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Waymo Partners With Jaguar for 20,000 Self-Driving Electric SUVs

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:15AM   Printer-friendly
from the pronounced-jag-u-ar dept.

takyon writes:

Waymo and Jaguar will build up to 20,000 self-driving electric SUVs

Waymo and Jaguar Land Rover have inked a deal that will add tens of thousands of all-electric I-Pace SUVs to the Alphabet unit's growing lineup of self-driving taxis. The I-Pace, which made its global debut earlier this month, is not as much of a people-mover as Waymo's Chrysler Pacifica minivans, but it will serve as a more high-end ride for those willing to pay a premium for their driverless transportation.

The first prototype I-Pace with Waymo's self-driving technology will hit the road for public testing at the end of 2018, and officially become part of Waymo's commercial ride-hailing service starting in 2020. Waymo and Jaguar Land Rover's engineers will work in tandem to build these cars to be self-driving from the start, rather than retrofitting them after they come off the assembly line. Long-term, the companies say they plan to build up to 20,000 vehicles in the first two years of production, with the goal of serving a potential 1 million trips a day. It's unclear how much money would be trading hands under the deal.

They're coming for Tesla!

Related: Waymo Orders Thousands More Chrysler Pacifica Minivans for Driverless Fleet
Google/Waymo Announces Testing of Self-Driving Trucks in Atlanta, Georgia

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  • (Score: 1, Troll) by c0lo on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:52AM (6 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 28 2018, @12:52AM (#659261) Journal

    The first prototype I-Pace with Waymo's self-driving technology will hit the road for public testing at the end of 2018, and officially become part of Waymo's commercial ride-hailing service starting in 2020.

    Public testing for a period of about 2 years. What could possibly go wrong?

    (a pat on my back for moving in an isolated outer suburb and using the train for commute. Otherwise, I'd need to get myself an armored vehicle for the same level of protection)

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:09AM (4 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:09AM (#659271) Journal

    Waymo on Uber crash: Our car would have been able to handle it [mercurynews.com]

    John Krafcik, chief executive of Waymo, formerly Google’s autonomous-vehicle project, said Waymo’s cars are intensively programmed to avoid such calamities.

    “I can say with some confidence that in situations like that one with pedestrians — in this case a pedestrian with a bicycle — we have a lot of confidence that our technology would be robust and would be able to handle situations like that,” Krafcik said Saturday during a panel at the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in Las Vegas.

    It's plausible that "bad boy" Uber has made the driverless industry look dangerous when the circumstances surrounding the crash could actually be unique to Uber:

    Uber’s need for self-driving cars before running out of money may endanger the entire industry [qz.com]

    Many companies are pursuing self-driving cars, but only one is on a deadline to make it work before it runs out of cash: Uber.

    The ride-sharing company was the first to deploy self-driving cars on pubic roads (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in late 2016), and is now the first to record a fatal accident.

    [...] True to form, Uber cut corners before the Tempe accident. In its drive to get Uber to customers, it defied local officials, betting (correctly) that it could lobby for regulatory change afterwards. It was the same pattern it followed in Pittsburgh, where its relationship soured as Uber’s demands mounted and benefits to the public didn’t and in California, where the state yanked the company’s vehicle registrations after Uber ignored demands it register its automated vehicles before launching its 16-car pilot in San Francisco.

    [...] As of February, Uber had logged about 50,000 rides with self-driving technology on board. The company has also apparently opted to have only one safety driver in the car, rather than the two people (one engineer to monitor the cars’ sensors and systems) now being used by most other companies.

    Uber remains under pressure to deliver on its technology. In 2016, the company is thought to have burned through $3 billion (despite earning profits from its top cities). Founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick has called self-driving cars “basically existential” for Uber—the technology may reduce fares by 80%.

    Uber’s Self-Driving Cars Were Struggling Before Arizona Crash [nytimes.com]

    Waymo, formerly the self-driving car project of Google, said that in tests on roads in California last year, its cars went an average of nearly 5,600 miles before the driver had to take control from the computer to steer out of trouble. As of March, Uber was struggling to meet its target of 13 miles per “intervention” in Arizona, according to 100 pages of company documents obtained by The New York Times and two people familiar with the company’s operations in the Phoenix area but not permitted to speak publicly about it.

    Yet Uber’s test drivers were being asked to do more — going on solo runs when they had worked in pairs.

    And there also was pressure to live up to a goal to offer a driverless car service by the end of the year and to impress top executives.

    So a company well known for corporate misconduct, disdain for regulation, and illegal activities appears to have rushed its driverless program. Google/Waymo could be in a far better position to deploy safe driverless cars.

    That's not to say that "perfected" driverless cars will cause no crashes or pedestrian deaths. But the Uber death video showed that the LIDAR didn't look like it was even being used whatsoever, and the lone test driver was not paying attention, whereas other companies are reportedly using a driver + engineer.

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    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:27AM (3 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:27AM (#659296) Journal

      Google/Waymo could be in a far better position to deploy safe driverless cars.

      Could. Will it?
      Are 2 years enough to answer to this question?

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      • (Score: 1, Troll) by takyon on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:40AM (1 child)

        by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:40AM (#659304) Journal

        Look at TFA. Google is laying down the cash. They are going for it. You just have to sit back, relax, and enjoy the deaths show.

        Also, I habitually use "weasel words" like "could" now.

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        • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by c0lo on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:49AM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 28 2018, @02:49AM (#659311) Journal

          You just have to sit back, relax, and enjoy the deaths horror show.

          Also, I habitually use "weasel wise words" like "could" now.

          FTFY 👍

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      • (Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday March 28 2018, @06:01AM

        by tonyPick (1237) on Wednesday March 28 2018, @06:01AM (#659367) Homepage Journal

        Are 2 years enough to answer to this question?

        Two years to deploy a general function AI of near-human capability?

        I'm guessing no.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:45AM

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Wednesday March 28 2018, @01:45AM (#659280) Journal

    Here's another one: Uber’s use of fewer safety sensors prompts questions after Arizona crash [reuters.com]

    When Uber decided in 2016 to retire its fleet of self-driving Ford Fusion cars in favor of Volvo sport utility vehicles, it also chose to scale back on one notable piece of technology: the safety sensors used to detect objects in the road.

    That decision resulted in a self-driving vehicle with more blind spots than its own earlier generation of autonomous cars, as well as those of its rivals, according to interviews with five former employees and four industry experts who spoke for the first time about Uber’s technology switch.

    Driverless cars are supposed to avoid accidents with lidar – which uses laser light pulses to detect hazards on the road - and other sensors such as radar and cameras. The new Uber driverless vehicle is armed with only one roof-mounted lidar sensor compared with seven lidar units on the older Ford Fusion models Uber employed, according to diagrams prepared by Uber.

    In scaling back to a single lidar on the Volvo, Uber introduced a blind zone around the perimeter of the SUV that cannot fully detect pedestrians, according to interviews with former employees and Raj Rajkumar, the head of Carnegie Mellon University’s transportation center who has been working on self-driving technology for over a decade.

    They dumbed down the LIDAR system. That could save a buck or two, but that's not worth it when LIDAR costs are falling an order of magnitude or more [soylentnews.org]. Use what works today, worry about cost as the (rushed, in Uber's case) rollout approaches.

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