Waymo Expands to Denver and Seattle (techcrunch.com) 40
Waymo is expanding its U.S. robotaxi footprint by bringing its Jaguar I-Pace SUVs and Zeekr vans to Denver and Seattle. Testing is set to begin this week, with commercial rides expected as early as 2026. TechCrunch reports: The vehicles will be manually driven to start, before the company starts testing its autonomous tech in both cities. Waymo told TechCrunch that it hopes to start offering robotaxi trips in Denver next year and the Seattle metropolitan area "as soon as we're permitted to do so." Denver and Seattle will be two of the most extreme-weather cities that Waymo is feeling out, giving it a chance to test out its tech in snow, wind, and rain that is harder to come by in places like Phoenix. The report notes that Waymo currently operates more than 2,000 robotaxis in the U.S., concentrated in cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta. The self-driving car company is expanding to Dallas, Miami, Washington D.C., and New York, while also "dipping its toes" in additional markets such as Philadelphia, Las Vegas, and Houston.
Further reading: 'Why Do Waymos Keep Loitering in Front of My House?'
Further reading: 'Why Do Waymos Keep Loitering in Front of My House?'
Extreme Weather (Score:2)
Seattle has extreme weather...? That's news to me!
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Seattle gets its fair share of fog and heavy rain all winter long
Meanwhile, Denver will get snow
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Seattle has 150 rainy days a year. Just unsteady piss coming from the sky. Our average rainfall per rainy day is measured in mm.
As for fog? maybe 1 or 2 days a year.
Either way, having lived in other parts of the country- nothing about Seattle's weather is extreme.
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They've never endured the tornado sirens.
Listened to the 60-70 lightning strikes per minute 3 times a week.
Now, California- I'll grant is pretty tame. But they still get crazier rains than we do when they get them, which is just about yearly.
I did live in Oklahoma. Did drive regularly dow
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I often travel to Seattle for work. My experience is that weather there is not extreme, just very annoying.
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Seattle and Chicago have almost identical annual rainfall totals. Seattle just gets a slow mist (not even rain most days) vs Chicago getting it all in 30 seconds.
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I lived in the midwest.
Also similar annual rainfalls- but you know what I've never had in Seattle? 12 inches of rain in a day, lol
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Well, while it might not be "Fairbanks, AK" weather, it's probably a lot more harsh than, say, LA, Texas, and the other places they've been operating.
Looking at a list: They're in Phoenix AZ, Los Angeles CA, Atlanta GA, and Austin TX.
Of their existing locations, Atlanta gets the most snowfall - 1.5-2.2 inches/year.
Looking it up though, Seattle averages only 4-6 inches of snow a year. I'm honestly shocked. Would have thought it more, being almost as far north as Minot, ND, which gets 40-50 inches/year, w
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it's probably a lot more harsh than, say, LA, Texas, and the other places they've been operating.
How do you figure?
LA has about 3x as many hot days per summer.
And yes, the ocean is responsible for our temperate climate.
Actual climactic breakdown [cec.org]
As you can see, the Pacific Northwest is the mildest climate on the continent.
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Heat is a different challenge than cold, obviously. All heat does is challenge your cooling systems. You actually get more grip with hot tires. Cold brings snow and ice, which changes driving conditions.
Rain cuts traction some, but visibility by potentially a lot.
Snow and ice bring fun with traction and concealed road markings.
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But we were discussing mild.
Mild weather has a definition, and it precludes hot (Southern California and Texas) and humid (Texas), and days over 0.5" of precipitation.
By the definition of "mild days", I sincerely doubt any major metro has more days in North America than Seattle.
Whether "mild" is better for an EV than "hot" is an entirely different question, and I tend to agree with you on that.
Mild, I do not think, is what they want.
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Mediterranean climate.
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What they want is probably a steady increase in weather events actually. They started in LA for very good reasons - favorable weather conditions, favorable government conditions. Now they want to spread out for more testing in less optimal conditions, now that they have a baseline they can adapt and tune.
Each city should make reaching for the next one a bit faster.
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We have "drizzly" weather on average.
