
Waymo has raised $3B in the last two months - Rutledge
https://www.wsj.com/articles/waymo-adds-750-million-to-war-chest-as-driverless-cars-prove-tough-to-deploy-11589299200
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enitihas
Can anyone explain why does Waymo need to raise any money? Doesn't Alphabet
have practically infinite pockets? If they are confident of Waymo, why would
they want to share the profits with anyone else ever?

Even if Alphabet was reluctant to invest their own profits, can't they borrow
cheaply too?

~~~
chubot
I think you answered your own question: _if they are confident of Waymo_

As I said a couple months ago, the "Waymo" name is a sign. If they really
believed in the product, it would be called "Google Self-Driving Cars".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22632588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22632588)

~~~
mtmail
Different brands can make sense though. Youtube isn't called Google Video and
Blogger isn't Google Blogs.

~~~
gruturo
Google Video was an actual product, competing with Youtube. When they decided
to acquire the much more successful Youtube, its brand already had a lot of
value and recognition, so it survived.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video)

~~~
tyingq
Similar, on a smaller scale, for Blogger. Google acquired it.

~~~
buttersbrian
Yet they applied the google name to nest? Android remains without a google
moniker (other issues there).

Point being that google has quite a few inconsistencies in their naming (which
is a thing in itself) and their not applying Google brand to Waymo at this
point is any indication.

~~~
throwaway2048
Android was also acquired.

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bdcravens
They've raised $3B in 2 months; this round was $750M. The original headline:

"Waymo Adds $750 Million to War Chest as Driverless Cars Prove Tough to
Deploy"

~~~
faitswulff
That headline should also be the title for this submission.

~~~
durpkingOP
headline police-- 'We protect and serve people who don't read articles'

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InTheArena
Meanwhile, Tesla continues to iterate on a production fleet with a (admit idly
rough) new capability rolled out to allow autopilot to obey stop lights and
stop signs.

If I were a investor that invested in individual stocks (which I am not), my
money would be on Tesla over the long run here.

~~~
ehsankia
Waymo did considering the iterative method and decided against it
intentionally. Putting aside the obvious danger of incrementally getting to L4
(the inbetween state where the system feels safe enough for users to not pay
attention, but actually isn't), it's actually not obvious that there is an
obvious smooth transition from L2 to L4.

Yes, Tesla may be getting more data in the field, but Waymo is still much
further ahead with actual fully self-driving car without anyone at the wheel
(within a small region + good weather). Also worth pointing out that the
quality of the data also matters, not only the quantity.

~~~
autokad
> "Waymo is still much further ahead with actual fully self-driving car "

Tesla is ahead where it counts, sales. it feels like waymo was already
'successful' in small regions with good weather not requiring complex thought
situations in 2018. meanwhile tesla is improving designs, expanding
capabilities, and selling cars.

I'm not a tesla fan boy, but I definitely prefer their approach in terms of
iteration (not sure if I agree with the tech choices).

~~~
magicalist
> _Tesla is ahead where it counts, sales._

Where it counts for what? Tesla has demonstrated it can sell non-autonomous
cars, Waymo has not, but the GP's point is it's not clear what bearing that
has on making an autonomous car work.

~~~
autokad
Because you have to sell them, and they actually have a product in the market.
if you don't intuitively understand that, there is nothing more to say because
you just don't understand it to make an informed thought on it.

I'll give you a hint, the technology doesn't define the product.

~~~
ehsankia
> the technology doesn't define the product

Product here is "L4 self-driving technology", not "car" as you seem to be
implying. Yes, Tesla is shipping cars, but they are nowhere close to L4 self-
driving (aka no one at the steering wheel).

> they actually have a product in the market

No they don't. They have a _car_ on the market, and an L2 driving assistant.
As I was implying above and again repeated by the post you replied to, there's
no indication that you can transition from L2 to L4 in a gradual manner, so
"L2 product in the market" means absolutely nothing.

Here's an analogy for you, I'm saying that Google is ahead of Intel in making
a Quantum chip, and you tell me that Intel is right now shipping millions of
classical chips, therefore they are closer to making quantum chips. My
argument is that the jump from L2 to L4 is similar to classical vs quantum
chips, and shipping millions of L2 cars does not mean you're any closer to L4
technology.

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daenz
Does anyone else think that the massive decrease in driving (due to lockdowns)
is a game-changer for the outlook on autonomous vehicles? Suppose we can
embrace a society with fewer drivers, isn't that better for autonomous
vehicles by most metrics?

