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

Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 434 posts

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#271

Post by amelius »

c3534l wrote: post #72
ctdonath wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the decades I've noticed how businesses need to recognize and focus on their core competencies - if they don't, they die. Everything must feed that core, and undue distractions are lethal. Occasionally there's a need to pivot , which is deliberately stepping from one competency to another, but that is rare and difficult. Apple's core is to build small computers; everything else they do (music, video, cloud servi…

Counter arguments: Walmart, Google and Amazon.

Another counter argument: Elon Musk.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#272

Post by icanhackit »

hueving wrote: post #190
icanhackit wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point but my question still stands, why couldn't they design it in California and outsource manufacturing to Hon Hai/Foxconn the way they do with their phones? Unlike Tesla, sourcing the parts wouldn't be Apple's problem.

Because outsourcing car manufacturing doesn't make much sense. The transportation costs eat up most of the savings. That's why Toyotas, Volkswagons, etc sold in the US are made in the US. One shipping container holds 60,000 iphones. One shipping container holds one car.

> Because outsourcing car manufacturing doesn't make much sense.

#1 It allows you to focus on design as opposed to supply chain management. #2 If the supply chain is centralised where production takes place then that bit of missing trunk carpet, as Elon Musk lamented, won't take two weeks to get to you and hold up the production line - It's down the road.

> One shipping container holds one car.

Which makes me think - the economics change if the vehicle you're shipping is only 1/2 or 1/3 the size of a typical car. When you have an electric automated vehicle why are you sticking with a sedan or truck sized vehicle when you can move individuals or couples?

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#273

Post by empath75 »

usaphp wrote: post #174
josteink wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have the iPhone because Apple was so ambitious. When you say that, you conventiently forget that Apple re -invented the smartphone. It was an proven thing, which already sold in spades in the tech/enterprise market. They took something which existed and was awkward to use, and re-did the UI layer of the whole thing. They refined something else which was already proven. They didn't invent something original from…

> When you say that, you conventiently forget that Apple re-invented the smartphone. It was an proven thing, which already sold in spades in the tech/enterprise market. Isn't a car a proven thing? All apple is need to do is re-invent it and slap a nice AI on top of it.

I'd buy an apple car that wasn't self driving.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#274

Post by empath75 »

jacquesm wrote: post #240
tambourine_man wrote: post #36

“From the beginning, the employees dedicated to Project Titan looked at a wide range of details. That included motorized doors that opened and closed silently. They also studied ways to redesign a car interior without a steering wheel or gas pedals, and they worked on adding virtual or augmented reality into interior displays. The team also worked on a new light and ranging detection sensor, also known as lidar. Lida…

This so reminds me of the discussion about fire from the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. The challenge of a self driving car is to get it to drive by itself, not to try to make it look good and to solve a whole pile of engineering problems that have had everybody in engineering looking at them since as long as we have the profession. Making gadgets and making a self driving car require a different mind-set. The fir…

What if 'self-driving' was just one possible feature among many in a potential Apple car and wasn't necessary? I'd happily buy an apple electric car that I had to drive myself.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#275

Post by ghaff »

freehunter wrote: post #54
mozumder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And streetcars are great at moving people that last mile. Take that road in front of your office, and just put rails in it. If your local government can pay for a road in front of your house, it can pay for a streetcar. This applies to dense areas as well as rural areas. Rail lines actually cost less to maintain than roads, and they cost YOU less because you don't have to buy and pay for a car. And you don't have to…

But would a streetcar go past my house? How far do I have to walk to get from my house to a bus stop or train station? Because I own 19 acres and my nearest neighbor is three miles from my house. The nearest town is 20 minutes by car. How would public transport deal with that kind of remoteness? My office is one end of the equation, my home (and the homes of my coworkers) are the other end. It's surprisingly common w…

The urbanization statistics are also misleading. According to the US census, 80% of Americans are urban. The definition of urban includes the town where I live which has about 7,000 residents and I live on 5 acres and my neighbors more.

The move to cities stats are also way overapplied. College educated young people are indeed moving to a few mostly urban dense cores like Brooklyn. More broadly there's somewhat of a shift from true rural to the suburbs but most of those people will still need cars.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#276

Post by freehunter »

lmm wrote: post #241
freehunter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution is to tear down our cities, abandon our homes, and rebuild everything somewhere else. Gotcha. I mean that's probably environmentally friendly, right?

Cities and homes should not be expected to last forever; while we shouldn't be rebuilding them every year, doing so every few decades is probably more environmentally friendly than not.

I'm not sure I'm understanding... my home was built in 1953 and is standing just fine. It's got new windows, new insulation, and a new roof. Are you saying I should abandon it and go build a new one? There's a brick building in town that's been there since 1842, you're saying we should rip it down just because it's old?

Has everyone in this entire thread lost their damn minds? First meth-head farmers are "living in luxury", then "street cars will replace every road in the nation", and now "buildings should be torn down and rebuilt every 30 years".

Are you people listening to yourselves?

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#277

Post by freehunter »

Apocryphon wrote: post #156
freehunter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the solution is to tear down our cities, abandon our homes, and rebuild everything somewhere else. Gotcha. I mean that's probably environmentally friendly, right?

Urban renewal is a policy which exists, yes.

Yeah that Empire State Building is almost 90 years old, time to tear it down and build a new one closer to the streetcar line.

Jesus you are absolutely insane.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#278

Post by jacquesm »

coldtea wrote: post #268
jacquesm wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing my point. It may not be stupid to reinvent the wheel at all. But that's not a project that you should mix with inventing a self driving car unless you conclude that spherical wheels are the only way a self driving car will ever become a reality. Similar to how every software application project could theoretically result in a new database, a new operating system and if you really want to go all out a n…

> You're missing my point. It may not be stupid to reinvent the wheel at all. But that's not a project that you should mix with inventing a self driving car That's only true if the team that reinvents the wheels and the team that does the self-driving tech is the same, and you're stealing members from the latter to the former. Obviously those are not the same teams, nor they need to be. And when you get out with your…

The degree to which globular wheels would complicate such a design is such that it would leave you being passed by your competitors right out of the gate, on top of that it would complicate all kinds of things such as certification and potentially reliability and safety as well as supply chain issues after delivery.

Solving too much is a fantastic way to crash a project.

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#279

Post by Superleroy »

coldtea wrote: post #269
ars wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, exactly this. They have no idea how to make a self driving car so wasted time on other things hoping someone will solve the actual hard part. It's pretty common when given an impossible project, and you need to show something .

Or you know, the have multiple teams, and they don't just want to put out a "self driving car" out, but a great self driving car that rethinks what a car should be like -- on top of "self-driving".

But does that even make sense? That would mean they redesigned something that they are not able to build in realistically at least the next 5-10 years. Or to go even further, they tried to make something better that does not exist yet. Wouldn't it make more sense to just go for the self driving car first and then, after you are sure that you can build that, creating teams which make it better?

Re: Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car

#280

Post by thomasjudge »

oblio wrote: post #204
amaranth wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google was a search engine that made money via ads then pivoted into an ad platform that also has a search engine. Android and Chrome are about ensuring they have a seat at the table and don't get pushed out by Apple or Microsoft. The first thing of significance they've done that doesn't fit this is their cloud platform.

Their cloud platform is the same thing: trying to not get pushed out by Amazon and Microsoft. Google Cloud is about ensuring that those two have competition and can't somehow pull an EEE. Extreme scenario: vast majority of world's online businesses are hosted on AWS and Amazon for whatever reason creates their own AWS ad service and forbids or undercuts Google AdWords for everything hosted on AWS.

"EEE"?
Post reply on HN