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posted by martyb on Friday November 16 2018, @01:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the we-know-where-you-are-and-are-going-to dept.

Waymo to Start First Driverless Car Service Next Month

In just a few weeks, humanity may take its first paid ride into the age of driverless cars. Waymo, the secretive subsidiary of Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., is planning to launch the world's first commercial driverless car service in early December, according to a person familiar with the plans. It will operate under a new brand and compete directly with Uber and Lyft.

Waymo is keeping the new name a closely guarded secret until the formal announcement, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the plans haven't been made public.

"Waymo has been working on self-driving technology for nearly a decade, with safety at the core of everything we do," the company said in an emailed statement. A Waymo spokesperson declined to comment on the name of the new service or timing of the launch.

It's a big milestone for self-driving cars, but it won't exactly be a "flip-the-switch" moment. Waymo isn't planning a splashy media event, and the service won't be appearing in an app store anytime soon, according to the person familiar with the program. Instead, things will start small—perhaps dozens or hundreds of authorized riders in the suburbs around Phoenix, covering about 100 square miles.

The first wave of customers will likely draw from Waymo's Early Rider Program—a test group of 400 volunteer families who have been riding Waymos for more than a year. The customers who move to the new service will be released from their non-disclosure agreements, which means they'll be free to talk about it, snap selfies, and take friends or even members of the media along for rides. New customers in the Phoenix area will be gradually phased in as Waymo adds more vehicles to its fleet to ensure a balance of supply and demand.

Related: Google Waymo Vehicles to Hit the Road This Month
Waymo Orders Thousands More Chrysler Pacifica Minivans for Driverless Fleet
Walmart and Waymo to Trial Driverless Shuttle Service in Phoenix for Grocery Pickups


Original Submission

Related Stories

Google Waymo Vehicles to Hit the Road This Month 12 comments

Google Waymo has announced that it will deploy Chrysler Pacifica minivans using its own homegrown sensors onto public roads starting at the end of January:

[Here's] the thing about these minivans. Waymo says that for the first time, its producing all the technology that enables its cars to completely drive themselves in-house. That means for the first time, the Google spin-off is building all its own cameras, sensors, and mapping technology, rather than purchasing parts off the shelf as it had done in the past. This allows the company to exert more control over its self-driving hardware, as well as bring the cost down to ridiculously cheap levels. In a speech in Detroit, Waymo CEO Jeff Krafcik said that by building its own LIDAR sensors, for example, the company was shaving 90 percent off its costs. That means sensors that Google purchased for $75,000 back in 2009 now only cost $7,500 for Waymo to build itself.

Bloomberg reports that Google/Alphabet/Waymo's cars are getting better at driving themselves, with fewer "disengagements":

Vehicles tested in California by Waymo, the autonomous car company owned Google parent Alphabet Inc., had a much lower rate of "disengagements" last year, compared with 2015. Disengagements happen when a human tester needs to take control of a self-driving car, either to avoid an accident or respond to technical problems.

Waymo Chief Executive Officer John Krafcik shared the data during a speech on Sunday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. California requires companies with permits to test autonomous vehicles to disclose the metric. The figure is one measure of the effectiveness of the nascent technology in the real world. In 2015, Alphabet reported 341 disengagements during 424,331 autonomous miles driven in California. That was 0.8 disengagements per thousand miles. In 2016, the rate improved to 0.2, according to Krafcik.

"As our software and hardware becomes more robust through our testing, we're driving this number down further," he said during a keynote address in Detroit. Krafcik also highlighted advances in Waymo's sensor technology.

Also at Reuters.


Original Submission

Waymo Orders Thousands More Chrysler Pacifica Minivans for Driverless Fleet 11 comments

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/30/16948356/waymo-google-fiat-chrysler-pacfica-minivan-self-driving

Waymo, the self-driving unit of Google parent Alphabet, has reached a deal with one of Detroit's Big Three automakers to dramatically expand its fleet of autonomous vehicles. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles announced today that it would supply "thousands" of additional Chrysler Pacifica minivans to Waymo, with the first deliveries starting at the end of 2018.

Neither Waymo nor FCA would disclose the specific number of vehicles that were bought, nor the amount of money that was trading hands. The manufacturer's suggested retail price for the 2018 Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivan starts at $39,995. A thousand minivans would cost $40 million, so this was at the very least an eight-figure deal.

