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Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

uk.reuters.com

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Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#41

Post by __jal »

salimmadjd wrote: post #26
dcwca wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has the best DNA to build cars. They know how to manufacture in scale. Something tells me shipping your phones off to be built by other people in China and building your own auto assembly factories from scratch are two completely separate things.

Take the precision by which apple makes watches, laptops or iPhones. They can scale the size up and with the same precision margins you'll get the car parts. You get BMW or someone else to source you the electric motor. And you just need to manufacture the body the interior part and put in your software. Obviously it's a lot more complex than this. But Apple could easily hire 10-20 people from car industry to fill th…

Uh.

My hobby is metal machining. Precision is a matter of understanding the physics of what you're doing, knowing your machines, and, well, the machines.

I can give you close to 0.0001 tolerances with the machine in my apartment (about 6-7 times better than stock cheap mills that haven't been properly tuned, depending on the material). Use a big, rigid, production-oriented machining center built for it, and you can do better.

I can't build you a car, though. Precision has nothing to do with this.

> But Apple could easily hire 10-20 people from car industry to fill the missing gap and get there in 5-6 years.

Something tells me you haven't been part of a project that involved mass production, complex engineering (not software-engineering; engineering), or regulatory compliance.

If I were to guess, I'd say Apple has already hired at least 10-20 automotive industry lawyers, just to get moving on just the regulatory side of it.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#42

Post by jacquesm »

kavok wrote: post #21
shouldbworking wrote: post #7

Does anyone care that regulatory realities will prevent driverless cars from ever carrying human passengers? Planes and trains have been driving themselves for many years but they still have human pilots. The human need for somebody to blame is stronger than market forces trying to eliminate human drivers

What about security concerns? I assume self driving cars could be made to remotely shut down or report tampering. With high profile terrorist attacks using vehicles it will become attractive for safety.

You can also reverse that: A self driving vehicle is actually more usable for a terrorist attack because it doesn't require you to sacrifice the driver and all the gear for full remote control is already on board. It's basically a software issue to turn it into a remotely guided inertial weapon.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#43

Post by beambot »

notliketherest wrote: post #9

Is it just me, or have folks living in the bay area noticed a huge increase in the number of "self driving" cars driving around? I've even seen a minivan with what looked to be a hastly assembled lidar driving around Sunnyvale. The space seems to be really heating up.

Of course! Add a $30k lidar to your vehicle and you can call yourself a $20M startup. ;-)

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#45

Post by maerF0x0 »

ajross wrote: post #33
Scramblejams wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lotsa downvotes on that guy. So who's got better DNA and why? Genuinely curious.

Pretty sure the takeaway is that (as above, Tesla excluded) Silicon Valley firms don't have the DNA to do heavy industrial manufacturing.

Yeah, in terms of the best Auto/Tech pairing I would say ford/Microsoft is the highest profile?

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#46

Post by asimpletune »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #39

In some markets, it is more about getting it right than getting in at the right time. We've seen many carcasses of products that were ahead of their time, not because they were bad ideas but because they were not formulated for mass adoption. Apple's own Newton is one example. It took the iPhone formulation to make the product features successful in the market. A more recent example is the telepresence robot. Many en…

> There aren't many really big tech markets left

Global GDB is estimated to be at around 80 trillion $.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#47

Post by bdamm »

ajross wrote: post #33
Scramblejams wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lotsa downvotes on that guy. So who's got better DNA and why? Genuinely curious.

Pretty sure the takeaway is that (as above, Tesla excluded) Silicon Valley firms don't have the DNA to do heavy industrial manufacturing.

Your main point is valid in the contemporary sense, but don't forget that the Silicon Valley is called Silicon because it used to be the global fab hotspot. While manufacturing chips, boards, accessories, computers, hard drives, card readers, and mainframe racks isn't quite the same as cars, there's plenty of manufacturing know-how in the Silicon Valley. Does Apple have that kind of know-how, and does it make sense for them to acquire it? Not so clear.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#48

Post by RivieraKid »

salimmadjd wrote: post #8

Of all the SV tech giants (obviously Tesla excluded), Apple has the best DNA to build cars. They know how manufacture in scale. They know how build a vertical product. They have the cash to do it and they have a strong brand. But most importantly, if the world moves to a car-sharing car-hailing model of autonomous cars. Ultimately, it becomes a consumer mobile play. This is where both Google and Apple own that experi…

Manufacturing experience gives them maybe a small edge.

The real question is why would it be a wise move for any SV tech giant to move into the very competitive car industry. Is it a more profitable investment than healthcare, food or shipbuilding?

The fact that they have mobile platforms is irrelevant, unless they plan to ban Uber from their app stores.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#49

Post by abritinthebay »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #39

In some markets, it is more about getting it right than getting in at the right time. We've seen many carcasses of products that were ahead of their time, not because they were bad ideas but because they were not formulated for mass adoption. Apple's own Newton is one example. It took the iPhone formulation to make the product features successful in the market. A more recent example is the telepresence robot. Many en…

AppleTV a loser?

The only device significantly ahead of it in sales is the Roku (Amazon and Google's sticks are ~the same number of sales as Apple TV).

But the market is pretty evenly split in sales and Apple still maintains one of the larger overall install bases for any of them (not the outsized winner it used to be there though of course).

"Not being a de-facto monopoly" is hardly a loss.

Re: Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

#50

Post by adolph »

mrbabbage wrote: post #34
BillinghamJ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have anything meaningful to back up your point? Any sources? Anyone else who agrees?

On the train point, humans have operated fully automatic rail systems for nearly fifty years (the London Underground Victoria Line opened in 1968; BART in San Francisco is similarly automated and open in 1972). The first unattended train to my knowledge, the Vancouver SkyTrain, didn't open til 1985, or 17 years later. My interpretation: it took a while—17 years—for people to warm up to driverless trains on fixed rout…

Also Dallas:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DFW_Skylink

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