Wednesday, February 14, 2018

They'll Still Have Drivers

I mean, "human monitors."

What also may have gone unnoticed was a January news item that Waymo had ordered "thousands" of Chrysler Pacifica minivans from Fiat Chrysler (NYSE:FCAU), which is the car Waymo used in the 100-vehicle early rider program. The order signals that Waymo is ready for widespread deployment, with Waymo CEO John Krafcik announcing, "with the world's first fleet of fully self-driving vehicles on the road, we've moved from research and development to operations and deployment."

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Not only did Waymo score more miles, but its disengagement rate fell to 0.18 per thousand miles, down from 0.20 in 2016. For reference, a disengagement occurs when a human monitor has to assume control of the autonomous vehicle. Waymo's figure was also well below GM-Cruise, which scored a 0.8 disengagement rate, though GM claimed this was a huge 1400% improvement from 2016, which, admittedly, is also impressive.

These figures are kind of meaningless unless you know how much they're gaming the results by driving lots of "easy" miles. Also, I suspect (but don't know) they're obscuring first/last 100 feet problems. But even if you take it at face value that you can run an automated taxi service that only needs a driver once every 5 thousand miles, you still need a driver (I mean "human monitor") all the time if you need one once every 5 thousand. Neat if true! Still not good enough, and no way they work that well in my urban hellhole, which is pretty easy to drive in compared to, say, Boston.