Waymo currently has 600 of FCA's minivans in its fleet, some of which are used to shuttle real people around for its Early Rider program in Arizona. The first 100 were delivered when the partnership was announced in May 2016, and an additional 500 were delivered in 2017. The minivans are plug-in hybrid variants with Waymo's self-driving hardware and software built in. The companies co-staff a facility in Michigan, near FCA's US headquarters, to engineer the vehicles. The company also owns a fleet of self-driving Lexus RX SUVs that is has been phasing out in favor of the new minivans. (The cute "Firefly" prototypes were also phased out last year.)

Also at Ars Technica and Bloomberg.

Previously: Apple Expands Self-Driving Fleet From 3 to 27 Cars


Original Submission

Walmart and Waymo to Trial Driverless Shuttle Service in Phoenix for Grocery Pickups 12 comments

Walmart To Test Self-Driving Cars For Grocery Pickup Service

The future is here and soon it will be toting grocery shoppers around Phoenix. Walmart and Waymo — formerly Google's self-driving car project — announced on Wednesday the launch of a pilot program that will allow consumers to make their grocery pickups with the help of an autonomous vehicle.

The plan is simple. Participants in Waymo's "early riders" program will be able to take a driverless shuttle service to and from Walmart whenever they purchase groceries from Walmart.com using the retailer's online grocery pickup service.

Current "early riders" will receive incentives to participate in the pilot and the rides will be provided with no additional cost, Molly Blakeman, a Walmart spokesperson, said in an email to NPR. "Since the pilot is part of our Grocery Pickup program, personal shoppers pick customers' orders and bring them right out to the car ... in this case a Waymo self-driving car," she said.

Also at NYT and AZCentral.

Related: Google/Waymo Announces Testing of Self-Driving Trucks in Atlanta, Georgia


Original Submission

Waymo Announces Limited Debut of "Driverless" Taxi Service in Phoenix, AZ 23 comments

Waymo has announced a driverless taxi service called Waymo One, but it will only be usable for around 400 preapproved "early riders" in the Phoenix metro area, rather than the general public. While self-driving Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans will be used, they will continue to retain a safety driver behind the wheel.

Waymo's "new" service could be described as a launch in name only:

The banner Waymo is unfurling, though, is tattered by caveats. Waymo One will only be available to the 400 or so people already enrolled in Waymo's early rider program, which has been running in the calm, sunny Phoenix suburb of Chandler for about 18 months. (They can bring guests with them and have been freed from non-disclosure agreements that kept them from publicly discussing their experiences.) More glaringly, the cars will have a human behind the wheel, there to take control in case the car does something it shouldn't.

So no, this is not the anyone-can-ride, let-the-robot-drive experience Waymo and its competitors have been promising for years. Building a reliably safe system has proven far harder than just about everyone anticipated and its cars aren't ready to drive without human oversight. But Waymo promised to launch a commercial service sometime in 2018, it didn't want to miss its deadline and risk its reputation as the leader of the industry it essentially created, and not even the might of Waymo parent company Alphabet can delay the end of the calendar year.

So Waymo is pushing out a software update, tweaking its branding, and calling it a launch.

Also at Reuters, Gizmodo, The Atlantic, and Ars Technica.

See also: Waymo's driverless cars on the road: Cautious, clunky, impressive

Previously: Google/Waymo Self-Driving Minivan Tested with the Public in Phoenix AZ
Waymo Orders Thousands More Chrysler Pacifica Minivans for Driverless Fleet
Walmart and Waymo to Trial Driverless Shuttle Service in Phoenix for Grocery Pickups
Google's Waymo Plans to Launch a Self-Driving Car Service in December (the service falls short of what is described in this November article)


Original Submission

Waymo Announces Plans for a Driverless Vehicle Factory in Michigan 13 comments

Waymo announces major expansion in Michigan, the cradle of the US auto industry

Waymo is expanding its presence in Michigan, the state synonymous with the US auto industry. The Google self-driving spinoff announced Tuesday that its plan to build a 200,000-square-foot manufacturing center and hire up to 400 employees over the next five years was just approved by the state's economic development corporation. It's a sign that Waymo is interested in gaining more control over its production process as it seeks to grow its business of deploying autonomous vehicles.

