
Waymo granted a permit to operate as a Transportation Network Company in Arizona - nopinsight
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/02/robotaxi-permit-gets-arizonas-ok-waymo-will-start-service-in-2018/
======
fastball
I'm just excited for the time when I can purchase a self-driving big rig and
stick a living space in the back of it. Work remotely while traveling all over
North America.

Maybe even all over Europe!

~~~
Numberwang
Wow, never thought about it that way. That would be awesome.

Why limit it to US And Europe. The world might soon be a better place. Imagine
Starting out in Berlin Then over a couple of months go to Turkey, then India,
Vietnam and beyond and then back without ever driving a single km. Just let it
drive while you sleep.

~~~
thanksgiving
Is anyone even talking about let alone demoing self-driving in a seemingly
chaotic urban driving in India and elsewhere? My uneducated guess is we are
decades away from being able to navigate anything real world like this
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLUm3Q-7iZA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLUm3Q-7iZA)

If you zoom out, you'll see that there's a method to the madness but a lone
driving car that's not a part of a fleet doesn't have such luxuries.

I don't think the problem is solely image processing and machine learning. I
just don't get self driving and how we're supposed to wow the logic. You have
to be aggressive to drive in a city or people will constantly cut you off for
hours. This means you will hold up traffic making the situation worse for
everyone. However, you can't be too aggressive. Imagine the damage we will
cause to the "optics" of self driving if we run over (at a slow 10 mph)
stubborn people who cut us off. That will just look like murder.

~~~
kjksf
Based on economics, self-driving cars are not necessarily attractive in India.

Consider that in US the cheapest ZipCar is ~$8/hr.

Adding even the cheapest human driver working at minimum wage is ~$15/hr.

Adding a human driver in US makes the trip 3x more expensive.

Or to put it another way: a self-driving trip can be 3x less expensive.

Or to put it another way: a $30 trip from SF downtown to airport becomes $10
trip which is competitive with BART prices.

I don't know what is the minimum wage in India, but per
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_India)
per capita income is $1670 / year which is probably less than $1 per hour.

In other words: self-driving cars only make economic sense in countries where
humans are expensive.

~~~
thanksgiving
> Or to put it another way: a $30 trip from SF downtown to airport becomes $10
> trip which is competitive with BART prices.

I looked up BART because of what you said and it looks pretty bad.

[https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-
comp-a...](https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-all.csv)

175 people make six figures in base pay. The total cost of employment is
ridiculously high. I don't know anything about BART but they clearly need to
lay off a lot of people. This is ridiculous.

------
nopinsight
This appears to go against Rodney Brooks' (former director of MIT's CSAIL,
member of NAE, and a robotics expert) predictions, which was just published
last month: [https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-
predictions/](https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/)

"NET (No Earlier Than) 2022"

"First driverless "taxi" service in a major US city, with dedicated pick up
and drop off points, and restrictions on weather and time of day."

"The pick up and drop off points will not be parking spots, but like bus stops
they will be marked and restricted for that purpose only"

A possible resolution is in the case that he meant somewhere more ‘major’ than
Phoenix, AZ (1.6 million population; 5th largest city in the US), but that is
a bit hand-waving.

Any insight or comment for this?

~~~
dgacmu
Yes. This definition of his:

"My milestone predictions below are not about demonstrations, but about viable
sustainable businesses. Without them the deployment of driverless cars will
never really take off."

In particular, he's predicting when a company does this profitably, not at a
loss as part of research.

(Btw, thanks for linking - that prediction list was a great read.)

~~~
alexandros
Arguably, that milestone hasn't been reached for rideshare apps in general,
even ones that use real drivers!

~~~
ghaff
That's just a deliberate business model decision though. If all the
ridesharing services decided tomorrow to double their prices and downsize in
line with reduced ride volume, they could probably turn a profit fairly
quickly, albeit on lower revenues and (probably more relevantly) sharply
reduced valuations. People will still use them even if they cost as much or
more than taxis. They just wouldn't use them as much.

------
kyle_martin1
I live in Phoenix and applied to their beta program. Haven't heard a word
since but I've seen a few passengers riding in them. My guess is that they're
hand picking people with compelling stories for marketing reasons.

Gotta say though...it's quite amazing to see 5-10 SDCs/day.

~~~
jakobegger
Are they already fully driverless or do they still have a safety driver?

~~~
jacksmith21006
Google moving them out of driver seat. So not possible to fake it.

[https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-google-arizona-phoenix-
dri...](https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-google-arizona-phoenix-driverless-
self-driving-cars/) Waymo Finally Takes the Driver Out of Its Self-Driving
Cars | WIRED

~~~
jakobegger
I think I've read a about a dozen announcements like that stating that they
are going to start having the cars drive without safety drivers, but all the
videos I saw on Youtube still have safety drivers, that's why I asked.

~~~
VVyattPrentice
Even without a safety "driver" you can have an employee monitoring with a
finger on the kill switch.

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unicornporn
> Waymo has been running a pilot program that lets people hail rides in its
> cars, at first with safety engineers riding in the driver’s seat, but fully
> driverless since November 2017.

Perhaps a stupid question... Does that mean that when the service starts the
car will be devoid of any human (except for the paying customer/customers)?

~~~
TulliusCicero
I think so, although apparently it's possible for Waymo to control the car
remotely. Not sure if that means fully driving the car remotely, or just
giving it higher level instructions.

~~~
zerostar07
wouldnt it be simpler and cheaper to just have an emergency driver in?

~~~
monk_e_boy
I think they have considered that

Remote driver with xbox controller who controls a car every 1,000 miles....
one person per 1,000 cars? Or your idea of 1,000 drivers for 1,000 cars.
Hm....

~~~
ghaff
Well, that assumes that solving whatever problem can be handled by a remote
driver with no situational awareness of what's going on can plug in 5 minutes
later and deal with things.

That's not necessarily unreasonable for handling rare and non-urgent events
but it's a lot different from having an alert backup driver. (Of course, if
you need an alert backup driver, there's no benefit to autonomous systems once
you get past the testing stage.)

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nopinsight
If Waymo launches the service this year according to plan, how that will
affect the upcoming Uber IPO in 2019 will be interesting to see.

It obviously depends on whether Uber has a similar service ready or imminent
before their IPO. They have great AI and robotics people recruited from top
places. However, such a feat takes time.

~~~
VVyattPrentice
"recruited"

They basically hired away Carnegie Mellon's entire SDC research team.

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zerostar07
Anyone here from phoenix who has tried them?

~~~
kyle_martin1
I live in Phoenix and applied to their beta program. Haven't heard a word
since but I've seen a few passengers riding in them. My guess is that they're
hand picking people with compelling stories for marketing reasons.

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jacksmith21006
Bring it on. Can't wait until this is common.

