
Waymo: Google's self-driving car company - davidcgl
http://waymo.com/
======
joeguilmette
I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs:

• Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers

• Waymo directly rolling their own fleet

• Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to
maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides

• Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up

• All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going,
presumably hoping for consumers to still want to own a vehicle rather than
just pay $1 to get a ride

So: How much is Uber's market share worth? I suspect it'll evaporate overnight
in every market where another service has autonomous vehicles and they don't.

Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after
autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for
vehicles will fall off a cliff.

I predict blood on the walls.

~~~
jcranmer
> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after
> autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for
> vehicles will fall off a cliff.

I've seen this sentiment so many times now that I have to ask a serious
question to anyone who echoes this sentiment:

Do you own a personal car right now? If so, why?

All of this... excitement over the transformations that self-driving vehicles
will bring to the world of transit basically boils down to a model that's a
mixture between taxi service and (really crappy) bus service, both of which
exist today and have existed for several decades--and basically predate the
automobile when you think about it. Yet somehow self-driving vehicles are
supposed to completely change the mix of transit use when it's not really
adding any capability changes. So I'm genuinely curious as to what the magic
sauce is that makes people so giddy for this future.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
I have to agree with you skepticism. Let's e.g. replace "car" with
"apartment". Imagine an apartment where you pay a premium to have all the
cooking, cleaning and maintenance done for you. This obviously exists today,
yet >99% of people don't use it.

I believe people like owning things, and using them to do stuff. This is a
basic fact of being human. Probably goes right back to the stone age. I doubt
autonomous cars will change that pattern.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> I believe people like owning things... This is a basic fact of being human

There are some objects we enjoy forming a relationship with. Your favorite
kitchen knife. Your bed. Your sports car you take out on the weekend.

There are other objects we just want to work. Your running shoes. Your daily
commuting vehicle. Your dish rack.

Of course it varies from person to person which items fall in which category.

There will always be a market for people who want to own and fetishize a car.
The same way there is a market for people who want to own and fetishize their
record collection.

But it is usually a smaller market than the market for people who just want
convenient access to the thing. I.e. Spotify.

Which will be bigger, Spotify for mobility, or your neighborhood hipster
automobile dealer?

------
walrus1066
It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the
core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are
still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite
number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For
example:

\- communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the
time, like when parked cars block the road, allowing just one car through. Or
traffic light out of action, so you negotiate with other cars using hand
gestures, light flashes etc

\- endless roadworks, that change what lane you're allowed to go on, turn a
two way road to one way road.

\- random debris on road. Plastic bag - safe to drive through, wooden plank -
safe, plank with nail - not safe.

\- loss of GPS, mobile data, or both (again, surprisingly frequent)

\- making way for emergency vehicles (sometimes need to drive into lane you're
not normally allowed to go, I.e. Bus lane, pavement)

\- policeman coordinating traffic

So far, I haven't found any evidence of autonomous cars dealing with the
above. If anyone has, please post.

~~~
brosky117
The page about technology says, "Our sensors observe that the cyclist has
extended their left arm. Detecting the cyclist's hand signal, our software
predicts that the cyclist will move to the left side of the lane." This
suggests to me that they're trying to deal with situations like the ones
you've brought up.

~~~
moxious
There is a difference between "trying to deal with" and "product on sale next
month".

These cars are overhyped. They've been just around the corner for the last 10
years. They are the Duke Nukem Forever of Silicon Valley.

~~~
criley2
>These cars are overhyped

Not really, they're correctly hyped. The concept is revolutionary.

> They've been just around the corner for the last 10 year

B-S. Holy revisionism BS!!

We were NOT talking about self-driving cars in 2006! There was no company
seriously designing fully autonomous cars in 2006! It was fully in the realm
of science fiction, no investment, no major players, nothing.

And you make it sound like it was supposed to be released 10 years ago!
Vaporware! They told us we'd have AI cars in 2006! It never came! <\---- False
reality that never occurred.

Why do you feel the need to lie about recent history? Shouldn't you observe
that if you have to make a nasty lie to support your argument, maybe your
argument is wrong?

You're definitely parroting the contrarian point here, but you're being very
low-effort about it. Contrarian can be cool but please try harder.

~~~
marssaxman
We absolutely were talking about self-driving cars in 2006, when no less a
"major player" than the US Government had already been investing in this
"science fiction" idea for two years, in the form of the DARPA Grand Challenge
races. The 2007 race even required compliance with traffic laws in order to
win. Google's autonomous vehicle program is a direct result of this project -
that's why they hired Sebastian Thrun, whose team won the 2005 race.

I don't know how serious it was, but part of the initial PR about the Grand
Challenge included the goal that it would enable the US military to convert
some significant fraction of their fleet of ground vehicles to autonomous
operation within ten years.

I do think the previous poster was overstating their case a little, but not so
badly as you seem to believe.

~~~
industriousthou
Wasn't there a breakthrough year with DARPA challenge? It seemed like for a
while the results seemed to indicate that autonomous vehicles were basically
impossible, then suddenly a few vehicles just killed it one year. I could be
wrong, but seems like that threshold may have been less than ten years ago.

------
metakermit
More business info in this Forbes article:

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2016/12/13/googles-s...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2016/12/13/googles-
spins-off-self-driving-car-unit-as-
waymo/?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=yahootix&partner=yahootix&yptr=yahoo#31c4b6572af4)

TL;DR:

> “We’re now an independent company within the Alphabet umbrella,”

> Google is currently equipping a fleet of 100 hybrid Chrysler minivans with
> its sensors and computing gear that will soon join its nearly 60 prototype
> autonomous vehicles. The company hasn't yet disclosed when and how it will
> begin generating revenue from its efforts and Krafcik declined to discuss
> specific business plans today.

~~~
Ph0X
I still finding it silly that they are trying to go straight for L5 (which is
the only case where you can fully remove the steering wheel).

By the sound of it, they already have an L4 going (can drive itself in 99.99%
of the situations, might need user take over in very rare cases).

Why not for now release an initial car with L4, and collect pile and pile of
data, which is what they need to get over that last 0.01%.

~~~
anonred
I attended one of Google's talks on this. The rationale is that humans can't
be trusted to take control in a timely manner for that 0.01%. Their internal
testing with an L4 system on trained Googlers (who were told to remain alert
in the event that action needed to be taken) had instances of testers
sleeping, eating, putting on makeup, etc. They concluded that if Googlers with
explicit training couldn't behave themselves, then L4 definitely wasn't
sufficient for the general public; autonomous driving had to be all or
nothing.

~~~
amelius
Or ... the car could monitor the driver too, and alert them when they lose
attention.

------
arijun
I still don't understand why every company doing self driving cars is focusing
on consumer cars while no major player is doing interstate trucking.
Interstate trucking could pretty much be done now, and has several advantages.
Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a
city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc. And there is a
great monetization scheme--no driver means you can get it to its destination
more quickly and more cheaply.

(The thought is you'd hand off to a real driver once you get in to a city)

~~~
1_2__3
Because it's all marketing bullshit. In fact that's a good indication that
it's marketing bullshit - the fiction that the tip of the self-driving car
spear will be consumer vehicles.

~~~
MorePowerToYou
+1 Forget about trucks. What about trains? That's an even easier problem to
solve than trucks.

~~~
OJFord
Trains don't even need AI. It's the lack of good incentive (the required
capital investment vs. potential for future savings) and angry drivers' unions
that are stopping innovation there, I'm sure.

------
Unklejoe
It’s going to be interesting watching how local police departments and
municipalities handle the widespread adoption of autonomous vehicles.

In my town (a suburban town with a low crime rate), the police spend the
majority of their time enforcing traffic laws. The municipal courthouse is
always filled with people, and if I had to guess, I’d say that 80% of the
people are there as a result of a traffic violation, while the other 20% are
there for drug offenses/other.

It seems like autonomous cars would lead to a drop in traffic offenses and
thus revenue. Even if only a tiny portion of the town’s revenue actually comes
from traffic violations (when compared to local property tax), there would
probably be a lot more idle time for police.

I suspect that they will first start to raise our property taxes to compensate
for the lost revenue, but I would think that the long term effect would be a
reduction of municipal workers/police.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to other areas like Philadelphia, where police
spend only a small percentage of their time enforcing traffic laws.

~~~
Corrado
Of course, the flip side to this is the notion that autonomous vehicles will
free up the existing police force to do more important things. In most cities
there is a distinct lack of officers on the street, usually due to budget
constraints. Now they can take all of those officers used for monitoring roads
and highways and have them do other, more important things; all without
increasing the number of officers or budget.

~~~
cjg
Or more realistically, make a substantial proportion of them redundant.

------
visarga
At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are
doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo
videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to
Tesla or other self driving car startups.

~~~
ucaetano
"how they compare to Tesla"

Given that Tesla doesn't even have emergency braking and auto-steering, I'd
guess they compare quite favorably...

~~~
yessql
Tesla will have 100,000 prototypes being trained in shadow mode for a billion
miles per year across the globe within a year. Tesla will compare quite
favorably

~~~
jcranmer
And how many of those miles are in conditions like:

* that road with the one-foot deep pothole (it's more like a sinkhole at that point, though) in the middle of a lane

* the perpetual construction zone where there are five layers of lane markers, only one of which is the actual layer of lane markers

* the 10% grade two-lane winding road in the dark with 2 inches of snow on the road and more coming

* open highway with a constant 30mph crosswind

* dense fog with less than 100m visibility

* torrential downpour with so little visibility you can't even see the lane markings on the road right in front of you

Those are all conditions I've driven in, and I can think of several other
horrible driving conditions that I haven't yet had the (mis)fortune to drive
in. Just because you can drive well in good conditions doesn't mean you can
drive well when things get tougher--as the driving records of many human
beings can well attest.

~~~
londons_explore
There are some conditions a human _shouldn 't_ be driving in. For example a
hurricane or while intoxicated.

We can likewise say there are some situations a machine shouldn't be driving.

As long as the machine can identify when it is incapable as a driver, it's
only the same as the human pulling over for a nap because they can't stay
alert.

Sure, if you ran a taxi service with such a system you'd have to send a
regular taxi to pick up the customer, but it's only the same as any other kind
of breakdown like a puncture.

------
boxcardavin
Google's commitment to SDCs has always seemed half hearted so I wonder if this
indicates that they are getting more serious about it. Moonshots at X have
been getting the axe, the SDC stuff seems to be the only obviously viable one
right now.

To the surprise of many folks (myself included) it has turned out that SDC
tech is probably for existing manufacturers to develop versus software guys
learning how to build cars without the massive supply chains needed to
assemble 4000lb widgets. Before anyone points to Tesla, try getting inside a
$140k Tesla and then a $140k Mercedes and it will be obvious what advantages
there are to having manufacturing experience stretching decades.

~~~
ksrm
I haven't been in either. What differences do you mean?

~~~
uw_rob
I think mostly it is the fit and finish. I've been in a 2016 BMW 750i and a
2013 Model S, for about a total of maybe 30 minutes in the BMW and 10 in the
Tesla.

The interior of the 7 series seemed special to me. All of the buttons felt
great, seats looked beautiful and were super comfortable to sit in. The
control panel had many small OLED displays and they looked great. And small
details like when I went to adjust the seat, by placing my fingers on the
buttons, information about my seat configuration popped up on the center
console, so I could see what I was changing. Also the rear passenger seats and
rear windshield had power sunscreens.

Here is a picture of the iterior of the BMW:
[http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2015/11/2016-BMW-75...](http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2015/11/2016-BMW-750i-xDrive-
interior.jpg)

Here is a video of the 7 series interior:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHDMAibH1G4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHDMAibH1G4)

In comparison, the Tesla's interior felt mostly large and empty.

Here is a picutre of the interior of a 2016 Model X:
[http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/03/2016-Tesla-...](http://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2016/03/2016-Tesla-
Model-X-P90D-interior.jpg)

Don't get me wrong, Tesla makes some super amazing cars. But the high price
tag isn't for the interior.

(Disclaimer: I own a lowly 3 series so I may be slightly biased to BMW)

------
joezydeco
Interesting that this very same day, the US Government is looking into
proposals to require vehicle-to-vehicle communication in passenger cars to
enhance safety.

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-call-on-cars-to-
chat-...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/regulators-call-on-cars-to-chat-with-
each-other-1481645582)

~~~
tedajax
Seems a little premature to require this as we don't necessarily know that
this would help.

~~~
soared
I think we do know it would help. If your car can't physically see the car 1/4
mile ahead, but gets info that it has slammed on its brakes, thats very
useful.

If you've ever driven in bumper to bumper traffic on a highway you know how
invaluable this info would be, even to a human driver.

Plus info about road conditions (icy spots ahead!), etc..

~~~
jrockway
I also feel like if you know where every car on the road is, you can also
optimize the traffic light timing.

There is no reason to sit at a red light at 2:00 in the morning when there are
no other vehicles, pedestrians or bicycles on the road. But the law currently
requires it.

~~~
mantas
So bicycles would have to carry the car-to-bicycle communication device too?

~~~
londons_explore
Sounds reasonable.

They already require other safety devices like lights at night and brakes.

------
graaben
Although this site doesn't really offer any substance, I'm glad that Google is
making this project more public. Not only it nice to have updates on the
project (I do hope they continue to update this site with their progress) but
I think PR campaigns like this will go a long way to swaying popular opinion
on self driving technology. The faster they can get the public on their side,
the fewer regulatory hurdles they will face.

------
heywire
On days like today, when there are several inches of snow on the ground and
more to come, I always wonder how autonomous vehicles will handle such
situations. What happens when snow (or mud, etc) accumulates on the camera or
sensors? I don't doubt that a computer can react quicker and with more
precision in an "event", but what about when it simply can't "see"? I don't
see a steering wheel in these videos, so I guess there is no manual failsafe?

