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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#231

Post by duality »

rubicon33 wrote: post #189
rorykoehler wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't be worth anything because autonomous ride-sharing will be a pricing game. Anyone who undercuts Uber, and there will be plenty of willing and able companies, will beat them.

Here's a crazy business idea: You know how a person nowadays can register for uber and drive people around? In the future, maybe people will register their CAR (which can drive itself). So they sit at home, getting work done, while their car is off autonomously driving itself and picking people up. When you want it to come home, just call it home.

Literally pimping your ride

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#232

Post by bdrool »

derefr wrote: post #84
bdrool wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Two sides of the same coin. If you can rent your neighbour's car, why own your own? Heck, why have driveways? In cities, at least, I could fully imagine new townhouse developments operating more like apartment buildings: one central parking lot for the "pool" of (mostly) driverless cars. Your car drops you off at your door and then parks in the pool; then comes back out to get you in the morning.

> Heck, why have driveways?

My point is that millions of them already exist, with a distributed network of roads leading to them, as well as storage (garages). It would be costly to suddenly rip all those up.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#233

Post by oceanswave »

mberger wrote: post #112
analogmemory wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showcase what? It's just a basic marketing site. Did they even need angular?

Probably not. My point is that what (I'm assuming) is a brand new site is not built using the latest version. I would have thought that an organization such as Alphabet would want to dog food as much as possible and in doing so tell the world that 'Hey, look at this! It's super easy and pretty! You can have a site like this too if you adopt our technology'. Instead, it suggests to me that the barrier to learning the…

Framework Ecosystem and current developer experience/knowledge/comfort level have a lot to do with it in addition to uncertainty.

Dogfooding is nice, but not at the expense of risking not having the site showcasing your new autonomous vehicle company ready by the time the press release hits.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#234

Post by allannienhuis »

virmundi wrote: post #178
Florin_Andrei wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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'm with you entirely. 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 tec…

Isn't the whole point of UBI to be Universal? People don't lose the benefit if they earn additional income and everyone gets it so it shouldn't have an inherent stigma to receiving it.

I'm not actually sure its a practical option, but I don't see 'enslavement' as being one of it's downsides - where's the 'lock in'?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#235

Post by pertymcpert »

bduerst wrote: post #209
bhups wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Google are also everywhere except China.

I'm not aware Facebook and Google are burning $1B to be in China though.

They sold their business to Didi Chuxing, they're no longer taking that loss.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#236

Post by Kalium »

bambax wrote: post #107
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

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…

> Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive But how is this going to work? In cities, everyone uses their car at exactly the same time: roughly, between 8-9 in the morning and 5-7 in the evening. If you don't own a car, chances are you won't get one when you need it to get to work on time. Or, if there are enough cars for peak hours, then demand for new cars will…

If your average car occupancy count goes from one-point-something to two, it would be a huge change in number of cars required and traffic congestion.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#237

Post by limeyx »

cphoover wrote: post #83
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

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…

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.

And what is Trumps so special plan for them I wonder ?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#238

Post by aetherson »

derefr wrote: post #84
bdrool wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Two sides of the same coin. If you can rent your neighbour's car, why own your own? Heck, why have driveways? In cities, at least, I could fully imagine new townhouse developments operating more like apartment buildings: one central parking lot for the "pool" of (mostly) driverless cars. Your car drops you off at your door and then parks in the pool; then comes back out to get you in the morning.

While driverless cars obviously make short-term car rental more attractive on a cost basis, I think that people here tend to overestimate the impact of this.

* A large percentage of people will want to have their own car because they don't want to put up with the occasional hassle of unavailability of rental cars during a peak time, and/or occasional long waits for the car to reach them (particularly when they are being picked up in un-dense areas). And before you hand-wave this away, note that the more of a cost advantage you give to rental cars (ie, the higher the utilization of those cars), the more of a disadvantage cost/wait time will be.

* People -- and very especially families with children -- also value cars as a mobile depot for their stuff. If you have kids of certain ages, this is practically a necessity. I definitely am not going to screw around with not just a carseat but like a dozen books and snacks and wipes and cups and so forth every time I get into/out of a rental car.

* Then cleaning and status and all the other things that people regularly bring up here.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#239

Post by joakleaf »

bambax wrote: post #107
joeguilmette wrote: post #49

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…

> Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive But how is this going to work? In cities, everyone uses their car at exactly the same time: roughly, between 8-9 in the morning and 5-7 in the evening. If you don't own a car, chances are you won't get one when you need it to get to work on time. Or, if there are enough cars for peak hours, then demand for new cars will…

If the cars no longer need a driver, then self-driving cars combined with route planning may open the door toshuttle-based door to door ride-shared commutes...

Potentially cheap enough to be a good compromise between current uncomfortable public transport, and owning your own vehicle (but unable to put the commute time to good use).

With that being said... I am also pretty doubtful. People like to own cars.

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