9 ms·

Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

89 points by astigsen 9y ago

ghaff 9y ago
This makes sense--and is quite consistent with what I've heard around some efforts being far more open (ahem) to open sourcing their code than their data. A lot probably comes down to the size of the moat. If some fairly modest dataset is "good enough" that implies needed data will be widely available can be used by anyone for their automation algorithms. (Regulation could also force some level of standardization at this layer.) Alternatively, truly vast data sets could turn out to be the difference between decent assistive driving systems, autonomy on highways, and more broadly useful and enabling self-driving technology. Such data sets could end up being outside the capabilities of a few companies who got there first.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  > A lot probably comes down to the size of the moat. If some fairly modest dataset is "good enough" that implies needed data will be widely available can be used by anyone for their automation algorithms. (Regulation could also force some level of standardization at this layer.) Given that humans do without detailed data of this sort, I think it should be okay to leave manufacturers and service providers to figure out how proprietary or standardized the datasets should be. I personally might never trust/desire an autonomous car, especially one connected to the internet, a phone network, or a car-to-car network. In a world where everyone has your best interests at heart, it seems like a nice feature; in the one world we've got, it doesn't.
  - olivermarks 9y ago
    Made me think of Michael Hastings demise... https://youtu.be/7zakBULPETo https://youtu.be/7zakBULPETo
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      The real point is that it is possible. Any specific suspicious death may come and go, but the fact that something like this is believable with conventional networked cars is enough reason to be very skeptical of security and government access (and criminal access) claims of manufacturers, no matter how well-meaning.
      - putsteadywere 9y ago
        If I had a level 5 autonomous car that was compromised by someone who wanted to kill me, they probably could. Or they could just push me down a flight of stairs. Ultimately, I am alive because nobody cares enough to murder me. https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/
        microcolonel 9y ago
        "Why lock my door, people will open the door if they want to, or break the window." I don't see what's wrong with having fewer things in your life which can silently kill you. If you get in a new car, you are now completely at its mercy. There are few or no precautions you can take; you might as well lay on your back, and strap your arms down so your belly stays up. What you're really doing is making it cheaper and easier to kill, misdirect, or trick you. This means that people who wanted to do these things before, but couldn't afford it, now can.
  - somenewacc 9y ago
    > Given that humans do without detailed data of this sort Humans learn by using data from their interactions with the environment, since childhood. That's a ton of data and there might not be a way around that.
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djyaz1200 9y ago
Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are) safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become even more heavily regulated, and there won't be any tolerance for testing unproven autonomous systems in the wild soon. Related... it will be interesting to see how well autonomous cars handle mechanical failures as they (and their tires) age. Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out).
- ghaff 9y ago
  The liability question will be an interesting one--far more so than trolley problems IMO. There aren't a lot of examples where we just accept things sold to consumers killing people when used according to directions and properly maintained because "hey, sometimes stuff happens." Drugs are probably the best example. But even that isn't a case of your drugs killing someone else. I do think it will figured out in some future where there's true autonomy and they're proven far safer statistically. But you're right that the general public isn't going to shrug when $AUTOMAKER's car runs over a skateboarder and the company says "We are committed to safety and we'll try harder next time." There's also the uncanny valley when no one's paying attention although they're legally supposed to be.
  - 6d6b73 9y ago
    >But you're right that the general public isn't going to shrug when $AUTOMAKER's car runs over a skateboarder and the company says "We are committed to safety and we'll try harder next time." Unfortunately many examples from recent years (acceleration pedals, air bags, tires) show that after few weeks everybody will forget about the issue and move on.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      The general population may forget but, in the cases you cite, there were significant lawsuits in each case and settlements.
petra 9y ago
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 ?
- icebraining 9y ago
  That's called the first-mover advantage, and history is littered with examples of companies failing to take advantage of it.
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stephengillie 9y ago
Given the lack of network effect in cars already, it's not likely we'll see a huge explosion of inter-car connectivity anytime soon. Even Tesla see their cars largely as individual machines, and not nodes on a highway network. Example: Driving with cruise control on at 60 mph. The car in front is going ~59.5 mph, so you slowly gain on them. Why do the cars not communicate their speed, so your car can adjust speed to maintain a safe distance? Even cars of the same brand can't do this today. What will be the catalyst for this changing?
- pscarey 9y ago
