This sentence was a bit cute: "Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at San Francisco International Airport." Yeah, that kind of pilot.
I really had to read through it twice to make sure they were just talking about car taxis picking up travelers, rather than some kind of prototype pilotless commuter helicopter or something.
danielvaughn 2 hours ago [-]
That was my first interpretation, and I was very surprised and kind of afraid. Glad to know they aren't trying for autonomous flight yet.
bdcravens 2 hours ago [-]
I have zero expertise for my claim, but I feel like autonomous flight is easier than autonomous driving.
tim333 1 minutes ago [-]
It depends a bit on your safety standards. There are already autonomous flying things delivering blood and blowing up oil depots where it doesn't matter so much if things go wrong, but to be an airline pilot you have to know how to deal with a huge range of emergencies and things packing up.
jerf 1 hours ago [-]
The hard part of automated driving is dealing with all the ground clutter that planes serenely fly over. If pedestrians could charge out in front of a 777 going 650 mph at 34,000 feet... well... we'd be living in pretty different world! And in that world, flying would be much more difficult. Not just for computers but for humans too.
Flying is obviously much harder than driving, but it's a sort of harder that is generally more amenable to automation, though I still think pilots are a good idea because when it goes wrong it goes wrong much worse.
bluGill 49 minutes ago [-]
Flying is almost always easier than driving. landing is hard. Bad weather is hard. But just flying - human pilots have napped many times over the years and it only rarely is an issue. Airplanes with primitive autopilot are very good.
0_____0 1 hours ago [-]
In the abstract yes but in practice the economic (ratio of cost of pilot to pax miles) and safety context of aviation mean fully autonomous flying has to be extremely robust before it has actual utility in industry.
rkomorn 1 hours ago [-]
In practice, you're also currently very reliant on infrastructure that is definitely not as solid as you want (eg: ILS and GPS can be interfered with quite nastily).
ILS being under maintenance and unavailable for certain runways is also far from unusual.
dcrazy 1 hours ago [-]
On the happy path, yes. Though I don’t think takeoff is automated yet.
Currently we rely very much on the problem solving abilities of human pilots to deal with troublesome situations. Autopilot will disengage in many scenarios.
seanmcdirmid 1 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure drones can already take off on their own. Taking off is a lot easier than landing, and planes have auto-landing tech already.
nradov 34 minutes ago [-]
Drones (both autonomous and remote piloted) have much higher mishap rates than crewed aircraft. Taking off is "easy" until something goes wrong, like a mechanical failure or runway incursion. It's impossible to anticipate and explicitly code for every possible failure mode, so developing autonomous flight control systems that would be safe enough for commercial passenger flights is extremely challenging.
Category IIIC ILS (full auto-land) does exist but requires special equipment for both the aircraft and airport. Human pilots have to actively monitor the system and take back control if anything goes wrong (which does happen).
Garmin also has the Autonomí auto-land system for certain general aviation aircraft which can attempt to land at the closest suitable airport. But this is only used for single pilot operation in case the pilot becomes incapacitated. It isn't suitable for regular flights.
dcrazy 1 hours ago [-]
Takeoff at a commercial airport is a very challenging and potentially dangerous situation. There’s way more margin to abort a landing than a takeoff.
prmoustache 39 minutes ago [-]
OTOH takeoff and landing could in theory be operated by people on the ground, flying simulator style.
I still believe that having an actual pilot inside the plane that care for his own life is not a bad idea vs someone remote feeling a bit disconnected with the reality of a crash.
dcrazy 3 minutes ago [-]
The pilot’s self-preservation instincts aren’t the most important reason to have them onboard. It’s that any loss of communication between the ground and the airplane at any point during either procedure would turn it into an uncontrolled cruise missile.
nradov 32 minutes ago [-]
Remote piloting is how the military operates certain drones like the MQ-1 Predator. The mishap rate is very high relative to crewed aircraft due to network lag and sensor issues. The military is willing to accept some level of equipment loss in order to accomplish their mission but this would never be allowed for commercial airliners.
xyzelement 26 minutes ago [-]
I am not sure why you were down voted. The original meaning of the word pilot is someone who comes aboard a ship for "the last mile" - getting in and out of the harbor and what you are talking about is kinda like that - a person associated with the airport rather than airplane to guide the planes in and out - perhaps using more reliable local communication technology vs what is used to control drones half way around the world.
I have no idea if that works but I thought you were making a good contribution to the conversation by proposing a potential solution to the exact problem everyone is talking about.
csours 54 minutes ago [-]
It's kind of funny how you can both be right.
lawlessone 1 hours ago [-]
It's the failed takeoffs that lead more often to jets leaving the run way and crashing into buildings or trees.
snickerdoodle14 1 hours ago [-]
I also feel like the demand is way, way lower. A pilot can't be that large a % of the cost of a flight. Maybe if we lived in the jetsons era.
rkomorn 1 hours ago [-]
Depends on the size of the plane, really. One of the reasons a few companies were investing in fully autonomous air taxis is because the math on a small piloted aircraft wasn't realistic for a low enough price point to be competitive.
seanmcdirmid 1 hours ago [-]
The problem is actually safety. As automated systems get better, the pilot is left with not much to do, and has to maintain vigilance while being really really bored. It is almost better to have fewer automated systems and give the pilot more things to do during the flight so it is easier to keep them paying attention, or all automated with no human pilot to mess things up.
1 hours ago [-]
1 hours ago [-]
efavdb 1 hours ago [-]
Don’t have a ref but heard that it’s been safe for quite a while but they keep the pilots around due to consumer fear rather than actual improved performance. Curious if anyone can confirm.
rkomorn 1 hours ago [-]
No. Airliners can't even take off on their own yet, and are only allowed to auto-land with zero visibility at a few dozen airports when the pilots, plane, and runway are all current/recently checked.
Look up the Airbus ATTOL project's first automated takeoff a few years ago.
Also, there's virtually no automation when it comes to interacting with ATC.
SoftTalker 42 minutes ago [-]
An airplane will take off when it is properly configured and it hits a certain speed. It's simple aerodynamics/physics. Pilots are there to react to failures and unexpected events.
