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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

#71

Post by CharlesW »

gajeam wrote: post #65

I guess you never know with Apple but it just seems like a really crowded space for them to come into, especially if they insist on controlling the whole ecosystem like they do with their other products. First of all, it's a high price tag for them to get top talent in the area. Waymo, Uber, Tesla, Ford (and a dozen other car companies), and who knows how many start ups are all vying for the same pool of engineers. E…

> I guess you never know with Apple but it just seems like a really crowded space for them to come into…

The iPhone entered a crowded phone market and now controls the vast majority of smartphone profits. There's really no such thing as market "saturation" when you can grow the market and eat old participants.

> First of all, it's a high price tag for them to get top talent in the area.

Apple has $250 billion in cash, so this doesn't strike me as a huge concern.

> Their success I feel depends on how much control they are willing to give up in partnerships…

As with phones, their hypothetical success in this area will be due to how much they won't give up. Apple learned this lesson with the disastrous Motorola ROKR E1, a.k.a. the one where they tried to be a "good industry partner" and play by industry rules.

If Apple enters this market, they'll play by Apple's rules and give up virtually nothing. Any launch partner(s) will profit, but on Apple's terms.

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

#72

Post by shouldbworking »

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…

I think this is a troll comment, but if not I ask you to simply look underneath your car.

Any auto made in the last 20 years is incredibly complex. The biggest advancement has been hiding all that complexity.

I have swapped engines and welded cars together, so this is coming from experience. Every car has many sensors, sometimes more than 100. All these sensors feed into enormously complex software state machines written to do all calculations on a RTOS in bounded time and in a verifiably correct manner. This complexity started in, but doesn't stop at, the engine.

You are vastly underestimating the effort needed to duplicate a modern car. There have been times where I've sat for several minutes just marveling at the complexity and beauty of small parts I can hold in my hand. Some of them were surely a years work for an engineer. On any car there are thousands of these clever little parts. For roughly 20k you're buying a product of many thousands of years worth of work.

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

#73

Post by tyingq »

ziikutv wrote: post #59

Heres a question, I know a lot of companies are investing their time/money into working on self-driving cars.. but from what I see, a lot of the cars use the same sensor. LIDAR and cameras being the main sensors. Of course, we have already seen Tesla perform well with these sensors. However, my question: Is/Was this industry only held back by sensing? edit: Restructure paragraph Regards,

The real asset is likely all the collected data from the sensors, and not the sensors themselves. The early players have a substantial head start. Their AI software basically has a huge private training corpus that makes it perform better.

Tesla would suffer a bit since their data is less rich without lidar, but make up for some of that with the larger aggregate miles traveled.

Not to say some players don't have better lidar than others, but the sensor quality/price should even out over time since credible third parties are in the business of selling it.

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

#74

Post by petecox »

gregschlom wrote: post #54
username223 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's tempting to strap random hardware to your roof to make other drivers fear you and give you more space.

It may result in the opposite effect though: pedestrians more willing to cross the street in front of you, and other cars trying to mess with you. (A friend of mine was telling me how he tried going really fast then braking hard behind a self driving car in front of him). The car swerved into the bike lane and almost hit a bicyclist before the driver regained manual control of the car)

> pedestrians more willing to cross the street in front of you

I'd be more afraid of crossing in front of a driver-less car. An automatic vehicle may have better reaction times than a human but I wouldn't want to be the first road fatality from a software bug.

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

#75

Post by hooloovoo_zoo »

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…

OTOH Apple has terrible AI. Siri has actually been getting worse in absolute terms.

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

#76

Post by jacquesm »

tsomctl wrote: post #62
gregschlom wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may result in the opposite effect though: pedestrians more willing to cross the street in front of you, and other cars trying to mess with you. (A friend of mine was telling me how he tried going really fast then braking hard behind a self driving car in front of him). The car swerved into the bike lane and almost hit a bicyclist before the driver regained manual control of the car)

Good thing California requires license plates on the front of vehicles. That way, if the bicyclist was hurt/killed, the video recorded by the self driving car would show your friend was the one liable.

I'm not sure that's correct. The self driving car should have stayed in its lane because an accident between two cars is preferable to an accident between a cyclist and a car, especially if the cyclist is not otherwise involved.

Self driving cars should protect the weaker traffic participants, not use their space as a 'get out of the way' option if that space is occupied.

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

#77

Post by kylec »

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.

Is it possible you saw an Apple Maps van?

https://forums.macrumors.com/attachments/img_0059-jpg.565631...

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

#78

Post by jacquesm »

petecox wrote: post #74
gregschlom wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may result in the opposite effect though: pedestrians more willing to cross the street in front of you, and other cars trying to mess with you. (A friend of mine was telling me how he tried going really fast then braking hard behind a self driving car in front of him). The car swerved into the bike lane and almost hit a bicyclist before the driver regained manual control of the car)

> pedestrians more willing to cross the street in front of you I'd be more afraid of crossing in front of a driver-less car. An automatic vehicle may have better reaction times than a human but I wouldn't want to be the first road fatality from a software bug.

> I wouldn't want to be the first road fatality from a software bug.

The first road fatality from a software bug happened long ago.

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

#79

Post by mikestew »

bsbechtel wrote: post #57
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…

Dealing with Apple Store level service for a car that needs regular maintenance isn't going to fly. Imagine waiting 2+ hours for an oil change entry three months.

Dude, the car is self-driving, why are you waiting for it to get its oil changed?

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

#80

Post by derrickdirge »

bsbechtel wrote: post #57
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…

Dealing with Apple Store level service for a car that needs regular maintenance isn't going to fly. Imagine waiting 2+ hours for an oil change entry three months.

I have a hard time imagining how Apple Store level service wouldn't be a big improvement over what I currently receive.

Also there's nothing routine I do at the Apple Store that requires me to wait any significant amount of time. Anytime I have a question, or want to buy something, or pick up an online order the service could hardly be any more prompt.

The only thing I have to wait for is the Genius Bar, and if I schedule in advance I don't usually wait very long. And I only have to do that when something actually breaks.

When my car breaks I generally have to schedule something in advance as well.

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