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Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

reuters.com

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Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#171

Post by derefr »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #107
adamt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deal is probably similar to the way an airline buys planes. E.g consider when Ryanair bought 200 737s for $22Bn [1] which is about the same in it's entire market cap. An order like this is probably: * For a delivery spread over 10+ years * The vehicles will almost certainly be leased/finance * Each vehicle will probably assume a 5+ year working life and have a residual of about perhaps 25% of list after 5 years g…

> After 5 years, the car is perhaps worth 20k. No way. Absolutely no way. Looking online I'm seeing estimates of 300,000 to 500,000 miles per year in a taxi. If Uber is even NEAR that max, this car is going to have 300,000 miles on it. Hell even 150,000 is a ton of miles on a used vehicle. Looking at KBB with a base S-Class that's 5 years old with 300,000 miles you're looking at roughly $12k in "good" condition (beca…

Cars are devalued by mileage because the average car is taken care of so poorly that small damage accumulates into big, irreversable damage over time. For example, waxing wears off -> unwaxed surface pits -> rust forms -> holes form. If you re-wax the car often enough to prevent it from ever pitting, you'll never see rust or holes no matter how long you own the car. Same for most of the other components.

Individual drivers may not be able to take very good care of their cars, but large companies that use fleets of cars can take them regularly (perhaps even every night, as their default storage) to maintenance garages and have them restored.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#172

Post by csours »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #21
spaceflunky wrote: post #18

At that kind of volume, would it make more sense to have MB develop a bespoke car for Uber? The S-Class is a great car, but I'm sure there are Uber-specific improvements that can be made. Why would you order some many of something 'off-the-shelf'?

I don't think you'd find any manufacturer who would tool up for a bespoke car. Uber either needs to buy an existing manufacturer with existing large scale capacity, or build out their own capacity. And we've seen with Tesla how much and long that capacity takes to build out for only 100K vehicles/year. Uber is capital chasing a potential treasure chest. Google, Tesla, GM/Lyft/Cruise are the real players it appears.

100k vehicles/year is 1/2 to 1/4 of capacity of a vehicle production line; any automaker would retool for 100k guaranteed sales, if the price was right.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#173

Post by konschubert »

In the German source[1] it is very clear that the order is under the condition that Mercedes delivers an autonomous self-driving vehicle.

It is also clearly stated there that Daimler is not expecting to be able to deliver such a car before 2020.

Basically, Uber said: "Once you're able to build a self-driving S class, we will buy 100.000 of them". And Daimler said: "We will come back to it."

[1]http://m.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082...

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#174

Post by csours »

pcl wrote: post #5

Wow, I wonder what a contract like that looks like, and how many years the payments and deliveries are spread out over. Assuming a massively-discounted price of $25,000 per car, that comes to $2.5 billion!

The lowest I could imagine them selling for is 45k per car. 25k isn't a discount, it's a loss.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#175

Post by BinaryIdiot »

jaycroft wrote: post #137
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True which is a $250k difference if my numbers are even correct (I mean I think they're closer than parent's but who knows). But $250k isn't that much when the company is a billion dollar company.

A difference of 250m, rather than 250k, which again, I guess still isn't that much for a 60 billion dollar company. Total depreciation on these is going to eat up up a billion in value a year, or only about 2% of market cap, assuming they keep or grow their valuation.

Oh man how could I make such a mistake? I got thrown off by the lack of zeros. I can't even edit it. :(

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#176

Post by abalone »

msoad wrote: post #144

TLDR: It's not self driving. It's data collecting cars for now. I know a little bit about this. It's not "self-driving" car per se. You know with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars. But to get there we need a lot of data. Uber and Lyft saw all the rides on their systems and thought if we had a lot of sensors in cars and recored all of that we could have the winning factor for self driving ca…

That's not the TLDR.. that's not in the article at all. You are correct however that it's unlikely that Uber would commit a large order for a car that doesn't exist yet.

It would make more sense if they were ordering their own fleet of standardized, sensor-laden, optimized UI cars. But that's not what this (dubious) news report is about.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#177

Post by username223 »

williamcotton wrote: post #147
username223 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the other function Uber serves is not just an aggregator of supply (of cars and drivers) but of demand (passengers). I think you misunderstand Uber. Most of its perceived value is in arbitrage between drivers' perceived and actual costs of car ownership: drivers mostly think in terms of wages minus cost of gas, ignoring all of the other costs. Given that business model, I doubt Uber is actually looking at b…

So do individuals buy or lease self-driving cars in the future? Would they then set up their self-driving car to take instructions from Uber's central dispatch service in exchange for a cut of the profits? Currently both Uber and Lyft handle the task of vetting drivers and making sure there is a good experience for their customers. They organize and control the labor required for a good experience for the riders. Thi…

> So do individuals buy or lease self-driving cars in the future? Would they then set up their self-driving car to take instructions from Uber's central dispatch service in exchange for a cut of the profits?

In Uber's perfect world, yes. And Uber will do its best to hide the true costs of insurance, depreciation, regular maintenance, etc. from owners and lessors, just like they do today. It's worth understanding that Uber only works as long as it doesn't own any cars, or employ any drivers. If they switch over to owning some self-driving cars, they'll have to maintain and insure them.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#178

Post by msoad »

abalone wrote: post #176
msoad wrote: post #144

TLDR: It's not self driving. It's data collecting cars for now. I know a little bit about this. It's not "self-driving" car per se. You know with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars. But to get there we need a lot of data. Uber and Lyft saw all the rides on their systems and thought if we had a lot of sensors in cars and recored all of that we could have the winning factor for self driving ca…

That's not the TLDR.. that's not in the article at all. You are correct however that it's unlikely that Uber would commit a large order for a car that doesn't exist yet. It would make more sense if they were ordering their own fleet of standardized, sensor-laden, optimized UI cars. But that's not what this (dubious) news report is about.

I meant my comment's TLDR. Sorry for confusion

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#179

Post by msoad »

akavel wrote: post #164
msoad wrote: post #144

TLDR: It's not self driving. It's data collecting cars for now. I know a little bit about this. It's not "self-driving" car per se. You know with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars. But to get there we need a lot of data. Uber and Lyft saw all the rides on their systems and thought if we had a lot of sensors in cars and recored all of that we could have the winning factor for self driving ca…

Do you write this based on the article (where?), or on information from some different sources (private?)? I couldn't find such information in the article, while it mentions that e.g. "In August 2013, Mercedes-Benz [...] drove [103 km] between the German towns of Mannheim and Pforzheim without any driver input" , which seems to have happened indeed ( https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/innovation/au... )

I meant my comment's TLDR. Sorry for confusion -----

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#180

Post by pmlnr »

pmlnr wrote: post #30

self-driving Uber cars? What could possibly go wrong? ... There comes a point at which the helpfulness of technology becomes a form of oppression: walled gardens, predictive services making the wrong predictions, and every social platform forcing us to use our real names. It's cute when it's small, but what happens when self-driving cars can collude with the cops? https://motherboard.vice.com/read/one-star ( previous…

Downvotes? Lol. Start reading some oldschool science fiction: those are to point out possible outcomes, both bad and good, of technical evolution.

Self driving cars in our current world, in our current system will not go well. We need changes in the heads first.

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