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Miami, your Waymo ride is ready

86 points by ChrisArchitect

by nthdesign

3 subcomments

I was at a conference in Phoenix in November and took seven Waymo trips during my stay. Four of those were fairly long (20-minute) trips. I preferred Waymo to the Uber/Lyft experience because it felt private. It was just me and my colleagues in the car, no strangers. It also felt futuristic and novel, which I'm sure will wear off. We experienced no weird or erratic driving, with one minor exception... Waymo always followed the speed limit. On a major road where the speed limit was 40mph, other cars were zipping around us at 55mph+. And, one parking lot had 5mph speed limit signs posted. As you can imagine, Waymo was the slowest vehicle in that parking lot by a wide margin.

by treis

13 subcomments

We got these in Atlanta. I haven't had the chance to ride yet but watching them it's pretty clear that they're legit.
I think we're on the cusp of something that will change the landscape of our cities. It's going to revolutionize getting around and take a chunk out of the land dedicated to parking.

by amelius

7 subcomments

The US would benefit much more from a good railroad system.
Everybody can drive a car. They have solved the wrong problem.

by ProfessorZoom

8 subcomments

Still can't believe the prices are comparable to Uber, sometimes costing even more. It should be significantly less to the point it drives Uber out of business. Is Waymo close to bankruptcy, unable to be profitable, or are they just greedy?

by icyfox

7 subcomments

Waymo is such an interesting case study. For most other ~AI deployments you have strong public reaction to the proliferation of slop, non-human failure modes, cost cutting at the expense of quality, etc. But I haven't met a single person who doesn't like the experience of Waymo. They ended up cracking the code on what I suspect people really want:
- consistent car quality
- safety of the drive (conservative driving and potential fear of drivers)
- no randomly chatty driver
All of those feel like a breath of fresh air especially when stacked up against the current state of Uber & Lyft rides. People really just want consistency. I don't actually think you needed AI to get there (I've had occasional rides in black cars that provided the same experience). Waymo was just right time, right place, right price.

by tapoxi

5 subcomments

Why would I use Waymo if an Uber/Lyft costs the same?
If it gets in an accident, who pays my medical bills?

by thomas_witt

1 subcomments

Funny that they apparently didn't include South Beach, at least according to the map.

by melling

1 subcomments

by techIA

0 subcomment

by josefritzishere

1 subcomments