Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase:
"Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development..."
reads a bit like a parody of corporate speak about a project nowhere close to happening. Did they agree to deploy? Or reach an agreement to collaborate? No, that's too strong. They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development.
5 years...? I bought mine with FSD in 2018, and that was years after it was "right around the corner." Worst Kickstarter of all time... Though I do like the car itself.
Yeah, FSD was promised with the release of the first model S, 2012 - to be ready by "next year"
As such, it's been roughly 12 years just around the corner for Tesla and Musk enthusiasts.
To be more specific: Musk explicitly said in that marketing event that buying anything other the Tesla wouldn't make economic sense, as they'll earn their own price back as self driving Taxis within the following two years.
Still blows my mind that people believed him anything as these kinds of unrealistic promises were at the heart of every event since the start.
Believing someone with promises like that is - from my perspective - begging to get scammed.
From that point of view, people should be glad the delivered cars were decent. Most purchases with outlandish promises end with merchandise that is borderline unusable.
This is at the other extreme end though. They could do nothing and call the agreement to explore satisfied. Would rather they wait till they've removed at least three of the hedging words.
The ODD for drive pilot is so limited, I don’t think it’s really comparable. I have very little faith that their approach will scale to anything more than a traffic jam pilot gimmick.
It’s fair to argue that FSD is limited as well but I believe their approach is much more scalable.
All I’m saying is that starting FSD from park in my driveway and having it drive to my destination with my hands on my legs and then having it park itself when it gets there seems reasonable to call “full self driving” to me. I pay for the subscription and I would continue paying if it never got any better. I do live in a rural state, so maybe that’s why it works so well.
Having used cars that had that "supervised" driving feature.... Gosh, I hope you were paying 100% attention the whole time of that driving experience you described. Even the smart cruise control features I've used allowed my mind to drift, and I was glad for the beeping from the steering wheel telling me to pay attention. I don't use those features anymore.
If it's full self driving, then I assume that Tesla is paying for your insurance and taking all responsibility for any crashes it causes in your car?
Let's see it do that in the snow, heavy rain, anything that doesn't replicate ideal conditions in SoCal. You're riding on the sweet spot of a Gaussian and at some point you're going to experience an outlier when the machine makes a wrong interpretation of its inputs.
Do you even drive? Or have you tried using any of the features discussed above. I think I’m going insane seeing people comparing cruise control (lol) to FSD. One is a line follower, the other is a teenage driver with a fresh license. They’re not the same.
Oh please, just because it can do (bad, sometimes horribly dangerous) turns doesn't mean that 99.9% of the time it's not just a glorified cruise control with lane centering.
I owned a Model 3 with FSD. I own a Mach-E with BlueCruise. They're equivalent for the majority of drives I've done.
They edit their videos to remove the mistakes. It's all a lie if it only works 90% of the time and you don't know when it's going to fail after being lulled into inattention.
Waymo made a very good point about this, fundamentally that's the problem with a progressive rollout - drivers will stop paying attention when the software is "good enough", and the result will probably be crashes. So for them, it was all or nothing - either it fully drives itself, or it's not worth deploying.
No, they really are no different. A legal guarantee doesn't actually mean the car is safe, it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail. Those fees paid out can just be considered a marketing expense to make the car appear safer.
This is misinterpreting what I'm saying. I'm not arguing for the safety of Tesla's system. I'm saying that judging the safety based off of corporate marketing decisions is a mistake and putting a guarantee on a product is a marketing decision.
Even if this originated as a marketing thought bubble, there's no way that such a decision could've been made without direct approval from the executive (including the CEO), and only after taking advice from their general counsel and consulting with the board. The potential reputational damage is too immense for such a decision to be made by "marketing" alone. What you're describing has happened before and the courts awarded massive punitive damages against the motor company.
Yes, they are different. The degree depends on the company and if they have a history of trying to weasel out, but a legal agreement makes it harder to dodge liability in court.
Tesla would love to offer the reassurance to buyers but there’s a reason they haven’t done so: they’d lose money on it.
You are failing to understand what I'm saying. They don't have to weasel out of legal liability in court. They just bake the legal settlements they know they will have to pay into their marketing budget.
Has no one watched Fight Club and heard the anecdote about how a company will only recall a car if the cost of the recall is lower than the cost of settling all the lawsuits? All this guarantee tells us is that Mercedes did a similar calculation. Taking legal liability is not proof the car is safe. It is proof that they think the value of customers thinking the car is safe is more valuable than the cost of paying out settlements. Tesla not making the guarantee does not prove their cars are unsafe. It is evidence that if they did the same calculation, that got a different result. Maybe that is because the car is more dangerous, but it could also just be a different marketing philosophy and Tesla notably does not approach marketing like most other car companies.
The conclusion that you reached in which the Mercedes is safer than the Tesla is valuable to Mercedes and that opinion was indirectly purchased by Mercedes paying out legal settlements.
Yes, we know that companies exist to make money. My point is simply that when they are willing to make a stronger legal commitment in a country famous for litigation it suggests that they have a higher confidence level in their system.
Think about it like this: company A says “our government product is military-grade. We have a 1 year warranty.” while company B also says their product is tough but offers a 5 year warranty. Which one do you think has better data supporting the durability of their product?
That scene is a reference to Grimshaw vs Ford Motor Co.
The precedents set in that case mean that the liabilities arising out of legal action based on 'strict liability' are likely to be extremely punitive (these days, well upwards of the $147M awarded against Ford in 1980, and into the billions). Any company that did not factor such a payment in their calculation in addition to the indirect costs of reputational damage, deserves everything they get. I doubt this is the case with Mercedes.
One question I do have that perhaps someone here will know - is the Mercedes guarantee limited to certain locales? e.g. Germany only as the roads there are in good condition and well marked? (I'm assuming here).
Yes, and them putting their money where their mouth is means they are reasonably certain the accidents wont eclipse the profits, which is a much better signal than whatever Tesla marketing is putting out, seeing as they're not able/willing to do the same.
I'm not familiar with the facts of the matter but if it is indeed the case that Mercedes is indemnifying drivers for accidents caused by FSD, then that's far more than marketing, and your comment (without presenting any facts to the contrary) is unwarranted.
> The bigger difference is that Mercedes’ system only works on highways, under 40 mph, and you need a car in front of you that it essentially follows.
And geofenced to specific highways, only during the day and during good weather.
It's still cool (to me at least). But it's bizarre seeing people dismiss FSD as being the same as adaptive cruise control while touting Mercede's Drive Pilot. Drive Pilot is a lot closer to adaptive cruise control than FSD.
It's unfortunate that there's so much misinformation that gets thrown around whenever this topic comes up.
People are interested because Drive Pilot is L3 while FSD is L2. People are naturally more interested in the more advanced systems, but that would include FSD if Tesla can improve it to perform closer to the way it’s been marketed. Exaggerating the capabilities for over a decade juiced their share price but it also gave them a reputation for failing to deliver which is going to need hard data to shake: putting their money on the line would be one way to do that.
Progress would be get certified for self driving. For comparison, Mercedes, BMW, Honda etc have L3 cars on the market. Mercedes just got approved full highway speeds in EU and working on L4 certification.
I just checked out Mercedes, and it appears to be geofenced with a lot of restrictions[1]:
> DRIVE PILOT can be activated in heavy traffic jams at a speed of 40 MPH or less on a pre-defined freeway network approved by Mercedes-Benz. DRIVE PILOT operates in daytime lighting conditions when inclement weather is not present and in areas where there is not a construction zone. Please refer to the Operator’s Manual for a full list of conditions required for DRIVE PILOT.
Only on select freeways and only under 40 mph (and only during daytime with good weather conditions) sounds like it wouldn't be particularly useful.
Still, the tech is cool, and moving in the right direction. It's just always hard to really tell the state of things without doing some digging, because there's a ton of misinformation that gets thrown about whenever this topic comes up.
That’s what the government allows them to do. They got approved for freeway speeds in EU and are trying to get approved in CA. You need to prove that the car is safer than a human driver.
There's now a thing called "FSD", yes. But it's not FSD as in Full Self-Driving, as in L4. It's still an L3, the driver still needs to be at the wheel and paying attention. "Full Self Driving" implies L4. What Waymo has, with no one at the wheel, is L4.
FSD is Level 2. The driver must, at all times, be supervising the car. L3 implies that the car, in exceptionally ideal and limited circumstances, takes over full control unsupervised.
Even if you were to take Mobileye's definitions, it would still be equivalent to other companies at best (hands off, eyes on).
Here in Ireland we often see news announcements in the construction sector that goes something like "We received the go ahead to submit an application for planning permission to commission an impact study to determine whether it's viable to survey the land for construction suitability."
Yeah, that's pretty amazing corporate speak. And the development time lines are long. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains, there is a Taxi/Van in Japan called the Alphard and it's pretty nice! Toyota also has the e-pallete, which is a self driving bus for their new Woven City project. It would be great to see a new vehicle platform co-developed for those purposes because the Toyota "electrical" architecture is about 10 years behind (all CanBus). If I was them I would sort that out before building new EVs. If you look at a bz4x and pop the hood, it looks like an IC vehicle! There is no frunk, just legacy junk. It was never designed as an EV, they just put an electric motor and a battery in a Rav4 type platform and called it a day.
The new Lexus TSS which is lane keeping and cruise control and auto park and safety oriented stuff has 11 cameras I think? Plus some lasers and sonar and whatnot. 4 of them are for the cool 360 top down view. I'd love to count up all the sensors on a current production car. I googled but failed. Maybe in the manual? There's a lot.
But they probably could use less if they had better software and networking in the car. I think automotive systems tend to be built like: add 1 ecu and 1 sensor for 1 function. So they can do all the functional safety analysis for that one system in isolation. I expect they can't just keep adding all these single purpose functions and features without a central computer indefinitely but they don't have one right now. A brain like waymo (probably has?) could possibly fix that.
It’s too early to be of much interest to outsiders, but impressing people likely isn’t the intention. By announcing that they’re talking, they don’t need to keep its existence secret anymore or worry about it getting into the news at some random time as a “secret project.”
What kind of development? LiDAR on every Toyota? Would be very interesting.
If every car on the road was self driving we would not need a giant chunk of code to work around human behavior
"We've agreed to let the engineering staff from both companies directly exchange information in a place and form that we would not normally allow to occur. Hopefully they work out a way to glue our two stacks together."
>"Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous driving technologies. "
Took me a minute to find it, but the title seems accurate to me based on the second paragraph in the blog post from Waymo.
"In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs)."
To me, it looks as if Toyota is hedging their bets. Toyota has made public statements about their view of autonomous vehicle research. Their publicly stated belief is that active safety is their focus. Things like collision avoidance, and mitigation.
On the other hand, Waymo has been at it for about 15 years. The Toyota people are smart enough to know they can't catch up in full autonomy within the next two or three product generations of vehicles.
For their part, Waymo is looking for more vehicle platforms.
Toyota has been way, way behind on electrification. I suspect they’ve been Innovator’s Dilemma’d are are in a death spiral that they haven’t even noticed yet
Actually, we should also realize that they've been super wildly successful at getting people to move towards clean energy vehicles.
Prius is the world's highest selling Hybrid car, and it's been that for more than a decade now. This means Toyota has helped cut down emissions from consumer automobiles by a significant degree.
It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars. It becomes obvious when we look at the total emissions generated by that pool of 100k cars.
If there's anyone to blame, I'd look at the luxury division - Mercedes, Audi and BMW (and also Genesis/Acura) - all late to the party, and still haven't been successful at meaningfully replacing the vehicles they would sell to their customers yet.
Up until recently (~2022/23) Toyota had cumulatively sold more hybrids than all EVs sold by all manufacturers combined, globally. They arguably have the best hybrid drivetrain on the market, and it's gotten to the point where even the Camry (2025 onwards) are exclusively offered as hybrids now.
There isn’t a non hybrid version of the Prius with all its weight and aerodynamic features.
But there’s ~45 MPG all gas cars that have been built. Currently the best option is 39MPG combined, but that car’s aerodynamics aren’t great because hybrids can push that a little further for people who really want maximum MPG.
Hybrids are a dead end. There’s already EV’s doing 1MW charging. That’s practically gas pump speeds while also being able to charge at home, and the underlying technology keeps improving.
8% of new cars in the US, 14% in the EU, and 27% in China are EV’s. Toyota’s EV sales are anemic by comparison.
Hybrids are the only choice for the vast majority of the country that doesn't have the needed infrastructure to support EVs. If you never leave your urban enclave, then sure, EVs are great. But hybrids are perfect for _right now_, even if EVs are the future.
The Toyota hybrid engine is also rock solid and has been for more than a decade. They don't have a reason to abandon that right now when the industry is highly unstable and government funding for infrastructure that isn't Tesla's is being cut left and right.
I live in rural VT, 600 person town in national forest. Tons of us have EVs because you don’t have to drive down the mountain for gas and they drive great in the snow and mud.
Toyota does not want to sell a lot of EVs, because that could mean investing heavily to scale up the manufacturing of a dead-end technology that ends up losing out. Meanwhile they've been iterating on their hybrid tech and are selling 50 MPG vehicles by the millions. When the dust settles, a lot of EV companies will be out of business and their products will be e-waste with 0 spares anywhere. Toyota on the other hand generally uses the same technology for decades to build very predictable appliance-like vehicles. This is why a 3 year old EVs have 40% residuals while used Toyotas are 60%.
Toyota has invested very heavily in hydrogen cars, which is an actual "dead-end technology that ends up losing out".
Sure, numerous EV startups will bite the dust, but the actual tech of putting a battery on wheels and spinning the wheels with motors isn't going anywhere.
Toyota invested heavily into the R&D which is distinct from tooling up to produce 70kwh battery packs by the millions. They've sold maybe 20k hydrogen cars, globally over the course of a decade as a pilot. They also sold 4k RAV4 EVs, are working on EVs with BYD and CATL, which means that they're keeping their finger on the pulse of the industry while also staying out of the lithium/neodymium pissing contest which they simply cannot win. The reason Chinese EVs are such a good deal is because all of the hard-to-source stuff is under the same roof because China doesn't really have a fossil fuel story. Their hope with EVs is that the current approach to making them is simply not sustainable on a global scale and that the emergence of less resource-intensive technologies will saddle all earlier entrants (that aren't subsidized by nations) with debt.
>It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars.
It seems like hybrid sales are pretty comparable to EV sales in the U.S., at least according to this source anyway.
These metrics are most likely skewed - California has a significant number of EVs in a sample of every 100 cars, but in other states EVs are almost nowhere to be found.