The Michigan Economic Development Corporation approved an $8 million incentive to Waymo to build its manufacturing plant in the state, The Detroit News reported. Under the deal, Waymo agrees to create a minimum of 100 new jobs in the state, but would receive the $8 million incentive only if it exceeds that minimum and creates up to 400 jobs. Total investment in the facility will be $13.6 million, MEDC says.

[...] In a blog post, Waymo said it would look to hire engineers, operations experts, and fleet coordinators. "This will be the world's first factory 100%-dedicated to the mass production of [Level 4] autonomous vehicles," the company said.

Also at TechCrunch.

Previously: Google's Waymo Plans to Launch a Self-Driving Car Service in December
Waymo Announces Limited Debut of "Driverless" Taxi Service in Phoenix, AZ


Original Submission

Google's Waymo Risks Repeating Xerox's Most Famous Blunder 12 comments

Google's Waymo risks repeating Silicon Valley's most famous blunder: Larry Page drew the wrong lesson from Xerox bungling the PC revolution

Everyone in Silicon Valley knows the story of Xerox inventing the modern personal computer in the 1970s and then failing to commercialize it effectively. Yet one of Silicon Valley's most successful companies, Google's Alphabet, appears to be repeating Xerox's mistake with its self-driving car program.

[...] Google's self-driving car program, created in 2009, appears to be on a similar trajectory. By October 2015, Google was confident enough in its technology to put a blind man into one of its cars for a solo ride in Austin, Texas.

But much like Xerox 40 years earlier, Google has struggled to bring its technology to market. The project was rechristened Waymo in 2016, and Waymo was supposed to launch a commercial driverless service by the end of 2018. But the service Waymo launched in December was not driverless and barely commercial. It had a safety driver in every vehicle, and it has only been made available to a few hundred customers.

Today, a number of self-driving startups are aiming to do to Waymo what Apple did to Xerox years ago. Nuro is a driverless delivery startup that announced Monday that it raised $940 million in venture capital. Another, called Voyage, is testing a self-driving taxi service in one of the nation's largest retirement communities.

Right now, these companies' self-driving services aren't as sophisticated as Waymo's. Their vehicles have top speeds of 25 miles per hour. But Apple started out making under-powered products, too, then it gradually worked its way up-market, ultimately eclipsing Xerox. If Waymo isn't strategic, companies like Nuro and Voyage could do the same thing to the pioneering self-driving company.

Previously: Google's Waymo Plans to Launch a Self-Driving Car Service in December
Waymo Announces Limited Debut of "Driverless" Taxi Service in Phoenix, AZ
Waymo Announces Plans for a Driverless Vehicle Factory in Michigan


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @01:59PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @01:59PM (#762687)

    fatalities!

    • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday November 16 2018, @02:05PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday November 16 2018, @02:05PM (#762689) Journal

      But who will be at-fault? If the Google car drives nice and safe, and doesn't cause obvious fatalities like Uber's car did, they may not be on the hook for millions per kill.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Friday November 16 2018, @04:44PM

      by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday November 16 2018, @04:44PM (#762731) Journal

      We've already had those. Maybe there's no corpses specifically imprinted with a big colorful G yet, but a couple with chrome Ts and one with a uber sticker dangling from their flesh.

    • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday November 16 2018, @10:43PM (1 child)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday November 16 2018, @10:43PM (#762875) Homepage

      Flawless Victory.

      But seriously, if my car malfunctioned and was programmed to kill me riding in it, rather than a busload of refugees, then I will not be riding in one. Because if my car malfunctions and I have to make a split-second decision to either kill myself or a busload of refugees, then I will chose the refugees. My life is worth more than fifty of theirs.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @10:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @10:51PM (#762881)

        So sad to see stupid is back in style.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @02:13PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @02:13PM (#762692)

    A taxi driver that won't [dailymail.co.uk] rape [sbs.com.au] you [hindustantimes.com] as part of the ride home, because "all Australian women are sluts and deserve to be raped [jihadwatch.org]".

    Would you catch a taxi if you knew there was a chance of being raped by the driver? Still, it's better than what happens in England [duckduckgo.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @06:26PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 16 2018, @06:26PM (#762786)

      Stop shaming women for enjoying their bodies.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @03:28AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 17 2018, @03:28AM (#762937)

        Do you have a problem with linking to newspaper articles about cab drivers who raped their passengers posted in response to an article about self driving cars?
        How very peculiar. Are you an incel?

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