Waymo Has Received Our Pilot Permit Allowing for Commercial Operations at Sfo

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Which can be bad - I often find it easier to just pay for a few minutes parking on dropoff/pickup.

That's way mo' information than needed thanks.

But seriously. I wonder why they have a designated pickup point if it would make sense to spread the cars out to alleviate traffic bottlenecks.

Overall though, I think I agree with you.

Currently we rely very much on the problem solving abilities of human pilots to deal with troublesome situations. Autopilot will disengage in many scenarios.

Flying is obviously much harder than driving, but it's a sort of harder that is generally more amenable to automation, though I still think pilots are a good idea because when it goes wrong it goes wrong much worse.

1d (train) - easy. just one lever

2d (car) - hard. super hard. why is it so crowded? who thought this was a good idea? you let teenagers do this?

2.5d (plane at takeoff or landing) - almost as hard as car. fewer pedestrians.

3d (plane flying) - easy even with all those extra levers

In an automotive setting you can almost always safely decelerate to a full-stop, put on hazards and call it a fail. Good luck trying that in an aircraft over urban areas.

In contrast when shit goes wrong for a plane we've got a big problem. Just stopping will definitely kill everybody, even from a modest altitude at a very low speed suddenly plummeting to the ground will straight up kill you. So, we want to land, albeit maybe we have to "crash land" destroying the vehicle to perhaps save its occupants.

You can buy (and indeed to some extent you can even retro-fit) emergency auto-land for small planes. Once engaged, or if set to do so automatically upon pilot failure the plane will figure out where it is (using GPS), pick the emergency radio frequency and announce the problem and its intended solution (I am a machine. My human pilot is incapacitated. I intend to fly to X location and land there. I am not listening to you and cannot understand you) and then it will fly to a chosen place and attempt to properly land the aeroplane, broadcast on radio that this airfield is now closed (this aeroplane is parked on the landing strip so you can't use it!) and then switch off.

Maybe the pilot is still alive and human medics can rush them to hospital. Otherwise maybe there are passengers who have been saved. In any case at least the aeroplane is now on the ground where humans can easily take over e.g. moving the plane so the airfield can re-open.

There's a reason the majority of accidents occur during take off and landing.

Spend some time listening: https://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=ksfo

With a car if the engine fails you just pull over. With an airliner it's not so simple. As a result the training for a pilot is much longer than for a bus driver say.

Other drivers aren't your only challenge out there.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38973404

Direct competitors are uber and Lyft which they can undercut since they don’t pay drivers.

The people who want to take buses and trains will continue to do so although Waymo might sway some with their ease and if pricing is reasonable.

Bikes and e-scooters only get you so far. Last time I was in SF I didn’t see too many bikes but I saw a ton of e-scooters. Are you really taking an e-scooter further than a few blocks? And when it rains?

Self owned cars make sense for longer trips out of the city but parking is a pain and driving is stressful so this is an easy win for Waymo.

It’s cheaper now so they can take market share. And their cost will certainly be lower than Ubers so they can win the pricing battle. But long term monopoly gonna monopoly. Perfect pricing is a given with the wealth in SF and how many rides will be on a business CC.