3ple_alpha 19 minutes ago [-]
There's a bit more to it since you do need to do last bit of configuration (pull up the nose) just as you hit the target speed. But yeah, automatic take-off is quite a bit easier than automatic rejection of take-off.
rkomorn 26 minutes ago [-]
Sure. It'll also land if you don't care about anyone surviving.
csours 40 minutes ago [-]
If you can design the product and environment to fit automation, then automation can be quick and effective.
The less you can change about the product and environment, then automation run slower and less effectively.
Air liner operations could be automated, but the minimum equipment list would be more stringent, the destination airport would not be able to take any equipment out of service for maintenance, visibility minimums would increase, takeoff and landing operations would require more slack time.
Besides all of that, the owner of the airplane would still want to have some crew on board.
In short, it's not worth it yet.
===
There is also the paradox of automation: Automation generally makes the hard parts harder and the easy parts easier.
anonymars 1 hours ago [-]
In a pinch, a car can just put on its hazards and pull over
dcrazy 1 hours ago [-]
That “just” is doing some heavy lifting! The car still has to deal with all the normal hazards of the road while pulling over, plus the hazards it is itself creating by acting abnormally.
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
"Autopilot" already exists when it comes to flying.
bdcravens 2 hours ago [-]
Sure but it's not autonomous in the sense of Waymo (ie, driverless)
In fact, it's pretty routine. Don't have the source at hand, but somewhere around 1% of all landings (at airports with ILS) are autolands.
I think it was Boeing that even requires at least 1 autoland per plane every 30 days or so.
You can find videos of this on YouTube. Completely hands-off.
danielvaughn 1 hours ago [-]
Yes but it should have been obvious that in the context of Waymo + SFO, the implication was autonomous flying of commercial airlines.
seanmcdirmid 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, but autopilot usually just keeps the plane flying in a straight line at some specified altitude, which have been around since 1912. It isn't full self-flying (although we definitely have drones that can fly themselves already, so that tech already exists).
dawnerd 1 hours ago [-]
That's an oversimplification of autopilot systems. They can follow flight routes, avoid traffic (TCAS), even auto land to name a few.
seanmcdirmid 1 hours ago [-]
Auto-landers are not simply classified with autopilots. An autoland system is an advanced function that is part of a modern aircraft's overall autopilot capabilities. A basic autopilot can control an aircraft's attitude and heading, but an autoland system can automatically execute the full landing procedure.
7 minutes ago [-]
loeg 21 minutes ago [-]
The flying kind is a license, not a permit.
simonbw 15 minutes ago [-]
There are driver's licenses and learner's permits. This could be the flying equivalent.
As a European, I can’t help but feel a bit sad that we’re missing out on the driverless side of things. It seems like most of the meaningful deployments are happening in the US (Waymo, Cruise).
I’d really like to see either a Waymo competitor emerge in Europe, or even Waymo themselves operating here. The regulatory environment is obviously more complex, but it’d be great if we didn’t end up years behind on something this transformative.
arcticbull 34 minutes ago [-]
Cars of any sort, self-driving or otherwise, do not solve traffic any more than Uber does because you need to have enough of them to get everyone to and from work at basically the same time. Trains are the only way to address traffic. Trains are self-driving. Europe already has the better self-driving system. It's just boring because self-driving is much easier when you build the road to support it instead of removing all constraints and adding GPUs, lidar sensors, cameras and an army of fall-back operators in overseas call centers.
durandal1 22 minutes ago [-]
Trains will fairly unreliably take you from one place that is not your home, to another place, which is not where you want to go, at a time that is probably not exactly when you wanted to arrive. Freedom of movement is incredibly important, and trains are very rigid in this aspect.
mint5 18 minutes ago [-]
Well That’s certainly not been my experience when visiting Europe. In fact, it many cases it’s been the opposite - having a car would have been restrictive in any major city and a source of friction.
grandinquistor 12 minutes ago [-]
I think the answer to this is microbility bike/scooter sharing (ex: lime)
Trains to cover the longer distance and micro mobility options to get to exactly where you need to go
dieortin 20 minutes ago [-]
Fairly unreliably? Unlike cars, trains do not typically suffer from traffic jams.
arcticbull 21 minutes ago [-]
Try a bicycle or a stroll instead of embracing the WALL-E.
If you feel that way about transit you may not have tried a good transit option like Hong Kong MTR with 90 second headways and travel from and to substantially everywhere you want to be.
There's some self driving tech being developed in Europe, but AFAIK nothing is at the current deployment level of Zoox or Aurora, let alone Waymo.
carlhjerpe 18 minutes ago [-]
Does it matter where it's developed though? Once it's good enough to expand into all major US cities they could look into deploying in Europe too.
Im happy to let Americans be the beta testers
leetharris 3 minutes ago [-]
Cruise has been out of business for almost a year I think.
leesec 13 minutes ago [-]
Cruise is basically winding down. Tesla is the other major competitor
JumpCrisscross 40 minutes ago [-]
> I’d really like to see either a Waymo competitor emerge in Europe, or even Waymo themselves operating here
I think you’ll see American and Chinese self-driving kit in Europe once it matures. It’s just easier to iterate at home, so while the technology advances that’s where it will be.
tuxone 33 minutes ago [-]
Maybe there just not enough interest? After all there is good public transportation (especially rail), increasing biking habits and just loving the driving experience.
petters 11 minutes ago [-]
We can’t even use Waymo when we land at SFO for a visit
ghurtado 41 minutes ago [-]
> As a European, I can’t help but feel a bit sad that we’re missing out on the driverless side of things
I don't know about other countries, but Spain will probably be one of the last ones to get it, thanks to the Uber-powerful (heh) taxi driver lobby
archagon 38 minutes ago [-]
As an American with extensive time spent in Europe, I’d much, much rather have European-style metros and tramways than self-driving cars.
Waymo is a bandaid over our inability to build and maintain public infrastructure. Be sure to cherish what you’ve got.
dgfitz 27 minutes ago [-]
As an American, I think you’re naive and short-sighted.
You must realize that, at some point, self-driving cars will be ubiquitous. Maybe not for 50 years, but they will be.
What you’re actually saying is “I’m virtue-signaling with Europe because that’s what the cool kids do”
archagon 19 minutes ago [-]
…What? What sort of terminally online strawman would be spending his free time “virtue-signaling with Europe” to some anonymous bozos on a tech forum? What a dull and intellectually uncurious reply.
