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Hello Toronto – Waymo Is En Route

87 points ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago 121 comments

lapkaaaa 59 minutes ago | parent

Saw a Waymo test car in Munich recently. Guess they will start operations in EU from here soon.

shevy-java 40 minutes ago | parent

I don't think US companies are much appreciated in the EU. It has to do with a certain orange guy, Mr. Krasnov. Just see how he sold out Ukrainians to Putin recently (again!) aka no info sharing. (Though, EU countries also suck here - why can they not compensate for the USA? This is deliberate sabotaging going on from EU countries as well, though Krasnov far outperforms them all combined, in a negative manner. He must get a lot of financial kickbacks for his family dynasty.)

lapkaaaa 36 minutes ago | parent

Munich has been a long-standing operational base for many US companies in EU, so they might try just a pilot, but it's not only waymos I see here, also some bmw self-driving test vehicles, also nvidia(?) test vehicles etc. And trust me as a ukrainian myself I know what people think about orange man both here and back there. And europeans are largely sceptical about US companies not because of him but mostly because they're just american.

jen20 3 minutes ago | parent

London too, I believe.

hncbw02z5a 58 minutes ago | parent

Winter is the real test here. Worked on lidar perception for a bit and falling snow throws returns everywhere, plus once the lane lines are under slush everyone just drives in the ruts the car ahead made. Curious how they handle those unofficial lanes.

lapkaaaa 56 minutes ago | parent

I have zero idea about lidar operational capabilities, but can you heat them to stop snow and ice from piling up?

mdurana 51 minutes ago | parent

Afaik the already do this. But another problem is that falling snowflakes reflect lidar pulses and heating doesn't help in that case

spollo 49 minutes ago | parent

Parent is referring to snow in the environment, not on the lidar itself.

When snowing in Toronto you usually cannot see the painted lines on the road, there's just the lines from cars driving through the snow that you follow. Sometimes two lane roads become an unofficial one lane road depending on what feels safe.

The falling snow also bounces the laser pulses(?) back at the lidar. Snow fall can be pretty heavy and make it difficult to see objects far ahead. Not sure how well their handling of rain ports over to snow, but it will be interesting to see!

lapkaaaa 47 minutes ago | parent

Damn, you guys have it hard over there

Rohansi 28 minutes ago | parent

You get used to it. I tried FSD (latest version) last winter in those conditions and it had no issues. Waymo shouldn't have any issues with it either.

jhonof 8 minutes ago | parent

Street parking in the core makes what would be a manageable amount of snow into a disaster like 2 weeks a year minimum because plows can't get down older streets.

scosman 53 minutes ago | parent

that's in the FAQ. They say they have sensor cleaning tech. But they aren't launching until 2028 so 2 winters of testing should tell.

parthdesai 42 minutes ago | parent

They will also need mother nature to co-operate. Last winter was brutal in terms of snow, we barely had any snow the year before that!

coldpie 51 minutes ago | parent

They've been doing test runs here in Minneapolis for more than a year. You're right that it's a challenge, but I bet they'll do fine after a couple years of refinement.

jscott817 47 minutes ago | parent

Yep, full launching in Denver just recently as well.

fidotron 50 minutes ago | parent

That's one of the reasons lidar will prove to be a dead end for this application. It's a temporary enabling technology on the path to the simpler multiple camera based solution.

lapkaaaa 48 minutes ago | parent

Best approach would be to use both lidar and cameras. They compliment each other

fidotron 45 minutes ago | parent

No, in the limit where everyone has lidar they end up stepping on each other too. Being a totally passive sensor system is a major benefit for mass deployment, on top of the cost advantages.

Lidar is cool when you want to get a point cloud from a fixed location, or dealing with perfectly uniform surfaces (which cars don't because humans can't do this either), but beyond that there are better ways to do things.

Fricken 45 minutes ago | parent

Camera's can't see in the dark. There is no perfect sensor. Waymo relies multiple sensor modalities: Cameras, Lidar, ultrasonics, radar, gps, inertial measurement units.

Rohansi 38 minutes ago | parent

Cars don't drive in the dark. Roads are usually lit. And every car has its own lights for seeing where you are driving.

triceratops 10 minutes ago | parent

> Roads are usually lit

Not always. Definitely not all freeways.

