Waymo's driverless vehicles are coming to Lyft's network in Phoenix

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: The latest collaboration between Lyft and Waymo is advancing the causes of ride-hailing and autonomous vehicles. It comes at a critical time - just after Lyft went public and not too longer after Uber experienced a fatal accident involving one of its self-driving vehicles.

Waymo in the coming months will deploy 10 self-driving vehicles in the Metro Phoenix area via Lyft’s ride-hailing platform, expanding on a partnership that was first announced in mid-2017.

Once the vehicles are in place, users in the area will have the option to select a Waymo directly from the Lyft app. Waymo CEO John Krafcik said that for many, it’ll be their first ride in a self-driving vehicle. A safety driver will be behind the wheel to take over in case of any hiccups and to answer rider inquiries.

Waymo launched its own commercial self-driving ride-hailing service, Waymo One, in the same area a little over six months ago. “Over that time we’ve grown to serve over 1,000 riders who hail Waymo cars each day to commute to and from work, bring their kids to school, get to the grocery store, and even to avoid parking at trailheads before a big run,” Krafcik said.

The next step in the partnership between Lyft and Waymo comes on the heels of Lyft’s first quarterly report since going public. In it, Lyft reported a net quarterly loss of $1.1 billion although much of that was related to stock-based compensation in connection with the IPO. The company’s adjusted net loss was $211.5 million.

Lead image courtesy Sundry Photography via Shutterstock

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https://www.techspot.com/news/79993-waymo-driverless-vehicles-coming-lyft-network-phoenix.html

 

[ShagnWagn]

Everyone in Phoenix - beware, especially pedestrians. Your fate will be decided by a computer. Multiple news articles highlight even the smallest malfunction will cause an error, and are reinforcing this statement. But they continue to put these on the street at our public safety risk. All in the name of "technology"...

"A safety driver will be behind the wheel to take over"
They have already proven how epic a fail this will be.

I foresee a class action multi billion dollar lawsuit in the future for autonomous self-wrecking cars.

 

[Hardware Geek]

A driver ready to take over in the event of a malfunction will be necessary for a long time. I think self driving vehicles are definitely the future of automotive transportation. I'm of the opinion that the vehicles will be able to drive themselves safely in the next few years, but it will take a lot of time for consumers in general to accept these vehicles are safe. Every time there is an accident it is a huge deal in the media, but when the statistics showing that these vehicles have a far lower accident rate with the average driver will eventually win over consumers when the technology is ready.

There will undoubtedly be more accidents with these vehicles, but assuming the rate of accidents is far lower than a human driver, it will succeed and potentially completely change the automobile industry. I expect all cars will be capable of self driving in my lifetime and owning a vehicles will become the exception, as it should be more profitable for automobile manufacturer to own the vehicles and for consumers to pay per ride or on a subscription type of plan. My primary concern about the technology isn't whether or not it will become ubiquitous, but the numbers of people who will find themselves unemployed because of this tech.

 

[ShagnWagn]

A driver ready to take over in the event of a malfunction will be necessary for a long time. I think self driving vehicles are definitely the future of automotive transportation. I'm of the opinion that the vehicles will be able to drive themselves safely in the next few years, but it will take a lot of time for consumers in general to accept these vehicles are safe. Every time there is an accident it is a huge deal in the media, but when the statistics showing that these vehicles have a far lower accident rate with the average driver will eventually win over consumers when the technology is ready.

There will undoubtedly be more accidents with these vehicles, but assuming the rate of accidents is far lower than a human driver, it will succeed and potentially completely change the automobile industry. I expect all cars will be capable of self driving in my lifetime and owning a vehicles will become the exception, as it should be more profitable for automobile manufacturer to own the vehicles and for consumers to pay per ride or on a subscription type of plan. My primary concern about the technology isn't whether or not it will become ubiquitous, but the numbers of people who will find themselves unemployed because of this tech.

"when the statistics showing that these vehicles have a far lower accident rate"
Please post some hard and factual numbers. Also, relate those numbers to REAL world driving. Not some fictitious perfect-world driving conditions, plus at normal driving speeds. Also compare percentages, not numbers. Most of those arguing just compare hard number of deaths of a few hundred of these compared to billions of people daily.

"assuming the rate of accidents is far lower than a human driver, it will succeed"
You say that they are, and then you are only assuming...? These cars are not pro-active. They are only reactive. They cannot compare to human intuition.

"consumers to pay per ride or on a subscription"
Great, so people will have to pay more, and for a vehicle they will never own. I guess if you are one of those people that pay over double for someone else to uber than own your own vehicle. Have fun with those seats someone has puked in or anything else they leave stained or busted.

"numbers of people who will find themselves unemployed"
People will move onto other jobs, so this is no concern. Now they will have to work two jobs if what you think will happen when nobody is allowed to own their own vehicle. They instead will be paying insane amounts of money than them buying a thousand dollar car and driving it for years.

"vehicles will be able to drive themselves safely in the next few years"
Ever since these were thought of, people have been saying this same thing. Kind of like people have been talking about flying cars. lol

 

[Bats Dude]

I can not wait to get hit by one of these mindless robots! Can you say, 'I'm rich!'?

 

[Hardware Geek]

"when the statistics showing that these vehicles have a far lower accident rate"
Please post some hard and factual numbers. Also, relate those numbers to REAL world driving. Not some fictitious perfect-world driving conditions, plus at normal driving speeds. Also compare percentages, not numbers. Most of those arguing just compare hard number of deaths of a few hundred of these compared to billions of people daily.

"assuming the rate of accidents is far lower than a human driver, it will succeed"
You say that they are, and then you are only assuming...? These cars are not pro-active. They are only reactive. They cannot compare to human intuition.

"consumers to pay per ride or on a subscription"
Great, so people will have to pay more, and for a vehicle they will never own. I guess if you are one of those people that pay over double for someone else to uber than own your own vehicle. Have fun with those seats someone has puked in or anything else they leave stained or busted.

"numbers of people who will find themselves unemployed"
People will move onto other jobs, so this is no concern. Now they will have to work two jobs if what you think will happen when nobody is allowed to own their own vehicle. They instead will be paying insane amounts of money than them buying a thousand dollar car and driving it for years.

"vehicles will be able to drive themselves safely in the next few years"
Ever since these were thought of, people have been saying this same thing. Kind of like people have been talking about flying cars. lol

I don't expect it to be good for the average person. In fact, I think this will benefit vehicle manufacturers and hurt the average consumer. These corporations don't care about consumers, they care about profit.

I don't expect fully autonomous vehicles to be able to drive in poor weather for a decade or more.I doubt we will see level 5 autonomy for quite some time and I expect there will always be a need for vehicles that can be driven manually, but that will be the exception and most vehicles will be autonomous.

The flying car, if it ever happens, will more than likely be autonomous as well. If you had told me 20 years ago that I would have a 6 inch touchscreen computer that happens to make phone calls and is exponentially faster than the first computer I built, I would have called you crazy. Yet here I am, using my "phone" to reply to this message...