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Lyft Self-Driving
- Game_Ender 9y agoBased on their job openings [0] it looks like Level 5 is going head to head with Google, Cruise, and Uber and building a full autonomy software solution. Looks like they are close to square one though since they are hiring leads for essentially everything: localization, perception, prediction, and controls. It's an interesting to see all the players trying to have an out if someone withholds either the transportation network, or self driving tech. 0 - https://www.lyft.com/jobs#job-openings https://www.lyft.com/jobs#job-openings
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- skywhopper 9y agoTo the extent this works anytime soon it will be so slow and inconsistent that it won’t be economically successful. Any driving service that works worse at night, in bad weather, or outside small well-mapped neighborhoods will not be comprehensive or reliable enough to be economically viable. Also the idea that self driving cars will end traffic is a dangerous lie to tell. Self driving cars will do nothing to reduce traffic. If anything, self driving cars will increase car trips. And in fact in order to serve people with reasonable service times there will need to be _more_ cars on the road at all times which will more than soak up any additional capacity gained from tighter traffic patterns on restricted access highways.
- elchief 9y agoLove me that hacker ethos...
- rocky1138 9y agoHe or she is definitely right about the second point. For more detail on the thought behind the second point, read up on the Jevons Paradox if you're not already familiar with it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox I'm not convinced about the first idea, though. I think we shouldn't get confused with equating not covering all trips with lack of success. Even if driverless only works for commutes in one or two major cities I think that might be enough to call it a success, economical and societal.
- labster 9y agoYes, increasing availability of cars through self-driving will result in more trips, probably from underage or elderly people. But add in a service like Lyft, and the facts change. Taxi services reduce the total amount of miles driven. When I first heard that it sounded crazy, but think of this scenario: you live near your friends, but go to work at different places. You all agree to meet up for a beer after work. If everyone takes the same taxi home from the pub, you've saved two car trips.
- rocky1138 9y agoI'm not sure you grasp just how fundamental a change in our lifestyles a switch to driverless cars could be, especially ones sold on a subscription basis with unlimited usage. It's the difference between first world countries with socialized medicine and those without. Before, driving was a job that everyone had and took up valuable cycles away from living your life. You had to consider each trip, e.g., "How much gas do I have? What's the traffic like? My car isn't working, I have to skip going out tonight." After, no matter what you want to do, you just call a car and get in. You don't even have to think about it. It's going to liberate so many people that undoubtedly frivolous trips are going to stack, similar to how people in countries with socialized medicine tend to visit the emergency room for less and less serious medical problems. Since Uber has come to town I catch myself calling it for things I could have easily skipped or taken the bus to or suffered on my motorcycle for (rain, etc.). I might haven taken, on average, less than one taxi per year but now take at least 15 Uber trips during that same time period. I think this sort of liberating convenience will only increase once driverless cars become popular.
- perennate 9y agoI am skeptical of claims that autonomous vehicles would decrease congestion even without taking into account this paradox (i.e., even if the density of cars on the road remained the same). All the claims seem to reference the same study [1], but per the abstract they are just simulating one circular lane of traffic. No "lane changes, bottlenecks, merges, or changes in grade". Intuitively, it seems like once you add all these other factors in, autonomous vehicles won't help much unless deployed on a wide scale; for example, it doesn't seem like one driver can do much to speed up the merging of cars ahead of it. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01693 https://arxiv.org/abs/1705.01693
- TYPE_FASTER 9y agoI think self driving cars will increase safety, and decrease accidents. I've read that accidents contribute for 25% of traffic congestion that exists today, so self driving cars could have a noticeable impact on decreasing drive times.
- bennettfeely 9y agoThe only noticable impact will be as you watch fellow human drivers speed past you on the road. Self-driving cars must follow the speed limit at all times. How can a company program a car to break the law?
- ajmurmann 9y agoYes, that's such a massive issue. Ideally we would do away with simple speed limits and have more complex safety rules for self driving cars. Of course that won't happen for a very long time. Till then the issue you are describing will be infuriating to human drivers. Here in Oregon though everyone already is going below the speed limit, so I won't really care. As a passenger it also doesn't matter as much, since you at least can do other stuff now. I'm looking forward to the increased productivity while the car is driving itself.
- iancarroll 9y agoTesla seems to have no problem letting people speed with Autopilot, within reason.
- Saaster 9y agoPassengers won't care, they'll be busy playing with their phones or working. All that useless time spent driving is suddenly productive, as if you were in a nice private train car. If a car passes the train on the highway outside, do you even notice as a passenger? I think following the laws and driving calmly is a great benefit. Never once I have thought, "I'm so happy that Uber driver drove like a maniac weaving between lanes, and got me to my destination all of 4 minutes earlier. Yay".
- grecy 9y agoTo the extent this works anytime soon it will be so slow and inconsistent that it won’t be economically successful. Any driving service that works worse at night, in bad weather, or outside small well-mapped neighborhoods will not be comprehensive or reliable enough to be economically viable. Worst case scenario - the cars NEVER self-drive and always have a driver - the whole setup is exactly as economically viable as current taxis. From all reports, current taxi setups make a lot of money. If the cars can self-drive lets say 25% of the time, then the whole setup is that much more economically viable.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago> outside small well-mapped neighborhoods will not be ... economically viable. Hmm... but aren't the small well-mapped (and high-density) neighborhoods where almost all the money is? You see way more conventional cabs roaming Manhattan and the Chicago Loop than you do on a county road outside Minot, North Dakota. Also, there's no reason they couldn't keep some human drivers for trips outside the dense core regions. The apps know where you're going before the car is even dispatched, after all. "This guy is going from the Art Institute to the Field Museum... send him a robocar." "This guy is going from O'Hare to a farmhouse on the outskirts of Kankakee... send him a human driver."
- elvinyung 9y agoIt's a Christmas miracle! In more seriousness, I'm curious how well this is supposed to play with the other partnerships that Lyft already has? i.e. all together, is this suppose to represent one coherent effort to build L5 autonomous, or multiple parallel ones?
- ukulele 9y agoThis really is the endgame for both Uber and Lyft. IIRC, Uber did $16B last year in revenue and paid something like $13B to drivers. Self driving vehicles will turn their current breakeven/loser business models into massive cash cows.
- evv 9y agoClearly this is the thinking of both companies, but I'm not convinced it makes sense. The $13B that Uber paid out last year gave them access to a scalable network of ~7M vehicles, not just the drivers. Even if they reach level 5 autonomy before they run out of runway, how long will it take to build out a network of that size?
- bookmarkacc 9y agoWho ever gets self driving down first can get as many cars are they want. Two scenarios: "Let Uber drive you to work for free then pay you to use your car for the day. We'll cover the gas!" "GM is happy to partner with Lyft to be the first self diving car! GM Good. GM Hip"
- CPLX 9y agoWhich of those two sentences is the one that's going to create seven million cars out of thin air and then maintain, manage, and insure them?
- dorianm 9y agoLooks like it's LIDAR-based, and it's a partnership with nuTonomy[1]. [1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/06/lyfts-self-driving-pilot-with-nutonomy-begins-rolling-out-in-boston/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/06/lyfts-self-driving-pilot-w...
- deepnotderp 9y agoSource for LIDAR based?
- jsjohnst 9y agoLyft is investigating all methods to get to Level 5, ruling out or requiring a specific tech doesn’t make sense at this stage.
- notliketherest 9y agoI will never join the "shared ownership" communist utopia. And neither will most Americans that live outside of the cities. I appreciate innovation but spare me the feel good crap.
- mintplant 9y ago> "shared ownership" communist utopia If only we were heading towards such a future. Unfortunately capital and ownership seem more and more consolidated. The replacement of individual vehicle ownership with massive corporate-controled self-driving fleets would form another brick in that road.
- ProAm 9y ago> And neither will most Americans that live outside of the cities. To be fair most money to be earned in this space is within the cities, so it's still going to happen. Most well off households will be dual-ownership. A personal car for longer, weekend, social trips and share owned for the daily commuter nonsense.
- kelnos 9y agoI already live like this, though without the commute (I walk). I use Lyft for shorter, in-city trips, and drive my car when I want to leave the city. It's honestly not a great use of money: my maintenance cycles are longer (though don't quite scale down linearly with decreasing use), but I still have to pay for parking and (slightly discounted) insurance. But I grew up in the suburbs and can't kick the habit of owning a car. I feel like it'd be cheaper to ditch my car and rent one from something like Getaround or Turo (or even from a legacy car rental service) when I need one for longer trips, but having a car that's mine is too embedded in my lifestyle.
- dang 9y agoPlease don't post ideological rants to HN. They lead to nothing good and so are always off topic. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sidcool 9y agoWhy can't Lyft just partner with Waymo? Supposedly they have the best solution right now.
- xandar11 9y agoI'm skeptical about all this. Hubert Horan [1] has done a great job exposing Uber's failed business model in 11 part series on NakedCapitalism ("Can Uber Ever Deliver?"). Same goes for Lyft. When it comes to self driving cars, why should Uber or Lyft have any massive advantage over other players and what makes us think it won't turn into something like an airline industry which has been unprofitable for most of their history? [1] http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html
- tlb 9y agoThe airline industry is unprofitable mainly because the pilots capture most of the money. Their union gives them nearly unlimited pricing power. It's possibly that self-driving cars won't be profitable, but it certainly won't be for the same reason. There's reason to believe it'll be a winner-take-all market, because more data leads to lower crash rate which (in a world of rational consumers) will make them more popular, in a self-reinforcing cycle.
- arcticfox 9y agoOnce we hit a minimum threshold of safety, don't you think other factors will become more important? Since when do consumers make choices solely based on safety? We would only see one type of car on the road if that was the case, whoever was winning the crash and avoidance tests that year.
- alasdair_ 9y ago>The airline industry is unprofitable mainly because the pilots capture most of the money. Their union gives them nearly unlimited pricing power. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average salary of a Commercial Pilot is $73,490 per year. This seems low given the sheer number of hours of training involved.
- nradov 9y agoThe average is meaningless. New regional airline co-pilots barely earn enough to eat. Senior captains for major airlines are paid very, very well.
- omarforgotpwd 9y agoGM owns 9% of Lyft, and also acquired Cruise, a YC company working on self driving tech. Since you can't invest in Lyft or Uber today, I would advise people to buy GM. I own about 5 times more Tesla stock than GM but I think GM is a really great value today trading at a P/E of less than 7. With the economics of this business transforming fundamentally over the next decade, making cars more of a "tech" business, I think you could see both revenue and earnings multiples increase dramatically. But who knows I could be wrong.
- sidcool 9y agoHaving recently watched the 'the big short', this is understandable and terrifying at the same time.
- dukeflukem 9y agoMight be a good one to add to the folio. Got some VW that I picked up cheap after the emissions scandle.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mherdeg 9y agoIf there's a 90% reduction in accidents, who will be providing the donor organs? What will happen to the average lifespan of people with certain chronic illnesses?
- lanna 9y agoAre you truly suggesting we allow young, healthy individuals to die in car accidents to harvest their organs? You should be asking yourself what will happen to the average lifespan of those who won't die prematurely in a car accident.
- mherdeg 9y agoHeavens no -- I don't think society should allow anyone die in car accidents, young and healthy or otherwise. It's abundantly clear that driving is too dangerous by far. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to know what the US will look like in a future with self-driving cars. Will we, for example, find such a severe shortage of donor hearts that certain unlucky people live less long? Will we prioritize research that could improve treatment diseases which, untreated, lead to organ transplants? Or will we consider changing laws to allow donors to be compensated for organ transplants? (which have all kinds of icky side effects but could help avert a crisis if there were one). I genuinely don't know what the effects of fewer road deaths will be on transplant wait times and wonder how this externality (if there is one) will be handled.
- kelnos 9y agoI would expect more research into organ cloning/regrowth and artificial replacements. It's an interesting question, to be sure.
- pokstad 9y agoWe will be forced to invent a new popular fad that kills people as cleanly as possible: jumbo size brain piercings
- jordache 9y agoThe traffic elimination claim is disingenuous. Surely they anticipate that as the avg traffic goes down, that just opens up for more volume of vehicles, thus reintroduces traffic problems
- kbos87 9y agoToday, the competitive advantage in this market goes to whoever has the largest network of drivers and can summon a vehicle quickly and at a low cost to a waiting passenger. The tech is marginally better or worse from Lyft to Uber to competitor X, and the ride quality is similar enough. When self driving cars become a reality, I don’t see the technology or the data becoming a real sustainable competitive advantage for any one player. Once the last technical hurdles have been overcome and society has adapted in whatever way it needs to, it just won’t be that difficult for every auto manufacturer to figure out how to get in on the game. Fragmentation across local markets also has to come into play at some point. It’s only a matter of time before cities and towns get their acts together and figure out how to extract revenue to at the very least cover the real but indirect costs they are incurring as a result of ridesharing. They could pretty easily make it next to impossible for their non preferred vendor partners to operate in a city.
