I live inside the original area in Phoenix where they did their training. I have to give kudos where it's due. I originally _hated_ their cars constantly driving around our neighborhood, but I was persuaded to try one a few weeks back. It completely changed my mind. They are now my favorite way to get around. I am a very happy, frequent customer and hope they keep adding coverage and more cars. This is absolutely the future I want to live in.
For folks that are interested, the discussion at /r/selfdrivingcars [1] picked out some of the salient numbers. Brad Templeton also did his own write up at [2].<p>I mainly hope that people take away that this service exists now. You can download the app and just use it in Phoenix. As mentioned in the post, we're doing thousands of trips per week of <i>non-employee</i> rides. There are some great (and not so great!) examples posted to /r/selfdrivingcars from time to time if you want to see them.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/137hr3l/waymo_doubles_robotaxi_service_area_in_phoenix_in/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/137hr3l/wa...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/05/04/waymo-hits-2-million-no-driver-miles-and-greatly-expands-robotaxi-zone-can-it-replace-your-car" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2023/05/04/waymo-...</a>
Really love what waymo have been achieving with a relatively small team, but more importantly, they’ve had their heads down working and solving hard problems instead of opting for attention-seeking behavior, making ridiculously pompous claims and false promises (e.g. delivering robotaxies that make you $30k/yr by next year!), getting into ideological (sensor) wars, etc.
(How many people know the name of their CEO? And yet they’re slowly and steadily marching along, hitting one milestone after another.)<p>Kudos to the hardworking waymonauts!
I've had access in SF for the past few months and have been really impressed! The Waymo rides I've taken have been confident + a bit conservative (e.g. driving at the speed limit when traffic is flowing more quickly), but overall the team's done a great job with the experience. It's free for now so I've been using it regularly during commuting/rush hour and casual drives. Some quick thoughts:<p>Advantages over Uber/Lyft:<p><pre><code> - Privacy - having the car to yourself is nice!
- Safety - My friends who are women have almost universally said they feel uncomfortable taking Ubers/Lyfts at night and would prefer the Waymo
- Ride matching happens almost instantly
- Estimated pickup times are consistently accurate
- Trunk is open for use and the car will prompt you to grab your items and open the trunk at the end of a ride
- Extra legroom in backseat because there's no driver
- No driver/car confusion - you can set your initials to be displayed on top of the car at pickup
</code></pre>
Parity with Uber/Lyft:<p><pre><code> - Drives surprisingly confidently/well - can handle complex urban traffic, pedestrians, cyclists without doing anything obviously "dumb"
- First-class native app experience
- Rides are priced upfront
- Rides can be multi-stop
</code></pre>
Disadvantages (today) vs Uber/Lyft:<p><pre><code> - Driving is conservative - nothing above the speed limit
- Driving is sometimes a little bit jerky (e.g. at stop signs, while inching on a right turn at a red light)
- Routes can sometimes be odd / longer (usually within 25% of the most direct route)
- Rarely (<5% rides), car will stop for pickup somewhere odd (middle of lane when there's an available curb, right turn lane)
- No driver if you leave something behind (there's a support form online, but I left my phone once and a good samaritan happened to call using the emergency number)
- Pickup times can be longer today than Uber/Lyft as they roll out more cars
</code></pre>
Honestly, if they fix the occasional indirect routing and eventually are able to let the cars flow at the same speed as traffic, I'd pick the Waymo almost every time.
The Waymo approach has proven itself. Targeted testing, running the driver in hard mode as much as possible, is better than the Tesla approach. Tesla’s plan was essentially “machine learning underpants gnomes”. Collect ten billion miles of data from guys driving down 280 -> ??? -> profit. Didn’t work and now Tesla is recognized as being dead last in the game, behind dozens of no-name Chinese players.<p>Now what I wonder is whether Waymo has a durable lead over Cruise, or if Cruise succeeds alongside them.
> "we are now serving over 10 thousand trips per week to public riders, not including employees. With this latest expansion, we intend for those numbers to accelerate rapidly to 10 times that scale by next summer"<p>they've been pretty cautious on predictions after the AV hype boom and bust a couple years ago. 10x in a year is an ambitious goal.
In this thread I am seeing nearly 100% positive praise for the driving abilities of these vehicles, but that is simply not always true. They are causing almost daily incidents for emergency responders in San Francisco and these companies seem unwilling to address the issue.<p><a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/05/waymo-cruise-fire-department-police-san-francisco/" rel="nofollow">https://missionlocal.org/2023/05/waymo-cruise-fire-departmen...</a>
I wonder if they plan to test in Europe. I moved to France and one issue I struggle with as a human driver is speed limits. I live in a suburban area where most streets have 30kmh limits (19mph). Nobody respects them, not even busses. I often get honked at when driving the speed limit. What would Waymo do?
I can't for the life of me figure out how to sign up for the waitlist in SF. The app just says "you'll receive updates about San Francisco." Anyone been successful with this?
With all the hype about AI this year, does anyone know whether it's translating in any meaningful sense into self driving? Can they use transformers? If so, is there a step change in performance? Has this already happened?
As we Europeans are very far away from seeing any of those, I have a question: how is the refuel / recharge handled? These are EVs, right? Do they some how do that independently, too?
> we are now serving over 10 thousand trips per week to public riders, not including employees. With this latest expansion, we intend for those numbers to accelerate rapidly to 10 times that scale by next summer.<p>Waymo cars are safer, cleaner and cheaper than Uber, which has never made an operating profit and has abandoned its self-driving development.<p>Uber is stalled on the railway tracks while the freight train of self-driving tech hurtles towards it. How is it still worth $76 billion?
It’s all smoke and mirrors.<p>There’s surely someone driving it remotely or hidden under the hood.<p>Self-driving is a hoax meant to distract us.<p>AI is snake oil, Dreyfus, hype train. Stochastic parrot. Confabulations. Unredeemable and based on intellectual mistakes.<p>Stochastic.<p>Stochastic.. parr..<p>…<p><i>fizzles out</i>