HN Reader

This sentence was a bit cute: "Waymo has received our pilot permit allowing for commercial operations at San Francisco International Airport." Yeah, that kind of pilot.

I really had to read through it twice to make sure they were just talking about car taxis picking up travelers, rather than some kind of prototype pilotless commuter helicopter or something.

As a European, I can’t help but feel a bit sad that we’re missing out on the driverless side of things. It seems like most of the meaningful deployments are happening in the US (Waymo, Cruise).

I’d really like to see either a Waymo competitor emerge in Europe, or even Waymo themselves operating here. The regulatory environment is obviously more complex, but it’d be great if we didn’t end up years behind on something this transformative.

Waymo ride costs are getting really expensive in SF.

I drove for Uber/Lyft back in 2020 and let me tell you, SFO is a nightmare. I missed a turn once and had a passenger trying to make a flight furious at me. I quickly figured out there were a group of drivers who specialized in SFO and amatuers like me should avoid the place. When Waymo announced San Jose I thought ok, that makes sense because SJC is easy, but SFO? Wow, I'm impressed. I hope it goes to plan.

Looks like this Kiss & Fly area where pickup will be is at the car rental center.

That's great to hear

The title makes it sound like GA but it's still in testing

If Waymo can pull off airport pickups smoothly, it might shift how we think about edge entry to city traffic. Most cities still struggle with that "last mile" problem maybe self driving fits perfectly there.

Seems like Tesla keeps talking big, while waymo conquers city by city.

Waymo got approval for SJC last week. That probably accelerated approval for SFO, which had been stalling. Nice.

When they get clearance to drop people off at the main terminals, that will be more convenient. Pickup at the terminals is harder. There will be a need for a staging area somewhere in the parking structures.

Man, I’m flying into SFO next week. Wish this was already available; I’d take it in a heartbeat.

Does this mean they'll be able to take the freeways to get there? Surface streets from SF to SFO would be pretty slow.

Boy, if they could actually navigate terminal traffic, I’d give ‘em true self driving.

I think this is a really exciting development for Waymo and the future of autonomous transportation. Imagine the next steps; waymo flights

One concern I have is how the user data collected by self driving cars will be handled. Companies like Waymo likely hold even more data than Uber. If such data is truly used in sensitive locations like airports, I hope there will be clear and transparent mechanisms.

I'm surprised and incredibly impressed at this announcement. It seems trivial, but the general feeling in the industry has been that SF would fight tooth and nail against robotaxis at SFO.

Hopefully Waymo does a better job than SF Uber drivers. I can't tell you how many times I've had drivers make a wrong turn trying to find their way to the pickup point.

But still no Waymo app in the European App Store for iOS.

I wonder what the ultimate price of this service will be compared to alternatives.

Is Waymo L5?

The setup at SFO is currently quite annoying (Lyft/Uber require you to walk 5 mins to the garage roof, and drivers need to park/wait 5-10 mins away, so there's always a substantial delay). Taxis get the privileged parking spot immediately outside arrivals, but if it's busy you might still need to wait a bit.

I've been wondering for a while why Waymo can't offer a semi-managed solution to SFO to dynamically manage load, have just the right volume of cars inbound, maximize parking utilization, etc. with all of the nice intelligence that an app-based system would enable.

It feels like you should be able to have a buffer of cars waiting right at the curbside, and automatically refill that buffer on short notice depending on observed or predicted demand.

It’s wild that $goog is so undervalued (p/e 27) given Alphabet owns Waymo in addition to everything else, and yet Tesla is so overvalued (p/e 243!!!) despite zero Robotaxis in the near (or far) future and lackluster sales.

Goes to show empty promises and fraudulent showmanship sell better than actual working products that people use.

Can you handle parking structures? I heard a lot of the autonomous cars were using 2D maps and couldn't handle multiple levels. Haha! This was just a year or two ago.

at first I thought they were doing those cargo quad copter things...

Nothing more rewarding than a company working hard and seeing real-world, first of its kind results in action. Makes me feel giddy about a company again like peak tech back in the 2010 era.

Congrats to the Waymo team, I’m sure this was a huge milestone internally.

hilariously needlessly complex expensive solution because "anything but viable public transport!"

Waymo has planes too??

Looks like this would (eventually) include service to not just San Francisco, but also the Peninsula (Silicon Valley) via freeways.

Waymo are toast, Tesla will out scale them in months if not sooner. They can't compete on costs, 100k plus for an ugly Waymo vs < 40k for Tesla model Y or cyber cab.

Who at Waymo can I speak to about using Waymo’s as an affordable housing solution? I work in commercial real estate and have a handful of affordable projects I am involved in and believe this to be a very interesting solution no one is talking about.

is waymo really that good???

how good it compared to Tesla FSD/Robotaxi ???

Hope you like traffic!

Okay what're the odds on how long it is until there's a stray Waymo on the tarmac. Hopefully with enough warning to divert any planes about to land on it.

Nobody needs this. This is, in all likelihood, just private enterprise developing technologies for automated warfare.

Cause what this country needs is to automate away even the gig economy jobs that are out there. Let's keep making a few people rich and screw all the normal people out there.

Have you priced this out compared to a regular taxi or Lyft?

It’s waaaay mo’

Can't wait to argue over outsourced call centers to a non human while being stuck in traffic in a dangerous situation

Wait, what is special about driving to/from airports?

Too bad waymo is more expensive than uber most of the time

I see a monopoly about to take shape. DOJ/FTC is sleeping on breakup schemes. USDOT should start government/private ventures in this space.