Silicon Valley wants us to believe that their autonomous products are a kind of self-guided magic, but the technology is clearly not there yet. A quick peak behind the curtain has consistently revealed a product base that, at a minimum, is still deeply reliant on human workforces.
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