G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by ssmoot » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #285

ssmoot wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We went from fliphone to total smartphone domination in 5 years. That's glossing over the Nokia video phone, the Treo, and all the Windows handsets. > ABS is a sideshow, not a revolution. I have no idea what you're trying to say. > Droves of people will ditch their old cars just for the purpose of upgrading. That seems like something that would require evidence. Or at least a theory to back it up. My 10 mile round-…

Antilock brakes are a sideshow because nobody cares. Yes, it makes cars safer, but few people bought specific cars because ABS was available. It was just another side feature. It was not something that people actively sought out like they'd seek out self-driving cars.

Not with anyone I know. But I guess we're just talking anecdata now.

But yeah, as someone who grew up driving old boats without it, I would never buy a car without ABS.

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

#302

Post by CaptSpify » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:22 PM UTC

jckr wrote: post #192

swax wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Uber and Lyft middle-men? Why wouldn't car companies themselves offer a subscription service for access to their cars? You don't pay more to own a BMW, but you do pay more for a BMW subscription over a Honda one. Uber would probably be a cheaper subscription service for 'used' autonomous cars.

yeah, but good luck for developing that middle-layer from scratch.

Especially from big car companies. They aren't exactly known for.... smooth software innovations.

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

#303

Post by hueving » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

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.

A smartphone doesn't cost more than the average American annual salary.

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

#304

Post by yggydrasily » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

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.…

> Mom, dad, and kid all need to go to work/school at roughly the same time.

That's okay, once automation really gets going, Mom & Dad will be out of work, solving that problem.

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

#305

Post by chinathrow » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:26 PM UTC

richardlblair wrote: post #193

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/

Yup, get ready for some major changes. The people who see this coming will be well ahead of the curve.

How? I also see this change coming - but I don't feel well ahead of the curve.

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

#306

Post by beau26 » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:31 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #275

frandroid wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

40,000 people a year die on American roadways right now. We are horrible drivers and get into hundreds of thousands of accidents per year. No software is perfect, but the bar is pretty low for computers to be better drivers than humans.

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

#307

Post by beau26 » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:33 PM UTC

trillup wrote: post #246

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…

The only thing I'd like to add is that if the car is used this often the utilization rate of the car would significantly increase thus causing the car to go in for maintenance more often. Average mileage on a car is 13,000 per year and if a car is being used to drop the whole family off and then do rides on its own you are looking at 70,000-100,000 on a car per year. You are encouraged to get an oil change every 6,00…

Great point, however if these autonomous vehicles are electric (and I'm not saying they would be), they'd require much, much less maintenance than a fossil-fuel based autonomous fleet.

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

#308

Post by yggydrasily » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:34 PM UTC

rconti wrote: post #284

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…

No, there just won't be private ownership. It makes no sense to own and maintain your own FLEET of self-driving cars for your own family (since it's virtually guaranteed that multiple family members will need a car at the same time, at some point in time).

Or people could still own self-driving cars and rent them out AirBnB-style when they aren't home.

In the suburban sprawl where the majority of the USA lives, we already have a nicely distributed network of storage (homes with attached garages). That would be far more efficient than having Uber and Lyft build their own duplicate storage for cars, which would almost certainly put them further away from the customers who need them and be far less efficient.

I know this is HN and we're all supposed to be just super ga-ga over the idea of one single company owning the entire future of transportation, but there are many more possible scenarios than just "everyone gives up control and ownership of how they get around".

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

#309

Post by sjm-lbm » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:40 PM UTC

karmacondon wrote: post #287

sjm-lbm wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm far from an expert on all of the details, but I find it amusing how similar Edison was to Steve Jobs: both non-engineers that seemed to have enough technical intuition to facilitate an amazing amount of development within their organizations, all while taking (perhaps) more credit than they deserved and running their businesses in occasionally ruthless ways. Yet, somehow it's popular to want to emulate Steve Jobs…

I don't want to derail this thread due to a passing mention of Edison's name, but. Edison's major inventions represented a difference in kind, not in degree, that drastically changed things for humanity. Think of how different life is as the result of recorded sound, the concept of an electric company or light bulbs for home use. Job's products were often well designed incremental changes. Apple made computers consum…

For what it's worth, I completely agree with you.

My comment wasn't really meant to directly compare the two's accomplishments or contributions, just to point out that a lot of the popular criticism of Edison is somewhat unfair and could be equally applied to figures that (at least in popular history) have been borderline deified.

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

#310

Post by intopieces » Mon, Jan 04, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

kesselvon wrote: post #239

intopieces wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>doesn't autonomous automobiles and AI based routing mean these people effectively get eliminated? Most assuredly and it can't happen soon enough. We need to run headlong into automation, eliminating as many jobs as we can. The sooner we eliminate industries, the sooner we enter the post-labor era.

I feel that's pretty dangerous without adequate adjustments in redistribution of wealth and other sociopolitical realities. The tradition from agrarian to industrial significantly depressed labor for quite some time, so I can't imagine what a transition from labor to non-labor would do for current civilization.

Those sociopolitical realities are only conjecture to the policy makers. They are never pro-active on these issues. The only way to get there is to force their hand.