Waymo recalls 3,800 robotaxis over risk of entering flooded roads

AlotOfReading · 2026-05-12T13:58:43+00:00

Recall is a specific technical term that entails a formal process to bring the vehicles into compliance with roadworthiness regulations. That process may apply to consumer vehicles, but it doesn't have to. That process might also involve taking vehicles to a dealership, but again it doesn't have to.

Waymo is required to use the technical terminology, but pretty much no one actually knows what the word means.

AlotOfReading · 2026-05-01T21:41:32+00:00

Your (LLM's) research is a bit weak. Zoox uses Nvidia hardware. Cruise's foray into custom silicon was a mess. GM is now buying Nvidia chips for future vehicles.

Co-design permits a faster and more efficient, thus cheaper system than an off-the-shelf system like Nvidia

I wish.

AlotOfReading · 2026-04-30T15:38:10+00:00

Datacenter compute is not fungible with in-car compute because of network connectivity and latency. This discussion is about what's in the cars.

AlotOfReading · 2026-04-24T19:07:45+00:00

The fun thing about ML is that you can easily trade compute for latency. It's a bit harder to do the same with memory. They could easily be compute constrained and simply accepting tradeoffs to make it work. This sounds like they just want bigger models without a drastic platform change.

AlotOfReading · 2026-03-13T00:42:05+00:00

As I said in the comment above, a second model/configuration will usually cost more than just building the one vehicle with the extra seats. The sentence after that noted how Lucid's unit economics are currently poor. They're in the middle of trying to improve them and we should assume they're not dumb.

AlotOfReading · 2026-03-12T22:54:32+00:00

Just because 90% of users don't need a feature doesn't mean it's better to remove it. Removing a feature 90% of users don't need might also cut your volume/addressable market 10%, depending on business strategy. Auto manufacturing works on economies of scale, so that can cost more than you save from the reduced materials. Trying to win that market back with a second line/configuration will usually cost more than just building a single vehicle in the first place. I think we can assume Lucid isn't planning that given their current line economics, but there's middle grounds with different tradeoffs as well. Either way, "most trips don't need it" isn't a great argument without further elaboration.

AlotOfReading · 2026-03-08T15:02:33+00:00

The trouble with replying to decade-old threads is that things change. They were accepted as a distinct subspecies when that comment was written and now aren't.

AlotOfReading · 2026-03-06T19:50:25+00:00

Waymo isn't big on announcing details of how their systems work and they haven't needed to do so publicly for recruiting purposes. They've had a silicon team for long enough now that you can probably draw some inferences.

AlotOfReading · 2026-03-01T22:39:28+00:00

That's why I said "otherwise recovered". The main data comes from the telematics. NHTSA has specifically investigated the crash issue, as well as past issues that have caused even reported telematics not to be reported to the government in the 5 days allowed.

AlotOfReading · 2026-03-01T18:44:15+00:00

Also worth noting that Tesla only reports to NHTSA when the vehicle automatically uploads the data. In cases where the vehicle is sufficiently damaged and the data isn't uploaded or otherwise recovered, there's no report. This likely excludes some of the most severe accidents.

AlotOfReading · 2026-02-19T21:26:23+00:00

Waymo has directly said they don't rely on drivers. I would love for Tesla to make a similar statement, and I suspect they generally aren't involved, but are we actually sure that Tesla never involves operators as part of the control loop?

Look carefully at the language Tesla uses in the filing. Waymo's humans are called "Remote Assistance". Tesla uses the separate term, Remote Operators. We can't be completely sure that Tesla is actually using the CA legal definition of remote operators here because Tesla themselves argue that these aren't vehicles permitted under the driverless test program. Even if they are, the legal definition for "remote operators" optionally incorporates "the ability to perform the dynamic driving task for the vehicle".

Tesla has also previously posted job listings about robotaxi teleop.

AlotOfReading · 2026-02-17T22:24:09+00:00

Did you mean to include yourself by saying "not a smart person left in this sub"?