  Surely the (already) observable relative difference is more important than what the car thinks it's speed is? Both cars might read 60mph and go at different speeds. Therefore I don't see much need for that to change. I think more interesting would be smarter traffic control systems which communicate with cars in cities to advise traffic flows - a simple example being a (wirelessly) counting down light rather than red/amber/green.
- tomsthumb 9y ago
  > Why do the cars not communicate their speed, so your car can adjust speed to maintain a safe distance? How do you deal with spoofing info for/from another vehicle? What happens when someone decides to see what happens when they `inter_car_radio.broadcast(myspeed=0)` or `inter_car_radio.broadcast(myspeed=120)` when the speed limit is 80?
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    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.
    - sah2ed 9y ago
      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 communications can be trusted. The encrypted signal would of course carry an information-rich payload for coordinating a convoy to travel at the same speed, brake, signal a turn, etc simultaneously, for instance.
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joewadcan 9y ago
This is a great write up but misses how gov't regulation could actually force a winner-takes-all distribution. States (like CA and NV) have already started to draw up their own autonomous driving regulations and the DOT is planning to support this evolution with Federal standards. It's reasonable to assume that these standards will get more stringent over time as accidents, insurance, and compatibility become forced issues (likely though lawsuits). The companies that have the data and systems to meet these standards will be able to keep up but it'd be hard (read: impossible) for a new entrant to catch up after the initial players are further down the evolutionary curve.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > It's reasonable to assume that these standards will get more stringent over time as accidents, insurance, and compatibility become forced issues (likely though lawsuits). The companies that have the data and systems to meet these standards will be able to keep up There's a term for this twin to regulatory capture. In essence, the amount of regulation in an industry scales with the age and development of the industry. Difficulty of entrance scales scales with regulation. Combine this with any economies of scale and network effects present, and you have a state-subsidised incumbency bias.
- Tiktaalik 9y ago
  The government regulatory standards could be so tough that there would be no real quality differentiation between autonomous car vendors, as all vendors would have to meet the same incredibly high standards of safety. An outcome could well be that both Tesla and Google both meet the high government standards, but in doing so they've had to create such high performing autonomous systems that the consumer can't tell the difference. They both work equally perfectly because they have to be to be allowed on the road. If this is the case then the autonomous system becomes a non-factor in the purchase of a car. Either you're in the market for an autonomous car or you're not.
mabbo 9y ago
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 with information. "My exit is soon, I'd like to change to the right hand lane everybody!"; "People up ahead of me seem to be stopping suddenly, watch out as I may need to do the same!"; "The right lane is blocked at 43.718045, -79.507663, pass the word back to everyone so they are prepared". If we can build an open protocol for how cars can share this rich information, then as more and more cars are autonomous, the roads will improve continuously. Even non-autonomous cars could start listening to this data and sharing it with the drivers. On the other hand, if we don't build an open protocol then we could start to see, for example, all the Waymo cars helping each other out- but not helping the Teslas or the GMs. There's a winner-take-all effect in action.
- ruytlm 9y ago
  Highly agree. While reading this article, I had a paranoid convergence of ideas. I was reading another article the other day about stock trading strategies, and how some particular strategies only work if a small number of people are using them; once they go mainstream, they lose their advantage. The example used was a whole lot of funds jumping into a particular strategy, which then effectively killed the strategy's effectiveness, and everybody lost. My paranoid fear is something similar in autonomous vehicles; a vicious cycle of systems reacting to each other, because they're not able to communicate directly. Like when you're walking towards someone, and you both try to step to the side to let the other pass, but you step to the same side; then you correct by stepping the other way, but so does the other person.
  - normalfaults 9y ago
    I wonder if there is an economic/academic term for this? Vicious Cycle?
    - 9y ago
salt-licker 9y ago
