• eicker@lemmy.worldOP
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    2 days ago

    Waymo is quietly turning robotaxis from a tech demo into infrastructure. 500,000 paid rides a week, roughly 4,000 cars and 15 US cities is no longer a cute experiment. The interesting part: 80% of the fleet is still concentrated in California and Texas. Scale first where density works, then expand. Tesla has a real race on its hands.

    • 13igtyme@startrek.website
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      2 days ago

      Not really a race. Waymo uses LIDAR, RADAR, and cameras. Last I checked Tesla only uses cameras.

    • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      Lol Tesla isnt even in the race, Waymo are kicking their ass.

      Last mile work is great but fuck big tech, AI and surveillance

      • frongt@lemmy.zip
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        1 day ago

        Yeah on the one hand, eliminating human drivers is great. On the other, Google.

        • kestrel7_7@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          I’m wondering when we’ll see statistics on if these things are actually safer than human drivers. Anecdotally they’ve already almost hit me a couple times, when I was on foot and driving my own car. But I’m also a cynic, I’m not convinced these things will ever be bettet than human drivers.

          • 73ms@sopuli.xyz
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            9 hours ago

            Well, according to them we already have them: https://waymo.com/safety/impact/

            There are some limited third-party studies also supporting this but to be fair I think there’s still more needed for independent verification. Of course, it also matters what exactly we consider safer, it is entirely possible that they could be the cause of more minor damage while also preventing deaths that would occur with humans at the controls.

          • Squizzy@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I dont think we are there yet. It will be good in that people require personalisable last mile transport for trips home from pubs or grocery store where time,safety and precision are vital.

            That said public transport needs to meet it.