Waymo Says Ohayō to Tokyo’s Streets
Why some passengers are now avoiding rideshare services, Zoox snags Tesla’s head of Autopilot hardware, Waymo 2024 ride summary
Top Stories of the Week
Waymo is sending autonomous vehicles to Japan for the first international tests (link). This marks the first time they’d be deploying their vehicles on public roads in a foreign country. They’re partnering with Nihon Kotsu and GO, and they’re treating this as a “road trip” to gather data on Japanese driving, including left-hand traffic and dense urban navigation. Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp said:
While we look forward to bringing the life-saving benefits of the Waymo Driver global, we have no plans to serve riders in Tokyo at this time.
I wasn’t expecting Tokyo as their next city but it makes sense. There won’t be any public rides, but they will be doing training. Lots of buzz for a training announcement though, give that PR team a raise :)
For the first time in my ~10 years of using Uber, my friends and I have started avoiding rideshare services altogether… Honestly, I can’t think of a better time for Waymo to step in (link). Interesting anecdote here but note that she doesn’t complain about long wait times or not being able to get a car - that’s the one thing Uber has mastered. Waymo is going to struggle with that, but they will dominate all of the categories that Alex is highlighting.
One area we’ve seen Uber investing heavily in over the past two years behind the scenes is with their fleet partners. Fleet partners (Hertz, Avis, Buggy, Tower, Moove, etc) acquire, maintain and rent their vehicles to Uber drivers and this ensures a consistent product, experience, etc. Some fleet owners like Tower in Los Angeles hire employee drivers for $18/hour to drive a Tesla Model Y, accept every trip, and then Tower keeps the margin on top of that. Not a bad model for all parties and it solves a lot of those issues Alex mentioned.
Cool Rides
An evasive swerve by Waymo, a mature self-driving system knows when to max swerve, and when not to! (link). Waymo should be posting these types of clips non-stop.
Driving through construction with a friend who’s a first-time Waymo rider. From “oh shit” to “interesting… that’s pretty good” 😆🚧 (link).
AVs behaving badly
Living on a hill + Waymo auto opening the trunk (link). This will be a good test to see how quickly Waymo can fix/update this feature. Are their engineers more Tesla like or the new Apple?
Other Stuff
I shared my stats earlier, but it looks like Jane is miles ahead—or should I say kilometers :)
Waymo is now offering $10 off your first ride! Click here to secure your discount.
Zoox just snagged Zheng Gao, Tesla’s head of Autopilot hardware, as their new Director of Hardware Engineering (link, no paywall).
My instinct is that the narrative of $UBER as a big loser as AV tech develops has probably gone too far in the near term (link).
One thing Waymo doesn’t have yet is the sheer thrill of being a touch late to something important and the Lyft lords blessing you with a maniac driver that will shave 5-7 min off your arrival time (link). I had an Uber driver give me a ride home from the airport the other day and he was a maniac. Honestly, the ride felt a bit unsafe, but we did get home in record time. There’s definitely some value in having a ‘mode’ that can get you there a little faster.
Alex Roy, Edward Niedermeyer, and Kirsten Korosec discuss the fall of Cruise and share broader lessons from the past decade of driving automation development, in this episode of the Autonocast Podcast (link). I thought this was a good, balanced discussion that discussed both GM’s missteps but seemed to place most of the blame on the CEO who was in charge of the company for most of the time.
Until next week.
-Harry