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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

#211

Post by azinman2 »

jtolmar wrote: post #199
smoe wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know much about the space, but always found it interesting that most of the conversation is about autonomous driving for individuals, which to me seems to be the last step after e.g cargo outside cities and public transportation has been automated. I reckon because the latter are less sexy, lead to job losses and maybe require more public acceptance? I know there is a lot of work being done in this areas as w…

A city bus carrying 20 people has 5% the drivers-per-person that an individual vehicle has. The driverless system only would save 5% the human effort that it would for a solo vehicle, so it needs to be 20x as good before it's worthwhile. Put another way, the bus with 20 riders is already equivalent to automating 19 cars. Roughly the same idea with freight - a single truck driver serves the needs of many people.

Human drivers still do meaningfully cost money to employ, and they do annoying things like needing to sleep or take rest room breaks. Autonomous trucking would completely revolutionize the industry.

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

#212

Post by Hydraulix989 »

twodave wrote: post #191

I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. They know it's a long way off, they're just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. Perhaps with the exception of Tesla, who I have no explanation for. Self-driving cars are so far down the totem-pole in my opinion--if we're going to have to rework our roadways in order to accommodate self-driving…

> I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success.

To that extent, was this acquisition actually a liquidity event for the employees or just an effective "change of ownership"?

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

#213

Post by paxys »

elpakal wrote: post #73

I learned to drive in Mexico at 13, where there are almost literally no rules or traffic signals (see the black arrow on the wall? that means don't stop). I remember thinking about how different things were when trying to get my driver's license in US at age 16 - almost easier - in spite of how many more rules there were. I wonder how self-driving cars perform when trained in a world of rules and order and are then t…

Either the car is trained on Mexico's streets and so behaves as aggressively as the rest of the traffic, or a significant enough number of vehicles are self driving so they can essentially regulate the streets themselves.

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

#214

Post by brandmeyer »

smoe wrote: post #161
plank_time wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw Levandowski do a presentation of self-driving at an Uber all-hands and it was then and there that I knew that self-driving is 20+ years away. The example video showed so many small things that we take for granted as a human driver that would need to be built in or hand coded that AI or neural nets would never be able to get. There just isn’t a way that you can train every single little thing that could cause an…

I don’t know much about the space, but always found it interesting that most of the conversation is about autonomous driving for individuals, which to me seems to be the last step after e.g cargo outside cities and public transportation has been automated. I reckon because the latter are less sexy, lead to job losses and maybe require more public acceptance? I know there is a lot of work being done in this areas as w…

Profit margin. The driver just isn't an expensive or limiting part of cargo transport.

To be clear, the conversation also isn't about autonomous driving for individually-owned cars. Tesla's disasters aside, its about autonomous taxi services.

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

#215

Post by paxys »

tdhz77 wrote: post #107

I keep getting downvoted. I’ll keep saying it, we need government investment into self driving. It cannot be done by private sector alone.

What would a government invest in this? Money? Technical expertise? The private sector already has a lot more of both.

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

#216

Post by throwaway0a5e »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #187
gher-shyu3i wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the new Tacomas made in Mexico? Do you think that will affect their reliability?

You'd be surprised how many good things come out of "Made in Mexico"... the biggest issues are always out of spec components and starting at a new factory and having people be scared of reporting QC problems. I'd expect the Toyota methodology to trickle down.

If we were talking about VW or Ford making stuff in Mexico people would be shitting all over made in Mexico. "Hurr durr side stepping muh UAW and muh OSHA" and stuff like that

But brands that start with T and end with A can do no wrong on the white collar parts of the internet so Toyota gets a pass.

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

#218

Post by danielheath »

azinman2 wrote: post #211
jtolmar wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A city bus carrying 20 people has 5% the drivers-per-person that an individual vehicle has. The driverless system only would save 5% the human effort that it would for a solo vehicle, so it needs to be 20x as good before it's worthwhile. Put another way, the bus with 20 riders is already equivalent to automating 19 cars. Roughly the same idea with freight - a single truck driver serves the needs of many people.

Human drivers still do meaningfully cost money to employ, and they do annoying things like needing to sleep or take rest room breaks. Autonomous trucking would completely revolutionize the industry.

Autonomous trucks for urban trucking are a pipe dream, but maybe for long-haul routes.

That said, it's not at all clear to me that developing autonomous trucks for long interstate routes would be meaningfully cheaper than laying rail on literally every high-traffic route on the planet, which uses perfectly-understood technology and has entirely predictable returns.

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

#219

Post by throwaway0a5e »

rbg246 wrote: post #184
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toyota is the last company I expect to bring something new to market well. The last time they did that it was the Prius and it was kind of a fluke IMO. Toyota's entire market is convincing people (the bulk of whom will trade in in a few years) that a Camry/4Runner/Sienna is worth substantially more than an Altima/Tahoe/Pacifica based on a bunch of promises about reliability after 150k that the statistical first owner…

Not sure whether you have factored in lost days of revenue into your back of envelope TCO. When a cheaper less reliable car is in the garage being repaired it's not just about the cost of repair but also the opportunity cost of lost revenue.

So how do you reconcile this with all the cheap domestics being used as fleet vehicles in commercial applications where downtime directly translates to money?

Pretty much every minivan fleet in the US runs on Pacificas and Transit connects. Small trucks are always the Colorado.

Of course the cabbies love their Priuses but they only begrudgingly switched after the supply of ex-cop crown vics dried up.

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