Top all-time · #2432
The Last Driver License Holder...
Personal blog · thelastdriverlicenseholder.comscienceeconomics
The Last Driver License Holder... is a personal blog at thelastdriverlicenseholder.com about science and economics. Since 2018, 34 different Hacker News readers have linked it 51 times, most often “Disengagement Reports 2018 – Final Results”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-30, and you can follow it by feed.
...has already been born. How Waymo, Tesla, Zoox & Co will change our automotive society and make mobility safer, more affordable and accessible in urban as well as rural areas.
Most-linked posts?
- /2018/02/01/disengagement-report-2017-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2018-07-18
- Disengagement Reports 2018 – Final Results3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-02-14
- /2025/02/03/2024-disengagement-reports-from-california/3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-02-21
- /2023/02/17/2022-disengagement-report-from-california/2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-06-12
- /2024/10/27/waymos-5-6-billion-round-and-details-of-the-ai-used/2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2025-05-01
- /2024/02/03/2023-disengagement-reports-from-california/2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-06-02
- /2022/02/09/2021-disengagement-report-from-california/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-16
- /2021/02/09/2020-disengagement-reports-from-california/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-06-21
- /2018/09/14/waymo-plans-autonomous-car-launch-leaked/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2018-09-18
What Hacker News says?
Just a small example: the small Tesla has more market capitalization than all German car manufactures combined (bmw, daimler, volkswagen): https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2020/06/01/teslas-mar...
Comment linking /2020/06/01/teslas-market-cap-exceeds-that-of-all-german-car-manufacturers-combined/
on “Ask HN: A way to adblock “we're using cookies” popups?”Submitted Driverless robotaxi fleet paralyzed for hours in San Francisco as a story · 504 points
HN discussionI will be sure to think of that the next time I see a human driver whose car has 29 dash cams, 5 lidars, 4 radars, and is using four H100s to process all of its realtime images of me: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10/27/waymos-5-6...
Comment linking /2024/10/27/waymos-5-6-billion-round-and-details-of-the-ai-used/
on “New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer”Submitted Fatal Accident: How Is BMW Misleading Us with Autonomous Driving? as a story · 12 points
HN discussionFor which any such system must be assumed unsafe until proven safe and the burden of proof lies with the manufacturer to present sound, robust, transparent, third-party audited evidence. You do not get to counter-argue: “What matters is the rate of cases per mile driven” without actually presenting that number with supporting evidence. Otherwise the only sound conclusion is the default presumption of non-safety. In…
Comment linking /2024/02/03/2023-disengagement-reports-from-california/
on “New Study: Waymo is reducing serious crashes and making streets safer”Submitted Waymo Zeekr with 6th Generation Waymo Driver and Windshield Wipers for Sensors as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWell because Elon Musk keeps making it. In January 2023, on the official Tesla earnings call, he said that FSD was currently overwhelmingly superior at autonomous driving than everything else in existence: "So who do we think is close to Tesla with -- a general solution for self-driving? And we still don't even know really who would even be a distant second. So yes, it really seems like we're -- I mean, right now, I…
Comment linking /2018/02/01/disengagement-report-2017-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/
on “Neuralink 'Participant 1' says his life has changed”Submitted First Details on Paralyzed Robotaxi Fleet in San Francisco as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> I don't know if I trust Waymo cars with my life, but at least there are SOME standards, compared to the natural variance of humans. The one thing you can trust Waymo to do is spy on you. Hurray, more surveillance-on-wheels! Every one of these things has 29 visible-light cameras, 5 LIDARs, 4 RADARs, and is using four H100s to process all of its realtime imagery of you: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2024/10…
Comment linking /2024/10/27/waymos-5-6-billion-round-and-details-of-the-ai-used/
on “Waymo robotaxis are now giving rides on freeways in LA, SF and Phoenix”Submitted Waymo Announces Completely Driverless Rides as a story · 2 points
HN discussionOne piece of evidence is disengagement rates. In 2017, Waymo led with ~6,000 miles per disengagement. Cruise was in second with ~1,000 miles per disengagement. Also, if you look only at the last few months of 2017, Cruise had improved to around ~3,000 or so as I recall. The other players testing in CA are far behind Waymo and Cruise. Of course, there are many caveats to comparing disengagement rates. These are self-…
Comment linking /2018/02/01/disengagement-report-2017-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/
on “Toyota Investing $500M in Uber in Driverless Car Pact”Submitted So Many Fisker Ocean in New York, but Why? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCalifornia has a reporting requirement for all companies testing L4/5 vehicles: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto... Here is a more human digestible summary: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2022/02/09/2021-disen... In 2021, Waymo averaged ~7,900 miles per disengagement and Cruise averaged ~41,000. In 2020, Waymo averaged ~30,000 and Cruise around 28,500. Tesla is absent from those r…
Comment linking /2022/02/09/2021-disengagement-report-from-california/
on “Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere”Submitted Waymo Car Spotted Driving Around Phoenix Without Driver as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI genuinely don't think this is true. FSD is better than a lot of people make it out to be, but I'm pretty sure they're still leagues behind Cruise who is behind Waymo. I don't think Tesla publishes their data, but from the 2021 report [1] Cruise is at 42,022 miles/disengagement and Waymo is at 7,800. In fairness, Waymo switched their car base car, which seems to be causing issues. Waymo was at 29,944 miles/disengag…
Comment linking /2022/02/09/2021-disengagement-report-from-california/
on “Tesla fired an employee after he posted driverless tech reviews on YouTube”Submitted Is Tesla testing LiDARs, after all? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionRecent Waymo leak suggests rain is solved and snow looking good to be solved next year. https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo-plan...
