Taxis account for a tiny fraction of vehicle traffic nationwide-even if you include new services like Uber and Lyft. What this point of view misses, however, is that the demand for taxi service isn't static. So you could see Waymo as just a new taxi service that has the same jobs that a conventional taxi service has but with no drivers. Waymo's dispatchers and fleet response team are doing roughly the same kind of work that traditional taxi dispatchers did. Waymo's technician jobs are largely replacing the work of conventional mechanics. Of course, you might object that these aren't really new jobs. (Yes, if someone pukes in a Waymo, there will be someone back at the depot to clean up the mess.) And Avis will need to hire a bunch of people in the Phoenix area to complete these tasks. We can also expect Waymo's growth to create jobs through its partnership with rental car company Avis, which was announced last year. We don't know exactly how the two companies will divide the work of managing Waymo's fleet, but it's a good guess that Avis will handle routine tasks like cleaning cars and changing their oil. Riders can push a button inside a Waymo vehicle at any time to connect directly to one of these representatives. "If one of our vehicles detects that a road is blocked up ahead, it may come to a stop and request confirmation from our fleet response team before plotting an alternate route," Waymo writes in its Medium post.įinally, Waymo has customer service representatives who field calls from passengers. Waymo also has a fleet response team that helps guide self-driving cars through tricky situations. Dispatchers are expected to "work cross-functionally with various teams" to maintain Waymo's fleet, according to a job listing. The company has a team of dispatchers that handles the logistics of making sure there are enough vehicles on the road, in the right places, to meet customer needs. Partly, the technicians will be doing the work of a conventional mechanic, things like "brake systems, oil-change intervals, tire replacement/wear indicators." But they will also need to perform more high-tech tasks like running Linux scripts and troubleshooting Waymo's proprietary lidar sensors. Waymo is hiring technicians responsible for performing vehicle inspections and repairs. In its Tuesday Medium post, Waymo described four jobs that are essential to the operation of its self-driving car service in the Phoenix area. Waymo's blog post described several of the major job categories Waymo has created to staff its service. The center is home to dozens of self-driving cars that are being used to offer rides to participants in Waymo's early rider program. On Tuesday, the company offered a look inside its operations center in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. Take Waymo, for example. The Google spinoff plans to launch a driverless taxi service in the Phoenix area before the end of the year. But there are also going to be jobs for workers further down the income spectrum, doing things like taking customer calls, cleaning and repairing cars, and updating the high-definition maps that cars use to move around. Most obviously, high-end jobs will spring up for engineers designing the necessary hardware and software. What often gets missed is that self-driving technology companies are going to create plenty of jobs, too. Many people worry that the development of self-driving technology will put taxi drivers and truck drivers out of work.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |