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

Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 294 posts

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#261

Post by wahsd »

dojomouse wrote: post #197

So much criticism of Google! My question: Why on earth would Google want to cede any significant chunk of the personal transport value stream to Uber - or acquire them at a $40Bil+ valuation - when the main (only?) semi-uniquely valuable thing Uber have (a large network of drivers) is worth approximately zero dollars in a self-driving vehicle scenario. Uber are valuable and effective in a human-driven vehicle model b…

As much as I am also inclined to jump on the bandwagon to chastize Google for having approaching zero capacity to compete with Uber in this space, I know that they are moving on this for the same reason that Uber is working on developing their own autonomous / self driving vehicles.

As fun as the Uber-jerking is, the future, if not sabotaged by all the many different interests that have high stakes in doing so, will be one where there are few if any real competitors to one monopolistic offerer of autonomous transportation services. Obviously Uber wants to be that one monopoly and I expect they will continue with their dirty tricks to get there, but others will also try to knock the king from the hill before he can complete his castle. Lyft, Curb, now Google, they will all try to beat Uber to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#263

Post by tlholaday »

dannymick wrote: post #262

You can talk about valuations or Google becoming a cheeky competitor to Uber but there are some deep economic implications. Millions of cab drivers or anyone who drives for a living will be losing their jobs, as a result of this.

> losing their jobs

Changing their jobs

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#264

Post by potatolicious »

dannymick wrote: post #262

You can talk about valuations or Google becoming a cheeky competitor to Uber but there are some deep economic implications. Millions of cab drivers or anyone who drives for a living will be losing their jobs, as a result of this.

Indeed, and the way we casually throw around "oh they'll find something else to do" is shameful. Many (most!) people affected by this won't be able to retrain into new, better jobs, and the knowledge economy is largely off-limits to many of them anyways.

The "retraining" argument is nothing more than a tool for our kind to disingenuously dismiss the negative impacts that come with progress.

[edit] and in the time it took to write this post someone already responded to that effect, hurray HN predictability :)

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#265

Post by Alupis »

visakanv wrote: post #228
Alupis wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a lot of unknowns and serious challenges and difficult problems to solve before driver-less vehicles can become "mainstream". Majority (all?) of the road testing has been on fairly controlled roads with "normal" circumstances, ie. not a blizzard with iced roads, hydroplaning, debris falling in front of the vehicle at speed, etc. Longevity of the vehicle - it's doubtful a driverless vehicle purchased toda…

> The moment the first human casualty occurs do to some software/hardware failure, there will be serious ramifications for the self-driving world. Just want to add to the discussion a reminder that this is said about literally every new piece of technology that has ever happened- the first human casuality from riding a horse, first human casualty from driving a car, etc. It's interesting to note that we're expected t…

> Also out of curiosity– re: longevity, why would a driverless car have to be on the road for 15 years?

There would become a significant cost burden to the owner if this was what was necessary. Most people can't afford to do multiple thousand dollar repairs to their vehicles every few years. Currently replacing the ECU in most modern vehicles will run you close to $1,000 after parts and labor, and these are the very "dumb" kind of car computers (comparatively).

> When renting becomes THAT cheap, ownership makes less sense (for most people, at least).

This may make sense to someone living in a big city, but when you shift to the suburbs or a more rural area, renting would become a significant inconvenience. In my experience, people living in big cities are the ones who often do not own vehicles and/or rent and/or use things like Uber/Lyft and/or Zip cars. Suburbians (which is where majority of our population lives in the US) would not be able to take advantage of this type of service for a number of logistical reasons.

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#266

Post by maxerickson »

Alupis wrote: post #215
jfoutz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're saying, and i agree there are a ton in testing. But it's not like i can go to the volvo website and check the box for the "no steering wheel" option at any price. Furthermore if i'm say, WalMart, I can't call up any truck manufacturers and get a self driving option for my next fleet purchases. That's in spite of having a huge infrastructure for supporting and maintaining my trucks. Today, unl…

There's also a lot of unknowns and serious challenges and difficult problems to solve before driver-less vehicles can become "mainstream". Majority (all?) of the road testing has been on fairly controlled roads with "normal" circumstances, ie. not a blizzard with iced roads, hydroplaning, debris falling in front of the vehicle at speed, etc. Longevity of the vehicle - it's doubtful a driverless vehicle purchased toda…

Computers are better at traction control than humans (a computerized traction control system is already mandated in new US vehicles: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#Re... ).

Longevity might be a problem, but it's reducible to an investment decision, the vehicles don't necessarily have to last 15 years unmodified to be practical.

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#267

Post by jfoutz »

Alupis wrote: post #215
jfoutz wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what you're saying, and i agree there are a ton in testing. But it's not like i can go to the volvo website and check the box for the "no steering wheel" option at any price. Furthermore if i'm say, WalMart, I can't call up any truck manufacturers and get a self driving option for my next fleet purchases. That's in spite of having a huge infrastructure for supporting and maintaining my trucks. Today, unl…

There's also a lot of unknowns and serious challenges and difficult problems to solve before driver-less vehicles can become "mainstream". Majority (all?) of the road testing has been on fairly controlled roads with "normal" circumstances, ie. not a blizzard with iced roads, hydroplaning, debris falling in front of the vehicle at speed, etc. Longevity of the vehicle - it's doubtful a driverless vehicle purchased toda…

The first iterations will not be consumer cars. I would have put my money on trucking before taxis, but it looks like i'm wrong.

