Waymo Set To Double To 20 Million Rides As Self-Driving Reaches Tipping Point (msn.com) 45
Google's self-driving taxi service Waymo has surpassed 10 million total paid rides, marking a significant milestone in the transition of autonomous vehicles from novelty to mainstream transportation option. The company's growth trajectory, WSJ argues, shows clear signs of exponential scaling, with weekly rides jumping from 10,000 in August 2023 to over 250,000 currently. Waymo is on track to hit 20 million rides by the end of 2025. The story adds: This is not just because Waymo is expanding into new markets. It's because of the way existing markets have come to embrace self-driving cars.
In California, the most recent batch of quarterly data reported by the company was the most encouraging yet. It showed that Waymo's number of paid rides inched higher by roughly 2% in both January and February -- and then increased 27% in March. In the nearly two years that people in San Francisco have been paying for robot chauffeurs, it was the first time that Waymo's growth slowed down for several months only to dramatically speed up again. Waymo currently operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with expansion planned for Austin, Atlanta, Miami, and Washington D.C. The service faces incoming competition from Tesla, which plans to launch its own robotaxi service in Austin this month. Waymo remains unprofitable despite raising $5.6 billion in funding last year.
In California, the most recent batch of quarterly data reported by the company was the most encouraging yet. It showed that Waymo's number of paid rides inched higher by roughly 2% in both January and February -- and then increased 27% in March. In the nearly two years that people in San Francisco have been paying for robot chauffeurs, it was the first time that Waymo's growth slowed down for several months only to dramatically speed up again. Waymo currently operates in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, with expansion planned for Austin, Atlanta, Miami, and Washington D.C. The service faces incoming competition from Tesla, which plans to launch its own robotaxi service in Austin this month. Waymo remains unprofitable despite raising $5.6 billion in funding last year.
Proving the concept (Score:4)
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Every single ride is more data for them to work with and more money to do research with
The problem is they don't need to repeat the same boring, uneventful drive over and over again. They need more data on fringe cases - like a deer suddenly darting onto the road - and those are unusual and high-risk cases that often result in vehicle damage or injury. Shuttling people back and forth across the same route over and over again isn't really that useful for expanding to different routes or new environments where these fringe cases are more likely to occur.
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Every single ride is more data for them to work with and more money to do research with
The problem is they don't need to repeat the same boring, uneventful drive over and over again. They need more data on fringe cases - like a deer suddenly darting onto the road - and those are unusual and high-risk cases that often result in vehicle damage or injury. Shuttling people back and forth across the same route over and over again isn't really that useful for expanding to different routes or new environments where these fringe cases are more likely to occur.
They're not running a bus service. They're not shuttling people back and forth on the same route: they're operating in large, complex cities where all sorts of things happen. In the end it's a numbers game, there will be many boring rides, and once in a while a few novel things will happen.
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In the dozen or so rides I used Waymo for out in SF on every one of them it had to deal with something unpredicatable, double parked cars, crowded intersections with multiple cars trying to "get out in front", pedestrians crossing middle of roads, cyclists in car lanes. It does imo a very good job at dealing with these, if anything I am always surprised how assertive it was, like they've programmed it to defend it's space so it reacts more lke you would expect a human driver to be (a lil' bit of dick)
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Hmm... That's what they're doing. They encounter what's currently a fringe case and adapt for that. They'll then expand and repeat the process. As they grow, they'll learn more as they encounter more. They've already encountered all sorts of edge case experiences. They already have humans, animals, and cars darting into the road and a remarkably good safety record.
I did chuckle a bit at the 'exponential' bit. It may appear so, but it'll really be sigmoidal eventually (assuming they continue to grow).
But, th
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> like a deer suddenly darting onto the road
You don't seem to get just how dynamic and chaotic cities are. So far as a self-driving AI responding to unexpected obstacles is concerned; a deer suddenly darting into traffic on road up by Yosemite or Tahoe is really no different from some crackhead suddenly darting into traffic on Market Street or Van Ness... except the crackhead is lighter and will do less damage to the car if they collide. In fact, given that forrest roads tend not to have street parking
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Waymo does operate in more locations than I had thought, but their operating zone within those cities is still pretty limited (for example, in LA only a fraction of the city is covered by Waymo: https://waymo.com/waymo-one-lo... [waymo.com]). Apparently they are working on expanding to new cities (such as DC, ha, that should be fun), although they spend extensive time initially mapping. My big
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It looks like cities with fair weather, no snow and limited rain with newer cleanly constructed and laid out roads that are pre-mapped in exquisite detail ahead of time and curated with constant updates are successful in limited areas of those cities. It remains to be seen how this will expand to areas where all external sensors on all vehicles fail regularly, areas with older badly laid out roads and intersections, and rural areas will actually pan out. Maybe in 50 years but we are going to see the lowest hanging fruit areas fill fast then completely stall out like we are seeing with AI.
Los Angeles decisively fails the "newer cleanly constructed and laid out roads " test. Citation: I live here. Another test: "that are pre-mapped in exquisite detail ahead of time and curated with constant updates are successful in limited areas of those cities" in spite of socially driven apps like Waze, construction zones are plentiful surprises, and it is common for streets to become blocked so that Wazers don't get shortcutted through the canyon roads.
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FWIW Waymo does claim that they can cope with snow and rain. Their service does operate on days when it is raining.
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Never been to San Francisco huh?
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Scaling up physical objects takes at least 20 years on global scale, so they have plenty of time before they run out of sunny roads.
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That's the plan (Score:4, Insightful)
>>Waymo remains unprofitable despite raising $5.6 billion in funding last year.
