Lisa Maskovich’s Post

Robotaxis aren't like Uber; they require a big footprint. I'm looking forward to the Princeton Smart Driving Cars summit later this week. To prepare, I've been catching up on my reading, and I was struck by this observation from Timothy B. Lee (h/t to Alain Kornhauser for flagging it): All taxi service is local. To quote Lee: "These experiences underscore a basic fact about taxi services: they are rooted in specific geographic areas. To offer a taxi service in San Francisco, Waymo needs the infrastructure to charge, clean, and repair vehicles in San Francisco. It helps to have a good relationship with police and firefighters in the city. And ultimately, it’s important for San Francisco voters to have a positive impression of Waymo—not only as customers but also as drivers and pedestrians who share the road with Waymo vehicles. "Waymo has spent several years investing in the infrastructure and relationships required to make Waymo’s San Francisco taxi service successful. I don’t know if Waymo will ultimately be successful—the company has a number of remaining challenges. But I think it’s going to be hard for a company to succeed in this business if they don’t make these kinds of investments in the cities where they offer taxi services." Uber was able to scale quickly because it didn't need a physical footprint in a city where it launched. All that was required was ephmeral: the app, and relationships with drivers (and perhaps with lawmakers). No garages nor offices required. A robotaxi service will need offices, garages, parking facilities, and cleaning facilities. In fact, at scale, cleaning facilities will be the most important. Human nature being what it is, the robocab will need constant maintenance to recover from littering, illness, drug abuse, vandalism, and other activities. At scale, this will be necessary several times a day. A robotaxi firm will need roots to succeed. Waymo is doing the work, which is necessary (but even so may not be sufficient). Without naming names—because I don't need the headache— I'll say that new firms getting into the business show no signs of doing the work, and I'm therefore skeptical they'll succeed. https://lnkd.in/ghrrTJV4

3 things that surprised me about my first Waymo ride. Waymo’s self-driving taxis are running in 4 US cities and growing fast, and after trying one in SF, a few things really stood out, none of which were what I expected. 1) When I opened the app, the line “world’s most trusted driver” popped up. Bold, but given how these models work, it’s kind of true. The AI has driven more miles than any human could in multiple lifetimes, getting better with each trip, while human drivers hit a ceiling and then decline. 2) My first random thought, how long will this thing wait before it gets annoyed and drives away? I wondered how much time I could spend taking photos before it would “get impatient.” I know, ridiculous. Even as someone deep in AI, I still kinda expected it to behave like a human driver! 3) My next thought, do I tip the AI? Being in the US for a few days, I was in tipping mode, trying to figure out when it’s appropriate and when I’m just getting ripped off by those sneaky screen prompts in shops. Taxis are usually tipped, but what about here? Would the AI ask for a tip? And if so, who’d get it? The developers? Maintenance crew? (Yep, the car still needs humans to clean it and change the tyres.) Obviously, that didn’t happen, but the thought was there. Imagine the headlines if Google (Waymo’s parent company) tried pulling that off. --- When I showed photos and videos, friends and family asked the same questions: - Did it feel safe? - Did you really trust it with your life? - Did anything weird happen? - So, no awkward small talk or bad music? Yes, I felt totally safe. The system let me know there were cameras, but no mics recording. The screens kept me informed about every move, and the ride was incredibly smooth, no sudden braking or jerks. And no awkward conversations! But I wouldn’t be surprised if they introduce some sort of AI chatbot for small talk to make it more mainstream. I could even pick my own music. I selected jazz, got Miles Davis. Final thoughts: 10/10. The future is here. PS: I keep seeing Tesla drivers with their hands off the wheel. Tesla’s self-driving tech is up there with Waymo's. PS2: I told people about my Waymo experience at lunch during an AI conference. 5 out of 5 had not tried it. All SF residents. #waymo #ai #robotics #sf #selfdriving

