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Transportation

Waymo Launches Paid Robotaxi Service In Los Angeles (nbcnews.com) 31

Posted by BeauHD from the heads-up dept.
Beginning today, Waymo said it would start offering paid robotaxi rides in Los Angeles. It's been offering free "on tour" rides since it announced plans for the service in January, and last month it received regulatory approval for the expansion to a paid service. NBC News reports: Waymo said Tuesday that more than 50,000 people were on its waitlist to use the service. The company did not say how many users it would allow to fully use the app starting Wednesday. Last month, the company said it was starting with a Los Angeles fleet of fewer than 50 cars covering a 63-square-mile area from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. Los Angeles County has a population of 9.7 million people. The service works similarly to other ride-hailing smartphone apps such as Flywheel, Lyft and Uber, except that Waymo's vehicles have no human drivers present. Riders follow instructions on the app and through the vehicle's sound system, though Waymo workers can assist remotely.

[F]or now, Waymo's only competition is traditional, human-driven car services. 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. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation said the Waymo expansion was happening too soon, without enough local oversight of autonomous vehicle operations, but in an order last month state officials said that those concerns were unfounded.
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Waymo Launches Paid Robotaxi Service In Los Angeles More

Waymo Launches Paid Robotaxi Service In Los Angeles

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  • The long-term potential of self-driving taxis, and the difficulty of competition re-creating the technology, is so huge that this is an endeavor worth losing money on for many years before reaching profitability. Nevertheless I am curious how long it might be until the cars could be built and maintained cheaply enough, and operated with so few remote interventions, as to reduce prices for customers yet turn a profit.

    • Musk recently stated that FSD has cost Tesla $10B so far, and Tesla FSD is many years behind Waymo IMO. I'm sure Waymo has spent a lot more.

    • You're making a better argument for public investment in public transportation than destroying value for shareholders by continuing this dead-end.

      • Public transportation is relatively expensive itself, requires high density, and can often be a poor fit for specific needs.

        Full electric self driving taxis can work well for those oddball trips that aren't a good fit - whether that be too much cargo, unusual time*, or unusual route in an economical fashion.

        Plus, well, if Waymo is now able to charge for their service, it isn't a dead-end. Expensive, yes, but not a dead end.

        *I was a shift worker for much of my career, so yes, I'd be concerned about how your

        • Anywhere that has the density for taxis to work has the density for regularly scheduled bus service. Tulsa fucking Oklahoma has the density for the London Underground. Density isn't the issue with US cities, it's literally the lack of investing in ourselves.

          • No, there fucking isn't. You can have Taxis at far lower densities than a bus service will make sense.

            For example, North Pole, Alaska has taxis. Population 2.24k. From what I remember, it has one bus that runs 3 times a day. Any bus line is going to be virtually empty most of the time, meanwhile you have a driver and a large bus running around. Plus, well, with -30 weather on the regular, people aren't exactly willing to walk far to catch one.

            If you downsize the bus, well, you're just running an ineffi

            • Except we're not talking about cherrypicked edge cases like you're suggesting, we're talking about the cities and suburbs 85% of Americans live in. That comprises less than 1% of America. Quit being obtuse.

              • You are the one who should quit being obtuse. You said "anywhere". That's a pretty absolute statement, so to disprove it, I only needed ONE countering example. Instead, I gave you three countering examples. By the time you cover all my "cherry picked edge cases", you're talking 95% of Americans, at least a couple times a year.

                While North Pole, AK is just one example, there's lots of places like it. They end up covering a substantial amount of territory that is lightly served by Taxi type services, but

  • no driver so can you get an DUI in one? as the law may say app = in control?

    • It's quite possible that it would end up in court, I think. Depends on how long it takes before a police officer and/or prosecutor gets stupid about it.

      In general, I'd expect prosecutors to shy well clear of such cases because drunk people taking a self driving taxi home is much better than them attempting to drive.

      While in some areas you can get hit for DUI if you're sleeping in the back seat of the parked car, it is normally only prosecuted when it's "beyond a reasonable doubt" that you had been driving.