The first iterations will be expensive, triple the cost of a normal car perhaps? that's ok if they get 10x the use. When you put in that kind of investment, it's ok to have dedicated staff for maintenance. You also get to learn a lot about failure modes, when and how to do upgrades, there's lots of good stuff that can happen there.

Google is in a pretty unique place. They have the data to make them work. They can afford a large staff to maintain the cars. They can afford flight data recorders for the cars. They can afford to create an insurance subsidiary. Insurance is cheap if you can prove robot cars never cause accidents. They can afford these things in dollars, technical talent, legal talent, and international reach.

Uber is lucky because it's not google's core business. They've got a lot of cash, but they don't (afaict) have the depth of resources to throw at the zillion problems that will inevitably come up. The only piece google lacks is the focus. It's google's game to lose.

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#268

Post by Alupis »

krisgee wrote: post #244
visakanv wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moment the first human casualty occurs do to some software/hardware failure, there will be serious ramifications for the self-driving world. Just want to add to the discussion a reminder that this is said about literally every new piece of technology that has ever happened- the first human casuality from riding a horse, first human casualty from driving a car, etc. It's interesting to note that we're expected t…

>It's interesting to note that we're expected to lose our minds over the first human death with New Technology Y, when Old Technology X is typically killing humans all the time. Exactly, call me when they're killing 1.2 million people a year[1]. The number of people killed by automobiles is completely fucking insane and the only reason we're cool with it is it mostly doesn't happen to someone a large number of people…

> The number of people killed by automobiles is completely fucking insane

We're largely talking about only the US market here -- in which only (and I say that word relatively) 32,000 people died in any sort of automobile related accident last year (including siting in their driveway idling and somehow died).

To put this in perspective, the common Flu (a totally vaccinatable, preventable, and treatable illness) killed more than 52,000 people in the US last year alone.

In reality, automobiles in the US are the safest they have ever been since 1949, and automobile related deaths have dropped more than 26% since 2005 alone.

According to the CDC, automobile related deaths are not even in the top 10 leading causes of death in the US.

Last year, heart disease was responsible for 596,577 US deaths last year alone. Stroke claimed 128,932 US lives. Diabetes took 73,831 american lives. Suicide robbed 39,518 people their life last year -- in excess of 7,000 more than died by automobile related accidents.

In 2009, approximately a grand total of 2,436,652 died in the US of all causes (including natural causes). Of that number, automobile related deaths only accounts for 1%. Of the entire US population, we're talking about 0.0096%...

According to the CDC, in 2012, 10,322 people (or 31%) of all automobile related deaths were alcohol-related deaths. Another 18% of automobile related deaths are attributed to drugs other than alcohol in the same year. That accounts for just about 50% of all vehicle related deaths, leaving the true automobile related deaths due to accident at a shockingly low number (relatively) of about 15,000 people per year.

All of this is to say, relatively speaking, automobile related deaths are not a significant concern anymore. It does not make logical nor financial sense to do anything significant in this sector while ignoring or not increasing efforts in these other much more significant areas.

So, to counter your original assertion -- no, it's not "completely fucking insane"... the amount of people dying from the common Flu is.

Sources:

[1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/09/guns-tr...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...

[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/top-causes-of-death-united-st...

[5] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...

[6] http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#269

Post by visakanv »

krisgee wrote: post #244
visakanv wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moment the first human casualty occurs do to some software/hardware failure, there will be serious ramifications for the self-driving world. Just want to add to the discussion a reminder that this is said about literally every new piece of technology that has ever happened- the first human casuality from riding a horse, first human casualty from driving a car, etc. It's interesting to note that we're expected t…

>It's interesting to note that we're expected to lose our minds over the first human death with New Technology Y, when Old Technology X is typically killing humans all the time. Exactly, call me when they're killing 1.2 million people a year[1]. The number of people killed by automobiles is completely fucking insane and the only reason we're cool with it is it mostly doesn't happen to someone a large number of people…

I'm reminded of this single story on Twitter where a woman unknowingly livetweeted her husband's death in a road accident- and then later found out it was him. I went to find her Twitter account, and saw that she basically spent everyday comforting other people who lost loved ones to road accidents... and it seemed like this was happening every day. Crazy, terrible shit.

Re: Google Is Developing Its Own Uber Competitor

#270

Post by visakanv »

krisgee wrote: post #244
visakanv wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moment the first human casualty occurs do to some software/hardware failure, there will be serious ramifications for the self-driving world. Just want to add to the discussion a reminder that this is said about literally every new piece of technology that has ever happened- the first human casuality from riding a horse, first human casualty from driving a car, etc. It's interesting to note that we're expected t…

>It's interesting to note that we're expected to lose our minds over the first human death with New Technology Y, when Old Technology X is typically killing humans all the time. Exactly, call me when they're killing 1.2 million people a year[1]. The number of people killed by automobiles is completely fucking insane and the only reason we're cool with it is it mostly doesn't happen to someone a large number of people…

I'm reminded of this single story on Twitter where a woman unknowingly livetweeted her husband's death in a road accident- and then later found out it was him. I went to find her Twitter account, and saw that she basically spent everyday comforting other people who lost loved ones to road accidents... and it seemed like this was happening every day. Crazy, terrible shit.
Post reply on HN