One of the (many) highlights of the jam-packed FCEV/EV Charging/AV/V2G tour of the Bay Area with Tim Echols Cory Hewett and K.C. Boyce this past Monday — was the two rides in Waymo AVs. Living in the Bay Area, I've seen hundreds of Waymo cars traversing the streets of San Francisco the last few years — but until Monday, I had never ridden in one. I became a convert. Everything about the Waymo vehicle and ride experience was impressive. As a passenger, I immediately felt relaxed in the Waymo and never felt uncomfortable. The Waymo vehicle is incredibly safe and conservative, and is a much more preferable experience to riding in an Uber/Lyft vehicle with human drivers. My favorite moment was when the Waymo AV showed a bit of passive-aggressive, human-like behavior. We were at an intersection and going to turn left, with a car arriving right after us on the opposite side of the intersection. The Waymo inched out into the intersection to signal to the other car that it wasn't just going to wait for it, but would proceed somewhat aggressively. It felt very much like how a human driver would behave. While we did not experience any issues with the Waymo rides, there remain some challenges. The Waymo's are geo-fenced and can't even go into some areas of San Francisco, nor drive on freeways. But more importantly to me, while I can take a Waymo to a BART station in San Francisco, I can't take one home to my house in the suburbs. The Waymo vehicles also struggle in certain situations such as those when a vehicle blocks a side street, requiring Waymo human intervention to tell the AV what to do. And while we didn't experience it, according to a San Francisco Chronicle article, Waymo AVs are very conservative on where they will pick you up, and you may have to walk some distance to where the Waymo will safely pick you up — obviously a different experience from that of a human ride-share driver. Though that said, I've had frequent issues with Lyft drivers going to the wrong area at a BART station, for example, and then cancelling on me. While it will be many, many years before AV services like Waymo are operating in dozens and dozens of major US cities, my Waymo experience convinced me that AV ride-sharing services are clearly coming in the not-too-distant future — at least in selected, geo-fenced cities. But it may be a long time before these services will pick you up in a city, and take you home out in the suburbs. And yes, we also rode in a Cybertruck. I preferred the Waymo.

Los Angeles /Mar 14, 2024 /Highways News /Paul Hutton -- Google’s driverless car sister company, #Waymo, has announced it is expanding its driverless operation, with rides starting in an area of Los Angeles. It will begin its expansion by offering rides in a 63 square mile area from Santa Monica to Downtown #LA, scaling operations over time. These initial rides will be free, and with a recent California Public Utilities Commission approval, it will transition to paid service in the coming weeks. Waymo says it will permanently welcome riders into its service, “gradually onboarding the more than 50,000 people on our LA waitlist and continuing to hand out temporary codes at local events throughout the city”. In a blog post it announces: “We’ve put the Waymo Driver through over a year of careful, deliberate evaluation in Los Angeles since we first announced it as our third ride-hailing city. Last October, we invited a broad cross section of Angelenos to experience the Driver for themselves during our Waymo One Tour. Angelenos have taken over 15,000 fully autonomous rides with the Waymo Driver over the past five months, across Santa Monica, Century City, WeHo, Mid City, K-Town and Downtown LA.” It also says it is currently testing fully #autonomous rides across 43 square miles of Austin, Texas, encompassing the heart of downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin, Hyde Park and more. It explains at this stage of testing, it’s providing rides to Waymo employees before opening Waymo One to members of the public later this year. Image Source | (©StockSnap | pixabay)

