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good luck finding any competitor willing to sell you a small fleet of them and let you launch a competing service, not only that they are the ones in control so

by flylib 10y ago

good luck finding any competitor willing to sell you a small fleet of them and let you launch a competing service, not only that they are the ones in control so if you launch a competing service with them, they could disable your cars. Uber, Apple and Google have all taken the approach that they will rely on their own autonomous systems retrofitted onto existing cars or potentially build new cars instead of relying on anything the existing car companies make, otherwise it makes no sense for any of them to be investing billions of dollars into research if they think they can just go to Ford/GM/Tesla/etc. in 2020 and buy enough cars to launch a fleet service.

zaroth 10y ago
So this is an interesting thought -- will the general public even be able to own their own self driving car? Or will self-driving functionality be locked down with DRM to such a degree, will the developers of the technology hoard it / control it to the point that they are the ultimate arbiters of what you can even do with a self driving car? What scares me is that there is absolutely precedence for companies to act like this, and I can even imagine legal arguments about the hardware requiring certain oversight and maintenance to allow self-drive to be enabled. Kind of like John Deere exerting control over their tractors but even worse. So to your point, in such a world, no one could go out and buy a self-driving car, and certainly not a fleet of them, and then just try to independently run this service. If you want the car to drive you from Point A to Point B you would be signing a TOS saying it was for personal use, yadda yadda, and all the APIs would be completely locked down like a walled garden preventing people from taking the self-driving platform and building on top of it. This would all be in the name of safety and limiting liability, of course....
- flylib 10y ago
  Here is tesla's comment on it, but it seems like they will be fully in control of the fleet/app software and could potentially favor their own cars in cities where they are running their own fleets over your own cars you have added into the fleet as it benefits them financially more. Potentially "jailbreaking" and building your own fleet/app would be an option, not sure how legal but if tesla issues a critical security update and the vulnerability gets published by the researcher and the the jailbroken ridesharing provider you are using hasn't updated yet/can't because it will break their jailbreak in the short term, you are exposed "When true self-driving is approved by regulators, it will mean that you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere. Once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else enroute to your destination. You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you're at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not. In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are." https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux
  - zaroth 10y ago
    I think Tesla has shown that jailbreaking the car is definitely not an option -- they will remotely brick your vehicle if they catch you. So I think this a great example where you can add your Tesla to Tesla's own on demand service, but if you don't like the rates Tesla offers, and you want to put it in rotation with someone else's service, you likely run afoul of the ToS and risk bricking your car. This probably helps explain why so many different companies, including Uber, are racing to develop their own self driving platforms. Because it won't be a bolt on feature by a supplier that anyone can build on, it will be a highly controlled and locked down service funneling the profits to the platform owners.

by flylib 10y ago

zaroth 10y ago

So this is an interesting thought -- will the general public even be able to own their own self driving car? Or will self-driving functionality be locked down with DRM to such a degree, will the developers of the technology hoard it / control it to the point that they are the ultimate arbiters of what you can even do with a self driving car? What scares me is that there is absolutely precedence for companies to act like this, and I can even imagine legal arguments about the hardware requiring certain oversight and maintenance to allow self-drive to be enabled. Kind of like John Deere exerting control over their tractors but even worse. So to your point, in such a world, no one could go out and buy a self-driving car, and certainly not a fleet of them, and then just try to independently run this service. If you want the car to drive you from Point A to Point B you would be signing a TOS saying it was for personal use, yadda yadda, and all the APIs would be completely locked down like a walled garden preventing people from taking the self-driving platform and building on top of it. This would all be in the name of safety and limiting liability, of course....

flylib 10y ago
Here is tesla's comment on it, but it seems like they will be fully in control of the fleet/app software and could potentially favor their own cars in cities where they are running their own fleets over your own cars you have added into the fleet as it benefits them financially more. Potentially "jailbreaking" and building your own fleet/app would be an option, not sure how legal but if tesla issues a critical security update and the vulnerability gets published by the researcher and the the jailbroken ridesharing provider you are using hasn't updated yet/can't because it will break their jailbreak in the short term, you are exposed "When true self-driving is approved by regulators, it will mean that you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere. Once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else enroute to your destination. You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you're at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not. In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are." https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux
- zaroth 10y ago
  I think Tesla has shown that jailbreaking the car is definitely not an option -- they will remotely brick your vehicle if they catch you. So I think this a great example where you can add your Tesla to Tesla's own on demand service, but if you don't like the rates Tesla offers, and you want to put it in rotation with someone else's service, you likely run afoul of the ToS and risk bricking your car. This probably helps explain why so many different companies, including Uber, are racing to develop their own self driving platforms. Because it won't be a bolt on feature by a supplier that anyone can build on, it will be a highly controlled and locked down service funneling the profits to the platform owners.