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Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

reuters.com

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Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#111

Post by BinaryIdiot »

jfoutz wrote: post #105

Uber has some of the best researchers in the world. I'd bet Mercedes builds the cars, specialized with Uber specified additional sensors and hardware for self driving. Uber customizes the source to deal with tough driving conditions, and turns the code back over to Mercedes. Uber gets it's fleet, Mercedes gets the tech. It's getting competitive. Mercedes will get the tech perfected, but this kind of deal could get th…

This has to be the answer if the rumors are actually true (the article does say one source said this, one source said this wasn't happening).

All auto companies need to get into the self driving space. Uber wants to get into this space for transporting people. If Uber and a car company work together Uber could get a discount, help develop the tech and share with the car company; it's a huge win for both sides.

At least that's how I'd try structuring the deal. You know, from my billion-dollar-company-CEO-arm-chair.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#112

Post by dsr_ »

I am reminded of Lucent, who built the best hardware for the end-user ISP market in the form of the Ascend MAX TNT, which would terminate a DS3, break it into individual dialup lines, and handle all of them as modem calls. Cool stuff.

It's just that they sold all this stuff to ISPs who didn't have any good credit lines, so Lucent extended them credit (bing! interest payments!) using the MAXen as collateral.

When the ISP dialup market collapsed, the ISPs returned the equipment in lieu of payment. That equipment had no value whatsoever, because anybody who wanted one and could afford one already had two.

Presumably there's some sort of secondary market for cars -- but a hundred thousand black S-Class is about what they've sold in the US over the last 7 years combined.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#113

Post by itchyouch »

gk1 wrote: post #10
mmakunas wrote: post #6

Maybe I'm missing something but that number sounds hard to believe. An S-Class in the US is $100K. Even if a stripped down "utility" version was available at $50K that's $5B worth of cars. Yes, it's a "long term" order (i.e., not paid for and delivered at once), but that seems way beyond anything even Uber would do.

I'm sure there's a volume discount when you order 100,000 of anything, even an S-Class. There's also the possibility of this not entirely being a cash sale. That is, if the report is even true.

Especially if there is no middle-man dealer to pay. On a $100k S-Class, Invoice comes in around $93k. Some people are able to pull off sub ~88k sale prices at dealers.

I wouldn't be surprised if the wholesale (with profit) cost on a S-Class Benz is somewhere around 65-70k. I'd imagine that the cost of building an S-Class (100k retail) over a C-Class (~40k) is nominal.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#114

Post by cbr »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107
adamt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deal is probably similar to the way an airline buys planes. E.g consider when Ryanair bought 200 737s for $22Bn [1] which is about the same in it's entire market cap. An order like this is probably: * For a delivery spread over 10+ years * The vehicles will almost certainly be leased/finance * Each vehicle will probably assume a 5+ year working life and have a residual of about perhaps 25% of list after 5 years g…

> After 5 years, the car is perhaps worth 20k. No way. Absolutely no way. Looking online I'm seeing estimates of 300,000 to 500,000 miles per year in a taxi. If Uber is even NEAR that max, this car is going to have 300,000 miles on it. Hell even 150,000 is a ton of miles on a used vehicle. Looking at KBB with a base S-Class that's 5 years old with 300,000 miles you're looking at roughly $12k in "good" condition (beca…

Lowering the sale price to $7k only bumps the per-year cost to Uber from $8k to $10.5k.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#116

Post by toomuchtodo »

josephmx wrote: post #106
toomuchtodo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla seems to be doing a fine job showing the benefits and safety of autonomous vehicles to the general public and regulators.

Which Tesla vehicle is self driving?

Both the Tesla Model S and X are Autonomous Level 3 capable:

"The driver can fully cede control of all safety-critical functions in certain conditions. The car senses when conditions require the driver to retake control and provides a "sufficiently comfortable transition time" for the driver to do so."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Classification

Its expected their Model 3 mass market vehicle will contain the same, if not a greater level, of driving automation.

Disclaimer: I've traveled down the interstate in a friend's Model S for ~2-3 hours at a time at ~85mph in autopilot mode with no intervention required.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#117

Post by psophis »

hodder wrote: post #115

If/when someone develops fully reliable, fully autonomous cars, what makes them need Uber?

Uber is positioned to be the platform for transportation as a service. In their ideal world no one would own a car. Owning a car, like a plane or boat, would be come a luxury item.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#118

Post by BinaryIdiot »

hodder wrote: post #115

If/when someone develops fully reliable, fully autonomous cars, what makes them need Uber?

They wouldn't but that's like saying computer manufacturers don't need the OS manufacturers anymore. They wouldn't necessarily have to have Uber but Uber providing the payment, route planning and logistics and someone else providing the vehicle seems like a pretty good match.

Though I'll admit the self driving vehicle delivery is probably another level of difficulty than Uber's current capability. But I suspect Uber and the car manufacturer may work on the self driving together.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#120

Post by bsbechtel »

If this is true, this is an incredibly risky move. I know self-driving cars are more or less inevitable at this point, but there are hundreds of unknowns that still need to be figured out. How will passengers treat the vehicles? What happens when there is a problem, and there isn't a human present? How secure will the cars be? Is the 'call a car from an app' business model the one that will win? Committing this amount of capital this early in the game seems like a big gamble, unless there are a large number of contingencies worked into this deal.
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