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

How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 41 posts

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#11

Post by azernik »

paganel wrote: post #5
curo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Waymo has pretty much cracked that nut. They've covered several million miles of testing in AZ and CA. You might be right, but do you have any links where I could see where your skepticism is coming from. Waymo vs Quanergy is apples and oranges I think

Not the OP, but I think rain and especially snow and fog don’t happen that often in those two States and afaik driving autonomously under those circumstances is still an unsolved problem with no easy solution in sight. Now, if you want to extend the self-driving thing to other parts of the world you’ll most probably need to solve the singularity problem, at least for driving in the Eastern European capital city where…

All of those scenarios are definitely a thing in sunny clear Oakland, CA. And San Francisco, where a lot of the testing has been run, is notorious for both its hostile and unpredictable driver/biker/pedestrian behavior, and for its fog. Rain and snow, which change the observed road surface, seem to be the harder problems.

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#12

Post by leesec »

curo wrote: post #3
ejlangev wrote: post #2

I suspect this will be a fairly regular story in the next few months/years. Self-driving tech seems to be a lot further off than people think so a lot of companies that were formerly very exciting will not be able to deliver and will need to close up shop. I think there's some possibility that it will go the way of flying cars at least for now. Fortunately a lot of the tech that does work can find a second life as pr…

I thought Waymo has pretty much cracked that nut. They've covered several million miles of testing in AZ and CA. You might be right, but do you have any links where I could see where your skepticism is coming from. Waymo vs Quanergy is apples and oranges I think

Waymo has the best tech for sure and even they are far off from full autonomy. Full autonomy in Phoenix, sure, they're the closest, but not full global autonomy.

The other issue being those cars prolly cost somewhere in the $500,000 range at the moment. Not exactly a consumer product.

Check comma.ai if you're looking for cheap, accessible, self-driving capabilities (still a long ways off, but you can get hands free today on 15+ cars for under 1k in plenty of common situations).

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#13

Post by xvector »

> In Eldada’s vision, lidar sensors could be deployed along the border, monitoring remote regions for movement, then determining whether there were people attempting unauthorized crossings [...] Eldada acknowledged that a contract for a virtual wall would be controversial, but he described it as a kind of protest against Trump’s version of border security. “I hate the word ‘wall’. We are anti-wall. We have a technology solution,” he said.

This physically nauseates me. Where are our ethics? Just because we can engineer something does not mean we should.

It makes me glad that this company seems to be nothing but vaporware.

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#14

Post by ModernMech »

ejlangev wrote: post #2

I suspect this will be a fairly regular story in the next few months/years. Self-driving tech seems to be a lot further off than people think so a lot of companies that were formerly very exciting will not be able to deliver and will need to close up shop. I think there's some possibility that it will go the way of flying cars at least for now. Fortunately a lot of the tech that does work can find a second life as pr…

This is kind of what I thought when I was thinking about entering the space. Especially when I started looking around and interviewing at different places, they all seemed to be doing the same thing in the same way. They were just repeating the successes of the DARPA Urban challenge, and making the systems more polished and capable. They made impressive demos and then got bought up for impressive amounts. But like most things, this follows the 80/20 rule, so most of the work is still ahead of us. We're probably 80% of the way there, but that last 20% is going to take decades and probably some fundamental breakthroughs in sensors and AI. It's going to take a while.

It just seems like every automaker heard that autonomous is the next thing, so they went out shopping for autonomous startups without a clear sense of what they were after and how hard it was going to be to get there. I think a lot of them are going to be feeling buyer's remorse.

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#15

Post by notfromhere »

xvector wrote: post #13

> In Eldada’s vision, lidar sensors could be deployed along the border, monitoring remote regions for movement, then determining whether there were people attempting unauthorized crossings [...] Eldada acknowledged that a contract for a virtual wall would be controversial, but he described it as a kind of protest against Trump’s version of border security. “I hate the word ‘wall’. We are anti-wall. We have a technolo…

i dont think the arguments about a border wall were ever about morality, but more about it being a huge waste of money

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#17

Post by zaroth »

jonny_eh wrote: post #8
paulddraper wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true. But Bird is a still billion dollar company selling transportation that is compatible with only certain weather and population density. If you can make 5% of the world's transportation 5x better, you have an enormous success on your hands.

> Bird is a still billion dollar company It's hype at this point, we'll see how that shakes out as well.

I’ve been in Paris this week and I’ve started to see more of them. I’ve found because they are silent they have an absolutely minimum impact on me.

They appear to be able to slow to walking speed and still remain stable, I’ve walked right along side one without any concern.

I’m thinking safety concerns are overblown. It’s a rad way to get around.

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#18

Post by zaroth »

notfromhere wrote: post #15
xvector wrote: post #13

> In Eldada’s vision, lidar sensors could be deployed along the border, monitoring remote regions for movement, then determining whether there were people attempting unauthorized crossings [...] Eldada acknowledged that a contract for a virtual wall would be controversial, but he described it as a kind of protest against Trump’s version of border security. “I hate the word ‘wall’. We are anti-wall. We have a technolo…

i dont think the arguments about a border wall were ever about morality, but more about it being a huge waste of money

Would the border wall be a huge waste of money?

It’s a weird game where the stricter you enforce the less people try to come in the first place. So it’s all about signaling.

And if a wall is to be built, should it not be a virtual wall to reduce cost and improve the likelihood that one day it can be merely switched off?

Wouldn’t broad sensors of this type have massive secondary applications?

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#19

Post by shkkmo »

zaroth wrote: post #17
jonny_eh wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bird is a still billion dollar company It's hype at this point, we'll see how that shakes out as well.

I’ve been in Paris this week and I’ve started to see more of them. I’ve found because they are silent they have an absolutely minimum impact on me. They appear to be able to slow to walking speed and still remain stable, I’ve walked right along side one without any concern. I’m thinking safety concerns are overblown. It’s a rad way to get around.

Yet I still see a great deal of very irresponsible driving of those scooters. I expect there to be a lot of local pushback as regulators catch up.

Re: How a billion dollar autonomous vehicle startup lost its way

#20

Post by coldtea »

paganel wrote: post #5
curo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Waymo has pretty much cracked that nut. They've covered several million miles of testing in AZ and CA. You might be right, but do you have any links where I could see where your skepticism is coming from. Waymo vs Quanergy is apples and oranges I think

Not the OP, but I think rain and especially snow and fog don’t happen that often in those two States and afaik driving autonomously under those circumstances is still an unsolved problem with no easy solution in sight. Now, if you want to extend the self-driving thing to other parts of the world you’ll most probably need to solve the singularity problem, at least for driving in the Eastern European capital city where…

>at least for driving in the Eastern European capital city where I’m currently living where you have to actually “guess” what the other traffic participants will do next: is that kid going against the flow of traffic on his bike? (answer: yes) Is that cab going to cut me off in the middle of the intersection and should I take my foot off the acceleration pedal so that we won’t crash? (answer: yes to both questions). Are those pedestrians going to jaywalk without checking for any incoming vehicles? (answer: yes). All these things happened to me during my short city drive half an hour ago.

Those sound very quaint. Try India, China, SEA, most of Latin America and so on...

Post reply on HN