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G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

nytimes.com

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

#271

Post by mtone »

gdubya wrote: post #254
Merad wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I think this is just totally disconnected from the reality of the average American who lives outside of a major urban center. 1. Mom, dad, and kid all need to go to work/school at roughly the same time. If they all have a 15-20 minute commute (well below average for many areas) and the destinations for all three aren't in the same immediate vicinity, we're right back to the family needing 2-3 cars. 2. Eh, no.…

1. Ok, maybe 2 cars if the locations are in completely disparate locations, but carpooling is possible. 2. User feedback could be a useful deterrent against messing up someone else's SDC, in the same way that both drivers and passengers can leave feedback with Uber today. 3. True, but one can adapt to this. Or maybe i'm just hopelessly optimistic... :)

I don't own a car and instead use a ZipCar-like along public transit and cycling.

My conclusion is that car sharing services are quite expensive. I can do no more than 3 or 4 short rentals a month before the cost start to resemble that of owning a used car. I do save money, but only because I drive a tiny fraction of what I drove when I did own a car.

Of course, car sharing is not as efficient as SDCs that can move around and maximize usage, but even SDCs would mostly end up parked at night and off-peak hours. Coupled with your point #4, I'm afraid it won't be long before driving the current average yearly mileage using those services become massively, prohibitively expensive.

I'm not sure how that would be a gain for anyone but the environment.

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

#272

Post by ThrustVectoring »

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…

Cars often get used as park-able, lock-able storage devices (for instance, people will often keep their gym clothes in their car, so that they can do work->gym->home instead of having gym clothes at work or doing work->home->gym->home). That's a big design feature that makes driving strangers around much less practical than it looks.

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

#273

Post by monk_e_boy »

Merad wrote: post #229
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…

Sorry, I think this is just totally disconnected from the reality of the average American who lives outside of a major urban center. 1. Mom, dad, and kid all need to go to work/school at roughly the same time. If they all have a 15-20 minute commute (well below average for many areas) and the destinations for all three aren't in the same immediate vicinity, we're right back to the family needing 2-3 cars. 2. Eh, no.…

    > 1. Mom, dad, and kid all need to go to work/school at roughly the same time.
This is flexible for most families as school drop off usually happens before a parent (or both) go to work.

Start times (school and work) are just arbitrary numbers. We changed our school start time to help with parents dropping off kids to multiple schools (primary and secondary schools) and then on to work (9:30 start is unusual but fine)

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

#274

Post by criley2 »

MajorLOL wrote: post #124
criley2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Factor in the interest USA would have saved by paying down the national debt instead. The average interest rate on the debt is 2.43$, we have around $17 trillion debt, and you're talking about a $17 billion paydown (0.1%). The amount of interest saved would be around $400 million per year. The profit on the GM bailout was $2400 million, so it would have taken 6 years for the decreased interest to total 2.4 billion.…

Debt: 6 years to realize the savings on the interest? It nearly took GM that long to repay the debt they took on. It's sounding like a worse investment all the time. OTJ Experience: I think it's less speculative and lines less wealthy billionaires pockets to invest directly into education and industry beyond private market money to provide great learning experiences for people.

>It's sounding like a worse investment all the time.

Until you realize the negative feedback loop of hundreds of thousands of GM employees hitting unemployment lines, and the secondary and tertiary companies that supply and contract for GM also shutting down. 200,000 employees * 1,000/mo unemployment * 100 weeks = $20 billion dollars. Obviously a terrible case, but not even a worst case as I examine only GM employees and not the subsequent losses in direct suppliers/contractors and community losses relying on those employees patronage.

Sure, the investment may not have great returns.

But are you calculating the billions in reduced welfare, or the billions in increased GDP, or the effect of stopping a negative feedback loop which spirals more deeply?

I mean, a GM level destruction isn't just GM. Isn't just suppliers. It's grocery stores. It's car mechanics. It's big box stores. It's fast food. It's everything in those communities that former employees patronized.

