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

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

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 383 posts

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

#361

Post by dguest »

11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #80

Here's the thing. The end game is that Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers are out of a job as chauffeur. However, the self-driving cars remain a capital expense that someone has to finance. I couldn't Google up numbers easily, but it looks like the number of ride-hailed vehicles is in the multiple millions in the US. 1,000,000 autonomous cars at $50,000 each is a $50 Billion-per-million capital expense. I'd guess that the c…

> The end game is that Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers are out of a job as chauffeur.

This is true, but as someone who grew up somewhere where there's snow on the ground 6 months out of the year, I'm wondering how we're going to deal with more extreme driving conditions. How reliable are these self-driving cars in ice and snow? Is there even a strong economic reason to solve this problem right now?

My concern is that we'll end up with a fleet of cars that work great 90% of the time, and then flat refuse to drive when they fall outside their design envelope. At that point driving will be a niche market: the pool of drivers for emergency vehicles (which can't just take the day off when it's snowing), and services in rural areas (where detailed maps and standard heuristics may fail) will be the only permanent workforce. Meanwhile anyone else with a licence will have to step in as a chauffeur when conditions get bad.

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

#362

Post by linkregister »

Larrikin wrote: post #62
spike021 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd. I'm in the Bay Area and have taken many Lyft's lately both in the south bay and also the peninsula. Usually the drivers I get drive for both even up to this point. Could just be regional, not really sure? I feel like even with Uber's issues many drivers who do ride-sharing as a "job" won't want to just drop Uber as it may mean losing out on income (not sure if they can make up the loss with driving more for Lyft…

In Chicago and Richmond atleast the drivers I've talked to that are doing it for a full time job tend to drive Uber, Lyft and every other small start up in the area. The drivers that aren't just getting started said they use Uber for volume but will take a Lyft over Uber because of the better pay. The only drivers I've had that are Uber only are just getting started/trying it out. The drivers I've talked to that just…

Have any of them told you how the pay is higher at Lyft? They both take 25%.

Edit: tips?

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

#363

Post by linkregister »

dguest wrote: post #361
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #80

Here's the thing. The end game is that Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers are out of a job as chauffeur. However, the self-driving cars remain a capital expense that someone has to finance. I couldn't Google up numbers easily, but it looks like the number of ride-hailed vehicles is in the multiple millions in the US. 1,000,000 autonomous cars at $50,000 each is a $50 Billion-per-million capital expense. I'd guess that the c…

> The end game is that Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers are out of a job as chauffeur. This is true, but as someone who grew up somewhere where there's snow on the ground 6 months out of the year, I'm wondering how we're going to deal with more extreme driving conditions. How reliable are these self-driving cars in ice and snow? Is there even a strong economic reason to solve this problem right now? My concern is that we'…

Considering most of the U.S. (primary market for self-driving cars) experiences snow and ice several months of the year, why wouldn't engineers spend time to make this work well? Is there something inherent about adverse weather that makes humans better at it?

The evidence is that anti-lock brakes and variable traction controls have lead to a reduction in crashes in adverse weather conditions. Driving in snow and ice is hard. Why wouldn't a system that can make much finer and frequent adjustments outperform people? The only thing that is really holding back self-driving systems is the computer vision aspect, which is mitigated with Lidar and by further research into computer vision improvements.

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

#364

Post by linkregister »

azernik wrote: post #120
yellow_postit wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal view is that the rates should be set such that tipping is not expected. That remains the main draw of Uber for me.

Lyft actually has higher rates (for the driver) than Uber.

Can you add information? Their websites both claim that drivers earn 25% of the fare.

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

#365

Post by drcross »

agildehaus wrote: post #335
sova wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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.

Do you think in your wildest dream that this exact scenario would ever be allowed to happen again by Tesla engineers? It may have crashed causing a fatality in this instance but it doesn't mean the prospect of camera only vision systems need to be written off. What people often overlook is that these systems get stronger with more and more edge cases and objectively the Tesla team are doing outstanding work with the sensor package that they have.

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

#366

Post by vxNsr »

nodesocket wrote: post #150
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'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…

It can be argued that the very significant changes United made to their training and rebooking procedures are the business impact. Just because they were able to quickly triage and come up with a workable solution I wouldn't say they weren't impacted.

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

#367

Post by IanCal »

Eridrus wrote: post #326
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.

I believe that Waymo are killing it, but... their desire to not be a car company and just write the software makes me wonder what their plan is to become a serious driver of Alphabet profit. Unless they have made some real breakthroughs and are managing to somehow keep them under wraps (seems unlikely), optimistically they have a 5 year lead on their competitors. 5 years is a good amount of time to be the only people…

Partnering with others sounds like a much faster route to getting into the hands of consumers (and therefore getting money).

Having to also create and scale up production of a car as well sounds harder and much riskier.

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

#368

Post by solipsism »

sqeaky wrote: post #341
solipsism wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is naive. You don't know what data you will care about in a year. The ability to have and keep all the data is incredibly valuable.

Why do so many on HN feel the need to structure their responses like this: > Something Rude. Real argument, which is stronger with first sentence removed. You may be right (or wrong, I don't know) but opening with rudeness or insults makes it more difficult to have meaningful conversations.

Rudeness? Insults? I said "this is naive", not "you are naive."

Surely we're all adults and can talk about ideas candidly without having to beat around the bush and tell each other little white lies.

A while ago you told someone, "You speak in broad generalizations that miss many points and make many faulty assumptions. "

Any difference between your statement and mine comes down to how individuals respond to specific words. How about we rise above such pettiness and focus on the subject matter?

You've added nothing to this discussion and have wasted people's time.

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

#369

Post by kyrra »

ehsankia wrote: post #349
Eridrus wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that Waymo are killing it, but... their desire to not be a car company and just write the software makes me wonder what their plan is to become a serious driver of Alphabet profit. Unless they have made some real breakthroughs and are managing to somehow keep them under wraps (seems unlikely), optimistically they have a 5 year lead on their competitors. 5 years is a good amount of time to be the only people…

They seem to have gotten a lot more serious since forming Waymo. In just a few months, they started the actual public trial in Phoenix as well as make this deal with Lyft. Seems like they've finally understood the urgency and have stepped on the pedal. I don't understand your claim that they have to be a car company though. With this deal, it seems like they are (at least for now) targeting ride sharing, and arguably…

It does seem Waymo is going the path of the component supplier (at least right now). While they have the active partnership with Fiat Chrysler, there was a report[0] in December that they were in talks with Honda as well. Then from reddit pointed out a job posted for Waymo looking for people that speak Japanese[1].

[0] https://www.recode.net/2016/12/21/14046496/waymo-alphabet-ho...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/67w27p/fia...

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

#370

Post by dllthomas »

agildehaus wrote: post #335
sova wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> But in what world is computer vision perfect?

I'd guess the same world where human vision is perfect...

Post reply on HN