On self-driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers

We'll know Tesla is serious about robotaxis when it starts hiring remote operators.

See full article...

 

[ERIFNOMI]

Oh? It does? I must have missed the multi-billion dollar commuter line that someone has apparently installed between me and work when I wasn't looking.

Restructuring American cities and towns to rebuild them around public transit might be the better solution, but I unfortunately live in a political reality where that isn't going to happen. Tens of million of Americans are not going to move an restructure their cities and towns around a shinny new public transit system that connects everything. It's fine to be upset about that reality, as it is in fact upsetting, but that doesn't change the fact that that is the reality we live in.

We are not going to restructure American cities and build a massive public transit network across America that results in most commuters taking rail or a bus to work. We however can envision a future where the cars that they take to work are all small electric commuter cars that consume a tiny fraction of the energy a full sized car does.

I'll take a pretty good solution that we can implement in the near future, over a perfect solution that no American political observer with two neurons to rub together can easily predict won't happen anytime soon.

Neither option is on the table right now, so might as well pick the more feasible one. We differ in that I think adding buses to a city is more likely to happen than Tesla magically flooding the streets with cars that drive around on their own all day, shuttling people to and from work.

I'm not one of these people who pushes public transportation as a solution for right now. It isn't. I literally cannot use public transportation from my house right now. But I also can't hail a magic self driving car either, because they don't exist. Buses do exist though.

Unless you're changing this discussion to just EVs in general? We're talking about self driving "robotaxis" here chief. There's already an EV sitting in my garage right now.

 

[linnen]

I'm not sure there is a lot you could safely do to tag road infrastructure. The possible issues from bad actors could be enormous. If you can hack the environmental data tags there is all sorts of mayhem they could create.

I can also see rich communities getting their police to mark the entire area as under construction or a crime scene so no "outside" AVs will come in.

I think a safer, and cheaper, approach might be to have the municipal data available in the cloud and provided by a "trusted" vendor.

This is part of a hoax but still

 

[brewejon]

So there is a case-study from when Walmart tried to go all in on RFID tags back in the early 2000s. The large hurdle was getting suppliers on board with packaging things with RFID tags. I believe another hurdle back in the day when Walmart first tried to push it was that RFID tags were not as cheap as they are now.

For Amazon they are large company but those stores do not move the amount of product that Walmart does. So trying to strong arm suppliers to include RFID tags probably was not an option. So they tried the classic strategy to make up for a lack of appropriate hardware with fancy software. In some situations that can work but clearly not always.

But a classic as technology progresses story it seems like Walmart is trying to push RFID tags again.

Just a note I think RFID tags in products is a great idea, it is just the logistics of getting those tags into all of your products that is a tough hurdle to get over.

The benefits of having rfid in all products is obvious, but I wonder the environmental impact of putting rfid on every supermarket item? I’m honestly asking, I’ve no idea. It might be environmentally justified for items more expensive per unit (like clothing, for example), but I imagine the cost/benefit it’s somewhat tighter for cheaper and higher volume products.

 

[hyartep]

"This makes sense for other reasons, too. It would give Tesla time to introduce itself to local officials and offer training to local police and fire departments."

I know this isn't a quote, and it's Timothy's words - but, imagine the chutzpah needed to expect local law enforcement and first responders to adjust to your private company's playthings deployed on public roads (before they're ready), and not the other way around (ie. your vehicles need to adjust to them).

I'm sure that if there will be more companies with AV, authorities will push for some "common standard" rather than learning 15 different response protocols.

 

[Bilateralrope]

Neither option is on the table right now, so might as well pick the more feasible one. We differ in that I think adding buses to a city is more likely to happen than Tesla magically flooding the streets with cars that drive around on their own all day, shuttling people to and from work.

I'm not one of these people who pushes public transportation as a solution for right now. It isn't. I literally cannot use public transportation from my house right now. But I also can't hail a magic self driving car either, because they don't exist. Buses do exist though.

Unless you're changing this discussion to just EVs in general? We're talking about self driving "robotaxis" here chief. There's already an EV sitting in my garage right now.

