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

Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

plus.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 201 posts

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#161

Post by pinaceae »

i guess it has a strong appeal to the hardcore android crowd. people that get excited about utility, but have no sense at all for style. not a bad thing, mind you, but it is already obvious that it will take a company that gets style, like Tesla and yes, Apple, to make this appealing to people on the other side of the spectrum. people who cannot unsee ugliness, assymetry and disproportion.

personnally i just hope roads stay open for motorcycles in the future. self-driven transportation can be massive fun.

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#162

Post by erikpukinskis »

randyrand wrote: post #98
zanny wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You won't lease or own self driving cars. That makes no sense. You will just subscribe to a drive service if you drive a lot or just pay per ride and have one pick you up. I easily see you scheduling regular events (leave for work at 8, for example) and your car will be out front waiting each day.

No way. In the city, yes. But in the somewhat wealthier suburbs many people will spring for the "self-driving" package. It might only be a ~$10k add on or less by my estimates. Most people will want to be able get in the car without having to request and wait for a ride (most people already have this luxury).

Sure, at first. But then your daughter has the SUV and your husband has the sedan and you want to get groceries and your sons want to go to two different friends houses, so you end up using sepf-driving cars all the time anyway, and you realize it's actually quite nice not to have to worry about maintenance and cleaning and charging. And you realize you could save $300 a month. And oh, you can just order a 4-wheel-drive vehicle pre-loaded with kayaks for your camping trip? And... and... and.

We haven't imagine half of what cars-as-a-service will entail. Some people will always hold onto their vehicles, but in the end I don't think a hunk of plastic and metal will be able to compete with a fleet of special-purpose vehicles supported by a staff of thousands.

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#163

Post by andrewljohnson »

bane wrote: post #75

Lots of people are point at this being Uber's future "auto-car". Here's an alternative idea: - You can buy this car. It costs $100,000. But that's okay. - When you aren't actively using it, you tell it to go "Uber mode" and pick up and drive people around as part of the "Uber Network of Cars" - You split the fee with Uber/Lyft/whoever. They get 30%, you get 70%. If the average ride pays you $7, over 5 years that's li…

Seems more likely that companies will own the fleets, and robo jitney won't be a thing.

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#164

Post by zanny »

ghaff wrote: post #89
zanny wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autos will never be sold to consumers. At least the general public. Or at least average people will never buy one. It is a tremendous, insane, unacceptable waste to have autos parked all day. The only way these things make sense is through subscription services where you can summon a car from a fleet whenever you want, so that you can maximize utilization.

However, the reason for that is that the majority of people keep roughly the same hours. And the current system at least has the advantage that cars are generally near their owners rather than driving additional miles to get to centralized locations. Given various assumptions, utilization could certainly be increased--though we already have the ZipCar and taxi options--but I'm unconvinced that the pay-per-use economi…

Except it is a self managing fleet. Autos would not just stay in central locations, they will use current parking infrastructure to distribute themselves. People will have drive ways for a hundred years even if everyone gets rid of the cars - and you'll get 5% off your subscription to let them park autos in your drive way.

And the majority is just maximal utilization. Even then, it is drastically less than the total number of vehicles in the system, and the reuse of those vehicles every other hour of the day besides peak hour is only a utilization gain.

It will be much cheaper to subscribe to an auto service than own one. In the best case one auto could possibly represent the vehicle usage of a dozen or more people if their driving times align properly. And the worst case is that it is still two or three times the utilization.

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#165

Post by ollysb »

toyg wrote: post #73
nichodges wrote: post #11

My initial reaction was dismay that Google seemingly didn't consult any decent auto designers on this. But then I wonder if that's actually fine. My kids will likely be baffled by the idea that we attached so much of our own identity to our cars. The financial investment in cars to make a statement about ourselves (over and above getting us from A to B) is immensely irrational. With self driving cars ownership will l…

> With self driving cars ownership will likely disappear That's a bold statement. It might become more of a luxury, i.e. something you buy when you reach a certain income, rather than something you need to live. But disappear, no, it won't. As anecdote, I can bring the experience of European life. In a lot of European towns and cities, you can live quite comfortably without a car, today -- after all, they were built…

In London I know a fair few people that earn over £100,000. None of them own cars. Aside from the fact that the tube or a bike is generally far faster for A-B the drinking culture means that people really don't want to be stuck having to drive a car home.

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#166

Post by Pyxl101 »

rtpg wrote: post #134
eru wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surge pricing also limits demand. And that's a good thing; it's better if there's an expensive spot available, than no cheap spots.

only better for rich people. Rent seeking does not follow free market principles (due to fixed supply), and so loses any form of moral highground in my opinion.

Surge pricing is not rent-seeking. If the surge pricing was not warranted by the situation, then it creates a trivial way for competitors to eat the business's lunch by offering the same service at a slightly lower price.

"Uber is surge pricing right now but Lyft is not, so I'll get my ride with Lyft"

Surge pricing is a legitimate function of a properly functioning market. When demand has skyrocketed, or supply is constrained, prices _should_ rise. This is the mechanism by which markets enable resources to be allocated efficiently. Whether someone is poor or rich, if they desire a thing more than other people do (for the sake of argument, other people of similar wealth), then they should have a mechanism by which to express that preference. That preference is the price they're willing to pay.

