http://waymo.com/ - sure doesn't look shelved.
Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
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Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#202Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#203Duplicate. Earlier submission here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165111 Also, the title is incorrect.
Thanks, we've updated the title to what the article says.
Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#204Mmmmmmm maybe not, this just went public: http://waymo.com/
Thread on the HN front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168888.
Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#205So Google's ad revenue business subsidized the education of thousands of people who took their newly acquired knowledge of autonomous vehicles to the big car companies. Aside from the Ad business Google is more like Stanford than any actual business.
The people who left from Google's self-driving car division walked in the door as the world's leading experts on the subject. I'm not sure you can say that they learned everything from Google.
Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#206Mmmmmmm maybe not, this just went public: http://waymo.com/
their tagline is "we're building a safer driver" not "we're building a safer car". doesn't seem to contradict the techcrunch report.
Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#207Mmmmmmm maybe not, this just went public: http://waymo.com/
The impression I get from the limited information on waymo is that their prototype is still just that.
A test bed for a platform that real car manufacturers can implement in their vehicle line-ups. I believe that's why you don't see controls in the prototype. It's unnecessary engineering R&D for what they are really focused on.
The R&D is prohibitively expensive and outside of the capabilities for many car makers.
I see Google and Apple selling to the Mazda's & Nissan's of the world. They focus on what they do well, Google works on the SDC backend.
And they get to learn more about us, where we go, who we meet, what we say.
Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we're imagining a pleasant future where self-driving cars have solved congestion, isn't some kind of car pooling going to be necessary? It's fundamentally silly for millions of commuters to each travel in their own car, and robot cars aren't going to fix that. Buses make massively more efficient use of road space (when they're reasonably full, anyway). Robot cars should reduce accidents, and parking problems will…
> If we're imagining a pleasant future where self-driving cars have solved congestion, isn't some kind of car pooling going to be necessary Maybe, maybe not. Small one-person "pod" cars that link up into road trains automatically are also a possibility, and have basically the same benefit for congestion as sharing without actually sharing the same pod.
That could work, but I'd bet against it! In the medium term at least.
It would be a big R&D problem to make it work at all. Even if it worked, is a train like that really going to be as efficient as a bus? And finally, even if those obstacles are overcome, it seems like everyone has to buy the same model (or at least compatible models, and who's going to make that happen?) to get decent economies of scale.
On the other hand -- in-flight refueling is a kind of similar problem that sounds similarly unlikely, but actually works!
On the other other hand, that's a very specialized (and I'm guessing very expensive) system that isn't used by commercial airlines. I think pod-trains will go roughly the same way.
Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Valid point, car pooling would definitely be a good thing. And I think people would be more willing if it was more efficient than it is. Uber Pool does not seem to match people very well. Scheduled rides could probably be very optimized, so its two minutes out of the way, for each person, and no one really minds. Also optimizations like, if the rider isn't there yet, don't even go for them and pass them on to the nex…
You just described a bus.
Something like Uber for buses would be great!
Imagine an existing excellent bus network, like London's, but with completely dynamic routes, and a variety of bus sizes suitable for different times of day. Open the app and tell it where you're going, and it tells you which bus stop and bus number you need.
Re: Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this is the Android playbook. Partner with phone/car manufacturers and let them do what they do. You got to worry about customizations/fragmentation but I am not sure if that is going to be an issue for a 'behind the scenes' technology. You got to somehow tie this into Android Auto (license this?) for an integrated environment and integrations with phones or onboard maps (to get the search dollars).
And they will always suffer from fragmentation issues while Apple suffers from a super-high profit margin. So we're going to have cars identical to our phones and seemingly all of the same problems that come along with that system.
I am hopeful that since a car can cause damage, and loss of life it will put under a stricter code. So they do have to meet a higher bar of safety and standards that are just not required on a phone. Fragmentation is going to be more of the car manufacturer branding... the underlying core engine will likely be the same.
I am curious if there ever will be a consumer grade Google Pixel Car. There is a risk it will compete with their partners, but it could have a niche if it is intentionally undersold (for example, one or two colors at most).