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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#161

Post by ucaetano »

yessql wrote: post #152
ucaetano wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a prediction, not a comparison.

That's a super conservative prediction which has zero growth from current sales numbers in it. Tesla grows has historically grown at about 50% per year.

Not talking about the number of cars sold, talking about that translating into self-driving capabilities. And in that sense, it is a very aggressive prediction, given that Google has had fully-autonomous, no-backup-driver, public-road-testing for over a year.

So you can say that Tesla is at least 1-years behind. More like 4-5.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#162

Post by btbuildem »

bambax wrote: post #107
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

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…

Look at tuk-tuks and minibuses in developing countries -- the US has a lot of catching up to do since public transit was destroyed.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#163

Post by googthrwwy1234 »

joeguilmette wrote: post #49

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…

None of the above. Tesla will reconsider and re-fashion Autopilot as an advanced driver assist. A car that you drive yourself, but can't crash would be worth a significant premium. Everyone else will ride the PR gravy train and GTFO a few years later. Google is just the first of many.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#164

Post by FT_intern »

DamnYuppie wrote: post #155
celticninja wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User is ubiquitous only because of its ability to burn an astonishing amount of money. Their bet is that they am do this long enough to make themselves the market leader. I am not convinced that they can continue to lose money at the rate they currently are for the future potential as a monopoly provider. At some point investors are going to ask for a return or bail on the company.

I don't disagree with you but people said the same thing about amazon for over a decade....

what economies of scale does ride sharing have?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#165

Post by choxi »

rorykoehler wrote: post #95
stormbrew wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It won't be worth anything because autonomous ride-sharing will be a pricing game. Anyone who undercuts Uber, and there will be plenty of willing and able companies, will beat them.

There are a few other things they could compete on:

- Availability. Who has the largest network and highest availability? - Car Design. Who has the most comfortable or fully featured cars? - Safety. Who has the safest car? Who has the safest track record?

It might eventually become a race to the bottom, but I think there's still plenty of opportunity to compete on other fronts for at least the next five years.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#166

Post by mschip »

celticninja wrote: post #146
mschip wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber will continue to hold a lot of the chips in this race. Consider the Tesla or GM examples - a regression in revenue will not be acceptable. So if they're currently selling x cars at y $ a year they will need to continue that revenue without actually selling cars. This means they'll have to get really good at understanding how many rides over the span of a vehicle will continue that revenue and provide just the ri…

I dont see how that is the case. User is currently burning through more eyes to maintain their market position and that is without a fleet of vehicles to operate and maintain. Moving to autonomous vehicles may cut their staff costs\remove drivers from their costs column, but this cost is moved to vehicles and in many jurisdictions at least for the medium term a human driver will be required even if it is just paid to…

My point was that regardless of the dollars and cents for Uber to transition from staff to cars, or even if it works out at all, Uber still has the information to decide it will take X cars in Y region to make Z revenue. The only other player with that kind of information (on a smaller scale) is Lyft.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#167

Post by cortesoft »

tedajax wrote: post #144
stormbrew wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You know it's funny though because I stopped using Uber with the most recent update that completely screwed up the UX. There's a billion variables that will go into which companies succeed and fail.

What was the change that did it for you? I didn't notice that much different, at least in how i use it.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#168

Post by stillworks »

bdrool wrote: post #57
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

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…

> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff. Or, if everyone has a self-driving car of their own (or one that can be converted to self-driving), people will rent out their cars AirBnB-style when they aren't using them. I mean, why not? You've already got a garage, a driveway, etc. Might…

This is an interesting thought experiment. What do people feel about recreational driving or weekend leisure driving ? For commuting, I am totally in favor of autonomous vehicles. But for a weekend or leisure drive I may not want to bother with shared ownership.

I am not from U.S. but the experience I have had with using local air travel (with Southwest) in the U.S. I am prepared to caffine up and drive up to 400mi rather than bother with the hassles of flying. (I have done that a few times and found it quite enjoyable, maybe there was a novelty factor to it)

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#169

Post by sbov »

tedajax wrote: post #156
bambax wrote: post #107

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…

Fully autonomous fleets of cars will push societal changes we can't yet predict. Right now everyone shows up to work at about the same time. Is that a fixed position society will always uphold? I don't know, there's a lot of things I don't know. The only thing I can predict is that in the same way the personal automobile upended the social structures of the day, autonomous vehicles will likely do something similar.

Always? No. Will autonomous cars change it? Doubtful. In fact, it could make it worse, because who cares if your commute is 3 hours instead of 2 as long as you can watch American Idol while you're doing it.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#170

Post by vinceguidry »

bdrool wrote: post #57
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

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…

> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff. Or, if everyone has a self-driving car of their own (or one that can be converted to self-driving), people will rent out their cars AirBnB-style when they aren't using them. I mean, why not? You've already got a garage, a driveway, etc. Might…

Not going to happen, or if it does it won't last. The so-called sharing economy has mostly just devolved to low-barriers-to-entry entrepreneurship. AirBnB listings start off with ordinary joes renting out their spare bedrooms, but they got crowded out in a few years by businessmen providing real services, and consumers follow.

Uber drivers at first were mostly just driving in their spare time, but over the years the professionals came in and crowded them out.

The lesson here is that it takes work to provide a level of service that consumers are willing to pay for. That work is best done through organization and professionalization. Some guy renting his car out during the work day isn't going to find it profitable enough to continue doing when he has to compete against dedicated on-demand rental services.

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