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With Waymo's Launch of Robo-Rides, When Can We Call a Tesla Taxi?

Discussion in 'Autopilot & Autonomous/FSD' started by Ty_McMahan, Dec 10, 2018.

  1. Ty_McMahan

    Ty_McMahan Blogger

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    Waymo, a unit of Alphabet Inc., launched this week the first driverless-car service in the U.S. The service, called Waymo One, works just like other popular ride-hailing providers – punch a button on your cellphone to summon a ride, which....
    READ FULL ARTICLE
     
  2. Tam

    Tam Well-Known Member

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    "next year" or "soon" is meaningless unless there's some concrete achieved competencies demonstrated.

    In 2016, Tesla said it would do an autonomous coast-to-coast "next year" but it failed to demonstrate that it has achieved traffic lights / signs compliance while Waymo already did that for years.
     
  3. SO16

    SO16 Active Member

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    Tesla will leap frog once again.
     
  4. Nocturnal

    Nocturnal Supporting Member

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    The Waymo cars still have a driver don't they? Even if they get ahead in actual FSD tech will they really be able to scale? Almost seems like they will need to be acquired by an automaker. Maybe that was the plan the whole time.
     
  5. ItsNotAboutTheMoney

    ItsNotAboutTheMoney Well-Known Member

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    At least the taxi income should help offset development costs a bit.

    And, hell no, this is Alphagoogle we're talking about. They'll make the automakers beg.
     
  6. CarlK

    CarlK Active Member

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    Yes and the driver still need to pay full attention all the time. Not any different than what Tesla requires. The only difference is Waymo uses professional drivers and don't need them to put hands on the streering wheel to confirm they are there.

    Don't think Waymo wants to be acquired by an automaker though. No auto company would want to buy a technology that requires an expensive and ugly LIDAR on roof of the car. Unless perhaps if the car can do real driverless driving so they could make cars to sell to Uber or others. It would be too expensive for any auto company to buy iwhen it does have the capability. Even now some are giving Waymo a ridiculously high valuation in the tone of $100 billion.
     
  7. DanCar

    DanCar Active Member

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    #7 DanCar, Dec 11, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2018
    • Disagree x 1
  8. Tam

    Tam Well-Known Member

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    Doubtful that its taxi revenue will be meaningful at this rate.

    It had quite a few of sign-ups (hundreds) for its Early Riders Program because it was free.

    Now that program is converted to Waymo One that costs riders money and guess who would want to pay for it?

    It still has problems of hesitations. Would anyone want to pay for a toddler or a student driver? That's what it feels like with current Waymo technology. Riders would want to scream to the machine "You can do it! Step on it! You can do a turn left right now!"

    Even when they got the same number of sign-ups as before (hundreds), they still have to pay for safety driver currently.
     
  9. Uncle Paul

    Uncle Paul Well-Known Member

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    You can already get a Tesla Taxi through Lyft or Uber. Like Waymo they also come with a driver.

    You will see your ride coming to you on your smart phone. Once you get into the car the driver will have the directions to your destination on his own smart phone to guide him. When you get out the billing for your trip will be done electronically. They driver will rate you as a passenger and you will rate the driver for his performance.

    All self drivng needs to do in better integrate these so well that the driver is no longer necessary.
     
  10. electronblue

    electronblue Active Member

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    #10 electronblue, Dec 11, 2018
    Last edited: Dec 11, 2018
    Some thoughts:

    1. Nobody would care about the look and style of Waymo’s sensors if the system was finished and available to buy and legally use yourself. Owning a self-driving car is that useful and looks would be totally secondary. It remains to be seen what kind of sensors eventually are needed, where things miniatyrize to. But if a car could take you home from bar today or your kids to school every morning the utility would be so massive that who cares what it looks like.

    2. If the progress shown by Waymo was shown by some other company that has a more enthusiastic following it would be seen as a miracle. :) Unfortunately Waymo is not a very sexy brand so the impressive thing they are doing goes mostly underappreciated. I mean realistically what would the response be if Tesla was running a fleet of 100 AP4 cars doing this thing somewhere, anywhere — even if they said AP4 is not coming to consumer cars for years. The reaction would not be the same that’s for sure.

    3. Waymo One isn’t a commercial enterprise in the sense that they are out to make money with it. It would be a mistake to treat it as such. They are developing and validating technology. What is significant is they are selling a service because that exposes them to more of a liability. That shows progress.

    4. And no, it isn’t the same as Tesla that Waymo have a safety driver — that safety driver is a backup whereas in a Tesla the driver is an active participant. A Waymo is a Level 4 car already today whereas a Tesla is a Level 2 car.

    5. The article in #7 kills one longstanding myth: Waymos do take the freeway too.
     
    • Like x 1
  11. strangecosmos

    strangecosmos Non-Member

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    Let’s just wait and see what happens after Hardware 3 launches. Andrej Karpathy says that Tesla has made progress with some new neural networks, but the Hardware 2 computers aren’t powerful to run them. He said he was excited to for Hardware 3 to start shipping.

    I don’t know if any of us can predict when real driverless robotaxis will be deployed at scale. The CEOs and CTOs of these companies (not just Tesla but also Google/Waymo) have made wrong predictions in the past. I won’t even try to predict. I’ll just watch progress and keep track of milestones.
     
  12. Tam

    Tam Well-Known Member

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    Agreed: It's just like when people needed a cell phone in the old days, they just had to put up with an ugly big brick cell phone. Either that or use a landline!

    Beauty came later when its functions were verified.
     
    • Like x 1
  13. electronblue

    electronblue Active Member

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    This is where I most disagree with your posts — the false equivalences in one particular direction. It is obvious Google/Waymo’s predictions have been far more accurate than those of Tesla’s and they have made far less promises they couldn’t keep when it comes to autonomous. You could have made the point that nobody knows when autonomous will happen without taking a swing at Google/Waymo in the process which is completely unnecessary given their very conservative track-record.
     
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