> And every car has its own lights for seeing where you are driving

Not always far enough. Especially at freeway speeds on unlit freeways.

fidotron 8 minutes ago | parent

So how can humans do it?

If humans don't have lidar but can drive it's an existence proof of the viability of that approach.

kotaKat 48 minutes ago | parent

They linked to https://waymo.com/blog/2025/10/creating-an-all-weather-drive... discussing the snow mitigations all the way from software down to the built-in heaters on the sensors.

yorwba 47 minutes ago | parent

When all an account posts is claims of first-hand experience with various unrelated technologies, the strategy becomes a bit too obvious: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hncbw02z5a&next=5009...

Bubble1296 45 minutes ago | parent

True. But don't most people drive in the tracks of the car ahead? I know when it snows people sometimes make a three-lane highway into a two-way "rut railway" road, and make do.

diskzero 44 minutes ago | parent

I worked on perception systems five years ago and we had de-noising algorithms that are much better now. We would never have dared to drive in obscured lanes, but I assume Waymo’s high resolution maps and sensor fusion are extremely good, but yeah, are the vehicles going to plow through the unofficial lanes?

shagie 33 minutes ago | parent

As a driver in places where it snows... I'm curious about how it will handle:

1. Fresh unplowed snow where there are no lane markers visible.

2. Significant banks that take up half a lane with two lanes in each direction.

3. Ice (often one doesn't start going through an intersection on a green until you're 100% sure that every car has cleared - I've been on both sides of this, where you don't go because there's a car sliding through, and the car sliding through because slick ice doesn't care about brakes)

4. Hard braking (the "drive slow and use the brakes lightly for a long while")

5. Cold car things. Electric battery life in the cold (heater for the passengers). Wipers frozen to the windshield. Accumulation of snow on the window. Excess snow on top of the car (considered an insecure load).

---

Tangent for the "how do you handle lanes when you can't see any" ... old school approach: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/833362

> Driving a snowplow during whiteout condition is one such example. In order to improve the safety and efficiency of the snow removal operation, a supplemental steering guidance display was proposed and instrumented in a Caltrans snowplow. The guidance information was calculated based on the magnetic markers embedded under the roadway. Operations were successfully conducted on a 6.25 km freeway over Donner Summit on Interstate 80 in California during the 1998-1999 winter season.

https://ahmct.ucdavis.edu/advanced-snow-plow

suddenlybananas 58 minutes ago | parent

I'd rather have bike lines :(

throw__away7391 54 minutes ago | parent

I'd 100% rather bike around a Waymo than a human driver.

Fricken 50 minutes ago | parent

Toronto is embroiled in partisan politicking around bike lanes. The provincial premiere is overriding city council to have them removed, which is what I suspect is the motivation behind the parent comment.

scosman 53 minutes ago | parent

both?

both!

BeaverGoose 51 minutes ago | parent

The bike lanes are being removed by our conservative government. So not both :(

whynotmaybe 53 minutes ago | parent

Bike lines don't send Canadian money to a startup in the USA so I guess bike lines don't have financial means to lobby the government.

lapkaaaa 51 minutes ago | parent

It'd be good to have more bike lanes, and waymo-type transport being used as a part of a public transport ecosystem rather than just pure taxi.

preommr 43 minutes ago | parent

Please, not this shit again.

Ford is already removing bike lanes.

Tax dollars to put in bike lanes, and then tax dollars to remove them.

blululu 29 minutes ago | parent

Fair, but I would take Waymos over Rob Ford being allowed to drive any day. As a bicycle commuter I find that Waymos are quite pleasant to share the road with. They generally try to avoid hitting me. Never had a Waymo swerve into my lane, or try to sideswipe me, or accelerate to cut me off to make a right turn, or make overt death treats because "roads are for cars".

trizoza 57 minutes ago | parent

Edinburgh next please!

smallpipe 47 minutes ago | parent

I'd rather we left that car dependency enabler to the yanks thank you very much

kypro 29 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, driverless cars are like something out of a sci-fi film. Modern tech like this is not going to fit with the aesthetics of European cities.

You can walk or cycle... Modern bikes are light and pretty fast too.