Rush hour seems like an area where robotaxies will not be cheaper than personal vehicles. To handle everyone commuting, the robotaxi companies would need as many cars as are on the road during current rush hour. With many of those cars only getting used during rush hour, then sitting somewhere not earning money the rest of the day.

 

[balthazarr]

I'm sure that if there will be more companies with AV, authorities will push for some "common standard" rather than learning 15 different response protocols.

There are (or were) at least half a dozen or so:

• Waymo
• Tesla
• GM
• Ford
• Mercedes-Benz
• Uber ...

How many more do we need before they insist on some sort of standard?

 

[Rindan]

The real prize is over-the-road trucking. Long-haul trucking doesn’t need an agent to deal with customers riding the truck the whole time. To a lesser extent, there would be significant revenue from sales to transit agencies that can dispatch a vehicle remotely and only need to send an employee if the user will require assistance.

You could also more easily imagine electrified trucks. Imagine if trucks were battery powered and driverless. They drive from truck charging station to truck charging station 24/7. They end up going the same distance as a human driving a gas powered truck because they never sleep. You trade "tucker is sleeping" for "battery is charging". Everything might take the same time to get to its destination because you just traded sleeping with charging, but now you do it using electricity rather than gas.

 

[IncorrigibleTroll]

It's an engineering problem more than a theoretical one.

I drive with two eyes. I don't have more sensors (well, ears, but you could add those to a car too).

So you can operate a car on cameras. But that doesn't mean it's easy, nor does it mean we know how, nor does it mean it will work well at any point in the near future.


200,000,000,000+ per year in the US https://www.businessofapps.com/data/taxi-app-market/

But I think Tesla is trying, not to replace taxis so much as to replace cars. (I don't think is a great plan)

Also: the same sort of capabilities that work on taxies would work on, say, delivery vehicles.

You’re using a lot more than just your eyes and ears. At least I hope you are. Your prioperception, sense of inertia, touch, balance, etc all play a role. If I’m in danger of hydroplaning, I feel the grip on the road becoming more tenuous moreso than I see or hear it. The same thing if I’m coming into a turn too hot or if there’s loose peastone on the road.

 

[Joseph Acerbic]

Throwing more computing power at an Artificial Idiocy system enables it to make stupid decisions a lot faster.

 

[jwbaker]

Everybody wants to argue about whether you can self-drive using only cameras, but the question is organizational not technological. Elon Musk is incapable of assembling a team of AI researchers and technologists who could pull that off, because he can only be surrounded by sycophants and lickspittles. Legitimate AI talent is fleeing Tesla because it's a negative entry on their résumé. They will never achieve self-driving until the culture issues are overcome.

 

[The Dark]

You could also more easily imagine electrified trucks. Imagine if trucks were battery powered and driverless. They drive from truck charging station to truck charging station 24/7. They end up going the same distance as a human driving a gas powered truck because they never sleep. You trade "tucker is sleeping" for "battery is charging". Everything might take the same time to get to its destination because you just traded sleeping with charging, but now you do it using electricity rather than gas.

At the risk of beating one of my dead horses, something similar was done over a century ago. The Curtis Publishing Company of Philadelphia bought Commercial Truck Company electric trucks starting in 1912 and ran them until 1964. The trucks were rated for 5 tons but often carried 9 or 10 tons of cargo. They used swappable battery packs so that one pack was charging while another pack was being used, and trucks were driven in a three-point relay system. A driver would haul magazines to the post office and leave the full truck to be unloaded since it takes time to unload 10 tons of magazines, pick up an empty truck there and drive to the rail yard, leave the empty truck there to be loaded and pick up a truck with paper or coal, and drive that truck back to the print shop to be unloaded. There were documented cases of trucks working 48 hours straight during rush periods, swapping batteries and drive teams every 6 hours.

 

[Snark218]

None of the edge cases in Tesla FSD have anything to do with sensors. The vehicles understand quite well where they are in 3D space, as well as the speed and trajectory of other vehicles and pedestrians.

Well, sure, maybe, 98% of the time. But the entire goddamn problem is that remaining 2% of the time, which is still a very significant portion of one's time driving! So no they goddamn don't, not really.

