Waymo will launch paid robotaxi service in Los Angeles on Wednesday

Table Of Content

• Why Robotaxis Have No Place in the City
• Waymo vs. Cruise: Which handles San Francisco streets better?
• Deal of the week
• Different business models
• Watch: Driverless taxi torched by mob in San Francisco
• Waymo, Cruise and Zoox Inch Forward Ahead of Tesla Joining Robotaxi Race
• Is it just us, or is this Outside Lands lineup totally amazing?

Tesla's unfortunately named "full self-driving beta" software routinely flubs scenarios that Waymo's cars have been able to handle for years. Maybe its software has become excessively optimized for suburban Phoenix. Maybe its hardware or back-end support costs are too high to operate profitably.

Why Robotaxis Have No Place in the City

"We are constantly evaluating and adjusting our dynamic routing to help riders safely and conveniently get where they’re going by balancing for road and traffic conditions," Waymo spokesperson Chris Bonelli said in a statement. “The reception from Angelenos so far has been exceptional, and we look forward to welcoming more riders into our service over time,” he said in a statement. Waymo is part of Alphabet and has been semi-independent since 2016. But for nearly a decade prior, it was known as the Google Car project and widely seen as the leader in the autonomous-mobility race.

Waymo vs. Cruise: Which handles San Francisco streets better?

We should be measured about the technology we add to our cities, not cheerleading anything novel for novelty’s sake. This is only the second quarter for which Cruise is supplying trip data to the CPUC, which is a condition of its commercial permit. And the company says its next report will show a significant increase in passengers and miles traveled as it continues to ramp up its robotaxi operation in the Bay Area. Cruise is waiting for CPUC to approve its request to expand operation to the entire city of San Francisco.

Deal of the week

The companies also shared data on instances in which someone from their team had to go and physically move a bricked AV, which they referred to as a “vehicle retrieval event” or VRE. Motiv Power Systems said it plans to launch a medium-duty chassis with a cab that can be used in various sizes of box trucks, step vans, shuttle buses, refrigerated vehicles and vocational vehicles. BrightDrop, GM’s commercial EV delivery business unit, plans to expand sales of its flagship electric vans to Mexico.

Different business models

Both companies offer a paid ridehailing service in the Bay Area, with most of their activity concentrated in downtown San Francisco. But while Cruise is permitted to charge for rides in its fully driverless vehicles, Waymo only has authorization to charge for rides in vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel. Waymo saw 18 minor contact events and 2 events which required a vehicle to be towed away, which means they go into NHTSA’s collision database CISS. 20 minor events in 1M miles is more than the 10 that might be expected for a human driver based on other data. However, Waymo states that all events involving another vehicle had it do something at fault, though it’s not clear if the Waymo might share some fault in a few of them. In event 3, they hit a construction cone (no damage.) In event 15 they hit a plastic sign blowing across the roadway.

Watch: Driverless taxi torched by mob in San Francisco

For example, now we can signal intensities to firefighters that, "Hey, we're about to make a U-turn and get out of this scene." I mean, this is not a question you're asking an app or a web page, which is giving you an answer. This is a multi-thousand pound vehicle that's moving through the physical world – yes, it's an application of AI but a very different kind of application of AI. And there's something to be said about time and experience and just rigor that no matter how hard you work, it takes time to do this.

CPUC gives Cruise, Waymo green light to give paid rides 24/7 across all of San Francisco - KGO-TV

CPUC gives Cruise, Waymo green light to give paid rides 24/7 across all of San Francisco.

Posted: Thu, 10 Aug 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Waymo used simulation of all fatal crashes in their Chandler operations area to determine that their system would have prevented most of those fatalities had it been driving the not-at-fault car. It will be good if future analysis provides details on what the system could have done better in any event. While generally, if a vehicle is hit while stopped there is less it can do, but a few of the incidents are ones where the car might have been able to proactively get out of the way. In evaluating these vehicles on the road, one of the key question is whether they are putting people at significant risk, in particular, more risk than ordinary human driving does. The goal of these projects it to take humans from behind the wheel of vehicles, and as we know, human driving creates quite a bit of risk.