Comment linking /2018/09/14/waymo-plans-autonomous-car-launch-leaked/
on “Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow”Submitted Disengagement Reports 2018 as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> Waymo, widely seen as leading the self-driving vanguard, says it has made progress teaching its software to better filter out “noise” from precipitation. The last Waymo leak claims that it is more than just 'progress', but that 'rain is solved', incidentally: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/09/14/waymo-plan...
Comment linking /2018/09/14/waymo-plans-autonomous-car-launch-leaked/
on “Self-Driving Cars Can Handle Neither Rain nor Sleet nor Snow”Submitted Disengagement Reports 2018 – Final Results as a story · 1 points
HN discussionChoosing between apples and oranges would be “pursuing the goal of eating”, but you’re still comparing apples with oranges. People are doing 2-3hour drives with FSD 12 with no disengagement. You should check out the recent progress. Meanwhile, Waymo is somehow going to map out in full detail entire countries in order to ever scale up. Btw, the definition of disengagement is up to the companies, not the DMV https://t…
Comment linking /2024/02/03/2023-disengagement-reports-from-california/
on “How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business”Will they be the current cars, or cars with the new next-gen hardware that are substantially safer? The cars that end up driving could signal a lot to the industry. New lidar was spotted a few months ago and more recently on the Jaguar cars and the CEO said it’s an order of magnitude better: https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2019/04/21/new-waymo-... https://medium.com/waymo/waymo-iaa-frankfurt-2019-b3cca36d84..…
Comment linking /2019/04/21/new-waymo-lidar-spotted/
on “Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way””For starters, Waymo reported 1 disengagement per 29,944 miles driven in 2020 to the California DMV [1], while in the talk, Karpathy implies that a Tesla being able to drive around the SF area for 2 hours without a disengagement is unusual. Note that Tesla didn't file a disengagement report because they didn't do any autonomous testing on public roads in California in 2020. There are issues with reading too much into…
Comment linking /2021/02/09/2020-disengagement-reports-from-california/
on “Andrej Karpathy (Tesla): CVPR 2021 Workshop on Autonomous Vehicles [video]”https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2025/02/03/2024-disen... says it's about 40% as good as a Waymo if you use disengagement as a metric.
Comment linking /2025/02/03/2024-disengagement-reports-from-california/
on “Zoox robotaxi launches in Las Vegas”So much manufacturing is moving from China to Mexico that Mexico is now the US' biggest trading partner [1] [2] [3]. As China ages rapidly, labor costs rise, and deglobalization occurs, the future won't be the past of enormous container loads from China eastbound. North American infra is the new hotness [4] [5]. Tangentially, 40% of ship cargoes are fossil fuels [6] [7], consider how that reduces marine traffic volu…
Comment linking /2022/01/12/almost-40-of-all-ship-cargoes-are-oil-coal-and-gas/
on “Panama Canal drought forces Maersk to start using land bridge for Oceania cargo”You're right; 2016 to 2017, not much improvement. Then, twice as good in 2018.[1] (CA DMV stats run on a year from December to November, so the most recent data set is for 2018.) [1] https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2019/02/12/disengagem...
Comment linking /2019/02/12/disengagement-reports-2018-preliminary-results/
on “Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago”it is obvious to the user when this happens; the car pauses, the screen shows a message saying it is asking for help. I've seen it happen twice across dozens of rides, and one of those times was because I broke the rules and touched the controls (turned on window wipers when it was raining). They also report disengagements in California periodically; here's data: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-servic…
Comment linking /2025/02/03/2024-disengagement-reports-from-california/
on “I think Yann Lecun was right about LLMs (but perhaps only by accident)”mercedes has about 1 disengagement per mile. zoox is a respectable third, actually, behind cruise/gm. https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/02/01/disengagem...
Comment linking /2018/02/01/disengagement-report-2017-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/
on “Zoox and Its $800M Robo Taxi Dream [video]”Zoox did several years of closed course testing and started on public roads in San Fransisco about 1 year ago with just 10 cars. Last fall they did a press event and took a few dozen journalists around for rides and everyone had good things to say about the performance of their vehicles. Their first set of disengagement reports for 2017 had them at 1 every 430 miles, which is worse than Waymo or Cruise, but way ahea…
Comment linking /2018/08/21/unidentified-suv-spotted-in-dogpatch-neighborhood-in-san-francisco/
on “Driverless Startup Zoox Suddenly Removes CEO”Every 24 months of EV production in China destroys 1 million barrels a day of global oil demand, as of this comment, at current rates of EV production. We should expect these rates of production will continue to increase. Total annual light vehicle sales are ~90M units. Globally, over 1-in-5 (22%) of new cars sold were electric in 2024. This share was 92% in Norway, and in China, it was almost 50%. In 2025, it was 1…
Comment linking /2022/01/12/almost-40-of-all-ship-cargoes-are-oil-coal-and-gas/
on “Deutsche Bank becomes first foreign yuan clearing bank in Europe”
