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Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

nytimes.com

151–160 of 383 posts

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#151

When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never go back to Uber.

I live in Seattle and I just don't prefer Lyft. 100% of the time Lyft's estimated time of arrival is wrong. They say your "lyft" is reaching in 3 minutes when I can clearly see it can't come even in 10mins. On the other hand Uber gives pretty good estimation.

Same goes with estimated cost of the ride. Uber tell me exactly how much I will have to pay while Lyft says $7-$12.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#152
post #50

When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never go back to Uber.

Lyft barely exists outside of the US. Uber is still on top if you take a global view.

As I understand it Uber's profits from the US market (and VC money) is funding the global expansion. If Uber lose their dominant position in the US we should expect their plans in the rest of the world to stop quite quickly; they won't be able to afford them.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#153
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be a factor, but not a major one. Say you expect to spend $30,000 on the car and $20,000 on repairs over a lifetime of 10 years (that's probably well on the high side, say you picked out a shitbox that always breaks down). At $15/h wage and $50/week in petrol, running the car 40 hours a week (probably on the low side, a lot of taxi drivers I know have 2-3 drivers to a car and would run it more like 120 hours), y…

> It'd be a factor, but not a major one. I disagree. I think it's going to be everything. Not because people are cheap but they're going to be eliminated in this space regardless (so it's not even an argument). A car manufacturer is going to have lower costs to making and maintaining a car than any non car manufacturer. Every ride sharing service will eventually become driverless so car manufacturers will be able to…

You're assuming that transit is a business that car manufacturers want to be involved in, which would be a big shift. They've got a nice secure position right now, regardless of which ride-sharing app is trending. Why would they want to shift from their high-margin B2B sales market to a low-margin consumer service market?

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#154
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use owner's home network?

Do owners generally connect their cars to their home wifi? (I don't know, is this a thing with Teslas?) Even if so, uploading gigabytes of data every day is going to be noticed. While I'm sure they have the legal right to do so (via their TOS / EULA) they probably still don't want to emphasize that they're gathering that much data (unless you opt in to their fleet learning stuff).

>Do owners generally connect their cars to their home wifi?

Generally I think they do to access the Tesla App features. Tesla also have a network connection so they may already be uploading the information anyway over cell networks.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#155
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use owner's home network?

The logs might be pretty big, so it might have a significant impact on people on metered internet connections.

Not if it's only greyscale camera data and some point cloud data which is heavily compressible.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#157

When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never go back to Uber.

Yes.. as a bay area resident can confirm this. I switched totally to Lyft the past few weeks and have no issues finding a ride promptly. Also all drivers that I met seem to be driving only for Lyft.

PS: What convinced me to totally switch was this https://github.com/lyft/envoy, my way of saying thanks for the Lyft team.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#158
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tipping culture has historically trended towards an expectation of ever higher and more commonplace tips to not look like an asshole. Tipping culture also introduces uncertainty into pricing, and means that nicer people pay more and jerks get to pay less, for the same service.

>Tipping culture also introduces uncertainty into pricing, and means that nicer people pay more and jerks get to pay less, for the same service. Why is someone a jerk for not tipping? I pay for service provided - give me a receipt with the amount and I'll pay it, no problem. Let's end tipping, folks...

I think the commenter means that jerks are less likely to tip drivers who do deserve it.

Re: Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars

#160
post #148

Waymo will have the first self driving cars on the road. They are so ahead of everyone. I think everyone including regular car companies buy the tech from Waymo in the short term.

Volvo / zenuity are also doing well. They'll probably have the first level 4 cars in public hands. It remains to see who can get to level 5. https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/27/11518826/volvo-tesla-auto...

Hmm, do they/you have any concrete numbers to back this up?

For example, Uber has a disengagement rate of once per 0.9 mile, whereas Waymo shows numbers higher up at 5000+ miles.

The California DMV report [0] has numbers for a couple other companies that tested in California. The other runners ups are Nissan and BMW with 247 and 638 miles respectively. Still an order of magnitude behind. But Volvo isn't there, and I'm curious to see concrete numbers. Because no amount of press and videos really means anything. Anyone can come up with a video of the car doing a nice ride. Google published one of those in 2009. It's spent the last 8 years perfectly that. That's the hard part, making it work in all cases, not just for one video.

[0] https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-...

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