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Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

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Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#121

Post by TheCoelacanth »

7952 wrote: post #95
redredrobot wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amazon doesn’t invest in greenfield projects that are not customer facing I don't think this is very true, they are just very good at turning around and selling the internal tech. The underlying technology for AWS was developed internally and it was not customer facing at first. Similarly if you look at their internal data platforms, they have invested heavily even though it's not customer facing (yet, because even…

Wasn't there an edict that amazon internal services have to be designed from the ground up to be externalizable. So even internal technology is designed with being customer facing in mind.

Does than mandate predate the creation of AWS?

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#122

Post by bathtub365 »

chii wrote: post #93
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad to live in a world where those kind of things still exist. Lying your way to success?

if you become successful at the venture, then was it lying in the first place?

It obviously was still lying, even if you are successful. How is there any question? You either lie and are unsuccessful, lie and are successful, or lie in a legally material way and are sued or fined, and are either successful or unsuccessful. All outcomes still started with a lie.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#123

Post by samstave »

orbifold wrote: post #55
achow wrote: post #49

How did Zoox start? In 2012, Kentley-Klay stumbled on a blog post about Google’s self-driving car project, then pretty much the only one in the field. He saw the company’s prototypes as unsightly half-measures.. Then, one day, he walked into his Melbourne office (animation, video production) and announced he was off to America to fulfill his driverless dreams. In a move that some will call devious and others will cal…

Fake it until you raise 1 billion and then sell your company for 1 billion?

I’m working on my fifth $Billion...

I gave up on the first four...

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#124

Post by arkades »

duncanawoods wrote: post #92
smallnamespace wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you noticed that the Odyssey is one long celebration of doing exactly that?

I'm not sure Greek myths are great sources of ethical behaviour given, you know, all the rape, incest, bestiality, cannibalism and more.

Quite a lot of Greek myths, when not stripped down to the "simplified for story-telling to kids" versions, are straight-up case studies / moral lessons to adults.

I'd never look at the Odyssey and mistake it as something to emulate. That people do is kind of surprising.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#125

Post by csours »

Is $1B a lot? It would certainly be a lot for me, but:

> "Zoox has already raised about $1 billion in funding — and once was valued at $3.2 billion"

More and more I'm reminded to search for context when presented with a big-looking number.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#126

Post by csours »

goshx wrote: post #83

> Zoox has been by far the most ambitious self-driving tech company as it's been working on developing a fully integrated vehicle, not just the core autonomous technology. > Zoox planned from the beginning to develop the technology, build a car and operate a robotaxi service. Not even Waymo is trying to bite off that much (although Cruise is). Is Tesla intentionally omitted or am I missing something?

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, this is solely my opinion and it is my opinion alone.

I think the tech press doesn't believe that Tesla is building a self-driving product.

I don't know if camera based computer vision by itself will ever be enough for full self driving. I think we can demonstrate that it is not enough at this time, and we can also demonstrate that human vision also fails at times; human vision has the benefit of some extremely specialized "software"

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#127

Post by csours »

hevelvarik wrote: post #107
numpad0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoom is Level 4, any experimental SDCs is Level 4 and all production SDC technology is Level 2. Few manufacturers thought L3 is simple enough to at least try, but all were abandoned for above reasons. By definitions, Level 2: driver always pays attention Level 3: car pays attention, may request driver Level 4: car do not require driver This seems simple enough, but Level 3 requires car to be able to drive entirely by…

Thanks for defining. I’m missing something: what is the purpose of level 3. Isn’t level 4 all you could ask for?

If you're a consumer, you probably don't want level 3. If you're a company selling self driving cars, you probably don't want level 3.

If you're a research organization developing self driving cars, you will find yourself stuck at level 3, because level 4 is really really hard. Going from level 3 to level 4 means getting rid of any problem that would keep you at level 3.

Disclaimer: I work for GM, not on SDC, this is solely my opinion.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#128

Post by 0x8BADF00D »

throw24234 wrote: post #26
whoisjuan wrote: post #6

Zoox raised almost a billion so terrible exit for the investors, who basically just parked their money for several years. Zoox likely ran out of money and nobody wants to keep dumping money in this space given the anemic progress in the last couple of years. But here is an interesting take. Amazon is an formidable acquirer and probably the only big-tech that knows how to squeeze from their M&A activity. They probably…

> Also kind of interesting that they are an opportunistic buyer (almost vulturous) that most of the times only pulls the trigger when the acquisition target is in their lows. Unsurprising since Bezos himself worked in a Hedge fund. The Autonomous Driving hype train is slowing down, so this is the perfect opportunity for this move. Interestingly, with this move, Bezos can soon rival Musk for the next 'billionaire supe…

> The Autonomous Driving hype train is slowing down, so this is the perfect opportunity for this move.

Zoox in particular was a LARP of an autonomous driving company. Until any of these companies start manufacturing, they’re literally LARPing. At least Tesla shipped an actual product.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#129

Post by gregmac »

joncrane wrote: post #113
kiernanmcgowan wrote: post #63

I lived along one of the Zoox test routes in the North Beach neighborhood of SF. My corner (Filbert and Grant) was also a tourist hot-spot to get up to Coit Tower with families, segway tours, and other meanderers being common place. Suffice it to say that I don't think self-driving car tech is ready for city streets. Zoox never put anyone in harms way, but damn did it hold up traffic if there was an "out of place" pe…

>Self-driving tech may be close to cruise control 2.0 - that is highway exit to highway exit navigation This is why the main first application of autonomous driving is going to be long haul trucking. The current regulations about duty time for humans in long haul trucking create inefficiencies. Now imagine that there are facilities just off of highway on- and off-ramps where truck drivers hang out. The autonomous veh…

I was watching an interesting video about this the other day [1] which suggested that one approach might also be a convoy of trucks, where the first one has a driver (even though it may be driving autonomously on the highway) followed by several autonomous trucks. The human driver can handle bad road conditions, mechanical problems, etc. It seems like a logical step on the way to fully autonomous, and significantly increases the capacity of freight per driver.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlPrAKtegFQ

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#130

Post by agakshat »

This is such a ridiculously good deal for Amazon. The collection of talent alone is worth more, let alone the tech Zoox has built up which Amazon can put to so much good use starting from inter-warehouse deliveries, and slowly getting closer to the consumer as the tech matures.
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