We need regulation to ensure they don't come here.

mech4bg 23 minutes ago | parent

Still plenty of cars/taxis in Europe and Waymo is much safer than human drivers. IMO legislating against them is legislating against safety. As a pedestrian I feel far safer around Waymo than human drivers.

canadiantim 55 minutes ago | parent

I doubt they’ll cut it in Toronto traffic. What’ll they do when going west by DVP and lakeshore, only a human can effectively navigate that space

dyauspitr 54 minutes ago | parent

It’s doing Manhattan, it’ll be fine.

rafram 47 minutes ago | parent

It's not. Waymo was using human-driven cars to collect data in NYC for a while, but their permit expired and they no longer operate at all in New York.

voidmain0001 55 minutes ago | parent

2028 arrival date.

fidotron 54 minutes ago | parent

Will be interesting how it handles the tougher climate conditions.

Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos. Those Roadster jets may finally make a smooth ride throughout the whole of the city possible.

oblio 52 minutes ago | parent

> Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos.

The ultimate test would be Cairo or Mumbai or Lagos :-)

jstummbillig 51 minutes ago | parent

Not much snow in any of these, or occluded vision. Which drivers seem to struggle with, a lot.

oblio 21 minutes ago | parent

Just traffic conflicts to the Nth power and bad/unmarked infrastructure.

ChrisMarshallNY 46 minutes ago | parent

I remember the traffic in Cairo (1970s).

It was absolute chaos. They had "half-cars" driving around (front-wheel-drive cars, with the back end missing, and replaced with a rickety wooden cart; sometimes, just like a drag cart, with no wheels).

jscott817 48 minutes ago | parent

Denver just launched ahead of a supposed "Super El Nino" winter. We'll see what happens.

jjsullivan5196 48 minutes ago | parent

They have a limited presence in New Orleans, mostly rolling around the French Quarter and Uptown. The roads look bombed out in parts of Uptown, maybe not the absolute worst anywhere but it's close.

palijer 42 minutes ago | parent

Describing Montreal as "sheer chaos" only makes sense in the north American context. Karachi and other such cities are actually chaos.

Fricken 39 minutes ago | parent

I find the anarchist traffic of developing world cities to be more aligned with natural game theory principles than proscriptive protocols. For a computer it may be simpler.

the_sleaze_ 37 minutes ago | parent

Self driving is all tactics and no strategy. Waymo would freeze solid when confronted with several hundred motor-scooters and dozens of tuk-tuks.

Zhenya 35 minutes ago | parent

~34% of Montreal residents are from 2nd or 3rd world countries

john_strinlai 29 minutes ago | parent

what point are you making?

Zhenya 26 minutes ago | parent

Derivation is up to the reader.

john_strinlai 21 minutes ago | parent

so, just.. stirring up some xenophobia for the lols?

triceratops 17 minutes ago | parent

They don't have driving tests in Montreal? (Or Quebec?) Anyone can just drive?

Otherwise you're just being racist.

Insanity 26 minutes ago | parent

At least in Toronto traffic they’ll mostly be capped at 10km/h, doubt they’ll have any high speed collisions with the terrible traffic here lol.

sandworm101 41 minutes ago | parent

>> Montreal would be the ultimate test, both climatically and just for navigating sheer chaos.

Montreal is a vacation compared to the great plains/prairies: -40 with half the road coved by blown snow. Lets see how the navigation system reacts to a total absence of painted lines and visible curbs. Or go to the rocky mountains. I doubt Montreal streets contain any mountain passes worthy of naming.

rikthevik 22 minutes ago | parent

Yeah, I regularly drive from Saskatchewan to BC in the winter.

I'm generally enthusiastic for electric vehicles, but batteries and FSD don't really work in a 12 hour blizzard at -40. Doesn't match my use case. :)

freedomben 21 minutes ago | parent

I had a similar thought from my time living in Alaska. half the year there aren't any lines on the road other than the occasional tracks from the previous car that drove on it, and that's if the wind is low. It's not unusual to have half the road covered in a foot or two of snow from a drift. Humans can see them and usually avoid them, but it involves strategically using the oncoming lane. Would be interesting to see the nav system deal with that!

sdenton4 17 minutes ago | parent

(well, there is Mont Real, for which the city is named... But I'll agree it's not much of a mountain.)

alex1138 38 minutes ago | parent

Pothole observed. Diverting around pothole -

pothole observed. Diverting a-

pothole observed. d-

pothole.

po-

fidotron 32 minutes ago | parent

You have crashed into a cone.