I think self-driving cars may eventually become common in areas where cars are currently common. I think public transit will continue to dominate in parts of the world where it currently dominates, because it is simply a superior user experience for the majority of people when the government cares to invest in it. (Not to mention far cheaper and more egalitarian.)
I am conveying my lived experience in most European cities I've been to.
whiplash451 24 minutes ago [-]
EU’s amazing infrastructure is the Minitel that will prevent it from getting the internet of self-driving.
Subways don’t solve last-mile problems or trucking.
archagon 17 minutes ago [-]
Good. Cars ruin walkable cities, and the last-mile problem can be solved in other ways.
And it's not just the EU. I'm sure that e.g. China and Japan will continue to invest in their excellent public transit infrastructure even when there are more self-driving cars on the road.
aaomidi 10 minutes ago [-]
US and China basically.
standardUser 47 minutes ago [-]
Apollo Go (the Chinese Waymo owned by Baidu) is planning to start road testing in Germany and the UK in 2026, in partnership with Lyft.
whiplash451 26 minutes ago [-]
Wayve?
mtoner23 52 minutes ago [-]
Regulation and under investment
unfitted2545 19 minutes ago [-]
Those darn regulators, don't they realise companies just want what's best for us?
softwaredoug 32 minutes ago [-]
Don't worry, we're missing out on a lot of "progress" on this side of the ocean thanks to Trump's dislike of wind farms and RFK Jr's whole anti-vaxxer thing
Hilift 50 minutes ago [-]
One thing you are missing out on: mandatory loud (97 to 112 db) 1000 Hz audible beep when the vehicle reversing, oh so slowly, such as at the recharging station. Also, constant shop vac five horsepower vacuum cleaner sound. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM
Oh wait, you thought those would be in the middle of nowhere? Nope.
Unless and until those noises that you mention are as annoying as those made by present time ICE vehicles, your point will remain irrelevant.
AlotOfReading 2 hours ago [-]
I'm surprised and incredibly impressed at this announcement. It seems trivial, but the general feeling in the industry has been that SF would fight tooth and nail against robotaxis at SFO.
I genuinely think things have changed with Lurie as mayor and 6 growsf endorsed people on the board.
quotemstr 34 minutes ago [-]
It's going to take a long time for SF to overcome the reputation it built for itself in the 2010s.
khuey 1 hours ago [-]
Recent changes in the composition of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors (i.e. Peskin being out of government) may have something to do with it being easier than expected.
caycep 54 seconds ago [-]
at first I thought they were doing those cargo quad copter things...
Animats 1 hours ago [-]
Waymo got approval for SJC last week. That probably accelerated approval for SFO, which had been stalling. Nice.
When they get clearance to drop people off at the main terminals, that will be more convenient. Pickup at the terminals is harder. There will be a need for a staging area somewhere in the parking structures.
standardUser 1 hours ago [-]
Few major airports I've been to allow Uber/Lyft anywhere near the pickup area, so many fliers are already accustomed to walking a quarter mile or so to their rideshare. But their inability to use the drop-off area is a new inconvenience, and I can see it limiting the appeal.
JumpCrisscross 39 minutes ago [-]
> Few major airports I've been to allow Uber/Lyft anywhere near the pickup area
Few major airports have Waymo at all. Phoenix has allowed pick-up at the airport for ages. (EDIT: Never mind.)
standardUser 28 minutes ago [-]
I'm talking about Uber/Lyft drivers being required by many airports to pick up away from the normal pick-up area, usually down the road a bit or in a parking garage.
dilyevsky 34 minutes ago [-]
Uber black and at least lyft extra room have no problem picking you up at the arrivals
ajmurmann 2 hours ago [-]
Looks like this Kiss & Fly area where pickup will be is at the car rental center.
kotaKat 2 hours ago [-]
Oh, this makes a bit of sense. The Avis/Budget fleet team will be part of managing the vehicles, so they can be quickly cleaned and fueled up when they slide into the airport, too.
Same. I go to the rectal car center at least 4 times each year. I just was there on Saturday and had no idea either. Still don't know what it is other than Waymo pickup.
owlninja 2 hours ago [-]
>rectal car center
Known nickname or typo?
ajmurmann 2 hours ago [-]
Definitely phone autocorrect issue. I'm gonna leave it though
blindriver 2 hours ago [-]
How often do you type "rectal" for that to become an autocorrect default for you??
ghurtado 35 minutes ago [-]
If you are over 50, and serious about not getting colon cancer, maybe a little bit more than one would expect.
buckle8017 2 hours ago [-]
I use Google keyboard without customized auto correct.
It really likes to change random words to inappropriate things.
But I guess that's the people who are typing on phones a lot are typing about.
apwell23 2 hours ago [-]
OP is a urologist
pryelluw 2 hours ago [-]
Otherwise known by its popular name “Cloaca-Rent—A-Car”
SirFatty 2 hours ago [-]
Or both :-D
bombcar 2 hours ago [-]
It - along with cell phone waiting lots - are ways for people to drop others off and avoid the traffic around the terminals themselves.
Which can be bad - I often find it easier to just pay for a few minutes parking on dropoff/pickup.
smelendez 35 minutes ago [-]
I did always find the term kiss and fly confusing and weirdly intimate, as if everyone is getting a ride to the airport from a spouse or parent. Definitely a throwback to another era.
bombcar 7 minutes ago [-]
I think it's also a regional thing; I'd never heard of it.
whycome 1 hours ago [-]
> rectal car center
That's way mo' information than needed thanks.
But seriously. I wonder why they have a designated pickup point if it would make sense to spread the cars out to alleviate traffic bottlenecks.
ghurtado 37 minutes ago [-]
What's even better is the variety of names this thing has. I'm my area, it's the "cell phone lane"
Tossrock 2 hours ago [-]
Does this mean they'll be able to take the freeways to get there? Surface streets from SF to SFO would be pretty slow.
nickvec 2 hours ago [-]
I'd hope so. As an aside, I wish Waymo was more transparent on the app that their cars are not allowed to take passengers on the freeway. I was unaware of this restriction when I booked a ride from SF to Burlingame last month and I was stuck in a Waymo for an hour going down residential streets!
bitpush 2 hours ago [-]
Doesnt it show the route and the ETA before your book the ride?
eptcyka 2 hours ago [-]
No, they need to add a pop up with even more text users will not read.
