We know Waymo started well before most other players in this space.
We know they hired a bunch of people from teams that did well in the DARPA Grand Challenge - such as Sebastian Thrun.
We know that Google Maps has some of the best map data on the market, including high-resolution images of a great many streets; and that ReCAPCHA regularly asks people to identify cars and street signs - which they do free of charge.
And finally, there are autonomous vehicle accident reports [1] which tell us they've driven a great many miles with very few manual interventions; and that their competitors are either doing orders of magnitude less driving or are doing so badly they won't even release their figures.
Of course, there's no reason this should be a winner-take-all market.
They've historically played it very safe so it feels like a bold announcement coming from them.
We don't know whether they have more advanced tech; there is too much opacity in this space. The best proxy we may have are the California disengagement reports[1] from last year and Waymo were doing better than anyone, by a WIDE margin.
Just as a contrary response to everyone else pointing to Waymo's (real) historical tendency to be very risk-averse...
Waymo has been feeling a lot of pressure from Uber and other companies, who have developed their autonomous car programs faster than Waymo did, even if Waymo is still momentarily ahead. Waymo's legal attempt to sidetrack Uber's program seems to have failed. So Waymo's executive may be at the point where Alphabet is asking them, "we've poured literally billions of dollars into you: when are you going to produce something beyond good marketing?"
FWIW, I think Waymo is still significantly more risk-averse than Uber and ahead of it technically, but you can't project its historical hyper-caution into the present or future indefinitely.
> Waymo has been feeling a lot of pressure from Uber and other companies, who have developed their autonomous car programs faster than Waymo did
Did the other companies develop their autonomous car programs faster than Waymo did or have they just hyped their programs up more than Waymo did when they started?
Uber strikes me as a company that'll spend a ton of money, try it out for a year or two, show off a few prototypes and back off once they see how hard it is. In the meantime they may produce a few vehicles with flaky autonomous capability that will hopefully not get anyone killed. The company has money, muscle, and can-do drive, but the company isn't rooted in nerdy tech the way Google is.
Makes far more sense for Uber to license Google's tech and integrate with vehicles.
Who has developed a SDC faster than Google? DE reports it is not at all close. Google working longer and appears spending more and just wants it more. Plus Google has the prephereal systems like simulations to test. P!us Google is the only one with the cloud infrastructure that is in play.
If anything, Waymo's risk appetite has seemed cautious to me. How many years have they been at it? How many millions of miles have they tested on? Every company that has something good in this race (Waymo, Tesla, Mercedes, etc.) seems to want to show it off. It seems pretty definite that Waymo is in the lead.
Waymo is doing more than building an autonomous vehicle, they are building a trusted brand. Admitting the problem is hard and periodically presenting small milestones builds credibility. When Waymo does release a general purpose car, I'll be far more likely to trust it than a Tesla Autopilot.
