Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 402 posts

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#161

Post by itchyouch »

samstave wrote: post #81
Shivetya wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One area I haven't seen mentioned is the loss of human interaction. For many just having someone to talk to/at during the trip is needed.

Here's where it will be a showstopper for me; many many times the uber map has fucked up directions and so I tell the driver the route I want to take, or to pass a particularly slow driver in front, in addition I sometimes change my destination/add a stop. How easily can I do any of this with a robot car?

Changing the "messed up" directions is a strawman in your head. Sure, in the beginning those complaints would be more prevalent, but as the "rate your ride" complaints get sent up to Google, I'd imagine that there will be an army of people re-training the AI to minimize these kinds of inefficient glitches to the point that they rarely if ever happen. Google does this today with an army of yellow-badge employees who fix Google Maps.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#162

Post by somerandomone »

axplusb wrote: post #157
saosebastiao wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can picture all of those things happening to some extent and still would only estimate a 3-5x reduction in fleet size. In order to get 10x, you are implicitly estimating that rush hour vehicle utilization is currently only 10%. I would estimate that rush hour utilization is in the range of 50-70%. For 10x, you would absolutely have to do something to address peak time behavior. For example, if Mom, Dad, and Junior…

How about Mom, Dad, and Junior share rides with other Moms, Dads, and Juniors who are headed in the same direction?

Yeah, but they usually don't originate from the same location. So instead of matching destination, now you have to match destination and departure location.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#163

Post by discodave »

If you are surpised that GM might invest in Lyft, remember that Daimler AG (a.k.a. Mercedes & friends) OWNS Car2go.

While I believe that the future of transport will involve a mixture of self driving vehicles and mass-transit (also potentially self-driving) we need to remember that this problem is being attacked from many angles.

Right now in many large cities we ALREADY have a mixture of:

Car ownership, human transportation (walking, biking), mass transit, car sharing (Zipcar, Car2go, Getaround), and finally RIDE sharing (Uber, Lyft).

I would actually argue that car-sharing services might be some of the first to use fully-autonomous driving technologies. Imagine Zipcar getting a permit to use self-driving cars on certain known routes between their pods, or to go for maintenance/refuelling. Uber and Lyft will be among the last to use fully-autonomous technology because they already have somebody getting PAID to drive and they have the widest area to cover.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#164

Post by pc86 »

spoiledtechie wrote: post #93
pc86 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they've paid back the money already (as of 2010 or so?) so I'm not sure that's totally relevant to what they're doing now.

Not really, what your speaking of isn't entirely accurate. http://business.time.com/2013/12/17/gm-ceo-were-not-paying-a...

You're talking about the delta in share value. The money they took was paid back.[0] They are two completely different things.

> Q: Did General Motors repay its TARP loan from the Treasury with other TARP money? > A: Yes. GM repaid the loan portion of the automaker bailout ahead of schedule, with interest.

The article you cite seems to suggest that the government should have had some sort of guarantee from GM that the gov't would be able to sell shares back for no less than what they paid for them. I don't think any such promise was ever made.

> taxpayers are still stuck with GM stock that isn’t worth what was paid for it.

[0] http://www.factcheck.org/2010/05/general-motors-debt/

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#165

Post by prostoalex »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…

I think 2 might be a bit slow as expectations towards vehicle cleanliness (in and out) and maintenance are higher for vehicles-for-hire than personal vehicles.

A few times that a customer won't be happy with "oil change needed" indicator lighting up, threading on one of the tires, some random food wrappers scattered on the floor, kid's soccer equipment forgotten in the trunk or just lack of recent car wash, and the transportation provider's rating system would squeeze this family out of network.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#166

Post by BookmarkSaver »

axplusb wrote: post #157
saosebastiao wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can picture all of those things happening to some extent and still would only estimate a 3-5x reduction in fleet size. In order to get 10x, you are implicitly estimating that rush hour vehicle utilization is currently only 10%. I would estimate that rush hour utilization is in the range of 50-70%. For 10x, you would absolutely have to do something to address peak time behavior. For example, if Mom, Dad, and Junior…

How about Mom, Dad, and Junior share rides with other Moms, Dads, and Juniors who are headed in the same direction?

Because that is already a possibility (carpooling is an established idea), and the critical reasons why it isn't more popular don't significantly change with automated cars. People don't want to spend their commute with random people who just happen to be going the same direction. Perhaps more important is that it creates a strict commitment to be prepared to leave on time and a reliance on others leaving on time.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#167

Post by wavefunction »

Aloha wrote: post #149
askoxyz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edison being the guy who ripped off Tesla?

Yes, Edison who also invented the lightbulb, phonograph, motion pictures, carbon microphone, fuel cell, stock ticker, and alkaline battery.

Well, or scientists working for his firm.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#168

Post by mrtron »

mangeletti wrote: post #116
tomasien wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bailout was massively profitable for the government and every penny has been repaid. Investing in innovation is exactly what a company like GM should be doing and our tax dollars are in no way involved in this. Edit: didn't make money on GM http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury-idUSBREA... Made lots of money overall: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/business/us-signals-end-of...

This is entirely untrue, pertaining GM. We tax payers lost tremendous money on GM[1], and then GM restructured (think "good bank bad bank"[2] style nonsense) in a clever way to ensure that we would never reap the benefits of the future success of "GM". 1. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-gm-treasury-idUSBREA... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_bank

Canada lost about 3.5B[1] on the bailouts to GM and Chrysler as well.

[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/canadian-t...

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#169

Post by BookmarkSaver »

anthonybsd wrote: post #150
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…

>(Note: people already do this in cities like New York, where car ownership is relatively scarce.) Car ownership is 45% in NYC. Not sure why this is considered "scarce" :)

...because in most of the country each household tends to own more than one care? Are you kidding me?
Post reply on HN