10 ms·
Zoox and Its $800M Robo Taxi Dream [video]
- Fricken 8y agoCheck out those prototypes, man. Bidirectional robots with independent steering + drivetrain for each wheel. I've been excited to see them in action since Zoox's inception in 2013. Zoox is the coolest startup, I'm amazed how far they've come, though they still have a long way to go.
- floatrock 8y agoCool, sure, but when $800M of capital is on the line, why is it important? Yeah, everyone who has putzed with robots gets a tingle of excitement when they build their first crab drive. It's neat, but also introduces a huge amount of complexity and probably maintenance wear on the tires from non-subdegree alignment at road speeds. Tesla is struggling to mass produce electric-from-the-ground-up traditional front-wheel-steering-only powertrains. What's the use case for this degree of added complexity beyond some cute parallel parking?
- Fricken 8y agoYou don't have to look beyond Elon Musk to see that the half-crazy ideas are the ones that get people excited. I've been following Zoox since it was literally just a guy with some concept art talking people up in hotel bars at tech conferences. It's in the article, why did Jesse Levinson, cream of the crop in robotics talent decide to go with Zoox and not Google? Because it's an opportunity to really innovate. Zoox has managed to get tons of great people on board for that reason alone. Otherwise you're right, it's very much an open question as to whether they can make these radically different vehicles to automotive grade reliability.
- oblib 8y agoThis really is an ambitious project. I spent quite a few years building custom cars and I have to agree that for the purpose they're aiming at what they're doing makes more sense than trying to outfit an existing vehicle with their tech. For example, I worked with a company named "Mobility Engineering and Development" outfitting Ford vans that C-4, C-5 quadriplegics could drive while sitting in their wheelchairs. Ford didn't redesign those very often so it was a very good choice for that purpose, but it would be a nightmare to have to redesign what we were making every 3 years to accommodate a new vehicle design produced by a 3rd party that had no interest in what we were doing with them.
- olivermarks 8y agoGreat web presentation by Bloomberg IMO, video and typography complement each other well.
- olivermarks 8y ago'..in the next breath, though, he predicts the future for all of his competitors—Alphabet, General Motors, Tesla, Apple, Daimler, et al.—if the bet pays off: “They’re f---ed.” This reminds me so much of dot com boom bravado and then hubris. If these guys had built lots of different types of cars from the ground up - race cars, customs, hot rods etc powered by different engine types - I would have more time for their reinvention confidence. I like what they are doing but this seems like pride before the fall
- dunpeal 8y agoStandard founder bravado. This is basically part of their pitch. "If we are right, then we're going to dominate the market that all the big boys are investing billions to control." (Not being disparaging at all - their value proposition actually looks interesting.)
- Fricken 8y agoZoox is differentiated. They're the only autonomous vehicle outfit thinking about a self driving car as a robot from the ground up, rather than just a car with some sensors slapped on to it and a giant computer in the trunk.
- dunpeal 8y agoYeah, not disputing that. Like I wrote, they have an interesting value proposition. The line about disrupting a huge market is still par the course, what's expected of them.
- Fricken 8y agoI wasn't disagreeing with you, just adding to your point. I too find their value proposition very interesting
- throwawaymath 8y agoFor those of us who don't have a background in robotics, do you mind giving a short explanation on the difference between a robot and a car with sensors/computers attached?
- cmuguythrow 8y agoSeems like they're putting the cart before the horse no? Don't you need functioning level 5 self-driving technology before you start optimizing for something like rider experience? This seems to violate the classic startup maxim to 'focus on just one thing and get it right'
- dmitrygr 8y ago> This seems to violate > the classic startup maxim > to 'focus on just one > thing and get it right' And who said this maxim works? Lots of startups do a lot of things in common. Doesn't mean those are all good ideas
- cmuguythrow 8y agoYou're right that this isn't a proven method of success, but the smell test seems to tell me that it's harder to do two very hard things than it is to do just one. They are simultaneously trying to redesign the auto experience AND invent a technology that doesn't exist. If doing one made the other easier, I would understand, but that doesn't seem to be the case. They are solving a problem that doesn't exist yet.
- RosanaAnaDana 8y agoSpent way too long trying to figure out if that was a limerick.
- maxerickson 8y agoThat beautiful crate is pretty clearly optimized for investor story time.
- sempuki 8y agoInvestors don't hand out money after looking at your github repo (though they do indeed do due diligence after becoming sufficiently impressed).
- gibybo 8y ago
- smrtinsert 8y agoWelcome to Johnny cab!
- agumonkey 8y agoAn uncanny Batman begins reincarnation of the Johnny Cab
- crb002 8y ago+1 for using three sensors. Visual only neural nets can be cracked with a sticker.