The company’s ridehailing vehicles traversed a total of 26,838.61 miles during the quarter, which covered September to November 2022. In the optimistic scenario, Waymo will maintain and expand its current lead. It will grow its current taxi service from one corner of the Phoenix metro area to all of Greater Phoenix, then steadily expand to other metro areas.

We've heard about self-driving taxis forever, but they're just starting to become a reality

A “no” vote would certainly delay, if not completely derail, Cruise’s and Waymo’s plan to launch commercial operations in the state. That could accelerate plans to expand in other cities like Phoenix, where Waymo has long operated and where Cruise is starting to push into. During those three months, the company only reported one collision.

Right now, beyond the novelty, the big upside for me is that the fleet's cars — electric Jaguars — are comfortable and clean. And that the per-trip cost is about the same as an Uber Comfort (one level up from the base Uber X fare) — but really a bit cheaper, since you're not tipping your robot driver. Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, has a couple hundred self-driving cars roaming around San Francisco, and access is still limited there via a waiting list, as well as by geography.

So I think that one way or another, we are going to make some version of this standard for many of us in the not-far-off future. Ultimately, cars — autonomous or not — will always be wasteful, whether powered by gasoline or electricity. The mining of lithium and cobalt for batteries destroys fragile ecosystems on Indigenous lands and has resulted in worker deaths and violations of human rights. Waymo had a slightly better go of it, but that could be because the company has fewer vehicles on San Francisco’s roads. From January 1 to June 30, Waymo recorded 58 retrieval events and said it averages 10 minutes to retrieve bricked vehicles. Developing, testing and deploying AV tech isn’t cheap, and the only way to reach positive unit economics is to scale.

Waymo has already had to pull back on operations this year after Alphabet issued a slew of layoffs in the first quarter. In July, the company shut down its self-driving trucks program to shift all its available resources to ride-hailing. NABSA’s fourth annual state of shared micromobility report shows that ridership in North America has returned to pre-pandemic levels. The number of cities with shared micromobility has hit an all-time high with 401 cities, and shared e-bikes and e-scooters have offset about 74 million pounds of CO2 emissions by replacing auto trips. Waymo just started testing with no safety driver in Los Angeles and is expected to soon open ...

In event 17 they hit a parking lot barrier arm but did not damage it. In event 18 they hit a shopping cart at the exit of a parking lot. Opponents of autonomous taxi expansions, including the Teamsters, have vowed to slow down the growth of companies such as Waymo. A bill pending in the California Senate would give cities and counties authority over robotaxi services — a power that currently resides with state government agencies. Waymo’s expansion to Los Angeles will bring autonomous for-profit taxis to the nation’s second-largest city — and to a city long synonymous with car travel. Waymo already operates commercial robotaxi services in San Francisco and Phoenix.

Blocked crosswalks and delayed fire trucks may seem insignificant compared to the graphic violence of car crashes, but these incidents pose a serious safety risk. Should an AV cause a death by delaying a fire truck or ambulance in an emergency scene, or cause one pedestrian to be injured while circumnavigating a crosswalk or bus stop blocked by a driverless car, the whole AV safety pitch comes crashing down. Back in May, the CPUC had all but granted the expansion permits, then delayed the final vote twice amid mounting opposition from city agencies and residents. Since AVs hit the streets of San Francisco, there have been numerous instances of vehicles malfunctioning and stopping in the middle of the street — referred to as “bricking” — blocking the flow of traffic, public transit and emergency responders.

To test that, teams will run the situation through their simulator to find out what would have happened had nobody intervened. When it says something bad would have happened, that’s a cause for major concern. With no safety driver, that something bad always happens in that situation, and as such, the bar to operating without one is higher, and doing so for a million miles shows the confidence and internal numbers the teams have on their safety performance. Formerly known as the Google self-driving car project and now an independent subsidiary of Google parent-company Alphabet, Waymo has been operating in some capacity since 2009. Five years ago, the company launched what it billed as the "world's first commercial autonomous ride-hailing service" in the metro Phoenix area, then last year expanded to San Francisco.