Not everyone wants an EV, especially in America. Unless EV’s can jump to 500 mile range and ubiquitous five minute charging, a lot of people are just gonna want a hybrid.
Just yesterday in the coffee shop the person next to me was having a conversation about his buyer's remorse over recently purchasing a full EV instead of a hybrid or plug-in hybrid. It sounded like he hadn't anticipated how much of a hassle it is to charge on road trips. Something about having to carefully plan around the locations of fast charge stations, and it really being a drag when you're just trying to get out of the city for a weekend.
My sense is that plug-in hybrids really are the sweet spot for a lot of people in North America. The shorter full EV range is still well within most people's needs for a typical day's worth of driving, but you can still travel to and through rural areas without so much stress about whether you'll get stuck killing time for an hour or two at a slow charge station.
Superchargers aren’t available everywhere, and even in your scenario that’s still twice as long as it takes me to fill a gas tank, and you have to do it twice as often (at least).
>It sounded like he hadn't anticipated how much of a hassle it is to charge on road trips.
A few years ago this was true, but now that Tesla has opened up their network of chargers, your destination probably has to be >100 miles away from most interstate highways before road trip charging becomes much of an issue.
Even if there are charging stations every ten miles along the exact route you were already planning to take, it’s just straightforwardly true that it’s more annoying to charge vs. get gas.
I can fill my tank and be back on the road in <5 minutes in most cases, and I only have to do that once every 350 miles.
With an EV, I would be stopping anywhere from 10-30minutes (depending on the kinds of chargers available) (assuming I don’t have to wait for one to open up), and I’d be doing it twice as often.
It adds a very meaningful amount of time to long car trips.
Yes it's straightforwardly true that road trip charging is less convenient than with gas cars.
But charging for regular use is dramatically better. Anytime you're not on a road trip, you spend essentially no time fueling. Just plug in at night like you do with other electronics.
So I'll take saving 15 mins every week avoiding the gas station, in exchange for the couple times a year I have to wait an extra 15 mins charging.
Note that if your hybrid is a plug-in hybrid then you might get the best of both worlds.
On long road trips you get the fast re-energizing of a gas car.
For regular use if your plug in every night there is a good chance you can do most of your driving in EV mode. Current plug-in hybrids often have EV mode ranges of 40+ miles.
This is what someone I know with a RAV4 Prime reports. They plug in at night and it seems to mostly use the battery. It does sometime use the ICE but it is infrequently enough that they have only had to put more gas in every few months.
I have a RAV4 Prime (decided to get that instead of a Tesla) and I absolutely love it. It's the best of all worlds for my use case (mostly <40mi daily commute entirely on battery, occasional longer drives that use gas). I often go months+ without refilling the gas tank, and it charges overnight from empty. And, it's clearly Toyota quality in terms of implementation.
But you don’t really. You get a weak drive train as many moving parts as an ICE plus a non-trivial size battery that is expensive to replace. Your maintenance costs potential are as a bad as an ICE plus an EV. EVs are way more elegant solutions, simpler, better performance. Also, EVs are improving rapidly, charging speed and range keep getting better.
Hybrids done well actually have fewer moving parts than ICEs. They eliminate some systems (alternator and starter motor for example) and greatly simplify others (transmission).
He was having buyer's remorse for choosing a BEV over a PHEV. The PHEV is better on road trips and just as good at commuting. It loses on maintenance but probably still comes out ahead on TCO.
I think this is overstated. My Ford EV gets ~300 miles. If I leave my home with a full charge, I can get ~500 miles with ~30 minutes of charging. If a ~30 minute break in the middle of an ~8 hour drive is a problem for you, you probably aren't a safe driver. There is a reason that truckers have mandatory breaks. A person shouldn't be driving all day nonstop.
Really? Maybe my knowledge of EV ranges is way out of wack. I was assuming avg ranges look much more like ~200mi on a full battery in real-world conditions, and that a 30-min charge usually only gets you 80%. Sounds like I’m at least somewhat misinformed.
I tend to get better range than that, I'd like to claim it is my driving style, but more realistically it is because I live in Southern California so the battery is generally at ideal temperature, I often don't need heat/AC, and probably most importantly I'm not sure if I have ever driven 70+ mph for 300 consecutive miles without hitting traffic.
Also when I do road trips, I'll tend to do multiple shorter stops which according to that link means I'm closer to the "optimum charging area" than going 10%-80% in one sitting, so that might have caused me to overshoot that estimate a little.
So beyond that slight amendment of switching that one ~30 minute charging stop to two ~15 minute stops, the answer to ketzo's question is "yes, really", but as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
The problem with EVs and roadtrips is simply charging infrastructure. If there were L3 chargers wherever there were gas stations, it really wouldn’t be a problem even in eastern Oregon (really want to take my i4 to John Day, but alas…not quite yet, even if you drive a Tesla).
I want a range extended EV with a easily removable power pack. Unfortunately the EPA doesn't consider it an EV so no one will make one because there's no tax credit.
In the US the BMW i3 range extender gas tank is software limited so the gas range is shorter than the ev range. That's the only way they could get it to qualify as an ev.
In the US a plug-in hybrid seems like the best of both worlds. Once the charging infrastructure gets fully flushed out pure EVs will look a lot better.
PHEVs (hybrids with large battery packs) are the worst of both worlds -- weight penalty of a big EV pack, but the complexity/maintenance of an ICE engine. Additionally, rarely used gas can go bad sitting in the tank. Just get a regular hybrid if you're concerned about EV range or don't like the current limited offerings.
It's not as easy as more components = more expensive.
The battery pack is much smaller. A Prius PHEV is almost 500 lbs lighter than a Model 3 and only 100 lbs heavier than a normal hybrid Prius, which also has a battery pack. The MSRP is lower by almost $10k, which can cover a lot of maintenance before you resell it with less depreciation.
America is massive. And has a huge portion of “wild” country. As much as I want to go EV. All my free time is in the mountains on logging roads and in sub zero temps in winter. The charging networks are not yet embedded in the small mountain towns I frequent and I can’t take that chance.
You are just describing the chicken-and-egg problem. Without enough EVs there aren't incentives to build more chargers; without enough chargers EVs aren't sold in enough numbers. That's why the EV adoption curve in the United States is still in the early adopter phase. And clearly you aren't enthusiastic about being an early adopter.
Hydrogen fuel cell is more about diversification, and it is fully backed by the Japan gov so ROI would be through the roof even if it doesn't "win".
Also many countries aren't producing enough electricity (cough Japan and Germanycough) so EVs getting popular _at scale_ isn't going to happen tomorrow either.
Having a nuclear disaster only decade ago with a flurry of other plants that couldn't pass the safety test when re-checked creates a pretty tough situation.
Right now there's a plant that is stopped by the gov from getting back into production for safety issues, with the elec company trying to appeal for the nth time, and it sure doesn't help the overall image.
"This time it will be fine" is kinda hard to stomach for the impacted public to be honest.
Japanese engineering at it's core is grit and resilience (”fall down seven times, stand up eight”）. Japan's architecture prowess comes from waves and waves of catastrophes they've overcome and rebuilt upon.
For Japan to be that good at nuclear, there first needs to be a way to gracefully fail and retry, instead of making whole regions unhabitable for a century. We're clearly not there yet.
I suspect it's that they build excellent ICE vehicles, and were quick to go to hybrids but missed the rise of EVs. Everything we're seeing is a rearguard action to protect their ICE business.
Even if that is true now, it seems like the days of that continuing to be true are numbered. Toyota is going to have to accept the inevitable eventually. And, as someone who likes Toyota, I hope they don't wait until it's too late to catch up.
The Hydrogen/fuel-cells were not mass-marketable for some reason, and also beyond that they have been hard to manufacture and sustain, especially when it came to setting up that network of fueling stations and adoptability for customers.
Isn't that Japan in general, and for national security reasons? AFAIK they're wholly dependent on China for crucial mineral components in EVs, and 'burning the boats' by abandoning internal combustion manufacturing would effectively turn them into China's vassal.
Yes, 'rare earths aren't rare,' and I hear that, and then I also hear that everyone is screwed if China won't sell theirs.
It can't be both. The key reasons I've heard for China owning this market are a) they have large deposits, b) they heavily invested for decades, and c) they aggressively dump and undercut in an anticompetitive fashion to ensure they keep the market cornered.
Seems like the only way out of this is to stop being religiously opposed to state subsidies in an industry of clear national security importance, combined with maybe a Herbert Dow-style jiu-jitsu move of countering any dumping by stockpiling and then re-selling the below-market product.
They have some of the best hybrids on the market and EVs in general are not ready for prime time yet. Their plug-in hybrids are in the current sweet spot and are very popular. They have plenty of time to catch up once infrastructure and power density are there for EVs. This is with a US context.
I went to a Subaru dealer here in Calgary and asked about the Solterra with a friend present.
The salesman bluntly told me to get a Tesla and half heartedly tried to get me to look at a hybrid. I wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't there with a friend.
In retrospect, I am happier with my used Model 3 than an electric car from a company with no intent on winning the market.
Not noticed, because they're printing money with their hybrids that all have year-long waitlists in the US. Gas stations are alive and well, and until the housing crisis is fixed (not happening in our lifetime), people will be reliant on gas vehicles because you can't charge at most apartment complexes.
Anyone have a source for how many pounds of batteries each car manufacturer has shipped over the years? It would be nice to see how BYD is doing compared to Toyota, Tesla, VW, and General Motors, etc.
I suspect you don't actually own an ev. Otherwise you might mention a specific here. I own an ev and they're marvelous. The ability to leave with a full tank of gas every morning and never have to worry about filling up is fantastic. No maintenance other than tire rotations ever 10k miles, and electricity is way cheaper than gas. And EVs are just fun to drive. The instant torque is fantastic and everyone I show it off to loves it.
The future of (public) transportation absolutely is driverless cars.
Every time I'm stuck in traffic on an LA highway with 5+ lanes and I see the horrendously inefficient use of space this future becomes clearer.
Waymos are also really confidence inspiring. They drive more safely and cautiously than any Uber/Lyft driver I've ridden with.
If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each other and at much faster speeds. This would optimize road space, decrease congestion, and reduce transit times.
So I'm happy to see more announcements like this. I hope the Waymo driverless tech becomes ubiquitous.
This “if cars were synced all would be well” fantasy assumes that the limited gains from scrunching won’t be a rounding error compared to the nearly unlimited additional trips that robots with infinite patience could start making.
Currently it’s got to be worth sitting at the wheel or paying a delivery driver… but if my robot says “6 hours to drive 10 miles”, I’ll think, “wow traffic is bad, whatever, it’ll get there when it gets there, beep, off you go! siri, text mom that the paint chip is on its way”, oh hmm actually maybe teal is better… “hey siri, get me another toyotaymo”
If you want to get rid of the space taken up by 5 lane highways you need to convert roads into walkways for pedestrians, bike lanes, and bus lanes.
There can still exist space for cars but they need to be last in priority rather than the first, second, and third consideration cars have today when it comes to infrastructure.
I challenge anyone who seriously proposes this to first spend a month in a wheelchair. You quickly discover that your sense of scale and freedom of movement is largely a function of your physical capability and financial comfort.
I’m confused by this. Making public infrastructure people first, not car first, in your opinion would make things more difficult and expensive for handicap people?
The town I live in has many streets without sidewalks, and even the ones with sidewalks, many of those are entirely unsuitable for wheelchairs. Designing the streets to have pedestrian needs prioritized over cars would make the streets more handicap accessible not less.
People. As in people walking. My town is not designed in a way that is conducive towards walking. It isn’t safe, there is either no sidewalks, the sidewalks are in disrepair, are not wide enough for two people to pass each other, or set back far enough from the road to not feel like someone could run you over.
But the roads and dozens upon dozens of acres of parking lots? Perfectly fine. Millions spent every year maintaining them while sidewalks are neglected, there are no bike lanes or paths, and it could take twice as long to take a bus as it would be to just walk on the dangerous roads.
I just would think I should be able to walk to a restaurant or the library with my kid safely but I guess because I can do it in a car I should shut up and stop worrying about everybody getting excited about autonomous vehicles making infrastructure even more car centric.
> If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each other and at much faster speeds. This would optimize road space, decrease congestion, and reduce transit times.
Fair enough. But keep in mind cars only solve this last mile problem when there's high throughput roads connecting all possible trip starts / destinations. In American we have this infrastructure (at a great cost in city design and tax payers dollars), but cities in many other countries don't have this and don't want it either.
The future of public transportation is buses and trains. Any other solution that involves wrapping individual humans in a steel bubble 10x the size is woefully inefficient and wasteful. No matter how well they self drive.
You might be right. I saw a survey somewhere (can't find it now), where Americans were asked about working in factories.
Majority said that USA will be better if more people started working in factories, but a minority said USA will be better if /they/ worked in factories.
It's the whole "I got mine" mentality, where people are not willing to compromise on their own comfort for the greater good, yet they expect others to do so.
I don't think this is unique to the US, I think it's just very egregious there at the moment.
I love AVs, but It would do jack shit for traffic and the horrible use of space until they become autonomous buses on dedicated bus lanes, or trains. You still gotta have spaces for pedestrians, and cars still make cities ugly and unpleasant. Even electric autonomous ones. Tire friction still makes noise and pollutes the air with microplastics.
They gotta supplement mass transit for dense cities, not replace it.
> They gotta supplement mass transit for dense cities, not replace it.
Full agreement here. AVs are great for last-mile transit.
> horrible use of space until they become autonomous buses on dedicated bus lanes, or trains
This is where we disagree. The whole point of AV TaaS is that they can go where bus lanes and trains can't. Last mile transportation.
I also wouldn't say they do "jack shit" for traffic in the sense that they reduce the need for parking, and reduce accidents which are the source of a lot of unpredictable congestion.
Surely there are tradeoffs. They indirectly incentivize sprawl and taking more taxi rides overall. And I get the tire residue argument (especially since AV fleets are mostly electric with high torque generating more tire wear). But is tire noise really a fair complaint? They're just going where cars already go and tires are engineered pretty well to minimize noise...
Tire noise is still quite substantial - use the NIOSH noise meter app on your phone to compare the sound levels on a city block when an EV goes by compared to just bikes and people – and there’s a growing body of evidence that noise levels correlate with worse health and sleep for residents. EVs help, but it’s only partial.
