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> Of all the SV tech giants (obviously Tesla excluded), Apple has the best DNA to build cars. whoa...chill out on the kool-aid
Lotsa downvotes on that guy. So who's got better DNA and why? Genuinely curious.
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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…
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
Do you have anything meaningful to back up your point? Any sources? Anyone else who agrees?
Humans have proven themselves to be mentally flexible by, for example, training themselves not to have a fear of snakes which is believed to be an innate fear of primates, speculatively including humans.
This means humans could possibly overcome the fear of being in a fast moving vehicle without human control, but I would argue that the self discipline needed to train our entire population not to fear these vehicles would be enough of an obstacle that they will never be realized.
There's also the human factor at play. For a long while humans and robots will be sharing the road, and as soon as human drivers learn that the robots will avoid collisions at all costs they will start abusing machine controlled vehicles. A human will reach a point where they say "Well, fuck it just run into me then" but it would be unethical to program a machine with the same logic. Other humans know they can't fuck with people too much or they risk a confrontation. I think its an open question how nice society will be to participant unable to retaliate.
A more realistic path for self driving vehicles is special segregated lanes on highways. This is already done for HOV vehicles so much of the infastructure and design is already in place. Self driving transports would use these lanes connect between hubs where the vehicles are brought under human control for the short and more chaotic final leg to their destination. This could be workable with our current highways and without scaring the hell out of anyone, but it means that much of the research towards these vehicles is currently misguided.
Sorry for posting a short and hollow response originally. I have been accused of doing so on the site before but my reasoning is to try to avoid giant walls of text like this. You're right in implying.l that such short and zany sounding answers don't add much to the discussion
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.
It's tempting to strap random hardware to your roof to make other drivers fear you and give you more space.
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.
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.
If they wanted to Foxconn it, I would think a company like Kia or Hyundai would be a logical partner for them to get into the business. Apple designs it with the help of their manufacturing expertise and imposes their usual tyrannical quality requirements (maybe with the help of some employees they could score from Honda or Toyota to get the requisite quality levels), their Korean partner produces it and everybody's happy.
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…
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…
I am looking forward to see what they come up with.
However, my question: Is/Was this industry only held back by sensing?
edit: Restructure paragraph
Regards,
I doubt Apple will ever launch its own car. However it seems that quite a few large IT firms consider DaaS (Driving as a Service) a viable B2B market. If you can create a superior suite of machine learning tools (including always up-to-date road data) that successfully drives passengers and goods from point A to point B then you can secure big revenue streams from automobile companies for years to come.
PC's of a couple of decades ago provide a parallel. Microsoft getting 10's of dollars of margin off every PC, Intel getting 10's or maybe 100+ dollars of margin off every PC, and motherboard makers with a gross margin of $3 per board. Much less the case makers....
The old line auto manufactures are building cases for the computers and software that are tomorrow's self-driving cars.