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Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO

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Re: Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO

#11

Post by olivercameron »

Animats wrote: post #8

That's a reasonable business model. But their self driving doesn't really work reliably yet.[1] Their "deployment" in San Jose is three cars, max speed 25MPH, with a "safety driver" on board. Now they've hired people from the "fake it 'til you make it" self driving projects. Not a good sign. This is similar to what Local Motors and Navya, which make minibus-sized driverless vehicles, are doing - the area and routes a…

Come for a ride (oliver@voyage.auto)! I think you might be impressed with where our technology is. It's really quite good. A lot has happened since August 2017.

We're heavily focused on a retirement city in Florida (125,000 residents on 750 miles of road) and on our G2 vehicle[1]. We recently signed a deal with Enterprise to commercially lease many, many more vehicles than our three initial prototype G1 vehicles.

1. https://news.voyage.auto/introducing-the-voyage-g2-autonomou...

Re: Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO

#12

Post by stephengillie »

olivercameron wrote: post #7

Hello everyone! @olivercameron, CEO of Voyage here. Drew is currently busy at our Testing Grounds shipping a new release, but if there's any Voyage or self-driving car related questions I can answer, I'd love to hear em'! My previous life was at Udacity, where I spent 4 years working on their self-driving car and machine learning curriculum. I learned a ton from working with Sebastian Thrun and the rest of the Udacit…

What are your thoughts on binocular cameras vs LIDAR for car vision? Will we ever get by on just 2 cameras?

Re: Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO

#13

Post by distorted_torus »

olivercameron wrote: post #10
distorted_torus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Oliver, Thanks for taking questions. Few questions: 1) What online resources do you recommend for someone that wants to go from beginner to skilled in the field of self-driving cars? Is there a sequence of courses that you could recommend? 2) What important concepts should this self-learner hone in on as they learn? 3) How can someone that does 1) (and has projects) break into the self-driving cars career?

Hello! Great questions. 1) If you already have a good grasp of Python, I always advise to start with the AI for Robotics MOOC at Udacity, which is my favorite class of all time. Once that's done, I'd take a look at their Deep Learning classes and the Self-Driving Car Nanodegree. 2) I think it's crucial to get to grips with how the whole stack works, so I always advise to get to grips with a middleware like ROS. Also,…

Great answer, thank you! I will look into those courses and dig deep into the algorithms/stack.

Re: Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO

#14

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

bhouston wrote: post #5
nilkn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking this, but it seems his departure from Cruise coincided with the GM acquisition, and the transition to Uber from Otto probably happened because Uber acquired Otto. The primary job changes then are from Tesla to Otto and now from Uber to Voyage.

Why didn't he stay on at GM if he was good/critical? Do not acquiring companies want to keep at the good people, not let them all leave immediately after acquisition?

Lots of good people want to leave after an acquisition. Working for a fast-paced innovative startup is a very different proposition than working for GM.

Re: Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO

#15

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

nilkn wrote: post #3
ta1234567890 wrote: post #2

Not necessarily a bad thing, but it seems that guy is always looking for his next job. Good luck keeping him on board for any significant amount of time. Although maybe he already ran out of self-driving-vehicle startups to work at.

I was just thinking this, but it seems his departure from Cruise coincided with the GM acquisition, and the transition to Uber from Otto probably happened because Uber acquired Otto. The primary job changes then are from Tesla to Otto and now from Uber to Voyage.

Totally agree. I got shit from folks in a different thread when I said I would be wary of hiring people with a lot of "job hopping" on their resume, but this guy totally doesn't look like he fits the bill for that:

1. 2 solid years at Tesla

2. Then moved to Cruise (very easy to understand why someone would want that) but was acquired only 7 mo later. Not hard to understand why he wouldn't want to work at GM, not what he signed up for.

3. Then moved to Otto/Uber where he was for 4 years until now.

Re: Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO

#17

Post by inverse_pi »

Very impressed with some of Voyage's recent hires. A question for @olivercameron,

What makes Voyage different? From what I understand, you pick canonical routes inside private communities. Let's assume demand on these routes are high enough, and there are enough private communities to make a significant market. What prevents Google from coming in and mapping the area in a week and run you out of business? Let's say, hypothetically, I'm a self driving car engineer, why would I pick Voyage over other big players who have a lot more capital and much bigger team with a lot more people like Drew Gray?

Re: Self-Driving Car Startup Voyage Brings on Ex-Tesla, Cruise and Uber Exec as CTO

#20

Post by [deleted] »

inverse_pi wrote: post #17

Very impressed with some of Voyage's recent hires. A question for @olivercameron, What makes Voyage different? From what I understand, you pick canonical routes inside private communities. Let's assume demand on these routes are high enough, and there are enough private communities to make a significant market. What prevents Google from coming in and mapping the area in a week and run you out of business? Let's say,…

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