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

nytimes.com

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

#181

Post by Joeri »

quonn wrote: post #174
CPLX wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the finance fundamentals of Uber are truly horrible. Their only explanation for literally lighting billions of dollars in funds on fire to subsidize rides is supposedly to consolidate market share. If they don't have a defensible position and they lose money on every transaction what exactly do they have to show for it?

> literally lighting billions of dollars in funds on fire Figuratively. But even that's not true, since customers have saved real money and spent it elsewhere.

So, uber is really a secret socialist scheme to redistribute wealth from the investors to uber's customers?

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

#182

Post by nodesocket »

riffraff wrote: post #177
nodesocket wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure Uber is losing gobs of money, but that's not the most important metric at this stage for them. Look at Tesla, they lost 330 million in 2017 Q1. You absolutely will find bears against Tesla, but that's mainly because of its current $324 share price, not its fundamental business which is losing money.

but then what is the most important metric for Uber? AFAIR they are not growing as fast as they were, and have been all but outlawed in many places already.

Actually there are only a handful of places in the US where Uber is banned. Contrary to popular belief (and intentionally propagated by smear campaigns), Uber wasn't banned in Austin TX... they pulled out of that market voluntarily.

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

#183

Post by bigbugbag »

ma2rten wrote: post #114
puranjay wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where Tesla fits into this scheme. In terms of road miles, I reckon Tesla would have Waymo beat easily. They have far too many cars on the road and thus, way more data. Does this factor into the quality of self-driving tech at all?

As of 2013 Google's self-driving cars collected about 1 GB per second of data [1], today it must be even more. There is no way Telsa can upload nearly as much data from customer's cars. I also belief that their team is smaller and they started much later. [1] http://www.kurzweilai.net/googles-self-driving-car-gathers-n...

Very first sentence of your source says "Google’s self-driving car gathers 750 megabytes of sensor data per SECOND!", here goes one fourth of the alleged 1GB.

Then this is about sensor data or raw data, but there is thing known as compression which is quite common and can shrink size by an order of magnitude.

75MB/s seems closer to reality and manageable.

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

#184

Post by lobster_johnson »

rjuyal wrote: post #151
alistproducer2 wrote: post #14

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.

Uber has started allowing drivers to accept a new ride before they're done with the current one, as an incentive to keep driving (as opposed to ending their shift). I have had rides stuck in "Driver is finishing up a trip nearby" for 10 minutes or more. And I could see on the map that there were other available drivers around. I don't remember what the initial estimate is in those cases, but I think it's less than what it ends up being.

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

#185

Post by bigbugbag »

Fricken wrote: post #111
puranjay wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious where Tesla fits into this scheme. In terms of road miles, I reckon Tesla would have Waymo beat easily. They have far too many cars on the road and thus, way more data. Does this factor into the quality of self-driving tech at all?

Last week Tesla began collecting short sections of video data from those with their new in-house Autopilot hardware. So really, Tesla's just getting started, and they're doing it with underpowered sensors and compute. https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/8/15581094/tesla-autopilot-u... Waymo was ahead of where Tesla is now back in 2012. In a demonstration capacity, Waymo's cars were working 5 years ago, but in the intermi…

It is a matter of point of view, how many waymo car have been sold to customers ? how many waymo cars are out of the waymo car factories every months ?

There are several things to tackle and different approaches to things, the DARPA grand challenge is the practical one and waymo did not took part in any edition AFAIK.

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

#186

Post by bigbugbag »

keeptrying wrote: post #77

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.

Ever heard of the DARPA Grand challenge ? The first edition way in 2004 and the project aim is to have one third of US ground military vehicles autonomous by 2015. It seems the US DoD has a quite a headstart on waymo.

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

#187

Post by Semaphor »

bigbugbag wrote: post #169
nodesocket wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say this assessment is clouded by your own judgements of Uber. Uber is vastly larger than Lyft. I've taken Uber's all over the world (Europe, South America), Lyft barely has market penetration in rural areas of the United States. I recently bet my friend who is supremely confident that United Airlines business will be significantly impacted due to the passenger incident. Thus far, it appears United is doing just…

Although Uber has a better market penetration right now, it seems each day we're getting closer to the tipping point for Uber. Once Uber loses traction and grip, what prevents the now uber driver to switch to become lyft drivers ? People looking for rides do not care if it's uber or lyft or something else as long they have a ride and it's not too expensive. United Airlines having a good Q2 quarters will not help Uber…

> what prevents the now uber driver to switch to become lyft drivers ?

The (non)availability of Lyft all over the world except one country. According to some quick googling, Uber exists in 80 countries without Lyft.

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

#188

Post by MagnumOpus »

Theodores wrote: post #89
paulddraper wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? Why?

If you are in London and you have got to get that famous child prodigy to the film studio with chaperone and teacher then you will be ordering them an Addison Lee private hire vehicle or better. A regular cab or some unlicenced 'Uber' gig-economy 'cab' isn't going to cut it. I expect that other parts of the world are the same.

> an Addison Lee private hire vehicle

As a Londoner: Huh? AddLee minicab drivers are infamous for being even more aggressive/xenophobic/inappropriate than black cab veterans. "Premium" they ain't.

But sure, if you want good service for the pampered "talent", you get a premium German private hire car, not the average Essex barrowboy...

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

#190

Post by chillydawg »

nodesocket wrote: post #182
riffraff wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but then what is the most important metric for Uber? AFAIR they are not growing as fast as they were, and have been all but outlawed in many places already.

Actually there are only a handful of places in the US where Uber is banned. Contrary to popular belief (and intentionally propagated by smear campaigns), Uber wasn't banned in Austin TX... they pulled out of that market voluntarily.

That's like believing a politician is ACTUALLY resigning to spend more time with their family.
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