MostlyStable 2 hours ago [-]
They have had permission to be on freeways for a while [0], although so far they have only done employee testing (I believe)
From the article “ Pickups and dropoffs will initially start at SFO’s Kiss & Fly area – a short AirTrain ride from the terminals – with the intention to explore other locations at the airport in the future.”
davidw 2 hours ago [-]
I wonder how that'd feel. I took a Waymo in SF last fall and I was pretty impressed. But it was also slow city speeds. I wonder if it feels different going at freeway speeds with "no one" at the wheel.
mynameisvlad 2 hours ago [-]
While the margin of error is much lower on a freeway due to the speeds, other drivers are generally a lot more predictable (also in part due to the speeds).
davidw 1 hours ago [-]
Sure - a good freeway is actually a lot more predictable in most circumstances than city driving, so as a problem to solve it's likely a little bit less complicated. What I wonder about is what it feels like as a passenger. I wonder if it would be more or less frightening than being a passenger when my 17 year old is driving.
jdeibele 33 minutes ago [-]
I use adaptive cruise control a lot, where I rely on the car for keeping a safe distance.
I have a limited version of SuperCruise which means it operates hands-free on freeways but nowhere else. My wife's Equinox EV has the regular version, which operates on a lot of arterials near us and has more capabilities. The first time that the Equinox signaled, changed lanes to pass, signaled, then changed lanes back was shocking.
We moved to a small town and drive a lot more than we used to and I find that having those capabilities really helps relieve the stress.
I will say that I move to the center lane when going through a notorious set of curves on I-5 in Portland because my Bolt doesn't steer as smoothly as I'd like near the concrete barricades. I wanted SuperCruise because it has a fantastic safety record. There are lots of times it's not available but when it is, I have near-total confidence in it.
rdoherty 18 minutes ago [-]
I took a Waymo that drove on an 'expressway' which had a speed limit of 40mph and it was definitely a different feeling. I did feel a bit scared, at 25mph it feels like a gentle theme park ride, at 40mph it's beyond that and feels dangerous.
TulliusCicero 35 minutes ago [-]
They're still working on freeways, doing employee riding testing.
buckle8017 1 hours ago [-]
The surface street route that bypasses 101 near Brisbane is surprisingly often faster than 101.
People love crashing there.
roughly 2 hours ago [-]
Boy, if they could actually navigate terminal traffic, I’d give ‘em true self driving.
wagwang 2 hours ago [-]
SFO traffic is not bad at all. Send them to LAX and we're talking.
jayd16 2 hours ago [-]
Its not true self driving until the Waymo asks if dropping you off at arrivals is ok.
andy99 2 hours ago [-]
There's the big sign there telling you to go to arrivals for drop-off. This is probably a stupid question but can Waymo cars interpret those temporary display signs and follow them? Would it?
OkayPhysicist 1 hours ago [-]
It seems to handle the standardized ones (think "construction ahead, detour left") perfectly well from the rides I've taken, but there's all sorts of ways they could be 'cheating' on that.
apwell23 2 hours ago [-]
Thats AGI
ian-g 2 hours ago [-]
I'll be honest, I think LAX's traffic is better than SFO's.
It feels like there's a lot less spaghetti at LAX, the shortcuts are reasonable, and you don't have separate international and domestic loops.
rkomorn 2 hours ago [-]
LAX's many parking lots with left lane entrances definitely threw me for a loop the first couple of times.
Overall though, I think I agree with you.
whippymopp 54 minutes ago [-]
JFK is probably the 10th circle of hell
javiramos 2 hours ago [-]
Send them to BOS and we're talking
dgacmu 1 hours ago [-]
Is the mark of intelligence being able to navigate to BOS, or refusing to drive through the big dig in the first place?
Andrex 39 seconds ago [-]
The Big Dig, for all the digs it rightfully got for taking forever and costing a shitton, actually does the job it's supposed to (mostly). I'm generally pleasantly surprised how few problems it had when I lived there.
I didn't go to Logan a ton though.
asah 2 hours ago [-]
JFK has entered the chat
mtalantikite 1 hours ago [-]
I'll take JFK over LAX. The construction going on right now at JFK sucks, but LAX is comically bad. Just last week I was on a rental car shuttle at LAX and watched 3 separate groups of people at different terminals miss their flights because traffic just wasn't moving.
ra7 2 hours ago [-]
They already do in PHX.
phendrenad2 1 hours ago [-]
Hopefully Waymo does a better job than SF Uber drivers. I can't tell you how many times I've had drivers make a wrong turn trying to find their way to the pickup point.
phkahler 1 hours ago [-]
Can you handle parking structures? I heard a lot of the autonomous cars were using 2D maps and couldn't handle multiple levels. Haha! This was just a year or two ago.
cperciva 45 minutes ago [-]
Google maps has been able to figure out parking structures for me recently. Not sure what technology is involved (gps isn't great for vertical) but it's clearly possible.
kayamon 56 minutes ago [-]
Do taxis need to park tho?
mystifyingpoi 47 minutes ago [-]
I mean, depending on the situation, of course. Do taxi drivers in US drop people right in the middle of a busy street?
kayamon 10 minutes ago [-]
Kinda yeah? They certainly don't navigate into long-term multi-storey parking structures.
fnord77 55 minutes ago [-]
one of the waymo depots in SF is a multi level parking building
nashashmi 34 minutes ago [-]
I see a monopoly about to take shape. DOJ/FTC is sleeping on breakup schemes. USDOT should start government/private ventures in this space.
Traubenfuchs 1 hours ago [-]
Seems like Tesla keeps talking big, while waymo conquers city by city.
olivermarks 1 hours ago [-]
Waymo ride costs are getting really expensive in SF.
harmmonica 59 minutes ago [-]
Not sure if you have a recent side-by-side example with Uber, but this seems like it would have to happen if the demand is there. How else can you offer a quality product (i.e., car shows up in a reasonable amount of time) if you don't have enough cars to satisfy the demand? Pricing is the primary demand lever.
