And over 10% of it went to Anthony Levandowski.
Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
41–50 of 86 posts
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you come to that first conclusion? It seems difficult to tell who is the “furthest ahead” because it’s a pretty complex race. For starters, we can’t even say with certainty who all of the competitors are. Some are very quiet or at early stages but could be working on a breakthrough problem that turns out to be a pivot point. Some are specializing. Who is going to scale up the best and most cost efficient solid…
> How do you come to that first conclusion? I don't really trust any of the marketing (including videos) or friendly articles about how far along companies are. The best way to judge I've seen is by the mandatory reports companies testing in California must supply. By those, Waymo is far, far ahead as of 2016. They've driven 635,868 miles (two orders of magnitude more miles than their next closest competitor) and the…
>They've driven 635,868 miles (two orders of magnitude more miles than their next closest competitor) and their miles driven per disengagement was 5,128 (an order of magnitude higher than the next closest, with many still in single digit miles per disengagement).
Making the assumption that "disengagements == bad" is a bit suspect though. We have no way of knowing if the reason for disengagement among competitors is purposeful, or due to more strenuous testing environments. It's not like this is a performance metric we know they are trying to optimize. Without knowing the testing methodology, it's meaningless to compare these numbers.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#43I think by most accounts - 1) Google / Waymo is by far the furthest ahead in self-driving tech. 2) Self-driving is possible in at least certain circumstances in the next decade or two (already is to an extent today). 3) Transportation / automobiles is an absolutely massive industry. Even companies like Dana, Inc (maker of axles) have $4bil valuations. It's easy to see how a self-driving tech maker would be worth far…
How do you come to that first conclusion? It seems difficult to tell who is the “furthest ahead” because it’s a pretty complex race. For starters, we can’t even say with certainty who all of the competitors are. Some are very quiet or at early stages but could be working on a breakthrough problem that turns out to be a pivot point. Some are specializing. Who is going to scale up the best and most cost efficient solid…
I work for one such "early stage" startup - all we do is bullshit VCs by showing them research done by other people, and then passing them off as our own.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The few times other parties have stepped in and spoken up, there's been some less rosy truths in there. What are you referring to?
An excellent example is a 2014 article in Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/... Consider that at the time, an engineer told him that the car was dependent on a level of mapping detail that was impractical at a nationwide level, that the car would run a red light if it wasn't on the car's map. The article also cites that the cars would have issues in bright sunlight, particularly deter…
Yes, but computer vision has moved forward by leaps and bounds since 2014, and so have GPUs.
AD pipelines uses object-detection for traffic-sign detection. RCNN was state of the art for this back then and ran at what 0.2 fps and ~40 mAP ? SSD came out in 2016 and ran at 60+ fps at ~80 mAP. Google's mobilenets implementation probably runs atleast twice as fast and apparently has no noticeable loss in accuracy.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The few times other parties have stepped in and spoken up, there's been some less rosy truths in there. What are you referring to?
An excellent example is a 2014 article in Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/... Consider that at the time, an engineer told him that the car was dependent on a level of mapping detail that was impractical at a nationwide level, that the car would run a red light if it wasn't on the car's map. The article also cites that the cars would have issues in bright sunlight, particularly deter…
The point of not having a steering wheel was to experiment with a platform where it is assume disengagements where user intervention is needed in an emergency won't happen, because Google's own research indicates that relying on disengagements is dangerous.
Level 2-3 cars are frankly, too dangerous for the road IMHO, and the rush by automakers to ship these out to the public is, I predict, going to lead to some serious disasters, class action lawsuits, and regulation, that imperils the whole enterprise.
If there's anything that you don't ship "until it's ready", it's a device that's lethal to human life when something goes wrong. Tesla already killed someone, and while you could argue he violated the beta test agreement, shipping cars which requirement drivers to be attentive and keep their hands on the wheel while self driving -- ready to be aware and take control at a moment's notice -- effectively are engaging in bullshit marketing, because we all know that people who use self driving don't want to sit there "engaged" but want to be free to do somethings like check their phone.
Public data on disengagements shows Waymo is far far ahead. Are disengagements important? Yes. Every disengagement is a failure of the car's automation to handle road conditions that would require emergency intervention by the driver. But keep in mind, Waymo drives off the highway as well, whereas many of the competitors with worse disengagement figures are triggering them on mostly highway driving.
Taking time to do this right might be frustrating to those who want products shipped immediately, but the first time a level 2-3 car runs over a schoolyard, people's minds will change very fast.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#46Serious question: Why not acquire Tesla and position yourself leaps and bounds ahead of the other tech giants?
I think while the technical differences could be resolved the biggest blocker would be cultural. Musk has been super aggresive in rolling out more and more self driving features, where as Google and everyone else seems to be much more cautious.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#47Don't know about how it's in the US, but if it's anything like in some European countries, a question is: How much of that $1.1 are recouped as "investments in research" etc. and thus contributing to tax-deductions (and in some cases even subsidies)?
100% of it would be tax-deductible. Corporations don't pay tax on any money spent on salaries, equipment, expenses, etc. Whether there would be ADDITIONAL subsidies, I do not know.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#48Google already has a huge amount of power over where people go on the Internet. It seems having power, however indirect, of where people go in the real world is their next goal, and it is quite deeply unsettling to consider. Imagine self-driving cars that will be cheaper but take you to "sponsored places" before going to your destination, refuse certain destinations "for your safety", and play ads continuously while…
"Since you uploaded a video which was removed from Youtube, your Google Driving account has been permanently revoked."
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#49I think by most accounts - 1) Google / Waymo is by far the furthest ahead in self-driving tech. 2) Self-driving is possible in at least certain circumstances in the next decade or two (already is to an extent today). 3) Transportation / automobiles is an absolutely massive industry. Even companies like Dana, Inc (maker of axles) have $4bil valuations. It's easy to see how a self-driving tech maker would be worth far…
> Given 1-4, $1.1B doesn't seem like much. Seriously, they'd make trillions from self-driving tech. They'd end up spinning off an Uber-like self-driving ride service, and then they can track you and serve ads to you wherever you go. The data mining potential alone is huge.
lol my first instinct was that they would charge a fee, but forcing you to watch YouTube commercials sounds so Google.
Re: Google Has Spent Over $1.1B on Self-Driving Tech
#50I think by most accounts - 1) Google / Waymo is by far the furthest ahead in self-driving tech. 2) Self-driving is possible in at least certain circumstances in the next decade or two (already is to an extent today). 3) Transportation / automobiles is an absolutely massive industry. Even companies like Dana, Inc (maker of axles) have $4bil valuations. It's easy to see how a self-driving tech maker would be worth far…
> 4) Software tends to be a winner-take-most industry.
That's true of software generally, but not will not be true of automated driving software.
Windows, iOS, Facebook and YouTube have strong network effects. Google search and Microsoft Office offer a familiar user interface and superior features.
Self driving software will have none of these benefits - there is no network effect, no significant user interface, and no feature differentiation. As soon as there are 3 self driving software products on the market that meet minimum safety standards, competition will force the price down to little more than the cost of development. What's more, that cost of development will diminish over time: If in 2027 a company decides to develop self driving software, the development cost will be much less than the $1.1 billion Google has paid. So over the long term the economics will be similar to airlines - suppliers offering a commodity product and generating thin margins.
Although the long-term trend is bleak, Waymo does have two short-term advantages: 1) possibly being first to market; 2) its suite of patents on self-driving tech. Personally I don't place much weight on these advantages so I would value Waymo much less than the stock market. As an Alphabet shareholder I very much hope that they spin off Waymo so I can sell my interest in self-driving tech.