# Even self-driving leader Waymo is struggling to reach full autonomy



## heynow321 (Sep 3, 2015)

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/1...less-launch-not-driverless-and-barely-public/

*The Wednesday rollout of Waymo One, Waymo's commercial self-driving taxi service, falls far short of expectations the company itself set earlier in the year.
In late September, a Waymo spokeswoman told Ars by email that the Phoenix service would be fully driverless and open to members of the public-claims I reported in this article.
We now know that Waymo One won't be fully driverless; there will be a driver in the driver's seat. And Waymo One is open to the public in only the narrowest, most technical sense: initially it will only be available to early riders-the same people who have been participating in Waymo's test program for months.*
https://thescene.com/watch/arstechnica/sitrep-president-trump-s-missile-defense-strategy

This seems to be the latest sign that Waymo's technology is progressing more slowly than a lot of people expected-including Waymo's own leadership a year ago. *People who have observed Waymo's vehicles on public roads in recent months report that the cars still struggle with unprotected left turns, merges, and other tricky situations.*

Waymo's ambitious plans for high-speed taxis could be holding it back
Waymo is widely seen as the industry leader. The company began working on self-driving technology in 2009, long before most other technology and car companies started taking it seriously. So if Waymo isn't ready to launch a fully driverless service after more than 18 months of intensive public testing, that should make us skeptical of claims from other companies that they'll be ready to launch fully self-driving technology any time soon.
*Waymo One is barely a public service*
The launch of Waymo One feels less like the launch of a public, commercial service than a rebranding of its testing program. Waymo vowed to launch a commercial service before the end of the year, and Waymo One technically qualifies. But the service hardly seems more open to the public than the early rider program Waymo had last week.
In a Thursday phone conversation, a Waymo spokeswoman declined to tell me how many customers had signed up for Waymo One on the first day or how many rides they'd taken. If a lot of people were signing up, you'd expect some of them to post photos or videos on social media, but 48 hours after the official launch I haven't been able to find any sign of people using Waymo One-and neither have other people.
I'm sure Waymo is telling the truth when it says it has invited "hundreds" of early riders to switch to Waymo One, and I assume at least a handful of people have signed up. But this is not what normally happens when a big public company launches a major new product.
*Waymo abandoned plans for a fully driverless launch*

Enlarge / This is a screenshot from Waymo's November 2017 video announcing the start of fully driverless testing. It shows fully driverless Waymo cars driving on residential streets that are almost empty.
Waymo
I wasn't the only reporter who was told that Waymo's first commercial service would be fully driverless.
In March, _The_ _New York Times_ reported that Waymo's Phoenix service would launch by the end of the year. Waymo "intended to move forward rapidly with a driverless ride service for the public because it was confident its vehicles could operate safely in virtually any driving situation where they would be put into use," the _Times' _Neal Boudette wrote. The same article stated that Waymo expected to be "providing as many as one million rides a day" by the end of 2019. (*Update:* a Waymo spokeswoman tells us that it never told the _Times_ this.)
*FURTHER READING*
Waymo One, the groundbreaking self-driving taxi service, explained
But in recent months, Waymo seems to have lost confidence in its fully driverless operations*. The Information's Amir Efrati reported last week that "due to concerns about safety, the Alphabet company put so-called 'safety drivers' back behind the wheel of its most advanced prototypes."*
Indeed, it's not clear if fully driverless vehicles have ever accounted for a significant fraction of Waymo's testing activities. *According to an August story by Efrati, fully driverless tests have typically been "in relatively small residential areas of Chandler, Arizona, where there is little traffic."*
That squares with the experience of Ryan Randazzo, a reporter at the _Arizona Republic_ who has covered Waymo over the last two years. Because he's based in the Phoenix area, he's able to regularly observe Waymo vehicles in action and talk to others in the area about the cars-including three days in October and November when he followed around Waymo vehicles to see how they perform.
"I don't know that anyone has ever seen one without a driver in the driver seat" since Waymo first announced driverless testing in November 2017, he told Ars. "They may have done it, but they don't tell us. I've asked five different ways-what percent of rides [are driverless]-they won't answer that question."
*Waymo cars struggle with tricky situations*
Over the course of October and November, Randazzo spent three days observing Waymo's cars in action-either by following them on the roads or staking out the company's depot in Chandler. He posted his findings in a YouTube video. The findings suggest that Waymo's vehicles aren't yet ready for fully autonomous operation.
*"Lane changes appear to be a problem for the cars," Randazzo says in the video. When trying to move into a crowded lane, a Waymo car seemed to lack a human driver's ability to anticipate other drivers' actions and squeeze into an open spot. Instead, the vehicle would turn on its turn signal and wait for a few seconds for an opening to appear. If one didn't appear, it would turn the turn signal off and wait for a while before trying again.
"It actually took this car almost a minute and a half to change lanes here," Randazzo said. "We talked to one person who uses these vehicles around the East Valley. He said that they sometimes miss their turns they're so hesitant."
In another incident, a Waymo car was part of a line of cars approaching an intersection where a car crash was blocking the right lane. The human drivers saw the issue far ahead and began shifting to the left lane. The Waymo car continued straight and only began trying to merge left when it was a few car lengths away from the traffic cones. The car then abruptly cancelled the left merge and instead went right into a turn lane-Randazzo speculates that this was the human safety driver taking over the vehicle.*
That jives with a video posted to YouTube in September showing a Waymo vehicle struggling to merge onto a California freeway.
According to The Information's Efrati, Waymo has struggled with turning from a low-speed residential street onto a major boulevard. This is also a problem _The_ _Washington Post_ observedduring a recent Waymo test ride. The _Post_ reported that "left turns can be painfully slow" when turning onto a major traffic artery.
With these kinds of challenges, it's not surprising that Waymo chose to keep safety drivers in its cars. And to be clear, I don't fault Waymo for doing this. Quite the contrary, they deserve credit for putting safety first. But if Waymo has largely halted testing with fully driverless vehicles-and there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that they have-it would be nice if Waymo would level with the public about this.
And if even Waymo-long regarded as the industry leader-is struggling to roll out fully driverless cars, that may be a cause for skepticism that its rivals will achieve the feat any time soon. We're going to see more and more self-driving cars on our roads. But it might be a while before we see ones that are fully driverless.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