There's so much polarizing opinion on Tesla's offering and whether they'll get to Waymo's level sooner than later, but this seems like it's going to be or already is a huge issue for Waymo where they can't manufacture the vehicles fast enough to satisfy the demand as they expand both locally (because they capture more of the market) and into new geographies. Will they try and acquire a manufacturer? I don't think that's economically feasible for Waymo (Geely market cap is $25b, per Google snippet fwiw), and obviously being in the car business is different than autonomous, but I'm sure Google would bankroll a purchase if they thought it was the right growth strategy.
I guess Tesla, even if their autonomous is on par with Waymo tomorrow, also has to manufacture the fleet, but it seems extremely beneficial to have that capacity in house vs. relying on partners. Maybe I'm wrong and it's not that much of an advantage, but at first glance it would seem to be.
Zigurd 16 minutes ago [-]
The CEO of Uber was quoted as saying Waymos complete more rides per day than 99% of Uber drivers. He didn't give a precise ratio but this makes me think that hundreds of Waymos can replace thousands of Uber drivers and their cars.
CMs like Magna have the flexibility to manufacture, at the low end, hundreds of vehicles, and at the high end thousands. I doubt Waymo will ever make their own vehicles. They are already working with Toyota on adapting Waymo technology to privately owned cars. That implies mass production. That would be a supply of vehicles that are probably simple to adapt to robotaxi use.
JumpCrisscross 37 minutes ago [-]
Waymo is a premium ride product that happens to be self driving.
yetiofparis 1 hours ago [-]
just use Robotaxi. 1/3 of the price, sometimes less
natch 14 minutes ago [-]
How much per mile? For some recent example rides, let's say. One I took was exactly $2 / mile but not in SF.
mbesto 7 minutes ago [-]
For now...
xvedejas 1 hours ago [-]
What's that? An app? I see a Chinese app of that name in the android play store, but it only has about 1k downloads
The Tesla service is colloquially called "Robotaxi".
chucknthem 41 minutes ago [-]
Not sure why you're downvoted. I've tried Robotaxi a few times and has been great. They still have a safety driver these days and wait time is a big high though.
baggy_trough 2 hours ago [-]
I wonder what the ultimate price of this service will be compared to alternatives.
MostlyStable 2 hours ago [-]
It will remain higher for a while. From reporting I have seen, they are close to maxing out their vehicles, and many people prefer it to other options, so are willing to pay a premium. As long as that is true, it's going to be priced as a premium product. It won't be until fleets grow significantly in size and/or another driverless taxi service enters the market that we will maybe start to see prices driven down closer to marginal cost of a ride.
-edit- multiple other comments apparently disagree with this. I'll defer to people who actually use them over the reporting. Odd that there is that disconnect though.
Zigurd 12 minutes ago [-]
On other threads I've seen conflicting anecdata regarding pricing being higher or lower than an Uber ride. That's not too surprising since the supply and demand variables are going to be different for Waymo.
TulliusCicero 33 minutes ago [-]
Yeah they need scaling and competition before the prices get lower. As long as supply is saturated with demand and nobody else is on their level, there's little reason to lower prices.
harmmonica 20 minutes ago [-]
Yeah, and just to add even though it's implied in your comment, there's plenty of reason to keep prices where they are independent of a desire to increase revenue. Customers will not wait forever for the car and so if the demand is high you have to keep the price high to discourage people from using it so wait times remain in check. Tricky tightrope they're going to be walking while they optimize the fleet size for local adoption and geographic expansion.
paxys 2 hours ago [-]
It's also higher right now because it is a novely. Plenty of people are booking it just to say they rode in a Waymo and take pictures. When that wears off they will have to start competing strictily on price and wait/ride time.
bradleybuda 2 hours ago [-]
Lots of people, myself included, pay a premium to not have a human at the steering wheel; it's nice to have the car to yourself.
paxys 1 hours ago [-]
Yourself and three dozen recording devices and call centers full of people tracking the car and reviewing the footage, yes.
OkayPhysicist 1 hours ago [-]
To be fair, Waymo claims to not record or transmit audio without you either manually engaging such (by requesting support), or a very unambiguous announcement (presumably when the car gets into some sort of emergency situation). And lying about that claim would probably run afoul of California's 2 party consent law. So still a step up in privacy versus having someone in the car listening in on your conversation.
That said, even if they were listening to you, there's a lot of things that are completely inconsequential from a perspective of an anonymous call center employee far away listening in on, that I probably wouldn't want to talk about in front of a taxi driver.
mystifyingpoi 44 minutes ago [-]
I still count that as a win.
octo888 55 minutes ago [-]
Like, the driver's presence bothers you? Even if they don't talk?
harmmonica 4 minutes ago [-]
This is just me, but maybe helps explain it. It's not that the presence of a driver is bothersome, but in the pre-Waymo world your interaction with the outside world starts when you step out the door of your house. Now the interaction with the outside world starts when you get to your destination and step out of the Waymo. I really enjoy the outside world, mind you. But it just feels easier to traverse my local area in solitude and with a consistent and comfortable vehicle, and non-erratic driving style.
I imagine how nice it could (will?) be when you can hop into a self-driving car for a longer ride or even a road trip. I think you'll feel like it's an extension of your living room vs. being in a car.
kylehotchkiss 2 hours ago [-]
Their goal is to have lower cost Hyundai models hit the market though, right? So the Jags probably remain the premium/higher cost option.
OkayPhysicist 2 hours ago [-]
In my experience so far, Waymo costs about the same as an Uber when you take into account tipping, but takes longer (they're not yet doing freeways). With the addition of SFO to their zone, I can't imagine freeways are far behind, because getting from the city to SFO without using the freeways would be... a novelty.
kelnos 6 minutes ago [-]
That's not been my experience... 90% of the time when I check, Waymo is still a good 20-50% more expensive in SF, when comparing to a tip-included Uber or Lyft price.
ru552 2 hours ago [-]
I've used Waymo countless times in SF. It's typically 15% cheaper than an Uber/Lyft and trip time/wait are generally the same. I much prefer the Waymo.
WorldPeas 2 hours ago [-]
I've never encountered it being cheaper, what hours do you generally use it?
ru552 52 minutes ago [-]
Generally between 11a and 7p. Going to lunch/dinner.
bix6 2 hours ago [-]
Cheaper than uber rn. Long term once they own the market? Too much.
gretch 2 hours ago [-]
They still have to compete with alternate modes of transportation such as buses, bikes, trains, e-scooter rentals, self-owned cars, Uber with human drivers.
