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GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

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Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#181

Post by nradov »

pj_mukh wrote: post #172
rgovostes wrote: post #3

> GM said in a statement that “... an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” were the reasons for the change. Isn't there basically Google/Waymo and then, seemingly much further behind, Tesla Cybertaxi, Amazon/Zoox, and Uber/Yandex? Cruise allegedly has one of the most sophisticated autonomous driving platforms, and GM's Super Cruise (if they share any tech) is comparable to Tesla FSD. Strange that they would bow…

For reference: "Ford BlueCruise is a hands-free driving assistance feature that allows drivers to take their hands off the wheel on certain preapproved roads" "It seems like drivers did not find the feature compelling and were not renewing. Interest in autonomous driving appears to be cooling across the board." No, because BlueCruise sounds like an asinine feature. To make me pay $2450 more for a car for some arbitra…

BlueCruise is a legitimate incremental improvement over more limited driver assistance systems. It clearly has some value to some drivers. But an extra $2450 is tough to swallow on a mainstream brand when middle-class consumers are already struggling to afford a new car. In a few years Ford will probably just bundle it in with common option packages.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#182

Post by mensetmanusman »

Aloisius wrote: post #50
bfrog wrote: post #36

Yeah the robotaxi is a pipe dream grift. Humans are gross and nasty, I think some of these people need to do a ride along in a cab sometime in the winter in a busy poorly marked city on a Friday or Saturday night. Pray tell how the robot kicks passengers out or navigates the inevitable unexpected weather/human activity.

> Pray tell how the robot kicks passengers out Why not just keep the meter running? Then it ceases to be a problem.

Exactly. Easy solution.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#183

Post by mensetmanusman »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #157
mensetmanusman wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business model enforced by the government.

And for good reason. The whole point of the regulation is to assure that there is someone nearby for the owner to get a vehicle repaired and be able to buy parts. ahem Guess what Tesla has a ton of problems with? Edit: there are a whole lot of people replying who seem unaware that I was referring to new car customers who have a vehicle which is broken under government-mandated warranties, but also that: - The majorit…

Is the only answer subsidized nepotism to the tune of nearly 7 figures annually? Seems like the wrong cloud of regulations.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#184

Post by FredPret »

SequoiaHope wrote: post #167
FredPret wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides "what we need"? I say "we" do - ie, if people want to buy autonomous cars, then that's what's going to happen. Incidentally if there's a large number of autonomous cars available in a fluid and efficient market, that would probably mean fewer people need cars in total.

> I say "we" do - ie, if people want to buy autonomous cars, then that's what's going to happen. Baked in to this is the assumption that the operation of markets are democratic, but they are not. A very small number of people decide where investments go, what tech to design, and what to buy. The alternative - public transit focused infrastructure, is not available to buy in small quantities. Huge investments have to…

> A very small number of people decide where investments go, what tech to design, and what to buy.

Baked into this is a certain kind of economic unrealism that you frequently see online. Rich people aren't endless fountains of capital. They fund things that work, ie, things that sell, ie, things the public likes. Rich people who have some other investment strategy than this go broke.

> Fifty percent of the people in the US have so little money as to make their votes nearly meaningless in such a scenario.

I think if you look up the median wealth and income of the US, and the purchasing power of the US middle class in aggregate, you'll be very surprised by how much sway these people have. Its true that the upper-middle class and the rich are even better customers, but many fortunes have been made catering to the whims of the median American. The US consumer rules the world.

And all this is just academic. Countless poor and middle class families buy cars every day because it's a way better option than living in an urban zone and taking a bus.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#185

Post by Philadelphia »

standardUser wrote: post #19

Waymo needs competition. Who else is even close to being able to provide it? I'd hate to think Tesla is next in line because they haven't even started a commercial pilot program yet.

There’s no evidence that this is even going to be a viable business model, commercially or technically. There’s no “moat” around it or obvious first mover advantage. It seems very early to worry about competition.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#186

Post by jefftk »

ivewonyoung wrote: post #159
adrr wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FSD isn't driving though, you're driving. Mercedes is driving itself and you have 10 seconds to takeover. Huge difference between level 3 and level 2. One is self driving and one is just a drivers aid.

> Mercedes is driving itself and you have 10 seconds to takeover. Huge difference between level 3 and level 2. One is self driving and one is just a drivers aid. None of that is true, it just follows the car in front in slow moving traffic during daytime in good weather on premapped roads and cannot even change lanes. No car in front anymore? It completely fails to "self"-drive. These limitations are taboo to talk ab…

I'm very much aware of how Drive Pilot doesn't handle most cases: in my comment I described it as "super limited" and linked to where Mercedes describes the details.