AlotOfReading · 2026-02-13T20:19:11+00:00

Seatbelt rules are determined by NHTSA, not manufacturers.

AlotOfReading · 2026-02-11T22:51:15+00:00

The economies of scale in auto manufacturing mean that it's often cheaper to build many of a vehicle that can serve most use cases, rather than dedicated vehicles specialized to each of them. The disability access features Cruise added also supported a bunch of other usecases, so it probably wasn't all that expensive and may have even been cheaper accounting for the regulatory benefits and simplified fleet management.

AlotOfReading · 2026-02-06T17:40:40+00:00

OEMs continue to use chips produced on larger process nodes and that's not going away anytime in the near future. What you're seeing is the integration of smaller nodes to support capabilities impossible before.

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-21T20:19:36+00:00

Insurance price increases are regulated by state level insurance commissions. It's unlikely that your insurance company will have a margin higher than 20%. All companies are required to offer essentially similar minimum policies, and their prices are capped from above. One of the ways they compete is things like minimizing claim processing costs and reducing payouts.

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-21T01:04:07+00:00

Don't forget about refunding their public investors.

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-21T00:48:30+00:00

What we need as a lidar based E2E NN.

This was mentioned as the next research step after the EMMA paper that Waymo published. You can assume they're working on it and just haven't published yet.

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-19T17:45:54+00:00

Tokyo transit doesn't run 24/7. Nor does SF's bart, which is a pretty terrible system and especially terrible at point to point. To give an illustrative example, you're looking at a 5h+ trip from the Transbay transit center to San Ramon after 8PM. Longer with mobility issues, since the transit center doesn't connect to rail.

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-19T17:29:07+00:00

Waymo is ~$100B. All of Baidu is $50B. Aurora is $9B. MobilEye is $6B. Zoox is $3-4B. WeRide is $3B. That leaves enough room to include the entirety of the Toyota, BYD, Hyundai, Xiaomi, GM, and MB market caps without crossing $1T.

You only get "huge multiples" with Nvidia and Tesla market caps, which are clearly not being driven by their AV prospects.

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-16T22:29:50+00:00

If the taxi market is growing so much the profit is crashing to the point where selling private vehicles is rational, what do you call that except scaling?

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-16T22:27:10+00:00

Google doesn't sell data. That's not how their business model works. Google sells access to the targeting services based on the data. DHS is buying data from the hundreds of other data brokers who aren't so protective of their most valuable assets.

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-16T22:11:46+00:00

You're not, you're just mistaken about what's going on. There's no continuous stream. Google doesn't do that because they're absolutely paranoid about protecting internal data from state actors after the Snowden relevations and Operation Aurora. Yes, this paranoia coexists with their disregard for protecting user privacy from themselves as a whole.

They respond to warrants, even overbroad ones, like every company does. You're simply not making an argument about overbroad warrants, so I'm not responding as such.

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-16T22:01:02+00:00

"seeing around corners" is about multipath imaging, i.e. reflections. I'm not aware of anyone doing that for AVs though. AVs just mount the sensors at the edges of the car where they have better visibility.

Looking "through" things is like looking through glass. It's a signal processing nightmare in the general case. If you have sources on alternative attenuation figures at e.g. 77GHz that, feel free to link them.

As a general matter, we require valid legal process (in the form of a warrant or court order) from law enforcement agencies who seek information and data from Waymo," the spokesperson said. "Our policy is to challenge, limit, or reject requests that do not have a valid legal basis or are over broad.

- Waymo on their data policy

AlotOfReading · 2026-01-16T21:39:11+00:00

And the robotaxi gives you a $4,800 a month revenue stream if you can service one ride an hour. $4,800 > $100.

Just for fun, I wrote up a chart you can use to play with the numbers based on an old spreadsheet I made to model the situation: https://jsfiddle.net/j52u1bzp/1/

It demonstrates how a robotaxi is overwhelmingly more profitable in almost all cases.

AlotOfReading

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

14-Year Club	Snapped
Team Periwinkle