I also had a magical autonomous ride when I visited Phoenix a couple years ago.
I asked a friend who works at waymo why it's taking forever to build up a critical mass of vehicles to get the wait times down to a more reasonable level.
He said the issue was cost. I guess all those sensors are actually more expensive than the cost of a human driver at this point?
It's great that your single unit hasn't failed but that's not much evidence against a recall.
My onewheel at some point started to fail occasionally. The first time I was going at ~15 mph and fortunately I came away with only a few scrapes. After that, I reproduced at slower speeds and was able to not fall when it failed.
I sent it in and they fixed it. This is their explanation which I don't know that I fully believe:
Our engineers completed the repairs on your board! They found that the power button had broken which led to damage to the controller circuit board. Both have been replaced under warranty for you. After your board passed our post-op testings it was picked up by FedEx!
I had a onewheel that would occasionally just stop. The first time I was going at 15 mph and fortunately came away with only a few scrapes.
I sent it in and they fixed it. This is their explanation which I don't know that I fully believe:
Our engineers completed the repairs on your board! They found that the power button had broken which led to damage to the controller circuit board. Both have been replaced under warranty for you. After your board passed our post-op testings it was picked up by FedEx!
I took a fully autonomous Waymo in phoenix a year ago. Very cool. A little jerky and at one point it said "Figuring this out" but whatever it was got resolved very quickly.
Also, it was a pain to book it. I tried once and there were no vehicles available. I tried a couple days later and it told me I would have to wait a half hour for a ride.
I sold my mobile maps startup to Google around the same time and worked closely with the where2 guys. This article sounds like the result of a casual conversation with Noel and not a well researched piece. A number of inaccuracies as far as I can remember. (not blaming Noel to be clear)
And what's the point of putting in months of work hearing a case if there's a chance that it will all get nullified.