
As Uber and Tesla struggle with driverless cars, Waymo moves forward - kcorbitt
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/06/as-uber-and-tesla-struggle-with-driverless-cars-waymo-moves-forward/
======
kcorbitt
The most important evidence for imminent commercialization is Waymo's recent
order for 62,000 minivans. If we're assuming a conservative $100k a pop once
they're loaded up with all the technology required, that's a $6B investment in
depreciating assets. They wouldn't do that unless they were extremely
confident that the technology is ready, and given their safety record, I'm
inclined to believe them.

The frequently-repeated caveats certainly apply -- they'll only be operating
in limited geographies with ideal weather; there will probably be roads,
conditions and maneuvers that are restricted. But having actual autonomous
vehicles on the road performing commercially useful tasks is by far most
important step. The rest will come incrementally.

Exciting times.

~~~
MarkMc
I agree with you about it being exciting, but Waymo haven't actually ordered
the minivans - the press release says _up to_ 62,000 minivans, so the actual
size of the order is not clear.

[https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/31/waymo-
orders-62000-fiat-c...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/31/waymo-
orders-62000-fiat-chrysler-minivans-for-its-upcoming-autonomous-taxi-service/)

~~~
bm1362
These deals are often structured with outs and progressive volume so you’re
probably correct. Realistically they probably ordered 500 minivans with a deal
to get more based on some targets.

~~~
mdorazio
You're spot-on here. The 62k number is almost certainly the negotiated volume
pricing amount they negotiated as a maximum under the current contract to get
favorable pricing. I would be highly surprised if the actual order volumes are
more than a few hundred at a time for the next couple years.

------
tribby
waymo started collecting lidar data so much earlier, it would be shocking if
they weren't ahead! they're ahead in so many ways, too. some of those google
vehicles I used to see driving around mountain view were so friendly and
round, making constantly awkward if perfectly safe stops like a student
driver, you felt empathy for the cars like you were watching "brave little
toaster." they're taking their time on a complex problem. meanwhile uber and
tesla were racing to be the first to earn the inevitable "robo-car kills
human" headline. there's a tenacity to that, but it's not winning any fans. by
staying mostly in the background so far, waymo will likely be perceived by the
public as more of a lovable underdog, even though it's an alphabet brand and
not at all an underdog.

------
bgentry
Yesterday afternoon I had two encounters with driverless cars in SF within a
few minutes. Both showed how hilariously far from ready these things are.

First, I came to a 4-way stop here where a Waymo car had arrived and stopped
maybe 1-2 seconds prior. Waymo was on 15th heading East, I was on San Bruno
heading north. Nobody else was at the intersection:
[https://goo.gl/maps/S2GmNTuWNDq](https://goo.gl/maps/S2GmNTuWNDq)

I stopped fully and gave it about 2 seconds to start moving since it had
right-of-way. It made a one or two false starts, then I just gave up and went
through the intersection because it was clearly having issues. Looking back in
the rear view I saw it did the same thing with the next car. Maybe it didn't
think it was a 4-way stop or something?

A few minutes later, I was on Bryant just past 7th outside the Hall of Justice
in dense traffic that was moving quickly (as people do on that street). A
Cruise Automation car (I think?) was in one of the right lanes next to me and,
for whatever reason, decided it wanted to get over to the left quickly. When
it didn't get a good opening after a couple seconds, it more or less stopped
in the middle of the road to wait for an opening. Unsafe and almost caused an
accident with the cars behind it.

Of course human drivers do stuff like this or worse all the time ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
It's going to be interesting to adjust to all the ways these things behave
unpredictably (relative to what we'd expect from human drivers).

~~~
econochoice
> I stopped fully and gave it about 2 seconds to start moving since it had
> right-of-way. It made a one or two false starts, then I just gave up and
> went through the intersection because it was clearly having issues. Looking
> back in the rear view I saw it did the same thing with the next car. Maybe
> it didn't think it was a 4-way stop or something?