~~~
zfedoran
These cars will likely have many sensors of different types at overlapping
locations, its not likely to keep going if all are completely unusable.

But I wonder about the snow though. How does the car know where to go when
there are no identifying lane features? Maybe its not as hard of a problem as
I believe it to be?

~~~
scarmig
I really don't get these questions. "How will the car drive in whiteout
conditions where the road is frozen over and not at all visible?" Same way a
(smart) human drives: it will pull over.

For substantially less crazy conditions, you can infer where the lanes would
be by (a) looking at the spots of the road you can see, (b) prior knowledge of
the road from experience, and (c) looking at oncoming cars and the flow of
traffic, and driving in a way that doesn't surprise them. Though it's likely
the case that you shouldn't be driving in these conditions anyway.

~~~
randomdata
_> Same way a (smart) human drives: it will pull over._

You mean carefully get to the nearest settlement as soon as possible? Some of
these storms can last for days at a time. Stopping to wait it out in the
middle of nowhere, especially if you don't have a full tank of fuel to keep
the car warm for extended periods, is a pretty scary situation.

~~~
scarmig
Hmmm. If the car decided, before your trip started, that it's too dangerous
for anyone to drive where you want to go because of possible weather and
environmental conditions mid-route, would that be useful or enraging?

~~~
randomdata
I imagine a bit of both. Getting caught in a snow storm is a pretty horrible
experience, and I would gladly stay home knowing I would have otherwise ended
up in one. But at the same time the forecasting isn't all that great, so often
the storms don't amount to anything, and you would have been perfectly fine to
be out there. Sometimes the storms even come up without any warning (most of
the snow we get – especially that which causes driving issues – is from the
lake, not the clouds). Having to essentially hibernate in the winter because
the car is always erring on the side of caution could become pretty enraging.

------
dfar1
I am confused. Was there some news today that they wouldn't have their own
car, and instead would use their tech with existing car companies?

------
bertil
There is an announcement today too that _Google_ will not be operating that
technology, but focus on selling self-driving to car manufacturers.

Does this mean that _Alphabet_ will keep on working on building their own cars
but under a different company? The association between the two is a little
confusing at the moment.

------
riprowan
A lot of comments here and I haven't seen one that addresses the problem of
impulsivity. Many / most of the times I need a car are not schedulable events
but impulses. For example when I'm working on a project around the house, it's
typical to need to run up to the hardware store 3 times in a day.

I think autonomous transport will be very popular but _shared_ vehicles will
be hardly more popular than Uber / taxis are now. If you think that shared
autonomous vehicles will be significantly more popular than shared
conventional vehicles are today, I'd be interested to hear why. Is it
primarily cost savings?

~~~
brwr
I think you may be experiencing recall bias.

How do you get to work every day? How often do you go to the grocery store?
What about going out to dinner?

For myself, living in the Bay Area, anything related to driving or owning a
car is a nightmare -- not that that has stopped me from owning a car. Driving
from Mountain View to San Mateo takes about 45 minutes in the morning at 75
minutes in the evening. I went to SF to have breakfast with a friend this past
weekend and finding parking took half an hour. I'd love a self-driving car
that could just drop me at my door. Autonomous cars should also lead to
drastic traffic improvements, assuming the cars will eventually be able to
communicate with each other in a reliable way.

Maybe you live in a less densely-populated area? I have an aunt that lives in
a rural area and I couldn't imagine a need or desire for autonomous cars
there.

There is definitely a long way to go, but think of all the advantages! Parking
can be automated and condensed, which means more land is available for
buildings or parks or anything else. If you suffer from traffic problems now,
your daily commute could be cut by 50% or more. Shared vehicles should cost
less than what you pay for gas and insurance now. High availability is a real
possibility if someone can figure out how to make the economics work. Ride
sharing can be almost completely automated, leading to less pollution.

~~~
riprowan
I don't think you read my comment clearly. I think autonomous cars are going
to be quite popular, but I don't understand how that necessarily leads to
_shared_ instead of _privately owned_ autonomous cars.

~~~
brwr
Ah. We might be talking past each other. Looking back, a number of the
advantages I mentioned are inherent in having self-driving cars. But the
benefits compound when we have shared self-driving cars.

Example:

Traffic is improved with self-driving cars because most traffic jams are
caused by humans. However, traffic is improved even more when carpooling is
automated with a shared self-driving fleet.

 _Shared_ autonomous cars will become popular as these compounded benefits are
realized.

~~~
riprowan
I understand the points you're making. But I think you failed to address my
question. Let me rephrase.

We have fleets of shared vehicles today, but most people prefer personal
transportation.

What is it about autonomous shared cars vs shared cars with a human driver
that makes you believe that driverlessness will lead to increased use of
shared vehicles vs personal vehicles?

