this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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No idea, and I doubt they'll ever publicly say.
Direct human intervention is definitely something other companies could be doing more of. Waymo especially given all the videos of them getting stuck, sometimes en masse.
I had heard through a friend who works at Waymo they currently have 1.5 engineers per car. Ideally, if you want a self-driving car company to be financially successful, that number should be significantly less than 1. These companies are heavily propped up by VC money and it’s not at all clear they’ll achieve that goal.
I find that 1.5 number amazingly hard to believe unless those engineers are never actually watching the vehicles while in use, in which case the number means absolutely nothing. The number of engineers per vehicle on staff means absolutely nothing if they aren't the ones monitoring them for issues while in use. You might as well say you have 50 employees per vehicle, including all office workers, executives, janitorial staff, etc. because it means nothing.
Given videos like this where there are dozens of them in complete chaos. Human intervention would easily clear that in a couple minutes, instead they just kept stacking up.
Waymo, uniquely, never remotely drives their vehicles. You’d have to wait for a safety driver to show up in order to help the vehicle
Other companies do remotely drive