 

[Snark218]

Here's my question: why are we trying to make cars drive themselves? Why are we trying to substitute for the driver entirely, except when it's absolutely necessary, so the driver needs to watch the system like a hawk, ready to intervene when it does something dumb? All this processing power and sensor input could just as easily be applied to a system that keeps the driver in control, but which improves the driver's awareness, reduces their cognitive load, and serves as a last-ditch collision avoidance system, without trying to substitute for human judgment, perception, and cognition.

 

[jjmorris2000]

The chess vs. checkers analogy in the title is I think very apt. But maybe not for the reasons typically associated with that analogy. Because they are playing two different games.

Checkers is a short term game. You don't need to look that far ahead to win. Chess is about the long term - making moves that don't pay off for another dozen turns.

Tesla is playing the short-term game with their self-driving cars. The goal for TSLA is to make the number go up and the activity around self-driving cars are all about keeping that number up. Number go up is a short-term goal - quarter by quarter is how you judge your effectiveness. And for the most part Musk has been able to convince investors to hold onto their TSLA, so he's winning the game he's playing.

On the other hand, Waymo is playing the long-term game. They're trying to build incrementally up to a working technology that people will trust and - crucially - the only investors they really have to keep impressed are Alphabet. And really, since Waymo was one of Sergay Brin's babies and since he retains a controlling interest on the board they only really need to keep him and another 10% voting block of shareholders happy. And Brin is happy when Waymo is making good news and looking like they're making progress. So for the most part they're also winning the game they're playing.

The mistake is thinking that these two companies are playing the same game. They're not. Even though they're both ostensibly about making self-driving cars, what success looks like for each of them is very different.

 

[Snark218]

Everybody wants to argue about whether you can self-drive using only cameras, but the question is organizational not technological. Elon Musk is incapable of assembling a team of AI researchers and technologists who could pull that off, because he can only be surrounded by sycophants and lickspittles. Legitimate AI talent is fleeing Tesla because it's a negative entry on their résumé. They will never achieve self-driving until the culture issues are overcome.

I agree, and would add that as long as Tesla is operating under Elon's preferred direction for FSD, it will never be a safe system, because he doesn't give a shit if it's safe and the way he wants the system to operate will always make the driver more confident and complacent in its capability and less attentive as a result.

 

[balthazarr]

Here's my question: why are we trying to make cars drive themselves? Why are we trying to substitute for the driver entirely, except when it's absolutely necessary, so the driver needs to watch the system like a hawk, ready to intervene when it does something dumb? All this processing power and sensor input could just as easily be applied to a system that keeps the driver in control, but which improves the driver's awareness, reduces their cognitive load, and serves as a last-ditch collision avoidance system, without trying to substitute for human judgment, perception, and cognition.

The answer to your first question depends on which business you consider.

For most of them, the why should be 'to reduce injuries and deaths' and 'to make bucketloads of money selling the cars and/or the service'.

For others, it's more to artificially prop up the share price by vastly over inflating the capabilities of your company's systems, and fraudulently selling the final, Level 5, system for around a decade now, with no hope of that bearing fruit any time soon.

 

[jjmorris2000]

Here's my question: why are we trying to make cars drive themselves?

Because the dream of the capitalist since slavery was outlawed is to figure out how to make money without having to pay people wages to do labor.

The reason for all of the money being thrown at this technology is because of the dream of owning a fleet of cars that will go out on the streets and just make money without having to pay drivers or worry about them taking sick days or vacation days or any of that.

 

[xoe]

This is not true. Cars behind will maintain an appropriate stopping distance which allows them time to react, as mandated by the highway code.

I am glad I have learnt to never simultaneously read ars comments and sip a drink.

 

[balthazarr]

So Waymo's technology is way ahead of Tesla's, except that maybe it isn't, we're not sure?

Somebody explain to me why I should bother reading anything in the article after this paragraph.

I dunno, but if you can't be bothered to read the whole article, why are you bothering to comment on it?

 

[Digitalclips]

There are (or were) at least half a dozen or so:

• Waymo
• Tesla
• GM
• Ford
• Mercedes-Benz
• Uber ...

How many more do we need before they insist on some sort of standard?