> A few minutes later, I was on Bryant just past 7th outside the Hall of
> Justice in dense traffic that was moving quickly (as people do on that
> street). A Cruise Automation car (I think?) was in one of the right lanes
> next to me and, for whatever reason, decided it wanted to get over to the
> left quickly. When it didn't get a good opening after a couple seconds, it
> more or less stopped in the middle of the road to wait for an opening.
> Unsafe and almost caused an accident with the cars behind it.

If you asked me ten years ago what a future with self-driving cars would look
like, it would be exactly this. I wouldn't have believed that we'd have the
hubris to put them in situations in which someone could be hurt or injured,
however.

------
a008t
A couple days ago we were discussing on here how AI winter is coming and will
likely arrive because of failure of driverless cars:
[https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/05/28/ai-winter-is-
well-o...](https://blog.piekniewski.info/2018/05/28/ai-winter-is-well-on-its-
way/)

Are Waymo somehow much better at handling corner cases, identifying obstacles
and their trajectories correctly and not having to disable emergency breaking
to stop the car from randomly breaking at speed? Or are they just more
careful/skilled with their marketing and publicity? Are they only planning to
deploy the vehicles in specific, fairly controlled conditions, rather than
claim general self-driving capabilities?

~~~
binarybits
(1) Yes. (2) Yes. (3) Yes.

The main point is that Waymo had a 4-6 year head start over virtually everyone
else in this industry. So it's not surprising that their technology seems
significantly better! Obviously we don't yet know how much better, or if it's
good enough to improve on the average human driver. But they seem to be pretty
close.

~~~
Fricken
The downside to their head start is that they had to build their system from
scratch, and there was a great deal of trial and error.

The upside is that they had the very best, most passionate and talented
roboticists in the field working on it, as nobody else was hiring at the time.
For every company entering late in the game, securing top tier talent is the
biggest hurdle.

------
DanCarvajal
Saw my first Waymo Van on Wednesday morning as I was leaving Phoenix, AZ. It
drove phenomenally better than my relatives at the reunion.

------
maherbeg
I've been pondering the economics of this and wondering what they will end up
charging.

Assumptions:

    
    
      * $100k / car
      * 250k miles / car before replacement (I'm assuming these aren't fleet vehicles which could go for longer)
      * $3 / gallon for gas
      * 30mpg
      * 10k car / year of opex
      * 250k miles / car / year
    

Per mile costs are:

    
    
      * $0.10 for gas
      * $0.40 for capex
      * $0.04 for opex
    

For a total of about $0.54 / mile. The biggest win is likely getting vehicles
that are fleet capable to reduce the overall cost / mile, followed by
switching to the all electric vehicles like the i-Pace.

~~~
ghaff
You basically just derived the IRS deduction rate for personal vehicles used
for business. While not a perfect proxy for costs (which is a complicated
question), it's a reasonable back-of-the-envelope estimate for operating a
vehicle--including depreciation--without a driver.

~~~
maherbeg
Heh yeah. I assume that the cost structure will be something like $0.70 / mile
for single person rides, and then dramatically dropping it for carpooled
rides.

If the cost structure is accurate, then this could really take a way the need
for a second car for most people, and maybe even a primary car for folks that
are ok with renting for their occasional weekend jaunt.

If they can get significantly higher mileage out of each car and/or reduce the
cost of LIDAR too, then that will make a large improvement in profitability /
car.

~~~
ghaff
I'm fairly skeptical about how soon door-to-door autonomy arrives but figuring
out the cost basis seems fairly straightforward. You also have to account that
there will be some deadheading to get to you, to the next fare, and to
park/get cleaned/fueled.

I suspect Uber/Lyft/Zipcar/etc.have already significantly cut into the second
car in a lot of greater urban area households--or will when the next refresh
cycle comes around. Anything that further reduces on-demand costs just
increases the effect. (Though it's probably worth at least noting that current
rideshare (where available) pricing is <= 2-3x base operational costs. That's
not nothing obviously but it's not a difference between a luxury and too cheap
to meter.)

------
bhouston
Waymo hasn't done any commercial deploys at all. So it is a bit of an unfair
comparison.

~~~
MBCook
Has anyone?

They’ve bought 82k vehicles recently. They’re clearly up to SOMETHING soon.

