Am I the only one getting OceanGate vibes from this Tesla robotaxi rollout?
They are being remotely piloted in an urban area. It will be hard to kill someone.
I doubt it will be has hard as you might think. They can do it even with someone sitting at the wheel.
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Is that a WayMo?
Yep
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The ride was comfortable and uneventful. Would gladly do again.
A couple of times the car might have accelerated a little faster than a human driver might have, but it was nothing too far from the norm. Might have been more related to riding in an electric car, which I haven’t done a lot of.
Things I found interesting/impressive:
You can see on 2 screens what the vehicle is perceiving in real time: cars, bikes, pedestrians, stop lights, slowing vehicles,…
At one point I noticed the car had highlighted a homeless guy sleeping in a bus stop. He wasn’t moving, so it was perceiving that via the detailed past scans of the area. That impressed me.
We were approaching a stop light downtown and suddenly sirens were nearby. It was hard for me to discern precisely where the police car was coming from. The Waymo immediately put on the right turn signal and pulled to the side. The cop car was actually passing on the street perpendicular to us so perhaps it was overkill, but still the right move.
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The news is reporting that starting today any Uber user here can get a Waymo.
Not sure how I got one on Sunday.
I got an answer to my question via email: when I opted into Waymo a while back, I apparently opted into the early access portion. Early access ended today with the start of full access. They gave me a $5 credit for taking a ride during early access.
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Tesla designed autopilot to disengage right before crashing so they can claim it wasn’t at fault.
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I’ve ridden in a Tesla a couple times and always feel incompetent trying to open the door. Am I ignorant of a smoother way to open the door or is it just terrible design?
I own a Model Y, even after owning it for years it’s a little awkward. I get that they are squeezing out every drop of aerodynamic efficiency, and I don’t know a better way to do it, but it feels weird.
https://insideevs.com/news/741185/tesla-fatal-accident-rates-new-study-report/?dicbo=v2-5E3rIUu
Given that these models perform well in crash tests, I’m guessing self driving could be a factor
Also, fire deaths, which appear to be going up generally, and might be disproportionately coming from Teslas.
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Already my third autonomous ride. I’m tailor made for what they are mostly doing here: shorter drives in populated areas
Zoox has announced they are testing in Atlanta. When Waymo started testing here, I saw them all the time in my neighborhood. This went on for months before they went live.
I have yet to see a Zoox vehicle since they announced testing here.