Insanity 25 minutes ago | parent

That or the random homeless person who decides to cross the road randomly.

You’re either dodging construction site, homeless people, or just sitting in traffic.

dgacmu 32 minutes ago | parent

They've been mapping, or whatever they do, Pittsburgh for almost a year now, and it was pretty funny watching the cars navigate around massive snow piles last winter. Curious to see how the rollout goes here. <Insert popcorn emoji.>

joenot443 26 minutes ago | parent

I was thinking this too - my guess is the cars simply wouldn't offer rides on days with really poor conditions.

Toronto's winter driving is normally very reasonable compared to Montreal. My guess is the Waymos operate some ~355 days a year, taking days off after big storms.

verelo 13 minutes ago | parent

This could still be a problem. Human drivers are still available on these days today, and if services like Waymo take over and theres less Uber (et al) drivers, then we'll have no support on the worst days.

fidotron 10 minutes ago | parent

Compounded by the fact in winter basically everyone will be going to the airports at least twice to escape, which drives demand.

Basically if the planes are flying the robotaxis will need to work.

gegtik 1 minute ago | parent

on the other hand, montreal doesn't allow right on red, and instead has an extremely strongly planned traffic grid including priority right turns. Not much ambiguity in the prescribed traffic patterns.

sheepscreek 51 minutes ago | parent

The second half of the post in Canadian French is a nice touch.

Bubble1296 46 minutes ago | parent

Canada has two official languages: Canadian English and Canadian French. This satisfies both the English-speaking population and the French-speaking population. As a result, signs, plaques, and public articles are posted with both the Canadian English version as well as the Canadian French version.

ChrisMarshallNY 44 minutes ago | parent

I believe that bilingualism is required by law. Many US product packages have repeats of the information in french.

mjr00 24 minutes ago | parent

This really depends on the context, but in general bilingualism is only required for the public sector and adjacent things (such as federal standards around food packaging). A private company like Waymo certainly does not need to send out a press release in English and French.

jt2190 6 minutes ago | parent

Generally no. Some provinces officially operate in both English and French but some do not.

For a press release from a private company operating in Ontario there is no legal requirement to publish in both languages. Some companies might do so anyway if they have operations that are regulated by the federal government and/or they just want the goodwill.

Imported products have to meet Federal packaging laws, which do require both languages.

senderista 34 minutes ago | parent

The official language is Zesty Mordant.

sandworm101 25 minutes ago | parent

It is more complex than that. Quebec (Montreal) has additional laws over and above the national laws, often requiring that French text be bigger/longer/more prominent than the English text.

There was also controversy over proper names v. decryptions. "Macdonalds" is a proper name but should "Burger King" be translated to "Burger Roi".

mjr00 14 minutes ago | parent

> As a result, signs, plaques, and public articles are posted with both the Canadian English version as well as the Canadian French version.

In general this is untrue outside of Quebec (and maybe Ontario). I'm in Vancouver and while there's some federally mandated bilingual text, the French-speaking population here is extremely low and day-to-day everything is English-only. Even local public sector things like announcements on the train. You're more likely to see signs in Mandarin than French.

semiquaver 34 minutes ago | parent

A legally required one, natch.

bix6 45 minutes ago | parent

Waymo is great. But I don’t want it in my town. More money and data for Google. No improvement to my local public transport.

labrador 43 minutes ago | parent

A lot of women want it along with the ability to order Uber/Lyft from women drivers only.

ktosobcy 39 minutes ago | parent

Maybe fix underlying social problem instead of forcing more crap that tries to patch the absolute terrible state?

mikepurvis 33 minutes ago | parent

That's a very different problem that probably has a generational timetable.

Letting women get home safely with a robot driver is a thing that can happen today.

catlikesshrimp 24 minutes ago | parent

Not today. Not next year, either. And calling taxi service that dangerous is an exageration. Preference enhanced by that type of comments would be more accurate

echelon_musk 22 minutes ago | parent

Where's the profit in that?

bix6 34 minutes ago | parent

Fair point, Uber has a female driver mode now.