But I think the real challenge isn't just the tech: it's the messy middle. Human drivers aren't going away anytime soon, and mixed traffic (humans + AVs) is where a lot of that theoretical efficiency gets lost
> If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each other and at much faster speeds. This would optimize road space, decrease congestion, and reduce transit times.
That's not going to happen, not in our lifetimes. It's not safe to do this unless you have a critical mass of cars on the road capable of doing it. Given the average age of cars, it'll take ~10-15 years from such tech being mandatory in new cars to think about doing this. Being mandatory is of course itself over 10 years from it being available. And it's not available yet.
We're now a decade out from people starting to say "stop investing in public transportation because driverless cars will obsolete it," and so far driverless cars have only managed to provide a limited taxi service in a couple of cities, a far cry from deprecating public transit.
(Actually, I personally hew to the belief that driverless cars will make traffic worse, since it will probably increase the number of empty cars running around because traffic tends to be dominated by unidirectional bursts of traffic.)
If the car ahead of you is sharing visibility and braking data, you can drive on their bumper and stop when they stop.
If the car next to you is receiving route data, they can open a spot for you to get to your exit.
The benefit is large and NOT REQUIRED for normal operation. It's the easiest coordination problem in the world, because it's all upside and practically atomic.
> It's not safe to do this unless you have a critical mass of cars on the road capable of doing it.
You could always give those cars their own section of the road like HOV lanes. EVs were granted access to HOV lanes in California as an incentive to increase EV adoption. A similar thing could happen with a dedicated autonomous lane that has a much higher speed limit.
Those goalposts moved pretty fast from "sleep while it drives me to work" which I can do today to the extreme of being able to drive "Anywhere in the world under any conditions". And I see no reason to believe "all of the nearby vehicles on the road communicating" is the solution to bridging that gap.
Reread my original comment or even just the that short seven word quote you have right there. Notice that key word "me". I was speaking about myself in the present tense, not "people... all over the planet during all seasons".
That's what I want to, but I don't think it's really a fair complaint given that this has been reasonably well defined. What we both want is 'L5' (level five) autonomy, where the vehicle doesn't even need the ability to be manually driven necessarily.
(L4 iirc is hands-off but someone in the driver's seat (which must therefore exist) in a fit state to take over if necessary - no sleeping on the way in, no drinking on the way home.)
A self-driving vehicle is like a commuter train that operates on your own schedule and goes between any two points and doesn't require billions of dollars of new tracks to be built and runs on clean electric power instead of diesel.
Moving self-driving vehicles requires billions of dollars of new roads to be built.
The statistic I like to use is that the train tunnels underneath the Hudson River into Manhattan move more people than all of the road crossings into Manhattan combined. It's probably cheaper in the long run to invest in better regional rail systems than it is to to keep widening highways; people drastically underestimate the costs of highway construction.
The same infrastructure that people often complain is inadequate to the task?
Self-driving vehicles are also going to come with the innovation of having zero occupants as they navigate somewhere to park. And if people want to replace existing mass transit systems with self-driving vehicles, that's going to require a lot more infrastructure.
Let me use my phone or watch videos on the highway. I’m okay with taking over with a small amount of warning. I’m also okay doing all non-highway driving.
I just want something that can keep me in my lane and avoid ramming the vehicle in front of me. If I need to drive at the start and end of my trip, that’s okay.
This is what I want too, driving 15 min manually in the city doesn't bother me or tire me out at all, I just want to watch TV when driving straight on the interstate for 300 miles.
Want I’d want to see is a focus on level 5 autonomous driving from day 1. (Edit: Even if the system is level 4 to start with.) Yes the current coverage area is limited, but if you live in one of those cities the coverage area is easily large enough to be useful.
Oddly enough I think this is one of the few times when a subscription model makes sense. The current approach has a fallback call center which can give the cars driving directions in unexpectedly situations, which could be supported by either a monthly subscription or low hourly fee. Similarly move out of the coverage area and stop paying etc.
As someone who's blind I've made this argument in the passed. I don't need 100% success as long as the failure mode won't injure me. Seven years ago I would have loved a car that would have driven me to and from work 95% of the time, and refused to take the other 5% if the weather forecast was bad enough that the self driving wouldn't work correctly. I'd also be fine with the car pulling over to the side of the road if it got confused and waiting for someone remote to take control and drive until it was out of the situation where autonomous driving wouldn't work. Given the fact that I now work remote and am married to someone who drives if you told me I could by a car with autonomous driving for $50000 now I don't think I'd do it. I'm interested to see just how good autonomous driving gets and if it drives down the prices of taxi services. At this point I'd rather see an autonomous taxi service offering lower rates then Uber instead of buying my own car with autonomous driving.
I think you may mean Level 4. The difference between 4 and 5 is that 5 doesn't have any territory/environmental constraints, but you said you don't mind those.
If they require high speed cellular service then the system can’t scale to level 5 driving. Add a Starlink dish on top and the hardware could eventually scale to the entire continental US etc.
And I actually agree about the subscription model too. It's one of the rare cases where it feels practical: pay while you're in the coverage zone, pause when you're not
This feels like a pretty natural pairing. Waymo brings the software + autonomy stack, and Toyota has the scale and track record for building reliable, safe vehicles. If this actually leads to autonomous tech in personally owned cars (not just robotaxi fleets), that would be a major shift from the current trajectory
"Toyota and Waymo aim to combine their respective strengths to develop a new autonomous vehicle platform. In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs)."
I can't overstate how hopeful I am about Waymo. They are already literally 10x safer than human drivers [1] and they'd become vastly safer still if they completely replaced human drivers on the road. This would also make commuting a much more pleasant experience, which I think could greatly relieve the housing crisis in high-demand cities. Parents would have an alternative to hours of driving kids to activities.
I can't think of another pipeline technology that is both this proven and this impactful.
"Woven by Toyota will also join the potential collaboration as Toyota’s strategic enabler, contributing its strengths in advanced software and mobility innovation."
I know we Americans just love to own cars, what with the rapid depreciation, constant maintenance and massive storage requirements. Who could resist? But isn't the promise of self driving vehicles that we don't all need to own, maintain and operate a 4000lb machine? I know it's hard to resist dropping the $30k, $40k or even $50k and paying that monthly insurance we all love. But wouldn't it be better if we could just summon whatever vehicle we need for the hour and then get on with our lives? And more importantly, don't we all want the benefits that will come from having mostly robo-cars on the road - such as fewer accidents and injuries, less traffic, faster trips and more parking?
That's one vision, but it's probably not the most likely one. People like privately owning cars, and as long as they're more convenient than hiring taxis it'll probably stay that way.
Here's another vision of the future - gradually everyone's cars become self-driving, and now cars are more accessible to a wider range of people. 30% of the population currently can't drive due to age or disability, but if cars drive themselves the elderly, disabled, and even children can now own and operate vehicles. And now you have 30% more cars on an already congested road system. That should be enough to make traffic jams the norm everywhere.
But in case that wasn't bad enough, consider this - now people can do other things while they travel, because they don't have to be driving. So, in turn, they can live further and further away from their workplaces in cheaper, larger houses and do more of their work on the go. And while they do this they're spending more time on the roads, and - you guessed it - causing more congestion.
And because parking will always be expensive and hard to find in busy city centers, people will set their cars to loiter while they visit, rather than parking. Just going round and round while their owners shop. Causing - you guessed it - even more congestion.
TL;DR - the most likely result of autonomous vehicles is out of control congestion.
When teleportation becomes a thing society will force supercommuters to teleport in from farther and farther-out to maximize shareholder value while remaining in compliance with their respective companies' hybrid work policies. That you arguably die and are recreated every time you pass through the portal will finally end all discussions around whether your life is worth more than productivity.
Simple. Not having a driver in the car. The driver is the only part of Uber I don't like. I feel like if I make them wait 20 seconds they could ding my rating. If I have kids with me, I hate having to get their carseat buckled, knowing the driver probably doesn't want kids in their car anyway. I hate the awkward silence. I hate listening to their shitty music. At no fault of their own, they are the only weak link in the Uber chain. Everything gets better for me if there just isn't a person waiting on me the whole time.
I'd sell my cars in a heartbeat if "Uber minus the driver" existed and was cheaper than owning a car.
Explain how a car with a human driver will be cheaper or have price parity with a car that requires no paid human driver. The driver is the most expensive part of every ride. And that's before tip.
Yeah, manufactured goods aren't exactly known to increase in price as production scales. This is a very temporary anomaly. Cars with drivers are on the precipice of becoming extinct, save for specialty needs and the wealthy.
Taxis/uber etc. are all built as "regular cards". It requires at least 2 people in there. How often is actually more than 1 person in a car? Wasn't that like 2/3 of all drives?
Now let's assume we have specialized cars for just a single person - that saves a lot of material, fuel, and also (parking) space.
But that only works if you don't OWN the car, because if you own it, you might sometimes have to have passengers right? So you always get a big car that is not needed in 2/3 or so of the drives.
That aside, having another driver is annoying for various reasons (e.g. privacy).
I have to pay to store my manually-driven car 90% of the day, because there's nothing else it could be doing while it waits for me.
A driverless car can very easily do things and make money while I'm waiting for it.
In some scenarios, people rent out their owned cars during the day to avoid this massive opportunity cost, but I doubt that will be the most efficient model.
In what other asset class ever has it made sense for the capital owners to be an extremely long tail of people, rather than a large corporate owner? Especially something as high velocity and fungible as cars.
been watching this space forever, always cracks me up how we go from overhyped PR to endless hedging - nothing feels real till someone puts their name on the liability. anyone else think real change happens only when they truly risk something?
Waymo has to start moving faster, and democratizing the space by making it available to all car makers is smart, because it seems that Elon Musk is pushing Tesla to make RoboTaxis their #1 priority:
The world would be a lot better off if Tesla and Uber get smoked on this. Tesla's public testing of beta quality industrial control software and Uber's attempt to lilypad jump across the backs of financially unsophisticated drivers are contemptible. I'd be very glad to see neither strategy actually work in the end.
The funny thing is that I've owned Gen 3 FSD for five years now and only in the last few months has it gotten noticeably better. It's actually respectable at driving around my city now, can handle roundabouts, make turns, etc.
I have noticed the same - Tesla FSD has improved remarkably in the last couple of versions, to the point where it almost never requires interventions.
That said, I still don't "trust" FSD to the point where I could comfortably be in the backseat taking a nap just yet.
99% is not "good enough" for something as critical as driving.
I actually started to trust V12. V11 was a complete joke vaporware. V12 is a complete game changer that actually drives on par if not better than human. Not a tesla stock holder(all of it is a scam per my retarded opinion), but I am now more than confident that they will start doing self driving this year. Maybe isolated and with some remote interventions here and there, but it feels on par with Waymo. My friend was just testing Waymo and by his words it is not as aggressive (human like) like Tesla on the road where you need to assert yourself to merge.
I’ve been reading this comment for years, just with version numbers changed. I expect in two years I’ll be hearing that V14 sucked, but now with v15, actual level 4 FSD is just around the bend!
> That said, I still don't "trust" FSD to the point where I could comfortably be in the backseat taking a nap just yet. 99% is not "good enough" for something as critical as driving.
You should only trust it after Tesla accepts full liability when FSD is enabled.
The funny thing is that a nearly perfect template of your comment appears on nearly every post which includes a criticism of FSD. It's always magically "just recently got better!" As well as "being able to do some selected basic driving despite being called FULL self drive."
I have no 'recently' to compare to, as I'd never been in a Tesla before. I was dubious because of all the "this year for sure" history, but after test driving one, I bought the new Model Y, and it now pretty much drives me to work and back every day with little to no intervention.
Knowing how prone to exaggeration Elon is, my bar was low. But it blew me away honestly. After nearly 30 years working in software and with some background in machine learning and computer vision and generally just trying to make software that works reliably, it's a pretty jaw dropping experience.
Would I take a nap in the back seat and let it drive? No. But does it allow me to sit there focused on a technical podcast or an audiobook so I feel like I'm getting back an hour or two a day instead of worrying about driving? Absolutely.
It reeks of manual fitting. Tesla surveys an area and makes manual adjustments that keep the system from misbehaving for a while until something changes and then it’s back to shit.
There is definitely some amount of that. On each training run it gets better at some things, worse at others (this is mostly limited to its lane handling more recently).
And in the 12 months I've had the car, it has gotten noticeably better maybe 2 times. Once last year, and then once in February. After the iteration last year, it drove fairly well, but I still had to intervene once or twice per trip. Now I make it through half of my trips without intervening, and when I do intervene it tends to be to avoid embarrassment vs safety (not committing, wrong lane for an upcoming turn, etc).
Given how ai is advancing, I am pretty confident they will get this working fully autonomously with just vision, it's just a question of when.
If it's true now then it means it was false before. Unless the claim is that every few months there's a noticeable spike in capabilities however the grandparent commenter seems to claim otherwise (ie, that only recently did it improve).
Look, everyone on the planet agrees that calling it FSD was over-promising. You are not adding anything to the conversation by pointing that out, or by confusing technology with "magic". The fact remains that software developed by a competent team can actually improve over time, despite the insanity of corporate leadership, and that's what is happening here.
The fact also remains that fraud (even if it's not prosecuted) is fraud. You promise X and deliver... not X, for years? You're a fraud. Even if you are getting better at delivering Y, for some value of Y which is Far, Far less than X.
As someone who also purchased FSD, I was able to drive hundreds of kilometers without any disengagements even though my car is an older HW3 with 12.6. I fully believe that with some Waymo-like conservative route planning and teleoperator backup, they will be able to achieve their robotaxi goals this year.
O3 can now play geoguessr better than master level human players. It can also beat master level Codeforces competitive programmers. I wouldn't discount the ability of AI to make sense of images far better than humans possibly could, all the while beating them at logical thinking, especially in a restricted domain like driving.
AI isn’t magic. If there isn’t enough information in the inputs, you can’t expect reliable results. It’s the same principle in all of software: garbage in, garbage out.
If there simply isn’t enough visual information, vision-only will fail.
That is not a debunking... That's someone running a similar experiment and getting a different result. That would debunk the claim that Teslas can never detect a painted wall. It does not debunk the claim that Teslas will sometimes fail to detect a painted wall.
And in a safety-critical system, the distinction is not mere pedantry.
Theoretically, if there's not enough visual information for AI drivers, then there's not enough visual information for human drivers, and that's a problem with the road. (Which, to be sure, occasionally there are roads like this: e.g. merging onto a higher-speed thoroughfare from a lower level, with a very short distance between "where you're in a position to see the merging traffic (and not that much of it)" and "where the roads have fully merged (and there's no shoulder)".)
