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

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

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Post by somethoughts » Wed, Dec 09, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #214

somethoughts wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big plan is a war of attrition to capture a monopoly/duopoly status for taxi services within a given country. Acquire all competing taxi companies or price them out of business.Once that is done, raise prices. If competition arises, lower prices again until they go away. In some senses, its just like Amazon.

How long can they afford to fight it? It's not hard to spool up a rideshare competitor per say. When they pulled out of Austin several other rideshare companies popped up in their wake. If prices got exorbitantly high for the average user, I wouldn't be surprised if a company came in undercutting uber.

Agreed - its "an" investment strategy, not necessarily the best one. And if you have Softbank's backing - maybe a valid one? Kinda works/worked for Walmart/Amazon.

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

#372

Post by jfoster » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 6:26 AM UTC

gotostatement wrote: post #359

jfoster wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, let's use another example: lifts don't move until the doors are closed. If the lift thinks the doors are open, it won't move. If it did, it would be an out of control situation just as quickly as a car misbehaving at 60 mph is. The expectation is that autonomous cars must be cautious.

my point is when we develop expectations and mental models of how machines work, we can use those to adapt and feel safe and in control. but that's less possible when the machine is typically moving at 60 mph and the mistake can happen without warning

Like elevators where the brakes fail. If it's infrequent enough, we tend not to think about it even if it does still happen from time to time.

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

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Post by tachyonbeam » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 4:38 PM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #356

tachyonbeam wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, there's the word "beta" in the name. Of course you want to test it with someone in the driver's seat. They're ahead of other players because they have: 1. Hundreds of thousands of cars on the streets with FSD hardware 2. More data than anyone else 3. Their own neural network accelerator chip.

Given this is tech site - can you please tell me there Tesla is storing this data? Video is very expensive to store and process, so if they have this massive data advantage, where are their data centers? I’d like to remind you as well that Google, aka waymo, had their nn accelerators for half a decade already.

I don't work at Tesla, so I don't know where they have their clusters, but there are obviously many cloud providers who would be more than happy to sell you as many petabytes of storage as you would like to buy.

> I’d like to remind you as well that Google, aka Waymo, had their nn accelerators for half a decade already.

That's true, but you need something mobile and low power for a car. I don't know if Waymo really has an equivalent there.

Also, it's an advantage for Tesla to have their own regardless, because of cost. Tesla can probably make their FSD computer for $200. If you are a third party and you want to buy Waymo's solution, they will sell it to you for thousands.

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

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Post by tachyonbeam » Thu, Dec 10, 2020, 4:42 PM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #354

tachyonbeam wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely bordering on Level 4 at this point. If you're claiming it's L2 then you simply have no idea what Tesla has been up to.

They’re not even at level 3 yet. Level 3 allows you to take your eyes off the road, and car will notify you if there’s something it cannot deal with, in advance. Tesla FSD will kill you if you do that. As I said, it’s very impressive for level 2. But just because it can do more stuff that any other publicly available l2 system, it doesn’t make it self driving system. And Tesla knows that. They’ve quietly walked back…

The beta has steering on city streets, it handles roundabouts, merging, changing lanes, construction work, deers crossing the road, garbage trucks, etc. It can also handle about half of the 10-minute drives I've seen without disengagements, and when it does disengage, it's rarely in a dangerous position.

You can call that L2 if you want, but I feel that's disingenuous. It's way ahead of anything anybody else has except Waymo, with the difference that Tesla's system will drive anywhere in the US.

You can say, sure, but you still need to watch it all the time. Yeah, but the number of interventions that you need to make is becoming less and less.

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

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Post by gotostatement » Fri, Dec 11, 2020, 10:42 PM UTC

jfoster wrote: post #372

gotostatement wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

my point is when we develop expectations and mental models of how machines work, we can use those to adapt and feel safe and in control. but that's less possible when the machine is typically moving at 60 mph and the mistake can happen without warning

Like elevators where the brakes fail. If it's infrequent enough, we tend not to think about it even if it does still happen from time to time.

I see your point but for me at least, my gut feeling is the autonomous cars are just scarier because they're moving at 60 miles per hour. Maybe it's irrational but this whole discussion isn't about rationality its about gut feeling

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

#376

Post by mrgordon » Sat, Dec 12, 2020, 6:47 PM UTC

jessriedel wrote: post #251

mrgordon wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree for Lyft but Uber pretty aggressively pushed the vision as necessary for their future when they were burning so much cash on ATG.

They pushed it as necessary for their future because the future will be self-driving and anyone without access to that tech will be out-competed. That's completely different than it being necessary to their future because their present business model cannot be made profitable.

You contradicted yourself. You said anyone without access to self driving will be out-competed but that doesn’t mean it’s necessary for them. It’s extremely necessary for them. I’d much rather take a driverless Waymo than a ride with a random Uber driver that might be driving distractedly, might get lost, etc. Not to mention the robotaxi should be cheaper at scale as they can operate 24 hours a day.