<story><title>Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/waymo-now-testing-its-self-driving-cars-on-public-roads-with-no-one-at-the-wheel/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aidenn0</author><text>I still think that proper self-driving cars are such a paradigm shift that predictions of how it will work are still up in the air.&lt;p&gt;For example, right now I live on the west coast and my parents live on the east coast.  4 kids, Minimum of 40 hour drive or $3500 flight.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s one tiny example:&lt;p&gt;I can work remotely for a few weeks and my boss doesn&amp;#x27;t mind.  The kids sleep for 8+ hours at night.  Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights driving for 12 hours (mostly sleeping) means I am at my parent&amp;#x27;s house on Tuesday and I either take Monday as vacation or work remotely from a friend&amp;#x27;s house in Ohio.  We see friends in flyover country that we rarely visit or see national parks on Saturday and Sunday.&lt;p&gt;I can now take the whole family to my parents taking just 2 days of vacation&amp;#x2F;remote for the trip, for only the depreciation cost on my car.  Car trip isn&amp;#x27;t too bad because the kids are awake for a total of the running time of 6 movies.&lt;p&gt;Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of driving isn&amp;#x27;t the dollars, but the time.</text></item><item><author>LrnByTeach</author><text>Here is the most probable scenarios I foresee.&lt;p&gt;If you are a pessimist about autonomous being bigger part of transpiration then add 2 years to DATES shown below.&lt;p&gt;2021 : Electric Self-driving on-demand FLEET Car 1000 miles&amp;#x2F;month SUBSCRIPTION from Google, DiDi, Uber, Renault&amp;#x2F;Nissan,Tesla, VW,Toyota,GM  for $400&amp;#x2F;month&lt;p&gt;2024 :same 1000 miles&amp;#x2F;month SUBSCRIPTION  $200&amp;#x2F;month&lt;p&gt;At $200&amp;#x2F;month Subscription price for 1000 miles&amp;#x2F;month (which is average US driver car mileage&amp;#x2F;month), savings are so big as average car ownership is around $400&amp;#x2F;month ( AAA Estimate ) , all inclusive of&lt;p&gt;- Car depreciation&lt;p&gt;- Insurance cost&lt;p&gt;- gasoline cost&lt;p&gt;- Repairs &amp;amp; maintenance costs&lt;p&gt;- extra 1 hours&amp;#x2F;day you get in NOT-Driving&lt;p&gt;(EDIT: This Model I mentioned is Summon only, there is NO OWNERSHIP of the Car, is it monthly pay instead of per RIDE Pay .
  In this Model, All the Major CAR Manufactures of today offer these FLEETS with monthly pay of 1000&amp;#x2F;miles month SUBSCRIPTIONS.&lt;p&gt;Being a) no-driver Cost b) ELECTRIC c) RIDE Sharing d) mass adoption -- is the key for Lower price tag of $200&amp;#x2F;month 
 )&lt;p&gt;The above is Phase 1,  in Phase 2 starting 2025 Google will be supplying only &amp;quot;end-to-end Autonomous vehicle Software system&amp;quot;  for a fee of $5000&amp;#x2F;year per car for ALL the CAR FLEET companies .&lt;p&gt;Google will run small FLEET of Autonomous CARs for the purpose of &amp;quot;Reference implementation of Software&amp;quot; much like &amp;quot;Pixel Android Phones&amp;quot; to showcase the Reference implementation of Android ( for all other Android Vendors )</text></item><item><author>a9a</author><text>It will be interesting to see how Lyft&amp;#x27;s partnership with Waymo evolves given this tech announcement and Waymo&amp;#x27;s acknowledgment that they plan to offer their own ridesharing service.&lt;p&gt;Lyft&amp;#x27;s approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption is correct, Lyft ends up in the great position of being compatible with all major self-driving providers before any of them can feasibly launch a standalone service without Lyft&amp;#x27;s driver network (who wants to take a car service that doesn&amp;#x27;t take you downtown? Or doesn&amp;#x27;t work in the rain?). Ideally, this means Lyft can negotiate favorable terms with all the providers and maintain their position as marketplace brokering between riders and ride providers (either human or robot).&lt;p&gt;But, if this announcement means Waymo is truly way ahead of the competition, is Lyft aiding and abetting its own demise by covering Waymo&amp;#x27;s short-term holes (weather, urban areas, etc) up until the day that Waymo can cut Lyft out and run their own service? If Waymo is the only self-driving game in town, and they solve the urban case, why do they need Lyft? I wonder if we&amp;#x27;ll see any tension develop between the two if leadership at Lyft starts to get concerned about this scenario being a likely outcome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>landryraccoon</author><text>&amp;gt; Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of driving isn&amp;#x27;t the dollars, but the time.&lt;p&gt;This is why I think self driving cars will make traffic worse, not better. The more comfortable it is to be inside a car and the less people mind long car rides, the more people will drive (self driving or otherwise). If road infrastructure is the same, that necessarily means a much higher density of cars on the road. It&amp;#x27;s possible that self driving cars will be more space efficient on the road, but ten times more efficient? I think it&amp;#x27;s more likely that there will just be way more cars on the road and traffic will worsen considerably.</text></comment>