Sure. Can you describe what leverage Uber actually has in those partnerships? That's a deal of convenience for Waymo, trading a bit of margin for some velocity. It (or similar deals) are downright existential to Uber.
Uber is acting as an aggregator for all types of rides. Customers have the direct relationship with Uber. Unless Waymo completely runs away with autonomous driving then I think Uber has a lot of leverage.
Waymo has shown itself more than capable of going D2C [1].
It’s actually the one case where Google’s customer service beats the competition’s. Waymo customer service is still somewhat trash. But you need it so infrequently compared with Uber, and Uber and Lyft somehow manage to make Google look like a people company, that I find myself almost exclusively taking Waymo when I’m in a city where it is an option. (Via the Waymo app.)
There is a reason even taxi companies are now partnering with Uber in places like DC.
I travel a lot between business (not as much now) and personally. I know I can land in any airport domestically and most airports internationally and can get a ride on Uber and with surge pricing someone will usually pick me up.
It isn’t financially viable to have enough Waymo cars on the road that will be able to handle peak demand and just sit there during low demand.
> It isn’t financially viable to have enough Waymo cars on the road that will be able to handle peak demand and just sit there during low demand
Sure. Waymo can absorb the usual base load. Uber and Lyft can be peakers. This is how it works in Phoenix, LA and Miami, cities one can’t dismiss as cities “of tech bros,” I assume, given during peak hours the wait time surges to 30+ minutes.
I would bet it takes literally one ride in a Waymo for 90%+ of users to be ready to download a different app to access that service again, if Waymo and Uber were to part ways.
Uber probably has legal framework of operation, ability to quickly obtain permits for autonomous testing, local political connections, special ability to gather roads, traffic, mapping data and overall support with rapid deployment. For waymo to get into a new location/country, establish their presence, navigate the political and regulatory landscape etc will take very long and many difficult hurdles.
Waymo has papa Google, Google Maps already has location and traffic data in excess of Uber. They don't just randomly color traffic lines in Google maps.
I doubt it. Uber is a 1000x more toxic brand to regulators than Waymo is. And I don't think Uber's maps mean anything to Waymo, though would be curious if someone else has direct insight into why they would.
Seems like a mixed bag. Parents, eldest sister and eldest all have Teslas and have done cross-country road trips with no problems, and use FSD very regularly. Brother, also the most cynical (and probably on HN), swears it's out to kill him and claims it nearly put him under a truck had he not taken over.
Tesla has never published the data required to substantiate this claim.
Next what you'll post is Tesla's press release where they look at accidents per mile with no segregation by driving type (city, freeway, age of car, weather conditions, etc)
Then the next step after that should be for you to say, "huh, it actually is odd that they publish something that purports to show it's safer than human drivers, but they consistently decline to publish the data necessary to actually evaluate whether it's safer than human drivers."
As someone who never wants to give Elon a cent and is 100x more interested in Waymo’s tech than Elon’s trust-me-bro FSD bullshit, this would have been devastating.
> Toyota and hybrid vehicles - very weak entry into the market
This statement doesn't seem to track with reality. The Prius was one of the first major hyrbids and it sold like hotcakes. You see them everywhere. Their current offerings include more hybrids than ever, in fact it seems a majority of their vehicles have a hyrbid option today, including the Tacoma and Tundra.
I think part of Elon's strategy is announcing <something> being around the corner in order to scare off competitors and investment into alternatives because, well, Telsa is already so far ahead.
This is why Tesla's "actuals" are delivered so many years after the dates of the initial pronouncements (for those few things that have so far been delivered at all).
That is the impression those pronouncements are intending to give. My point is that it may not reflect reality; it's trying to present "we are way ahead", whether they are or not, as reality, in order to incentivise investment in their company, rather than in a competitors, whilst at the same time scaring away those thinking about attempting to compete by making the moat look wider than it is.
I legitimately don't know who's ahead of who and where the state-of-the-art currently sits, but I do know that I hear far more about Tesla's vision roadmap than Waymo's or Uber's or anyone else's.
Wonder if there's any breakup clauses when the manufacturers want to do autonomy with other companies outside of Waymo and this is Alphabet casting a conflict-of-influence net across the industry, almost like a desperate man calling every divorce lawyer in the tristate area to deny his wife proper justice.
And anyone that survived or tries to sue due to massacres committes by self driving Teslas will be sent to the death camps in El Salvador for being domestic terrorists
Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase:
"Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development..."
reads a bit like a parody of corporate speak about a project nowhere close to happening. Did they agree to deploy? Or reach an agreement to collaborate? No, that's too strong. They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development.
> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development.
Compared to "FSD this year", every year for the past five years, I honestly find the approach pretty refreshing.
5 years...? I bought mine with FSD in 2018, and that was years after it was "right around the corner." Worst Kickstarter of all time... Though I do like the car itself.
Yeah, FSD was promised with the release of the first model S, 2012 - to be ready by "next year"
As such, it's been roughly 12 years just around the corner for Tesla and Musk enthusiasts.
To be more specific: Musk explicitly said in that marketing event that buying anything other the Tesla wouldn't make economic sense, as they'll earn their own price back as self driving Taxis within the following two years.
Still blows my mind that people believed him anything as these kinds of unrealistic promises were at the heart of every event since the start.
Believing someone with promises like that is - from my perspective - begging to get scammed.
From that point of view, people should be glad the delivered cars were decent. Most purchases with outlandish promises end with merchandise that is borderline unusable.
> Compared to "FSD this year", every year for the past five years, I honestly find the approach pretty refreshing.
As an 11 years Toyota driver I agree.
This is at the other extreme end though. They could do nothing and call the agreement to explore satisfied. Would rather they wait till they've removed at least three of the hedging words.
this is just the opposite extreme of "FSD this year"
Doesn't Waymo already have FSD?
FSD is something you can BUY and USE right now. Toyota is writing an MoU. They’re not the same.
Waymo is something that actually drives itself and you can hail right now. FSD is not actually “full self-driving”.
Tesla doesn't even call it that, there's “(Supervised)” after that. That's like calling it “Full Self-Driving (Not!)”.
FSD can’t self drive on any street though. Its just L2 like cruise control and lane centering.
I use it every day on every street in Vancouver. Where do you come up with your information?
If you car crashed while using "FSD", who would be liable?
You’re driving. Why you can’t watch a movie like you can on a Mercedes L3 car.
The ODD for drive pilot is so limited, I don’t think it’s really comparable. I have very little faith that their approach will scale to anything more than a traffic jam pilot gimmick.
It’s fair to argue that FSD is limited as well but I believe their approach is much more scalable.
FSD is not approved to work on any street. Drive Pilot is approved for highway speeds in EU. Limitations is what the government allows.
What you're buying is not driving, by itself, fully.
Mine drove me from my house to the airport without my ever touching the steering wheel so what exactly do you mean?
If you can't sit in the backseat and watch a movie, it's not self driving.
All I’m saying is that starting FSD from park in my driveway and having it drive to my destination with my hands on my legs and then having it park itself when it gets there seems reasonable to call “full self driving” to me. I pay for the subscription and I would continue paying if it never got any better. I do live in a rural state, so maybe that’s why it works so well.
Having used cars that had that "supervised" driving feature.... Gosh, I hope you were paying 100% attention the whole time of that driving experience you described. Even the smart cruise control features I've used allowed my mind to drift, and I was glad for the beeping from the steering wheel telling me to pay attention. I don't use those features anymore.
If it's full self driving, then I assume that Tesla is paying for your insurance and taking all responsibility for any crashes it causes in your car?
Let's see it do that in the snow, heavy rain, anything that doesn't replicate ideal conditions in SoCal. You're riding on the sweet spot of a Gaussian and at some point you're going to experience an outlier when the machine makes a wrong interpretation of its inputs.
It sounds like you're recklessly interpreting the parameters by which your "self driving" car was made available to you
Did it also drive itself back to your home empty?
Adaptive cruise control could do that too.
How impressive it is depends on where you live.
Do you even drive? Or have you tried using any of the features discussed above. I think I’m going insane seeing people comparing cruise control (lol) to FSD. One is a line follower, the other is a teenage driver with a fresh license. They’re not the same.
Oh please, just because it can do (bad, sometimes horribly dangerous) turns doesn't mean that 99.9% of the time it's not just a glorified cruise control with lane centering.
I owned a Model 3 with FSD. I own a Mach-E with BlueCruise. They're equivalent for the majority of drives I've done.
> Adaptive cruise control could do that too.
No, it could not.
Except there’s FSD videos everywhere on X with every minor release, demonstrating the progress.
They edit their videos to remove the mistakes. It's all a lie if it only works 90% of the time and you don't know when it's going to fail after being lulled into inattention.
Waymo made a very good point about this, fundamentally that's the problem with a progressive rollout - drivers will stop paying attention when the software is "good enough", and the result will probably be crashes. So for them, it was all or nothing - either it fully drives itself, or it's not worth deploying.
They constantly highlight regressions.
Yes, that’s called marketing. Believe it when they do what Mercedes does and accept liability rather than trying to shirk it.
If marketing is a 20 min video demonstrating both progress and regressions for each minor rev, then I’ll take more of that.
I'll believe it when they accept liability for the actions of their autonomous vehicles. Videos mean nothing.
You fell for Mercedes’ marketing so that’s hilariously ironic
I’m sure that sounded more clever in your head but an actual legal agreement is more than marketing.
No, they really are no different. A legal guarantee doesn't actually mean the car is safe, it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail. Those fees paid out can just be considered a marketing expense to make the car appear safer.
it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail
Tesla will not - it will blame the human driver for not paying attention. That's the difference.
This is misinterpreting what I'm saying. I'm not arguing for the safety of Tesla's system. I'm saying that judging the safety based off of corporate marketing decisions is a mistake and putting a guarantee on a product is a marketing decision.
Even if this originated as a marketing thought bubble, there's no way that such a decision could've been made without direct approval from the executive (including the CEO), and only after taking advice from their general counsel and consulting with the board. The potential reputational damage is too immense for such a decision to be made by "marketing" alone. What you're describing has happened before and the courts awarded massive punitive damages against the motor company.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Yes, they are different. The degree depends on the company and if they have a history of trying to weasel out, but a legal agreement makes it harder to dodge liability in court.
Tesla would love to offer the reassurance to buyers but there’s a reason they haven’t done so: they’d lose money on it.
You are failing to understand what I'm saying. They don't have to weasel out of legal liability in court. They just bake the legal settlements they know they will have to pay into their marketing budget.
Has no one watched Fight Club and heard the anecdote about how a company will only recall a car if the cost of the recall is lower than the cost of settling all the lawsuits? All this guarantee tells us is that Mercedes did a similar calculation. Taking legal liability is not proof the car is safe. It is proof that they think the value of customers thinking the car is safe is more valuable than the cost of paying out settlements. Tesla not making the guarantee does not prove their cars are unsafe. It is evidence that if they did the same calculation, that got a different result. Maybe that is because the car is more dangerous, but it could also just be a different marketing philosophy and Tesla notably does not approach marketing like most other car companies.
The conclusion that you reached in which the Mercedes is safer than the Tesla is valuable to Mercedes and that opinion was indirectly purchased by Mercedes paying out legal settlements.
Yes, we know that companies exist to make money. My point is simply that when they are willing to make a stronger legal commitment in a country famous for litigation it suggests that they have a higher confidence level in their system.
Think about it like this: company A says “our government product is military-grade. We have a 1 year warranty.” while company B also says their product is tough but offers a 5 year warranty. Which one do you think has better data supporting the durability of their product?
That scene is a reference to Grimshaw vs Ford Motor Co.
The precedents set in that case mean that the liabilities arising out of legal action based on 'strict liability' are likely to be extremely punitive (these days, well upwards of the $147M awarded against Ford in 1980, and into the billions). Any company that did not factor such a payment in their calculation in addition to the indirect costs of reputational damage, deserves everything they get. I doubt this is the case with Mercedes.
One question I do have that perhaps someone here will know - is the Mercedes guarantee limited to certain locales? e.g. Germany only as the roads there are in good condition and well marked? (I'm assuming here).
Yes, and them putting their money where their mouth is means they are reasonably certain the accidents wont eclipse the profits, which is a much better signal than whatever Tesla marketing is putting out, seeing as they're not able/willing to do the same.
Money talks, as it were.
I'm not familiar with the facts of the matter but if it is indeed the case that Mercedes is indemnifying drivers for accidents caused by FSD, then that's far more than marketing, and your comment (without presenting any facts to the contrary) is unwarranted.
The bigger difference is that Mercedes’ system only works on highways, under 40 mph, and you need a car in front of you that it essentially follows.
It’s for traffic jams, and only usable in them. There’s not a big legal liability when the biggest risk is probably a fender bender.
> The bigger difference is that Mercedes’ system only works on highways, under 40 mph, and you need a car in front of you that it essentially follows.
And geofenced to specific highways, only during the day and during good weather.
It's still cool (to me at least). But it's bizarre seeing people dismiss FSD as being the same as adaptive cruise control while touting Mercede's Drive Pilot. Drive Pilot is a lot closer to adaptive cruise control than FSD.
It's unfortunate that there's so much misinformation that gets thrown around whenever this topic comes up.
People are interested because Drive Pilot is L3 while FSD is L2. People are naturally more interested in the more advanced systems, but that would include FSD if Tesla can improve it to perform closer to the way it’s been marketed. Exaggerating the capabilities for over a decade juiced their share price but it also gave them a reputation for failing to deliver which is going to need hard data to shake: putting their money on the line would be one way to do that.
Progress would be get certified for self driving. For comparison, Mercedes, BMW, Honda etc have L3 cars on the market. Mercedes just got approved full highway speeds in EU and working on L4 certification.
I just checked out Mercedes, and it appears to be geofenced with a lot of restrictions[1]:
> DRIVE PILOT can be activated in heavy traffic jams at a speed of 40 MPH or less on a pre-defined freeway network approved by Mercedes-Benz. DRIVE PILOT operates in daytime lighting conditions when inclement weather is not present and in areas where there is not a construction zone. Please refer to the Operator’s Manual for a full list of conditions required for DRIVE PILOT.
Only on select freeways and only under 40 mph (and only during daytime with good weather conditions) sounds like it wouldn't be particularly useful.
Still, the tech is cool, and moving in the right direction. It's just always hard to really tell the state of things without doing some digging, because there's a ton of misinformation that gets thrown about whenever this topic comes up.