When you examine the decision more deeply than "net dollar returned" I think you'll develop a greater appreciation for the economic benefits of entire communities not being ruined.

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

#275

Post by wil421 »

frandroid wrote: post #244
ssmoot wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's crazy unrealistic that autonomous cars will be the majority in anything short of 20 to 30 years. The tech doesn't even exist yet. It's taken that long just to see ABS become standard equipment across 90% of vehicles. And this just completely ignores the ~5 to 7 year product cycle. There's no way that in just one or two generations of the Taurus we have a completely self-driving car capable of operating i…

We went from fliphone to total smartphone domination in 5 years. ABS is a sideshow, not a revolution. As soon as self-driven vehicles are market-ready, we'll see a massive car park upgrade within one car-generation, which I guess is 7 years. Droves of people will ditch their old cars just for the purpose of upgrading.

>We went from fliphone to total smartphone domination in 5 years.

Smartphones cannot kill multiple people on a highway if the software malfunctions. What happens if I am going 75mph and my self driving car crashes and has to restart? What if one the sensors malfunctions and thinks it needs to swerve to avoid someone merging into my lane?

With smartphones you arent putting the lives of whole families in your hand.

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

#276

Post by justincormack »

spydum wrote: post #189
mbesto wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what about trucking? According to this[0] there are approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States. I hate to go down the route of "machines are going to replace everything", but doesn't autonomous automobiles and AI based routing mean these people effectively get eliminated? http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/

Given that trains require far less cognitive load to operate than a tractor trailer (sorry engineers!), and yet still require humans to operate.. I wonder if ever? I'm actually curious why trains haven't been automated at this point (in the US at least). It seems like an ideal first step (no navigational issues, retrofit some collision avoidance mechanisms, remote control, etc, and you are up and running).

Automated trains have existed for many years, outside the US. They are still not common though, other than in airports.

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

#277

Post by c141charlie »

What happens when the first person gets killed while riding in an autonomous vehicle? Do companies who make them get sued into oblivion? Will customers stop riding in them regardless of whether or not statistics suggest they are safer than traditional cars?

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

#278

Post by jlarocco »

frandroid wrote: post #244
ssmoot wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's crazy unrealistic that autonomous cars will be the majority in anything short of 20 to 30 years. The tech doesn't even exist yet. It's taken that long just to see ABS become standard equipment across 90% of vehicles. And this just completely ignores the ~5 to 7 year product cycle. There's no way that in just one or two generations of the Taurus we have a completely self-driving car capable of operating i…

We went from fliphone to total smartphone domination in 5 years. ABS is a sideshow, not a revolution. As soon as self-driven vehicles are market-ready, we'll see a massive car park upgrade within one car-generation, which I guess is 7 years. Droves of people will ditch their old cars just for the purpose of upgrading.

> We went from fliphone to total smartphone domination in 5 years.

How can you even compare those things?!?

A car easily costs 100 times what a phone does, and is literally being trusted with your life and the life of people around you.

> Droves of people will ditch their old cars just for the purpose of upgrading.

Back in the real world, a car is a major purchase and the majority of people couldn't afford to drop their current car and upgrade even if they wanted to.

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

#279

Post by SEJeff »

MajorLOL wrote: post #258
IanCal wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't want to spend their commute with random people who just happen to be going the same direction Many, many people already do this on public transport. What we're talking about is general door-to-door public transport. Car-pooling is awkward to arrange, particularly for short joined parts of the journey (e.g. picking someone up part way and dropping them off a little later), and it's extremely hard to arr…

>Many, many people already do this on public transport Total fantasy. Virtually nobody uses public transport. 5% of commuters use public transport. Relative to the car-pooling, who sees double the volume of users as public transport, 10%. http://traveltrends.transportation.org/Documents/CA10-4.pdf

Guess that depends on where you live. In cities like NYC, or Chicago (where I live), having a car in the city is common, but the minority.

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

#280

Post by tootie »

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'm wondering what this does for real estate prices. Cities will become even more livable, but on the flip side suburban commutes will also become way easier.
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