8 ms·

It is really fascinating to see the self-driving car space. I have been assuming that Google is way ahead of everyone else, and that other tech companies litera

It is really fascinating to see the self-driving car space. I have been assuming that Google is way ahead of everyone else, and that other tech companies literally didn't stand a chance including Apple. If traditional car companies are not too far behind Google, and are able to confidently compete in this space, then Apple definitely has a chance to compete in this space.

kuzmin 10y ago
It's actually quite amazing how much the self-driving car hype is focused around Google and Tesla. This thread has been up for four hours and only has 6 comments, meanwhile the submission about Tesla has over 200 comments (!)
- aluhut 10y ago
  To be fair, the Tesla submission covers an recent rare event while this here is more of general information about things that will happen in the future. Just this is enough to cover for the amount of comments. There is a lot to discuss.
- jaimex2 10y ago
  Because the Tesla one isn't just words. I read up till "They plan to..."
  - dosshell 10y ago
    "Plan to" as in they will do it if nothing very strange happens. The cars are currently driving around here in Gothenburg with Volvo employees behind the wheels. The cars will however only work for some well tested roads, eg. the big transit roads around the city.
sien 10y ago
When self-driving cars become a reality over the next 10 years it's probably going to reduce the number of cars sold massively. Many or most adults in the developed world currently own a car. If you can share them even between, say 3 people the number of cars required will plummet. There are credible predictions around as well that even say up to 10 people might be able to share a car. There is already over capacity in car production globally. Self-driving cars are likely to drive that even further. It's not a good market for a company that isn't in the game to be going in to. Google are different because they seem to be selling the technology to enable other manufacturers to sell self-driving cars.
- mdorazio 10y ago
  Not sure why you got downvoted. While I think the number of cars sold will decrease, I don't think it will be by very much. The biggest problem is that most people go to work and go home at roughly the same times during the day, so realistically you can't have more than maybe 2-3 people sharing a car if they're both employed. Yes, some fraction of a city's residents work non-standard hours, but the majority are on something close to a 9-5 schedule. Also keep in mind that while the number of cars sold might go down, it's also fairly likely that the margin on each car will go up, and the total number of miles driven will go up as well. Basically when you take the unwanted part of driving out of the equation (sitting in traffic wasting time) and don't need driver attention anymore, you can start adding all kinds of value-add features to vehicles like giant in-vehicle displays or massage chairs. And if you can do whatever you want while on the road, longer commutes aren't so bad, so it's easy to put more miles on a car in a year, which means more replacement parts, service visits, etc. over time. The market will no doubt change significantly, but existing OEMs are by no means going to be excluded entirely.
- frgewut 10y ago
  Totally agree with you. Also some of the freight traffic will be shifted to nights; self-driving cars will allow door-to-door service, so number of parking spaces will be reduced; also when no driver is needed you get that extra seat.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    I'm watching this closely too. Many articles showed how cities shifted organization around cars. I wonder how it will reverse that trend. Weird times.
- sauwan 10y ago
  I disagree. While the number of cars may plummet initially, when you share cars between multiple people, the mileage on those cars is going to increase dramatically. Shared cars may end up hitting 300,000 miles in 5 years rather than 15. Unless self driving cars dramatically increase the lifespan of the average car, things will balance out in a few years.
mdorazio 10y ago
Based on what I saw at CES this year and some other automotive tech conferences and demos, I would say Google is 1-2 years ahead of everyone else with their automated driving capabilities. Not a huge lead, but they have far more data to use for training and far more cars in the wild than any OEM. Most competitors have a few cars that they field test occasionally and trot out for press events. What's interesting to me is that the technology gap seems to be closing with the rapid advancement of sensors and embedded processors, and more standardized approaches to computer vision, machine learning, etc. making their way into automotive applications. Volvo is obviously taking advantage of this in a great way.
- mitchellh 10y ago
  Depending how you look at it this isn't entirely true for a few reasons, but also not entirely wrong either. I'll do "why its not true" first but also "why you're not wrong"... Tesla's are actively collecting data all the time for autopilot-enabled cars, even if autopilot isn't purchased. Some basic info here: http://electrek.co/2016/04/11/google-self-driving-car-tesla-autopilot/ http://electrek.co/2016/04/11/google-self-driving-car-tesla-... The usage of this data is relatively unknown, but based on how autopilot is improved week to week it is assumed that it is being used to learn the speed to take turns, where lanes are, etc. The provider of Tesla's autopilot hardware (partially) calls this something like "Active Mapping". Or something. The reason you're not wrong though is that Google has more sensor-rich data. Tesla vehicles currently just don't have the same level of sensor package onboard. So Google has a lot of data Tesla can't get.
kriro 10y ago
I had this somewhat naive view as well. But there's actually some very good research and work done by traditional car manufacturers. Mercedes-Benz has done some very good work in the trucking department for example (from talking to some trustworthy AI researchers at a conference). I do feel that Google (and Apple) have an edge. Traditional car companies (at least in Germany) are driven by engineers and usually decision makers tend to be ex-engineers. They have a subtly different attitude towards programming and software (often only working with Matlab and the like) and I often feel like software isn't all that important to them. Alas software is eating the world is especially true in this segment. I don't know how to succinctly say it without sounding like "ZOMG programmers > engineers haha" elitism but I think "software first" thinking and not "engineering first" thinking is the principle that will succeed in this space.
- uola 10y ago
  Generally I would say that a company like Google is researching self-driving, while a company like Volvo is building self-driving cars. It's very likely that Google has the edge when it comes to something like autonomous taxis (i.e. pods), but that is still some years ahead and who knows how much of that will have been a relevant effort then. I guess they will have a lot of patents though.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Android demonstrates Google is happy to have someone else build the physical hardware. The current auto industry is predicated on many independent suppliers and Google could easily become yet another one.
    - uola 10y ago
      Yes, but the technology they are researching (full autonomous) is still further down the road than something like highway autonomy only. Which would still give you most of the benefits of an autonomous car in boredom, accident and unproductive time reduction. While not requiring as expensive parts and as much research. If you do a self-driving pod then it's another story because then you share the cost between passengers and you can engineer it to only go city speeds for instance. What I'm essentially saying is that at the point Googles research becomes "a reality" the car becomes the weak part of the equation. When we have full autonomy, I might almost just take a train (that will probably always be much faster than cars because of physics) and catch another autonomous pod at the other station. This is of course what could/should happen in theory, not what will happen.
dharma1 10y ago
Wouldn't discount the Swedes and Germans, a lot of very smart brains working on this
RealityVoid 10y ago
Out of the car companies out there, Volvo is one of the better ones as far as sw goes. I've heard good words about the way things work in Daimler, Volvo and WV but not many good things about the way other companies treated software.
vlehto 10y ago
It's easier for BMW to implement Mobileye in existing model than Apple to build self driving software, self driving sensors, good car and efficient production line for it all. http://www.mobileye.com/technology/applications/ http://www.mobileye.com/technology/applications/ Apple sure has shot. But it's upphill battle.