- em3rgent0rdr 9y agoI recently read a couple (long) articles basically arguing that the simple answer to transportation woes is not about self-driving cars and hyperloops, but basic simple steps to make cities more pedestrian friendly and improvements to mass transit: http://www.kevinklinkenberg.com/blog/autonomous-vehicles-a-very-american-obsession http://www.kevinklinkenberg.com/blog/autonomous-vehicles-a-v... https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/12/what-elon-musk-doesnt-get-about-urban-transit/548843/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/12/what-elon-mus... So I tend to not get excited about Lyft/Uber and autonomous vehicles when presented as a solution for transportation. Whether they will be successful companies is a separate question.
- smt88 9y agoWalking and mass transit suck for people who are: traveling with kids, obese, disabled, short on time, carrying groceries, elderly, and/or in a place with bad weather. That's not even mentioning people who can't afford to live in dense, central urban environments. Self-driving, solar cars solve all problems of mass transit and are far cheaper, since they use existing roads.
- sandworm101 9y agoAnd anyone with more than a handbag to carry. Many workers travel with tools. Im going to training next month and have to bring about 80lbs of various stuff with me. Hauling that in and out of busses, not to mention finding places to secure it while i sleep/eat, wouldnt be much fun. But it all fits in my car nicely. And no, i cannot send it by courier.
- lostdog 9y agoMaybe you really do need a vehicle, but improving public transit and walkability would get a lot of other people out of your way.
- losteric 9y agoWhat kind of tools? Is there a functional reason for lugging your tools back and forth, or is that just how it's done? Could you leave those tools at work/training if they had secure storage? Alternatively, could the training facility offer a set of training tools while you keep your personal set at home for training?
- andy_ppp 9y agoHas anyone seen anything to suggest this will happen for sure in 10 years? I’m sure there will be improvements in safety with these features but there are basically zero AI demos out there that are what I’d call good. For example Siri and even Google Assistant quickly show how limited they are after years and years of real world use. If these rely on the same Deep Learning technology won’t it just be the same limits apply to this much harder problem?
- hanbura 9y agoWhy should driving be a harder problem then being a universal assistant (Siri's promise)? Siri's potential problem field is huge, driving is a well defined, limited problem field.
- alexbeloi 9y agoSiri/Alexa/GoogleAssist etc. work well in constrained situations (e.g. changing music, turning stuff on/off, pop culture quiz questions), they have trouble parsing more general/complex questions. Many researchers I've talked to believe the initial self-driving car deployments to the public will be have to be very constrained: fixed routes, possibly isolated self-driving car lanes, only allowed in clear/daytime conditions.
- nojvek 9y agoAnd its probably going to be here earlier than we think. Essentially train carriages on tarmac :)
- KKKKkkkk1 9y agoCould someone explain what we're seeing here? I've seen self-driving startups do staged demos of self-driving cars, but this seems to be the unveiling of a self-driving car web page.
- michalnaka 9y ago"Last year, nearly 6 million Americans sold their cars and switched to ride sharing. This year, almost 6 million plan to do the same thing." No source citied on this or any of the other assertions made on the landing page.
- simonjgreen 9y agoI envisage the manufacturers bypassing third party's entirely. Rather than buying or leasing car, you subscribe to your manufacturer of choices plan for a car as a service. Eg subscribe to Tesla. Quick trip, model 3 appears and drives you there. Longer trip? Model s does the job. Family holiday? Model x picks you all up. At the end of the day the car returns itself to the pool.
- tonyquart 9y agoI've just read https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accident-injury-lawyers-attorneys/ https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accid.... Since few years ago, the only thing that made me interested to these autonomous cars is the laws that regulate these cars. I think the government haven't fixed the laws, so it's still an interesting topic to be discussed next year.