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Hello all! CEO of Voyage and former YC founder here. Would love to answer any questions I can about autonomous taxis. I'm obviously very passionate about the ar

Hello all! CEO of Voyage and former YC founder here. Would love to answer any questions I can about autonomous taxis. I'm obviously very passionate about the area. It feels like dev time is only accelerating (vs. linear progression), so I believe we'll see self-driving cars much faster than the skeptics think. We're also hiring. I don't care about your credential, just that you love robotics or machine learning. Ping me! jobs@voyage.auto.

gregpilling 10y ago
Hi there, I own a manufacturing company in Arizona, and we make (eseentially) brackets, and I would like to make brackets for your retrofit kits. I actually wrote a business plan out 3 years ago based on the likely idea that someone would build a self drive system but would need a partner to figure out how to make the bracketry to bolt the parts on. The way I see it, the 1 billion vehicle fleet on the road now could be upgraded with a standard suite of sensors and actuators, but they would need unique vehicle specific brackets to bolt the parts on. We can help with that part! Most of our vehicles we cover are current model year, back to about 2000, and we work with the steering and suspension on late model vehicles everyday. When will your product be available to test? My personal vehicle is a 09 Tahoe Hybrid, with electric steering and up to 28 mph electric only, purchased specifically to hack. greg@traxda.com if you want to discuss we make lift kits for pickup trucks, as well as LED lightbar brackets and air horn brackets, but it is really just making hundreds/thousands of parts to bolt into existing holes and make the truck do something a little different. We are in the SEMA Tech Transfer program, so we can get OEM CAD files, and we make everything in our robotically powered, vertically integrated operation in Tucson :)
Denzel 10y ago
What are you (or anyone in the space) doing to advance the public's perception of the viability of self-driving cars? Whenever I speak to laypeople about self-driving cars their mind immediately shoots to the 1 million+ ways that things can go terribly wrong, or even slightly wrong. Therefore, they have no interest in self-driving cars. It'd be helpful if we could see when self-driving cars get there. Like crash-safety tests soothe people's nerves, a battery of self-driving tests -- visual, visceral -- would silence objections. Something to point to... something tangible. A way to score the playing field. Because between Google, Tesla, Uber, Cruise, Voyage, and whoever else, it's insanely difficult to see through the fog.
- olivercameron 10y ago
  Great question! I think the biggest help would be statistical significance. We (as in the tech community) realize that machines can exceed humans in efficiency and safety, but the data that this is unarguably true does not yet exist. Waymo drives 1 million miles per year, but this is obviously dwarfed by humans driving. A self-driving car company needs to be doing hundreds of millions of physical miles in order to quieten these fears, and it's only a matter of time before this is happening. This is one of the reason I think autonomous taxis are the perfect vehicle (pun intended) to bring autonomy to the world, since the business gets stronger the more miles you do.
  - Denzel 10y ago
    Thanks for answering Oliver. I understand the statistical point of view (as a member of the tech community). However, I think that argument is falling upon deaf ears across the general population. You still get a "yeah, but..." with an uneasy shrug. People don't like the idea of losing agency when things go sideways. While people may agree with the premise of a computer being better in extraordinary situations, it's hard getting over an unknown unknown. They don't trust the system. They trust themselves. Elon Musk fundamentally understands that you must "capture the imagination" of the general public to advance a field. [1] He's done it consistently through SpaceX and Tesla, and I witnessed it first-hand on two separate occasions with two very different people. For years, I would tell my father -- an older American muscle-car loving guy -- about Tesla and their cars. All the logical arguments. But his heart was set upon the Dodge Hellcat: one of the fastest street-legal cars ever released. That was, until the day the Tesla Model S beat the Dodge Hellcat in a drag race. From then on, he started talking about Tesla, calling me when he saw one, and talking with the owners. Tesla captured his imagination with a visual, visceral experience. And so it was with my girlfriend -- a young, 20-something, not really interested in cars. I'd point out Tesla cars while we were driving and tell her all about them. The logic behind electric cars didn't interest her. Until one day, she called me, screaming into the phone, "Babe! Babe! I just saw this car... it... the doors, I don't know, they like went up like a bird! But it was an SUV!" She was over the moon excited. To which I responded, "That's the Tesla Model X." From then on, her dream car is the Model X. Tesla captured her imagination with a visual, visceral experience. My gut feeling is that the company to win will be the one with statistical significance and a way to capture the public's imagination. P.S. This is all assuming that you're trying to win as a consumer company. If your mission is just to succeed as a supplier, then disregard. [1]: https://youtu.be/xmOt5OZGvhw?t=3m24s https://youtu.be/xmOt5OZGvhw?t=3m24s
dbur 10y ago
Congrats. What kind of roles are you hiring for, and geographically where are you hiring? Also, will you stay actively involved with Udacity's CarND?
- olivercameron 10y ago
  We're hiring for machine learning & robotics engineers. We like pre-mapping and LIDAR, and we like machine learning and cameras. We're focussed on the Bay Area right now, mainly since our team is so small. I will be staying on as an advisor to Udacity, primarily to help with the self-driving car curriculum!
yeeloong001 10y ago
Assuming that the tech behind the company are all sound and working as intended, how does the company differentiate itself from competitors (both local and overseas) like Lyft (which is still dependent on humans) and others like Uber/Otto, Didi and a few others looking to add autonomous vehicle into their product offerings?
Rutledge 10y ago
Hi Oliver, congrats on the launch! With a self-driving taxi what kind of challenges and opportunities do you see in terms of the passenger's request and ride experience (i.e. in the BI article there's a reference to using voice controls for music/navigation)
- olivercameron 10y ago
  If you think of the things you'd ask a human Uber driver to do, we need to reproduce almost all of those digitally, whether through voice or just your mobile phone. Things like changing destinations, asking for ETAs, or turning up the AC.
yanma 10y ago
Hey Oliver, congrats! What do you see as your unique competitive advantage against in a competitive fields filled with well funded giants.
- olivercameron 10y ago
  More details on this publicly very soon!
ThisIsUnfair 10y ago
So you guys literally milked ideas and and code in the guise of teaching the students only to spin up another business. I loved the whole MOOC idea until it was ambushed and hijacked by people running all manner of fluffy positions. The whole system is now bent on profiteering with marketing staff fabricating fancy outcomes and guarantees to lure people to sign up for the paid version of the course. Especially Udacity and Coursera. Edx not so much even though their programs are more rigorous!
- olivercameron 10y ago
  Not at all! The open source self-driving car project is still open sourc and hasn't been commercialized in any way. The spinout involves no student-written code. Hope that helps.
- lawnchair_larry 10y ago
  Most likely they were just passionate about self-driving cars then, and are passionate about self-driving cars now. It doesn't mean the two were connected.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Everhusk 10y ago
  > So you guys literally milked ideas and and code in the guise of teaching the students only to spin up another business. I loved the whole MOOC idea until it was ambushed and hijacked by people running all manner of fluffy positions. As someone enrolled in the course, I don't think this is a very fair judgement. The TAs genuiunely seem there to help. I'm actually happy that Oliver decided to do this and wouldn't mind if more did it, more employment opportunities! > The whole system is now bent on profiteering with marketing staff fabricating fancy outcomes and guarantees to lure people to sign up for the paid version of the course. Oh, you mean like traditional universities? $2400 doesn't look so bad when you compare it to grad school somewhere that would teach this stuff.

