Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars • Hacker News Board

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#61

Post by icebraining » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 8:29 AM UTC

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #22

6d6b73 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out). Autonomous cars will be much better at handling these types of situations - in your example, the machine will know what's going on few milliseconds after it happens and will be able to adjust speed and direction almost instantaneously. All you need is lots of sensors.

> All you need is lots of sensors. Which rapidly reduces the MTBF at which point you're stuck with an overpriced manual drive vehicle.

Do you also replace cars when a tire gets punctured?

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#62

Post by icebraining » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 8:32 AM UTC

mypalmike wrote: post #39

6d6b73 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

System will know that they are failing. this is not rocket science.

And this is one reason they will be better to rent than own. How many times have you had a perfectly drivable car with some failing sensor? In an autonomous vehicle, such sensor failures will essentially brick the vehicle until it's fixed.

If the sensors are redundant enough, a failure or two shouldn't prevent the car from driving; it'll just drop you off and drive itself to the nearest repair place.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#63

Post by icebraining » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 8:42 AM UTC

sah2ed wrote: post #54

colejohnson66 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The naive solution would be to make it illegal to modify the communication system of your car, but wouldn't just making it illegal to broadcast false data be enough? And then if an accident is caused because of that, you can tack on some other charge like an autonomous version of reckless driving.

A better solution would be to provision each car with its own key pair and the car maker's root CA just before it rolls off the factory floor, that way it can constantly beam 2 signals: - a signed (regulator-mandated) signal for cars from other manufacturers; - an encrypted signal intended for cars from the same manufacturer. The first signal would be signed by the root CA of the car maker to indicate that its commun…

Signed messages only ensure that they weren't modified by a MITM. If the attack controls the sending vehicle, the signature doesn't help.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#64

Post by dalbasal » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 8:45 AM UTC

Interesting questions posed, and relevant. Centralizing forces like network effects can be very powerful in technology fields, and they're constantly evolving. We don't have generations of experience to draw predictions from, like traditional manufacturing. Data aggregation advantages seems to be something companies believe in, and are pursing.

From full-autonomy onwards, it is very hard to predict anything. There will still be manufacturers of course, but the manufacturer-consumer structure of the market could completely change. I think there's a decent chance personal ownership will decline.

Removing drivers from ride-services will drive down costs, a lot. Probably enough to change ownership incentives and market dynamics.

If that happens, 2nd order effects will also be big. People act very differently when they pay per-km explicitely, even at reduced rates. Tolls (economists love tolls, btw) become more palatable when rolled into a per km price. There might be fleets of little, light cars servicing city centres.

In this chaotic context, I think it's hard to predict anything about market structure.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#65

Post by petra » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 8:47 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #41

There's considerable wishful thinking about autonomous cars. Not about the technology; that's coming along fine. (I used to work on that stuff.) About the business possibilities. There's a fantasy that there's a high-margin business opportunity in there somewhere. The most likely outcome in the near term is that self-driving is an auto accessory you can order for a car. That's what the car-makers have in mind, and mo…

The key question is what advantage can a level 4 car can give to an on-demand service(maybe like Via who seems like the cost leader, by succeeding in doing shared on-demanf rides and filling(maybe) small microbuses).

For example, if a driver can rest while such car travels the highway(or a traffic jam), he might agree to a 10% pay cut(Via pays decently today, unlike Uber), and that would be enough to win.

That's a level-4 service with strong network effects and thus nice margins, with time.

As for how that translates to advantage in level-5, that's a complicated question, but a few ideas:

1. Brand and technology advantage due to much more miles.

2. Sharing. Maybe some share of the global transportation demand would continue to be shared.

3. Politics. On-demand shared transportation solves moat of the slowness of public tranaport. Maybe we could also solves the experience part(and easier for 3 person shring than a bus). At that context, dedicating special road lanes for sharing may become politically realistic, and than cars lose on speed.

Same goes for rush fees.

Or maybe, just owning the customer order layer, would be enough to win on optimization of single person cars moving around a city, giving a 10% advantage in trip time , and that would be enough , with time, for a mono/duo-poly.

But even if not and it's a low margin business, there would still be a ton of money to be made.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#66

Post by icebraining » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 8:51 AM UTC

petra wrote: post #8

Let's say you're a strong company ,one that can manage to achieve a lead of, say 5 years over competitors with the tech. Does anybody think you won't(most likely) manage to bind yourself to a stable competitive advantage in this industry, if such exists ?

That's called the first-mover advantage, and history is littered with examples of companies failing to take advantage of it.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#67

Post by imron » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 9:07 AM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #29

One way to help prevent a winner-take-all situation is to have more open protocols for some of the hard problems. An example that I feel needs to be done right now: an open protocol for signaling intent. Today we have left and right blinkers, brake lights, the horn, and some 'body' language when you use the whole vehicle to show your intent. But with fully autonomous cars, we could be giving out signals that are rich…

You'd like the short story 'Human Readable' by Cory Doctorow: http://craphound.com/walh/Cory_Doctorow_-_With_a_Little_Help...

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#68

Post by rad_gruchalski » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 9:09 AM UTC

dgregd wrote: post #59

So much talk about LIDAR and other sensors. Why nobody talks about obvious idea of Road Object Message Bus? ROMB is a protocol where each road object (a traffic light, a sign, a car, etc.) can transmit info about itself. A car could broadcast its direction vector, intention to turn, any non ROMB moving object it sees. A traffic light could broadcast current state and when it is going to change. That additional inform…

And when something goes wrong with the infrastructure - chaos.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#69

Post by anovikov » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 9:12 AM UTC

Important point is that software for self-driving is subject to virtuous cycle because the more it is in use, the more information it collects and the better it becomes. Which in turns means more use... And it can go out of control with one supplier dominating the market completely.

Re: Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

#70

Post by new299 » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 9:35 AM UTC

dgregd wrote: post #59

So much talk about LIDAR and other sensors. Why nobody talks about obvious idea of Road Object Message Bus? ROMB is a protocol where each road object (a traffic light, a sign, a car, etc.) can transmit info about itself. A car could broadcast its direction vector, intention to turn, any non ROMB moving object it sees. A traffic light could broadcast current state and when it is going to change. That additional inform…

Right, and I think it's the obvious way to approach autonomous vehicles. With the correct infrastructure investment, self-driving vehicles would be vastly simpler and more reliable.

The problem is who pays for it, and who authorizes its installation. It's really something that has to be done at the governmental level. And I don't think there's any will to pay for it.

There are other issues of course. One is that in an Urban environment transportation issues would be better served by good public transport than self-driving vehicles.

The other is that I think once the government get involved, the numerous sociological issues associated with self-driving cars (which I personally think are more significant than the technical issues) would become apparent.