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Uber Expands Driverless-Car Push with Deal for 24,000 Volvos
- greenyoda 9y agoExtensive discussion a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15741019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15741019
- chinathrow 9y agoTo give some perspective about these numbers: currently there are 13,587 medaillons in NYC alone.
- DeusExMachina 9y agoIt's hard to compare the numbers though. Autonomous cars work 24/7, so you definitely need fewer to provide the same coverage as human taxis. How efficient it will be though, we still don't know.
- DrScump 9y agoMedallion cabs (leased by the owner to other drivers) are generally worked all shifts that fares can be found.
- bpicolo 9y agoUber/Lyft outnumber taxis 4 or 5:1 in nyc
- Fricken 9y agoI'm not in Pittsburgh or any of the places where people are taking rides in Uber's autonomous test vehicles, but from a few YouTube videos it appears they can't get more than a few blocks in urban traffic without needing human intervention. They've been at it for about 2.5 years now, not including the work that was inherited from the CMU robotics department. I think if a company can program and train an autonomous vehicle to reliably go 5 or 10 miles in city traffic, then it's an indicator they've got the genius level problems solved. Safety validation is a whole other ball game, labour intensive but not super difficult. A few companies have passed that benchmark. There are others who, in spite of being ambitious and well-capitalized, and having had a few years to incubate, appear to be painting by numbers, and don't seem to know what to do when the instruction manual runs out of instructions. Talent is the big X factor in this race and not everybody's got it. Do you think Uber will be ready to receive another 24,000 Volvo's on top of the ~200 they've got somewhere in the 2019/2020 timeframe? I'm not betting on it.