Amazon's Zoox Unveils Robotaxi for Future Ride-Hailing Service (bloomberg.com) 41
Zoox, the self-driving startup owned by Amazon.com, unveiled a fully autonomous electric vehicle with no steering wheel that can drive day and night on a single charge. From a report: The vehicle, which Zoox describes as a driverless carriage or robotaxi, can carry as many as four passengers. With a motor at each end, it travels in either direction and maxes out at 75 miles per hour. Two battery packs, one under each row of seats, generate enough juice for 16 hours of run time before recharging, the company said. To commercialize the technology, Zoox plans to launch an app-based ride-hailing service in cities like San Francisco and Las Vegas. "This is really about re-imagining transportation," Zoox Chief Executive Officer Aicha Evans said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. "Not only do we have the capital required, we have the long-term vision." The company also plans to launch ride-hailing services in other countries, Evans said. Executives didn't say how much rides would cost but that they would be "affordable" and competitive with services operated by Uber Technologies and Lyft. Nor did they say when the service would launch but confirmed it wouldn't happen in 2021.
Which will launch first, Zoox or Tesla Taxi... (Score:2, Offtopic)
It will be interesting to see if the service Tesla talked about where you could hire your ar out as a taxi, will launch before Zoox or not...
Kind of funny to think how some states are squabbling about Uber drivers not getting paid enough has hastened the day when drivers will have no job at all.
"Launched" (Score:3)
shenzen china already launched FSD taxi. Waymo launched a few months back.
"Launched" is a pretty loose term though, since both services have safety drivers [youtube.com].
I'm talking about for-real FSD taxi service where there is just the passengers in the taxi. That is what Zoox and Tesla are planning to deliver.
Also, what I really mean is a taxi service that can be anywhere instead of a heavily mapped city, so probably Tesla will be the first to have a real FSD taxi service.
Re: "Launched" (Score:1)
Waymo soft launched a fully driverless service a couple of months or so ago.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com]
Thanks for info.. (Score:1)
Waymo soft launched a fully driverless service a couple of months or so ago.
Great point, didn't realize they had actually been doing real driverless.
Now, how fast can they expand that... it seems like it could go pretty rapidly, though anywhere with real weather may cause issues with them for a while.
I think Way also needs a very mapped out environment but that still means they could expand to a ton of citied fairly fast.
It makes something like Zoox seem pretty viable as well and not many years before it la
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johnny cab
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johnny cab
Yeah, I was going to tag the story with this but tags seem to be gone. Perhaps I missed a memo or something.
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johnny cab
Nope; Johnny Cab had a joystick for those emergencies when the bad guys are trying to kill you. This Amazon contraption will just let you get shot up.
Tesla camera coverage sucks (Score:3)
I like Tesla but I seriously don't think they have enough cameras in the right locations for reliable full self driving. They need to have side facing cameras further up than the B-pillars. There are situations, especially in cities, where the Tesla has to jut out into an intersection about 3 feet more than a human would need to to get adequate visibility. For example, when it is entering an intersection where of a one way road with cross traffic from the right. In such a situation, especially when there ar
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That's an interesting comment. I can't imagine it being a big problem in the wide open roads around silicone valley and most of the rest of California. Take it to a small Italian hilltop village and suddenly I just can't imagine how you cope. I mean the kind of roads where a normal saloon car occasionally has to fold in both wing mirrors to pass and a corner can take you ten minutes. You'd basically have to stop at every corner and very slowly inch out hoping whoever's there sees you and stops for you.
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You're right, a lot of European roads present challenges that the highways and city grids of the US don't. I suspect that self-driving car manufacturers are aware of this. The first "self-driving" cars will only work on certain types of road - there could be a gap of 10 years or more between these cars, and cars that can handle 99% of roads and driving conditions in every country.
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I am unsure how popular these Taxi services will be.
For both Tesla and Amazon. I think we are in a case where if a person has the option they will want their own car, And with good level 3 or Level 4 autonomy I think that would be enough for most drivers who hate driving to have something where they would want their own car.
A Taxi service has you sitting in a car, where other people have been. Some of the people like to destroy what the don't own, and in general just be abusive to it. This is a key reaso
Riders will be known entities (Score:1)
Taxi and Ride haling services, allow for more comfortable seating because there is a driver who can kick you out if you messing up their car.
That is an interesting point, however I think that most of the robotaxi services will have a pretty full profile on you (and your credit card) before they let you ride in addition to interior cameras - so if you damage anything, they can and will come after you.
With traditional taxis you are just piked up from wherever with the driver knowing nothing about you, so whil
Rural (Score:4, Informative)
Wouldn't something like this work best in more rural areas where there likely aren't going to be many human-driven taxis available? They could keep these on standby.
Depends how you are doing your self-driving... (Score:1)
Wouldn't something like this work best in more rural areas where there likely aren't going to be many human-driven taxis available?
It depends how you are doing the self-driving.
Companies like WayMo are only driving in areas that have been heavily mapped. Rural areas are places they might cover years after they have been fully servicing major cities.