WAYMO GIVING 100,000 ROBOTAXI RIDES PER WEEK BUT NOT MAKING ANY MONEY Waymore Revenue As its competitors falter, the Google-owned and California-based #robotaxi service Waymo seems to be in cruise control. According to figures the company shared in August, Waymo is now giving over 100,000 paid rides to customers each week in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles, using its fleet of fully autonomous and specially-equipped Jaguar SUVs. That's double the number of weekly rides it was giving in May, a clear sign of its growing dominance in this burgeoning market. "At this point, the fully #autonomousdriving industry is really just an industry of one: Waymo," former CEO John Krafcik, who is now a board member at the #EV automaker Rivian, told The New York Times. But as the newspaper notes, there's a major caveat: despite its healthy stream of customers, Waymo still isn't profitable. Google's experimental division, which includes Waymo, had an operating loss of around $2 billion in the first of this year, and the robotaxi company is most likely a significant portion of that loss, Mark Mahaney at investment research firm Evercore ISI told the NYT. With even the industry leader still in the red, it's a sobering reminder that the #roadtoprofitability is a long one, with no guarantee that it won't lead to a dead end. Highway Robbery Granted, these kinds of losses come with the territory. To make stupid amounts of money, you've got to spend stupid amounts of money. Nevertheless, the NYT lays out a key disadvantage for Waymo. Unlike the rideshare companies it will be competing against, Uber and Lyft — with whom it charges similar prices per ride — Waymo needs to provide its own vehicles. And self-driving Jaguars aren't cheap, costing as much as $100,000 a pop, according to the NYT, citing remarks made by a Waymo executive in a podcast. Though its safety track record is very good, Waymo will also have to contend with a general hesitancy towards self-driving technology. To safely operate its vehicles, Waymo meticulously creates detailed maps of each city, so expanding to new ones will require considerable research, time and money. Case in point: not long before Waymo announced a huge expansion across California, Google said it was reinvesting $5 billion into the company. A show of faith, sure, but a sign of the serious expenses that an expansion entails. Down the Road The long and short of it is that everything costs a lot. Luckily, Waymo has managed to avoid the costliest blunder of them all in this biz, which is a major crash turned PR disaster — unlike its competitor Cruise, owned by General Motors, which briefly flamed out of the business after regulators began investigating its robotaxis for endangering pedestrians. Waymo's chief product officer Saswat Panigrahi told the NYT that...

When I was a small kid my father took us to the cinema to watch ‘The Invisible Man’. The HG Well’s film involves a stranger named Dr. Jack Griffin who is covered in bandages and has his eyes obscured by dark glasses, the result of a secret experiment that makes him invisible by proving his superiority over other people by performing harmless pranks at first and eventually turning to murder. In the movie which I distinctly recall even today there’s a scene where a car is driven without a driver and passers by are alarmed and taken aback. I kept on talking about it to my school friends and whomsover I met as a kid. Last Sunday while visiting San Francisco, I witnessed a similar scene after coming out of the Caltrain station. There were a number of cars that were being driven without a driver, and passengers were sitting at the rear/ front seat. Were they autonomous taxis that we have talked about for quite a few years now? Google’s Waymo have launched autonomous cabs in San Francisco and Phoenix as an experimental launch. We hailed a cab with the Waymo app and soon the car arrived all by itself to pick us up. We got inside, greeted by an announcement and shut the doors. The panel right in front showed the route to our destination and the time it would take. But the cab wouldn’t start until the seat belts are fastened. Navigating a crowded distance for 25 minutes adhering to all traffic rules including giving way to traffic on the left (in US) and halting when some other errant car driver violated, we arrived at our destination. The car found a place for itself to park. The prices of the ride was definitely steep- $27 against a standard Uber fare of $14 for the same distance. Quite in line, Waymo has adopted premium pricing strategy by taking first mover advantage and skimming the early adopters. In our subsequent rides which were the driver driven Ubers I observed reaching the destinations was a quicker as drivers possess the skill in negotiating expected traffic hold up. Artificial intelligence would never allow it. That way they are dull. An autonomous vehicle has to give the right of way to any driver and not expected to yell at those people who don’t. Computers they say @are not supposed to lose their tempers. The sum and substance, for first time riders it’s quite a novelty. How they would succeed in unruly cities in India will be a formidable exercise. But certainly, autonomous vehicles would bring in lot of discipline in driving. Imagine owning an autonomous car, there would be no requirement to hire a driver. Impressed all the cars were EV Jaguars.