------
shogun21
I feel like they're really getting on the cute-sy theme, from the car's
friendly design to the name "Waymo".

The lack of control is still kind of terrifying so I think they're trying to
make it as non-threatening as possible.

~~~
dsymonds
I've seen what happens when humans have control of cars. It's not pretty.

~~~
brwr
This is the point that I see everyone discounting. Whether autonomous cars
turn out to be feasible or not, we know for a fact that humans are bad
drivers. Don't we owe it to ourselves to try something different?

~~~
euyyn
There's a nice analogy with fighter jets taking off from aircraft carriers.
They have handlebars in the top of the cabin that the pilots are required to
grab during take off. Experience had shown that, when they took off with their
hands in the steering stick, the acceleration was so high that they'd react by
pushing the stick, plunging the plane into the ocean.

------
jrowley
How long until someone puts a personal gym inside a self driving SUV, so you
can workout during your commute? I can imagine people running on a treadmill
inside a car while it is stuck in traffic. Or at least sitting on a trainer.

~~~
kLeeIsDead
Or just a bed.

~~~
jpindar
Given that these cars are supposedly going to strand us on the side of the
road (or in our workplace parking lot) on many snowy winter nights, they had
better have beds.

------
fareesh
What is it about car hardware+software that gives people confidence that the
operating system / some core process won't crash or reboot in the middle of a
turn or brake? I'm not familiar with the architecture of "mission critical"
systems which I assume would be similar to what they use in these cars.

~~~
euyyn
You'll like this story about the redundancy in the Space Shuttle saving the
day:
[https://twitter.com/marssciencegrad/status/80696366235102003...](https://twitter.com/marssciencegrad/status/806963662351020032)

------
shardo
I'm not sure how I would feel about the absence of steering wheels and pedals
within their cars.

Tesla's auto-pilot can be over-ridden due to the presence of the steering
wheels and the pedals. But in a car that has none, you're not in control. And
that, is scary no matter how you look at it.

~~~
pg314
Once the technology is mature, I don't think it would be any scarier than
driving with the average driver as a passenger.

------
meterplech
Obviously this vision is compelling. I'm confused by the decision of their
prototype car to not have manual control overrides (e.g steering wheel or
something similar). Air travel has been revolutionized with autopilot, but
there are clear overrides for safety in case systems crash. I don't think we
need to be wed to the pedal + wheel paradigm - but having a manual override
option seems critical to safety.

~~~
the8472
a big red emergency switch telling it to pull over and shut down may be
useful.

Anything more than that would mean your system is not fully autonomous,
because the driver would have to pay attention all the time. What good is
manual override if there's nobody paying attention? It would also mean you
need a qualified driver, you couldn't use it to ferry around children,
disabled people or simply people without a license.

------
kLeeIsDead
How is this news? So what, they slapped a new name on the project. What about
actual progress on the tech?

Honestly, with Google's track record, I'm starting to doubt that this will
ever ship. It just seems like a huge marketing tactic at this point. Plus. all
of the talent has moved to companies like Otto and comma.ai; who are making
tangible progress in this space.

~~~
rak00n
I had thinking the same thing when I saw 600+ comments. I thought they
announced L5 along with the spun out.

------
nojvek
Its great that waymo has its own brand now. I really wish udacity's open self
driving car takes off as well. I predict there will be a linux of self driving
car software/hardware kit that will be battle tested, reliable, secure and
solid with contributions and test cases from all around the world.

I also really think someone should invent a solution to convert existing
modern cars with brake, gas and steering from CANbus to self driving cars by
installing a kit.

The current car manufacturers can simply make really good cars with cameras
and sensors integrated. One can then install open software adapted for the
region that is always getting updates. The test cases and lidar data is put in
a giant shared repo whose ownership is the community. E.g OpenStreetMap and
wikipedia.

Same software can be used for smaller robots to dispatch packages to the front
door, or robotic lawn mowers, rubbish trucks, cleaning trucks e.t.c

That would be a fantastic future to be part of.

~~~
ktta
Wow, you just described everything that commaai[1] did (or tried to do).

They tried the kit that can be self installed[2] but decided not to
continue[3]

They also have a dataset that can be downloaded by anyone[4]

And they have open sourced the software on their github, [1]:
[http://comma.ai/](http://comma.ai/) [2]:
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/comma-ai-will-
ship-a-999-a...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/comma-ai-will-
ship-a-999-autonomous-driving-add-on-by-the-end-of-this-year/) [3]:
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13453344/comma-ai-self-
dr...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13453344/comma-ai-self-driving-car-
comma-one-kit-canceled) [4]:
[http://research.comma.ai/](http://research.comma.ai/)

------
pera
Google seems to like logos with a W shape (Wallet, Wave, now Waymo). I wonder
if that's on purpose, as in making a reference to WWW in some way.

