[ad_1]
Last Thursday, Waymo launched a real bombshell: she started the commercial operations of her autonomous taxi service. And that made the announcement in the most anti-climatic way possible. Ruth Porat, chief financial officer of the parent company Alphabet, announced the news in response to a question asked at the quarterly earnings call of Alphabet.
"We entered the early days of commercialization," Porat said in the third quarter. "We now have people paying for rides." The company then confirmed to Ars that it now charged its customers directly for journeys – and this for a few weeks. Waymo has also generated revenue from retailers, such as Wal-Mart, which offers customers the ability to order groceries online and pick them up in a Waymo vehicle.
The news, however, accompanies important warnings. According to Waymo, motorists with paying customers always have driver safety drivers (some other vehicles are driverless). And the program is not completely open to the public – you must be one of the first users chosen by Waymo and accept strict rules regarding non-disclosure.
The deployment of Waymo over the past 18 months has been methodical, incredibly progressive and sometimes secretive. It's a formula to minimize the hype. And this is not a coincidence.
Other companies need to market their products to attract customers, investors and employees. Tesla has even begun charging for "complete autonomous driving" for years before the technology is ready. Waymo has taken the opposite approach. Waymo boasts an important technological lead, a close connection with one of the world's best-known companies (Google) and access to truly unlimited financial resources. So, the media coverage has little benefit for Waymo and could have significant disadvantages.
Waymo's deployment seems calculated to fly under the radar
One of the strangest media events of my career took place on December 13, 2016. It's the day Google announced the split of Waymo as a separate subsidiary of Alphabet. At the same event, Google announced that it had led the first round to the world entirely driverless. But that did not happen in December 2016 – more than a year ago, in October 2015.
Google has achieved the historic feat in Austin, Texas. Steve Mahan, a legally blind man and long-time partner in Google's auto-driving program, piloted one of Google's tiny "Firefly" vehicles, models now abandoned without a steering wheel or pedal. And then Google kept this secret for more than a year.
Why did not Google explain that? This was perhaps related to a change of leadership that was occurring at the time: from engineer Chris Urmson to the executive of the auto industry, John Krafcik. Krafcik has finally killed the Firefly car and has focused on creating partnerships with automakers to add Google's technology to conventional cars.
Whatever the case may be, the launch of Waymo marked the beginning of the company's marketing plan. In April 2017, Waymo announced its first-passenger program, which allows ordinary residents of the Phoenix area to take a seat in Waymo's vehicles, even with a safety and no-money driver.
In November, Waymo announced that it would begin testing driverless cars on public roads. But he did not turn to driving all vehicles in driverless mode or something close. A year later, many Waymo cars still have safety drivers.
This summer, Waymo announced a series of business partnerships. Waymo will transport customers to Wal-Mart so they can do their shopping. It will also transport employees – and possibly later customers – from the region's transit agency to and from local transit stops.
At about the same time, rumors began to circulate that Waymo had begun to show customers the potential prices of their journeys, although he has not yet started accepting payments. We now know that this has changed between July and September: some customers now pay Waymo directly for their travel in autonomous cars.
However, Waymo is still a few steps away from its ultimate goal of operating a fully public, commercial and driverless service. At present, the service is only available to select customers who have signed confidentiality agreements. And if Waymo 's ultimate goal is to ensure that paid journeys are entirely driverless, today' s paid journeys still have drivers to safety.
The deployment of Waymo has been so progressive that no stage is causing a sensation. Each ad represented only a slight change from the situation that prevailed before and in some cases Waymo did not announce a change until a few weeks or months after its appearance. Journalists like me cover every ad, of course. But no announcement was important enough to attract unprecedented coverage in mainstream publications.
Waymo has no reason to make noise
Most driverless car manufacturers – most technology companies at the time – have reason to promote themselves and their products to the media. The attention of the media attracts customers, investors and employees. Without this, most businesses can not grow.
But Waymo is in the enviable position of not really needing the help of the media. He has access to financial resources basically without Google basics. It does not need to attract outside investors. If Waymo's technology works, it will probably be convincing enough for customers to join, especially in the first few months. And Waymo's links with Google – and its many years of rivals – allowed him to easily recruit top talent.
This could change eventually. Waymo has ordered 82,000 vehicles to be delivered over the next few years. Once everyone is on the road, Waymo will have plenty of seats to fill and media coverage could help Waymo attract customers.
But in the short term, the media coverage only has disadvantages for Waymo. Negative coverage could spark a public reaction that could slow down the introduction of Waymo's technology. Negative coverage often results from a previous hype that created unrealistic expectations that were later disappointed. Even a positive coverage of a commercial launch could create public pressure for tighter monitoring.
So the safest approach for Waymo is to get the lowest possible coverage – and make it as boring as possible. Dribbling changes, one small step at a time, is a good way to do it. Stories about big new product launches naturally attract all the attention. The stories about Waymo's cars that do something slightly different from the previous week's are not as likely to break through.
Waymo does for transport what Google did for the software
The progressive rollout of Waymo also reflects Waymo's roots as a derivative of Google.
When Google was created in 1998, most consumer software was still packaged in plastic wrapped boxes and sold in point-of-sale stores. Software publishers have consolidated a large number of updates into numbered versions published every year or two.
Google was one of the first companies to recognize that the Internet was allowing a radically different model. Connected computers can download new software versions at any time, which allows them to post updates as soon as they are ready, every week, every day or even every hour. And updates can also be incremental.
A change can be introduced for 1% of users to see if major bugs appear. If this is not the case, it can be extended to five, ten, twenty, or even one hundred percent of users over days or weeks. A change that causes problems can be canceled. New features can also be introduced in different parts of the world at different times and Google regularly uses A / B tests to determine if a particular change enhances the user experience.
Nowadays, most cars are sold as retractable film software. There is a new version every year or every two years and every customer who buys a given model year gets exactly the same product. Although cars contain a lot of software, car manufacturers (other than Tesla) rarely update them, as it usually requires the customer to bring the car to the dealership. So, if you buy a car today, it will probably have the same functionality in 10 years as today.
Waymo's model is totally different. Waymo will own the car and will have the opportunity to regularly update its hardware and software. At launch, Waymo will only offer service in part of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area, but will expand its service territory over time. Waymo will be able to experiment with different user interfaces and driving styles.
And the company will also be able to experience things like rides that attract a safety driver and the price to pay for the rides. And it will make it difficult to say exactly when the Waymo service was officially launched. Not only is the current service different from what customers will be going through in December or February, but the service offered to a Waymo customer may be different from that of their neighbor the same day.
Thus, the official launch of Waymo's self-driving taxi service will likely be another anti-climate event. Waymo will gradually modify its first snowmobile program to look more and more like a normal commercial service. There will probably be an official launch day, but at the right time, Waymo will probably already run a driverless commercial service in all but the name.
And even after the full launch of the service and its release in the Phoenix area, phased-in testing will continue for many years in other cities. The launch of the Waymo service is not a one-off event. It is a gradual process that started at least a year ago and will continue for the foreseeable future.
Source link