If it would be "too much", then there's no reason why taxis (incl uber/lyft) wouldn't be too much today.
ElijahLynn 2 hours ago [-]
from what I heard, the intention is to make it much more affordable than it is now. I don't remember the source right now but I did think it was a blog post or something like that.
I think if it's affordable then people will easily take that. instead of drinking and driving at night or other unsafe activities. if it's affordable then people can just take a waymo home and then back again to get their car when it's safe again.
bix6 4 minutes ago [-]
Certainly they aim to make it affordable now in order to undercut Lyft and uber. Long term they will own the market and jack up prices as monopolies do.
airstrike 2 hours ago [-]
That's great to hear
The title makes it sound like GA but it's still in testing
fnord77 56 minutes ago [-]
Too bad waymo is more expensive than uber most of the time
SoftTalker 38 minutes ago [-]
Why is that too bad?
perfmode 2 hours ago [-]
Is Waymo L5?
bryanlarsen 58 minutes ago [-]
L5 means the car can drive everywhere a human can. Waymo's refuse to drive outside of a constrained area, and occasionally stop to ask for assistance, so that makes them L4.
horhay 49 minutes ago [-]
This whole autonomous driving levels kinda muddies the waters. Some would argue this isn't full L4 even. But it is a self driving car in the places it offers its services.
AlotOfReading 34 minutes ago [-]
What would be the argument that Waymo is anything except L4?
yakz 58 minutes ago [-]
No, L5 is a car that can drive itself anywhere in any conditions.
TulliusCicero 32 minutes ago [-]
I think there's an implicit "where a decent human driver could drive safely" for L5, otherwise you get increasingly ridiculous scenarios like, "can Waymo drive safely in a whiteout blizzard?" or "can Waymo safely escape an erupting volcano??"
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
Wait, what is special about driving to/from airports?
yonran 1 hours ago [-]
What’s special about the airport is that the City of San Francisco owns and regulates it (as opposed to the streets that are regulated by the state CPUC), and the Board of Supervisors previously were regulatory captured by taxi medallion owners and Teamsters union (https://missionlocal.org/2024/12/waymo-rolls-toward-san-fran...). Specifically, Aaron Peskin (BoS supervisor from 2001–2009, 2015–2025, and board president for the last 2 years) said, “Their entire M.O. is, ‘The state regulates us; we don’t have to work with you, we don’t have to partner with you.’ My response is: There are things we do control. Including where you charge your cars. And the airport. What I intend to do, is condition their deployment and use of the airport property on their meeting a number of conditions around meeting this city’s minimum standards for public safety and transit.” https://missionlocal.org/2023/11/waymo-rebuffed-by-sfo-sf-gu...
pryelluw 2 hours ago [-]
I’d say it puts a lot of Uber (and similar) drivers at risk because airport rides are a good source of income. Waymo undercutting them will reduce the amount of passengers available for pick up.
Not saying it’s a bad or good thing. Just that it has real world impact on people and the economy.
WorldPeas 2 hours ago [-]
Usually you'd have to take the BART one stop then the waymo, which seems to be a common tourist attraction for fresh deplaners. Perhaps the airport was afraid without that step of friction, too many people would try this and cause a waymo-jam
Chabsff 2 hours ago [-]
Isn't it by far and wide the most common use of taxi services? It certainly is basically the only time I ever use one.
Waymo getting into that space seems like a pretty big step up in market penetration.
tantalor 2 hours ago [-]
Looks like this would (eventually) include service to not just San Francisco, but also the Peninsula (Silicon Valley) via freeways.
tonyhart7 1 hours ago [-]
is waymo really that good???
how good it compared to Tesla FSD/Robotaxi ???
djsavvy 55 minutes ago [-]
haven ridden in both a few times, yes, Waymo is head and shoulders better. It's smooth and I don't think I've ever seen any false alarms or behavior that made me feel unsafe in a Waymo, while I've had a few scary or annoying situations in the Teslas. I took a 6-minute robotaxi in drizzling weather where it parked in intersections twice because the cameras were obscured. Meanwhile Waymo can drive perfectly in heavy fog.
Both the Waymos and Teslas have that central display that shows you what the car sees (pedestrians, dogs, traffic cones, other cars, etc). The Waymo representation of the world reaches pretty far is is pretty much perfect from what I've seen. Meanwhile the Tesla one until recently had objects popping in and out.
Neither is perfect, of course; both will hesitate sometimes and creep along when (IMO) they should commit. But they're both still way better in that regard compared to the zoox autonomous cars I see in SF.
TulliusCicero 31 minutes ago [-]
Tesla doesn't have a real robotaxi yet, they're still in the testing/prototyping phase where they need a safety driver or safety monitor in the car.
They might be close to a real robotaxi in some areas, but it's hard to say until they actually pull the trigger on removing any employees from the car.
dboreham 43 minutes ago [-]
Until just now I had no idea Tesla had a taxi service. Otoh I've seen hundreds of Waymos in SF and the west side of LA.
fnord77 52 minutes ago [-]
tesla robotaxi is worse than waymo was 3 years ago when I was a tester
pastureofplenty 2 hours ago [-]
Hope you like traffic!
thinkingtoilet 59 minutes ago [-]
How would this reduce or increase traffic? The demand is staying the same.
Rebelgecko 36 minutes ago [-]
Presumably the increased supply of "drivers" going to SFO will lower rideshare prices for everyone and make public transit less appealing
jgalt212 2 hours ago [-]
surge pricing FTW!
james_marks 2 hours ago [-]
Have you priced this out compared to a regular taxi or Lyft?
It’s waaaay mo’
OkayPhysicist 2 hours ago [-]
Inside SF, my experience is that Uber and Lyft are ~10-15% cheaper than Waymo, but that's before tipping. I don't have to tip a robot, so they work out to nearly identical prices.
rowls66 1 hours ago [-]
You don't have to tip an Uber or Lyft driver either.
mystifyingpoi 40 minutes ago [-]
Preach.
gkbrk 2 hours ago [-]
You also don't have to tip a taxi driver. They get paid for giving rides, it's not an extra service.
bitpush 2 hours ago [-]
Yup, but it is kinda culturally expected to tip. You're right, you dont need to, but then again we do a lot of things just because it is .. polite.
kylehotchkiss 2 hours ago [-]
Waymo food delivery will be incredible. You won't even get your food if you don't tip your ubereats.
