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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

#331

Post by pm90 »

CydeWeys wrote: post #207
Joeri wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Heh, it's kind of funny when you look at it like that. It's the opposite of the typical fleecing scheme, wherein a publicly owned company enriches the big guys at the little guys' expense (a la Enron). Uber is doing the opposite, since it isn't publicly traded and only has large rich investors: They're saving lots of little guys' money on car fares at the expense of the few big guy investors.

For now.

Their plan, as far as I can see, is to totally dominate the market. Once, and if that happens, they will raise their prices, and once again the little guy's money will be going in the pockets of the big guys.

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

#332

Post by SallySwanSmith »

cubano wrote: post #300
taneq wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Tesla's don't connect to LTE networks by default? If not, I find it shortsighted and rather cheap that each car doesn't have it's own $50/month data plan (or whatever) to phone home important data.

At 80k new cars a year that's a 4mil a month waste of money. Tesla couldn't survive giving each car a 50/mo data plan forever.

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

#333

Post by MarkMc »

amyjess wrote: post #314
fragmede wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when Facebook came out with Google Plus, we all switched away from Facebook, right? All the engineering genius in the world couldn't do enough for Google Plus (hint: it's not the engineering), why would they do any better with supplanting Lyft unless they copied Uber and lit money on fire by offering free rides for a year like they did with (domestic US) phone calls.

To extend your comparison, look at how much better buying YouTube was for Google than starting Google Video was.

Both Facebook and YouTube have very strong network effects protecting them from competition. A self-driving taxi service would have no network effect - a better analogy is to the airline industry.

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

#334

Post by cubano »

SallySwanSmith wrote: post #332
cubano wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's don't connect to LTE networks by default? If not, I find it shortsighted and rather cheap that each car doesn't have it's own $50/month data plan (or whatever) to phone home important data.

At 80k new cars a year that's a 4mil a month waste of money. Tesla couldn't survive giving each car a 50/mo data plan forever.

Waste of money?

To have a constant high speed IoT-like connection to the web for real-time updating and such?

I am sure some sort of volume discounts could be negotiated as well.

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

#335

Post by agildehaus »

sova wrote: post #307
fixermark wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is: in the long run, yes; in the short run, Waymo is manufacturing its own chipsets that it has a patent on. It's not using COTS kit for on-board processing, which gives it a significant technical advantage that will be hard for competitors to match.

Elon maintains that with just cameras you can achieve super-human (10x) performance with self-driving cars. Fact I nabbed when he spoke about Boring at TED. https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_future_we_re_buildin...

I wouldn't ever bet against Musk, but Musk says a lot of things. Yes we should be able to make self driving cars with just cameras because, after all, we do it with just two eyes. But in what world is computer vision perfect? Tesla's Autopilot already has a fatality on its record because it couldn't differentiate the color of the sky with the color of a truck.

LIDAR solves a lot of problems.

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

#336

Post by CaptainZapp »

ipqk wrote: post #311
CaptainZapp wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you willing to let Uber spy permanently on you in order to save a few bucks? http://www.wired.co.uk/article/uber-track-location-data-upda...

And it's not permanently . It's for a few minutes after drop off. Assuming you trust them.

  Assuming you trust them.
Well, in my book that's exactly the rub. I, for one, don't trust them at all.

Pulling that extra effort to track Apple devices even after the app has been deleted and other shenagigans they pulled in violating their customer's privacy doesn't really help in the trust building department:

https://m.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/24/uber_cloaked_its_spyi...

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

#337

Post by greglindahl »

cubano wrote: post #300
taneq wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Tesla's don't connect to LTE networks by default? If not, I find it shortsighted and rather cheap that each car doesn't have it's own $50/month data plan (or whatever) to phone home important data.

Teslas do connect to LTE. Why would they pay that much for a data plan? In the US, you can get mobile hotspot plans for $3/month + $10/gbyte. That's the consumer price; wholesale over 100s of thousands of cars has got to be cheaper.

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

#338

Post by lobster_johnson »

grkhetan wrote: post #206
lobster_johnson wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

Its a neat feature actually. Taking up the next ride before finishing a previous one allows drivers to have no downtime, and thus increase their earnings; and for riders it allows them to get drivers sooner in cases where other available drivers are further away.

Neat for the driver, but for me, I cringe whenever I get that message, because I know I'll have to wait longer than usual. Those rides are always the slowest ones to arrive.

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

#339

Post by rtx »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #328
rtx wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They own the process knowledge to operate a Taxi company in 80 countries. Atleast what I have see in India they are beating OLA another competitor like Lyft.

I'm not really seeing how knowing how to sell two dollar bills for one dollar in 80 different countries is really all that valuable.

Because few people make four dollars in the same amount of time it takes for the exchange to happen. So they are choosing it for a different reason. It's possible you may not be seeing the value in the service they provide. But for me personally they are as revolutionary (execution) as Amazon and Facebook.

To kill the any future competition they jut need to start a global loyalty program.

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

#340

Post by williamsmj »

grkhetan wrote: post #213
williamsmj wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, we really do want them to die. Couldn't happen to a nicer company. If it's competition you're concerned about: they have a well documented record of sabotaging their competition, rather than winning on merits. They're not good for the market they are in, which is bad for all of us. There are also some other reasons we want them to die, relating to their being an abusive employer, which I'd like to think would ha…

I wouldnt want Uber to die. They were one who created the ride-sharing market and the industry fighting against all outdated regulations. They may have done "sabotaging" their competition once several years ago -- there's no record of them having done it in the last 2-3 years. Btw, Lyft also has done similar stuff.

Um, the article discusses an ongoing court case accusing them of industrial espionage last year, which may result in criminal prosecution.
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