the Tech's capability and reliability is what's in question. The capability and reliability also determines how quick they are able to launch into another city if they decided.

Can a Tesla drive fully autonomously within Waymo’s geofence to the same quality level that Waymo can? Nope. Does that mean it’s failing to do what it set out to do? (Musk’s widely inaccurate time estimates aside) No.

You can't be 5-10 years ahead as Tesla fans like claiming and not be able to drive at similar or better quality as Waymo in similar environment and conditions.

There is zero chance that Waymo are ever going to provide a vehicle that can pick me up from my house any take me to another arbitrary location. There is a non-zero chance that Tesla will. They’re playing different games.

No its not. Its the same game, its driving. If Tesla FSD was a flying system for planes then it would be different games. If it was chatGPT, then it would be a different game. BUT no its DRIVING! They encounter the same roads, the same rules, the same vehicles, the same traffic lights, the same pedestrains, same degree of movement, same wheather, same everything.

What you are creating is a false fairy tale scenario where Waymo operates in 50 cities in 2028 and Tesla is still struggling to launch in acouple. But you still try to claim that Tesla is not behind. It makes no sense.

Your sports analogy would be more correct if you were trying to compare an Olympic sprinter with a cross country runner. Who’s the better runner? It depends what you want.

No its not. Its the game of driving period. Its not driving vs flying. Its driving vs driving.

This is why the Disney monorail comparison is relevant. By your standard of ‘look, here’s a video proving they can already do it’ the Disney people mover is way ahead. It’s been doing it, for real, to the tune of many thousands of passengers for years. Of course it’s a dumb comparison because it only services one very specific route. A tiny geofence, if you like.

This is nonsensical, just as nonsensical as Tesla fans who say that waymo is just a glorified AEB system.
It actually exposes your inability to use logic and reason when you make statements like this.

 

[ThomasD]

If the Rain and Wind got heavier while the Waymo had a passenger would the Waymo still take take the passenger to their destination? Would Waymo just stop and let the passenger out? Or would it return to depot with the passenger in the vehicle leaving them far from their destination?

 

[diplomat33]

If the Rain and Wind got heavier while the Waymo had a passenger would the Waymo still take take the passenger to their destination? Would Waymo just stop and let the passenger out? Or would it return to depot with the passenger in the vehicle leaving them far from their destination?

I believe the Waymo would still take the passenger to their destination.

 

[Mullermn]

You can't be 5-10 years ahead as Tesla fans like claiming and not be able to drive at similar or better quality as Waymo in similar environment and conditions.

Ok, if that’s the acid test show me Waymo handling Chuck Cook’s favourite left hand turn in Florida.

Waymo can’t be ahead and not able to drive at a similar or better quality than FSD, right?

 

[ThomasD]

People wouldn't have to worry about getting caught out in really bad weather driving their own cars. The risk would be on Waymo.

 

[Supcom]

This is why the Disney monorail comparison is relevant. By your standard of ‘look, here’s a video proving they can already do it’ the Disney people mover is way ahead. It’s been doing it, for real, to the tune of many thousands of passengers for years. Of course it’s a dumb comparison because it only services one very specific route. A tiny geofence, if you like.

Operating since 1959, with Richard Nixon (then VP) and family as the first passengers.

 

[diplomat33]

Waymo hiring iOS people to grow their ride-hailing app dev team:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1638582797031051264

I think this bodes well for Waymo, not just that they are hiring but also that they are working on making the ride-hailing app better with iOS people. Hopefully, this means a better app experience with new features and an app that can handle scaling.

 

[Bladerskb]

Ok, if that’s the acid test show me Waymo handling Chuck Cook’s favourite left hand turn in Florida.

Waymo can’t be ahead and not able to drive at a similar or better quality than FSD, right?

Theres a huge difference between driving a route once and it working and driving it a million times with no issues.
Do you really think that Waymo is unable to drive that rotue with a safety driver? Seriously?
Have you been watching Waymo videos? Its done way more complicated turns/routes with NO HUMAN DRIVER.
When the same system (Tesla FSD) can't even do what Waymo is doing in the same city/roads.

(Ofcourse you never see recording from Omar of any of this bad behaviors he tweets consistently only the prestine ones)
But i previously posted the video from the other guy in another city showing FSD doing the same thing as its doing for Omar in SF.
This should tell you clearly the state of Tesla FSD compared to Waymo.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1637963167174389762

 

[ThomasD]

Is Waymo mapping other cities that they aren't transporting riders in like Atlanta, Tampa or Boston?

 

[diplomat33]

Is Waymo mapping other cities that they aren't transporting riders in like Atlanta, Tampa or Boston?

Waymo has mapped other cities where they have done testing, like NYC and Orlando (just to name two off the top of my head, there are more cities than that). Waymo has done testing in 25 cities in the US.

 

[diplomat33]

Ok, if that’s the acid test show me Waymo handling Chuck Cook’s favourite left hand turn in Florida.