[1] https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot#2
That’s what the government allows them to do. They got approved for freeway speeds in EU and are trying to get approved in CA. You need to prove that the car is safer than a human driver.
There's now a thing called "FSD", yes. But it's not FSD as in Full Self-Driving, as in L4. It's still an L3, the driver still needs to be at the wheel and paying attention. "Full Self Driving" implies L4. What Waymo has, with no one at the wheel, is L4.
FSD is Level 2. The driver must, at all times, be supervising the car. L3 implies that the car, in exceptionally ideal and limited circumstances, takes over full control unsupervised.
Even if you were to take Mobileye's definitions, it would still be equivalent to other companies at best (hands off, eyes on).
If progress is noticable in a 20 minute video, Tesla has a long way to go.
As do Waymo and Toyota
It reads like a Memorandum of Understanding.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding
And if they don't develop a formal contract after 5 months, it's a deadMoU5
This headline brought to you by the marketing department.
Feels more like the typical battle amongst PR, Marketing and Legal.
Say everything and nothing in less than nine words.
> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development.
Concepts of a plan
Here in Ireland we often see news announcements in the construction sector that goes something like "We received the go ahead to submit an application for planning permission to commission an impact study to determine whether it's viable to survey the land for construction suitability."
Veridian Dynamics' "Project Jabberwocky" is gonna be great.
Yeah, that's pretty amazing corporate speak. And the development time lines are long. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains, there is a Taxi/Van in Japan called the Alphard and it's pretty nice! Toyota also has the e-pallete, which is a self driving bus for their new Woven City project. It would be great to see a new vehicle platform co-developed for those purposes because the Toyota "electrical" architecture is about 10 years behind (all CanBus). If I was them I would sort that out before building new EVs. If you look at a bz4x and pop the hood, it looks like an IC vehicle! There is no frunk, just legacy junk. It was never designed as an EV, they just put an electric motor and a battery in a Rav4 type platform and called it a day.
>Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains
Does the Waymo brain need all the Waymo hardware?
>With 13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs), our new sensor suite is optimized for greater performance...
https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...
The new Lexus TSS which is lane keeping and cruise control and auto park and safety oriented stuff has 11 cameras I think? Plus some lasers and sonar and whatnot. 4 of them are for the cool 360 top down view. I'd love to count up all the sensors on a current production car. I googled but failed. Maybe in the manual? There's a lot.
But they probably could use less if they had better software and networking in the car. I think automotive systems tend to be built like: add 1 ecu and 1 sensor for 1 function. So they can do all the functional safety analysis for that one system in isolation. I expect they can't just keep adding all these single purpose functions and features without a central computer indefinitely but they don't have one right now. A brain like waymo (probably has?) could possibly fix that.
It’s too early to be of much interest to outsiders, but impressing people likely isn’t the intention. By announcing that they’re talking, they don’t need to keep its existence secret anymore or worry about it getting into the news at some random time as a “secret project.”
Don't forget that this is also a PRELIMINARY agreement. So it's not clear what the terms even are.
I think this kind of vague language is pretty common when two giant companies want to signal interest without actually committing to anything risky
Japan is the champion of announcing the consideration of making an announcement. They did this all through covid, too.
What kind of development? LiDAR on every Toyota? Would be very interesting. If every car on the road was self driving we would not need a giant chunk of code to work around human behavior
And it's only a preliminary agreement.
"We've agreed to let the engineering staff from both companies directly exchange information in a place and form that we would not normally allow to occur. Hopefully they work out a way to glue our two stacks together."
>"Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development and deployment of autonomous driving technologies. "
The current HN title seems too definite.
Ok, we've reverted the title to that of the article now. Thanks!
(Submitted title was "Waymo partners with Toyota to bring autonomous driving to personal vehicles")
Took me a minute to find it, but the title seems accurate to me based on the second paragraph in the blog post from Waymo.
"In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs)."
Not really. I feel that’s still a far cry from “bring[ing] autonomous driving to personal vehicles”.
“Enhance next-generation POVs” could be accomplished by bringing Toyota’s autonomous driving to the same level as Tesla’s, give where they are today.
And they’re not definitively “bringing” it. They’re just exploring bringing it.
bringing Toyota’s autonomous driving to the same level as Tesla’s
Toyota would not ever be getting into something to get to “Tesla-level” - like if they were hoping their kids end up C students ;)
Seems close enough modulo HN character limits.
To me, it looks as if Toyota is hedging their bets. Toyota has made public statements about their view of autonomous vehicle research. Their publicly stated belief is that active safety is their focus. Things like collision avoidance, and mitigation.
On the other hand, Waymo has been at it for about 15 years. The Toyota people are smart enough to know they can't catch up in full autonomy within the next two or three product generations of vehicles.
For their part, Waymo is looking for more vehicle platforms.
Toyota has been way, way behind on electrification. I suspect they’ve been Innovator’s Dilemma’d are are in a death spiral that they haven’t even noticed yet
Actually, we should also realize that they've been super wildly successful at getting people to move towards clean energy vehicles.
Prius is the world's highest selling Hybrid car, and it's been that for more than a decade now. This means Toyota has helped cut down emissions from consumer automobiles by a significant degree.
It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars. It becomes obvious when we look at the total emissions generated by that pool of 100k cars.
If there's anyone to blame, I'd look at the luxury division - Mercedes, Audi and BMW (and also Genesis/Acura) - all late to the party, and still haven't been successful at meaningfully replacing the vehicles they would sell to their customers yet.
Up until recently (~2022/23) Toyota had cumulatively sold more hybrids than all EVs sold by all manufacturers combined, globally. They arguably have the best hybrid drivetrain on the market, and it's gotten to the point where even the Camry (2025 onwards) are exclusively offered as hybrids now.
>> Camry (2025 onwards) are exclusively offered as hybrids now.
This is a very dope move. Glad to hear that
That sounds more impressive than it is actual savings from hybrids is vastly less than EV’s and the ramp up has been extremely quick.
Combined mileage from many hybrid power trains is only ~10% better, and the technology inherently adds significant costs/complexity.
They were not getting 45 mpg without hybrid…
There isn’t a non hybrid version of the Prius with all its weight and aerodynamic features.
But there’s ~45 MPG all gas cars that have been built. Currently the best option is 39MPG combined, but that car’s aerodynamics aren’t great because hybrids can push that a little further for people who really want maximum MPG.
Hybrids are a dead end. There’s already EV’s doing 1MW charging. That’s practically gas pump speeds while also being able to charge at home, and the underlying technology keeps improving.
8% of new cars in the US, 14% in the EU, and 27% in China are EV’s. Toyota’s EV sales are anemic by comparison.
Hybrids are the only choice for the vast majority of the country that doesn't have the needed infrastructure to support EVs. If you never leave your urban enclave, then sure, EVs are great. But hybrids are perfect for _right now_, even if EVs are the future.
The Toyota hybrid engine is also rock solid and has been for more than a decade. They don't have a reason to abandon that right now when the industry is highly unstable and government funding for infrastructure that isn't Tesla's is being cut left and right.
I live in rural VT, 600 person town in national forest. Tons of us have EVs because you don’t have to drive down the mountain for gas and they drive great in the snow and mud.
[dead]
Toyota does not want to sell a lot of EVs, because that could mean investing heavily to scale up the manufacturing of a dead-end technology that ends up losing out. Meanwhile they've been iterating on their hybrid tech and are selling 50 MPG vehicles by the millions. When the dust settles, a lot of EV companies will be out of business and their products will be e-waste with 0 spares anywhere. Toyota on the other hand generally uses the same technology for decades to build very predictable appliance-like vehicles. This is why a 3 year old EVs have 40% residuals while used Toyotas are 60%.
Toyota has invested very heavily in hydrogen cars, which is an actual "dead-end technology that ends up losing out".
Sure, numerous EV startups will bite the dust, but the actual tech of putting a battery on wheels and spinning the wheels with motors isn't going anywhere.
Toyota invested heavily into the R&D which is distinct from tooling up to produce 70kwh battery packs by the millions. They've sold maybe 20k hydrogen cars, globally over the course of a decade as a pilot. They also sold 4k RAV4 EVs, are working on EVs with BYD and CATL, which means that they're keeping their finger on the pulse of the industry while also staying out of the lithium/neodymium pissing contest which they simply cannot win. The reason Chinese EVs are such a good deal is because all of the hard-to-source stuff is under the same roof because China doesn't really have a fossil fuel story. Their hope with EVs is that the current approach to making them is simply not sustainable on a global scale and that the emergence of less resource-intensive technologies will saddle all earlier entrants (that aren't subsidized by nations) with debt.
>They also sold 4k RAV4 EVs
Toyota has sold over 33,000 BZ4Xs in the U.S..
https://electrek.co/2025/01/03/toyota-bz4x-sales-finally-pic...
https://insideevs.com/news/755382/bz4x-solterra-sales-increa...
>It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars.
It seems like hybrid sales are pretty comparable to EV sales in the U.S., at least according to this source anyway.
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63904
These metrics are most likely skewed - California has a significant number of EVs in a sample of every 100 cars, but in other states EVs are almost nowhere to be found.
Seems in line with the data here as well:
https://www.bts.gov/content/gasoline-hybrid-and-electric-veh...
...I would think this data is from vehicle registration data, and not sampled from owner surveys (or the like).
yes exactly, that is the kind of success that prevents you from believing that the next big thing is going to worse-is-better you out of the market
Toyota makes hybrids that are excellent. I don't think they want to go full EV.
They can pretend that hybrids are enough but many markets are going full EV regardless while Toyota only has a half baked solution.
Not everyone wants an EV, especially in America. Unless EV’s can jump to 500 mile range and ubiquitous five minute charging, a lot of people are just gonna want a hybrid.
Just yesterday in the coffee shop the person next to me was having a conversation about his buyer's remorse over recently purchasing a full EV instead of a hybrid or plug-in hybrid. It sounded like he hadn't anticipated how much of a hassle it is to charge on road trips. Something about having to carefully plan around the locations of fast charge stations, and it really being a drag when you're just trying to get out of the city for a weekend.
My sense is that plug-in hybrids really are the sweet spot for a lot of people in North America. The shorter full EV range is still well within most people's needs for a typical day's worth of driving, but you can still travel to and through rural areas without so much stress about whether you'll get stuck killing time for an hour or two at a slow charge station.
This is only a problem for non-Teslas or vehicles that can't utilize the Tesla supercharger network.
I don't think I have ever plugged into a supercharger more than 10/15 minutes.
He was specifically talking about getting a Tesla.
It wouldn't be the first time reality failed to live up to the promises of Tesla's marketing folks.
Superchargers aren’t available everywhere, and even in your scenario that’s still twice as long as it takes me to fill a gas tank, and you have to do it twice as often (at least).
That’s not nothing!
>It sounded like he hadn't anticipated how much of a hassle it is to charge on road trips.
A few years ago this was true, but now that Tesla has opened up their network of chargers, your destination probably has to be >100 miles away from most interstate highways before road trip charging becomes much of an issue.
Even if there are charging stations every ten miles along the exact route you were already planning to take, it’s just straightforwardly true that it’s more annoying to charge vs. get gas.
I can fill my tank and be back on the road in <5 minutes in most cases, and I only have to do that once every 350 miles.
With an EV, I would be stopping anywhere from 10-30minutes (depending on the kinds of chargers available) (assuming I don’t have to wait for one to open up), and I’d be doing it twice as often.
It adds a very meaningful amount of time to long car trips.
Yes it's straightforwardly true that road trip charging is less convenient than with gas cars.
But charging for regular use is dramatically better. Anytime you're not on a road trip, you spend essentially no time fueling. Just plug in at night like you do with other electronics.
So I'll take saving 15 mins every week avoiding the gas station, in exchange for the couple times a year I have to wait an extra 15 mins charging.
Note that if your hybrid is a plug-in hybrid then you might get the best of both worlds.
On long road trips you get the fast re-energizing of a gas car.
For regular use if your plug in every night there is a good chance you can do most of your driving in EV mode. Current plug-in hybrids often have EV mode ranges of 40+ miles.
This is what someone I know with a RAV4 Prime reports. They plug in at night and it seems to mostly use the battery. It does sometime use the ICE but it is infrequently enough that they have only had to put more gas in every few months.
I have a RAV4 Prime (decided to get that instead of a Tesla) and I absolutely love it. It's the best of all worlds for my use case (mostly <40mi daily commute entirely on battery, occasional longer drives that use gas). I often go months+ without refilling the gas tank, and it charges overnight from empty. And, it's clearly Toyota quality in terms of implementation.
But you don’t really. You get a weak drive train as many moving parts as an ICE plus a non-trivial size battery that is expensive to replace. Your maintenance costs potential are as a bad as an ICE plus an EV. EVs are way more elegant solutions, simpler, better performance. Also, EVs are improving rapidly, charging speed and range keep getting better.
Hybrids done well actually have fewer moving parts than ICEs. They eliminate some systems (alternator and starter motor for example) and greatly simplify others (transmission).
He was having buyer's remorse for choosing a BEV over a PHEV. The PHEV is better on road trips and just as good at commuting. It loses on maintenance but probably still comes out ahead on TCO.
I think this is overstated. My Ford EV gets ~300 miles. If I leave my home with a full charge, I can get ~500 miles with ~30 minutes of charging. If a ~30 minute break in the middle of an ~8 hour drive is a problem for you, you probably aren't a safe driver. There is a reason that truckers have mandatory breaks. A person shouldn't be driving all day nonstop.
Really? Maybe my knowledge of EV ranges is way out of wack. I was assuming avg ranges look much more like ~200mi on a full battery in real-world conditions, and that a 30-min charge usually only gets you 80%. Sounds like I’m at least somewhat misinformed.
Assuming OP has a Ford Mustang Mach-E, RWD, Long Range model, you might expect:
https://evkx.net/models/ford/mustang_mach-e/mustang_mach-e_l......that model seems to take about 45 minutes to charge from 10-80%:
https://evkx.net/models/ford/mustang_mach-e/mustang_mach-e_l...
I tend to get better range than that, I'd like to claim it is my driving style, but more realistically it is because I live in Southern California so the battery is generally at ideal temperature, I often don't need heat/AC, and probably most importantly I'm not sure if I have ever driven 70+ mph for 300 consecutive miles without hitting traffic.
Also when I do road trips, I'll tend to do multiple shorter stops which according to that link means I'm closer to the "optimum charging area" than going 10%-80% in one sitting, so that might have caused me to overshoot that estimate a little.
So beyond that slight amendment of switching that one ~30 minute charging stop to two ~15 minute stops, the answer to ketzo's question is "yes, really", but as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.
