There are other big players in the autonomous driving world, and we’ve covered several of them quite a bit, but there are really two names that stand out above the rest — and they’re taking very different approaches. I’m talking about Waymo and Tesla, of course. Whether it’s planned or organically ironic, just after Tesla held its AI Day to show us the progress it’s making toward robotaxis, Waymo has expanded its legit, collecting-money-now robotaxi into San Francisco.
Waymo has been operating in the Phoenix area for a few years, but the long delay to other cities (as well as some quirks with the system) have made people wonder if the company can really make this work commercially at a decent scale. The expansion into San Francisco is anbs exciting step that I think will make many people look at Waymo a bit differently. It’s still not proof that Waymo can make money putting robotaxis in dozens or hundreds of cities — it’s just San Francisco — but this does provide a true boost of confidence.
Honestly, one of the first things that came to mind when watching the video above was, “I wonder when they will roll out in my part of Florida.” Florida is a top attraction for initial robotaxi service, after all. A subsequent thought was: “Will Waymo get to my metro area before Tesla has robotaxi servicerunning?” (I know — some readers think Tesla will never have robotaxi service. Others think it’s sacrilegious to consider the possibility that Tesla isn’t first.)
Happily, this San Francisco rollout also shows Waymo using the electric Jaguar I-PACEs, 100% electric vehicles Waymo committed to using in order to help cut emissions some years ago.
Credit: “Now, for the first time, San Franciscans will be able to hail an autonomous ride in one of our all-electric Jaguar I-PACE vehicles equipped with the fifth-generation Waymo Driver,” Waymo writes. “While this is a first for San Francisco, it is a familiar step for Waymo. Over the past four years in Metro Phoenix, we’ve gone from welcoming our first riders in 2017 with an autonomous specialist on board, to launching the first public, fully autonomous ride hailing service. Since October 2020, we’ve served tens of thousands of fully autonomous rides, and through our years of experience, have refined our incremental approach guided by our safety framework and rider feedback.”
Waymo is first providing this system to a limited group of “Trusted Testers.” We’ll have to wait to see when broader commercial service rolls out.
“We’re beginning our Trusted Tester program with riders of all different mobility levels, and those who require a wheelchair accessible vehicle can hail directly from the Waymo One app and provide critical feedback on their experience as well.”
Waymo does also point out its deep history with San Francisco. “We’ve been driving in the city for over twelve years, have accumulated more autonomous driving miles in California than anyone in the industry, and began ramping up our testing by offering autonomous rides to our employees in San Francisco earlier this year.” I recall seeing a Google self-driving Lexus on the roads in Palo Alto back in 2007! This is a long project coming to fruition with true robotaxis at last! Here are a few more comments from Waymo:
“And because our software fuses the outputs of our radar, lidar, and camera sensors together, our machine learning models can reason more intelligently about the world. If our cameras detect a stop sign, our lidar can help the Waymo Driver work out whether it’s a reflection in a West Portal storefront.
“Our powerful onboard compute platform allows the Waymo Driver to process vast amounts of data and run real-time inference on large Machine Learning (ML) models to react immediately without additional human input, like when an emergency vehicle is approaching, or when a dog runs out into the street. Our vehicles also don’t need a cell signal to operate — the Waymo Driver knows what to do even if it’s in the Broadway Tunnel.”
What do you think of Waymo? Drop us a note down below if you can.
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Source: https://cleantechnica.com/2021/08/25/waymo-enters-san-francisco/