If they are going for a generalized self-driving approach that can work anywhere like Tesla is, then they would be great for servicing rural areas. Only issue
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Wouldn't something like this work best in more rural areas where there likely aren't going to be many human-driven taxis available?
No. They will work best where there are plenty of customers, which is where the human-driven rides are. The human drivers are not an obstacle because self-driving taxis will have a big cost advantage. The human drivers will disappear soon enough.
They could keep these on standby.
That makes no sense. You want your taxis earning revenue, not sitting on standby.
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A village could buy a few to share between them. Replace lost bus services.
For the love of safety. (Score:5, Informative)
-Thank you, signed sane people.
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This is actually a feature. If anyone gets hit by one of these vehicles the police won't believe them...
Police officer: So you're telling me the car that hit you was going backwards in the driving lane at 25 mph?
Pedestrian: Yes! I'm certain of it. And there was no driver!
Police officer: Sir, have you been drinking today?
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Oh come on! You have to love the Citroen Ami [cnn.com]...
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In this dimension of the Euclidean reality I'm stuck in .. when objects approach towards me they get larger and when they go away they get smaller.
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My previous snark aside .. I think the ambiguity actually might make it safer because you will assume the worst and be safer/more cautious. Whereas in the other scenario you won't be prepared for a reversing car.
Inevitable cross promotion (Score:2)
I can't wait for the inevitable cross promotional tie-ins with other companies. Like, say, taking regular actors from Disney movies and having them voice the car. Then you can have Josh Gad Zooxs.
probably wont be a popular question but (Score:3)
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It's not really feasible to halt forward technological progress simply to preserve "remedial" jobs. Automation displaces some jobs, but often creates ancillary work in other areas, while at the same time lowering the total cost of goods and services for everyone. This has been going on for *centuries* now. It's nothing new.
For the moment, I don't think we need worry. There are still lots of low-skill jobs available, or skilled blue collar work in which it's possible for someone to enter without specific
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Here are a few of the jobs that are going away in the next decade:
Garbage collection
At least 1/2 of heavy equipment operators
3/4 of security guards
1/4 of sailors
>1/4 of farm labor
Home healthcare workers
Most janitors
Window washers
Almost all miners
Baristas
Fast food workers
1/3 of mechanics
1/2 of receptionists
Most of the rest of the warehouse workers
1/4 of cashiers
1/2 of long-haul truckers
And the list could continue almost indefinitely.
Not only low-skill jobs are going away either, breast cancer pathologists
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The people making the decisions to do this don't give a shit if people end up homeless. Management types the world over love automation of all types. While a lot of companies espouse the idea that, "people are our best resource," people also tend to be a company's most expensive resource. There's training, there's medical expenses which the US has gone out of its way to tie directly to employment, there's other benefits to worry about, like 401k matching, aux life policies, work comp when injured on the
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You are espousing the Lump of Labor Fallacy [wikipedia.org].
There are not a fixed number of jobs in an economy. Automation does not cause unemployment, poverty, or homelessness.
Look at the world around you. If automation caused poverty, then industrialized regions in America, Europe, and Japan would be starving, while countries that avoided the "productivity catastrophe" like Somalia, Ethiopia, and Afghanistan would be living in luxury. This is the exact opposite of reality.
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By that logic we shouldn't be have cars at all, horse drawn buggies and carts supported many jobs. The guy who shoveled the shit out of the street was out of work when concussion combustion engines came along.
More generally we have been transitioning away from manual jobs to knowledge based ones, services that can't easily be automated... Yet. UBI is probably the next step but it's going to be a difficult one.
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There are an awful lot of people who really can't do any job more complicated than sweeping floors or security patrols, there won't be any training them to become programmers.
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Remedial jobs need to exist for remedial people
Good free-market thinking there. Heaven forbid that we question other ways of doing things.
Well... sorry government but we must tell you the same message we tell all those other lovely businesses. "Innovate or you will become irrelevant". Time to give a serious go at UBI.
bla, bla, bla.... thud (Score:2)
In the software world, we call this vaperware. It doesn't exist. Considering the US's litigious proclivity, I'm betting it never will. Or, will be rolled out in selected areas and die a death of a 1000 cuts.
Large Enough To Fail (Score:2)
I work in Amazon Corporate (nothing to do with Zoox), and it's interesting to be somewhere that has so much cash that "Failure Is An Option" is a real concept. Sometimes it seems like they'll just throw projects at the wall and see what sticks.
I worked with a project manager whose attempt to create a new access control and alarm system crashed and burned through no fault of his own (they were unable to acquire the hardware drivers from Mercury). At other companies he would have been shunted off to the hin
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They should invest in Wacky Wally.
Drone or robot delivery (Score:2)
These could probably evolve to facilitate drone delivery for Amazon. I would envision a van or truck size version of this that drives to designated spots and then launches drones and/or mobile delivery robots to go deliver packages. They would need an automated system for loading the drones packages though. Should be pretty easier especially if they standardize the boxes/packaging. Then each home might need a drone friendly delivery station or mailbox.
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If the drone can retrieve the package and get into the air on its own then ping a remote flyer for the landing it could allow one person to do the work of many in an automated delivery vehicle.
Where Am I? (Score:1)