Your post said: "How long do you think it will take for them to offer a 24/7 driverless service (in whatever way, employee only then public tour or full public service) in 50-100 sq mile?" I'm pretty sure EVNow's reply of 3 years referred to full public service, as did my comments.
Sorry, let me re-phrase it.
1) How long do you think it will take for them to offer a 24/7 driverless service in 50-100 sq mile for employees only?
2) How long do you think it will take for them to offer a 24/7 driverless service in 50-100 sq mile for beta public riders?
3) How long do you think it will take for them to offer a 24/7 driverless service in 50-100 sq mile for full public service?
So three timelines.
"Limited cars" is Waymo's choice. Jaguar would be delighted to deliver the 20k i-Paces Waymo "ordered" 5 years ago. Production doesn't stop until 2025.
Yup I agree.
Waymo Execs likely leaning towards the Zeekr car rather than retro-fitting more I-Paces. But I disagree and probably lots of employees disagree with them on that because its going to slow things down. Its probably going to take to the end of 2024 to get a meanful amount of those cars in the US and also to validate the platform.
I never said "Austin took 8 years". Just that early testing gave them a head start in Austin. Despite that it'll take them ~2 years from restart to full public service.
Duly noted.
How long do you think it will take for them to be driverless for employees and then also for beta public riders (before full public service)?
I too believe there won't be a public service like PHX anytime soon, but not because of tech limitations. Mainly because of exec decisions and the fact that there aren't enough cars to go around.
Based on their statement in August: "we’ll begin an initial phase of operations this fall, with fully autonomous deployment and our first rides with the public in the months following."
I believe it points towards them initiating a driverless beta public ride phase for people on the wait-list by the end of 2023 or Q1 2024 at the very latest. So below 1 year from restart.
I disagree that earlier h/w and s/w erases that head start.
How meaningful is the head-start if it consisted of maybe ~3% of your current plans? (The geofence before compared to the geofence they are planning on offering). Not even taken into consideration the night and day difference in software.
Now however if you're saying testing in Austin before helped make their system overall better and more general, then yes every city they have tested in has improved their software, shown them areas to improve their hardware, processes, etc.
Otherwise it'd be pointless to test to soon-to-be-obsolete Gen 5 there today.
I don't think Gen 5 is going to be obsolete. I think the tech going into the Zeekr van will be of similar quality as Gen 5 with maybe some reduction in size (productization). I say maybe because even the Gen 5 when announced looked more sleeker than what it ended up being. There are several missing sensors on the released Waymo Zeekr Concept Van. But hopefully the difference between retrofitting and actually being built to specification from the factory means we get a more integrated looking vehicle.
Gen 4 > Gen 5 on the other hand saw multiple orders of magnitude quality increase in every category.
You seem to be focused on how fast Waymo "could" deploy.
Well that's all that matters when looking at how mature the SDC tech is.
I look more into when they start offering driverless rides to employees and then when they start offering rides to public beta riders.
Actually being able to run a full public charging service takes more and can run into regulations (as we saw in California) or not enough vehicles.
Their technology has never been the issue. It's their lack of business model and entrepreneurship that's slowing their rollout.
We both agree on this. Definitely!
