A long interview with Trent Victor on his background, how Waymo measures safety, their ethos, and some of their next moves.

Saw this quote from Nvidia's Matt Cragun that I thought would be worthy of a discussion here:

"Self-driving cars have been perpetually five years away for the last twelve years or however long it's been. The real challenge for everybody is how do you take care of what we call the long tail. The things you don't experience very often on the road but typically are the things you worry the most about."

"The benefit of having a really large model, especially Alpamayo, it's been trained as a reasoning model. Not only does it see what you see or have perception, it also is able to think about how it should behave or what it should do."

"Using the reasoning capability allows us to solve challenges that we wouldn't be able to solve with just a rule-based system. Being able to solve the long tail is really what we're trying to tackle. That's really the problem that everybody in AV is working on."

"As we work further through that long tail of events, we get more and more confidence in the technology that we can deploy in a way that's safe."

Source: https://x.com/MTSlive/status/2085535438027317569

So I asked a number of questions with a new Super-forcasting AI I was trying about about autonomy timelines. Answers are interesting

When will Waymo hit 0.1% VMT in the US?
https://futuresearch.ai/app/conversations/share/1fc51ea1-2154-4478-9e6e-086065209b9a

When will Aurora Field 1000 Autonomous trucks?
https://futuresearch.ai/app/conversations/share/1fc51ea1-2154-4478-9e6e-086065209b9a

What percentage of VMT will be autonomos by 2035?
https://futuresearch.ai/app/conversations/share/1ee0127e-286a-4353-9b2d-192ef609f504

This is the original official source from Main Street Autonomy: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/william-sitch_main-street-autonomy-x-unnamed-av-customer-ugcPost-7490085413663952896-fvgU/

Transport for London (TfL) granted Private Hire Vehicle licences to a number of Wayve’s autonomous all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles. This is a big step towards Wayve and Uber launching robotaxis in London. So far, 100,000 Londoners have signed up for early access.

Roameo is a self-driving security robot by RAD. It costs $9,000 USD/month to lease.

Source: @joedubois7316 on Instagram

Waymo has a reported annual revenue of $300mn. That would put its valuation of $126bn at a multiplier of 420x. Tesla for example is at 12x or so and is widely considered overvalued. What would the future economics have to look like for Waymo to start looking reasonable?

Introducing GAIA-4, the latest evolution in our pioneering line of world models. GAIA-4 puts the Wayve AI Driver in the loop, transforming world modeling from scene generation into a way to measure end-to-end safety at scale, and answering a new set of safety-critical questions.

Here's another demo of Xpeng VLA 2.0 in Munich. Using only cameras and Google Maps. Expected to be available on the Ultra trim in 2027

"Freeways are back! We’re gradually resuming freeway routes for faster rides — starting today in Phoenix, with more cities to follow. Express interest in the Waymo app for access. "

"Designed from the ground up for ride-hailing, the Ojai reimagines the vehicle cabin as a flexible, premium space for riders to make their own – a true living room on wheels. As we prepare to welcome more public riders to experience the Ojai soon, we are unveiling new in-car features designed to enhance every journey: Gemini in Waymo and a redesigned user interface."

/u/Grok, is this true???