Lyft Self-Driving
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Lyft Self-Driving
1–10 of 176 posts
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#2It's a Christmas miracle!
In more seriousness, I'm curious how well this is supposed to play with the other partnerships that Lyft already has? i.e. all together, is this suppose to represent one coherent effort to build L5 autonomous, or multiple parallel ones?
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#3This really is the endgame for both Uber and Lyft. IIRC, Uber did $16B last year in revenue and paid something like $13B to drivers. Self driving vehicles will turn their current breakeven/loser business models into massive cash cows.
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#4Looks like it's LIDAR-based, and it's a partnership with nuTonomy[1].
[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/06/lyfts-self-driving-pilot-w...
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#5This really is the endgame for both Uber and Lyft. IIRC, Uber did $16B last year in revenue and paid something like $13B to drivers. Self driving vehicles will turn their current breakeven/loser business models into massive cash cows.
Neither Uber or Lyft will reach full autonomy before exhausting their runway, unless a miracle occurs and they solve level 5 within the next 1-2 years (caveat: it could happen, but it’s very unlikely).
You can’t do hundreds of millions of dollars in raises forever without some proof of progress (or maybe you can if SoftBank is willing to pour money in for a decade).
At some point, someone is going to be left holding the bag when it’s evident that the last 20% is the hardest part (but mandatory for level 5 service).
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#6This really is the endgame for both Uber and Lyft. IIRC, Uber did $16B last year in revenue and paid something like $13B to drivers. Self driving vehicles will turn their current breakeven/loser business models into massive cash cows.
I'm curious what's going to inevitably eat into that potential margin. The most profitable large scale businesses are Visa and Facebook. After the corporate tax change, both should get near 50% net income margins (Visa is at 44% last quarter; Facebook was at 46%). I could see some of it getting competed away vs Lyft, given back to consumers in lower fares. Some to typical bloat with scale & age. Perhaps higher local taxes on their business, as the cities they make all their money in will hit them that much more if they're not employing drivers. And of course those millions of vehicles will have a high cost in terms of maintenance, replacement, vandalism, etc.
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#7Based on their job openings [0] it looks like Level 5 is going head to head with Google, Cruise, and Uber and building a full autonomy software solution. Looks like they are close to square one though since they are hiring leads for essentially everything: localization, perception, prediction, and controls.
It's an interesting to see all the players trying to have an out if someone withholds either the transportation network, or self driving tech.
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#8This really is the endgame for both Uber and Lyft. IIRC, Uber did $16B last year in revenue and paid something like $13B to drivers. Self driving vehicles will turn their current breakeven/loser business models into massive cash cows.
Neither Uber or Lyft will reach full autonomy before exhausting their runway, unless a miracle occurs and they solve level 5 within the next 1-2 years (caveat: it could happen, but it’s very unlikely). You can’t do hundreds of millions of dollars in raises forever without some proof of progress (or maybe you can if SoftBank is willing to pour money in for a decade). At some point, someone is going to be left holding…
Not just that, getting self-driving approved with regulators is a major challenge. Also, to achieve level 5 we need not just algorithm improvement, our physical infrastructure need to be improved as well. On intersection, two human drivers wave at each other to decide who goes first. How should the human driver communicate with the machine? What should the machine do when there is a dog standing in the middle of a street? Move on and let a human driver take care of it? Isn’t that now a bystander effect? These are just some examples I am not sure if textbook definition of level 5 will address.
Going really extreme: in a car accident in a somewhat remote area, the driver might be able to get an injured passenger out if the passenger stuck. Now a fully autonomous car, there is only passenger. Yes, for sure this is extreme and perhaps likely a dramatic scene only, but it is one of those edge cases we can’t cover in a self-driving car.
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#9This really is the endgame for both Uber and Lyft. IIRC, Uber did $16B last year in revenue and paid something like $13B to drivers. Self driving vehicles will turn their current breakeven/loser business models into massive cash cows.
Clearly this is the thinking of both companies, but I'm not convinced it makes sense. The $13B that Uber paid out last year gave them access to a scalable network of ~7M vehicles, not just the drivers. Even if they reach level 5 autonomy before they run out of runway, how long will it take to build out a network of that size?
Re: Lyft Self-Driving
#10To the extent this works anytime soon it will be so slow and inconsistent that it won’t be economically successful. Any driving service that works worse at night, in bad weather, or outside small well-mapped neighborhoods will not be comprehensive or reliable enough to be economically viable.
Also the idea that self driving cars will end traffic is a dangerous lie to tell. Self driving cars will do nothing to reduce traffic. If anything, self driving cars will increase car trips. And in fact in order to serve people with reasonable service times there will need to be _more_ cars on the road at all times which will more than soak up any additional capacity gained from tighter traffic patterns on restricted access highways.