I wish I could Like this post about 50 times!!


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

Still no evidence of any real rides ever havin' taken place. 

Just a few promotional videos showing the car driving around the block.


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## touberornottouber (Aug 12, 2016)

We are at least three years away from true SDVs as taxis being possible. Two of those years are technical and then one more year for regulations. More than likely though we are looking at 5+ years.

It's important to note that the researchers and developers are currently using a Weak AI approach. This basically means little "hacks" here and there to get the computer to generally be able to drive. How it will function in any state of uncertainty is pretty much undefined. This is the price for using Weak AI over Strong AI. Strong AI for those who don't know is basically when the computer can do everything a human can in general terms.


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## everythingsuber (Sep 29, 2015)

Think Apples report on their vehicles that are showing disengagement at an average of 1 per mile travel along with reports from people who watch Waymo do their stuff paint a clearer picture of what is going on out there than Elon Musk deflecting from Tesla's billion dollar losses.


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## beebob (Apr 9, 2019)

goneubering said:


> I wish I could Like this post about 50 times!!


Greg, Didn't u think PayPal was "stupid" at its inception?
? tomato surprise, consistency???


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## uberdriverfornow (Jan 10, 2016)

beebob said:


> Greg, Didn't u think PayPal was "stupid" at its inception?
> ? tomato surprise, consistency???


Tomato, why are you talking to other people as if they are one of your many duplicate accounts?

Only those accounts praising SDC's are tomato owned and operated. You know that.


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## beebob (Apr 9, 2019)

uberdriverfornow said:


> Tomato, why are you talking to other people as if they are one of your many duplicate accounts?
> 
> Only those accounts praising SDC's are tomato owned and operated. You know that.


Nice try ?Greg. Why so angry ? ? One of ur many illegal accounts get deactivated?

Could it be Getting older has magnified ur character traits, often in undesirable ways?

https://www.griswoldhomecare.com/blog/dealing-with-elderly-anger/


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

touberornottouber said:


> We are at least three years away from true SDVs as taxis being possible. Two of those years are technical and then one more year for regulations. More than likely though we are looking at 5+ years.
> 
> It's important to note that the researchers and developers are currently using a Weak AI approach. This basically means little "hacks" here and there to get the computer to generally be able to drive. How it will function in any state of uncertainty is pretty much undefined. This is the price for using Weak AI over Strong AI. Strong AI for those who don't know is basically when the computer can do everything a human can in general terms.


This is 2019

You say above that true SDVs are at least 3 years away

Ok so let's say 5 years then

Are you saying that in 2024 we will see true SDVs?

Because I'll come back in 5 years and hold it to you


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## Bubsie (Oct 19, 2017)

If they are having problems with left turns it might be faster for them to take three right turns instead. Learn from UPS routing.


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## touberornottouber (Aug 12, 2016)

iheartuber said:


> This is 2019
> 
> You say above that true SDVs are at least 3 years away
> 
> ...


Honestly I don't know that. All I am saying is that it isn't realistic for them to come about within the next three years.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

touberornottouber said:


> Honestly I don't know that. All I am saying is that it isn't realistic for them to come about within the next three years.


Well I can tell you when I think true SDCs used for the purpose of a taxi service will come-

Either never or in so long that it may as well be never

The short answer to the reason why I think what I think is that while I'm sure sometime soon we can go to the car dealership, buy a new car with SD features on it, using those to build a taxi business has an entire set of challenges that make it difficult

And so far the only real rebuttal I've heard to that argument on UP is "you're just dumb if you think that."

So... not exactly the greatest arguments


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