Doesn’t change my desire for better public transport though.

gosub100 26 minutes ago | parent

What about race or religious preference too?

catlikesshrimp 23 minutes ago | parent

Cathering to racism now? /s ?

tcoop25 42 minutes ago | parent

Took my first Waymo in Austin, TX last weekend and it did not go well. Was supposed to be a 9 minute drive, then randomly it tells us the ride has been 'slightly extended' to 45 minutes. Customer support dropped us off at a restaurant and said sorry. We ordered a human Uber.

Honestly the last thing I thought would happen would be that it would get lost. I thought maybe it would get confused on the road, but it drove better than most human drivers.

sssilver 35 minutes ago | parent

The perfect driving equivalent of AI slop

wombat-man 14 minutes ago | parent

Did it think it needed to take a very out of the way route?

shevy-java 42 minutes ago | parent

Wait ... isn't this Google? Aka a US company?

I understand the issue of technical power, mind you, but I don't really see how US companies expanding into Canada is a good idea as long as a hostile orange individual keeps on potty-mouthing Canadians.

papercrane 40 minutes ago | parent

Google already has quite a large office in Toronto.

bubbluppugus 35 minutes ago | parent

So your response to asocial, xenophobic politicians is give them what they want?

"I will show that America first President who wants to fracture global trade...by arguing for fracturing global trade."

That gen pops tune changed with the political climate just like big corp previously going on about left wing shit is stunning

Ya'll are just LARPing what you watch on TV and read online

Rohansi 22 minutes ago | parent

Maybe we'll end up cancelling whatever contract Waymo got and give them a secret payout amount like we did for Starlink.

dennis_jeeves2 13 minutes ago | parent

>hostile orange individual

Orange guy may make news, but Canada has greater problems from within.

jbmchuck 40 minutes ago | parent

Just in time for the bike lane removals /s

semiquaver 33 minutes ago | parent

This give me hope that other snowy midwestern cities are right around the corner.

ptaffs 30 minutes ago | parent

What does robotaxi offer apart from less taxi-driver jobs? They can't inherently shorten journeys or avoid surface disruption, we already have taxi services in most cities. This just removes a human job and that's the progress.

KolmogorovComp 26 minutes ago | parent

What does a 1-driver taxi compared to a 2-drivers taxi offer apart from fewer taxi-driver jobs? They can't inherently shorten journeys or avoid surface disruption, we already have taxi services in most cities. This just removes a human job and that's the progress.

Now what about a 3-drivers taxi?

The answer is always the same, people hope to lower the driver cost, which I believe is significant for a 1-driver taxi.

ptaffs 6 minutes ago | parent

Well, some long-haul coaches have two drivers to allow them to switch-out for safety but keep the passengers and bus moving. Of all the things to get excited about, I don't understand why reducing the labor costs for corporates is one. Improving transportation instead would benefit us all, for example with better road design and mixed/integrated transport systems.

notemaker 25 minutes ago | parent

Road safety. Personal safety. A consistent experience.

quaverquaver 24 minutes ago | parent

It obeys the rules of the road and kills many fewer people - 0 killed in 250M miles. Driving a machine is something people are not good enough at frankly.

Rebelgecko 20 minutes ago | parent

IMO it's a safer and more comfortable passenger experience

criddell 18 minutes ago | parent

Do you know any women who have had drivers act inappropriately towards them? Or drivers who pretend the meter is broken and try to charge more?

There are lots of reasons somebody might prefer a driverless car and lots of reasons somebody might prefer a human driver. Why not have a choice?

Tiktaalik 15 minutes ago | parent

- frees up people to do more important things than drive you around.

- can play your own weird free jazz via Spotify.

- obeys traffic rules

triceratops 14 minutes ago | parent

30-35% of the cost of running a city bus is the driver.

Imagine what cities could do with 50% higher bus frequency or more bus routes.

iLoveOncall 7 minutes ago | parent

Ok except apparently Waymo is more expensive than human-driven alternatives.

tempest_ 5 minutes ago | parent

Buses / Trams are the best use of this tech since not only is a high percentage of the cost the driver but they also drive the same predictable routes and not all over the place.