The problem with EVs and roadtrips is simply charging infrastructure. If there were L3 chargers wherever there were gas stations, it really wouldn’t be a problem even in eastern Oregon (really want to take my i4 to John Day, but alas…not quite yet, even if you drive a Tesla).
I want a range extended EV with a easily removable power pack. Unfortunately the EPA doesn't consider it an EV so no one will make one because there's no tax credit.
Plug in hybrids are eligible for the U.S. Federal $7,500 tax credit if they meet the same battery mineral sourcing requirements as the EVs do.
https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/tax2023.shtml
My dream is a little trailer gas generator. Give you infinite range for longer trips. Day to day, just leave it disconnected.
Isn’t that the BMW i3 range extender?
In the US the BMW i3 range extender gas tank is software limited so the gas range is shorter than the ev range. That's the only way they could get it to qualify as an ev.
That does not seem bad! I was imagining something more generic, literally a mini trailer with a generator bolted on top, but this is sleek.
The motorcycle engine doesn't produce enough power so it can only do 40mph when the battery is dead.
That is less than ideal. Definitely does not fit my detachable range extender vision.
In the US a plug-in hybrid seems like the best of both worlds. Once the charging infrastructure gets fully flushed out pure EVs will look a lot better.
PHEVs (hybrids with large battery packs) are the worst of both worlds -- weight penalty of a big EV pack, but the complexity/maintenance of an ICE engine. Additionally, rarely used gas can go bad sitting in the tank. Just get a regular hybrid if you're concerned about EV range or don't like the current limited offerings.
PHEV fits the ideal use case of short commute to work every day on EV, and a weekend trip to national park/resort city 400 miles away.
but the downside is maintenance of ICE engine and transmission and all consumables
> PHEV fits the ideal use case of short commute to work every day on EV, and a weekend trip to national park/resort city 400 miles away.
IMO, EVs fit this use case just fine. There are plenty of chargers; it's not a big deal.
I thought those were programmed to run the engine once in a while regardless of necessity - to prevent the gas from going bad?
Yes -- it's happened once or twice with my Chevy Volt. Full charge, and it pops up a dialogue and runs the engine for a mile.
It's not as easy as more components = more expensive.
The battery pack is much smaller. A Prius PHEV is almost 500 lbs lighter than a Model 3 and only 100 lbs heavier than a normal hybrid Prius, which also has a battery pack. The MSRP is lower by almost $10k, which can cover a lot of maintenance before you resell it with less depreciation.
> It's not as easy as more components = more expensive.
I never said "more expensive."
You said weight penalty and maintenance. Those things have a cost in time and money. It is less than for a comparable BEV.
America is massive. And has a huge portion of “wild” country. As much as I want to go EV. All my free time is in the mountains on logging roads and in sub zero temps in winter. The charging networks are not yet embedded in the small mountain towns I frequent and I can’t take that chance.
You are just describing the chicken-and-egg problem. Without enough EVs there aren't incentives to build more chargers; without enough chargers EVs aren't sold in enough numbers. That's why the EV adoption curve in the United States is still in the early adopter phase. And clearly you aren't enthusiastic about being an early adopter.
What is their beef with full-EV? First it was hydrogen fuel cells and now limitation to hybrid. Seems odd at best.
Not mature enough to Toyota's taste, probably.
Hydrogen fuel cell is more about diversification, and it is fully backed by the Japan gov so ROI would be through the roof even if it doesn't "win".
Also many countries aren't producing enough electricity (cough Japan and Germanycough) so EVs getting popular _at scale_ isn't going to happen tomorrow either.
cannot believe that Japan finds its better to depend on oil from Middle East and import gasoline instead of building one more nuclear plant
Having a nuclear disaster only decade ago with a flurry of other plants that couldn't pass the safety test when re-checked creates a pretty tough situation.
Right now there's a plant that is stopped by the gov from getting back into production for safety issues, with the elec company trying to appeal for the nth time, and it sure doesn't help the overall image.
"This time it will be fine" is kinda hard to stomach for the impacted public to be honest.
They have no other sustainable energy sources a d frankly I trust japanese engineering minds they can fix their nuclear designs
Japanese engineering at it's core is grit and resilience (”fall down seven times, stand up eight”）. Japan's architecture prowess comes from waves and waves of catastrophes they've overcome and rebuilt upon.
For Japan to be that good at nuclear, there first needs to be a way to gracefully fail and retry, instead of making whole regions unhabitable for a century. We're clearly not there yet.
It's always been surprising to me that they don't have more geothermal power generation. Seems liked they should be well-positioned for that.
I suspect it's that they build excellent ICE vehicles, and were quick to go to hybrids but missed the rise of EVs. Everything we're seeing is a rearguard action to protect their ICE business.
Funny enough they produced an electric Rav 4 as far back as 1997! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4_EV
It's more expensive for a worse consumer experience.
Even if that is true now, it seems like the days of that continuing to be true are numbered. Toyota is going to have to accept the inevitable eventually. And, as someone who likes Toyota, I hope they don't wait until it's too late to catch up.
I think they've just never liked the range. They're waiting for solid state batteries to work at that scale
I believe they’re batten on solid-state technology, which is like nuclear fusion. 10 years away
This is 100% intentional, they have been clear that their strategic direction is hybrids, not pure electric. Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterlyon/2024/03/03/bucking-in...
> have been clear
I disagree. They backed hydrogen / fuel cells for most of the years others were developing bevs.
The Hydrogen/fuel-cells were not mass-marketable for some reason, and also beyond that they have been hard to manufacture and sustain, especially when it came to setting up that network of fueling stations and adoptability for customers.
I remember looking at a fueling station years ago, and one kg of hydrogen (~ 1 gal of gas?) was over $17 at the time.
No worries for the folks who got free fuel with their car at first, but didn't seem sustainable (for a wallet).
And they were way ahead on hybrids, at least from my perspective in the UK market.
every single minivan in London, it seems
As far as I can tell, I cant disagree harder. Toyota has been making EXCELLENT design decisions and providing great value to consumers.
For most of America, EV'S and the associated infrastructure aren't QUITE there yet.
Hybrids are barely mainstream and are growing faster than EVs, Toyota doesn't have anything to worry about for a long time.
that’s true today and yet they will be bankrupt by 2030
Isn't that Japan in general, and for national security reasons? AFAIK they're wholly dependent on China for crucial mineral components in EVs, and 'burning the boats' by abandoning internal combustion manufacturing would effectively turn them into China's vassal.
Rare earth's aren't rare.
China processes ~90% of rare earth raw materials into actual rare earths
This.
Yes, 'rare earths aren't rare,' and I hear that, and then I also hear that everyone is screwed if China won't sell theirs.
It can't be both. The key reasons I've heard for China owning this market are a) they have large deposits, b) they heavily invested for decades, and c) they aggressively dump and undercut in an anticompetitive fashion to ensure they keep the market cornered.
Seems like the only way out of this is to stop being religiously opposed to state subsidies in an industry of clear national security importance, combined with maybe a Herbert Dow-style jiu-jitsu move of countering any dumping by stockpiling and then re-selling the below-market product.
Then onshore the processing to Japan, other countries like Australia can provide the ores
only because nobody else bothered to build processing plants for the low demand minerals.
it is trivial to build and these minerals can be found everywhere
You are delusional if you think it's trivial.
> Toyota has been way, way behind on electrification
They’re Toyota. They can buy their way onto the winner’s table later.
I fear in the long run Toyota might be bought by some Chinese competitor. Like BYD.
Hopefully this won't happen.
You can sleep easy.
There is zero chance the Japanese government would let that happen.
Their new Prius Hybrid is an excellent car. Wish people didn't look away from hybrids due to all the EV hype.
They have some of the best hybrids on the market and EVs in general are not ready for prime time yet. Their plug-in hybrids are in the current sweet spot and are very popular. They have plenty of time to catch up once infrastructure and power density are there for EVs. This is with a US context.
Two car family with one plug in hybrid and one EV is a low stress setup. Only uses gas/petrol on road trips.
yes it was smart to keep a landline phone for a few years
They seem to make good hybrids, just haven’t chosen to go full electric in a lot of cases.
I do wish they’d make a plug in hybrid Sienna…
The electric Toyota bZ4X is marketed in Japan, Australia, US, Canada, Europe, and China as the Subaru Solterra.
I went to a Subaru dealer here in Calgary and asked about the Solterra with a friend present.
The salesman bluntly told me to get a Tesla and half heartedly tried to get me to look at a hybrid. I wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't there with a friend.
In retrospect, I am happier with my used Model 3 than an electric car from a company with no intent on winning the market.
> death spiral that they haven’t even noticed yet
Not noticed, because they're printing money with their hybrids that all have year-long waitlists in the US. Gas stations are alive and well, and until the housing crisis is fixed (not happening in our lifetime), people will be reliant on gas vehicles because you can't charge at most apartment complexes.
I actually think we’ve passed peak urban density and people will de-densify to have better access to electrification
I am certain some fine folks like us said the same thing 30 years ago :)
https://www.reddit.com/r/electricvehicles/comments/1jzzanf/a...
Wow, you’re more right than I thought. Ford is way higher than I would have thought too.
electrification isn't self-driving, though. They're worlds apart.
Toyota had an incredible lead with the Prius that they completely squandered. It was a shamefully poor decision to stop investing in electric.
Like Nissan's lead in full electrification with the Leaf. Squandered.
"Been behind" is actually sugarcoating it, they actively lobbied against EVs for years: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/climate/toyota-electric-h...
Toyota has delivered more batteries in cars than anyone but Tesla.
Anyone have a source for how many pounds of batteries each car manufacturer has shipped over the years? It would be nice to see how BYD is doing compared to Toyota, Tesla, VW, and General Motors, etc.
EV has been a hype and a pain to own. Hybrids ftw.
I suspect you don't actually own an ev. Otherwise you might mention a specific here. I own an ev and they're marvelous. The ability to leave with a full tank of gas every morning and never have to worry about filling up is fantastic. No maintenance other than tire rotations ever 10k miles, and electricity is way cheaper than gas. And EVs are just fun to drive. The instant torque is fantastic and everyone I show it off to loves it.
The future of (public) transportation absolutely is driverless cars.
Every time I'm stuck in traffic on an LA highway with 5+ lanes and I see the horrendously inefficient use of space this future becomes clearer.
Waymos are also really confidence inspiring. They drive more safely and cautiously than any Uber/Lyft driver I've ridden with.
If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each other and at much faster speeds. This would optimize road space, decrease congestion, and reduce transit times.
So I'm happy to see more announcements like this. I hope the Waymo driverless tech becomes ubiquitous.
This “if cars were synced all would be well” fantasy assumes that the limited gains from scrunching won’t be a rounding error compared to the nearly unlimited additional trips that robots with infinite patience could start making.
Currently it’s got to be worth sitting at the wheel or paying a delivery driver… but if my robot says “6 hours to drive 10 miles”, I’ll think, “wow traffic is bad, whatever, it’ll get there when it gets there, beep, off you go! siri, text mom that the paint chip is on its way”, oh hmm actually maybe teal is better… “hey siri, get me another toyotaymo”
If you're implying the marginal cost of a 6-hour AV errand is almost zero, I think you're describing a prosperous future.
This is also easily managed with congestion pricing.
If you want to get rid of the space taken up by 5 lane highways you need to convert roads into walkways for pedestrians, bike lanes, and bus lanes.
There can still exist space for cars but they need to be last in priority rather than the first, second, and third consideration cars have today when it comes to infrastructure.
I challenge anyone who seriously proposes this to first spend a month in a wheelchair. You quickly discover that your sense of scale and freedom of movement is largely a function of your physical capability and financial comfort.
I’m confused by this. Making public infrastructure people first, not car first, in your opinion would make things more difficult and expensive for handicap people?
The town I live in has many streets without sidewalks, and even the ones with sidewalks, many of those are entirely unsuitable for wheelchairs. Designing the streets to have pedestrian needs prioritized over cars would make the streets more handicap accessible not less.
> Making public infrastructure people first, not car first
What does this mean? People ride in cars.
People. As in people walking. My town is not designed in a way that is conducive towards walking. It isn’t safe, there is either no sidewalks, the sidewalks are in disrepair, are not wide enough for two people to pass each other, or set back far enough from the road to not feel like someone could run you over.
But the roads and dozens upon dozens of acres of parking lots? Perfectly fine. Millions spent every year maintaining them while sidewalks are neglected, there are no bike lanes or paths, and it could take twice as long to take a bus as it would be to just walk on the dangerous roads.
I just would think I should be able to walk to a restaurant or the library with my kid safely but I guess because I can do it in a car I should shut up and stop worrying about everybody getting excited about autonomous vehicles making infrastructure even more car centric.
> If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each other and at much faster speeds. This would optimize road space, decrease congestion, and reduce transit times.
So like a train?
Yeah, but the train goes from my house to my destination. Not 10-20 minutes away from my house and 10-20 minutes away from my destination.
Fair enough. But keep in mind cars only solve this last mile problem when there's high throughput roads connecting all possible trip starts / destinations. In American we have this infrastructure (at a great cost in city design and tax payers dollars), but cities in many other countries don't have this and don't want it either.
Trains don't have guaranteed personal space, nor do they proceed from one's origin directly to their destination.
You might not value that, but lots of other people do.
Like a train without the worst of the public, where any individual can choose their preferred spot for a station.
The future of public transportation is buses and trains. Any other solution that involves wrapping individual humans in a steel bubble 10x the size is woefully inefficient and wasteful. No matter how well they self drive.
For every bus you can take ~50 cars off the road.
Unfortunately, at least in the US, that ship has sailed, and there is zero interest in creating walkable, public-transit friendly cities.
Doing things the right way requires civic-minded effort. The average American is just way too individualistic to make a dent in this problem.
You might be right. I saw a survey somewhere (can't find it now), where Americans were asked about working in factories.
Majority said that USA will be better if more people started working in factories, but a minority said USA will be better if /they/ worked in factories.
It's the whole "I got mine" mentality, where people are not willing to compromise on their own comfort for the greater good, yet they expect others to do so.
I don't think this is unique to the US, I think it's just very egregious there at the moment.
I love AVs, but It would do jack shit for traffic and the horrible use of space until they become autonomous buses on dedicated bus lanes, or trains. You still gotta have spaces for pedestrians, and cars still make cities ugly and unpleasant. Even electric autonomous ones. Tire friction still makes noise and pollutes the air with microplastics.
They gotta supplement mass transit for dense cities, not replace it.
