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Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

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Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#121

Post by cannonpr »

Animats wrote: post #69

Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1] Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining…

I think that might be missing the point of something like uber a bit, they could very well just rent you the self driving cars of individuals when they are not using them. Once self driving features hit most cars, companies like uber will be very well placed to capitalise on that. As software providers for the networks of self driving cars and trucks, owned by others.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#122

Post by celticninja »

Animats wrote: post #69

Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1] Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining…

And all of that is only going to be profitable if they are somehow allowed to operate fully autonomous cars without the need for a driver. If a driver wage has to be paid then the additional cost of an autonomous car is going to fuck up the already slim margin for potential​ profit. And whilst they have been able to disrupt the existing system by bypassing or ignoring laws they don't like and then fighting them in the courts there is no country on earth, at least not in somewhere they want to to operate​, that will allow them to run an autonomous car and seek approval later.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#123

Post by celticninja »

timewarrior wrote: post #70
Animats wrote: post #69

Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1] Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining…

I think the biggest cost in this business is the human component. For that all you need to do is check the price difference between renting for a day or getting taxi for a day. Given a choice, Uber would love to be the first to have self driving cars. Once they do that their business model scales predictably with capital. Whoever gets self driving technology right, will own all transportation and logistics - which is…

In addition they need the law to allow them to have driverless vehicles, right now these vehicles need a human driver 'just in case' with that expense autonomous vehicles will struggle against their traditional rivals. Where uber have an issue so that whilst Google can wait for the laws to allow for it Uber can't burn money for that long.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#124

Post by yawaworht12 »

kogepathic wrote: post #120
yawaworht12 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And if he downloaded them but never handed them over or never did anything else with them after leaving Google? I think one of the crazy things about all this is that having files from a previous employer is not a smoking gun. I wouldn't be surprised that with the blurring or work and life boundaries that a significant portion of people on HN have files from a previous employer on their personal computers. I still to…

> I wouldn't be surprised that with the blurring or work and life boundaries that a significant portion of people on HN have files from a previous employer on their personal computers. Maybe you do, I don't. Leaving an employer while retaining a copy of their confidential data is IMO a massively unethical thing to do. I won't speak for others but when I leave an employer I do not take any data with me, not even noteb…

I didn't say I intentionally keep things from previous employers. I return or delete everything that I know about, but that doesn't mean that I don't occasionally come across stuff that I wasn't aware I was still in possession of from time to time. Oftentimes, it's an archived email, but sometimes it's a file. Blurred work/life boundaries contributes to this happening from time to time.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#126

Post by Neliquat »

cstejerean wrote: post #95
djsumdog wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not aware drivers could lease vehicles from Uber. I assumed they couldn't because I once reserved a ReachNow car, only to find an Uber driver setting up in it. He had ended his ride by accident, and was on the phone with their customer service. He was talking about needing to start work. The customer service rep said there was another car nearby (it was 2 blocks away when I looked at the app). The guy then says…

That seems unlikely. You need to register each car you intend to drive with Uber and each one requires them to perform an inspection. So the chances of just grabbing a ZipCar and using it for Uber for the day being allowed are pretty much zero.

Ehh, except I have seen people use different cars. I imagine you could just have a random zipcar inspected, and grab a similar looking one each time. People who drive for uber already have a terrible idea of finances, so not suprising.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#127

Post by Neliquat »

kolbe wrote: post #29

For all the relative good that Facebook and Google have done for the image of how contemporary business gets done in Silicon Valley, Uber is doing its best to make sure we realize that y'all are just as big a shitheads as the rest of corporate America.

Facebook and google are doing that fine by themselves.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#128

Post by Balgair »

fstuff wrote: post #111
sangnoir wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber already lease out vehicles so people who don't have a car but want to drive for Uber.... can lease it out from them Do you have any links for Uber-backed leases? This is the first I've heard of them and I'd like to know more. Last O heard, Uber was encouraging/facilitating leases from 3rd parties for its drivers without being involved in the resulting lease itself.

Copied this reddit post ive linked to before that sums it up: "It's their xchangleasing leasing program. It's basically a sub prime car loan like from the housing bubble days. You use Uber as your income verification and they'll let anyone lease a car provided they do X amount rides each week regardless of credit. They require a three year lease, you a have month to back out but after that you're on the hook for the…

Wow! So, Uber is not a taxi company, it's a sub-prime auto-loan company with draconian terms that masquerades as a taxi company. So much more makes sense about Uber in this light.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#129

Post by Animats »

timewarrior wrote: post #89
bduerst wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Matt Levine succinctly said it best: >Eventually there will be self-driving cars, and there's no special reason to think that Uber will be the best at building them, or that its dominant position in the ride-hailing-app space will protect it from better self-driving-car businesses.

Agreed. Unless they have a monopoly on self driving technology (which I seriously doubt). On the other hand, I feel that we will not have self driving cars for a really long time. Instead I believe we will have flying cars before that, who will solve the last mile problem. They will take you from the house to the hub and hub to the final destination. Buses can transport people between hubs. With self driving cars you…

tunnel from SF to South Bay

I have a copy of the 1960 U.S. Corps of Engineers plan for the Bay Area. It totally predates environmentalism, and they were thinking big. They proposed five freeways on the SF peninsula - US 101, I-280, CA-1, CA-35, and one out in the bay on stilts. There's a second Bay Bridge at Candlestick. The area south of the Dumbarton bridge was to be filled in and developed.

Marin was planned as a heavy industry center, with steel mills at Tiburon. There was considerable WWII heavy industry in the north bay, including big shipyards, and the Corps thought that would grow, not shrink.

The SF peninsula would be a center for "business machines". They got that right.

Re: Uber must turn over information about its acquisition of Otto to Waymo

#130

Post by SilasX »

Animats wrote: post #69

Uber's self-driving system doesn't actually have to work beyond the demo level. It's mostly to pump up the company's valuation. Uber is losing money, and unless they find another sucker within a year, they're toast. They've already had to borrow on unfavorable terms.[1] Operating a fleet of self-driving cars may turn out to be a lousy business. Uber's business model is built around others buying the cars, maintaining…

How does the link show that they were borrowing on unfavorable terms? Crunchbase doesn't show the terms of the funding round, and when I followed the link for the July 2016 round, it shows that they got a loan at 5%, which is ridiculously good in tech:

https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/07/new-reports-confirm-1-15b-...

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