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Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

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Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#221

Post by ghaff »

pishpash wrote: post #186
ghaff wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My assumption would be both. Taxi companies have way lower cost structures. They certainly don't employ lots of software engineers. And there's no reason to think that Uber should be significantly cheaper than a taxi ride. Scale buys you something but probably not a lot. (And scale has some costs too.)

You underestimate what you can extract from making the market larger and more efficient, which taxis could never do. Why don't people barter instead of paying huge sums to Wall Street to intermediate?

In part, because, on an individual basis, Wall Street's skim is tiny. It's only big in aggregate.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#222

Post by ghayes »

cyrux004 wrote: post #81
ghayes wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To answer your question: presumably it's easier for a self-driving car company to offer "ride sharing" than a ride sharing company to offer self-driving cars. The power imbalance could be an existential threat to Uber or Lyft if it were realized.

Exactly, if a OEM or partner figured out how to solve self-driving; they would go to market first. I know people like to say its hard to build a market for drivers and passengers like Uber and Lyft; but if you solved self driving, then you should have a good price advantage to build a new market like Waymo is doing

Plus the market would no longer be two-sided, which significantly reduces Uber, et al.’s moat.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#223

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

femto113 wrote: post #21
wmf wrote: post #3

So Uber is throwing in $6.2B in ATG equity plus $400M in cash and getting $2.6B in Aurora equity? Sounds like a massively down round.

Helluva down round (the $400M in cash is the most telling in my opinion and reminds me of the kickback that IBM had to pay to "sell" its chip foundries [1]). If Uber's new stake is worth $2.5B, then the equity is worth only ~$2B. Last year Toyota+Denso+SoftBank paid $1BN for 13% of ATG, so by the new valuation their stake is now worth only about about $280M, or an over 70% loss in value in just one year. [1] https://…

I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the $400 million in cash. This was a payment to get ATG off Uber's books, and given how much money ATG loses sounds like it was basically a "we'll pay for a year or so worth of expenses" kind of deal.

My biggest question about this deal is that is combining a 600 person company with a 1200 person company (obviously many/most of those people will not be sticking around). Those types of large technology merges are extremely challenging in the best of times, but I'm curious how it will work out in an era where so many people are teleworking (but I don't know, could even be better, as there is less opportunity for offhand office gossip).

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#224

Post by arcticfox »

dekhn wrote: post #183
LeoPanthera wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I never understand is what happens when a new situation that the system did not previously train for happen? This happens to human drivers all the time, and humans are really bad drivers even in situations that have happened before. I fully expect AI drivers to be safer than human drivers.

One pedestrian death due to cars occurs on average every ~200 million car-driven miles. Is that really bad? (the math is based on # of US miles driven in 2017 divided by the number of car-caused pedestrian fatalities in the same year)

Is that right? That seems phenomenally bad. I feel like I have normal American driving habits and I drive a standard 10k miles per year...

So I'm going to kill a pedestrian every 100 years? Assuming I drive normally for ~50 years, 500k miles, I have a 50% chance to kill a pedestrian?

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#225

Post by [deleted] »

neolog wrote: post #199
mlboss wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere that there are different levels of "tech" company. A truly tech company would work without any human intervention for multiple days without breakdown. A non-tech company involves human in every tasks required for work. Most of the companies fall somewhere in between. Ride services/Food delivery company cannot function without humans.

Are there any companies that work for days without human intervention?

[deleted]

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#226

Post by jfoster »

dekhn wrote: post #183
LeoPanthera wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I never understand is what happens when a new situation that the system did not previously train for happen? This happens to human drivers all the time, and humans are really bad drivers even in situations that have happened before. I fully expect AI drivers to be safer than human drivers.

One pedestrian death due to cars occurs on average every ~200 million car-driven miles. Is that really bad? (the math is based on # of US miles driven in 2017 divided by the number of car-caused pedestrian fatalities in the same year)

Pedestrian deaths are not the only bad thing that can happen when driving.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#227

Post by warent »

tintor wrote: post #178
LeoPanthera wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I never understand is what happens when a new situation that the system did not previously train for happen? This happens to human drivers all the time, and humans are really bad drivers even in situations that have happened before. I fully expect AI drivers to be safer than human drivers.

Human drivers can adapt to a new unseen before situation.

I think what this boils down to is that the volume of vehicle-related injury/death will decrease, and the few remaining cases will be really strange and unlikely to have occurred with human drivers.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#228

Post by cwkoss »

petra wrote: post #151
majani wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has monopolizing a sector then jacking up the prices ever worked as a strategy?

It worked for WalMart.

What does walmart have a monopoly on? Are they no longer cheaply priced?

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#229

Post by kajecounterhack »

chairmanwow1 wrote: post #68
mkoryak wrote: post #33

I don't understand the current state of self driving cars. First we have tesla which already has a self driving car. They were the first to build one and now everyone is playing catch up, or are they? Waymo has been building something for a really long time too but I have no idea how close they are to an actual product. Now there is this new company that gets a bunch of money to build something. It feels to me like t…

As someone who worked in the industry, there are a couple of different approaches, incredible amounts of hype, and disappointing amounts of progress to fully autonomous vehicles. * Tesla driver assistance features that they market as self-driving features. You need a driver that is alert and monitoring the vehicle because it can return control to the driver without warning. * Waymo has launched limited L4 pilot in th…

> In my opinion, Comma is going to crush it in the next 2 years, Tesla will keep refining their AP tech, but still won't be FSD. I think autonomous robotaxis will be the norm eventually but not until after 2025.

Curious why you think Comma is going to crush it vs all the other companies working in this space?

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#230

Post by jowday »

dougmany wrote: post #162
dev_throw wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[ https://medium.com/unikie/self-driving-cars-2020-and-beyond-... ] helped me understand the major players in self driving vehicles and what they're upto. Tesla does not use Lidar as a cost savings measure, and only uses camera output to determine how the car drives. It is unknown if this is enough to account for enough permutations of traffic, but they're calling it full self driving while using car owners as paying…

>Tesla does not use Lidar as a cost savings measure I think it is less about cost saving and more about getting to the root of the problem. According to Elon's statements, Lidar is a crutch and since the AI will eventually have to be good enough to remove the crutch, remove it an the get go and save learning how to use the crutch. This is similar to his reasoning about EVs. Since we will eventually have to have petro…

Its a cost savings measure. Tesla is adding an imaging radar to their cars (which gives a LIDAR-like output) because their current sensor suite doesn't cut it. "LIDAR is a crutch" is Elon trying to rationalize why he advertised cars without the necessary hardware as capable of autonomy.

(See https://mobile.twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1319363515610...)

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