This write-up overlooks that hardware integration is neither free nor easy. Tesla has a huge advantage over an 'autonomy in a box' model because 1. It only has to support 2 or 3 car models and 2. It has full control over all design decisions. Imagine trying to calibrate your third-party self-driving software for every different car geometry, sensor placement, transmission system, and steering sensitivity across a few different car manufacturers. If you screw it up for one car model, people die and it's your fault. Now let's say waymo chooses a sole partner to avoid this, GM, for example. Now waymo and GM have to work together to build a car, with a huge expertise barrier between the two teams. Will GM be willing to redesign their decades-old electronics platform around Waymo's self-driving system? Will Waymo put in the effort to make their sensors easily maintainable by GM mechanics? If the relationship doesn't last forever, much of this effort is wasted. Tesla has expertise on both sides and has a mandate across the organization to make the integrated system work. Not to mention a huge head start handling UX and safety regulations in the field. They may not have a monopoly, but I expect them to be the first to level 5 and the leader in autonomous driving market share for years to come.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  > Now let's say waymo chooses a sole partner to avoid this, GM, for example. I think it depends a lot on the specific partner. Noticeably WayMo has partnered with Chrysler, rather than Ford, and Chrysler seems in a position where they would retool to do what WayMo told them to do, because they have no self-driving effort of their own, so WayMo is their only hope if this becomes real. WayMo might just buy Chrysler at that point.
Animats 9y ago
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 most of them are talking about shipping it for the 2020-2021 model year. In that business model, it's not a big money-maker for whoever sells the self-driving technology. They get to be a Tier I auto parts supplier, squeezed hard on price. There's a lot of noise about "transportation as a service". Remember that Uber loses money, even after squeezing its drivers really hard and making them buy and maintain the cars. Actual "transportation as a service" is going to look more like car rental and Zipcar, and will probably come from companies that already operate fleets of cars. They already have "rent by the hour, day, week, or month". They're just adding "rent by the trip". Also, bear in mind that "transportation as a service" requires level 5 autonomy - no driver required - so the vehicles can move around empty to pick up a passenger. That's going to come a few years after Level 4. Autonomous cars don't require car to car communications. They don't need to be "connected" at all. Chris Urmson pointed that out when he was heading Google's self-driving effort. From a safety perspective, it might be better if they're not connected. The enthusiasm for car to car communications is coming from the infotainment and advertising people.
- sien 9y ago
  What do you think about these slow electric busses that are all over the world on serious trials with real passengers. For examples: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/18/self-driv.. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/18/self-driv.... They have also been used in DC, Vegas, Perth, the Netherlands and other places. It might not be a total replacement for cars but they are self-driving vehicles that are moving passengers now. If I had access to these running at 30km/h only on major streets in my city I'd probably get rid of my car.
  - Animats 9y ago
    There are several of those, none of which seem to be beyond the demo level. Navya is really slow, about walking speed. EasyMile is so slow they have to show sped-up videos. Proterra, which makes electric buses, is just talking about self-driving. Olli, from Local Motors, is starting out at 5MPH and doesn't seem to have any units installed. None of these systems seem capable of an ordinary airport parking shuttle route. That's embarrassing. Those things should be performing better.
nostrademons 9y ago
Planet Labs is the big wildcard in mapping. When Google first mapped the world, they had to hire thousands of contractors to drive cars down every street, and even pretty metropolitan areas would be updated once or twice a year. Now, there's a company with a fleet of a couple hundred satellites that's imaging the whole world every day, with a resolution of about 10 feet. Not sure on their pricing - I think it's a lot - but the capital cost of building an accurate physical map has gone down dramatically.
dgregd 9y ago
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 information would greatly enhance overall security, especially during rain and snow conditions. Self-driving is such important (just after eliminating combustion engines) that we could upgrade existing cars with cheap ROMB boxes. Vehicle GPS tracking system costs about $30. ROMB box would cost about $60. Let's say a car ROMB received info about the white truck, while your car cameras and vision recognition systems see just a cloud and any truck in 50 m range, that conflicting info should cause the car to slow down.
- rad_gruchalski 9y ago
  And when something goes wrong with the infrastructure - chaos.
  - new299 9y ago
    Are there any reports showing what happens when all the traffic lights in a city stop working? I would guess it would be similarly chaotic. The infrastructure would need to be designed such that large scale outages are unlikely I guess.
- new299 9y ago
  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.
dalbasal 9y ago
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.
anovikov 9y ago
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.
mikhailfranco 9y ago
Combining maps with road journey data is already an oligopoly, based on: first mover advantage, economies of scale, network effects, satnav products/apps, in-car systems, mobile device OS oligopoly, fleet management data and value added data analytics. The 3+1 companies of sufficient scale to dominate the market are: Google (Android), HERE (was Navtek, was Nokia), Tom Tom (Apple iOS), and Inrix (startup) - which does not create its own maps, but has captured enough driving data to compete with the Big 3. The only other major map provider is Microsoft Bing, but it does not (AFAIK) have significant products based on driving data, although it does have 'T-Drive' and various other research efforts. Losing the battle for mobile OSes has crippled its efforts.
amelius 9y ago
> winning LIDAR doesn’t give leverage at other layers of the stack (unless you get a monopoly) Patents are effectively a grant of monopoly. Also strong vertical integration can still ruin the market.