  • It will all come down to safety & insurance co (Score:3)

    by Wycliffe ( 116160 ) on Wednesday April 10, 2024 @10:43AM (#64383336) Homepage

    I wonder who is providing insurance or if they are self insured.
    Insurance companies have started asking if you drive for ride share or food delivery
    because that's a lot of added risk. If robots can have less claims and not have to
    pay a driver then drivers obviously won't be able to compete on cost.

    • Sorta light on details but there is sortof an answer:

      https://www.marketwatch.com/gu... [marketwatch.com]


      According to Tilia Gode, head of risk and insurance at Waymo, insurance for autonomous vehicles isn’t any different than for human-driven cars. She likens the insurance that Waymo has for its Level 4 vehicles to that of fleet insurance held by a taxi cab company.

      “Just like any commercial entity, we have insurance coverage in place that covers the Waymo driver over the course of the driving task,” Gode exp

  • WARNING: Rant ahead

    During this morning commute* a human driver suddenly jutted in front of me while I was changing lanes on the highway. I had to slam on the breaks and the car behind me came close to plowing into my tail. Not the first time I've come close to Smashville in the highway. I was rear-ended by a drunk lady once, but it wasn't during commuting. My back is still wonky from that.

    Bots couldn't be any worse than these moron humans. And bots get better with time, while humans seem to be getting wors [usatoday.com]

  • Well, it doesn't matter who goes on the unemployment line, or who dies--as long as all the money is centralized in one place. Robotaxis will really help the homeless people in LA get jobs. : P

  • What is the price? And, if it is undercutting taxi and uber, is there a case for a lawsuit for predatory business practice?

    • They are a taxi. Operating illegally almost everywhere that medallions are required to prevent taxis from choking streets.

      • 1. They're operating hardly anywhere
        2. In the cities they are operating in, as far as I know, unlike Uber, they have full permission.

        • If they had full permission, they'd be operating marked cars instead of trying to hide in the crowd and telling people to look for some rando with a specific plate number. Which is something that Uber does in other countries, just not in the US unless you're obviously LGBTQ or black.

          • Uh, I was talking about Waymo. I'm sorry, I missed the title - it's so rarely changed, I thought you were talking about the subject of the Op, which is Waymo, not Uber.

            Thus "In the cities they're operating in, as far as I know, unlike uber, they have full permission."

            • Well, for San Fransico, Waymo has permission to operate as autonomous cars but no permission to operate taxis. They're doing that part illegally.

              • Do you have a source that they're not allowed to operate as taxis? Just curious, because "unsaid" doesn't necessarily mean "illegal".

                Found that the state regulatory board [washingtonpost.com] voted to allow them.

                Given that a regulatory body voted to allow them, I'd judge them legal. The actual rules and regulations may not be fully public at this point.

    • In the USA, no there wouldn't generally be a case for "predatory business practice". If you can truly operate cheaper than the competition, for example, like not having to pay a driver, then you can legitimately charge less.

      They're probably losing money if you include R&D, but charging money will enable them to stem that bleed some.

      I think they'll be fine on that front as long as they are charging more than the marginal cost of providing the ride. It's not like they're using money earned from taxi ope

  • https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

    GM's Cruise robotaxis are back in Phoenix — but people are driving them. General Motors' Cruise is redeploying robotaxis in Phoenix after nearly five months of paused operations, the company said in a blog post. The catch? The cars will be in “manual mode,” so they won't be driving themselves.

  • "Waymo One currently operates 24/7 across 63 square miles of LA. From Santa Monica to Downtown, let the Waymo Driver take the wheel."

    According to Waymo, sometimes "you may notice" that there is a Waymo operator in the driver's seat. So, some trips will have drivers. (The wording is hilarious: like you're so out of it that you might not notice that the car has a human driver!)

    I wonder what happens if a passenger sitting in the driver's seat tries to actuate any controls, like the steering wheel or brakes. Do

  • What a great day for the medical industry.

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