kuzmin 10y ago

It's actually quite amazing how much the self-driving car hype is focused around Google and Tesla. This thread has been up for four hours and only has 6 comments, meanwhile the submission about Tesla has over 200 comments (!)

aluhut 10y ago
To be fair, the Tesla submission covers an recent rare event while this here is more of general information about things that will happen in the future. Just this is enough to cover for the amount of comments. There is a lot to discuss.
jaimex2 10y ago
Because the Tesla one isn't just words. I read up till "They plan to..."
- dosshell 10y ago
  "Plan to" as in they will do it if nothing very strange happens. The cars are currently driving around here in Gothenburg with Volvo employees behind the wheels. The cars will however only work for some well tested roads, eg. the big transit roads around the city.

sien 10y ago

When self-driving cars become a reality over the next 10 years it's probably going to reduce the number of cars sold massively. Many or most adults in the developed world currently own a car. If you can share them even between, say 3 people the number of cars required will plummet. There are credible predictions around as well that even say up to 10 people might be able to share a car. There is already over capacity in car production globally. Self-driving cars are likely to drive that even further. It's not a good market for a company that isn't in the game to be going in to. Google are different because they seem to be selling the technology to enable other manufacturers to sell self-driving cars.

mdorazio 10y ago
Not sure why you got downvoted. While I think the number of cars sold will decrease, I don't think it will be by very much. The biggest problem is that most people go to work and go home at roughly the same times during the day, so realistically you can't have more than maybe 2-3 people sharing a car if they're both employed. Yes, some fraction of a city's residents work non-standard hours, but the majority are on something close to a 9-5 schedule. Also keep in mind that while the number of cars sold might go down, it's also fairly likely that the margin on each car will go up, and the total number of miles driven will go up as well. Basically when you take the unwanted part of driving out of the equation (sitting in traffic wasting time) and don't need driver attention anymore, you can start adding all kinds of value-add features to vehicles like giant in-vehicle displays or massage chairs. And if you can do whatever you want while on the road, longer commutes aren't so bad, so it's easy to put more miles on a car in a year, which means more replacement parts, service visits, etc. over time. The market will no doubt change significantly, but existing OEMs are by no means going to be excluded entirely.
frgewut 10y ago
Totally agree with you. Also some of the freight traffic will be shifted to nights; self-driving cars will allow door-to-door service, so number of parking spaces will be reduced; also when no driver is needed you get that extra seat.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  I'm watching this closely too. Many articles showed how cities shifted organization around cars. I wonder how it will reverse that trend. Weird times.
sauwan 10y ago
I disagree. While the number of cars may plummet initially, when you share cars between multiple people, the mileage on those cars is going to increase dramatically. Shared cars may end up hitting 300,000 miles in 5 years rather than 15. Unless self driving cars dramatically increase the lifespan of the average car, things will balance out in a few years.

