Comment by xnx

5 hours ago

Apologies for repeating myself, but it's hard to convey how far ahead Waymo is in every area: sensors, vehicles, training data, markets served, simulation, infrastructure, operations, regulatory.

They're growing fast, but I do wonder what they see as the bottlenecks: municipal approval, training, manufacturing? It's really unfortunate that lobbying is slowing self-driving rollout in some of the biggest and most important cities: NYC, Chicago, DC.

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xnx

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lanstin  2 hours ago

I just took a Waymo in San Jose, having taken a few from San Francisco - it dropped me off in a place that would have made sense in SF (across the street from my destination at a light, avoiding a U turn) but was terrible in the suburban streetscape where the road was literally 10 lanes 4 / 4 / 2 turning and no one would ever drop someone off like that instead of U turning so they didn't have to cross scary giant traffic.

So weird little things for scaling, but overall it was a good ride till that point. Also, the dropoff was at a hospital/clinic and Lyft for the return trip had no issue with going into the property to the actual destination.

liliumregale  4 hours ago

Is it unfortunate, or just a different priority in a different place?

Those are also cities with a great public option for transit (unlike, say, Dallas or the Bay Area where different municipalities squabble). One might laud New York driving people away from car culture when the subways/buses can serve more people, greener.

  • xnx  3 hours ago

    Perhaps, but I can't think of why Waymo should be prohibited but not Uber or taxis.

    • egypturnash  2 hours ago

      Taxis and barely-legal app taxis both require a human to drive. Someone who's earning a living doing this, and paying taxes to NYC. Waymo is driven by a robot, owned by a company out in California, who has a lot of lawyers doing their best to avoid as much financial and legal liability as possible. Not that Uber and its ilk isn't doing the same thing but they've still got a tax-paying citizen in the loop.

      The current mayor of NYC is a DemSoc so he might have some ideas about keeping NYC's money in the pockets of middle-class NYC citizens.

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