> They gotta supplement mass transit for dense cities, not replace it.
Full agreement here. AVs are great for last-mile transit.
> horrible use of space until they become autonomous buses on dedicated bus lanes, or trains
This is where we disagree. The whole point of AV TaaS is that they can go where bus lanes and trains can't. Last mile transportation.
I also wouldn't say they do "jack shit" for traffic in the sense that they reduce the need for parking, and reduce accidents which are the source of a lot of unpredictable congestion.
Surely there are tradeoffs. They indirectly incentivize sprawl and taking more taxi rides overall. And I get the tire residue argument (especially since AV fleets are mostly electric with high torque generating more tire wear). But is tire noise really a fair complaint? They're just going where cars already go and tires are engineered pretty well to minimize noise...
Tire noise is still quite substantial - use the NIOSH noise meter app on your phone to compare the sound levels on a city block when an EV goes by compared to just bikes and people – and there’s a growing body of evidence that noise levels correlate with worse health and sleep for residents. EVs help, but it’s only partial.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11297122/
> Tire noise is still quite substantial
100% I live near a bus route and their tires and engines are a huge disturbance.
But I think the real challenge isn't just the tech: it's the messy middle. Human drivers aren't going away anytime soon, and mixed traffic (humans + AVs) is where a lot of that theoretical efficiency gets lost
> If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each other and at much faster speeds. This would optimize road space, decrease congestion, and reduce transit times.
That's not going to happen, not in our lifetimes. It's not safe to do this unless you have a critical mass of cars on the road capable of doing it. Given the average age of cars, it'll take ~10-15 years from such tech being mandatory in new cars to think about doing this. Being mandatory is of course itself over 10 years from it being available. And it's not available yet.
We're now a decade out from people starting to say "stop investing in public transportation because driverless cars will obsolete it," and so far driverless cars have only managed to provide a limited taxi service in a couple of cities, a far cry from deprecating public transit.
(Actually, I personally hew to the belief that driverless cars will make traffic worse, since it will probably increase the number of empty cars running around because traffic tends to be dominated by unidirectional bursts of traffic.)
How does it require a critical mass?
If the car ahead of you is sharing visibility and braking data, you can drive on their bumper and stop when they stop.
If the car next to you is receiving route data, they can open a spot for you to get to your exit.
The benefit is large and NOT REQUIRED for normal operation. It's the easiest coordination problem in the world, because it's all upside and practically atomic.
> It's not safe to do this unless you have a critical mass of cars on the road capable of doing it.
You could always give those cars their own section of the road like HOV lanes. EVs were granted access to HOV lanes in California as an incentive to increase EV adoption. A similar thing could happen with a dedicated autonomous lane that has a much higher speed limit.
If I can’t sleep while it drives me to work it’s not autonomous
That's the kind of autonomous that'll make a difference
I don't think we get there until we have all of the nearby vehicles on the road communicating.
I can order a Waymo from my phone right now and sleep in the backseat while it drives me across town.
Anywhere in the world under any conditions? (rain, snow, etc)
We're at least a decade away from that.
Those goalposts moved pretty fast from "sleep while it drives me to work" which I can do today to the extreme of being able to drive "Anywhere in the world under any conditions". And I see no reason to believe "all of the nearby vehicles on the road communicating" is the solution to bridging that gap.
> "sleep while it drives me to work"
People work all over the planet during all seasons, don't they?
Reread my original comment or even just the that short seven word quote you have right there. Notice that key word "me". I was speaking about myself in the present tense, not "people... all over the planet during all seasons".
You were commenting on a broader point... now that is some serious "changing goal posts".
Thank you, I appreciate you clarifying to me what I meant when I said what I said.
Hard for me to square that opinion with the fact these are normal for people in some cities now
That's what I want to, but I don't think it's really a fair complaint given that this has been reasonably well defined. What we both want is 'L5' (level five) autonomy, where the vehicle doesn't even need the ability to be manually driven necessarily.
(L4 iirc is hands-off but someone in the driver's seat (which must therefore exist) in a fit state to take over if necessary - no sleeping on the way in, no drinking on the way home.)
What you're describing is L4. L4 is fully autonomous but with limitations on where/when it can operate. Level 5 is that but without restrictions.
Level 2 and 3 are the mostly-automated version, and they differ in how much notice they're supposed to provide and how much attention they require.
I want to turn my mini van into a mini living room. Everyone climb in, let’s play some Point Salad or Splendor!
You can sleep in a Waymo taxi already.
You can sleep in any taxi.
What a great post. Best thing I've read in months.
Read more then?
You can already do this with commuter trains.
What a joy for people who live near commuter trains
Maybe we should build more commuter trains so that more people can live near them, then.
A self-driving vehicle is like a commuter train that operates on your own schedule and goes between any two points and doesn't require billions of dollars of new tracks to be built and runs on clean electric power instead of diesel.
Moving self-driving vehicles requires billions of dollars of new roads to be built.
The statistic I like to use is that the train tunnels underneath the Hudson River into Manhattan move more people than all of the road crossings into Manhattan combined. It's probably cheaper in the long run to invest in better regional rail systems than it is to to keep widening highways; people drastically underestimate the costs of highway construction.
> Moving self-driving vehicles requires billions of dollars of new roads to be built.
I haven't heard this. Wouldn't self driving cars use the same road infrastructure we already have?
The same infrastructure that people often complain is inadequate to the task?
Self-driving vehicles are also going to come with the innovation of having zero occupants as they navigate somewhere to park. And if people want to replace existing mass transit systems with self-driving vehicles, that's going to require a lot more infrastructure.
I want a step before it right now.
Let me use my phone or watch videos on the highway. I’m okay with taking over with a small amount of warning. I’m also okay doing all non-highway driving.
I just want something that can keep me in my lane and avoid ramming the vehicle in front of me. If I need to drive at the start and end of my trip, that’s okay.
This is what I want too, driving 15 min manually in the city doesn't bother me or tire me out at all, I just want to watch TV when driving straight on the interstate for 300 miles.
Want I’d want to see is a focus on level 5 autonomous driving from day 1. (Edit: Even if the system is level 4 to start with.) Yes the current coverage area is limited, but if you live in one of those cities the coverage area is easily large enough to be useful.
Oddly enough I think this is one of the few times when a subscription model makes sense. The current approach has a fallback call center which can give the cars driving directions in unexpectedly situations, which could be supported by either a monthly subscription or low hourly fee. Similarly move out of the coverage area and stop paying etc.
As someone who's blind I've made this argument in the passed. I don't need 100% success as long as the failure mode won't injure me. Seven years ago I would have loved a car that would have driven me to and from work 95% of the time, and refused to take the other 5% if the weather forecast was bad enough that the self driving wouldn't work correctly. I'd also be fine with the car pulling over to the side of the road if it got confused and waiting for someone remote to take control and drive until it was out of the situation where autonomous driving wouldn't work. Given the fact that I now work remote and am married to someone who drives if you told me I could by a car with autonomous driving for $50000 now I don't think I'd do it. I'm interested to see just how good autonomous driving gets and if it drives down the prices of taxi services. At this point I'd rather see an autonomous taxi service offering lower rates then Uber instead of buying my own car with autonomous driving.
I think you may mean Level 4. The difference between 4 and 5 is that 5 doesn't have any territory/environmental constraints, but you said you don't mind those.
By focus on I mean that should be the goal.
If they require high speed cellular service then the system can’t scale to level 5 driving. Add a Starlink dish on top and the hardware could eventually scale to the entire continental US etc.
And I actually agree about the subscription model too. It's one of the rare cases where it feels practical: pay while you're in the coverage zone, pause when you're not
This feels like a pretty natural pairing. Waymo brings the software + autonomy stack, and Toyota has the scale and track record for building reliable, safe vehicles. If this actually leads to autonomous tech in personally owned cars (not just robotaxi fleets), that would be a major shift from the current trajectory
This is the choice quote from the article:
"Toyota and Waymo aim to combine their respective strengths to develop a new autonomous vehicle platform. In parallel, the companies will explore how to leverage Waymo's autonomous technology and Toyota's vehicle expertise to enhance next-generation personally owned vehicles (POVs)."
I can't overstate how hopeful I am about Waymo. They are already literally 10x safer than human drivers [1] and they'd become vastly safer still if they completely replaced human drivers on the road. This would also make commuting a much more pleasant experience, which I think could greatly relieve the housing crisis in high-demand cities. Parents would have an alternative to hours of driving kids to activities.
I can't think of another pipeline technology that is both this proven and this impactful.
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/new-swiss-re-study-waymo
This is probably the biggest car news in a long time
It's horrifying. Many sci Fi movies have shown why self driving cars are a nightmare.
I think Toyota has some sort of subsidiary who's bailiwick was this sort of thing? Woven or some other name?
"Woven by Toyota will also join the potential collaboration as Toyota’s strategic enabler, contributing its strengths in advanced software and mobility innovation."
I know we Americans just love to own cars, what with the rapid depreciation, constant maintenance and massive storage requirements. Who could resist? But isn't the promise of self driving vehicles that we don't all need to own, maintain and operate a 4000lb machine? I know it's hard to resist dropping the $30k, $40k or even $50k and paying that monthly insurance we all love. But wouldn't it be better if we could just summon whatever vehicle we need for the hour and then get on with our lives? And more importantly, don't we all want the benefits that will come from having mostly robo-cars on the road - such as fewer accidents and injuries, less traffic, faster trips and more parking?
That's one vision, but it's probably not the most likely one. People like privately owning cars, and as long as they're more convenient than hiring taxis it'll probably stay that way.
Here's another vision of the future - gradually everyone's cars become self-driving, and now cars are more accessible to a wider range of people. 30% of the population currently can't drive due to age or disability, but if cars drive themselves the elderly, disabled, and even children can now own and operate vehicles. And now you have 30% more cars on an already congested road system. That should be enough to make traffic jams the norm everywhere.
But in case that wasn't bad enough, consider this - now people can do other things while they travel, because they don't have to be driving. So, in turn, they can live further and further away from their workplaces in cheaper, larger houses and do more of their work on the go. And while they do this they're spending more time on the roads, and - you guessed it - causing more congestion.
And because parking will always be expensive and hard to find in busy city centers, people will set their cars to loiter while they visit, rather than parking. Just going round and round while their owners shop. Causing - you guessed it - even more congestion.
TL;DR - the most likely result of autonomous vehicles is out of control congestion.
When teleportation becomes a thing society will force supercommuters to teleport in from farther and farther-out to maximize shareholder value while remaining in compliance with their respective companies' hybrid work policies. That you arguably die and are recreated every time you pass through the portal will finally end all discussions around whether your life is worth more than productivity.
Yeah, I'd expect many cities passing laws to forbid empty driverless cars on the road unless they're a taxi.
That's already possible and called taxis/uber/etc.
In what way would self driving cars incentivize not owning your own car?
Simple. Not having a driver in the car. The driver is the only part of Uber I don't like. I feel like if I make them wait 20 seconds they could ding my rating. If I have kids with me, I hate having to get their carseat buckled, knowing the driver probably doesn't want kids in their car anyway. I hate the awkward silence. I hate listening to their shitty music. At no fault of their own, they are the only weak link in the Uber chain. Everything gets better for me if there just isn't a person waiting on me the whole time.
I'd sell my cars in a heartbeat if "Uber minus the driver" existed and was cheaper than owning a car.
Cost, accessibility, convenience, reliability, safety. You can get all of that with a human driver too, if you're rich.
Waymo is not cheaper than Uber. I don't buy the cost argument tbh.
Explain how a car with a human driver will be cheaper or have price parity with a car that requires no paid human driver. The driver is the most expensive part of every ride. And that's before tip.
A Waymo has something like $100k of sensors and other hardware on top of the cost of the vehicle.
That cost will almost certainly come down, but at the moment it is cheaper to just pay a human to drive a car with $0 of AV hardware.
Yeah, manufactured goods aren't exactly known to increase in price as production scales. This is a very temporary anomaly. Cars with drivers are on the precipice of becoming extinct, save for specialty needs and the wealthy.
In a few ways, no.
Taxis/uber etc. are all built as "regular cards". It requires at least 2 people in there. How often is actually more than 1 person in a car? Wasn't that like 2/3 of all drives?
Now let's assume we have specialized cars for just a single person - that saves a lot of material, fuel, and also (parking) space.
But that only works if you don't OWN the car, because if you own it, you might sometimes have to have passengers right? So you always get a big car that is not needed in 2/3 or so of the drives.
That aside, having another driver is annoying for various reasons (e.g. privacy).
I have to pay to store my manually-driven car 90% of the day, because there's nothing else it could be doing while it waits for me.
A driverless car can very easily do things and make money while I'm waiting for it.
In some scenarios, people rent out their owned cars during the day to avoid this massive opportunity cost, but I doubt that will be the most efficient model.
In what other asset class ever has it made sense for the capital owners to be an extremely long tail of people, rather than a large corporate owner? Especially something as high velocity and fungible as cars.
"You will own nothing and be happy."
...no.
You can have autonomous driving on your Toyota today using openpilot
been watching this space forever, always cracks me up how we go from overhyped PR to endless hedging - nothing feels real till someone puts their name on the liability. anyone else think real change happens only when they truly risk something?
Waymo has to start moving faster, and democratizing the space by making it available to all car makers is smart, because it seems that Elon Musk is pushing Tesla to make RoboTaxis their #1 priority:
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-elon-musk-prioritize-r...
The world would be a lot better off if Tesla and Uber get smoked on this. Tesla's public testing of beta quality industrial control software and Uber's attempt to lilypad jump across the backs of financially unsophisticated drivers are contemptible. I'd be very glad to see neither strategy actually work in the end.
Tesla has minted a fortune on broken promises and vaporware. As someone who purchased FSD, would be glad to see them lose their shirts on this one.
The funny thing is that I've owned Gen 3 FSD for five years now and only in the last few months has it gotten noticeably better. It's actually respectable at driving around my city now, can handle roundabouts, make turns, etc.
I have noticed the same - Tesla FSD has improved remarkably in the last couple of versions, to the point where it almost never requires interventions.
That said, I still don't "trust" FSD to the point where I could comfortably be in the backseat taking a nap just yet. 99% is not "good enough" for something as critical as driving.
I actually started to trust V12. V11 was a complete joke vaporware. V12 is a complete game changer that actually drives on par if not better than human. Not a tesla stock holder(all of it is a scam per my retarded opinion), but I am now more than confident that they will start doing self driving this year. Maybe isolated and with some remote interventions here and there, but it feels on par with Waymo. My friend was just testing Waymo and by his words it is not as aggressive (human like) like Tesla on the road where you need to assert yourself to merge.