gregpilling 10y ago

Hi there, I own a manufacturing company in Arizona, and we make (eseentially) brackets, and I would like to make brackets for your retrofit kits. I actually wrote a business plan out 3 years ago based on the likely idea that someone would build a self drive system but would need a partner to figure out how to make the bracketry to bolt the parts on. The way I see it, the 1 billion vehicle fleet on the road now could be upgraded with a standard suite of sensors and actuators, but they would need unique vehicle specific brackets to bolt the parts on. We can help with that part! Most of our vehicles we cover are current model year, back to about 2000, and we work with the steering and suspension on late model vehicles everyday. When will your product be available to test? My personal vehicle is a 09 Tahoe Hybrid, with electric steering and up to 28 mph electric only, purchased specifically to hack. greg@traxda.com if you want to discuss we make lift kits for pickup trucks, as well as LED lightbar brackets and air horn brackets, but it is really just making hundreds/thousands of parts to bolt into existing holes and make the truck do something a little different. We are in the SEMA Tech Transfer program, so we can get OEM CAD files, and we make everything in our robotically powered, vertically integrated operation in Tucson :)

Denzel 10y ago

What are you (or anyone in the space) doing to advance the public's perception of the viability of self-driving cars? Whenever I speak to laypeople about self-driving cars their mind immediately shoots to the 1 million+ ways that things can go terribly wrong, or even slightly wrong. Therefore, they have no interest in self-driving cars. It'd be helpful if we could see when self-driving cars get there. Like crash-safety tests soothe people's nerves, a battery of self-driving tests -- visual, visceral -- would silence objections. Something to point to... something tangible. A way to score the playing field. Because between Google, Tesla, Uber, Cruise, Voyage, and whoever else, it's insanely difficult to see through the fog.