89 points by astigsen 9y ago

This makes sense--and is quite consistent with what I've heard around some efforts being far more open (ahem) to open sourcing their code than their data. A lot probably comes down to the size of the moat. If some fairly modest dataset is "good enough" that implies needed data will be widely available can be used by anyone for their automation algorithms. (Regulation could also force some level of standardization at this layer.) Alternatively, truly vast data sets could turn out to be the difference between decent assistive driving systems, autonomy on highways, and more broadly useful and enabling self-driving technology. Such data sets could end up being outside the capabilities of a few companies who got there first.

microcolonel 9y ago
> A lot probably comes down to the size of the moat. If some fairly modest dataset is "good enough" that implies needed data will be widely available can be used by anyone for their automation algorithms. (Regulation could also force some level of standardization at this layer.) Given that humans do without detailed data of this sort, I think it should be okay to leave manufacturers and service providers to figure out how proprietary or standardized the datasets should be. I personally might never trust/desire an autonomous car, especially one connected to the internet, a phone network, or a car-to-car network. In a world where everyone has your best interests at heart, it seems like a nice feature; in the one world we've got, it doesn't.
- olivermarks 9y ago
  Made me think of Michael Hastings demise... https://youtu.be/7zakBULPETo https://youtu.be/7zakBULPETo
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    The real point is that it is possible. Any specific suspicious death may come and go, but the fact that something like this is believable with conventional networked cars is enough reason to be very skeptical of security and government access (and criminal access) claims of manufacturers, no matter how well-meaning.
    - putsteadywere 9y ago
      If I had a level 5 autonomous car that was compromised by someone who wanted to kill me, they probably could. Or they could just push me down a flight of stairs. Ultimately, I am alive because nobody cares enough to murder me. https://www.xkcd.com/538/ https://www.xkcd.com/538/
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        "Why lock my door, people will open the door if they want to, or break the window." I don't see what's wrong with having fewer things in your life which can silently kill you. If you get in a new car, you are now completely at its mercy. There are few or no precautions you can take; you might as well lay on your back, and strap your arms down so your belly stays up. What you're really doing is making it cheaper and easier to kill, misdirect, or trick you. This means that people who wanted to do these things before, but couldn't afford it, now can.
- somenewacc 9y ago
  > Given that humans do without detailed data of this sort Humans learn by using data from their interactions with the environment, since childhood. That's a ton of data and there might not be a way around that.

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djyaz1200 9y ago

Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are) safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become even more heavily regulated, and there won't be any tolerance for testing unproven autonomous systems in the wild soon. Related... it will be interesting to see how well autonomous cars handle mechanical failures as they (and their tires) age. Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out).

ghaff 9y ago
The liability question will be an interesting one--far more so than trolley problems IMO. There aren't a lot of examples where we just accept things sold to consumers killing people when used according to directions and properly maintained because "hey, sometimes stuff happens." Drugs are probably the best example. But even that isn't a case of your drugs killing someone else. I do think it will figured out in some future where there's true autonomy and they're proven far safer statistically. But you're right that the general public isn't going to shrug when $AUTOMAKER's car runs over a skateboarder and the company says "We are committed to safety and we'll try harder next time." There's also the uncanny valley when no one's paying attention although they're legally supposed to be.
- 6d6b73 9y ago
  >But you're right that the general public isn't going to shrug when $AUTOMAKER's car runs over a skateboarder and the company says "We are committed to safety and we'll try harder next time." Unfortunately many examples from recent years (acceleration pedals, air bags, tires) show that after few weeks everybody will forget about the issue and move on.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    The general population may forget but, in the cases you cite, there were significant lawsuits in each case and settlements.

petra 9y ago

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 ?

icebraining 9y ago
That's called the first-mover advantage, and history is littered with examples of companies failing to take advantage of it.

