I agree Waymo is doing the best here, but Waymo is nowhere near a real self-driving car. They can't make unguarded left turns. Or drive in the dark, or the rain. Much less the snow, or in construction, or on poorly marked roads, or roads that aren't marked at all. Or city roads that aren't laser-mapped to the centimeter. Or roads with many pedestrians. Or cyclists.
And even when they do make it work, how is money going to be made by someone like Waymo? I don't see a route to the supposed massive profitability that would justify the huge investments being made.
> I agree Waymo is doing the best here, but Waymo is nowhere near a real self-driving car. They can't make unguarded left turns. Or drive in the dark, or the rain. Much less the snow, or in construction, or on poorly marked roads, or roads that aren't marked at all. Or city roads that aren't laser-mapped to the centimeter. Or roads with many pedestrians. Or cyclists.
I work for Google, opinions are my own.
I don't know the specifics myself but I trust what you're saying is true and agree those are real problems.
Nevertheless, one of the best things to do when you have a really hard problem is to simplify the problem. It's not as though we have to have fully self driving cars before they're released.
I think what would make a lot more sense is some middle ground where we have certain sections of the road where self driving cars will be able to work well and only allow them there.
That was the idea with Google's little bubble car. It was supposed to have a top speed around 25mph and cruise around retirement communities. That seemed like a feasible goal. But it cost too much to make as a product. The LIDAR units alone would have put it over $100K.[1]
Voyage.auto [2] claims to be deploying such cars now. Or rather, their web site contains announcements from late 2018 that they were doing so. Later information seems to be lacking. It's a basically good idea, but they claim an on-site staff of 5 for three cars, so they are nowhere near this making financial sense.
A real problem with self-driving cars is the false-alarm rate for emergency braking. If you're conservative about crash prevention, every once in a while the vehicle is going to detect something it doesn't identify as safe and will brake hard. That's why Uber turned off automatic braking in their cars - "to reduce potential for erratic behavior."[3] False-alarm braking, or even strong braking conservative by human standards, limits customer acceptance.
Or properly merge. Or recognize proper behavior in right-on-red situations. Or prevent their "safety drivers" from stopping in traffic to pick up friends for joyrides.
And even when they do make it work, how is money going to be made by someone like Waymo? I don't see a route to the supposed massive profitability that would justify the huge investments being made.