I'd go for a Jaguar iPace over a Tesla any day, so Waymo it is

 

[mobby_6kl]

Other way around. Did you look at all the unnecessary things hanging off the Waymo car? And Waymo cars are geo fenced. Meanwhile a Tesla on FSD v12 can take you door to door anywhere in the US and Canada.

* Unless it drives into a train and kills you

 

[jandrese]

It is such a trip to flip between this forum and Tesla forums and see such diametrically opposed viewpoints. Over in Tesla land they're all cheering and patting themselves on the back because the ML version of FSD has basically solved it, and any small remaining deviations now will be fixed with just more data. Waymo is seen as a dangerous use of dead end technology that will only improve linearly vs. the exponential improvements in FSD. Robotaxi and licensing out FSD are going to be multi-trillion dollar industries don't you know? This is why Elon deserves the GDP of the Congo for his compensation package.

 

[oojohnboyoo]

Meanwhile a Tesla on FSD v12 can take you door to door anywhere in the US and Canada.

lol no it cannot. Stop taking what your weird uncle says as fact.

 

[LJ]

there are several things here to consider:

First, Timothy can't objectively show how FSD has improved. Tesla doesn't share accurate numbers, and even their accident numbers were terribly skewed as they only shared accident data that resulted in airbag deployment (roughly 17% of all accidents) and compared those numbers to all accidents.

Second, FSD is a level 2 driver assist system. It is not comparable to Waymo's approach. Comparing them is a fool's errand. Tesla assumes a driver in the driver seat and assumes zero liability for anything. As a result, they can make all kinds of design decisions that you absolutely could not if your car was responsible for everything.

Consider, for a second, how many accidents teslas would get in if drivers didn't intervene within a few seconds of a FSD mistake.

Tesla 'learning' has been misconstrued by people who think it will just magically get better on its own with miles. And they use the number of miles driven (without useful simulation, mind you), as somehow magically valuable as a metric on its own, guaranteeing some future advance.

It is not so.

I think it's fundamentally disingenuous to compare Waymo's approach to Tesla's, as Tesla is absolutely not setting itself up to be able to deliver driver-free autonomy.

 

[Longmile149]

It has always seemed to me that the most realistic end state of autonomous vehicles is going to be analogous to self checkout stands.

I don’t think a company like Waymo could ever eliminate the human in the loop; the goal will always be to increase the ratio of cars to operators.

Taxis require 1 operator : 1 car.

How many operators does Waymo employ for a given number of cars on the road?

Is it 1:10? 1:100?

It doesn’t make sense to me to talk about sensor fusion or boosting the smarts of the fleet without acknowledging that human oversight is a powerful component of self-driving systems.

Technology to replace humans rarely works well, rarely scales well, and is usually incredibly brittle. Technology to augment and assist them is flexible and powerful and usually scalable.

Put another way, the goal shouldn’t be “how do I automate this car,” it should be “how do I augment this fleet.”

 

[Rindan]

Neither option is on the table right now, so might as well pick the more feasible one. We differ in that I think adding buses to a city is more likely to happen than Tesla magically flooding the streets with cars that drive around on their own all day, shuttling people to and from work.

First, I am all for expanding bus service, but a bus will not help me get to and from work. There is no scenario where my area supports a bus from where I live to where I work, much less offers a commute time that people would be willing to tolerate. This is reality. It might not be reality everywhere, but it is reality in most place in America. Our cities and towns are not setup for public transit, and we are not going to tear down our cities and rebuild them anytime soon.

Second, I don't understand your obsession with Tesla. You know that there are other automotive makers besides Tesla, right? I don't expect anything from Tesla. I frankly think that they are about to suffer a pretty brutal contraction due to extremely poor leadership. I am not counting on Tesla to bring us a future where you can get a small autonomous electric commuter car, muchless autonomous ones.

I'm not one of these people who pushes public transportation as a solution for right now. It isn't. I literally cannot use public transportation from my house right now. But I also can't hail a magic self driving car either, because they don't exist. Buses do exist though.

There exists no bus between me and my work, and there is absolutely 0% chance that that is going to change. Literally 0%. If your area has a great bus connection that can get you too and from work, good for you. I encourage you to use it. That is however not a solution for most Americans, and it certainly isn't a solution for me.