<story><title>Waymo now testing its self-driving cars on public roads with no one at the wheel</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/07/waymo-now-testing-its-self-driving-cars-on-public-roads-with-no-one-at-the-wheel/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>aidenn0</author><text>I still think that proper self-driving cars are such a paradigm shift that predictions of how it will work are still up in the air.&lt;p&gt;For example, right now I live on the west coast and my parents live on the east coast.  4 kids, Minimum of 40 hour drive or $3500 flight.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s one tiny example:&lt;p&gt;I can work remotely for a few weeks and my boss doesn&amp;#x27;t mind.  The kids sleep for 8+ hours at night.  Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights driving for 12 hours (mostly sleeping) means I am at my parent&amp;#x27;s house on Tuesday and I either take Monday as vacation or work remotely from a friend&amp;#x27;s house in Ohio.  We see friends in flyover country that we rarely visit or see national parks on Saturday and Sunday.&lt;p&gt;I can now take the whole family to my parents taking just 2 days of vacation&amp;#x2F;remote for the trip, for only the depreciation cost on my car.  Car trip isn&amp;#x27;t too bad because the kids are awake for a total of the running time of 6 movies.&lt;p&gt;Car usage will go up by an order of magnitude because a major cost of driving isn&amp;#x27;t the dollars, but the time.</text></item><item><author>LrnByTeach</author><text>Here is the most probable scenarios I foresee.&lt;p&gt;If you are a pessimist about autonomous being bigger part of transpiration then add 2 years to DATES shown below.&lt;p&gt;2021 : Electric Self-driving on-demand FLEET Car 1000 miles&amp;#x2F;month SUBSCRIPTION from Google, DiDi, Uber, Renault&amp;#x2F;Nissan,Tesla, VW,Toyota,GM  for $400&amp;#x2F;month&lt;p&gt;2024 :same 1000 miles&amp;#x2F;month SUBSCRIPTION  $200&amp;#x2F;month&lt;p&gt;At $200&amp;#x2F;month Subscription price for 1000 miles&amp;#x2F;month (which is average US driver car mileage&amp;#x2F;month), savings are so big as average car ownership is around $400&amp;#x2F;month ( AAA Estimate ) , all inclusive of&lt;p&gt;- Car depreciation&lt;p&gt;- Insurance cost&lt;p&gt;- gasoline cost&lt;p&gt;- Repairs &amp;amp; maintenance costs&lt;p&gt;- extra 1 hours&amp;#x2F;day you get in NOT-Driving&lt;p&gt;(EDIT: This Model I mentioned is Summon only, there is NO OWNERSHIP of the Car, is it monthly pay instead of per RIDE Pay .
  In this Model, All the Major CAR Manufactures of today offer these FLEETS with monthly pay of 1000&amp;#x2F;miles month SUBSCRIPTIONS.&lt;p&gt;Being a) no-driver Cost b) ELECTRIC c) RIDE Sharing d) mass adoption -- is the key for Lower price tag of $200&amp;#x2F;month 
 )&lt;p&gt;The above is Phase 1,  in Phase 2 starting 2025 Google will be supplying only &amp;quot;end-to-end Autonomous vehicle Software system&amp;quot;  for a fee of $5000&amp;#x2F;year per car for ALL the CAR FLEET companies .&lt;p&gt;Google will run small FLEET of Autonomous CARs for the purpose of &amp;quot;Reference implementation of Software&amp;quot; much like &amp;quot;Pixel Android Phones&amp;quot; to showcase the Reference implementation of Android ( for all other Android Vendors )</text></item><item><author>a9a</author><text>It will be interesting to see how Lyft&amp;#x27;s partnership with Waymo evolves given this tech announcement and Waymo&amp;#x27;s acknowledgment that they plan to offer their own ridesharing service.&lt;p&gt;Lyft&amp;#x27;s approach to self-driving partnerships in general seems to rest on the assumption that self-driving providers will catch up to each other before any of them can fully handle everything a human driver can do. If this assumption is correct, Lyft ends up in the great position of being compatible with all major self-driving providers before any of them can feasibly launch a standalone service without Lyft&amp;#x27;s driver network (who wants to take a car service that doesn&amp;#x27;t take you downtown? Or doesn&amp;#x27;t work in the rain?). Ideally, this means Lyft can negotiate favorable terms with all the providers and maintain their position as marketplace brokering between riders and ride providers (either human or robot).&lt;p&gt;But, if this announcement means Waymo is truly way ahead of the competition, is Lyft aiding and abetting its own demise by covering Waymo&amp;#x27;s short-term holes (weather, urban areas, etc) up until the day that Waymo can cut Lyft out and run their own service? If Waymo is the only self-driving game in town, and they solve the urban case, why do they need Lyft? I wonder if we&amp;#x27;ll see any tension develop between the two if leadership at Lyft starts to get concerned about this scenario being a likely outcome.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>titzer</author><text>&amp;gt; Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights driving for 12 hours (mostly sleeping)&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really sad that the United States has let passenger rail deteriorate to the point that people are forced into this situation. Really, really poor foresight.</text></comment>