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stephengillie 9y ago

Given the lack of network effect in cars already, it's not likely we'll see a huge explosion of inter-car connectivity anytime soon. Even Tesla see their cars largely as individual machines, and not nodes on a highway network. Example: Driving with cruise control on at 60 mph. The car in front is going ~59.5 mph, so you slowly gain on them. Why do the cars not communicate their speed, so your car can adjust speed to maintain a safe distance? Even cars of the same brand can't do this today. What will be the catalyst for this changing?

pscarey 9y ago
Surely the (already) observable relative difference is more important than what the car thinks it's speed is? Both cars might read 60mph and go at different speeds. Therefore I don't see much need for that to change. I think more interesting would be smarter traffic control systems which communicate with cars in cities to advise traffic flows - a simple example being a (wirelessly) counting down light rather than red/amber/green.
tomsthumb 9y ago
> Why do the cars not communicate their speed, so your car can adjust speed to maintain a safe distance? How do you deal with spoofing info for/from another vehicle? What happens when someone decides to see what happens when they `inter_car_radio.broadcast(myspeed=0)` or `inter_car_radio.broadcast(myspeed=120)` when the speed limit is 80?
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  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.
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    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 communications can be trusted. The encrypted signal would of course carry an information-rich payload for coordinating a convoy to travel at the same speed, brake, signal a turn, etc simultaneously, for instance.

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joewadcan 9y ago

This is a great write up but misses how gov't regulation could actually force a winner-takes-all distribution. States (like CA and NV) have already started to draw up their own autonomous driving regulations and the DOT is planning to support this evolution with Federal standards. It's reasonable to assume that these standards will get more stringent over time as accidents, insurance, and compatibility become forced issues (likely though lawsuits). The companies that have the data and systems to meet these standards will be able to keep up but it'd be hard (read: impossible) for a new entrant to catch up after the initial players are further down the evolutionary curve.

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> It's reasonable to assume that these standards will get more stringent over time as accidents, insurance, and compatibility become forced issues (likely though lawsuits). The companies that have the data and systems to meet these standards will be able to keep up There's a term for this twin to regulatory capture. In essence, the amount of regulation in an industry scales with the age and development of the industry. Difficulty of entrance scales scales with regulation. Combine this with any economies of scale and network effects present, and you have a state-subsidised incumbency bias.
Tiktaalik 9y ago
The government regulatory standards could be so tough that there would be no real quality differentiation between autonomous car vendors, as all vendors would have to meet the same incredibly high standards of safety. An outcome could well be that both Tesla and Google both meet the high government standards, but in doing so they've had to create such high performing autonomous systems that the consumer can't tell the difference. They both work equally perfectly because they have to be to be allowed on the road. If this is the case then the autonomous system becomes a non-factor in the purchase of a car. Either you're in the market for an autonomous car or you're not.

mabbo 9y ago

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 with information. "My exit is soon, I'd like to change to the right hand lane everybody!"; "People up ahead of me seem to be stopping suddenly, watch out as I may need to do the same!"; "The right lane is blocked at 43.718045, -79.507663, pass the word back to everyone so they are prepared". If we can build an open protocol for how cars can share this rich information, then as more and more cars are autonomous, the roads will improve continuously. Even non-autonomous cars could start listening to this data and sharing it with the drivers. On the other hand, if we don't build an open protocol then we could start to see, for example, all the Waymo cars helping each other out- but not helping the Teslas or the GMs. There's a winner-take-all effect in action.

ruytlm 9y ago
Highly agree. While reading this article, I had a paranoid convergence of ideas. I was reading another article the other day about stock trading strategies, and how some particular strategies only work if a small number of people are using them; once they go mainstream, they lose their advantage. The example used was a whole lot of funds jumping into a particular strategy, which then effectively killed the strategy's effectiveness, and everybody lost. My paranoid fear is something similar in autonomous vehicles; a vicious cycle of systems reacting to each other, because they're not able to communicate directly. Like when you're walking towards someone, and you both try to step to the side to let the other pass, but you step to the same side; then you correct by stepping the other way, but so does the other person.
- normalfaults 9y ago
  I wonder if there is an economic/academic term for this? Vicious Cycle?
  - 9y ago

salt-licker 9y ago

This write-up overlooks that hardware integration is neither free nor easy. Tesla has a huge advantage over an 'autonomy in a box' model because 1. It only has to support 2 or 3 car models and 2. It has full control over all design decisions. Imagine trying to calibrate your third-party self-driving software for every different car geometry, sensor placement, transmission system, and steering sensitivity across a few different car manufacturers. If you screw it up for one car model, people die and it's your fault. Now let's say waymo chooses a sole partner to avoid this, GM, for example. Now waymo and GM have to work together to build a car, with a huge expertise barrier between the two teams. Will GM be willing to redesign their decades-old electronics platform around Waymo's self-driving system? Will Waymo put in the effort to make their sensors easily maintainable by GM mechanics? If the relationship doesn't last forever, much of this effort is wasted. Tesla has expertise on both sides and has a mandate across the organization to make the integrated system work. Not to mention a huge head start handling UX and safety regulations in the field. They may not have a monopoly, but I expect them to be the first to level 5 and the leader in autonomous driving market share for years to come.