Unless you're changing this discussion to just EVs in general? We're talking about self driving "robotaxis" here chief. There's already an EV sitting in my garage right now.

Well, I've got a gas powered car sitting on the side of my street, and I don't even own a garage. I guess our situations are pretty different, so maybe you need to stop assuming that everyone is in the same situation as you? For a large fraction of the American population, a small, single seat, electric car showing up outside of their house when its time to commute would be a vast improvement over all other even vaguely plausible alternatives.

No one would stopping you from owning a personal electric car if that's what you want, but that's not what I want. I don't need a multi-purpose, multi-seat, heavy, long range electric car that sits on the street all day. I need an extremely light, short range, single seat that gets me too and from work and then gets used by other people for the rest of the day because I don't need it. On occasion when I need something bigger and with a longer range. If a single seat electric commuter taxi was economically competitive with owning an entire big, heavy, long range electric or gas car that sits idle 98% of the day, I'd own no car. I'm certainly not alone, even if this doesn't describe you, even if you'd prefer we all lived on bus routes, which we don't.

 

[internetomancer]

Here's my question: why are we trying to make cars drive themselves? Why are we trying to substitute for the driver entirely, except when it's absolutely necessary, so the driver needs to watch the system like a hawk, ready to intervene when it does something dumb? All this processing power and sensor input could just as easily be applied to a system that keeps the driver in control, but which improves the driver's awareness, reduces their cognitive load, and serves as a last-ditch collision avoidance system, without trying to substitute for human judgment, perception, and cognition.

For one thing, these are all of the same tasks. A computer/sensors can't really help you drive without being able to. Any work spent on a last-ditch collision system doubles as self-driving and vice-versa.

This is why I don't hate Tesla, despite kind of hating Musk. Teslas have a great safety record, in large part because all those cameras and computers work well as safety equipment, even if they can't drive without intervention.

 

[Deleted member 228006]

For one thing, these are all of the same tasks. A computer/sensors can't really help you drive without being able to.

This is why I don't hate Tesla, despite hating Musk a good deal. Teslas actually have an excellent track record. Because all those sensors and computers actually function pretty well as safety equipment, even if they suck pretty bad at "self-driving".

I would invite you to do a search of "Tesla phantom braking" on YT or your search engine of choice.

 

[nbax]

Agree with the first point though a quibble with the second.

Robotaxis scale at the point where they become cheap enough and frictionless enough that it allows semi-urban folks to go from two or three cars to one or two, or urban folks who might have a car for once-a-week trips to drop them altogether. I don't believe we're anywhere near that, but it certainly scales more than the current taxi business.

My back of the envelope math says a taxi driver earns $20/hour and has $0.50/mile in car costs, let's assume 40 miles/hour of driving (which seems high), for $40/hour total expense. If you drop the labor cost there to $1-5/hour and ensure significant reliability ("When I push the button I will get a car within n minutes"), current consumer car behaviors can change.

You’re missing the capital costs. The problem with the current “taxi” business is Lyft and Uber have managed oversupply via encouraging more drivers to be on the road and available and for them to be out more hours. This has trained many passengers that they’ll have a car very quickly to take them somewhere. This didn’t used to be the case.

That’s fine when they’re in a $18,000 used HEV and not really covering their cost of capital, but if you’ve got a robotaxi the owner will want that asset to be in use most of the time, which means wait times for passengers, which means they’ll take an Uber subsidized by their driver’s pocket books.

Waymo isn’t going to tell us if they’re operationally profitable, but that is the next part of the business to tackle.

 

[bb-15]

From the article title; ”We'll know Tesla is serious about robotaxis when it starts hiring remote operators.”

Another version of that. I’ll know that Tesla (Musk) is serious about robotaxis when they do this; The Boring Company, with Tesla vehicles, operates a closed course, geofenced transport loop in Las Vegas (The Vegas Loop). When these Musk companies get rid of the drivers in that loop and just use FSD, then I’ll know that Musk is serious about robotaxis.

 

[ERIFNOMI]

First, I am all for expanding bus service, but a bus will not help me get to and from work. There is no scenario where my area supports a bus from where I live to where I work, much less offers a commute time that people would be willing to tolerate. This is reality. It might not be reality everywhere, but it is reality in most place in America. Our cities and towns are not setup for public transit, and we are not going to tear down our cities and rebuild them anytime soon.

