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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

#191

Post by jmatthews »

pikachu_is_cool wrote: post #57
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…

$40,000/car * 100,000 cars = $4B. that's only a 20% discount over the course of 5 years.

In the states the franchise laws do not allow Uber to buy directly from the manufacturer. Also, the margin on an S class sold in the US is approximately 15%, not 60%.

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

#192

Post by jmatthews »

itchyouch wrote: post #113
gk1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Respectfully, your inference is entirely off base. Trivial research gives you the wholesale value. A slightly deeper dive gives you the manufacturer margin. Franchise laws prohibit direct sales.

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

#193

Post by jmatthews »

iandanforth wrote: post #9

Anyone know how this volume compares to a Mercedes dealer's volume over 5 or 10 years?

Large dealers in california sell around 1200 S classes per year. More common dealers sell between 200 and 300 per year.

Or were you comparing that to total volume? Market leaders sell a bit over a thousand per month.

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

#194

Post by notatoad »

gaur wrote: post #181
msoad wrote: post #144

TLDR: It's not self driving. It's data collecting cars for now. I know a little bit about this. It's not "self-driving" car per se. You know with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars. But to get there we need a lot of data. Uber and Lyft saw all the rides on their systems and thought if we had a lot of sensors in cars and recored all of that we could have the winning factor for self driving ca…

> You know with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars. Why not? Doesn't the Google car have a near-spotless record with minimal human intervention?

I could be wrong, but last I heard google's self driving cars still required a high-precision 3D map of any route they operate on. They can drive on marked roads in mountain view and a couple other areas Google has mapped, but they're a long way from sensors that let cars drive an arbitrary route on any road.

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

#195

Post by dumbguy »

msoad wrote: post #178
abalone wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the TLDR.. that's not in the article at all. You are correct however that it's unlikely that Uber would commit a large order for a car that doesn't exist yet. It would make more sense if they were ordering their own fleet of standardized, sensor-laden, optimized UI cars. But that's not what this (dubious) news report is about.

I meant my comment's TLDR. Sorry for confusion

Strangely, it seems the etiquette would be that a TL;DR at the beginning of a post suggests a summary of the article. TL;DR at the end summarizes your comment.

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

#196

Post by prostoalex »

dsr_ wrote: post #112

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…

There's a market for used taxicabs and police vehicle. It's not a very vibrant market, but a car with a working engine will fetch something before being considered for its scrap value.

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

#197

Post by shpx »

msoad wrote: post #144

TLDR: It's not self driving. It's data collecting cars for now. I know a little bit about this. It's not "self-driving" car per se. You know with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars. But to get there we need a lot of data. Uber and Lyft saw all the rides on their systems and thought if we had a lot of sensors in cars and recored all of that we could have the winning factor for self driving ca…

Or, if you're Tesla, people pay you for the privilege of collecting data for you. [0]

[0] https://backchannel.com/how-elon-musk-and-y-combinator-plan-... "Probably Tesla will have more real world data than any other company in the world."

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

#198

Post by JupiterMoon »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #33
ThomPete wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And most of northern Europe

Here in Norway we even have Tesla Model S taxis. (The government subsidies are a bit crazy.) Edit: to be clear, these are regular taxis, not high-end/limousine/whatnot-service

Are there actual subsidies or just lower taxes on electric cars in Norway?

EDIT We are being pedantic apparently. Are there any cash or cash like payments or is the subsidy purely in the form of a tax reduction?

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

#199

Post by semi-extrinsic »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #198
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Norway we even have Tesla Model S taxis. (The government subsidies are a bit crazy.) Edit: to be clear, these are regular taxis, not high-end/limousine/whatnot-service

Are there actual subsidies or just lower taxes on electric cars in Norway? EDIT We are being pedantic apparently. Are there any cash or cash like payments or is the subsidy purely in the form of a tax reduction?

Investopedia defines subsidy as

"A subsidy is a benefit given by the government to groups or individuals usually in the form of a cash payment or tax reduction."

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

#200

Post by patrickk »

doczoidberg wrote: post #168
wimagguc wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick fact-check, both E-Class and S-Class are common in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_by_country

I am from germany. I have never seen a S-Class taxi.

I've actually seen a Porsche Panamera taxi in Germany.
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