121–130 of 769 posts
Tesla's auto-pilot can be over-ridden due to the presence of the steering wheels and the pedals. But in a car that has none, you're not in control. And that, is scary no matter how you look at it.
I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…
Uber is literally all over the world, though. Google can barely launch a keyboard app outside the US. Or a payment system. Lyft is still constrained entirely to the US and a handful of large Asian cities. I think people severely underestimate Uber's worldwide push in preparing themselves to be a force to be reckoned with when the autonomous vehicle takes off.
At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.
I have friends that live in one of the neighborhoods they're testing in, here in Austin (Mueller, if you're curious). And they've said the vehicles have been performing well, with no issues at intersections or dealing with pedestrians or cyclists. It's a new-urbanism style neighborhood, with the houses positioned close to the streets, with lots of on-street parking. I imagine it's a challenging environment for the ca…
I'm not sure there's a better spot in Austin to test autonomous cars.
That said, they aren't perfect. 1. They wait just long enough at stop signs when it is their turn, which confuses other drivers. 2. They drive well under the limit, causing small jams at peak congestion.
At least they could have given a more up to date report on what they are doing. 7 years passed since 2009 and all we've seen is a couple of promo videos with scant actual information. We have no idea how they compare to Tesla or other self driving car startups.
I'm interested to see where all the major players end up in 5yrs: • Tesla bootstrapping a ride service on the backs of buyers • Waymo directly rolling their own fleet • Uber trying to get a self-driving fleet up, burning mountains of money to maintain their "monopoly" on Uber for rides • Lyft working with GM to get a fleet up • All of the other car manufacturers trying to get autonomous vehicles going, presumably hop…
> Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive But how is this going to work? In cities, everyone uses their car at exactly the same time: roughly, between 8-9 in the morning and 5-7 in the evening. If you don't own a car, chances are you won't get one when you need it to get to work on time. Or, if there are enough cars for peak hours, then demand for new cars will…
Ride sharing for rush hour would use a ton of compact vehicles. Even if the number of vehicles is the same to account for peak usage, the majority of the vehicles will be much smaller and much less capable, and therefore much less profitable for manufacturers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive But how is this going to work? In cities, everyone uses their car at exactly the same time: roughly, between 8-9 in the morning and 5-7 in the evening. If you don't own a car, chances are you won't get one when you need it to get to work on time. Or, if there are enough cars for peak hours, then demand for new cars will…
Often you need a car to get to the subway which does not take that long. Slug lanes also become more useful with self driving cars. Combine the two and you get a self driving car to central location > car or public transit to city center > self driving car in the city. Remember parking is often 10+$ a day due to land value, so two ~4$ trips can be a net savings. Finally, even a 20-30% drop in demand would be huge in…
And can be more of a hassle or less conveniently located than a transit stop.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla has lane-assist, adaptive cruise control and a few other goodies. Many auto manufacturers have those things. You still have to manually follow GPS directions. Google/Waymo is actually piloting a car from origin to destination without a steering wheel or pedals. That's a much more difficult challenge. Put another way, no blind person is going to sit behind the wheel of a Tesla and tell the car to take him/her to…
>Google's car actually does this, on real roads, today. It should be obvious that Tesla is going to win this race. Tesla already does fully autonomous driving, they released that video in November. And they build real, production cars. "Real artists ship", as Steve Jobs said. If you a manufacturing ace, would you join the company with a long list of failed projects and no actual production cars, or would you join the…
"The average US city gets 26 inches of snow per year." http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/california/mountain_v... "Snowfall is 0 inches." http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/arizona/phoenix "Snowfall is 0 inches." http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/texas/austin "Snowfall is 1 inches." http://www.bestplaces.net/climate/city/washington/kirkland "Snowfall is 4 inches." I hope they are driving far enough from…
Do you really think it hasn't occurred to WayMo/Google that maybe they should test their cars in snow/rain/sleet/fog/confetti?
I still don't understand why every company doing self driving cars is focusing on consumer cars while no major player is doing interstate trucking. Interstate trucking could pretty much be done now, and has several advantages. Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc. And there is a great monetization scheme--no driver me…