Waymo And Cruise have Both Hit 1M Miles With No Driver, But Waymo Publishes Detailed Safety Data

Table Of Content

• Another robotaxi company wins (25 percent)
• California regulators to decide the future of Cruise and Waymo
• Waymo And Cruise have Both Hit 1M Miles With No Driver, But Waymo Publishes Detailed Safety Data
• Electric vehicles, charging and batteries
• Channel Ars Technica
• We've heard about self-driving taxis forever, but they're just starting to become a reality
• Getting into the data

Waymo has already had to pull back on operations this year after Alphabet issued a slew of layoffs in the first quarter. In July, the company shut down its self-driving trucks program to shift all its available resources to ride-hailing. NABSA’s fourth annual state of shared micromobility report shows that ridership in North America has returned to pre-pandemic levels. The number of cities with shared micromobility has hit an all-time high with 401 cities, and shared e-bikes and e-scooters have offset about 74 million pounds of CO2 emissions by replacing auto trips. Waymo just started testing with no safety driver in Los Angeles and is expected to soon open ...

Another robotaxi company wins (25 percent)

The traffic cop stopped trying to move us and just held his hands over his head in disgust. Like using it for food delivery — which is happening in Phoenix, via Uber Eats. Maybe it's for people who believe a robot is more reliable than a human driver — at least we know a Waymo won't watch TikTok while driving on the highway like a Lyft driver did when I was in their back seat a couple of years ago. Cruise, a majority owned subsidiary of General Motors and Waymo’s main rival, is also prepping to launch a similar service in the state.

Waymo, Cruise and Zoox Inch Forward Ahead of Tesla Joining Robotaxi Race - Bloomberg

Waymo, Cruise and Zoox Inch Forward Ahead of Tesla Joining Robotaxi Race.

Posted: Mon, 15 Apr 2024 07:00:00 GMT [source]

California regulators to decide the future of Cruise and Waymo

For example, now we can signal intensities to firefighters that, "Hey, we're about to make a U-turn and get out of this scene." I mean, this is not a question you're asking an app or a web page, which is giving you an answer. This is a multi-thousand pound vehicle that's moving through the physical world – yes, it's an application of AI but a very different kind of application of AI. And there's something to be said about time and experience and just rigor that no matter how hard you work, it takes time to do this.

Waymo And Cruise have Both Hit 1M Miles With No Driver, But Waymo Publishes Detailed Safety Data

To test that, teams will run the situation through their simulator to find out what would have happened had nobody intervened. When it says something bad would have happened, that’s a cause for major concern. With no safety driver, that something bad always happens in that situation, and as such, the bar to operating without one is higher, and doing so for a million miles shows the confidence and internal numbers the teams have on their safety performance. Formerly known as the Google self-driving car project and now an independent subsidiary of Google parent-company Alphabet, Waymo has been operating in some capacity since 2009. Five years ago, the company launched what it billed as the "world's first commercial autonomous ride-hailing service" in the metro Phoenix area, then last year expanded to San Francisco.

Electric vehicles, charging and batteries

Blocked crosswalks and delayed fire trucks may seem insignificant compared to the graphic violence of car crashes, but these incidents pose a serious safety risk. Should an AV cause a death by delaying a fire truck or ambulance in an emergency scene, or cause one pedestrian to be injured while circumnavigating a crosswalk or bus stop blocked by a driverless car, the whole AV safety pitch comes crashing down. Back in May, the CPUC had all but granted the expansion permits, then delayed the final vote twice amid mounting opposition from city agencies and residents. Since AVs hit the streets of San Francisco, there have been numerous instances of vehicles malfunctioning and stopping in the middle of the street — referred to as “bricking” — blocking the flow of traffic, public transit and emergency responders.

Channel Ars Technica

We should be measured about the technology we add to our cities, not cheerleading anything novel for novelty’s sake. This is only the second quarter for which Cruise is supplying trip data to the CPUC, which is a condition of its commercial permit. And the company says its next report will show a significant increase in passengers and miles traveled as it continues to ramp up its robotaxi operation in the Bay Area. Cruise is waiting for CPUC to approve its request to expand operation to the entire city of San Francisco.

Hitting an orange cone

A “no” vote would certainly delay, if not completely derail, Cruise’s and Waymo’s plan to launch commercial operations in the state. That could accelerate plans to expand in other cities like Phoenix, where Waymo has long operated and where Cruise is starting to push into. During those three months, the company only reported one collision.

We've heard about self-driving taxis forever, but they're just starting to become a reality

Tesla's unfortunately named "full self-driving beta" software routinely flubs scenarios that Waymo's cars have been able to handle for years. Maybe its software has become excessively optimized for suburban Phoenix. Maybe its hardware or back-end support costs are too high to operate profitably.

You can't get a Waymo to pick you up at San Francisco International Airport, for instance, or take you across the Bay Bridge to Oakland. Which is exactly how I felt after my last trip to San Francisco, when I took several rides in Waymo's robotaxis. Apple, which has been working on its own secretive car project for years, reported driving 18,805 miles, more than doubling its mileage in 2019. The tech giant also reported 130 disengagements, up from 64 the previous year. Waymo only reported 21 disengagements over the course of the year, or a rate of 0.033 disengagements per 1,000 miles.

In January, Cruise unveiled its Origin shuttle, a completely driverless vehicle on which it collaborated with GM and Honda. The Origin should follow a fleet of Cruise vehicles that will use autonomous Chevy Bolt EVs when the ride-hailing service launches. Dozen of companies are testing autonomous technologies on California roadways, but some are racking up lots of miles, while some are barely doing anything at all. And different companies are pursuing different self-driving systems with multiple business models.

In event 17 they hit a parking lot barrier arm but did not damage it. In event 18 they hit a shopping cart at the exit of a parking lot. Opponents of autonomous taxi expansions, including the Teamsters, have vowed to slow down the growth of companies such as Waymo. A bill pending in the California Senate would give cities and counties authority over robotaxi services — a power that currently resides with state government agencies. Waymo’s expansion to Los Angeles will bring autonomous for-profit taxis to the nation’s second-largest city — and to a city long synonymous with car travel. Waymo already operates commercial robotaxi services in San Francisco and Phoenix.

The company’s ridehailing vehicles traversed a total of 26,838.61 miles during the quarter, which covered September to November 2022. In the optimistic scenario, Waymo will maintain and expand its current lead. It will grow its current taxi service from one corner of the Phoenix metro area to all of Greater Phoenix, then steadily expand to other metro areas.

The companies also shared data on instances in which someone from their team had to go and physically move a bricked AV, which they referred to as a “vehicle retrieval event” or VRE. Motiv Power Systems said it plans to launch a medium-duty chassis with a cab that can be used in various sizes of box trucks, step vans, shuttle buses, refrigerated vehicles and vocational vehicles. BrightDrop, GM’s commercial EV delivery business unit, plans to expand sales of its flagship electric vans to Mexico.

Waymo used simulation of all fatal crashes in their Chandler operations area to determine that their system would have prevented most of those fatalities had it been driving the not-at-fault car. It will be good if future analysis provides details on what the system could have done better in any event. While generally, if a vehicle is hit while stopped there is less it can do, but a few of the incidents are ones where the car might have been able to proactively get out of the way. In evaluating these vehicles on the road, one of the key question is whether they are putting people at significant risk, in particular, more risk than ordinary human driving does. The goal of these projects it to take humans from behind the wheel of vehicles, and as we know, human driving creates quite a bit of risk.