That was a large chunk of the article.

~~~
asdsa5325
Tesla has semi-self driving in their cars already

~~~
pavs
Tesla has driver-assist, it's like comparing a bicycle to a motorcycle. Tesla
autopilot is doing a lot of harm to its brand and self-driving industry by
using half-baked driver-assist on a production car and implying that it's
self-driving. Your Tesla won't stop in front of a brick wall if your life
depended on it.

~~~
ajross
That's a semantic distinction without real meaning. Tesla autopilot may have
been designed/deployed to different standards of autonomy, but it's
fundamentally solving exactly the same technical problem.

And it's actually doing quite well, though given human psychology any crash is
going to be turned into "doing a lot of harm to its brand". Alas, we can't
automate away knee-jerk conservatism.

> Your Tesla won't stop in front of a brick wall if your life depended on it.

You folks are going to come after Waymo with your hatchets too, once a few
juicy wrecks show up on Twitter.

~~~
Qworg
Are you kidding me? It is far more than a semantic distinction - Tesla is
actively telling people that their car is "on autopilot". People, perhaps out
of the same level of boosterism you're demonstrating here, believe them. Some
growing percentage of them die.

It isn't going well - they're actively harming the future of self driving in
the world.

~~~
ajross
> It is far more than a semantic distinction - Tesla is actively telling
> people that their car is "on autopilot".

Uh... what Tesla is "telling people" (or what they are "calling" their
product) is the very definition of a semantic distinction. The point was that
the technical problem being solved is the same one Waymo is working on.

> Some growing percentage of them die.

Are you kidding me? (See what I did there?) That statement isn't remotely
true. There have been two fatal accidents involving Tesla autopilot. Sales are
growing rapidly quarter after quarter. How exactly do you support that?

That kind of fake analysis (driven by your personal feelings about the company
or its owner, presumably, and not numbers) is what's harming the future of
self driving in the world.

~~~
Qworg
Except Tesla doesn't have the sensors and hasn't demonstrated the chops.

How many fatal accidents involving Waymo vehicles are there? Sales aren't even
remotely associated. I support it based on "autopilot" versus true self
driving systems. Which is safer?

"Fake analysis" won't matter when the NTSB bans all self driving systems
because a few companies keep screwing it up. My hope is that they only target
the egregious offenders - Tesla and perhaps Uber.

------
petermcneeley
Uber's existence is at stake here.

------
loser777
Perhaps one of the most interesting parts of this deal are the fact that the
order seems to be on the scale where things appear to be ready _off-the-
shelf_. Does an order of 62,000 imply that Waymo is close to having hardware
that can be quickly adapted to multiple cars (e.g., the Jaguar and now the
Chrysler) that can be produced at scale? Or have they managed to convince
manufacturers to heavily customize their existing vehicles (seems unlikely)?

That's something I'm not sure is even on the horizon for any self-driving car
effort other than Tesla.

~~~
pavs
Unless I have missed something they are getting the cars over several years. A
modified car (presumably during the manufacturing process), over several
years, is very much reasonable. Radar and camera is part of the production of
the modified car, LiDAR and compute system snaps into modified body. Waymo
keeps control on their most important hardware. Seems very doable over several
years.

------
yalogin
If waymo launches a self driving car either for sale or as part of some ride
sharing network, will it be trouble for Tesla? Will their stock tank? Could be
trouble for the model 3 production line.

~~~
MBCook
for the stock to tank that would imply investors only value their self driving
technology, not the electric car sales/tech.

I would say it’s the opposite. If anything I would say their autopilot tech is
weighing the stock down due to its constant liabilities.

------
paulcole
Hope there's nothing stationary in front of them.

------
fma
An article about self driving cars and comparing different companies without
mentioning GM/Cruise Automation? Hmm..

I'm sure softbanks $2.2 billion investment recently is worth a confidence
boost in their technology.

~~~
MBCook
Mentioned on page 2 multiple times as the closest competitor. But they get
something like 1/20th the monthly miles Waymo does so they’re only close in
relative terms.

~~~
fma
Whoops didn't see a second page! Thanks.