WorldPeas 2 hours ago [-]
The inherent problem there is the edges, most food delivery isn't the trip, it's the person getting out of the vehicle and putting it on your doorstep or going through the building. Zipline and their droneports for buildings seem to have the better solution, at least until waymo has some sort of legged robot that can bring the bag the last meter(s)
kylehotchkiss 1 hours ago [-]
I think the frustration with tips is so prevalent that the advertising could just be "Skip the tip, simply walk to the street to pick up your order!"
Would work great in suburbs where a robot car could pull in front of home for a minute or two, your food will be bid to another customer if you don't pick it up in 5 minutes. maybe the little robots in NYC are better.
WorldPeas 51 minutes ago [-]
I would argue that the sidewalk robots are too hard to coordinate and not strong enough to hold up against crime, the solution is somewhat closer to my other comment below, a vehicle with maybe 4 or 8 food cells that can fill up at various locations then make its journey around the city. At that point the problem would be idle timeouts and how to handle disgruntled consumers that lost their window for pickup
rkomorn 1 hours ago [-]
Aren't the "first meters" also pretty problematic? Are Waymos going to double park in front of a restaurant waiting for someone to come out and put the right order in the right vehicle?
WorldPeas 52 minutes ago [-]
That's easier to do with training, and the business is usually more willing than a consumer as it increases their business. Anecdotally, see how many of them (at least locally to myself) have adopted the doordash/grubhub tablets in their kitchen ordering system. I imagine it would be a co-packing situation with lockers on wheels similar to the vehicle KFC uses in China: https://www.mashed.com/284555/the-futuristic-way-kfc-is-sell...
Nuro is an independent company from Uber, the latter just has a partnership with and some investment in the former. Uber has similar relationships with more than half the industry at this point.
Dylan16807 30 minutes ago [-]
A lot of restaurants already have dedicated parking spots where they'll bring the food out.
corysama 1 hours ago [-]
I have a relative in Texas who is looking into leasing a drone to operate for food delivery. Apparently, that's already a thing there? If we could get food/small packages delivered to our building's roof instead of the front door, it would be a huge win for everyone in the building.
asdff 1 hours ago [-]
Using an otherwise empty 5 person vehicle to move a grocery bag worth of food is pretty stupid though
ForHackernews 2 hours ago [-]
>I don't have to tip a robot
Now that tips are tax free, it's only a matter of time before some clever SV accountants figure out how make everything a tip.
OkayPhysicist 1 hours ago [-]
Self-serve ordering terminals already often ask for tips. Presumably to be legal they're being paid to the kitchen staff, but I think sticking to "tips are for workers who have to pretend to like me" is a pretty firm boundary to stick to.
(Also, arbitrarily reclassifying things as tips is hard, because legally 100% of tip revenue has to go to workers, not management, and certainly not the company's investors or coffers).
ForHackernews 1 hours ago [-]
That's why they're clever accountants.
Tax-free tips paid to robots go to the hardworking AI engineers -> AI engineers voluntarily donate part of their tips to a 501(c)(3) that helps support struggling venture capitalists.
Something like that. We'll work it out the details once the right PAC donations are in place.
amykhar 22 minutes ago [-]
Cause what this country needs is to automate away even the gig economy jobs that are out there. Let's keep making a few people rich and screw all the normal people out there.
I really had to read through it twice to make sure they were just talking about car taxis picking up travelers, rather than some kind of prototype pilotless commuter helicopter or something.
Flying is obviously much harder than driving, but it's a sort of harder that is generally more amenable to automation, though I still think pilots are a good idea because when it goes wrong it goes wrong much worse.
ILS being under maintenance and unavailable for certain runways is also far from unusual.
Currently we rely very much on the problem solving abilities of human pilots to deal with troublesome situations. Autopilot will disengage in many scenarios.
Category IIIC ILS (full auto-land) does exist but requires special equipment for both the aircraft and airport. Human pilots have to actively monitor the system and take back control if anything goes wrong (which does happen).
Garmin also has the Autonomí auto-land system for certain general aviation aircraft which can attempt to land at the closest suitable airport. But this is only used for single pilot operation in case the pilot becomes incapacitated. It isn't suitable for regular flights.
I still believe that having an actual pilot inside the plane that care for his own life is not a bad idea vs someone remote feeling a bit disconnected with the reality of a crash.
I have no idea if that works but I thought you were making a good contribution to the conversation by proposing a potential solution to the exact problem everyone is talking about.
Look up the Airbus ATTOL project's first automated takeoff a few years ago.
Also, there's virtually no automation when it comes to interacting with ATC.
The less you can change about the product and environment, then automation run slower and less effectively.
Air liner operations could be automated, but the minimum equipment list would be more stringent, the destination airport would not be able to take any equipment out of service for maintenance, visibility minimums would increase, takeoff and landing operations would require more slack time.
Besides all of that, the owner of the airplane would still want to have some crew on board.
In short, it's not worth it yet.
===
There is also the paradox of automation: Automation generally makes the hard parts harder and the easy parts easier.
In fact, it's pretty routine. Don't have the source at hand, but somewhere around 1% of all landings (at airports with ILS) are autolands.
I think it was Boeing that even requires at least 1 autoland per plane every 30 days or so.
You can find videos of this on YouTube. Completely hands-off.
I’d really like to see either a Waymo competitor emerge in Europe, or even Waymo themselves operating here. The regulatory environment is obviously more complex, but it’d be great if we didn’t end up years behind on something this transformative.
Trains to cover the longer distance and micro mobility options to get to exactly where you need to go
If you feel that way about transit you may not have tried a good transit option like Hong Kong MTR with 90 second headways and travel from and to substantially everywhere you want to be.
Moia (Volkswagen) in Hamburg https://www.moia.io/en
Mercedes autonomous driving https://group.mercedes-benz.com/innovations/product-innovati...
There's some self driving tech being developed in Europe, but AFAIK nothing is at the current deployment level of Zoox or Aurora, let alone Waymo.