Eridrus 9y ago
> Now let's say waymo chooses a sole partner to avoid this, GM, for example. I think it depends a lot on the specific partner. Noticeably WayMo has partnered with Chrysler, rather than Ford, and Chrysler seems in a position where they would retool to do what WayMo told them to do, because they have no self-driving effort of their own, so WayMo is their only hope if this becomes real. WayMo might just buy Chrysler at that point.

Animats 9y ago

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 most of them are talking about shipping it for the 2020-2021 model year. In that business model, it's not a big money-maker for whoever sells the self-driving technology. They get to be a Tier I auto parts supplier, squeezed hard on price. There's a lot of noise about "transportation as a service". Remember that Uber loses money, even after squeezing its drivers really hard and making them buy and maintain the cars. Actual "transportation as a service" is going to look more like car rental and Zipcar, and will probably come from companies that already operate fleets of cars. They already have "rent by the hour, day, week, or month". They're just adding "rent by the trip". Also, bear in mind that "transportation as a service" requires level 5 autonomy - no driver required - so the vehicles can move around empty to pick up a passenger. That's going to come a few years after Level 4. Autonomous cars don't require car to car communications. They don't need to be "connected" at all. Chris Urmson pointed that out when he was heading Google's self-driving effort. From a safety perspective, it might be better if they're not connected. The enthusiasm for car to car communications is coming from the infotainment and advertising people.

sien 9y ago
What do you think about these slow electric busses that are all over the world on serious trials with real passengers. For examples: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/18/self-driv.. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/18/self-driv.... They have also been used in DC, Vegas, Perth, the Netherlands and other places. It might not be a total replacement for cars but they are self-driving vehicles that are moving passengers now. If I had access to these running at 30km/h only on major streets in my city I'd probably get rid of my car.
- Animats 9y ago
  There are several of those, none of which seem to be beyond the demo level. Navya is really slow, about walking speed. EasyMile is so slow they have to show sped-up videos. Proterra, which makes electric buses, is just talking about self-driving. Olli, from Local Motors, is starting out at 5MPH and doesn't seem to have any units installed. None of these systems seem capable of an ordinary airport parking shuttle route. That's embarrassing. Those things should be performing better.

nostrademons 9y ago

Planet Labs is the big wildcard in mapping. When Google first mapped the world, they had to hire thousands of contractors to drive cars down every street, and even pretty metropolitan areas would be updated once or twice a year. Now, there's a company with a fleet of a couple hundred satellites that's imaging the whole world every day, with a resolution of about 10 feet. Not sure on their pricing - I think it's a lot - but the capital cost of building an accurate physical map has gone down dramatically.

dgregd 9y ago

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 information would greatly enhance overall security, especially during rain and snow conditions. Self-driving is such important (just after eliminating combustion engines) that we could upgrade existing cars with cheap ROMB boxes. Vehicle GPS tracking system costs about $30. ROMB box would cost about $60. Let's say a car ROMB received info about the white truck, while your car cameras and vision recognition systems see just a cloud and any truck in 50 m range, that conflicting info should cause the car to slow down.

rad_gruchalski 9y ago
And when something goes wrong with the infrastructure - chaos.
- new299 9y ago
  Are there any reports showing what happens when all the traffic lights in a city stop working? I would guess it would be similarly chaotic. The infrastructure would need to be designed such that large scale outages are unlikely I guess.
new299 9y ago
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.

dalbasal 9y ago

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.

anovikov 9y ago

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.

mikhailfranco 9y ago

Combining maps with road journey data is already an oligopoly, based on: first mover advantage, economies of scale, network effects, satnav products/apps, in-car systems, mobile device OS oligopoly, fleet management data and value added data analytics. The 3+1 companies of sufficient scale to dominate the market are: Google (Android), HERE (was Navtek, was Nokia), Tom Tom (Apple iOS), and Inrix (startup) - which does not create its own maps, but has captured enough driving data to compete with the Big 3. The only other major map provider is Microsoft Bing, but it does not (AFAIK) have significant products based on driving data, although it does have 'T-Drive' and various other research efforts. Losing the battle for mobile OSes has crippled its efforts.

amelius 9y ago

> winning LIDAR doesn’t give leverage at other layers of the stack (unless you get a monopoly) Patents are effectively a grant of monopoly. Also strong vertical integration can still ruin the market.