------
gaspar
I can see the potential of self-driving cars for long distance trips (e.g. SF-
LA) or for big trucks, but I can't see it for everyday use especially if
someone has kids. How many times an average person in US uses her car? 2-3
without kids and maybe more than 4-5 with kids(I think my numbers are probably
too low)? For this to be viable economically, the pricing has to be very low
and in order to be very low all of the people has to use this "self-driving
service". This creates another problem though, you will have to plan your
"short ride" ahead of time, e.g. what happens if you want to leave at the last
moment and no car is available around you? And then there is another problem,
if the self-driving service is cheap the ownership of the car is going to be
even cheaper. A lot of variables and difficult to answer questions. I don't
know if we ever going to be a society without car ownership and to be honest
as long as there is no traffic I like driving, and it makes me relax. I see it
more as a fancy option for cars, like what Tesla does, but to completely
remove the car ownership is going to take many decades. Before cars there were
horses and stuff so the transition was easier. This is going to be very tough.

------
ticktockten
Am I the only one getting a 404 on this URL?

------
gpmcadam
You'd think Google would have considered optimising the content on this page
as per their own recommendations:

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwaymo.com%2F&tab=mobile)

------
laurentoget
My real question is whether they will be able to convince american customers
to give up one of their most prized status symbols. It feels from this webpage
their main argument will be safety, so I guess we will find out how much human
life weighs against the thrill of owning and controlling fast, expensive and
shiny machines.

------
jonthepirate
More power to anybody who's willing to put their children in a car and not pay
attention to the road or have control the outcomes of relentless traffic
threats all around them.

In my view, all of this technology is much better suited to aid the human
driver as a safety enhancement system rather than a full replacement for
vehicle navigation.

------
devy
On the FAQ section,

Q: "I'd like to join the team. Where can I find a list of open roles?" A: "You
can learn more about available roles here[1]."

And interestingly, that link[1] is broken :)

Update: it's fixed NOW!

[1]: [https://waymo.com/join/](https://waymo.com/join/)

------
mberger
Interesting that they built the site with Angular 1.5.7. I thought they would
want to showcase Angular 2.

~~~
analogmemory
Showcase what? It's just a basic marketing site. Did they even need angular?

~~~
mberger
Probably not. My point is that what (I'm assuming) is a brand new site is not
built using the latest version. I would have thought that an organization such
as Alphabet would want to dog food as much as possible and in doing so tell
the world that 'Hey, look at this! It's super easy and pretty! You can have a
site like this too if you adopt our technology'. Instead, it suggests to me
that the barrier to learning the new shiny is big enough that whoever made it
didn't want to learn it. That raises the question, should I learn it? Why, if
even people at Alphabet don't want to? Do they doubt the long term prospects
for Angular 2 so much that they hesitate in adopting it? Do they not consider
it mature enough? TL;DR I read too much into things.

~~~
oceanswave
Framework Ecosystem and current developer experience/knowledge/comfort level
have a lot to do with it in addition to uncertainty.

Dogfooding is nice, but not at the expense of risking not having the site
showcasing your new autonomous vehicle company ready by the time the press
release hits.

------
dispose13432
What I don't understand is if trains aren't completely automated, planes
aren't completely automated, subways aren't completely automated, ships aren't
completely automated,

How are CARS supposed to be automated??

~~~
jordwest
> trains aren't completely automated

> subways aren't completely automated

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems#Grade_of_Automation_4_Systems)

> planes aren't completely automated

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

~~~
dispose13432
>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle)

Many of which are still piloted by people on the ground.

And I can't take a flight without a pilot yet.

------
rudolf0
Really shallow of me, but the name kind of turns me off. "Uber" or "Lyft" are
just whatever, but Waymo sounds like... something an infant would sputter out.
Or "Lame-o".

~~~
tmzt
Goo-gol?

------
shanwang
Looking at it, I'm thinking google hasn't learnt anything about the failure of
google glass, who wants to buy a car like that?

A car is more than a commuting tool, it really matters how it looks.

~~~
jiggliemon
They're not selling a car. They're selling a driver. They're presumably going
to partner with auto manufacturers.

~~~
shanwang
On their website they have pictures of both the prototype and other
manufacturers' cars. it makes a lot of sense to just sell the driving system,
like the android model. But I assume they designed the prototype to capture
the public's attention. I just don't know why they can't spend a bit more
effort to make it look desirable.

------
ipreferhumans
Being a pedestrian sharing space with moving autonomous cars is not a future
I'm looking forward to, not one bit.

1\. Pedestrian->driver observation and interaction are the primary factors in
deciding what's safe.

2\. Roads full of networked autonomous vehicles are a hack away from becoming
hoards of hurtling tonnage.