olivercameron 10y ago
Great question! I think the biggest help would be statistical significance. We (as in the tech community) realize that machines can exceed humans in efficiency and safety, but the data that this is unarguably true does not yet exist. Waymo drives 1 million miles per year, but this is obviously dwarfed by humans driving. A self-driving car company needs to be doing hundreds of millions of physical miles in order to quieten these fears, and it's only a matter of time before this is happening. This is one of the reason I think autonomous taxis are the perfect vehicle (pun intended) to bring autonomy to the world, since the business gets stronger the more miles you do.
- Denzel 10y ago
  Thanks for answering Oliver. I understand the statistical point of view (as a member of the tech community). However, I think that argument is falling upon deaf ears across the general population. You still get a "yeah, but..." with an uneasy shrug. People don't like the idea of losing agency when things go sideways. While people may agree with the premise of a computer being better in extraordinary situations, it's hard getting over an unknown unknown. They don't trust the system. They trust themselves. Elon Musk fundamentally understands that you must "capture the imagination" of the general public to advance a field. [1] He's done it consistently through SpaceX and Tesla, and I witnessed it first-hand on two separate occasions with two very different people. For years, I would tell my father -- an older American muscle-car loving guy -- about Tesla and their cars. All the logical arguments. But his heart was set upon the Dodge Hellcat: one of the fastest street-legal cars ever released. That was, until the day the Tesla Model S beat the Dodge Hellcat in a drag race. From then on, he started talking about Tesla, calling me when he saw one, and talking with the owners. Tesla captured his imagination with a visual, visceral experience. And so it was with my girlfriend -- a young, 20-something, not really interested in cars. I'd point out Tesla cars while we were driving and tell her all about them. The logic behind electric cars didn't interest her. Until one day, she called me, screaming into the phone, "Babe! Babe! I just saw this car... it... the doors, I don't know, they like went up like a bird! But it was an SUV!" She was over the moon excited. To which I responded, "That's the Tesla Model X." From then on, her dream car is the Model X. Tesla captured her imagination with a visual, visceral experience. My gut feeling is that the company to win will be the one with statistical significance and a way to capture the public's imagination. P.S. This is all assuming that you're trying to win as a consumer company. If your mission is just to succeed as a supplier, then disregard. [1]: https://youtu.be/xmOt5OZGvhw?t=3m24s https://youtu.be/xmOt5OZGvhw?t=3m24s

dbur 10y ago

Congrats. What kind of roles are you hiring for, and geographically where are you hiring? Also, will you stay actively involved with Udacity's CarND?

olivercameron 10y ago
We're hiring for machine learning & robotics engineers. We like pre-mapping and LIDAR, and we like machine learning and cameras. We're focussed on the Bay Area right now, mainly since our team is so small. I will be staying on as an advisor to Udacity, primarily to help with the self-driving car curriculum!

yeeloong001 10y ago

Assuming that the tech behind the company are all sound and working as intended, how does the company differentiate itself from competitors (both local and overseas) like Lyft (which is still dependent on humans) and others like Uber/Otto, Didi and a few others looking to add autonomous vehicle into their product offerings?

Rutledge 10y ago

Hi Oliver, congrats on the launch! With a self-driving taxi what kind of challenges and opportunities do you see in terms of the passenger's request and ride experience (i.e. in the BI article there's a reference to using voice controls for music/navigation)

olivercameron 10y ago
If you think of the things you'd ask a human Uber driver to do, we need to reproduce almost all of those digitally, whether through voice or just your mobile phone. Things like changing destinations, asking for ETAs, or turning up the AC.

yanma 10y ago

Hey Oliver, congrats! What do you see as your unique competitive advantage against in a competitive fields filled with well funded giants.

olivercameron 10y ago
More details on this publicly very soon!

ThisIsUnfair 10y ago

So you guys literally milked ideas and and code in the guise of teaching the students only to spin up another business. I loved the whole MOOC idea until it was ambushed and hijacked by people running all manner of fluffy positions. The whole system is now bent on profiteering with marketing staff fabricating fancy outcomes and guarantees to lure people to sign up for the paid version of the course. Especially Udacity and Coursera. Edx not so much even though their programs are more rigorous!

olivercameron 10y ago
Not at all! The open source self-driving car project is still open sourc and hasn't been commercialized in any way. The spinout involves no student-written code. Hope that helps.
lawnchair_larry 10y ago
Most likely they were just passionate about self-driving cars then, and are passionate about self-driving cars now. It doesn't mean the two were connected.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Everhusk 10y ago
> So you guys literally milked ideas and and code in the guise of teaching the students only to spin up another business. I loved the whole MOOC idea until it was ambushed and hijacked by people running all manner of fluffy positions. As someone enrolled in the course, I don't think this is a very fair judgement. The TAs genuiunely seem there to help. I'm actually happy that Oliver decided to do this and wouldn't mind if more did it, more employment opportunities! > The whole system is now bent on profiteering with marketing staff fabricating fancy outcomes and guarantees to lure people to sign up for the paid version of the course. Oh, you mean like traditional universities? $2400 doesn't look so bad when you compare it to grad school somewhere that would teach this stuff.