[username223]

> Waymo is operating in a handful of carefully chosen US cities. Uber can probably open in any city in the world (within reason) with probably a few weeks' effort.

This. Uber can operate anywhere that has human drivers and cell service. Waymo needs (I think) high-precision maps that are frequently updated, and simple traffic behavior.

Traffic in Lima looks like absolute chaos to an American, with endless honking and lane markers treated as vague suggestions, but there are not constant crashes, because the (mostly professional) drivers know the local conventions and communicate with each other by horn, eye contact, hand signal, etc. Huaraz is full of blind 4-way intersections with no stop signs, so drivers honk as they get close to one, and there is a remarkable lack of fiery death.

Waymo can't work in most places until it either changes human driving, or achieves AGI. Uber works as soon as it can pay local drivers.

[actinium226]

So you're saying Waymo can't scale because traffic in Lima is chaotic? That feels like saying cars won't scale because many rural villages don't have roads smooth enough for cars, and that horses can deal with that problem just fine.

[username223]

Yes and no. If you think Lima is a "rural village," you need to get out more, or at least check Wikipedia. It's a city of 10+ million people that doesn't follow American traffic laws, and there are plenty more like Huaraz (100,000+) where I can catch a human-driven taxi right now.

I'm saying a Jaguar I-Pace with lidar that knows how to follow lines and a high-res map isn't suitable for a lot of the world's roads. And how it will "scale" to what a taxi can handle right now isn't at all obvious.

[robocat]

I've driven or motorcycled in Chile, Mexico, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines. Too many situations where the roads are just nonsense and the other drivers are insane or homicidal: I can't imagine how a self-driving car could work in the worst traffic without AGI.

Plus drivers will learn the weaknesses of self-driving cars and then abuse those weaknesses.

Taxi drivers know not to stop in certain unsafe locations - good luck for self-driving cars to learn how to read for dangerous situations because of criminals.