The Road to Autonomous Vehicles: Are We There Yet?

Self-driving cars have been on the horizon for quite some time. But, they might actually be here.

We got to ride around in one all over San Francisco with Waymo’s Chief Product Officer, Saswat Panigrahi.

We discussed so much, including the five levels of autonomy, the infamous LIDAR vs video debate, regulation, UX, and the role of AI in fine-tuning these models. But most importantly, if autonomy is here… now what?!

Topics Covered:

00:00 - Introduction03:20 - A first look at Waymo05:21 - 5 levels of autonomy09:45 - Technology challenges14:32 - LiDAR vs video debate18:19 - How Waymo differentiates19:01 - Technological unlocks on the horizon20:39 - The role of AI in autonomous vehicles25:37 - How Waymo views safety32:05 - Collaborating with regulators37:26 - Learnings from the first 2m miles39:45 - Driving user retention43:47 - Waymo’s expansion strategy47:00 - Changing regulation47:41 - Societal unlocks enabled by autonomy52:21 - Will self-driving cars replace humans?52:58 - Closing thoughts

Resources:

Check out Waymo: https://waymo.com/

Check out Waymo's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Waymo

Find Saswat on Twitter: https://twitter.com/saswat101

Check out a16z's 8-part series on the autonomous vehicle ecosystem: https://a16z.com/2018/02/03/autonomy-ecosystem-frank-chen-summit/

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