In my opinion this is all a solution looking for a problem and we should know
better than to make our roads so utterly hostile to our own kind.

------
fh973
... meanwhile Microsoft successfully attacks the billion dollar office
communication market.

Seriously, Google has had so many growth businesses in their hands and just
fails to execute on them. This might be for one part because of its internal
structure but I get the impression that many of these things look not exciting
enough for its leadership.

------
melling
The hardest problem to solve will be the humans who bully the polite self-
driving cars:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/17/humans-
will...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/11/17/humans-will-bully-
robot-cars-mercedes-chief-warns/)

~~~
pg314
It seems that could be easily solved with regulation. The self-driving cars
could even automatically send a video of incidents to the police.

~~~
melling
You want to regulate politeness?

~~~
TillE
Reckless driving is already a crime (not just a civil offense) in many states.
In New York:

"Reckless driving shall mean driving...in a manner which unreasonably
interferes with the free and proper use of the public highway"

Simple aggressive driving as described in the linked article is, well, not a
real problem. Unless you cause an accident.

~~~
melling
No one was talking about reckless driving. Aggressive driving could be a
problem. That's why it is being discussed.

------
scarmig
If you look at the cumulative miles driven, the slope has a tendency to
increase, as you'd expect as you added more cars to your fleet.

In 2013, though, there's a regression in number of new miles logged, and it
took until 2015 to catch up to 2012 numbers. Can anyone give insight into the
cause?

~~~
a9a
Probably a shift from testing mostly on the highway (which was the initial
proving ground for the program) to testing on surface streets

------
iblaine
What does waymo mean?

~~~
jl6
It'll cost waymo' than a regular car.

------
thomasthomas
this comment section is hater news at its finest. autonomous will change all
of our lives for the better sooner than you think. edge cases will be solved.
the competition will be interesting, rooting for everyone.

------
dang
There's also a Wired article about this at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168781](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168781).

------
iMuzz
The only thing I really learned watching that video is that google decided to
call its autonomous vehicle unit 'Waymo'.

While I'm excited, I'd love to know how they actually plan to roll this out!

------
hartator
> Imagine if everyone could get around easily and safely, without tired, drunk
> or distracted driving.

I don't really think we should place drunk driving at the same level as tired
or distracted driving.

------
pookieinc
This is really exciting! I see these cars all over the place in the Bay Area,
so it's nice to see that they're at least one step closer in making it into a
product and thus bringing it to reality.

I wonder about the internationalization of this product, especially if (or
when?) it's brought to other countries and regions, such as the Middle East.
In some of those countries, women aren't allowed to drive and men drive with
extreme speed (and park in the most horrible of ways). While this will cut
down on things like speeding / drinking / etc, it may also potentially impact
social norms as well.

I'm hoping to keep a level-head about this project, but any step forward in
this endeavor is worth being excited about.

~~~
positr0n
Women aren't allowed to drive in, e.g. Saudi Arabia, because they aren't
allowed to be out of their home without a blood relative or husband. That
could lead to mingling with the opposite sex or something like that. “What
would happen if a woman got in a car accident? Then she would be forced to
deal with the male driver of the other car, a stranger, with no oversight."
[0]

So I don't think self driving cars will solve that problem at all, sadly.

[0]:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/-ne...](http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/-negative-
physiological-impacts-why-saudi-women-arent-allowed-to-drive/280343/)

Quora answers from people that appear to be saudi: [https://www.quora.com/Why-
are-women-not-allowed-to-drive-in-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-are-women-
not-allowed-to-drive-in-Saudi-Arabia)

~~~
pookieinc
I appreciate the reply, that's pretty sad to hear. Thanks for the links,
they're really interesting.

------
blancotech
All I can think of when I hear the word Waymo
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lMu8V5Xa90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lMu8V5Xa90)

------
turingbook
The self-driving car is just a component of bigger system, as new generation
of servers on cloud centers. Riding service is cloud computing. I bet on Uber
or Didi in China.