But within the range of cases where the Mercedes system is applicable (which recently went up to 59mph in Germany [1]) it's solidly better than the Tesla system because Mercedes did the engineering to make it reliable enough that you don't have to supervise the car's driving. If I had a highway commute in stop-and go traffic I'd be comfortable reading in a Mercedes, but not in a Tesla.

[1] https://media.mercedes-benz.com/article/4c04b46a-05e3-4a20-9...

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#187

Post by dangus »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #154
dangus wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair to GM, Tesla basically had to be a brand new auto company and work through a whole bunch of legal loopholes and battles just to have their direct sales model. GM and the rest of the legacy automakers are essentially bound to the dealership system and the dealerships represent a much larger lobbying base than the automakers themselves. We are seeing this play out with VW’s attempt to direct-sell Scout vehic…

GM and the other automakers should be lobbying to change the dealership laws then.

Automakers started out with direct sales. Anti-trust issues quickly arose with that business model and that’s where we got dealership laws, as imperfect as they may be.

The document is rather one-sided and slanted, but I think it’s interesting to see how a dealership association explains their perspective:

https://www.nada.org/media/3267/download?inline

Of particular interest is warranty issues. Tesla has an extra-strong interest in hiding recall-worthy issues and preventing warranty service from occurring since their service department is owned by the manufacturer.

A car dealership has the opposite incentive: every dealer-performed warranty service is a payment from the manufacturer to the dealer.

Finally, even if GM is lobbying to do direct sales, dealerships employ more Americans than the carmakers and parts manufacturers. Their lobbying group is larger and more local.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#188

Post by rogerrogerr »

crazygringo wrote: post #130
derektank wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely with everything you've said, but it's worth keeping in mind that if legal/compliance requirements were to be loosened, a company could expand their offerings with a less robust safety record. And someone close to the incoming presidential administration would be in a position to influence what those requirements are.

> a company could expand their offerings with a less robust safety record But would people take it? I mean, if one service is 25% cheaper but there are a bunch of horror stories of their vehicles crashing into highway barriers (like this past October), I'm not sure people are going to get in.

Driving is 100% cheaper, and there are a bunch of horror stories of people crashing their vehicles into highway barriers. We’re not starting at zero here.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#189

Post by jjfoooo4 »

derektank wrote: post #104
fyrn_ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no proof that tesla can make FSD work with the level of safety they would need for a robitaxi service. Especially with camera only. If they do pull that off, or are able pivot to a fused sensor architecture then I do think their hardware potential will make them a good competitor.

I agree completely with everything you've said, but it's worth keeping in mind that if legal/compliance requirements were to be loosened, a company could expand their offerings with a less robust safety record. And someone close to the incoming presidential administration would be in a position to influence what those requirements are.

Why would this help Tesla more than Waymo?

Even supposing slanted regulatory rule making, Tesla’s autonomous capabilities are vastly inferior to Waymo. The rules can’t be that complicated, either you can drive a car autonomously on a given road or not.

FWIW I’m a Tesla owner who rides Waymos whenever they are available for a cab ride, and won’t turn on FSD despite a number of free trials

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#190

Post by jefftk »

boshalfoshal wrote: post #176
jefftk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The latter is closer to a Waymo or Cruise than it is to a Mercedes or GM driver assist. It depends how you look at it, but in the (super limited) cases where you can use Mercedes Drive Pilot you can legally and safely read a book, watch a movie, or work while in the driver's seat. [1] That's not the case with any Tesla product. [1] https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot

Yes there are actual "legal" notions of driver assistance "levels," but out of those 3 companies Tesla seems to be taking it the most seriously. Elon has a high conviction in the product and has continued to pour billions of dollars in GPUs, talent, supply chains, etc to make it happen. Other manufacturers don't take it nearly as seriously, unfortunately. Sure you might not be able to legally claim that a Tesla is to…

I think there's some chance that Tesla's approach will work out for them, but I'm not optimistic. Getting self-driving software to "impressively good" happened pretty quickly, and even systems from 2016 would usually pass your "go there without touching the wheel or pedals" test. But from there to "as safe as a human" let alone "as safe as we require human-replacing machines to be" turns out to be quite a hard gap to cross.
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