mdorazio 10y ago

Based on what I saw at CES this year and some other automotive tech conferences and demos, I would say Google is 1-2 years ahead of everyone else with their automated driving capabilities. Not a huge lead, but they have far more data to use for training and far more cars in the wild than any OEM. Most competitors have a few cars that they field test occasionally and trot out for press events. What's interesting to me is that the technology gap seems to be closing with the rapid advancement of sensors and embedded processors, and more standardized approaches to computer vision, machine learning, etc. making their way into automotive applications. Volvo is obviously taking advantage of this in a great way.

mitchellh 10y ago
Depending how you look at it this isn't entirely true for a few reasons, but also not entirely wrong either. I'll do "why its not true" first but also "why you're not wrong"... Tesla's are actively collecting data all the time for autopilot-enabled cars, even if autopilot isn't purchased. Some basic info here: http://electrek.co/2016/04/11/google-self-driving-car-tesla-autopilot/ http://electrek.co/2016/04/11/google-self-driving-car-tesla-... The usage of this data is relatively unknown, but based on how autopilot is improved week to week it is assumed that it is being used to learn the speed to take turns, where lanes are, etc. The provider of Tesla's autopilot hardware (partially) calls this something like "Active Mapping". Or something. The reason you're not wrong though is that Google has more sensor-rich data. Tesla vehicles currently just don't have the same level of sensor package onboard. So Google has a lot of data Tesla can't get.

kriro 10y ago

I had this somewhat naive view as well. But there's actually some very good research and work done by traditional car manufacturers. Mercedes-Benz has done some very good work in the trucking department for example (from talking to some trustworthy AI researchers at a conference). I do feel that Google (and Apple) have an edge. Traditional car companies (at least in Germany) are driven by engineers and usually decision makers tend to be ex-engineers. They have a subtly different attitude towards programming and software (often only working with Matlab and the like) and I often feel like software isn't all that important to them. Alas software is eating the world is especially true in this segment. I don't know how to succinctly say it without sounding like "ZOMG programmers > engineers haha" elitism but I think "software first" thinking and not "engineering first" thinking is the principle that will succeed in this space.

uola 10y ago
Generally I would say that a company like Google is researching self-driving, while a company like Volvo is building self-driving cars. It's very likely that Google has the edge when it comes to something like autonomous taxis (i.e. pods), but that is still some years ahead and who knows how much of that will have been a relevant effort then. I guess they will have a lot of patents though.
- Retric 10y ago
  Android demonstrates Google is happy to have someone else build the physical hardware. The current auto industry is predicated on many independent suppliers and Google could easily become yet another one.
  - uola 10y ago
    Yes, but the technology they are researching (full autonomous) is still further down the road than something like highway autonomy only. Which would still give you most of the benefits of an autonomous car in boredom, accident and unproductive time reduction. While not requiring as expensive parts and as much research. If you do a self-driving pod then it's another story because then you share the cost between passengers and you can engineer it to only go city speeds for instance. What I'm essentially saying is that at the point Googles research becomes "a reality" the car becomes the weak part of the equation. When we have full autonomy, I might almost just take a train (that will probably always be much faster than cars because of physics) and catch another autonomous pod at the other station. This is of course what could/should happen in theory, not what will happen.

dharma1 10y ago

Wouldn't discount the Swedes and Germans, a lot of very smart brains working on this

RealityVoid 10y ago

Out of the car companies out there, Volvo is one of the better ones as far as sw goes. I've heard good words about the way things work in Daimler, Volvo and WV but not many good things about the way other companies treated software.

vlehto 10y ago

It's easier for BMW to implement Mobileye in existing model than Apple to build self driving software, self driving sensors, good car and efficient production line for it all. http://www.mobileye.com/technology/applications/ http://www.mobileye.com/technology/applications/ Apple sure has shot. But it's upphill battle.