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Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

forbes.com

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Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#151

Post by taligent »

jpatokal wrote: post #145
cynwoody wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We've had computers and sensors powerful enough for decades, only Google have all of that maps data, polished again and again by android users using maps (and now Ingress) to make it more reliable. Of what relevance is Google's map data (which they buy from vendors)? Google's map data doesn't tell the car if a pedestrian or another car or a fire hydrant is where it is about to go. The car has to figure that out all…

You don't quite understand the scale at which Google operates. What they're essentially doing is building a 3D model of the entire world , using their own data (did you think those Street View cars were just taking pretty pictures?). By comparing the real world against the model, they'll be instantly able to distinguish between the fire hydrant (which was there yesterday) and the pedestrian (who wasn't). No algorithm…

I don't think you understand the scale of the world.

Street View is YEARS out of date in most major international cities and doesn't exist in the majority of smaller cities. It would be dangerous borderline criminal for a self-driving car to be relying on it for anything important.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#152

Post by Tichy »

overgard wrote: post #46
warfangle wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the parent, but I do think there is something inherently wrong about it. I grew up around cars, driving cars (heck, my college job was the stereotypical pizza delivery guy). I live in a metropolitan area where I can go just about anywhere I need to with the swipe of a card and waiting a few minutes on a train platform. The feeling of independence that I didn't need to worry about the CV boots on my axles screwing…

You're lucky. It's a luxury to live in an area with effective mass transportation. A lot of people aren't so lucky. The freedom a vehicle provides those people is quite real.

Usually you can choose where you live. Where I live (Germany) the government unfortunately subsidizes car travel and living in the country side. Not sure what the economics factors are in the US. I suppose gas is cheaper, but still, owning a car must cost a lot of money. Really cheaper to go car+suburb than pay the additinal money you saved on the car for rent in the city?

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#153

Post by taligent »

logn wrote: post #10

"Because people consistently underestimate the implications of a change in technology—are you listening, Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders, Sears, etc.?" Um, are you listening Ford, Hyundai, Honda, GM? Can't wait until they legislate their way back to competitiveness with google.

All of those companies have had self-driving car projects for a decade now.

Might want to pay attention.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#154

Post by [deleted] »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #133
Cushman wrote: post #50

I've been saying this to anyone who will listen for years. I really believe this technology will touch everything . Real estate markets will shift dramatically as the average commute time halves or quarters. Transport costs will plummet, making every single physical object cheaper. Public transit will be dirt cheap, always punctual, and take you absolutely anywhere. Tens of thousands of people each year will escape d…

You're missing one important factor - many people, me included, just like to drive cars and they don't treat them as "transport vehicle only". I would refuse to use a driverless car even if it would be more economic, more safe and would transport me faster.

[deleted]

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#155

Post by 4abhishekpathak »

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #133
Cushman wrote: post #50

I've been saying this to anyone who will listen for years. I really believe this technology will touch everything . Real estate markets will shift dramatically as the average commute time halves or quarters. Transport costs will plummet, making every single physical object cheaper. Public transit will be dirt cheap, always punctual, and take you absolutely anywhere. Tens of thousands of people each year will escape d…

You're missing one important factor - many people, me included, just like to drive cars and they don't treat them as "transport vehicle only". I would refuse to use a driverless car even if it would be more economic, more safe and would transport me faster.

Do many people also like to drive trains,or pilot airplanes?

Its a paradigm shift in the usage of an established commodity,one that will take some time getting used to.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#156

Post by tzs »

h2s wrote: post #83

Holy shit. Forbes is an absolute cesspool of a website. There are about three paragraphs of text, and then I have to pony up another ad impression by clicking through to the next page in order to keep reading. All the while, two enormous fixed nav bars follow my every move at both the top and the bottom of the page. Meanwhile a veritable flotilla of fixed-position "social icons" on the left beg me to help Forbes adve…

Their print links[1] are pretty good though. Normally, I object to linking to print pages because they usually are formatted in a way that makes them unreadable (e.g., very tiny font and very wide columns), and often provide no way to reasonably find the non-print version if you want to look for things like comments and related articles.

However, the Forbes print link uses a reasonable font and a reasonable column width, and has at the bottom a link to the non-print page. (It does invoke a print dialog, which is a bit annoying).

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your...

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#157

Post by tzs »

Joeri wrote: post #53
Cushman wrote: post #50

I've been saying this to anyone who will listen for years. I really believe this technology will touch everything . Real estate markets will shift dramatically as the average commute time halves or quarters. Transport costs will plummet, making every single physical object cheaper. Public transit will be dirt cheap, always punctual, and take you absolutely anywhere. Tens of thousands of people each year will escape d…

90 percent of those in the transportation sector will lose their jobs. Car companies will go broke when demand plummets. Pizza delivery will not be an entrylevel job. I think the net effect will be hugely positive, but like all paradigm shifts this is going to cause immense social upheaval and initially look like it only makes things worse.

> Pizza delivery will not be an entrylevel job

Why not? People are still going to want the pizza delivered to their door, not to their driveway or parking lot.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#158

Post by lucian1900 »

sopooneo wrote: post #149
lucian1900 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you use an optionally driverless car? On long trips you could just take a nap, but you could have your fun driving any time. However, at some point the safety factor may force you to stop driving. I wouldn't want you to be driving, when a machine could do it better.

Many will not take such a rational approach to the safety issue. Every driverless car fatality will get huge press. No one I know has ever died in an airplane, but quite a few I know are afraid to fly.

Indeed, public perception will be an issue. I still have hope that people will get over it.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#159

Post by kdragon »

jpatokal wrote: post #139
MichaelApproved wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take the next leap and see that you don't need to actually own the car at all. No need to send a car back home. No need to negotiate with your neighbor. We all share a fleet of cars like a taxi service. Need a car? Pull out your smartphone app and push the "call" button that sends a nearby car to your location. You could also schedule a pickup for the exact time you get off work. No need to send an empty car back hom…

...except if said family has kids of the age that they need car seats, which are a pain in the ass to install correctly; ripping them out and putting them back in twice a day is both ridiculous and unsafe. And you can't realistically even have shared cars with pre-installed car seats, because they need to be adjusted all the frigging time as the kid grows. FWIW, neither my wife or I had ever owned a car, we managed j…

Virtually all auto accidents are because of human error, and computers can handle any situation with lightning-fast (literally) reflexes.

If driver-less cars become the norm, the practical need for toddler car seats will cease to exist.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#160

Post by defrost »

gfodor wrote: post #102
defrost wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're talking about a system for autonomously controlling every motor vehicle in the U.S., Not a (single) system, rather one such system per car - standard protocols for inter system comms are yet to arrive and each vehicle needs to react to local changes such as pedestrians w/out reference to an external global computing infrastructure. It's not a big data, massively interconnected problem at all - the elegance c…

It's both. Its hyperlocal real-time understanding and eye-in-the-sky big data analysis to keep everything running smoothly. Think about where you end up 10-15 years after this technology comes out: "cars" driving on multi-level, many-laned highways travelling 150-200mph a few meters apart, traffic flow coordinated to optimize energy usage and minimize time to destination. It's a hard problem and not solvable via loca…

> It's a hard problem and not solvable via local agents alone.

Oh, Really?

Ants seem to do okay.

Following your, umm,, solution of critical external hyper networked global oversight it seems there'd be the mother of all traffic accidents if the servers went out.

Biologically emergent local behaviour seems wonderfully adept at converging on globally optimal solutions via local agent actions. Perhaps you're right, maybe Google is the only company capable of replicating the efficiencies of termite mounds.

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