Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source • Hacker News Board

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

#211

Post by nmrm2 » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

sirkneeland wrote: post #88

nmrm2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Retro-fitting. They buy plain old cars and then slap their sensor suite on top.

That seems way harder unless they plan on buying a very small number of car models. Every different car model (even the same model between years) has different performance characteristics (do you issue the same orders for "hit the brakes" to a car that needs 100ft to go from 40-0 as a car that needs 50ft?) and physical dimensions which would necessitate different software optimizations and sensor calibrations. Develo…

Hence buying 100k of the same car.

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

#212

Post by tixocloud » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 2:35 PM UTC

Erwin wrote: post #129

tixocloud wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do taxi drivers afford them?

In Denmark, you could buy a car for taxi use at a much lower tax rate than normal people, but after driving it with passengers for around 250,000km and 2 years you could sell it as a private vehicle. The calculation made the car extremely cheap (I've seen a calculation of deprecation of 20% over 2 years despite the heavy use ) -- so you might as well get a nice Mercedes. The tax a private person has to pay to buy a c…

I've always curious about why the taxi differences between North America and the rest of the world. When I was younger in Asia, we had these "luxury" taxis that were still very reasonably price. I was appalled that taxi rates in North America were so high and the cars were just terrible.

Thanks for your clarification!

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

#213

Post by tixocloud » Mon, Mar 21, 2016, 2:36 PM UTC

ucsdrake wrote: post #94

tixocloud wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do taxi drivers afford them?

Unfortunately I don't have any articles to back this up, just anecdotal discussions with drivers in Germany, but; First: they're a domestic car manufacturer, lower cost to deliver to local drivers. Second: they're able to offer specific taxi options, such as manual front seat adjustment (vs automagic). Third: they offer a substantial discount to taxi drivers (they justify the discount through the marketing value of h…

Would you have any idea what the cost to build an E class might be? Just wondering how the various taxes around the world affect its affordability.