Was in SAN Fran for 4 nights. We took Waymo 5 times and Uber 2x and taxi 1x.
Waymo is quick, fun, good service and you can pipe in your own music on the ride.
Once when stopped some guy came up and tried to kick the mirror off. Clearly not everyone likes the idea Support called right away to check on us and do a safety check on the car.
Cost wise it was comparable with both Uber and Waymo using surge pricing. With Uber we had some good drivers with good service. With the taxi driver he got mad that we asked for him to turn on the meter instead of taking cash (safety with kids in the car). He yelled at my wife for being “one of those people”. A meter tracks location.
Waymo doesn’t go everywhere (no airport or out of the San Francisco area) and I am not sure when Airport will be an option due to lobbying.
Overall, I can’t wait for Waymo (or other taxi services) to come to Canada.
I think taxis are a thing of the past pretty quickly and it will be Uber, Lyft and Waymo left standing.
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I wonder if they'd have to have a whole different set of training data for driving in Canada when you can't see the lanes or the road or the curbs or the sidewalks or anything else and you just know where the road is from a general idea of where cars and piles of snow are
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Definitely a strange experience. Though I was distracted replying to urgent messages while I was in the Waymo car. Interesting they are using Jaaaaags. One odd thing was the wipers weren't activated while it was quite rainy... Driving without a clear windshield is definitely an automated car feature.
The ratio of human supervisors for some of these startups has been shown to be higher than 1 human per car in some cases (but all remote employees in cheap locales).
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I saw them last year when I was in SF. IMO, the future of Waymo is for trains and buses or special fixed routes. There's going to be too much competition in the driverless car scene IMO. People can buy their own self driving vehicles and maybe Turo/Uber rent out their self driving vehicle when they don't need it. Waymo might get squeezed out of the taxi scene.
Now if Waymo creates a subsidiary named Delamain for premium taxi... that's a slightly different story. But they gotta add stuff like defense and crowd control and stuff
Or just "discretely" add a driver like the autopilot they had in the movie Airplane!
I saw them last year when I was in SF. IMO, the future of Waymo is for trains and buses or special fixed routes. There's going to be too much competition in the driverless car scene IMO. People can buy their own self driving vehicles and maybe Turo/Uber rent out their self driving vehicle when they don't need it. Waymo might get squeezed out of the taxi scene.
Now if Waymo creates a subsidiary named Delamain for premium taxi... that's a slightly different story. But they gotta add stuff like defense and crowd control and stuff
Or just "discretely" add a driver like the autopilot they had in the movie Airplane!
Delamain gave me nightmares. Too real.
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Another step to our glorious future of never having to interact with another human. What’s next, sex dolls?
Seriously though, I like to talk with drivers when in a different city. I get tips and just general commentary about the place. At home not so much…shut up and drive.
Let’s talk about Waymo (driverless taxi).
