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1) Yep, Waymo is a moneypit. I don't know that Alphabet actually cares/expects it to make money. It feels like a halo PR project; attract and retain smart people so they don't work for others, and maybe some stuff will fall out of it. I'm sure the connections with automakers help with Android Auto, at least a bit, etc. 2. Solve the easiest problems first, as opposed to what? Even the easy problems are hard to solve, trying to solve everything at once is going to be floundering around with nothing to show. Is an automated vehicle that can only do the easy parts super useful? Not really, but it's somewhat useful. In a model with human controls, this is tractable, assuming there's a safe handover --- either directly with appropriate advance notification and acceptance, or by parking and switching; without a safe handover or human controls, it's pretty limiting, but some areas would have most of the year coverage, and some areas have tourist populations that overlap with fair weather, so it's something. 3. I don't think this is a big problem, if the vehicles are driving the routes, they can update the mapping. The road map is finite, and most places don't change that often. Again, safe handoff is critical, though. 4. Yep, it's expensive. But mass produced, less expensive lidar is plausible. Given this thing is still several years from mass deployment, constraining to today's inexpensive tech is too limiting. Figure out if you can do it, and figure out how you can do it with unlimited budget, and then figure out how to make a working system with less. P.S. I can't believe I'm defending Waymo here. Usually I'm the staunch negative against automous vehicles. On the other hand, Waymo's serious errors have been more amusing than dangerous (let's try to merge into a bus at low speed, cause it'll certainly move out of out way) |