Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple receives permit in California to test self-driving cars

uk.reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 323 posts

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

#251

Post by adamlett »

bigtimeidiot wrote: post #239
adamlett wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your conclusion, but I think your analysis is dead wrong. I don't think Apple would have problems manufacturing cars at scale. They have virtually unlimited money to aquire people with the know how, and to invest in factories. And they have lots of experience with manufacturing already. Sure, cars are different from consumer electronics, but not in any insurmountable way. The real reason I think Apple wo…

> Sure, cars are different from consumer electronics, but not in any insurmountable way. Perhaps not "insurmountable"... ...but you realize that what Apple currently manufactures is equivalent to one single, near-insignificant component of what goes into a car: the on-board navigation system. Building a car is hard. I don't think Apple can't do it, but I'm convinced they won't find it "worth it".

No, building a car is actually comparatively easy, as evidenced by the myriad of boutique super cars. It's especially easy if what you want to build is an electric car, because electric cars have an order of magnitude fewer moving parts compared to an ICE car. What is difficult is mass producing a car, as evidenced by Tesla's difficulty in doing just that. But Apple has lots of experience at mass production, and they have the means to acquire whatever talent they lack. That's not to say that they are guaranteed to succeed, but they have a much, much better chance than almost any technology company.

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

#252

Post by elmar »

icanhackit wrote: post #248
elmar wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla burns cash, loses more than $4,000 on every car sold http://www.reuters.com/article/us-teslamotors-cash-insight-i...

1.) That article is from 2015. 2.) Dividing operating losses by number of cars sold is...not a very good way of calculating things. You're taking R&D, new capital (Gigafactories, retail outlets, acquisitions like SolarCity) and all other expenses and dividing by number of cars sold. It makes for a nice clean Excel spreadsheet (A1 divided by A2) but a poor understanding of how emerging businesses with huge growth pote…

Why Investors Love Elon Musk, Even Though Tesla Is Losing Money (2017)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardhyu/2017/02/24/why-invest...

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

#253

Post by [deleted] »

jcfrei wrote: post #38

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.

[deleted]

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

#254

Post by repsilat »

ghshephard wrote: post #174
astrodust wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine going back to the early 1980s and seeing people argue that the personal computer market was too crowded, and there was no way anyone was ever going to make any money in it. The whole thing had played out. Big companies owned the software market. Big companies owned the games. Big companies owned the peripherals. What could possibly be left? Wait, what's a laptop? What's a workgroup server? What's email? None…

My 12th grade computing science instructor (who was admittedly horrible) said that she didn't see much of a future programming computers, because pretty much all of the computer programs that were required had been created, and all that was left was to improve the speed, size of documents allowed, and maybe add a few extra features. This was in Spring, 1987.

And, funnily enough, the word processing tool most often used in my office (Dropbox Paper) is slower, less suited to long documents and has fewer features than the first word processor I used. Still, you can't expect your teacher of 30 years ago to foresee "the future is emojis".

People just want different software every few years, because fashion is fickle there's a natural feeling that old stuff is out of date. Slack doesn't provide any real improvement over an IRC server that keeps its logs around, but it's web-based and it has custom emojis, so...

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

#255

Post by briandear »

sumedh wrote: post #217
tsomctl wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't the driver who hit from behind usually at fault. It does not matter if the car ahead of you hits the break for fun or not, you should always be aware and brake accordingly.

That's Texas law for sure: the car that rear-ends another car is always at fault -- and rightfully so: maintaining correct following distance is a fundamental driving skill, one that is sadly ignored in France where I live now.

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

#256

Post by [deleted] »

briandear wrote: post #234
fgonzag wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean from a computer to a mp3 player to a phone is the same ballpark. Electronics. Moving to mechanical systems is a whole different thing. I'm not saying it won't work out, but I don't think their plan is manufacturing cars. Maybe it's just licensing the self driving tech along with the infotainment system.

Yet somehow Elon Musk went from internet payments to building rockets and cars. Musk had zero background in rockets or cars. Remember Apple is a company that has more cash in the bank than the entire value of Tesla. It's foolish to think that Apple can't execute. Remember Apple has a long history of the last mover advantage: they take promising but cumbersomely executed tech and expand on it.

[deleted]

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

#257

Post by charlesism »

briandear wrote: post #236
charlesism wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that building a car involves a fairly different set of skills (ie: pretty much everything except the dashboard) than Apple has. The thought of bringing in 95% new-hires to work on a project in which your company has no experience... I mean, why? If the primary motivation is money, without sufficient passion, good luck competing with Tesla - where they live and breath electric cars.

What were Tesla people doing before they made cars? We could have made this argument comparing Tesla to GM a few years ago.

My point about experience is that it's not Apple building this car, it's basically a new group at Apple handicapped by poor motives.

In the context of my comment, Tesla's answer to "why" was a bit more inspiring than "we need to enter a new market because our existing markets are saturated"

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

#258

Post by archvile »

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…

Hey now, I LOVE my Apple TV's. They may not have the adoption or attach rate as other multimedia devices but they definitely fill a need for a certain group of people. Since I am all in on Apple they work perfect for me. I just wish they would market it a little better.

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

#259

Post by [deleted] »

georgespencer wrote: post #231
charlesism wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your reasoning is excellent. The only problem is that Apple doesn't have sufficient drive, talent, or reputation, in the auto industry to actually make and sell a good car. No employee wants to leave Tesla to work at Apple. No consumer wants to buy a car made by Apple. Hopefully Tim and the gang won't blow through too much money before they accept that. They're pretty good at making phones and computers. They might w…

List of people who have been or are working on Project Titan: Jamie Carlson (ex-Tesla autopilot) Megan McClain (ex-Volkswagen) Vinay Palakkode (Carnegie Mellon automated driving) Xianqiao Tong (computer vision at Nvidia) Paul Furgale (Autonomous systems lab at SFIT) Sanjay Massey (automated vehicles, Ford) Stefan Weber (Bosch video based driver assistance) Lech Szumilas (Delphi computer vision researcher) Doug Betts…

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by dsacco »

MBCook wrote: post #118
weaksauce wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to be fair, the apple tv remote is fantastic and it's better than any other remote i have used for the common features. (i do wish it had a tv power button though since it can actuate the volume but i guess they wanted to go with the standard that shuts down the tv when you shut off the apple tv if your tv supports it)

Really? The TiVo peanut is still the best I've used. The ability to scrub with the Apple remote is really nice and Siri can be useful but the shape is a disaster and I really miss physical buttons for moving around the interface.

I have both, and vastly prefer my AppleTV. Using voice or my iPhone keyboard to search is a game changing experience.
Post reply on HN