If the area is congested, and you _really_ want to go somewhere right now, then surge pricing gives you two ways to accomplish this. (1) To the extent that capacity is fixed, the ability to out-bid someone else means that you can take the capacity from someone else who doesn't desire it as much as you do. (2) The higher price incentivizes more supply. Uber drivers who see an exceptional surge price will make themselves available in order to take advantage of higher wages. A higher surge price is pure profit for the driver, if he can make himself available to drive right now versus some other time in the week

Lastly, no supply is fully constrained. If the price of parking in a city skyrockets, then this creates a strong incentive for parking businesses to find a way to make more parking available. This might mean buying existing buildings, demolishing them, and converting them into parking structures; or it might mean that in the routine course of building new structures, the high price of parking will make it economical to dig a few stories deeper and provide a few more levels' worth of parking. Price and incentives always influence the operation of the market.

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#167

Post by jordonwii »

derefr wrote: post #62
amckenna wrote: post #25

A lot of people are bashing the car's appearance, but I think people forget that putting the first driverless cars on the road is as much a PR challenge as it is a technological challenge. Truly autonomous driverless cars is a huge shift in the way we have operated for almost 100 years. There will be a lot of caution and resistance from political groups, concerned citizens, entrenched interests, etc. The car that the…

> The car that they put forward first needs to be non-threatening, safe, and easy to adopt. Moreover, I think Google wants their car to be recognizable as a driverless car . They don't want it to blend in, because people would (at least for now) think that was "spooky"—that any car anywhere around them could be being secretly driven by a robot. Instead, the visual distinctness means that it's instantly clear that the…

That sounds plausible to me. Apparently, even things like exhaust from another car in cold weather can interact with the laser in a way such that the car can mistake it for a large object directly in front of the vehicle.

Source: tech talk at my university by a self-driving car engineer.

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#168

Post by ollysb »

aetherson wrote: post #82
millstone wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My family doesn't own our cars because we like driving them. We own them for convenience! The prospect of ordering a car, waiting for it to arrive, futzing with car seats, transferring car toys, dealing with scarcity and surge pricing, etc. for every trip is very unappealing. And renting is usually more expensive than owning anyways! In the near term, I'm looking forwards to hybrid assistive technologies. We took a v…

I think that virtually nobody who is certain that self-driving cars will be short-term rentals (ie, the Uber model) has children. It's a HUGE blind spot that the of course mostly very young, mostly childless tech commentariat has. The value of car ownership as a way to have large amounts of your property available at whatever location you are presently at without you constantly engaging in a bunch of loading and unlo…

Couldn't you order a car replete with everything you needed? There are lot's of parents on the roads, presumably there's a fair degree of overlap regarding what they'd want in the car?

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#169

Post by aetherson »

eru wrote: post #135
aetherson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that virtually nobody who is certain that self-driving cars will be short-term rentals (ie, the Uber model) has children. It's a HUGE blind spot that the of course mostly very young, mostly childless tech commentariat has. The value of car ownership as a way to have large amounts of your property available at whatever location you are presently at without you constantly engaging in a bunch of loading and unlo…

> I think that virtually nobody who is certain that self-driving cars will be short-term rentals (ie, the Uber model) has children. It's a HUGE blind spot that the of course mostly very young, mostly childless tech commentariat has. Why? Can't be less convenient than trains or planes. People take those all the time with kids. (My parents used to.)

I have a hard time believing this is a serious comment. Obviously plane travel is in no way comparable to travel intended to replace the family car -- they're wildly different modes of transportation with different destinations, plane travel is vastly less frequent, and its many annoyances are dealt with because it is the only reasonably expedited way to travel the distances it covers.

Depending on what you mean by "train" travel, that is perhaps more comparable (ie, local subway is in some ways a substitutable good for local car travel). In short, though: families are considerably less likely to find local rail travel useful than are single people. Yes, of course you can find people who use it by choice or necessity. But when you have to tote a baby carrier and diaper bag, or your kid's soccer gear, or just keep track of a gaggle of children in a crowded train, it's just much less convenient.

Re: Google Self-Driving Car Project's first vehicle prototype

#170

Post by aetherson »

ollysb wrote: post #168
aetherson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that virtually nobody who is certain that self-driving cars will be short-term rentals (ie, the Uber model) has children. It's a HUGE blind spot that the of course mostly very young, mostly childless tech commentariat has. The value of car ownership as a way to have large amounts of your property available at whatever location you are presently at without you constantly engaging in a bunch of loading and unlo…

Couldn't you order a car replete with everything you needed? There are lot's of parents on the roads, presumably there's a fair degree of overlap regarding what they'd want in the car?

No, of course not. It's not generic cartons of "insert kid item here," it's your stuff. It's your kid's clothes, it's your stroller, it's your sporting goods, it's all the elements of a life that isn't the mid-20's techie lifestyle, where all your important material goods are your various computing devices at home and your smartphone.

I suppose that you could try to have the cars come with baby seats (though there are like a million variations of baby seats depending on the age of your child, so that's going to be a headache) and things like kleenex/wipes/snacks/drinks (though replenishing those is going to be a huge logistical issue and there are some legit sanitary concerns). But lots of the stuff people tote around is individual, valuable property.

This is what I'm saying about the blind spot of the tech commentariat. Next time you walk past a family unloading their car, glance at their trunk. It's twice the size of your car's trunk, and it's filled with stuff all the time.

Post reply on HN