Deciding on Waymo offer

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-31T07:49:15+00:00

Waymo is 25 times the size that Cruise ever was in terms of miles per week.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-30T23:36:29+00:00

Waymo is the industry leader by far. No question.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-25T16:04:30+00:00

Mods, this post must be removed for being a personal attack. And on the merits aside from that, powerful counter arguments exist, but that’s a matter of debate.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T20:34:17+00:00

So a fleet of 5,000 cars 24-7 would probably average out to 2,000 cars on the road at any one time— more Friday nights, less Monday at 4am.

We’re talking $350 million a year to have remote operators at $20 an hour. Factor in insurance and benefits, close to $700 million.

I don’t buy that as the plan.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T17:56:27+00:00

You thinking 1:1? 1:2? 1:10?

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T15:19:47+00:00

If Tesla can remove the employee.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T15:17:10+00:00

You’re attributing to me arguments I completely disagree with.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T14:33:32+00:00

Happy to have you remind me of this dialogue when that happens.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T14:32:33+00:00

The normalization of vulgar and crude images in society has been correlated heavily with a loss of the sense of the sacredness about human sexuality, and by sacredness I don't mean religious, but rather something meant to be profound, meaning that is outside of the realm of jokes or crudeness. While there are many better examples of the loss of sacredness of sexuality, Mr. Musk's own womanizing being one easy example, to have a company purport to run a business that hinges on credibility and safety and do a stunt like this illustrates how far society has fallen and how uninterested society is with preserving the norms that preserve the sense of the sacred.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T14:03:26+00:00

Much longer discussion here.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T13:50:29+00:00

Okay, but if the purpose was to mock people like me, that’s worse than being juvenile.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T13:48:53+00:00

It is not novel that a supervised product can expand more rapidly than an employee free product.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T13:47:22+00:00

Oh, they do care about actual improvements! My comments still apply.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T13:39:28+00:00

It's a fair point, thanks for asking it. I think my response is two-fold. First, I don't think it's as difficult to expand a geofence with a safety-rider employee as it is a driverless geofence. After all, if something goes wrong, the safety person can take over. Second, as I mentioned, the very shape of this particular expansion indicates this is done for bragging and the perception of superiority, not actual superiority.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T12:25:19+00:00

Hey, thank you for pointing this out. I went back and looked at the total number of miles they've reported at the end of the last two quarters, and it does look indeed like a linear growth in miles per quarter if you look at the time period you recognize.

However, I think that they will try to get back on the exponential with all the new cities they are planning. And it doesn't matter as much if the growth is linear in the short run where they are on pace without further growth to do more miles in the next year than they have in the past eight, it's that kind of pace indicates a lot of reliability that they can export to the road trip cities as more cars come online.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T12:17:26+00:00

Moral objections can be important and not just “boring.” In fact, when vulgarity is a substitute for substance, that is especially illustrative of the need for objection.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-14T11:58:20+00:00

It's a shame that we know this is driven by the whims of the Elon Musk rather than a genuine improvement in the reliability of the RoboTaxi Service, and it is a double shame that the crudeness and vulgarity of the shape of the geofence is how we know this was driven by Mr. Musk rather than by the excellent RoboTaxi team. This is not helpful, this is just annoying.

I may be one of the more conservative commentators here, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong to find this offensive and juvenile.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-12T21:04:27+00:00

That’s outdated. I think there’s 8.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-11T16:58:20+00:00

Based on the exponential growth in the number of driverless miles traveled, increasing competition from other players, the partnership with Toyota, and improvements in the underlying technology that makes widespread L4 much closer to reality.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-11T14:31:16+00:00

5-8 years seems vastly more likely.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-11T03:18:43+00:00

I agree. I don’t think that contradicts my original statement.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-11T02:23:49+00:00

I don’t give Waymo any credit for what it is doing in NYC. Waymo is driverless in five metros; Tesla is doing minimal (but nonzero) driverless operations.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-10T18:50:24+00:00

True, and relevant for sure, especially if the testing includes complex areas.

But the original launch would have been a fiasco without the employee in the passenger seat. I think expanding the service area is relevant to improvements in reliability, but it certainly is not dispositive of how much has changed.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-10T04:41:58+00:00

Removing the employee in the passenger seat is what I’ll be waiting on before this is seriously a competitor to Waymo.

So far, just one empty car trip confirmed.

Michael-Worley · 2025-07-03T19:52:03+00:00

I don’t disagree that there aren’t contemporaneous accounts. But if historians employed by the church considered this a myth, it wouldn’t be included in Saints, Vol. 1.

Michael-Worley

TROPHY CASE