That's the plan. Just like Uber ran at a loss for years, undercutting taxi services until they captured the market, then jacked up prices and squeezed their employees (sorry, "contractors") after they had no more competition. Now robotaxis will do the same thing to them.
Re: That's the plan (Score:2)
Uber was always supposed to use humans only as a temporary measure until they could get self driving vehicles.
So more people (Score:2)
Oh goodie (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile there is a huge automation push going on for white collar workers and we are almost certainly going into a massive recession caused by out of control tax cuts for the ultra wealthy funded by large tax increases on the working class via tariffs.
Forget recession we are going into a depression. And I don't think we are ever coming out. Christ I wish this could have waited until I died.
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"I didn't force them."
*Looks around the bar and shouts* "Did any of you force people drive for Uber?"
Surprisingly, one blue-haired man drinking an appletini (at least that's the assumption) raised ziz hand.
"See? Nobody forced anyone to do anything of the sort."
Have fun being homeless (Score:2)
If you own a house you will eventually be forced the mortgage it. I'm going to guess they will get you with medicine and medical care. You're here so I know you're not a young man. They will raise the price of the pills and doctor visits to keep you alive.
Eventually you will borrow money and eventually mortga
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Deepmind is working on making drugs with AI and they have made good progress with it too. I think it is more likely that within few years we have a cure for everything. Even aging. And the price will be eventually really low due to automation handling the work. Not only for drugs, but for everything. We have seen prices dropping due to automation already in the past.
I think society will at some point change to some kind of communism or StarTrek-utopia. But before that happens, times can be rough for some pe
The price isn't going to be low (Score:2)
Old economy businesses had to compete and they wanted as many customers as they could get.
New economy antitrust law no longer exists because those are bureaucrats and we hate bureaucrats. And businesses look at Apple with their tiny customer base and huge profit margins and say I want that!
The change is going to be techno feudalism. We are all going to basically have our property and our money taken from us and should moved to v
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We forced approximately 10 million people into driving Uber for a living and now we are going to take that away from them.
This has been Uber's plan for quite a while. Even though Uber has given up on developing its own robotaxis, it has partnerships with many robotaxi makers, including Waymo. There's even a report [automotiveworld.com] that 20% of Uber rides in Austin are serviced with Waymo cars.
Uber is trying to benefit its stockholders, not its employees (or independent contractors). If it could do so today, it would eliminate all its human drivers now. The human drivers were intended to be just a temporary stepping stone.
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This has been Uber's plan for quite a while. ... The human drivers were intended to be just a temporary stepping stone.
Uber just never bothered to tell their employees that was the plan. So, eventually, *Surprise*!
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Ever actually try to drive for Uber? It's like trying to mine cryptocurrency at home. Seems like the market is saturated with folks doing it who are oblivious to its unprofitable nature, or they're just driving an EV and getting free electricity from Mom and Dad.
If you're gonna lament jobs going away, they should at least be a good well-paying jobs. Driving for Uber is a side hustle for college kids who don't have real expenses and cannot grasp how poorly it truly pays, once you factor in your overhead c
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I'm confused. Is working as an Uber drive a good thing, or a bad thing? If people were "forced" to drive Ubers, wouldn't it be good if those jobs were replaced by robots so they can't be "forced" to do that work anymore?
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Uber drivers are still doing just fine, thank you. Even in Phoenix, where Waymo started. Even at more than 150 million monthly active users, Uber is still growing, not shrinking. https://backlinko.com/uber-use... [backlinko.com]
tipping point (Score:2)
I think this tipping point is the point at which the bullshit gets deeper and stinks more.
You can pry the steering wheel out of my cold dead hands.
I have a question (Score:2)
I feel like all we need is one incident where they all stop dur
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If the cell data network goes down due to a power outage or hack or malfunction or ransomware or whatever, do the cars just stop?
This is the problem with Waymo: they are keeping their data and technology secret. We have no idea what will happen.
Re:I have a question (Score:4, Informative)
According to Waymo themselves they say the cars are not reliant on an always-available internet connection:
"We believe the most optimal way to operate autonomous driving technology is for the compute to be on board and for it to make decisions, without needing to rely on cell signals and remote operators," the spokesperson wrote. "We don't want to have a situation where, say, if the car lost cell connection, it couldn't make a left turn. Therefore, everything from custom made maps to robust neural nets that inform our perception and routing runs on board."
https://www.lightreading.com/i... [lightreading.com]
Well that's terrifying (Score:2)
They can say they want whatever they want. I want a billion dollars and a Porsche. I'm sure the car isn't just going to grind into a halt but it's frightening to think of what what happened if a solar storm took out the cell phone network for an hour.
Not that any of us has any say in this Grand experiment on our public roads. There is trillions of dollars to be made replacing all those taxi drivers so we can suck it.
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Not surprising (Score:2)
Waymo remains unprofitable despite raising $5.6 billion in funding last year.
Their cars are Jaguars with $15k (or so) of extra hardware tacked on. That's before paying all the researchers.
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Research cost does not matter if they can sell on global scale (which I am sure they are aiming for). And you are making wrong comparison. The car does not cost 15k more, that is the cost of the driver for perhaps 3 or more years. So you are getting a taxi driver for 5k per year.
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So you are getting a taxi driver for 5k per year.
According to some of the complains about low pay, it may be what Uber drivers may be down to (or heading to) these days. Not that that is a survivable wage.
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Roller Coasters (Score:2)
People love roller coasters - the thrill of potential injury or death, the feeling of being at total mercy of a mechanical contraption.
So, yeah, handing your life over to a driverless car makes sense.
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and they get any one the car hit's to auto take the EULA that lets them get off the hook!