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VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

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Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#11

Post by baybal2 »

boxcardavin wrote: post #2

This is bizarre, I’m in non-car autonomy but I talk daily with car autonomy folks. Everyone has been expecting a consolidation of companies through acquisitions but drive.ai showed us that it’s probably not going to happen. At The Information mobility event last month one of the SoftBank fellas said that autonomous cars will be ‘won’ by those who can outspend everyone else. Looks like backing up billions with more bi…

> SoftBank fellas said that autonomous cars will be ‘won’ by those who can outspend everyone else.

Listen to them more. What else do you expect fund managers to say?

We will not see any real self driving in our generation, and may be not even after. That is much more for practical consideration than that of technical possibility.

Second to that, just how many self driving and AI startups are plain fraud? The amount of companies getting 9 digit valuations with nothing more than OpenCV hello worlds should make people to at least scratch their heads

Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#12

Post by nutjob2 »

boxcardavin wrote: post #2

This is bizarre, I’m in non-car autonomy but I talk daily with car autonomy folks. Everyone has been expecting a consolidation of companies through acquisitions but drive.ai showed us that it’s probably not going to happen. At The Information mobility event last month one of the SoftBank fellas said that autonomous cars will be ‘won’ by those who can outspend everyone else. Looks like backing up billions with more bi…

I think the corporate types are assuming that throwing money and engineers at the problem is going to "win" it, but I'm not sure it will. Google has plenty of both of those things and they seem to be stalling at the moment, or the very least they're not confident enough to go out and claim the market for themselves.

I think the engineers have been probably been wildly optimistic as usual, and the last 5% of car autonomy is going to take as much effort as the first 95%, or maybe double that.

Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#13

Post by jillesvangurp »

lovelycarboxyl wrote: post #3

Unrelated, but does anyone know how many electric cars have an autonomy of more than 700km, while also charging fully in less than one hour? Is that even possible with the current technology?

Most of the more expensive EVs come pretty close to that and seem to be competing on getting the numbers better there. E.g. I think Tesla is planning to break the 400 mile barrier pretty soon. 300 mile is pretty normal already. Most EVs charge pretty quickly to about 80%. 20 minutes to half an hour gets you plenty of range. Mostly EV owners don't charge to 100% unless they are at home or doing some overnight stop.

I think most normal drivers on a cross country trip need bathroom breaks, lunch/snacks/drinks, leg stretching etc. every 2-3 hours. Great opportunity to plug in and recharge enough for another 2-3 hours. Range anxiety is mostly irrational and mostly a non technical problem as your car probably has more endurance than you.

Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#14

Post by choppaface »

Argo also released a relatively massive 250GB dataset recently: https://www.argoverse.org/

The problem of Perception has a long road ahead at any of these companies and Argo is taking a very long position with this funding round. The headcount growth is rather worrisome but other than Aptiv there aren't many fleets that span multiple continents.

Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#16

Post by choppaface »

tjoff wrote: post #10
boxcardavin wrote: post #2

This is bizarre, I’m in non-car autonomy but I talk daily with car autonomy folks. Everyone has been expecting a consolidation of companies through acquisitions but drive.ai showed us that it’s probably not going to happen. At The Information mobility event last month one of the SoftBank fellas said that autonomous cars will be ‘won’ by those who can outspend everyone else. Looks like backing up billions with more bi…

I would have thought that Uber had proved that you can't just throw money at the problem.

Uber proved it's possible to burn a lot of money on a team that is ineffective due to needless infighting and excessive internal competition.

Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#17

Post by konschubert »

boxcardavin wrote: post #2

This is bizarre, I’m in non-car autonomy but I talk daily with car autonomy folks. Everyone has been expecting a consolidation of companies through acquisitions but drive.ai showed us that it’s probably not going to happen. At The Information mobility event last month one of the SoftBank fellas said that autonomous cars will be ‘won’ by those who can outspend everyone else. Looks like backing up billions with more bi…

> one of the SoftBank fellas said that autonomous cars will be ‘won’ by those who can outspend everyone else

This may not be true if there is still a fundamental leap to be made

Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#18

Post by dasloop »

RaceWon wrote: post #15

God I wish I could be alive 436 years from today; when the self-driving cars might actually be able to give me a run for my money.

Someone in the year 1583: God I wish I could be alive 436 years from today to write a post in HN about self-driving cars :)

Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#19

Post by threeseed »

konschubert wrote: post #17
boxcardavin wrote: post #2

This is bizarre, I’m in non-car autonomy but I talk daily with car autonomy folks. Everyone has been expecting a consolidation of companies through acquisitions but drive.ai showed us that it’s probably not going to happen. At The Information mobility event last month one of the SoftBank fellas said that autonomous cars will be ‘won’ by those who can outspend everyone else. Looks like backing up billions with more bi…

> one of the SoftBank fellas said that autonomous cars will be ‘won’ by those who can outspend everyone else This may not be true if there is still a fundamental leap to be made

Not sure if there are necessarily fundamental leaps needed.

Rather hundreds or thousands of small leaps. For example solving problems like this:

https://sites.google.com/view/lidar-adv

Re: VW invests $2.6B in self-driving startup Argo AI as part of Ford alliance

#20

Post by sschueller »

ml_basics wrote: post #4

"Argo AI’s focus remains on delivering a SAE Level 4-capable SDS to be applied for ridesharing and goods delivery services in dense urban areas." Perhaps naive question from an outsider to the AV world: what does "SAE Level 4-capable SDS" mean?

According to Elon [1] Tesla will have this by the end of 2020. At some point reality has to kick in or not?

[1] https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-drivin...

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