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Comment by emanuele232 | Hacker News Reader

because waymo relies on a continuous mapping of the cities you can take it. that's why it is available in few US cities, but this does not scale at all. The point of those startups (and tesla's) is to produce something that can drive everywhere whitout prior information (fantasy world right now)

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As far as the scaling, I think some would have said the same about Google Street View, but now the majority of streets in the country are mapped out. Google already has the infrastructure to be able to do the necessary mapping. And as Waymo cars become more common, I suspect they'll be able to fill in a lot of the gaps.

street view has images from years ago depending on where the google cars are mapping in that moment, waymo needs constant mapping of the cities it has cars in, therefore needing more man-hours. furthermore the driving laws differs from country to country, and in most of the world the road paint/signs are borderline indescifrable for a human, let alone a machine. i'm not saying that it can't be done, but it is already expensive in big US cities, it just do not scale well.

This argument keeps coming up, mostly from Tesla fans. Google does collect a lot of data, but it uses it mostly for two things: 1) location with loss of or errors in GPS info, and 2) street maps of where to go. The driving environment is too dynamic for static info to be useful for more than that.

Driving in static environments with GPS, maps and LIDAR worked two decades ago, after all. The hard problems involve the other players.

Yes, Musk is saying that Tesla will have robot taxis by August 2024.[1] He said that back in 2021, too.[2] And in 2016.[3]

Tesla vs bollard: [4] Tesla still has only a not-very-good level 2 system.

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/business/elon-musk-tesla-robo...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vZ8eWBiWFE

[3] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4682448-tesla-sudden-third-...

[4] https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1585626430154502145

It's not at all clear why that wouldn't scale, could you elaborate? Legitimately not being snarky. The existence of Google Street View seems to be a fairly strong counterpoint.

> The point of those startups (and tesla's) is to produce something that can drive everywhere whitout prior information

Nope. The point is to make asstons of money. One does not need to achieve this silly ideal in order to do so.

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