GM had and still has an impressive technical research center. Its just that establishment big companies dont get the respect that startup companies do. Nor can the employees win big like in a startup IPO. General Electric is currently running a humorous TV commercial about this. A hipster engineers friends throw him a "new job party". But they go slackjaw when they discover he joinged GE instead of Facebook. GE has t…
G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
181–190 of 402 posts
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
>I get nearly killed by either on my bike just as easily Glad I'm not the only one who notices these cars randomly driving slowly or parked in the bike lanes waiting for the next ride to come in. Ride safe..
They get more distracted by the phones I believe. Specially in between rides when they have to accept ride requests in a timely fashion. I've seen drivers parked in lots when they are awaiting a request but in places where parking is charged such as downtown, I think they prefer to keep looping around blocks. There may be an interesting case study to be made on the environmental impact of these idling cars.
Also, some drivers are lazy and don't get proper mounts for their phones. I've had a few Lyft drivers spend much of the ride with their faces buried in their phones because they didn't bother to get a mount and don't want their nav to speak out loud.
I also had one reckless idiot spend the whole ride texting while driving, too.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about Mom, Dad, and Junior share rides with other Moms, Dads, and Juniors who are headed in the same direction?
Because that is already a possibility (carpooling is an established idea), and the critical reasons why it isn't more popular don't significantly change with automated cars. People don't want to spend their commute with random people who just happen to be going the same direction. Perhaps more important is that it creates a strict commitment to be prepared to leave on time and a reliance on others leaving on time.
> People don't want to spend their commute with random people who just happen to be going the same direction
Many, many people already do this on public transport. What we're talking about is general door-to-door public transport.
Car-pooling is awkward to arrange, particularly for short joined parts of the journey (e.g. picking someone up part way and dropping them off a little later), and it's extremely hard to arrange anything that overlaps such that the first passenger needs to get out before the last passenger (currently would involve handing over the keys to your car).
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#184It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…
And what about trucking? According to this[0] there are approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States. I hate to go down the route of "machines are going to replace everything", but doesn't autonomous automobiles and AI based routing mean these people effectively get eliminated?
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
GM has good reason to make risky decisions, since the taxpayers will likely be asked to support the company a second time if it runs into trouble. As a taxpayer, I would like them to be as safe and stagnant as possible, but I have no say in the matter. This is the moral hazard created by the bailout.
Ford was in bad shape in 2006. Does anyone even remember the Ford of 2006? With their awful Focus when everyone was clamoring for the euro version? Or the Ford 500? They didn't avoid a "bailout" because they were a strong company. Two years earlier they mortgaged everything (including the iconic blue-oval logo) while money was still cheap. It was pure luck. Not strength or some sort of moral superiority. So by the ti…
I apologize if this is incorrect as the only bits I know are from my interest in cars and not finance, but I don't think it was completely luck that Ford decided to try to get money. From what I understand, they did all this because Alan Mullaly just took over as CEO and he wanted to cushion a potential unexpected event.
At least that's what it says here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/business/09ford.html?scp=5...
As far as I can tell, Alan Mullaly is a very good CEO who many consider to be responsible for the comeback of both Ford and Boeing. I remember there were rumors he was even considered for the position of CEO of Microsoft. That being said, I don't think you could say it was completely luck.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not being pressured to carry cash is a suboptimal experience? I refuse to carry cash. If I were to take Uber, I'd have drivers one-starring me and giving me a bad reputation for not tipping them. With Lyft, I can tip in the app and avoid all that mess.
I've taken over a hundred Uber rides and literally never tipped. Nor have I ever had a driver who gave me a bad look for not tipping them. It's not expected and Uber actively discourages drivers from soliciting tips. For the record, my rating was around 4.5 last time I checked so it doesn't seem like drivers are penalizing me for not tipping. Not having to do the mental/social gymnastics of tipping is a big feature o…
> For the record, my rating was around 4.5 last time I checked so it doesn't seem like drivers are penalizing me for not tipping.
If you were a driver, a rating of 4.5 could get you kicked off the platform. So, yes, drivers are rating you poorly.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#187It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…
I can picture all of those things happening to some extent and still would only estimate a 3-5x reduction in fleet size. In order to get 10x, you are implicitly estimating that rush hour vehicle utilization is currently only 10%. I would estimate that rush hour utilization is in the range of 50-70%. For 10x, you would absolutely have to do something to address peak time behavior. For example, if Mom, Dad, and Junior…
You only need the three cars if you insist on owning the vehicle you're riding it. So if Mom, Dad and Kid all need to be somewhere different at the same time, Uber Pool could work for two of the three, or all three while the car is earning more as Uber Black (or the future equivalent). They only need their own vehicle if they want to ride together.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can picture all of those things happening to some extent and still would only estimate a 3-5x reduction in fleet size. In order to get 10x, you are implicitly estimating that rush hour vehicle utilization is currently only 10%. I would estimate that rush hour utilization is in the range of 50-70%. For 10x, you would absolutely have to do something to address peak time behavior. For example, if Mom, Dad, and Junior…
How about Mom, Dad, and Junior share rides with other Moms, Dads, and Juniors who are headed in the same direction?
Self-driving mini-vans could lie in the car / public bus & subway trade-off on high traffic commute roads.
car: high flexibility, high cost
public transport: low flexibility (last mile, connections, fixed time schedule), lower cost
self-driving vans: medium flexibility, possibly low cost.
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#189It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…
And what about trucking? According to this[0] there are approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States. I hate to go down the route of "machines are going to replace everything", but doesn't autonomous automobiles and AI based routing mean these people effectively get eliminated? http://www.alltrucking.com/faq/truck-drivers-in-the-usa/
Given that trains require far less cognitive load to operate than a tractor trailer (sorry engineers!), and yet still require humans to operate.. I wonder if ever?
I'm actually curious why trains haven't been automated at this point (in the US at least). It seems like an ideal first step (no navigational issues, retrofit some collision avoidance mechanisms, remote control, etc, and you are up and running).
Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
How about Mom, Dad, and Junior share rides with other Moms, Dads, and Juniors who are headed in the same direction?
Because that is already a possibility (carpooling is an established idea), and the critical reasons why it isn't more popular don't significantly change with automated cars. People don't want to spend their commute with random people who just happen to be going the same direction. Perhaps more important is that it creates a strict commitment to be prepared to leave on time and a reliance on others leaving on time.
Carpooling in private cars is very different from carpooling in self-driven cars. While you own the private cars, it's very reasonable to expect you not to share the ride with strangers or to occupy another's car. However, if it's a self-driven car which no one owns - it's just like public transit, but way more efficient. Instead of buying a monthly train or bus pass you just pay your self-driven car rental/lease, to be picked up door-to-door at your whim. This will happen and will bring about the 10x change.