Waymo is the last man standing in the race toward autonomous taxis. I don't understand people burning down the cars or even people push over scooters. This random violence toward machines is confusing at best. The hatred and anger toward technology is a complicated subject. Like everything in life, there are tradeoffs. In the end, it is going to become an important way to maintain independence for a growing elderly population that will no longer be able to drive. Elderly people are one of the fastest growing populations in the US but also one of the most dangerous in terms of driving accidents. https://lnkd.in/gfhKUDsU

🔲 ROBOTAXI TO PERFECTION. THE TRANSITION WILL IMPACT THE WAY WE LIVE. 🔲 SOON YOU WILL GET YOUR WAYMO IN YOUR CITY, FOR A PERCENTAGE OF TAXI BILL. STILL NEED TO OWN YOUR CAR? 👉 What is the impact the robotaxi will have on the way we live?  Waymo is now shifting its focus to commercialization. 👉 Waymo and Uber will bring autonomous ride-hailing to Austin and Atlanta, only on the Uber app, in the beginning of 2025. 👉 Uber will manage and dispatch the robotaxi Waymo fleet including vehicle cleaning, repair, and other operations. Waymo will further take responsibility for testing and operation, including roadside assistance and other rider functions. Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber: “We’re thrilled to build on our successful partnership with Waymo, which has already powered fully autonomous trips for tens of thousands of riders in Phoenix,” said Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber. 👉 Ruth Porat, CFO of Alphabet said the Google parent company will invest an additional $5 billion into its self-driving car unit Waymo. “This new round of funding will enable Waymo to continue to build the world’s leading autonomous driving company.” 🔲 Costs of a car can immense. Buying a car and running it can be broken into upfront costs to get you on the road and ongoing such as fuel costs, road tax and insurance, servicing/maintenance, depreciation, parking fees and other driving expenses. Some also depending on brand and age. 🔲 Why do you still need your own car ? Want to save costs and time? Will we talk "VolksWaymo" in 5 years? #robotaxi #selfdrivingcar #autonomous #Waymo #Uber #Alphabet #Google Waymo Uber Alphabet Inc. Google Isaac Pheko Sourab S Harsh Yadav William Lee Pyaar Singh Marc Lawn Bhavya Saxena Marvin Samuels ᖇᗩᑌᒪ ᗩᖇᖇEᗪOᑎᗪO ᗰᗷᗩ - Auto, EV, Battery Frank Lorrain Armando Ciarlariello Scott Edy⚡ Frederik Monnet Hamed Hamid Muhammed Siddharth Jain Siddharth Jain Helen Yu Nicolas Boehmer Dagmara Choluj Roberto De Luca Rajendra Mhalgi Shashwath P. Susan Kouroshniya Amal Vinod Jatin Jogani

I'm a mega huge fan of checking things out for one-self. I noticed these vehicles with all the additives around the bumpers and on the top when we were waiting on our Uber to show up in the PHX Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. And then I realized they didn't have a driver! I just had to take some videos and then I asked our Uber driver about them - he had some things to say - but I also asked him if he had ever ridden in them himself. If even to check out the competition- he said no. Too new. Too weird. Too many bugs. (I remember how people said that when it gets confused, it just cuts off.) It's taking away my customers. Too scary. Well, I needed to check it out for myself. So here's my first experience of the Waymo autonomous driving vehicle. I'm still alive to upload this video and I'm reminded of when other new technology came on the scene in our past. Remember "cashierless check-out machines"? I heard so many things when they were coming on the scene but now it's a regular sight in most stores. I know new things are .....well, new. And likewise, maybe being around people or people groups we don't know can cause us to have similar reactions as well. ... You can check out the rest of my thoughts and reflections about navigating change on my substack https://lnkd.in/gG9SUdHR . It's a space I'm trying out to help me find my most authentic (written) voice and community through virtual connections and conversation. Come say hi. #waymo #change #doyourownresearch