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…
If I have to bet against anybody it will be Uber. They will be burning cash and given that Google just gave up on building hardware why would one think Uber will succeed?
Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
171–180 of 769 posts
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#172I'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…
A fleet would be able to handle these sorts of things better.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#173Earlier 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.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#174"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…
I am not a self-driving car expert (software or hardware). Nor am I an expert in ML, computer vision, etc. But I do have minor experience in each of those. Currently, I am enrolled and taking Udacity's new "Self-Driving Car Engineer" nanodegree course. For my cohort (November), we just completed the first basic project - Lane Finding.
This project utilized Python and OpenCV, and was far from a robust enough system for it to be used on a real vehicle (for one thing, it wasn't fast enough - it does well with non-real time video and still photos, but it would likely need to be re-written in C/C++ for it to stand a chance in a real-time situation). It couldn't deal with curves, and it has other corner cases.
We had several still pictures to work with, then two required videos, and one bonus "challenge" (ie - extra credit) video. If we had time, we could try our hand with our own videos, etc. It was very easy to get things working with the still images, and the two regular videos. But the challenge video was something else entirely.
In that video, you had to deal with not only different color lines, but also a section of different color roadway, shadows and varying light conditions. With enough effort and thought, it was easy enough to get things working properly, but it highlighted the fact that humans do some amazing things when they drive.
For one thing, our eyes are better capable to handle subtle differences in color, shadow, and lighting (particularly brightness and contrast) than most traditional image sensors. Furthermore, we can "fill in gaps" and "infer" where and how things should be, based on other information in the environment. In cases of rain or snow, we can - for instance - watch where other cars go, follow the "tracks" other cars make in front of us, follow road "edges", and use other subtle cues to help us guide our vehicles as we drive (another instance - recently they repaved the road near my work - but haven't painted new lane markings - I and probably others instead used the "seams" between the asphault runs as "lane markers" instead).
These and many other issues likely are "edge cases" that haven't been fully explored in this relatively new cycle in self-driving car engineering. I am confident that the problems will be solved, likely with deep learning systems of varying kinds, as well as better sensors. Sensor data fusion and priority could also help (ie - use a LIDAR to "follow" a car in front of you, perhaps? Of course, filter out the noise of the falling rain/snow, first).
So far, this course has enlightened me more on just how hard of a problem overall self-driving vehicle systems are to solve. Furthermore, there aren't many players (companies nor individuals) in the market (which is why I am taking the course - to expand on my current skills). Solving these kinds of hard problems will be paramount for a successful self-driving vehicle to last in the market.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cleaning comes to mind as a serious, unsolved problem here. The reason I like my own car is because I know the history of its dirt.
I wonder what the worst case scenario is here. I'll put Muni-level syringes and human waste as the worst. But (1) fare evasion wouldn't be a problem and (2) the 1% of worst offenders who account for 99% of the disgustingness can be readily blacklisted. I suspect the typical case will be a drunk person throwing up in it on the way home. Hopefully they self-report; if they don't, it comes to the next rider to report it…
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
The sensors are primarily radar based. Mud/snow won't really affect them.
False -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutter_(radar) Anyways, if this is true, it's a grim future then. Radar is incredibly trivial to interfere with.
One is the basic "environmental" interference with competing radar signals from other devices. Imagine how much more complicated this gets when a majority of competing traffic is likewise equipped.
But the other risk, which seems to be mostly ignored thus far, is sabotage. Can you design a system that is hardened not only against stray competing EMR but also against attempts to hack or vandalize your system into misbehavior or malfunction? For example, consider a terrorist plot. Or even a smart neighborhood crazy who wants the neighborhood kids off his lawn and neighborhood traffic to stop during his midday nap. Or, a British organized crime gang using stopped traffic to cover an escape[0].
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#177Earlier 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....
The reason I believe that it may collapse is because now when I want to buy something online I rather go to Walmart,Target or to the specific brand store. When I think of Amazon the picture that comes to mind is of shady people trying to scam me out of my money. My perception, even if erroneous, right now is that Walmart is less shady than Amazon when it comes to buying merchandize.
If enough people start to feel this way about Amazon there may come a tipping point and the entire company will collapse. Once the tipping point happens I don't think it will be possible for Bezos to reverse it, though he will spend mountains of cash trying to.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are plenty of conversations around that idea here. UBI for example. Some people think that the population in general will retool (some will get left behind). Others point to the horse population in the US that went from some 5 million to a few hundred thousand following mechanized transportation as an example of what will happen to the middle class.
"Retooling" sounds like such a great idea when you're a 20-something urban male single software engineer, you've got nothing to lose, and the world is yours to take. It also sounds like a great idea when you're independently wealthy and you don't have to work for a living, so you can afford to bloviate from your ivory tower. Most other demographics have very a different perspective on that concept, and for good reaso…
I have no idea how to solve this problem. My cousin's husband is a truck driver. He makes a six figure income running between Indy and Chicago (bang, bang). He's going to retire before they can get rid of him, but this is a huge issue.
I tried to explain this problem to my father, who's a CPA. I've pointed out that his firm can get by with a dramatically smaller office than it use to due to tech. Same's true for his lawyer friends. I pointed out that the law firms are not training the next generation like they use to since they use fewer low-level lawyers for research thanks to Lexus Nexus. Account is next.
I'm not a huge fan of UBI since I think that makes people slaves of their State. We've seen such enslavement in the US under welfare programs. We've set the program up to lock people in. If they try to get out, they will lose benefits (donut hole issue). I think UBI is like that, but worse.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#179I'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 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…
Certainly some auto makers may choose to go down the route of executive assisted suicide and maximize shareholder (and executive) profit distributions in the process, as IBM decided to do. To pretend than the next 50 years will be like the last 50, I'm not sure how long that charade can hold up.
Personally I think Google and Apple are the ones who hold all of the chips. This definitely can be turned in to a commodity business with a few OS adjustments. There are some cards Uber can play to avoid this, like exclusive infrastructure agreements, although not really sure where that will be permitted geographically.
A more interesting question is will this look like smartphones where a single company gets 90% of the profits and the rest of the companies do huge volume but capture small to zero margins.
Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
a whole industry of workers will be out of the job. How will society react? Will we have a socialist revolt? Want to stay clear from politics... but seriously why isn't anyone talking about the socioeconomic impact this will have once drivers are put out of the job? IMHO this is the reason Trump won the election, because there is no plan for these people.
There are plenty of conversations around that idea here. UBI for example. Some people think that the population in general will retool (some will get left behind). Others point to the horse population in the US that went from some 5 million to a few hundred thousand following mechanized transportation as an example of what will happen to the middle class.