All cars were once restricted in the locations they could drive. EVs are restricted today. I don't see why universal access is a requirement for a commercially viable autonomous taxi service, which is what Waymo is currently. And the need for human operators seems obvious for any business, no matter how autonomous, let alone a business operating in a cutting edge and frankly dangerous space.

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shadowgovt 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

It's by definition in terms of how these things are counted.

L4 is "full autonomy, but in a constrained environment." L5 is the holy grail: as good as or better than human in every environment a human could take a car (or, depending on who's doing the defining: every road a human could take a car on. Most people don't say L5 and mean "full Canyonero").

	▲	yencabulator 5 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> or, depending on who's doing the defining: every road a human could take a car on. That's a distinction without a difference. Forest service and BLM roads are "roads" but can be completely impassable or 100% erased by nature (and I say this as a former Jeep Wrangler owner), they aren't always located where a map thinks they are, and sometimes absolutely nothing differentiates them from the surrounding nature -- for example, left turn into a desert dry wash can be a "road" and right not. Actual "full" autonomous driving is crazy hard. Like, by definition you get into territory where some vehicles and some drivers just can't make it through, but it's still a road(/"environment"). And some people will live at the end of those roads.
	▲	standardUser 5 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		These definitions appear to be largely academic and now outdated.

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pavel_lishin 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> EVs are restricted today.

Are they? Did you mean Autonomous Vehicles?

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standardUser 6 days ago | parent [-]

No, you can't go driving off into an area with no charging options, which would be much of the world.

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yencabulator 5 days ago | parent [-]

Did you know that a gas car can also run out of gas?

	▲	standardUser 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Yes, and before gas stations were widespread you couldn't drive gas cars anywhere you wanted either, dummy.