I’ve been reading this comment for years, just with version numbers changed. I expect in two years I’ll be hearing that V14 sucked, but now with v15, actual level 4 FSD is just around the bend!
Probably, but what they are saying is true. It recently went from uncomfortable verging on unsafe, to moderately comfortable.
> That said, I still don't "trust" FSD to the point where I could comfortably be in the backseat taking a nap just yet. 99% is not "good enough" for something as critical as driving.
You should only trust it after Tesla accepts full liability when FSD is enabled.
The funny thing is that a nearly perfect template of your comment appears on nearly every post which includes a criticism of FSD. It's always magically "just recently got better!" As well as "being able to do some selected basic driving despite being called FULL self drive."
I have no 'recently' to compare to, as I'd never been in a Tesla before. I was dubious because of all the "this year for sure" history, but after test driving one, I bought the new Model Y, and it now pretty much drives me to work and back every day with little to no intervention.
Knowing how prone to exaggeration Elon is, my bar was low. But it blew me away honestly. After nearly 30 years working in software and with some background in machine learning and computer vision and generally just trying to make software that works reliably, it's a pretty jaw dropping experience.
Would I take a nap in the back seat and let it drive? No. But does it allow me to sit there focused on a technical podcast or an audiobook so I feel like I'm getting back an hour or two a day instead of worrying about driving? Absolutely.
Maybe because it is true?
> Maybe because it is true?
It reeks of manual fitting. Tesla surveys an area and makes manual adjustments that keep the system from misbehaving for a while until something changes and then it’s back to shit.
There is definitely some amount of that. On each training run it gets better at some things, worse at others (this is mostly limited to its lane handling more recently).
And in the 12 months I've had the car, it has gotten noticeably better maybe 2 times. Once last year, and then once in February. After the iteration last year, it drove fairly well, but I still had to intervene once or twice per trip. Now I make it through half of my trips without intervening, and when I do intervene it tends to be to avoid embarrassment vs safety (not committing, wrong lane for an upcoming turn, etc).
Given how ai is advancing, I am pretty confident they will get this working fully autonomously with just vision, it's just a question of when.
If it's true now then it means it was false before. Unless the claim is that every few months there's a noticeable spike in capabilities however the grandparent commenter seems to claim otherwise (ie, that only recently did it improve).
Look, everyone on the planet agrees that calling it FSD was over-promising. You are not adding anything to the conversation by pointing that out, or by confusing technology with "magic". The fact remains that software developed by a competent team can actually improve over time, despite the insanity of corporate leadership, and that's what is happening here.
The fact also remains that fraud (even if it's not prosecuted) is fraud. You promise X and deliver... not X, for years? You're a fraud. Even if you are getting better at delivering Y, for some value of Y which is Far, Far less than X.
Well that’s what people pay for when they buy a Tesla. The holistic experience of self driving. Somebody who pays for self driving alone pays Waymos.
The funny thing is that just this weekend FSD was in the news for a crash that put a young man in a coma.
But when the usual outcome is death, i suppose a coma is an improvement.
lol the bar is so low
[dead]
> It's actually respectable at driving around my city now, can handle roundabouts, make turns, etc.
This year for sure, guys, for real this time!
-- Elon
As someone who also purchased FSD, I was able to drive hundreds of kilometers without any disengagements even though my car is an older HW3 with 12.6. I fully believe that with some Waymo-like conservative route planning and teleoperator backup, they will be able to achieve their robotaxi goals this year.
Tesla is going nowhere without LiDAR.
O3 can now play geoguessr better than master level human players. It can also beat master level Codeforces competitive programmers. I wouldn't discount the ability of AI to make sense of images far better than humans possibly could, all the while beating them at logical thinking, especially in a restricted domain like driving.
AI isn’t magic. If there isn’t enough information in the inputs, you can’t expect reliable results. It’s the same principle in all of software: garbage in, garbage out.
If there simply isn’t enough visual information, vision-only will fail.
https://youtu.be/IQJL3htsDyQ
This Mark Rober video has been debunked several times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzZhIsGFL6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cxTO8g47_k
That is not a debunking... That's someone running a similar experiment and getting a different result. That would debunk the claim that Teslas can never detect a painted wall. It does not debunk the claim that Teslas will sometimes fail to detect a painted wall.
And in a safety-critical system, the distinction is not mere pedantry.
I mean he didn't even use FSD.
Theoretically, if there's not enough visual information for AI drivers, then there's not enough visual information for human drivers, and that's a problem with the road. (Which, to be sure, occasionally there are roads like this: e.g. merging onto a higher-speed thoroughfare from a lower level, with a very short distance between "where you're in a position to see the merging traffic (and not that much of it)" and "where the roads have fully merged (and there's no shoulder)".)
It also has the help of being able to do web searches and when o3 fails, it doesn’t kill people.
AI can't make cameras see in the dark. LIDAR produces light, so it doesn't matter if there isn't enough of it in a particular environment.
headlights can make cameras see in the dark
Left and right of the car? What about behind it?
Waymo has 360-degree LIDAR and, not coincidentally, is the state of the art.
I strongly disagree. Go look at the videos of the current iteration of FSD.
Go and actually test drive one and let it FSD you around. Videos don’t do justice. There is always MKBHD kind of biased videos.
Yes, then read this article: https://www.jalopnik.com/teslas-fsd-is-biased-towards-influe...
Spinning lidar is not a panacea.
Sadly the US is quite corrupt, so I wouldn't bet against the car company whose CEO has a close personal relationship with the US president.
Unlike China, right?
Toyota is Chinese now?
I'm just saying that out of two American companies, Waymo and Tesla, Tesla is more likely to benefit from government favors.
I still can't believe they were taking one-time purchases for FSD like... 6 years ago.
Isn't waymo already partnering with Uber on offering rideshares in different markets?
Sure. Can you describe what leverage Uber actually has in those partnerships? That's a deal of convenience for Waymo, trading a bit of margin for some velocity. It (or similar deals) are downright existential to Uber.
Uber is acting as an aggregator for all types of rides. Customers have the direct relationship with Uber. Unless Waymo completely runs away with autonomous driving then I think Uber has a lot of leverage.
Waymo has shown itself more than capable of going D2C [1].
It’s actually the one case where Google’s customer service beats the competition’s. Waymo customer service is still somewhat trash. But you need it so infrequently compared with Uber, and Uber and Lyft somehow manage to make Google look like a people company, that I find myself almost exclusively taking Waymo when I’m in a city where it is an option. (Via the Waymo app.)
[1] https://x.com/aleximm/status/1867257473671082356
Wow one whole city of tech bros? I was able to get an Uber in Manuel Antonio Costa Rica coming from an airport whose terminal is literally a hut (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quepos_La_Managua_Airport).
There is a reason even taxi companies are now partnering with Uber in places like DC.
I travel a lot between business (not as much now) and personally. I know I can land in any airport domestically and most airports internationally and can get a ride on Uber and with surge pricing someone will usually pick me up.
It isn’t financially viable to have enough Waymo cars on the road that will be able to handle peak demand and just sit there during low demand.
> It isn’t financially viable to have enough Waymo cars on the road that will be able to handle peak demand and just sit there during low demand
Sure. Waymo can absorb the usual base load. Uber and Lyft can be peakers. This is how it works in Phoenix, LA and Miami, cities one can’t dismiss as cities “of tech bros,” I assume, given during peak hours the wait time surges to 30+ minutes.
I would bet it takes literally one ride in a Waymo for 90%+ of users to be ready to download a different app to access that service again, if Waymo and Uber were to part ways.
Uber is buying time, Waymo is buying velocity
I think it is likely that people order Waymo's through Uber in the future
That's exactly what we're talking about... that's already happening and probably will continue to happen for as long as it's convenient for Waymo.
Margin will never accrue to Uber in that relationship because they have no leverage.
It's been a few years and so far no one but waymo is offering public rides. If there are fast followers they need to launch soon.
Waymo already has an app.
Uber probably has legal framework of operation, ability to quickly obtain permits for autonomous testing, local political connections, special ability to gather roads, traffic, mapping data and overall support with rapid deployment. For waymo to get into a new location/country, establish their presence, navigate the political and regulatory landscape etc will take very long and many difficult hurdles.
Waymo has papa Google, Google Maps already has location and traffic data in excess of Uber. They don't just randomly color traffic lines in Google maps.
I doubt it. Uber is a 1000x more toxic brand to regulators than Waymo is. And I don't think Uber's maps mean anything to Waymo, though would be curious if someone else has direct insight into why they would.
Customers???
Its just an advertising relationship.
I am now convinced that Uber/ride-sharing is responsible for the deterioration in our high-trust societies.
Uber made it ok for regular drivers commit road violations with impunity.
> Uber made it ok for regular drivers commit road violations with impunity.
It was probably because cops stopped enforcing traffic laws during COVID and never started again:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/29/upshot/traffi...
> Uber made it ok for regular drivers commit road violations with impunity.
Can you say more about this?
It was actually Vietnam according to historians.
Seems like a mixed bag. Parents, eldest sister and eldest all have Teslas and have done cross-country road trips with no problems, and use FSD very regularly. Brother, also the most cynical (and probably on HN), swears it's out to kill him and claims it nearly put him under a truck had he not taken over.
“A mixed bag” for a safety critical system is a synonym for “dangerous” or “dogshit”
No it's not.
I've heard both "This has done things more intelligently than me and prevented errors I would've made" and also "This made errors"
Statistically, it's better than human drivers. But of course, if a machine makes an error - it's going to get more headlines.
> Statistically, it's better than human drivers.
Tesla has never published the data required to substantiate this claim.
Next what you'll post is Tesla's press release where they look at accidents per mile with no segregation by driving type (city, freeway, age of car, weather conditions, etc)
Then the next step after that should be for you to say, "huh, it actually is odd that they publish something that purports to show it's safer than human drivers, but they consistently decline to publish the data necessary to actually evaluate whether it's safer than human drivers."
That should make you raise your eyebrows a bit.
Pretty sure they already worked but its a nice sentiment.
When full self-driving actually goes mainstream, today's "it worked" will look pretty identical to not working at all.
Granted, plenty of douchebags will have made their money and scrammed, but founders would prefer to emulate the biggest winners which is what matters.
Nobody is out here emulating the business practices of John Studebaker though I'm sure he died plenty rich.
Hear hear
This is what I needed to avoid buying a Tesla
I just need buttons.
Would some dials be too much to ask for as well?
Next you're going to ask for stalks.
Everything's computer not good enough?
They really need to slim down the design and obviousness of a sensor-ridden car. These vandalism issues on Waymos is not going away anytime soon
I would believe Elon about the robotaxi stuff if they partnered with Waymo. This is a smart partnership.
As someone who never wants to give Elon a cent and is 100x more interested in Waymo’s tech than Elon’s trust-me-bro FSD bullshit, this would have been devastating.
A bit thin. Seems like they got the MoU done first - without solving any of the hard questions.
Also - big warning that they're highlighting "wave" and Toyota Technologies in general.
hurry up and give me a self driving rav4!
Horrible. Hopefully this will keep the Prius line going though
Everything is terrible.
Anything Toyota latches themselves to eventually dies.
Toyota and hybrid vehicles - very weak entry into the market
Toyota and hydrogen powered vehicles - dead on arrival
Toyota’s failure to electrify fleet
Now they want autonomous vehicles? Wonder who backs out first? Waymo or Toyota once they realize what a joke Toyota is.
Well at least they are not collaborating with Nissan.
> Toyota and hybrid vehicles - very weak entry into the market
This statement doesn't seem to track with reality. The Prius was one of the first major hyrbids and it sold like hotcakes. You see them everywhere. Their current offerings include more hybrids than ever, in fact it seems a majority of their vehicles have a hyrbid option today, including the Tacoma and Tundra.
Isn't the rav4 hybrid the best selling non truck in the US? The comments on this story amaze me with how inaccurate people are about Toyota hybrids.
Best selling company year after year. Hybrids are growing faster than EVs.
This source seems to show that hybrid and EV sales are pretty comparable?
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63904
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So? Big deal. Tesla is going to have FSD this year. Elon said so.
no thanks. I like the fact that I drive MY car. I don't want a sass service dictating where I can and can't go or how fast i can get there.
> or how fast i can get there.
I sure do, because it sounds like you aren't driving at safe speeds, and I'd like you to not hit me with your car please.
When companies partner like this it's implicit that they're both heavily lacking something
So only fully vertically integrated companies are “not lacking”?
I mean, Waymo doesn't make cars. Not exactly shocking.
Waymo has also partnered with a lot of the rest of the auto industry with little to show for it...
I wonder if this time it'll be different now it looks like Tesla might finally get self driving to the mass market.
I think part of Elon's strategy is announcing <something> being around the corner in order to scare off competitors and investment into alternatives because, well, Telsa is already so far ahead.
This is why Tesla's "actuals" are delivered so many years after the dates of the initial pronouncements (for those few things that have so far been delivered at all).
In what way Tesla is ahead of Waymo ?
That is the impression those pronouncements are intending to give. My point is that it may not reflect reality; it's trying to present "we are way ahead", whether they are or not, as reality, in order to incentivise investment in their company, rather than in a competitors, whilst at the same time scaring away those thinking about attempting to compete by making the moat look wider than it is.
I legitimately don't know who's ahead of who and where the state-of-the-art currently sits, but I do know that I hear far more about Tesla's vision roadmap than Waymo's or Uber's or anyone else's.
> now it looks like Tesla might finally get self driving to the mass market.
What year is it?!
Stardates will be a thing before FSD actually is released as originally advertised.
I used to own a Model 3 with FSD, so before anyone comes in with "you simply haven't tried it", no, I have, and I stand by what I said.
> little to show for it
Wonder if there's any breakup clauses when the manufacturers want to do autonomy with other companies outside of Waymo and this is Alphabet casting a conflict-of-influence net across the industry, almost like a desperate man calling every divorce lawyer in the tristate area to deny his wife proper justice.
What other companies? Is anybody else even close to waymo?
They been saying it’s coming next since 2017. Baby steps and fix the vision only automatic wiper controls first.
> I wonder if this time it'll be different now it looks like Tesla might finally get self driving to the mass market.
Source? Not just another Elon "next year" promise though right?
I mean this time he may actually release it.
And anyone that survived or tries to sue due to massacres committes by self driving Teslas will be sent to the death camps in El Salvador for being domestic terrorists