~~~
oneiftwo
I expect we will see gradual conversion of roads to be more amenable to
autonomous driving - barriers for pedestrians, special markings, etc - and
autonomous zones will become more and more commonplace.

On the other hand I think with the collapse of the economy and skyrocketing
unemployment, the price for a human driver may plummet. Remains to be seen if
the increased demand in deliveries is enough to offset the voids left in the
rest of the economy.

~~~
bradlys
I don’t see it happening for the US that way. The increased cost of
infrastructure would probably be too much? Unless the US figures out how to
lower construction/maintenance costs reliably, I don’t see those features
being added. It feels like we’re already pretty low on features... It takes
years for faded lines to be repainted on the road.

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alokrai
Unpaywalled: [http://archive.is/Beahs](http://archive.is/Beahs)

~~~
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
Is there a chrome extension or something that finds these links automatically?

~~~
jackson1442
Here's what I use: [https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-
chrome](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome)

Not available on AMO or Chrome Webstore, unfortunately, but is very easy to
install on Firefox, and requires just a bit of effort on Chrome.

~~~
ricktdotorg
thank you for posting this! in a mere 5 minutes of use you have earned a
thousand thank-yous.

:thumbsup:

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yalogin
I dont understand Waymo and what they are doing. What is their path to making
money on this?

They are not building their own cars, haven't partnered with any automakers
either. In fact they discussed with a bunch of them and couldn't convince any
company to partner with them. Most of the automakers already are investing
heavily in their own autonomous tech stack. Unless they blow everyone out of
the water with their technology I don't see them selling their stuff to
automakers.

The only path then is an Uber competitor. That means they have to acquire a
fleet custom made for their solution. That is a huge investment a large
undertaking, not sure Waymo has it in them to do it. This is not Google wave
to abandon so I am sure they will not do so, however I will not be surprised
if people grow frustrated by the lack of clarity.

~~~
TuringNYC
I get your frustration -- but at the same time, i'm darn glad they are doing
"stuff" whatever it might be. Self driving cars will change the world in so
many ways. Traditional industry was too close-minded to tackle the challenge
and now we have non-traditional players (Google, Uber) leading the charge --
this has spurred traditional players to jump in. It also creates a
statistical-ish way to spread strategy bets in approach. Hopefully some
combination of the many approaches being used wins -- then we all win.

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iamleppert
Can anyone explain the business model of a self-driving car company? We
already have this service, except it’s powered by humans. Humans who own the
cars, store the cars, clean them, and take care of all the maintenance.

A self-driving car company will have to own a huge depreciating asset, and
they’ll still need staff to clean & take care of the cars in addition to an
enormously expensive engineering team and/or licensing payments.

What business model are these companies trying to fulfill? It seems like they
are trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

~~~
malux85
Except self driving trucks can drive 24/7 and never take a break. You’ve seen
those truck stops where there’s 30-40 trucks sitting idle while their drivers
are sleeping and on mandated breaks? Wasteful.

If all cars are self driving we can eliminate red lights and traffic signals
because of machine coordination.

Better utilisation of cars will lead to a 5x to 10x decrease in traffic, and
route planning algorithms will optimise pickups and simultaneous package
delivery.

Your car can go and ferry people around rather than sit idle taking up parking
spaces while you’re at work (copy paste this for 200,000 workers in the city)
and make you money

The car can go fuel and charge itself and drive itself to servicing and
cleaning.

~~~
kortilla
Other than the trucking example, none of those are business models for self
driving car companies.

