What's the big deal with Waymo?

[MXWing]

As far as I know, I can't find a Google Car Store and get myself a Google Car and see how the Waymo autonomy solution works.

I just keep reading about bears on Seeking Alpha talking about Waymo as the leader in vehicle autonomy. Cramer seems to think Waymo is the best as well and there is that often cited report that in California Waymo was the best performing on their tests.

So what is Tesla EAP suite - chopped liver?

Any education or pointing to additional resources would be appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[cwerdna]

Google/Waymo has been at it for YEARS.

was video Google put out in 2012.

Look at Tesla's report at Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports 2016 vs. Waymo's.(page 3 of the PDF).

Spoilers: Tesla only did autonomous 550 miles in 2016 on CA public roads and there were ~170 to 182 disengagements vs. 124 disengagements in 635K miles (or 0.2 per 1000 miles).

I wouldn't be surprised if the 20 miles in November 2016 was for Tesla Self-Driving Demonstration.

I found this thread discussing it: How else to interpret 2016 CA autonomous driving results?

It's been discussed in others, but I can't find them all now. There are numerous allegations at CA DMV Report Sheds New Light On Misleading Tesla Autonomous Drive Video - DailyKanban. Whether or not you agree with them, the timeline seems about right and the number of disengagements in Tesla's report speaks for themselves.

I did make some commentary at Frustrated with FSD timeline and Frustrated with FSD timeline.

More background info at Autonomous Vehicles in California.

Testing of Autonomous Vehicles has a pointer to Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Reports 2015. Read Tesla's vs. Google's.

Back to Google/Waymo, they used to put out monthly reports like https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/files/reports/report-1016.pdf. You can find some by Googling for google self driving cars highway monthly report.

They are also doing Waymo begins first public on-demand self-driving service test in Arizona.

is from 2010.

and

were from 2011 at TED. 1st video at Video: Inside Google's Self-Driving Cars was an external video.

When you mean "EAP suite", that's a suite that AFAIK can't read traffic lights, stop signs, nor execute turns other than some lane following or lane changes. Nor can it reliably deal w/pedestrians and bicyclists and stopped traffic.