How Apple Scaled Back Its Titanic Plan to Take on Detroit

Post by mahyarm » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 8:05 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #51

adamio wrote: post #47

I think Detroit and other manufactures are fearful of automation. If you ask them what the future looks like its driving assist technology. Fully automated driving kills the emotional experience that is used to sell cars.

The bigger issue is that autonomous cars make it extremely easy to massively boost utilization: driver assist still means your car sits at home, work, etc when not in use. This in turn means more cars are required by society. Autonomous cars can achieve much higher levels of utilization. This is the real reason legacy car makers don't want fully autonomous vehicles.

Post by X86BSD » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 8:08 PM UTC

bronson wrote: post #90

Animats wrote: post #84

Did Apple ever really have a "titanic plan to take on Detroit?" There's no indication that they even built a prototype chassis. This may just be mis-reporting of autonomous vehicle R&D. Apple's strength in automatic driving should be the development of better, and better-looking, sensors. Apple does electronics and small hardware well. Those Velodyne LIDAR things are rotating kludges, look awful, and cost way too muc…

> Building cars is a low-margin business. So is building phones.

Post by aetherson » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 8:16 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #83

Fricken wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of steel in today's cars that won't be needed if they're optimized for moving commuters around cities one or two at a time.

Even more than that, if cars don't crash, they don't have to be crashworthy. BMW's concept motorcycle concept makes that point: If autonomous vehicles mean that road crashes become very rare, as other rare as, say, accidental strangulation in bed, you won't need a helmet to ride. A vehicle could be an minimal as a motorcycle and still be much safer than an S-class Mercedes.

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 8:30 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #91

qeternity wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is that autonomous cars make it extremely easy to massively boost utilization: driver assist still means your car sits at home, work, etc when not in use. This in turn means more cars are required by society. Autonomous cars can achieve much higher levels of utilization. This is the real reason legacy car makers don't want fully autonomous vehicles.

The demand for repair parts will increase significantly and cars will expire a lot faster. Cars that do 400 miles a day will reach 200'000 miles within ~1.3 years. Usually most cars are fairly low value by then. They would reach 400 miles by being on a highway for ~6.5 hours/day, which is fairly reasonable to assume.

Post by Zigurd » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 8:35 PM UTC

aetherson wrote: post #95

Zigurd wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more than that, if cars don't crash, they don't have to be crashworthy. BMW's concept motorcycle concept makes that point: If autonomous vehicles mean that road crashes become very rare, as other rare as, say, accidental strangulation in bed, you won't need a helmet to ride. A vehicle could be an minimal as a motorcycle and still be much safer than an S-class Mercedes.

Maybe. I'm not aware of much precedent for the idea that statistically safer X leads to fewer safety regs for X. Maybe you could draw a parallel with the over-the-counterization of various pharmaceuticals, but I'm not sure that's an analogy that would fill me with hope.