The 20-year journey to fully autonomous cars with Dmitri Dolgov of Waymo

Key Takeaways

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  Waymo scales to 500,000 weekly rides across 10 cities

  “We are now at the point where we are doing nearly 500,000 paid rides every single week across 10 different cities. This isn't just a science experiment anymore; it's a massive global scaling operation where we've moved from the lab to the streets in a way that is repeatable and safe across diverse urban environments.”

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  Lidar remains essential for robust autonomous sensor stacks

  “People often ask if you can do this with just cameras, but our stance is that Lidar provides a level of redundancy and precision that you simply cannot ignore. When you are operating a multi-ton vehicle in a complex urban environment, having that direct depth perception and 360-degree awareness is the difference between a research project and a reliable commercial service.”

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  Supervised driving systems won't evolve into full autonomy

  “There is this misconception that if you just keep improving driver-assist systems, they will eventually wake up as fully autonomous robotaxis. That's not how it works; the architectural requirements for a system that requires no human fallback are fundamentally different from one that relies on a human to pay attention. You can't just bridge that gap with more data; you need a different foundation.”

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  Simulation and critic models accelerate AI training safety

  “We use a combination of Simulation and what we call 'Critic' models to train our AI drivers. This allows us to run billions of miles in a virtual environment where we can test the most extreme edge cases that you might only see once every hundred years in the real world, ensuring the system knows how to react before it ever hits the pavement.”

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  Custom vehicle designs prioritize passenger-centric living rooms

  “Our new custom-built vehicle is a total departure from traditional car design because it doesn't need a steering wheel or pedals. We've designed it from the ground up to feel like a mobile living room, focusing entirely on the passenger experience, comfort, and utility rather than the mechanics of driving.”

Episode Description

Waymo is now doing nearly 500,000 rides a week across 10 cities. Co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov came to the pub to discuss how they moved from scientific research to massive global scaling. He gives a masterclass on the sensor stack (and why you still need Lidar), how they use "Simulation" and "Critic" models to train the AI, and why he believes cars that require human supervision will never naturally evolve into robotaxis. They also cover the new custom-built vehicle that feels like a living room, the economics of ride-hailing in rural Alaska, and the "Russian math nerd" diaspora that seems to run the UK tech scene. Timestamps (00:00:22) Russia (00:02:51) Waymo architecture (00:09:59) Why now? (00:19:46) Driving nuance (00:29:37) Stripe Agentic Commerce Suite (00:30:17) Hardware (00:40:20) Emergent behavior (00:46:36) Scaling (00:57:56) Google Article: EMMA: End-to-End Multimodal Model for Autonomous Driving – Waymo Research: https://waymo.com/research/emma/