Waymo can’t be ahead and not able to drive at a similar or better quality than FSD, right?

Put Tesla FSD beta with no human driver in the same geofence as Waymo so that it is an apples to apples comparison. I believe Tesla FSD beta would do worse than Waymo. Why do I say that? Because we can see how FSD beta drives. It is not able to do reliable driverless like Waymo can do. From what we've seen in FSD Beta videos, I highly doubt that FSD beta could do driverless in SF or downtown Phoenix 24/7 and only have 20 minor accidents (zero at-fault) in 1M miles like Waymo reported. That is how we know Tesla is far behind Waymo in terms of how good the autonomous driving is. And deploying driverless is about being able to handle all driving in a specific ODD reliably, it is much more than just handling one particular ULT. Waymo drives overall at a far better quality than FSD Beta.

In terms of outside the geofence, the Waymo Driver can work everywhere because it is generalized. Waymo just does not allow it to go outside the geofence because Waymo does not allow the tech to drive in an area until after it has passed their safety validation process. So we don't know for a fact how Waymo would drive outside the current geofence. There would likely be some new edge cases outside the geofence that cause "disengagements". So perhaps the driving would be a bit worse than the current geofence. It would depend on the environment. But considering that the Waymo Driver is generalized and works so well in suburban and urban environments from Chandler to SF to Phoenix to LA, I highly doubt that the Waymo Driver would suddenly drive horribly if you put it outside the geofence. IMO, if you dropped the Waymo Driver anywhere, it would still driver better than FSD beta.

 

[diplomat33]

Waymo CEO Tekedra Mawakana speaking at Berkeley Haas:

 

[diplomat33]

Don't mess with Waymo.

 

[ThomasD]

Why didn't the car backup and drive around them?

 

[diplomat33]

Why didn't the car backup and drive around them?

Because it was not needed, the Waymo can easily just warn the hooligans and wait for them to move out of the way.

 

[JHCCAZ]

Why didn't the car backup and drive around them?

Because it was not needed, the Waymo can easily just warn the hooligans and wait for them to move out of the way.

I think there really isn't a lot of choice. If the Waymo tried to move at all, I think the liability picture changes completely in the event of a mishap and claim.

For example, say the Waymo decided to reverse and at the same moment the punk executed his jump up on the hood move. Then he falls off, hits his head or says he did, or just gets any injury or says he did, now you have a personal injury lawsuit with Google's (Alphabet's) pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.

It would be satisfying if we could say " it was his own fault, he's obviously an idiot kid and he created the whole problem". But camera footage or no, there would be a case that the Waymo made an active decision that contributed to injury, this is "defective safety programming". I am not a lawyer but I bet I could get a settlement from Alphabet without even trying hard.

The Waymo did the sensible and least risky thing, from a safety and liability perspective, which was to do nothing other than request the punks to move away.

 

[diplomat33]

It's official. Bye Bye 4th Gen Pacifica. Waymo will retire the 4th Gen Pacifica in April and deploy the 5th Gen I-Pace in the Chandler geofence. This will make the entire Waymo fleet fully electric:

In late April, we will deploy the Jaguar I-PACE and our fifth-generation Waymo Driver in the Phoenix East Valley, making our entire Waymo One ride-hailing fleet fully electric. We’ll retire the previous-generation Waymo Driver from our service, as we have done with similar platforms in the past.
....
Focusing our service on an all I-PACE fleet helps us better optimize our technical and operational support to be more efficient in the near term as we prepare future vehicles like the ZEEKR mobility platform. Our machine learning-based fifth-generation Waymo Driver learns more with every mile traveled, so deploying our existing I-PACE fleet into the East Valley will only further advance the performance and reliability of the Driver as we continue to scale.

Paving the way toward a fully electric ride-hailing fleet

In late April, we will deploy the Jaguar I-PACE and our fifth-generation Waymo Driver in the Phoenix East Valley, making our entire Waymo One ride-hailing fleet fully electric. We’ll retire the previous-generation Waymo Driver from our service, as we have done with similar platforms in the past.

blog.waymo.com

There is speculation that we could see a geofence expansion in the East Valley too to accompany the I-Pace deployment. It would make sense since the 5th Gen is more capable and would be able to handle a bigger geofence than the 4th Gen Pacifica. Plus, that last sentence seems to indicate that Waymo is looking to use the 5th Gen I-Pace in Chandler to scale further.

I think this moves makes a lot of sense. The 4th Gen is obsolete now so it makes sense to ditch it. The 5th Gen is clearly the tech that Waymo is focused on now. Having the entire fleet be fully electric will reduce costs and maintenance. And having the entire fleet be the same 5th Gen will also help them deploy the software updates faster. And it fits well with the upcoming Zeekr platform that is also fully electric and uses the 5th Gen. So I feel like this is a key move to prepare for big scaling.