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GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

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Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#111

Post by AnotherGoodName »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #105
throwaway48476 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So stupid. If something has proved to be possible then you as number 2 can hire people from 1 to replicate it. China is built on this principle.

That would require paying more than competitors and that’s unacceptable to anyone except for the successful companies that commonly do just this. I’m serious about this point too. Eg. Intel pays less than half of what tsmc in Taiwan pays for similar jobs on a ppp basis after 20years of wage freezes and cuts at intel. They can’t poach any talent and investors want more layoffs and wage freezes next quarter to fix the…

To follow up on above I’ll give a clear example. $77k/yr hardware engineer degree required job at intel in a high cost of living area for anyone wondering how dire the situation is at these uncompetitive companies.

https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Intel-Corporation/job-titles/Inte...

They unsurprisingly rate ‘very easy interview’ on glassdoor since they’d hire no one without lowering the bar significantly. I would never begrudge anyone working at these broken companies either fwiw. You just have to be aware it’s a job you have while looking for a reasonably paying job. If anyone wants a lesson in the core place the rot starts consider maybe there’s a reason intel is struggling to achieve what it’s much higher paying competitors achieve.

A very similar story plays out for GM, Boeing and the other rotting companies. Short term focus leading to non-competitiveness in the labor market leading to poorer results in all aspects. GM is not going to win this. They can’t due to a focus on production lines using minimum wage staff and applying that to knowledge work.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#112

Post by rvnx »

kajecounterhack wrote: post #95
BXlnt2EachOther wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

possible context... summoning from NY to LA around January 2018 was a real promise by Musk. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920 edit: removed talk of downvotes, just providing the tweet.

thanks for the context, shitposting is hard to detect!

It was circa the same period that humans were supposed to be back on the moon (now delayed to end of 2027) :’(

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#113

Post by amacneil »

atomic128 wrote: post #2

Here's an interesting "lidar gem" from Hacker News a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33554679 Lidar obstacle detection algorithm from a Git repo leaked onto Tor This is a drivable region mapping (obstacle detection) algorithm found in what appears to be a git repo leaked from an autonomous vehicle company in 2017. The repo was available through one or more Tor hidden services for several years. Th…

Is there any indication this object detection algo was originally from Cruise? The linked code has been rewritten and has no attribution beyond "an autonomous vehicle company".

Fun fact - Cruise did actually have a source code leak a few years back, some engineer decided to embrace the 4 hour work week and outsource their role to a contractor, who uploaded their work to a public github repo (I assume this was accidental and they intended to make a private repo). But it was not core AV code.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#114

Post by wahern »

ra7 wrote: post #13

GM believed Kyle Vogt when he was hyping up their tech by having small, meaningless deployments in a dozen cities and promising $1B revenue by 2025. Then they had that incident and GM found out exactly how far behind Waymo they are. Waymo is now giving 175k rides every week and expanding to new markets every year. No other robotaxi company in the entire country giving rides to the public. Now they've gone back to wha…

I took cruise at least a dozen times, back when they were giving free rides from downtown SF late at night, originally advertised as a promotion for restaurant and hospitality workers going home. (I was just hacking late into the night ;) I lived on the other side of town, so it was about a 6 mile trip.

I can't speak to their technology, but generally speaking Cruise seemed too cautious, both in the aggressiveness of the driving, and in how quickly the company capitulated. I've taken Waymo a few times and what stands out to me is how aggressive Waymo cars are. As a passenger this aggressiveness makes them feel more sophisticated, not to mention faster, but the cars also spook pedestrians to a greater extent as they nose their way into traffic or through turns. Nonetheless, Waymo has been more adept at moving past bad publicity than Cruise, including in the face of accidents.

Above and beyond whatever technological shortcomings there may have been[1], I think there was a management and business development mismatch between GM and Cruise. Cruise manifestly worked well enough. With better management--more honest, but also more aggressive--it could have been a contender; heck, it was (is?) the only proven competitor to Waymo for autonomous public taxi service, at least in the U.S.

[1] In 3 Waymo trips remote intervention was required once, which is a comparable ratio to my Cruise trips.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#115

Post by margalabargala »

rgovostes wrote: post #3

> GM said in a statement that “... an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” were the reasons for the change. Isn't there basically Google/Waymo and then, seemingly much further behind, Tesla Cybertaxi, Amazon/Zoox, and Uber/Yandex? Cruise allegedly has one of the most sophisticated autonomous driving platforms, and GM's Super Cruise (if they share any tech) is comparable to Tesla FSD. Strange that they would bow…

> Small anecdote: I visited a GM dealership this week and the salesperson told me Super Cruise was not enabled for test drives. The excuse was pretty weak, like the dealership would have to pay for the service or something. GM might have the technology but they are completely bungling the strategy.