~~~
malux85
The trucking model is profitable enough. Truck drivers is literally the most
common job in the US.

And what if the ferrying people around part is a revenue share between the
self driving car company and the car owner?

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neonate
[https://archive.md/BhlFN](https://archive.md/BhlFN)

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supernova87a
I'm not sure I would be so pleased as an employee or share/optionholder in
Waymo about the fundraising. In fact, people forget that fundraising isn't
something really to be overly proud of. It's a loan, whether it's phrased that
way, or as an equity stake.

It was all fine when they got free money from Google to power their
experiments (cars, people, time). Now they're borrowing from their own value
to pay investors for the loan.

I'd want to see some belt tightening from what is sure to be an overly large
engineering team and lots of support staff, if there were ever to be the
promise of becoming profitable (and to eventually pay for these loans from
investors).

------
kilroy123
It'll be interesting to watch Waymo try to make it on their own.

I predict they end up focusing on semi-autonomous trucks instead of cars for
regular people.

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mitfahrener
Title is misleading.

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fl1pP3R
y

------
LatteLazy
They primarily make software right? 3Bn seems like a lot of cash for a
software company to need. That’s 2m dollars per employee. What am I missing
here? Am I just old and out of touch?

~~~
dodobirdlord
They also design hardware, and they run a fleet of 600 vehicles in Arizona by
last count. They're also ramping up a new fleet of up to 20,000 no doubt very
expensive vehicles.

[https://www.wired.com/story/waymos-self-driving-jaguars-
arri...](https://www.wired.com/story/waymos-self-driving-jaguars-arrive-new-
homegrown-tech/)

~~~
LatteLazy
Thanks, I had no idea they were over 20 cars, let alone 600->20000.

20,000 seems like a proof of concept. If you have 20,000 cars and they're
mostly on the road, you could open your own Uber in a city...

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jhpriestley
One oft-repeated line about driverless cars was that they would improve the
world by reducing car accidents, and possibly helping with congestion and
parking problems.

The pandemic has proven that these goals and many more can be accomplished
without any complicated, speculative AI technology, simply by taking full
advantage of telecommuting and delivery. Obviously there is no profit to be
made so it would make no sense for investors to do so, but I wonder what $3B
could accomplish if it were put to the purpose of reducing the need to travel,
rather than finding new ways to burn gasoline.

~~~
drcode
I'm pretty sure delivery drivers also get into car accidents.

~~~
jhpriestley
Fewer miles, fewer accidents. One delivery truck can replace many personal car
trips.

------
KCUOJJQJ
I'm not a car owner but I wouldn't buy a car from Google or a car that is
connected to the internet / saves data into logs that can be read in a garage.

I wouldn't buy a car from Google because of this [1]. Even if Google promised
not to collect data I wouldn't believe them.

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-
location...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/21/16684818/google-location-
tracking-cell-tower-data-android-os-firebase-privacy) _Google admits it
tracked user location data even when the setting was turned off_

~~~
bluegreyred
How do you feel about Tesla in this regard?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I wouldn't buy a Tesla and I wouldn't drive one if it was given to me free.
Despite the legal property of a car title, you can't really own a Tesla, they
control the software "activation" and "license" that it won't operate without.
And even if you don't use the Autopilot sensors, Tesla uses them to collect
data for itself.

Waymo would have all the same problems, except I doubt Waymo is targeting cars
people would buy at all. Google seems set on delivering a transportation
service. It's questionable if they'll ever sell their system at all.

~~~
iknowstuff
They might disable supercharging for crashed vehicles but the software itself
was never deactivated for anyone.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's a little more than supercharging: [https://www.teslarati.com/think-twice-
buying-salvaged-tesla-...](https://www.teslarati.com/think-twice-buying-
salvaged-tesla-model-s/)

"However having Tesla Motors maker of the Model S activate the car’s onboard
computer and allowing it to drive"

