Behind the Scenes at Waymo Driverless Taxi Depot

This video shows Waymo's depot operations, which is a combination of autonomous driving/parking plus manual charging/cleaning. Some locations are only used for parking the driverless Waymo vehicle and minimal staff. Other locations, such as Toland Street, are "full service" with DC fast charging and many employees. All three locations visited are surface parking lots, rather than the enclosed garages preferred by GM Cruise.

*CHAPTERS*

0:00 Introduction: Why do depots matter?
0:33 14th Street Depot
2:29 Hailing out of the depot
3:56 Waymo Roadside Assistance
4:40 Harrison Street Depot
5:49 Toland Street Depot
8:57 Auto parking
14:36 Bonus clips
15:10 Conclusion

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Not affiliated with Waymo. The views expressed in this video are the personal views of each speaker. They do not necessarily represent the views of their employer. Rides are taken in a personal capacity.

[JJs_playground]

As a huge "car guy", I never thought I'd be so interested in watching a 15min video about a parking depot. Lol

[bubble_tea]

The "time out" spot is where cars that need to be deep cleaned are sent, for example if someone spills something or damages the interior.

[rxtf]

Eating breakfast on a Sunday morning, watching a video about depots... Doesn't get better than this.

[realthree]

typically youtube recommends me tiny channels that have boring or low quality videos, but this is clearly an exception. nice work!!

[JJRicks]

15 minutes flew by, amazing coverage and insights!!

[martincday]

It's only when you see the Waymo depot in operation that it really highlights how far ahead Waymo are in providing a RoboTaxi service than Tesla with their FSD. Even if Tesla's FSD was capable there is so much more to providing a taxi service other than the automated driving.

Waymo have made so many advances such as improving their interaction with emergency responders, allowing the emergency services to geofence an area from Waymo vehicles and having Waymo remote operators take over or give advice, and to train the emergency responders on how to interact or take control of a Waymo vehicle.

There is a big difference going from an always supervised vehicle to one that has no driver. If a Tesla FSD disengages, the driver takes over, for a Tesla RoboTaxi after a disengagement there would be no one to take control, and that part of the service needs to be addressed before they can be let loose on the road.

Waymo and Tesla FSD are often compared to one another when really there is no comparison. There is very little that Tesla FSD can do that Waymo can't, while there would seem to be a stack of things that Waymo can do, that Tesla FSD can't.

[imjody]

This was definitely super neat! The slow speed is probably to also ensure the safety of the many staff roaming that same parking lot. Really appreciate you putting this together!

[stephenrogers]

Honestly what a fantastic video.
I’m in Australia, & the thing of a driverless taxi is crazy.
For a small channel I think you’ll expand good.
Your quality is very good.

[Michael_Sw]

Thank you so much for the detailed explanation. I used to drop off packages near the main location and I remember before when amazon had a warehouse and when waymo started buying that area. crazy how fast it changed and it’s a depot there now

[NikConwell]

Thanks for sharing this. Great video, great production values!

[rajavenkatesh]

wow kevin! loved the way you walk through the video and the audio, video, content quality is top notch !! loved the aerial view ... Hope to see you big !! cant believe 15 mins went by soo fast!

[JohnICGomes]

One of the best innovation of this decade!

[findlisa]

Great video Kevin. I agree with your guesses at about 13:00 on data swapping going on during the trunk visits by the Waymo staff. I'd say the main reason for the disk swapping vs. wireless data transmission is speed (and maybe cost). Historically wired data transfers occurred at least an order of magnitude faster by wire than wireless. That ratio may have gone down somewhat recently with new WI-Fi and cell standards, but we don't know what they are doing with this data. If they just retain it briefly, then they might not even transfer it off the swapped drives Instead, they might just schedule the drives to be reused once the data was retained long enough to be sure there wasn't a big problem, like an accident that was reported somewhat later.

BTW, two possibilities for the wired connection are USB or Ethernet. I believe most (if not all) of the 40 sensors (28 cameras, 6 radars, and 6 lidars) are networked to the Waymo computer in the trunk via one or more Ethernet switches, also located in the trunk. I believe the data drives you are talking about are external to the rest of the Waymo computer and either are connected via Ethernet (like a NAS unit) or as an external drive using USB or eSATA. Maybe some former Waymo or Cruise employees can comment on this, since those working with this onboard storage (probably mostly to archive the sensor data) would know best which drive types (although I'd guess big SSDs) and which wired communications (Ethernet, USB, or SATA?) are getting used in the latest self-driving systems like Waymo's.

[JoeBissell]

I live down the street from this depot, it's really cool to watch sometimes.

[john.dough.]

I love this boots on the ground reporting! Great!

[mrkjmsdln]

Great video. You have a perfect voice for this. I enjoyed your pondering about the slow speed. Ultimately it will be interesting to see where the average number of miles/day, trip miles/day and trips/day come to lie. I guess when we see change in parking lot speed we will know they are approaching commercialization. Since they appear to be using Alpitronic chargers they have already minimized charge time. Everything becomes a math problem when you optimize :)

[pedropt]

Very interesting video, no need for fireworks and visual FX to make for a great watch. Nice work! 👍

[CasperChicago]

That is interesting and informative! I have many questions about Waymo and this is a good start to understanding the technology 👍🏾

[million_dollar_business]

never had issue with waymo in arizona. like it

[aeromtb]

i guess waymo is keeping the ipace line alive.