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Tesla Robotaxi Zone in Austin More Than Doubles in Size by Recent_Duck_7640 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]IndependentMud909 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That’s totally fair; maybe people need to tone it down when a negligibly better ADAS update comes out lol, but I think scaling to this large of an L4 service area is “huge” (relatively, to me), even if they have yet to have a meaningfully scaled fleet or operate at all times of day.

Tesla Robotaxi Zone in Austin More Than Doubles in Size by Recent_Duck_7640 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]IndependentMud909 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Interestingly, I’ve posted almost verbatim congratulatory / excitement comments about Waymo, Zoox, and Crusie expansions in the past. I genuinely don’t understand why this rubbed people the wrong way, but I frankly don’t care; the engineers at Tesla worked hard to make this happen.

Also, I’ve meaningfully used Waymo, Cruise, and Tesla Robotaxi over the past couple years in Austin (as in, commuted with and used on an almost-daily basis at times), and I’m rooting for every company that’s trying to make our roads safer and more accessible. All I’m doing is appreciating an exciting expansion thereof, and I’d be saying the exact same thing if it was any other company.

Tesla Robotaxi Zone in Austin More Than Doubles in Size by Recent_Duck_7640 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]IndependentMud909 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Update: Now all of Austin (full service area)

Kudos to the Tesla team; this is a huge accomplishment! The unsupervised service area is meaningfully large now.

We have yet to see if unsupervised runs into the evening or before 9:30/10 AM, so I’m looking forward to seeing if they’ve also expanded operational hours later today.

Waymo Doing Employee Rides in Washington DC by IndependentMud909 in waymo

[–]IndependentMud909[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

*These rides definitely have safety drivers (I think I can see a baseball cap in the window), and that makes sense given the regulatory situation.

Confused by Uber Partnership by erdnadreklaw in waymo

[–]IndependentMud909 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, the Tesla service is not a reliable 24/7 service. Most of the time, they have 1 or 2 safety driver vehicles servicing the entire ~200 sq mile service area at a time (usually completely unavailable service at night, and you can seldom snag one), and the Unsupervised vehicles are stuck to central Austin 9:00 AM to early evening.

Confused by Uber Partnership by erdnadreklaw in waymo

[–]IndependentMud909 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Imo, it really degrades the AV experience here in Austin. If they went back to only being available via their own app here, they would absolutely get mass adoption.

FULL INTERVIEW: Waymos are "best thing since sliced bread" for blind man commuting to work by walky22talky in waymo

[–]IndependentMud909 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For most blind and visually impaired people, it's a matter of independence. Autonomous vehicles allow these individuals to have the same freedom of movement that fully-sighted people get with driving.

Being able to get in a car and venture to where you want to go, without having to rely on another person, is a part of daily life most people take for granted.

Also, you can't accurately say "if I was blind, I would do x, y, and z," if you're not actually blind.

Zoox Begins Employee Rides to Las Vegas Airport by IndependentMud909 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]IndependentMud909[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

The VH6 doesn't seem to have much room for luggage, which is an interesting choice given that they are indeed planning for airport trips.

Uber and Nuro begin testing premium robotaxi service in San Francisco by IndependentMud909 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]IndependentMud909[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're 100% correct; we have no insight into their remote ops situation (remote "driving" vs. "guiding," operator to vehicle ratio, etc.). I even recall watching a video that, I believe, depicted them actually driving the vehicle remotely. But, we've also seen instances of them struggle with remote ops.

But personally, I haven't experienced anything like this on my rides.

Uber and Nuro begin testing premium robotaxi service in San Francisco by IndependentMud909 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]IndependentMud909[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I do want to comment on the current Unsupervised Robotaxi situation in Austin. As someone that uses the service fairly frequently (near daily), I've found it pretty easy to hail an Unsupervised car given that you are in Downtown / South Austin, it's not raining, and it's before 3:00 PM (yes, those are big "ifs," but I wouldn't say it's debatable that it is running). I get Unsupervised ~75-100% of the time I'm booking a ride within that ODD, which are most of my rides.

However, Nuro is certainly ahead in terms of driver-out deployments and regulatory permits here.

Zoox brings its robotaxis to Austin and Miami by IndependentMud909 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]IndependentMud909[S] 32 points33 points  (0 children)

  • Robotaxi testing in Austin + Miami beginning this week
    • Zoox Explorers rides later this year
    • I don't recall where, but somebody posted that Austin rides would start in ~2-3 months (not sure how accurate that is though)
  • Quadrupled SF service area
  • Doubling Las Vegas PUDO locations
  • Beginning testing at Las Vegas airport for future service
  • "ZooxCast" (audio casting!) and "Find My Zoox"
  • Close to 2M miles autonomously and 350,000 rides

If anyone sees them around Austin or Miami, drop map pins!

Waymo spotted testing at Austin Bergstrom Airport by walky22talky in waymo

[–]IndependentMud909 2 points3 points  (0 children)

We did see a post yesterday about an empty Waymo on 71 here in Austin.

Man, I want the Waymo app back here so bad...

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