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Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

investor.lyft.com

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Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#11

Post by SECProto »

adamnemecek wrote: post #5
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Funny in hindsight from 2016: "Lyft's president says 'majority' of rides will be in self-driving cars by 2021" https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-drivin... https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-third-transportation-revo...

I wonder if it’s possible that this is true in some restricted area where companies are heavily testing their self-driving cars, and COVID reduced the amount of driving people do.

From very brief observation a year ago, it seemed like Lombard Street [1] was 90% self-driving-car training. Definitely a very special case that just disproves the quote from Lyft's president.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/oXrvVYhDXWVxaoQC8

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#12

Post by ra7 »

gtirloni wrote: post #3

Well... "In December 2020, Lyft announced that it will launch a multi-city U.S. robotaxi service in 2023 with Motional." https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-selfdriving-lyft-idUSK...

They also have a partnership with Waymo to provide autonomous rides. Ultimately, I think Lyft, Uber and the likes will just become a provider/maintainer of robotaxi rides, while the actual tech will be done by Waymo et al.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#13

Post by tananaev »

gtirloni wrote: post #3

Well... "In December 2020, Lyft announced that it will launch a multi-city U.S. robotaxi service in 2023 with Motional." https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-selfdriving-lyft-idUSK...

Lyft still works with third party partners, like Motional and Waymo to provide self-driving services on the platform. L5 division was a separate effort to have own self driving car.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#14

Post by alpha_squared »

rkalla wrote: post #9
quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

It's those edge cases that make me think real FSD (vehicles with no steering wheels) is a decade-timescale problem. Figure out 99.9% of driving, but otherwise take a family off a bridge when the sun is blinding the camera? Still need a steering wheel.

Just like reliability SLAs, I suspect every extra nine requires an exponential increase in investment. My armchair-know-nothing assessment is we're maybe at 90% coverage* right now, with maybe 10x all investment up until this point needed to reach 99%; then 10x that to reach 99.9%. Even at 99.9%, though, a failure scenario still threatens injuring or killing 0.1% of drivers (350,000 motorists for US alone).

* Coverage as a percentage of scenario's occurrence over the total duration of driving. For example, over 90% of a long-distance trip will be spent on a highway following traffic patterns within a lane with the occasional lane change.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#15

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim?

He definitely uses ambiguity to his benefit (eg "soon", "by fall/winter/spring/summer" (in which year?)), but I haven't heard anything about Tesla being L5 by the end of 2021.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#16

Post by ravenstine »

minimaxir wrote: post #2

Funny in hindsight from 2016: "Lyft's president says 'majority' of rides will be in self-driving cars by 2021" https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-drivin... https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-third-transportation-revo...

Back in late 2015, I was working at a media firm and one of our top directors called together a meeting with our engineering team to talk to us about the impact of our products/content. He was convinced that by 2018 most people would be using self-driving cars regularly and that this was going to hurt our core product.

I don't think I ever tried harder in my life not to LOL.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#17

Post by [deleted] »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #15
quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? He definitely uses ambiguity to his benefit (eg "soon", "by fall/winter/spring/summer" (in which year?)), but I haven't heard anything about Tesla being L5 by the end of 2021.

[deleted]

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#18

Post by shaoonb »

joshuawright11 wrote: post #10

100m a year, 0 roi expense gone. Also no more shared rides due to COVID (which I expect will never come back to Uber or Lyft since they were gigantic money sinks). Assuming ridership is bouncing back from COVID I wouldn't be surprised if their first profitable quarter was this year.

Uber and Uberlikes are doing fine here in New Zealand. As long as they can pump money into/scam drivers into being cheaper than taxis they will keep market share.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#19

Post by okareaman »

rkalla wrote: post #9
quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

It's those edge cases that make me think real FSD (vehicles with no steering wheels) is a decade-timescale problem. Figure out 99.9% of driving, but otherwise take a family off a bridge when the sun is blinding the camera? Still need a steering wheel.

I used to live in Mountain View where Waymo tests their cars so I would observe them quite often. I sat a railroad crossing with one, thinking about what could go wrong. What if the signal didn't work, but you could hear the train coming and see it way off to the right or left if you looked. Are Waymo cars listening for trains? Or are they looking at railroad guards only? I suppose they could program the train schedule in, but what if the train system changes the schedule? That could be adjusted for, but how much would I trust this system? Not enough to take a nap behind the wheel.
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