Los Angeles gets thunderstorms at the end of the summer that drop up to an inch per hour. Here, we'd call that the end times. They get it every year.
Maybe they just want to improve their ability to drive in really light rain. We've got that in spades.
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Well, I wasn't considering "mild" in the context of humans, but in terms of self-driving cars. With them, the modifications for driving in the heat, at least until the pavement starts melting, are minimal.
You might be right about Seattle. Consider that when I looked up Seattle's actual weather, I ended up calling it a "baby step" in terms of extending autonomous cars into more extreme climates.
I was figuring that a northern state would have more severe weather, I admitted I was wrong in my post original p
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As pointed out elsewhere, there are places with similar numbers with weather nowhere near ours.
For example, our 37 or so inches of precipitation, are spread across ~168 days.
The average rainy day here is about 50mm of precipitation- it's not what most people would even call "rain".
Snow? It's true that it snows... but events of snow actually sticking to the road are as far as 5 years apart.
Severe weather events? Say- a storm that actuall
Re:Extreme Weather (Compared to current footprint) (Score:3)
Seattle has extreme weather...? That's news to me!
Why yes it does! Seattle has between 4 and 14 seasons, depending on how sensitive you are to the false season changes and how smoky the seasons become.
But most importantly, compared to the existing Waymo service areas (San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Austin, and Atlanta), both Denver and Seattle have more seasonal weather variations in any 3-month period.
Denver gets things like frost-to-extreme heat-to-snowfall within arbitrary 36-hour periods, and Seattle goes from 30s with marine clouds (mist an
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I won't say it doesn't happen- but I can count the number of times I've experienced it in the last 40 years on 1 hand.
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And that's the gist of Waymo's deployment; there's more variability/extremes in Denver and/or Seattle during any given year than those 5 other markets combined. (So I wouldn't argue about their usage of "extreme weather
Seattle (Score:2)
The hobo steeplechase.
Oh, joy (Score:2)
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I don't look forward to Waymo vehicles blocking two lane loads like CO 93 in a snow storm. It's bad enough when people with crappy tires do it.
Why do you think that will happen? The Waymo vehicles are all-wheel drive, and I think you can expect them to have good tires, probably even snow tires.
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Why do you think that will happen? The Waymo vehicles are all-wheel drive, and I think you can expect them to have good tires, probably even snow tires.
Lack of any visible lane markings during heavy snow storms is one reason. How well do those vehicles pick up the road edge markers on posts? Hope the automated vehicles will be kept off the roads in heavy snow.
LiquidASS (Score:2)
I see a major problem with these unmanned taxis. What keeps someone from blowing off something from Liquid ASS [liquidass.com] in one of these things and walking away?
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I see a major problem with these unmanned taxis. What keeps someone from blowing off something from Liquid ASS in one of these things and walking away?
Having their face recorded on video and their credit card on file to be billed and/or prosecuted afterwards would deter many. Of course the hard-core troublemakers would use a face mask, and a fake or stolen credit card, and would probably skip the prank-fart-bomb kiddy stuff and strap in an IED instead.
OTOH you could do a lot of the same shenanigans with a traditional human-driven taxi as well, with less chance of being caught on video afterwards. So it isn't clear that the problem is any worse for Waymo
But more importantly (Score:2)
How big of a dick has Musk drawn on the Robotaxi coverage map? After all, all the paid for "reviewers" have unanimously agreed that driving a Robotaxi feels more natural and lifelike than a Waymo, funny they all used the same terms too.
Re:But more importantly (Score:4, Interesting)
They're awesome (Score:3)
I dislike Google's actions and influence extremely so I'm not sure how to feel about this in general, but the tech is really nice.
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Little kids can take a turn without looking, without any warning. Unless you want to pass a kid and trust your luck, you will need a to have quite a lot of space.
Personally I like Google. Compare it to some other companies:
- Oracle and what they did with Java or other things.
- Microsoft, how they want to lock-in users to their software.
- Apple, how they want to lock-in users to their hardware.
- IBM and their crappy software
Google on the other hand:
- Gives free folded proteins and tries to create cure for ev
Billionare Companies Can do Anything They Want (Score:2)