Second, I don't understand your obsession with Tesla. You know that there are other automotive makers besides Tesla, right? I don't expect anything from Tesla. I frankly think that they are about to suffer a pretty brutal contraction due to extremely poor leadership. I am not counting on Tesla to bring us a future where you can get a small autonomous electric commuter car, muchless autonomous ones.


There exists no bus between me and my work, and there is absolutely 0% chance that that is going to change. Literally 0%. If your area has a great bus connection that can get you too and from work, good for you. I encourage you to use it. That is however not a solution for most Americans, and it certainly isn't a solution for me.


Well, I've got a gas powered car sitting on the side of my street, and I don't even own a garage. I guess our situations are pretty different, so maybe you need to stop assuming that everyone is in the same situation as you? For a large fraction of the American population, a small, single seat, electric car showing up outside of their house when its time to commute would be a vast improvement over all other even vaguely plausible alternatives.

No one would stopping you from owning a personal electric car if that's what you want, but that's not what I want. I don't need a multi-purpose, multi-seat, heav, long range electric car that sits on the street all day. I need an extremely light, short range, single seat that gets me too and from work and then gets used by other people for the rest of the day because I don't need it. On occasion I need something bigger and with longer range. If a single seat electric commuter taxi was economically competitive with owning an entire big, heavy, long range electric or gas car that sits idle 98% of the day, I'd own no car. I'm certainly not alone, even if this doesn't describe you, even if you'd prefer we all lived on bus routes, which we don't.

As I already said, public transportation is non-existent where I live as well. I'm not saying take a non-existent bus to work tomorrow. Just like I'm going to assume you aren't arguing for taking a non-existent autonomous taxi to work tomorrow.

We were talking about autonomous taxis. The original comment I replied to said people won't own cars anymore because there will be an army of autonomous taxis to fill everyone's transportation needs at the drop of a hat. I call bullshit. If people wanted to take taxis to and from work, why don't they do it now? Is it really down to the fact that there's another human in the driver's seat? No. They don't do it now with real taxis. They're not going to do it with "robotaxis." Whether those are Teslas (which won't exist in 3 years, just like they didn't exist 3 years after they last dozen times we were told they're just around the corner) or Waymos or anyone else. It's not happening. You have to have enough cars available to take everyone to work from 6-9am and home from 4-7pm or whatever. So you're going to need a number of cars approaching a significant fraction of users of the service (and the argument is everyone will use it and car ownership will be a thing of the past). Not happening. What the fuck are those cars going to do for the rest of the day? Park somewhere? How have we done anything except make it so you don't own the car that takes you to work?

 

[BMWMECHANIC]

Counterpoint:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2023/tesla-autopilot-crash-analysis/


Yes, humans drive with their eye cameras, but "a human can do it therefore a computer can do it" isn't a statement that holds up to any level of scrutiny in 2024.

Paywalled...

But was the Semi also Self Driving?

Because it looks like the Semi didn't see the Tesla when making a left hand turn across a highway

 

[ZhanMing057]

I dunno, are human beings able to drive a car without lidar and radar?

I honestly don't know where people get the idea from, that more sensors are necessary for driving. Is it because early self-driving cars (Darpa challenges, etc.) relied on Lidar so we all just assume that that's how self-driving cars work now?

Our eyes are more sensitive than the vast majority of production color CMOS sensors from an SNR standpoint, running on optics as fast as the fastest videography lenses in production, and has both wider dynamic range and lower readout lag than such setups.

If you can rig two of those onto a car, I'm sure that could work. I don't think Tesla's monochrome smartphone sensors are a good substitute, though, in which case we're back to Lidar and Radar.

 

[internetomancer]

I would invite you to do a search of "Tesla phantom braking" on YT or your search engine of choice.

Yeah. It sucks. But it's all relative.
Every ADAS has been found wanting. Especially on a car that cost less than $50k
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a60175248/iihs-automated-driving-evaluation-results/

 

[Bilateralrope]

As I already said, public transportation is non-existent where I live as well. I'm not saying take a non-existent bus to work tomorrow. Just like I'm going to assume you aren't arguing for taking a non-existent autonomous taxi to work tomorrow.