- dawhizkid 8y agoI’m getting Theranos level vibes
- vasilipupkin 8y agoso, the reporter in your opinion is lying when he says "...It’s in the city, though, where Zoox really shines. The screens inside the vehicle show an overwhelming amount of information, as the computer vision software keeps tracks of cars, people, stoplights, and road markers all at the same time. Unlike many self-driving cars, it glides to stops. At an intersection with a left turn, it allows oncoming traffic to pass and then waits for some slow pedestrians. Overall, the vehicle performs so well that you forget no one is driving. ....." ?
- dawhizkid 8y agoIf you’ve followed the Theranos saga you know they had set up a lab specifically for reporters and their blood samples were manually tested by a team of scientists instead of their actual device. How would the reporter know if the car was or was not being remote control operated by an employee? Is “overwhelming amount of technical info” any more impressive than those memes of computer hackers typing really fast with the green terminal text scrolling down like you see in the movies? The left turn doesn’t sound like anything an autonomous car shouldn’t be doing? He’s wowed that the car stopped for a pedestrian? Really?
- vasilipupkin 8y agoactually, no. They did not let people into the lab and never sent back the tests they did on those reporters. The story of Theranos, as I said in another comment, is not the story of lack of evidence - it's the story of lots of people ignoring evidence. Do you have any evidence this company cannot do what it claims to do ?
- FrankBooth 8y agoso, you're saying it would be impossible to fake the demo with, for example, a remote driver?
- bumholio 8y agoI think custom hardware would make sense on custom infrastructure: small 2m wide tracks dedicated to rapid electric transit pods, tucked under and along side the main roads. It would simplify the design a lot to the point where you could build it using 80s technology, simple automation, since there are no pedestrians or non-pod vehicles. If you could build the pods on the cheap, cities would love it as an affordable alternative to subway and tunnels - it's much cheaper to dig a 4x2m concrete box under the main road then massive tunnels and stations. In time, as the network expands, full self driving can be added and the vehicles can exit the network and drive the last miles on regular roads to the traveler's front door in the suburbs.
- 21 8y ago> it's much cheaper to dig It still costs money. And where should the exits be? If they are far apart this doesn't work. And the prospect of being underground for a long trip is not that thrilling. You're basically proposing a boiling the ocean kind of solution.
- bumholio 8y agoIt's quite easy to envision some ramps where the vehicle steers out of the main underground lane and ascends on a 20% incline for 10m, stops into a station not dissimilar to any other public transit station, with multiple platforms so multiple passengers can embark at the same time in different pods. When passengers are secure, another ramp takes them back down - or even the same one, with proper synchronization on less busy stops. It would then drive the passengers to any station in the network with almost the same flexibility as a self driving car. I would say the cost differentials to subway are massive, one order of magnitude for similar passenger throughputs. And it's not some unproven, highly speculative technology like self driving cars, it's something that could be built today with low tech (but I concede, high capital investment).
- Retric 8y agoLike most people you vastly underestimate just how many passengers a subway moves. You need to move ~10 people per second through to match a subway's capacity. (2 directions * almost 200 per car * 10 cars per ~5 minutes.) Self driving pods could work but you would basically need to dig tunnels as big as current subway tunnels to deal with the traffic + breakdowns etc.
- ralusek 8y agoThe claim that outfitting an existing car is the wrong way to approach the remaining problems doesn't seem like a reasonable case to me, at least given my understanding of what those problems are. Is the state of the technology not currently limited by the type and quality of sensor data when it comes to unfamiliar/unsatisfactory road conditions, as well as the shortcomings of neural nets/alternative existing algorithms?
- 11thEarlOfMar 8y agoThis resonates with me. The kind of company that makes a good human-driven car is so far away from the kind of company that can develop a level 5 autonomous system that to try to start up both at the same time would be simply multiplying an already low chance of success by another low chance of success. How about developing the world's leading level 5 system and then licensing it to the all auto companies?
- Fricken 8y agoL5 is science fiction, nobody has even an hypothesis about how to do that. Zoox and the other major players are developing L4. There is another interesting, but still young company called Aurora innovation that has a very good team together that plans to develop and licence L4 to 3rd parties. Aurora has partnerships with 2 of the top 3 biggest car manufacturers in the world, VW and Hyundai, as well as with Byton, a Chinese EV startup backed by big Asian capital. Zoox has a different plan.
- wruza 8y agoFor those curious what 0-5 is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Definitions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Definitions (edit: changed link to point to wikipedia instead of random site)
- vladislav 8y agoExactly. But hey cool concept cars make for pretty pitchdecks. Technology will solve itself if you just throw money at it, right? Next up, we'll have startups whose main differentiation is designing the interiors of time machines.
- cjensen 8y agoSelf-driving is a software problem, not a hardware problem. Investing in someone with zero useful ideas and zero ethics is not a symptom of good investment skills. (Yes, tricking experts into talking to you is unethical)
- dsr_ 8y agoThat wasn't the only ethical lapse being gleefully mythologized in the story. I half-suspected that they didn't bother taking out a permit for autonomous vehicle, but I was pleasantly surprised to find them on the list: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/permit https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/permi...