There are issues though. If you remove the staff from the bus you will need to handle some particularly unruly passengers in a different way. Currently the driver just stops until that person leaves or gets police / special constables involved.

jen20 5 minutes ago | parent

Of the robotaxis in Austin, I've only used Waymo, but have used it fairly extensively. So far I have noticed:

- Waymo vehicles don't argue about having the air conditioning on,

- They don't try and talk about local (or national) politics to you while driving,

- They don't play annoying games to try to make you cancel rides they don't want to take while collecting cancellation fees (see the /r/uberdrivers subreddit for quite how endemic this is),

- The selection of music (or not) is with the rider, not the driver,

- They smell better - an especially important point during summer when temperatures are regularly over 100 degrees. This is as much about the lack of gross air freshener trees as it is about an extra person in the car the whole day,

- The cars aren't falling apart. This has got noticeably worse for Uber and Lyft (which was always a little more flexible on the age and condition of cars) - it's not uncommon to see fault lights on human-driven ride share vehicles, or body panels duct-taped or twined in place.

There are three major disadvantages right now:

- Waymo is only available through the Uber app, and there is no preference to say you only want Waymo vehicles. This will be fixed in January 2028, which I assume is contractual rather than technical, since during the launch period the standalone app was used - but I wish they'd hurry up, or they'll likely lose my business to Zoox or similar,

- They don't use highways currently, leading to some fairly circuitous routes that take longer than they should, especially to downtown,

- They don't go to the airport. Ride sharing dynamic pricing to the airport means that for trips under a week it's often cheaper to park than to ride-share though (even from ~downtown). I have no doubt that the robotaxis will learn the tricks of late-stage capitalism once they have some market lock-in though.

pama 4 minutes ago | parent

> What does robotaxi offer apart from less taxi-driver jobs?

One more passenger seat (once the wheel is removed); the option for privacy (once the recordings are removed); increased safety (starting now, but even more so in the future); ability to build overnight charging stations in unpopulated areas; once fully adapted you can have reduction or removal of parking spaces, eliminate commercial daytime traffic, etc. Maybe it is the ever optimist in me… I think eliminating a job that led to increased cardiovascular problems and reduced lifespan of fulltime drivers while keeping the human rate of accidents, will be seen as an obvious improvement in human civilization in the future, similar to giving up horse carriages.

127-1298 28 minutes ago | parent

Absolutely sick. Again they are using minimal job creations and people with diseases to push their job-killing, inhumane surveillance devices.

CountHackulus 22 minutes ago | parent

I wonder how this will handle streetcars. It's illegal to pass a streetcar with the doors opening. There's a flashing signal on the vehicle, but it seems like a fairly important local difference. I hope it won't take a pedestrian death to get that sort of thing looked at.

mech4bg 21 minutes ago | parent

They handle school buses which have a similar mechanism, so I would hope it's already a solved problem.

127-1298 20 minutes ago | parent

Shouldn't Waymo be renamed into ASIC, "American Super Intelligence Car"?

Toronto is already on Lake America (approved by Google). Maybe bring out the traffic cones or get another trucker protest.

SenHeng 17 minutes ago | parent

I happened to drive past 2 of them in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago. One was making a left turn into an alley, another was on the otherwise of the road so I never got to see how they actually drove but I giddily squealed like a happy pig rolling in the mud WAYMO! as I tried explaining to my shocked wife wtf was going on. It's been so long since I've had this feel of wonder when seeing technology.

I'm so going to ride in one once they're open to the public.

weitendorf 8 minutes ago | parent

I’m so glad to see someone excited about them, because this is how I felt when they first started to go live in San Francisco. Now I take them multiple times a week, and have been doing so for multiple years.

They really do feel like magic, and give you palpable proof that you’re living in the future.

zombittack 14 minutes ago | parent

I live in Denver, Colorado. A Waymo drove into a farmers market. Luckily, no one was hurt. I assume a human doing this would be charged with reckless driving. Local cops said there are no laws to charge a driverless car with a crime. Absolutely stupid for a city or state government to approve autonomous systems in their municipalities without first enacting very strict and very punitive laws around these systems. This goes for surveillance, sidewalk delivery bots, and especially driverless cars.

I only say this hoping Toronto is not like "The Wild West" and hopefully has protections around these tech companies stealing jobs and hording wealth in the interest of public efficiencies.