That was a your-dealership issue, not a GM issue. GM doesn't run the dealerships (though they sure have plenty of influence).

I test drove the Silverado EV a month ago and got to try out super cruise.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#116

Post by boshalfoshal »

standardUser wrote: post #19

Waymo needs competition. Who else is even close to being able to provide it? I'd hate to think Tesla is next in line because they haven't even started a commercial pilot program yet.

I think it will be Tesla. Regulatory pressures for them just lifted, and they move faster than all the other driverless companies, courtesy of Elon's fairly hardcore mode of operation.

It may not be a perfect driving solution (probably 1:1 teleoperator to car in the beginning), but their go to market speed is undeniably better than Waymo et al. Waymo, Cruise, etc have to map out an entire region and have long rollout timelines. In theory Tesla could say they will deploy in X city, talk with the local government to get necessary approvals, and get it going after a few test drives. Thats the tail, anyway. With that kind of go to market speed you can start acquiring customers pretty easily and start scaling up the business. Its basically the typical SaaS setup - cut some corners for market share and become the defacto player in it after some time.

I wouldn't write them out purely out of spite. Their solution is the most conducive to scaling laws, on the ML, operations, and business side.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#117

Post by jefftk »

boshalfoshal wrote: post #110
rgovostes wrote: post #3

> GM said in a statement that “... an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” were the reasons for the change. Isn't there basically Google/Waymo and then, seemingly much further behind, Tesla Cybertaxi, Amazon/Zoox, and Uber/Yandex? Cruise allegedly has one of the most sophisticated autonomous driving platforms, and GM's Super Cruise (if they share any tech) is comparable to Tesla FSD. Strange that they would bow…

Supercruise might be comparable to Tesla's "Autosteer" product but its incomparable to Tesla's paid "FSD Supervised" product. The latter is closer to a Waymo or Cruise than it is to a Mercedes or GM driver assist.

> The latter is closer to a Waymo or Cruise than it is to a Mercedes or GM driver assist.

It depends how you look at it, but in the (super limited) cases where you can use Mercedes Drive Pilot you can legally and safely read a book, watch a movie, or work while in the driver's seat. [1] That's not the case with any Tesla product.

[1] https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#118

Post by [deleted] »

rgovostes wrote: post #11
mingus88 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on my anecdotal experience, another issue is that salespeople are not trained on the tech I worked on a feature for new vehicles and the company failed in part because buyers simply didn’t know those features were part of the vehicle. Dealers never set it up for the buyer and it wasn’t something many people would think to do on their own A salesperson isn’t going to jeopardize an easy sale by bungling some fanc…

I don't want to be a jerk but the salesperson couldn't pronounce "autonomous" which tells me they aren't being trained in selling the feature at all. I can't even remember him referring to it by the marketing name.

[deleted]

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#119

Post by ggreer »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #90
axus wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Tesla service worse than the dealerships? Maybe things have changed, my opinion is completely based on what I've read on the Internet.

Their buying/test drive experience is top tier IMO but I know multiple people who waited literally 4+ months to get undrivable cars repaired. Those experiences were mostly pre-2023 so maybe it's better now

It was bad a couple years ago but has gotten a lot better. The reason for this was that Tesla scaled up manufacturing quickly, but took longer to scale up service centers and certify third party shops. For a while there was only one certified Tesla repair shop within 100 miles of me. Now there are at least ten, four of which are Tesla service centers.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#120

Post by jaimex2 »

boshalfoshal wrote: post #110
rgovostes wrote: post #3

> GM said in a statement that “... an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” were the reasons for the change. Isn't there basically Google/Waymo and then, seemingly much further behind, Tesla Cybertaxi, Amazon/Zoox, and Uber/Yandex? Cruise allegedly has one of the most sophisticated autonomous driving platforms, and GM's Super Cruise (if they share any tech) is comparable to Tesla FSD. Strange that they would bow…

Supercruise might be comparable to Tesla's "Autosteer" product but its incomparable to Tesla's paid "FSD Supervised" product. The latter is closer to a Waymo or Cruise than it is to a Mercedes or GM driver assist.

It's not even close between Tesla and Waymo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hv9HtWUf27s

Arguably this is Waymo in its "home turf"

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