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GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

cnbc.com

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

#31

Post by schiffern »

rgovostes wrote: post #28
schiffern wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that GM and Ford have no viable strategy for transitioning these features into taxi services, whereas Tesla does. Not sure how it's suddenly so controversial to realize that Detroit is terrible at software strategy. This has been the conventional wisdom (and with good reason) for quite some time.

I briefly owned a Chevy Volt with the worst infotainment UX imaginable. I found a quote from a Chevy spokesperson describing it as an "Apple-like experience," presumably because the graphic designer on Fiverr found the Gradient tool in their pirated copy of Illustrator CS6.

True, but even that's just at the surface level. When you dig into the architecture / planning / business strategy that happens in Detroit, it's even worse than what the UI suggests.

"Creative destruction" is coming for them real soon.

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

#32

Post by master_crab »

mfkhalil wrote: post #23
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.

Zoox (Amazon Subsidiary) should be rolling out soon. They've already done successful test rides and should be launching in Las Vegas next year.

Saw at least one zoox scooting around Vegas last week at Reinvent

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

#33

Post by bobthepanda »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #24
Wytwwww wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Waymo is doing is very localized and really only suitable for self-driving taxis and not normal cars. Not clear if that would help GM to sell more cars in the short to medium term (and obviously their execs have no reason to care about anything else).

A taxi is a car. The taxi industry is by itself profitable. GM should be in thr business of making money, with or without cars.

there's a significantly lower volume of taxis sold than personal cars sold, and if taxis got bigger in the way the self driving utopians foresaw, it would significantly cut into their personal car sales.

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

#34

Post by throwaway48476 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #33
throwaway48476 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A taxi is a car. The taxi industry is by itself profitable. GM should be in thr business of making money, with or without cars.

there's a significantly lower volume of taxis sold than personal cars sold, and if taxis got bigger in the way the self driving utopians foresaw, it would significantly cut into their personal car sales.

Car sales in the US go down every year and have since the 90s, were past peak car. They need to find a new market.

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

#35

Post by Animats »

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.

> Who else is even close to being able to provide it?

Baidu/Apollo, maybe. There are deployed robo-taxis in China. Reviews of driving quality indicate "meh", they are sometimes directly teleoperated to get out of problems, and difficult intersections have fixed cameras the cars can see through.

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

#36

Post by bfrog »

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.

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

#37

Post by Animats »

ra7 wrote: post #13

GM believed Kyle Vogt when he was hyping up their tech by having small, meaningless deployments in a dozen cities and promising $1B revenue by 2025. Then they had that incident and GM found out exactly how far behind Waymo they are. Waymo is now giving 175k rides every week and expanding to new markets every year. No other robotaxi company in the entire country giving rides to the public. Now they've gone back to wha…

Cruise started as "fake it til you make it", with a drive down the Great Highway in San Francisco. The ideal public road - several miles of straight road with no cross streets. They managed to parlay that into an acquisition by GM and board seats on GM's board.

Then they didn't deliver.

Waymo hasn't left blood on the pavement. Cruise and Tesla have.

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

#38

Post by Animats »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #16
ra7 wrote: post #13

GM believed Kyle Vogt when he was hyping up their tech by having small, meaningless deployments in a dozen cities and promising $1B revenue by 2025. Then they had that incident and GM found out exactly how far behind Waymo they are. Waymo is now giving 175k rides every week and expanding to new markets every year. No other robotaxi company in the entire country giving rides to the public. Now they've gone back to wha…

So stupid. If something has proved to be possible then you as number 2 can hire people from 1 to replicate it. China is built on this principle.

Remember what happened to the Google employee who tried to leave and take some of the technology with him.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski

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

#39

Post by schiffern »

standardUser wrote: post #30
jamiequint wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Ad hominems aside, it's easy to cheerlead Waymo since they stand alone as the nation's only commercial robotaxi service. They're expanding, their track record is exceptional, and having used them a handful of times they definitely leave an impression.

Waymo's strategy traded "do robotaxi early" in exchange for big penalties in cost-per-car (LIDAR) and cost-per-city (requirement for millimeter mapping).

Yes it gets them early service in a small number of cities, but it dramatically kneecaps their ability to scale to the entire planet.

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

#40

Post by CamperBob2 »

Animats wrote: post #37
ra7 wrote: post #13

GM believed Kyle Vogt when he was hyping up their tech by having small, meaningless deployments in a dozen cities and promising $1B revenue by 2025. Then they had that incident and GM found out exactly how far behind Waymo they are. Waymo is now giving 175k rides every week and expanding to new markets every year. No other robotaxi company in the entire country giving rides to the public. Now they've gone back to wha…

Cruise started as "fake it til you make it", with a drive down the Great Highway in San Francisco. The ideal public road - several miles of straight road with no cross streets. They managed to parlay that into an acquisition by GM and board seats on GM's board. Then they didn't deliver. Waymo hasn't left blood on the pavement. Cruise and Tesla have.

Waymo hasn't left blood on the pavement. Cruise and Tesla have.

As long as we're clutching our pearls and being overdramatic, how much blood have the humans left on the pavement in the meantime?

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