It will commit to the ride and not cancel.
Ability to scale the amount of Waymo cars to an area is immensely easier than scaling the amount of Uber/Lyft drivers available and willing to go to said area.
[1]https://www.epa.gov/environmental-economics/mortality-risk-v...
A car today at the admittedly high cost estimate of $1M will “pay itself off” versus your labor estimate in less than 8 years. Humans don’t get paid off and then work for free afterwards.
I see very little to suggest that a Waymo car costs less all-in over the course of about two years than a Prius and an Uber driver does, and that's the much more relevant comparison.
Nothing to say that this couldn't change in the future. But that's my guess for the status quo.
$190k - $80k for a jaguar ipace leaves $110k per vehicle for Waymo to work with, multiplied by the size of their fleet. How much do we want to figure a pile of sensors, computer hardware, and custom housings to cost? Minus insurance and electricity, which I don't know how much to figure and the answer is yeah I don't know. $110k over 2 years doesn't seem like that much, but multiplied across a sizable fleet it adds up. I'm sure they're scaling up as fast as they can.
why is 2 years the relevant timeframe?
I mean, if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound? Even if yes, does it matter?
If we're just going to let the robots be the only thing we see all day long, why not just call it - hang up the hats build full AGI and blow up the humans.
I'm surprised there's such a staunch defense.
It's mixed. Driving is both a career and a pastime/hobby. I can certainly see a long term (30+ year) shift to AI driving being a hindrance to the latter, even if the efficiencies would be massive (e.g. there wouldn't be such thing as "stop and go city driving" to the extent of modern day driving. Stop and go is a product of inefficient human sensors and signalling).
As a career, yes. It probably won't exist in 20 years at this rate.
This is an uncharitable reading of someone wanting peace and quiet from time to time.
But yeah, taxis and Ubers can suck sometimes.
Avoiding talking to humans altogether is one thing but couldn't we also just say "sorry I don't feel like chatting" or something like that?
I’ve been hit on by a few Uber drivers. (Early thirties guy.) They stop talking then forget after two seconds. Unfortunately, the person who crosses the first boundary isn’t deterred by the second.
That said, I do appreciate the chutzpah of the driver who tried to invite himself to my date for a threesome.
Not to mention the thousands of people who currently make a respectable living driving people around.
But maybe I’m just one of those extroverts who doesn’t mind being around people.
We will have to agree to disagree on whether it's a beneficial change to society to disrupt human drivers with autonomous drivers. Personally, I found the argument that artists shouldn't be disrupted by AI much more defensible than saying drivers shouldn't be disrupted. It always seemed easy to look at previously disrupted jobs, like people getting up at 4AM to act as manual alarm clocks via peashooters on windows, and say yes, we should replace this simple act of labor with technology.
Maybe. I had a very boring experience overall with mine. I wouldn't have noticed if they were replaced with bots. That could be my lack of extroversion (or maybe getting all introverts myself. Few gave a vibe of wanting to chat. Just a job, after all).
But for the short term, I'm paranoid right now about autonomous driving because it is far from technologically sound. Probably more sound than the average driver, but we know that we hold tech a lot more accountable than humans. humans hold liability in human issues, companies are liable for tech issues and have the money to spend to fight any issues that arise (as we can see in real time with Tesla).
Maybe. Or you've just been "lucky" with the kinds of experiences you've had on Uber.
I've had some really annoying drivers, shitty drivers. People have reported assaults and some have ended up worse.
If this were a daily thing for people (which it could be in the future), I wouldn't want a 1on1 experience every day (twice a day) with a new driver each time, each with their own personalities, driving abilities, and needs at the moment. Forget that.
Sometimes I want a chauffeur, usually one I have a relationship with, often I want a reliable ride. We’re all better off for having the choice.
They ask for temperature and conversation preferences when you order a black car, which I find somewhat funny.
Seems dubious to me. Can't you still call an Uber in SF, where they've had Waymo for a while?
I say "near fully automated" because there's loads of operations involved, including human remote fleet management for when cars get stuck. But even that doesn't scale linearly with the amount of automated vehicles on the road, whereas Uber will always be at least 1:1 human:car.
So I don't see the point of theorizing, when we can get real-world feedback from customers.
I'm comparing costs in other comments in this thread.
as I said, if Waymo is actually charging money now, then real data is much more credible than a theoretical analysis like yours.
A few drives later, I had a group dinner reservation at a restaurant downtown. I'm not a big sports person and I didn't realize I was asking to go downtown on the Saturday before the Super Bowl. Uber told me I had to wait 4 minutes for pickup, but that turned into a 20+ minute wait as driver after driver canceled on me when they saw where I was asking to go. I had to text all of the guests and apologize for being late to my own reservation.
A few drives later, I had a long conversation with a gay driver who recently fled from Iraq because his sexual identity wasn't respected there. I'm a mid-thirties, single male. The first question the driver asked me when I got in the car was if I had a family. I said no. Then he asked if I had a girlfriend. I said no. Then he slowly engaged with me in conversation for 10 minutes trying to figure out if I was a potential date for him and had trouble understanding that while I fully supported his sexual identity that that didn't mean I was an opportunity for connection.
Last weekend, as I was espousing the benefits of Waymo to a friend, they called an Uber while we were heading down from a restaurant at the top of an elevator. When we got down to the bottom floor, he was dismayed. Someone else had gotten into the Uber, the driver didn't check names, and they were now travelling on his dime.
Surely it's not that hard to envision the scenarios in which an autonomous driver might be desirable?