fun fact with all zoox rides (sf) they manually start every ride and make sure your seatbelt is actually on before they start your ride. A human is always watching you & your ride.
Waymo & Tesla don’t manually start every ride and verify.
According to the affidavit, the Tesla was operating with FSD engaged and was approaching a stop sign at the intersection of Bradford Hills Lane and Gable Hollow Lane. Investigators say the system had already begun slowing the vehicle and was preparing to come to a complete stop at the intersection.
At that point, Butler allegedly overrode the system. The court documents state that pressing the accelerator pedal transferred control away from FSD and back to the driver.
Investigators say accelerator input was gradual, indicating a deliberate action, first reaching 67% before climbing to 100% shortly before the vehicle left the roadway.
The Tesla subsequently crashed through the front of the home, killing 76-year old Martha Avila inside.
Apparently a mapping error and confused remote agents led to a failed ride for Sawyer Merritt.
This youTube video shows how Porsche integrated the Mobileye supervision system cameras. Pay close attention to the cameras in the side mirrors and above the front wheels.
"Robotaxis with nobody at the wheel are real, scaling, and stuck inside a handful of cities. The 'self-driving' car you can actually buy still needs you. Where autonomous driving really stands in 2026, and why the holdup isn't the technology."
UKF,EKF MCL-based filters, MHE, all that sort of good stuff, used to be de facto in a lot of stuff, absolutely no clue whether they are still used anymore. I guess some legacy ADAS/OEM players would? But what about the hotter players like Waymo? FSD? Any joint that positions itself for L4 and beyond?
Given the closed source nature of these things, I would appreciate insights!
I’ve taken a Waymo from my home to the office, the exact same route, over 500 times. Probably more.
This morning, Waymo decided that the entire mile radius of my apartment and surrounding streets was not in a supported zone. It wanted me to walk over ten minutes to get to the car, even though for nearly a year and a half it’s come within 5 feet of the pick up spot I gave it.
Support says that many people could have marked the pick up experience as poor, leading to the change. For more than one reason, that is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The improved pickup experience that it changed too was on a street with no parking and a much busier road for pedestrians to be walking on.
It’s quite frustrating using a service so often, that I do genuinely prefer over Uber, and having them make it unusable for you for an abirtrary reason. I’m in the heart of Austin, TX and you’re essentially going to dead zone the one building I live in?
This is a whole separate rant from the terrible iheartradio they make you play, or when the car decides the ten minute ride is going to become an hour long one. I hope robotaxi speeds up its Austin launch and scales, because I’m really ready for Waymo to stop reaping the benefits of being the only autonomous player in the Austin market despite how often it’s screwing over its customers.
Recently saw the news about a person being killed by a Tesla while in autopilot, and reminds me of similar news in the past, especially a gruesome one in 2018. According to https://www.tesladeaths.com/, Tesla FSD could have been involved in as many as 65 deaths, and yet, people seems to forget about them as quickly as come.
On the other hand, a single FSD incident has been the downfall of at least a couple FSD start ups, including Uber ATG (part of the rideshare company) and Cruise (bought by GM). Both of them were valued at billions at one point and were both considered top contenders in the self-driving car space. For Uber, in 2018, it struck a person on a bike and gained huge publicity and pretty much brought the group to a standstill. Shortly after in 2020, it's pretty much dissolved when Uber sold the group to Aurora, a much smaller competitor at the time. For Cruise, it actually beat Waymo in offering public self-driving services in San Francisco. However, it struck and dragged a person that was thrown in its path after being struck by another car in 2023. Pretty much shortly after in 2024, GM shut it all down.
Curious on the business case studies of Tesla's strategy and how it persevered through way more incidents while other major players were brought down by a single one.
The recent announcement that Polestar will be banned from selling 2027 model year cars is an ominous sign for Waymo's Ojai platform in the US. It shows the administration's willingness to deny Geely linked platforms, even when the car is assembled in the U.S. A China built Zeeker is much less likely to get approval merely because Waymo replaces the tech stack.
If they don't get 2027 approval, it hardly makes sense to import them, pay 102.5% tariffs, transport them inland to AZ, retro-fit them using expensive US labor, transport them back to the port and then export them.
Unfortunately the Bureau of Industry and Security doesn't publish its approvals so it's hard to know if Waymo has already received a 2027 approval or not. Absent Waymo telling us, I would look for an announcement that they are setting up a retrofitting factory outside AZ as a clue that things are not going their way.
What does everyone think? Does this development have no reflection on Waymo's chances of keeping the Oaji platform or does it show it will be a major uphill struggle to do so?