Im happy to let Americans be the beta testers
I think you’ll see American and Chinese self-driving kit in Europe once it matures. It’s just easier to iterate at home, so while the technology advances that’s where it will be.
I don't know about other countries, but Spain will probably be one of the last ones to get it, thanks to the Uber-powerful (heh) taxi driver lobby
Waymo is a bandaid over our inability to build and maintain public infrastructure. Be sure to cherish what you’ve got.
You must realize that, at some point, self-driving cars will be ubiquitous. Maybe not for 50 years, but they will be.
What you’re actually saying is “I’m virtue-signaling with Europe because that’s what the cool kids do”
I think self-driving cars may eventually become common in areas where cars are currently common. I think public transit will continue to dominate in parts of the world where it currently dominates, because it is simply a superior user experience for the majority of people when the government cares to invest in it. (Not to mention far cheaper and more egalitarian.)
I am conveying my lived experience in most European cities I've been to.
Subways don’t solve last-mile problems or trucking.
And it's not just the EU. I'm sure that e.g. China and Japan will continue to invest in their excellent public transit infrastructure even when there are more self-driving cars on the road.
Oh wait, you thought those would be in the middle of nowhere? Nope.
https://www.karmactive.com/waymo-charging-noise-blasts-112-d...
When they get clearance to drop people off at the main terminals, that will be more convenient. Pickup at the terminals is harder. There will be a need for a staging area somewhere in the parking structures.
Few major airports have Waymo at all. Phoenix has allowed pick-up at the airport for ages. (EDIT: Never mind.)
https://www.avisbudgetgroup.com/avis-budget-group-announces-...
(Dallas, but they do this in other cities, too.)
Known nickname or typo?
It really likes to change random words to inappropriate things.
But I guess that's the people who are typing on phones a lot are typing about.
Which can be bad - I often find it easier to just pay for a few minutes parking on dropoff/pickup.
That's way mo' information than needed thanks.
But seriously. I wonder why they have a designated pickup point if it would make sense to spread the cars out to alleviate traffic bottlenecks.
[0] https://sfstandard.com/2024/03/01/waymo-san-francisco-cpuc-e...
I have a limited version of SuperCruise which means it operates hands-free on freeways but nowhere else. My wife's Equinox EV has the regular version, which operates on a lot of arterials near us and has more capabilities. The first time that the Equinox signaled, changed lanes to pass, signaled, then changed lanes back was shocking.
We moved to a small town and drive a lot more than we used to and I find that having those capabilities really helps relieve the stress.
I will say that I move to the center lane when going through a notorious set of curves on I-5 in Portland because my Bolt doesn't steer as smoothly as I'd like near the concrete barricades. I wanted SuperCruise because it has a fantastic safety record. There are lots of times it's not available but when it is, I have near-total confidence in it.
People love crashing there.
Overall though, I think I agree with you.
I didn't go to Logan a ton though.
There's so much polarizing opinion on Tesla's offering and whether they'll get to Waymo's level sooner than later, but this seems like it's going to be or already is a huge issue for Waymo where they can't manufacture the vehicles fast enough to satisfy the demand as they expand both locally (because they capture more of the market) and into new geographies. Will they try and acquire a manufacturer? I don't think that's economically feasible for Waymo (Geely market cap is $25b, per Google snippet fwiw), and obviously being in the car business is different than autonomous, but I'm sure Google would bankroll a purchase if they thought it was the right growth strategy.
I guess Tesla, even if their autonomous is on par with Waymo tomorrow, also has to manufacture the fleet, but it seems extremely beneficial to have that capacity in house vs. relying on partners. Maybe I'm wrong and it's not that much of an advantage, but at first glance it would seem to be.
CMs like Magna have the flexibility to manufacture, at the low end, hundreds of vehicles, and at the high end thousands. I doubt Waymo will ever make their own vehicles. They are already working with Toyota on adapting Waymo technology to privately owned cars. That implies mass production. That would be a supply of vehicles that are probably simple to adapt to robotaxi use.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tesla-robotaxi/id6744257048
-edit- multiple other comments apparently disagree with this. I'll defer to people who actually use them over the reporting. Odd that there is that disconnect though.
That said, even if they were listening to you, there's a lot of things that are completely inconsequential from a perspective of an anonymous call center employee far away listening in on, that I probably wouldn't want to talk about in front of a taxi driver.
I imagine how nice it could (will?) be when you can hop into a self-driving car for a longer ride or even a road trip. I think you'll feel like it's an extension of your living room vs. being in a car.
If it would be "too much", then there's no reason why taxis (incl uber/lyft) wouldn't be too much today.
I think if it's affordable then people will easily take that. instead of drinking and driving at night or other unsafe activities. if it's affordable then people can just take a waymo home and then back again to get their car when it's safe again.
The title makes it sound like GA but it's still in testing
Waymo getting into that space seems like a pretty big step up in market penetration.
how good it compared to Tesla FSD/Robotaxi ???
Both the Waymos and Teslas have that central display that shows you what the car sees (pedestrians, dogs, traffic cones, other cars, etc). The Waymo representation of the world reaches pretty far is is pretty much perfect from what I've seen. Meanwhile the Tesla one until recently had objects popping in and out.
Neither is perfect, of course; both will hesitate sometimes and creep along when (IMO) they should commit. But they're both still way better in that regard compared to the zoox autonomous cars I see in SF.
They might be close to a real robotaxi in some areas, but it's hard to say until they actually pull the trigger on removing any employees from the car.
It’s waaaay mo’
Would work great in suburbs where a robot car could pull in front of home for a minute or two, your food will be bid to another customer if you don't pick it up in 5 minutes. maybe the little robots in NYC are better.
Uber's NURO seems to be developing a vehicle with a similar form factor as seen on this page: https://www.nuro.ai/first-responders
EDIT: see comment below, uber does not own NURO
Now that tips are tax free, it's only a matter of time before some clever SV accountants figure out how make everything a tip.
(Also, arbitrarily reclassifying things as tips is hard, because legally 100% of tip revenue has to go to workers, not management, and certainly not the company's investors or coffers).
Tax-free tips paid to robots go to the hardworking AI engineers -> AI engineers voluntarily donate part of their tips to a 501(c)(3) that helps support struggling venture capitalists.
Something like that. We'll work it out the details once the right PAC donations are in place.