------
jeffmcjunkin
They have a number of blog posts that just launched on Medium:
[https://medium.com/waymo](https://medium.com/waymo)

~~~
cbr
It looks like they're converting many of their articles from
[https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/](https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/reports/)
to Medium?

------
cr0sh
This post seems like a "way-back" post - considering Google has announced
pulling from the self-driving car market (another HN post details it)...

------
gist
What's the story in the video with 'pulling at heartstrings' by featuring a
blind person? The problem of a blind person getting a ride is obviously
solved. But more importantly it's an edge case of a need for a vehicle that is
self driving. And actually I wonder whether someone who is blind actually
would rather have a human driver in the car and feel safer generally that way.
Seem to me almost like a strawman in a way. In other words 'if you feel that
you have to help the handicapped you need to be onboard with self driving
cars'.

------
wiz21c
How will this affect climate change ? I mean, will autonomous driving increase
or decrease the number of cars on the roads ?

------
tzury
Waymo will be the Android of the cars, that is, Google Technology on other's
hardware.

Well decided Alphabet, very well decided!

------
chirau
Welp, the site no longer works. Let's hope they didn't shut down the project
already, Google Wave style.

------
ilaksh
So when does the Waymo app come out that I can use to get an autonomous car to
drive me to the store?

------
kin
The website is pretty explicit about it being just self-driving "technology".
I wonder if they just plan to work w/ one manufacturer for now or if they're
in talks w/ many. With so much competition, if they're all executed to the
same standards of safety, my wallet is going to go w/ better design &
aesthetics.

~~~
roymurdock
> Our testing fleet includes modified Lexus SUVs and custom-built prototype
> vehicles. We also plan to add modified Chrysler Pacifica minivans to our
> fleet.

Probably safe to say they're in talks with other auto manufacturers that are
looking to add self-driving software to their portfolios.

------
Pica_soO
How much alone are the parking lots worth in San Francisco? Imagine a city
without those..

------
glbrew
They will get smoked by Tesla.

------
debt
definite old-school warner brothers inspired logo they got going on there

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaz0YyIcmHQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaz0YyIcmHQ)

------
Skunkleton
The name sounds like a cartoon car crash.

------
codecamper
Easily mispronounced "whammo"

------
sidcool
Somehow the link is giving 404 to me.

------
perseusprime11
Do we even need a car in the future?

------
tedajax
So nothing new, just the name?

------
vthallam
This is great. Finally a separate division with focus and more accountability
on the timeline i guess.

------
cjcole
"The average US city gets 26 inches of snow per year."

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/mountain_v...](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/mountain_view)

"Snowfall is 0 inches."

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/arizona/phoenix](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/arizona/phoenix)

"Snowfall is 0 inches."

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/texas/austin](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/texas/austin)

"Snowfall is 1 inches."

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/washington/kirkland](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/washington/kirkland)

"Snowfall is 4 inches."

I hope they are driving far enough from their home bases to get some snow
miles under their belt.

[http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/massachusetts/boston](http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/massachusetts/boston)

"Snowfall is 47 inches."

~~~
emmett
Do you really think it hasn't occurred to WayMo/Google that maybe they should
test their cars in snow/rain/sleet/fog/confetti?

~~~
bambax
Well, they only tested in US cities, so it's unclear what has occurred to
them. How will it work in small crowded streets in India, China, or just
Italy?

~~~
DrScump
Or _Boston_?

------
dictum
This is such a minor nitpick, but I'm bothered by it because I see so much
_performance-shaming_ coming from some Googlers:

The site loads large pictures for all viewport widths (ideally they'd load
downscaled images for smaller viewports — it's wasteful to load a large image
for small devices) and the image files are PNGs when they should be jpeg or
webp (example:
[http://waymo.com/static/images/journey/streets.png](http://waymo.com/static/images/journey/streets.png))

~~~
Govannon
That example isn't even compressed, which could drastically reduce its size.

~~~
abailin
The image shouldn't be a png in the first place.

------
homero
You mean Alphabet

------
SippinLean
Sounds like "lame-o" D:

------
serg_chernata
I'm optimistic. I agree with Musks estimates. At most I see first fully
autonomous vehicles being on the roads within 5 years.

Yes, they may only work in places with clearly marked streets but if I could
use my autonomous car for daily commute or roughly 50% of the time it's still
an incredible achievement and well worth the cost.

~~~
fullshark
Those two ideas are contradictory. It's not fully autonomous if it only works
in ideal conditions. There's already a bunch of prototypes that work perfectly
in ideal conditions.

------
aoeu345
This repels me for a few reasons:

\- Instead of talking about their car's capabilities on the front page, they
include a pathos about drunk driving. I feel embarrassed how Google doesn't
have more things to say about the car.

\- It looks really unattractive, I could hardly call it cute.

\- It's not in production, it's in testing.

These companies are sitting on _mountains_ of cash! And they still fail to do
things effectively! Apple and Google are just sitting on their fat cashflows
while the world is getting very scary _very_ fast. I'm tired of these
"technology" companies doing complete fails of R&D projects, too damn shy to
leave their advertising revenues. We need leaders with real courage.

~~~
mabbo
They've told you exactly what matters to them: not sexy cars, not the kinds of
technology used, but the _goal_ they have in mind. Tesla, by comparison, is
building sexy fast cars that happen to be self-driving.

~~~
RIMR
And Tesla's "Self-Driving" autopilot already has one attributed death. Google
has a few fender-benders...