We were talking about autonomous taxis. The original comment I replied to said people won't own cars anymore because there will be an army of autonomous taxis to fill everyone's transportation needs at the drop of a hat. I call bullshit. If people wanted to take taxis to and from work, why don't they do it now? Is it really down to the fact that there's another human in the driver's seat? No. They don't do it now with real taxis. They're not going to do it with "robotaxis." Whether those are Teslas (which won't exist in 3 years, just like they didn't exist 3 years after they last dozen times we were told they're just around the corner) or Waymos or anyone else. It's not happening. You have to have enough cars available to take everyone to work from 6-9am and home from 4-7pm or whatever. So you're going to need a number of cars approaching a significant fraction of users of the service (and the argument is everyone will use it and car ownership will be a thing of the past). Not happening. What the fuck are those cars going to do for the rest of the day? Park somewhere? How have we done anything except make it so you don't own the car that takes you to work?

The predicted difference between current taxis and robotaxis is cost. Removing the human driver should make the robotaxi significantly cheaper. A lot of people are saying they will be cheaper per mile than your personal vehicle.

That will make some people use robotaxis more than they use current taxis. Depending on how much cheaper they become and if it's worth the loss of convenience.

 

[Rindan]

As I already said, public transportation is non-existent where I live as well. I'm not saying take a non-existent bus to work tomorrow. Just like I'm going to assume you aren't arguing for taking a non-existent autonomous taxi to work tomorrow.

Public transit where I live isn't a possibility. Electric autonomous cars are. That's the difference. We are arguing about the future, and I am saying that in the future bus lines are not going to become suddenly more viable in America, but autonomous electric cars will.

We were talking about autonomous taxis. The original comment I replied to said people won't own cars anymore because there will be an army of autonomous taxis to fill everyone's transportation needs at the drop of a hat. I call bullshit. If people wanted to take taxis to and from work, why don't they do it now? Is it really down to the fact that there's another human in the driver's seat? No. They don't do it now with real taxis. They're not going to do it with "robotaxis."

No, the reason why we don't do that now isn't because people don't like taking rides with other humans. The reason we we don't do it now is because it is too expensive. The extra human in the seat is a very large added costs that rules out the possibility no matter how cheap you make the car. Likewise, the car in question needing be a large multi-passenger car also increase the price to make it no longer viable.

If you shrink the capital cost by making your car a small, single seat, electric commuter car with no driver, you just slashed the cost of using that as a commuter vehicle.

Whether those are Teslas (which won't exist in 3 years, just like they didn't exist 3 years after they last dozen times we were told they're just around the corner) or Waymos or anyone else. It's not happening. You have to have enough cars available to take everyone to work from 6-9am and home from 4-7pm or whatever. So you're going to need a number of cars approaching a significant fraction of users of the service

You might need roughly the same number, but they don't need to be the same size. I don't need a 300 mile ranged 5 seat car to take me to work. An ultra-light single seat electric car with a 50 mile range is more than enough. That would be a massive improvement and cost significantly less than everyone buying their own full sized car to drive their butts a few miles to work.

Not happening. What the fuck are those cars going to do for the rest of the day? Park somewhere?

Yes. A bunch of them will continue to work as people need to move outside of commuter hours, but a large fraction of them probably would park until they are needed, trading off with working cars as batteries run down. You would in fact have fewer cars in operation if commuter cars continued to work as needed when it isn't rush hour, even if you can't take full advantage of all of them 24/7.

A single seat 50 mile ranged commuter car that is used 20% of the day is vast environmental and fiscal improvement over a 5 seat 300 mile ranged car that is used 5% of the day.

How have we done anything except make it so you don't own the car that takes you to work?

What we have done is made it so that people wanting to be economical or environmentally friendly can take an ultra-light electric car with a 50 mile range that is purpose built for commuting in the most efficient way possible. That seems like a massive improvement to me over everyone taking large 300 mile ranged gas and electric vehicles designed to haul around a few thousand pounds of passengers and luggage to and from work.