- Animats 8y agoIt's not hard to get a California DMV permit for testing autonomous vehicles. It's like a learner's permit. You have to have a licensed driver on board able to take over. You have to have insurance. You have to report all accidents. No driving for hire. No heavy vehicles. That's what Uber considered over-regulation.
- dssu 8y agoWith all these self driving companies, I ask. What is the lowest price point they can get to for that product? Cause if I can pay a highly reliable driver for less, what's the point?
- TaylorAlexander 8y agoTwo things: Right now they’re fighting to own the platform that works when, ten years from now, the technology is affordable. That means developing on higher priced technology now to get the software sorted out. Human drivers that are cheap probably leave a lot to be desired in the “reliable” category (I conjecture), so robots really can (in theory) offer more there.
- maxerickson 8y agoThey can have pretty high up front price points and still hit a decent price per mile. An automatic system reliable enough to let on the roads should be able to drive more hours per day than a human and the up front cost will be amortized over a few years. So you easily get to 5x a good driver's annual cost probably being cheaper.
- throwawayjava 8y ago> What is the lowest price point they can get to for that product? Cause if I can pay a highly reliable driver for less, what's the point? Let's assume that the technology and mapping becomes a Solved Problem. Then the competition with humans boils down to the cost of sensors and compute (plus recouping R&D). I expect prices for both of those to plummet whenever self-driving capabilities are clearly demonstrated because the massive anticipated demand will justify huge capex in improving efficient manufacturing of these often bespoke sensors. The market for computing machines 1950 - 1990 is instructive.
- agumonkey 8y agoYou might need more than 1 human driver in certain cases, unless you have one that is 24/7 in it and ready to drive. Funny point of view nonetheless
- Fricken 8y ago
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- CPLX 8y agoFor those of us that lived through the tech bubble of 1998-2001 the tone of this profile feels very familiar.
- throwawaymath 8y ago> In a distressing early sign for Zoox’s investors, Kentley-Klay also spent $16,000 on a Sub-Zero office refrigerator because he thought it looked cool. Let's say I'm an investor and a founder of a company in my portfolio does this. What would be an appropriate response? This seems like a cartoonishly gratuitous waste of capital.
- throwawayjava 8y agoWhat would you do if literally any other employee with a company card did this? You'd either fire them on the spot. Or, if that's not an option [1], quietly figure out a longer-term strategy for eventually firing them. Or, if you're a Nice Guy, you'd offer to let them stay on if they return the gratuitous waste of capital and/or pay the company back. I'll never quite understand why founders are treated as an exceptional case by capital. Especially in hard tech fields like self-driving where the idea is literally obvious to a five-year-old but the execution requires courting `the best humans available. -- [1] e.g., an engineer with mostly undocumented knowledge of key parts of your software or sales rep with close relationships to a client during a critical time period.
- Fricken 8y agoIt's like when a municipality spends some piddling sum on public art, you always get this chorus of idiots asking "what are they doing blowing taxpayer money on art when there's potholes to fill?"
- an4rchy 8y agoIt might have been budgeted in or part of some other discretionary spending limit (employee perks, parties etc) and this is so small that it doesn't matter. I have seen termsheets where the founders need board/investor approval for spend over $XXXK, so that it stops/limits misuse of capital. This could have been board approved, if it needed to be or else investors/boards can always ask for it to be returned and mandate approval for future spends above $X in categories outside of regular business spending.
- dfischer 8y ago> The pair have mastered the hyperbolic vernacular of the Silicon Valley startup scene. Text running around the wheel wells of the Zoox vehicles reads, “Infinity is enough,” a phrase the company has trademarked. Kentley-Klay’s own name is another invention. He was born Tim Kentley and adopted the Klay. “I have added Klay to my surname, as I find I just love making things and [sic] is a big part of me,” he wrote to the Zoox employees in 2013. “So, clay, or mud, is the primal aspect of this spirit, and ‘K’lay is a word play on that to keep the K in the mix of the evolving family name.” This... hubris hurts when it's not in the show Silicon Valley. At least the show hurts good.
- Edmond 8y agoyou can add "hype speak" to that hyperbolic vernacular: https://blog.codesolvent.com/2016/10/hype-on-hacknews-and-silicon-valley.html https://blog.codesolvent.com/2016/10/hype-on-hacknews-and-si...
- duxup 8y agoIf I worked there I would feel the urge to urgently find a like minded employee to talk to just so I'd feel better knowing that someone else thought it was absurd.
- dangerismycat 8y agoAh, so even robot taxis block traffic when they stop. I guess pulling over to the curb is too difficult a problem to solve…
- ucaetano 8y agoFor reference, until Nov 2017, Zoox drove a cumulative 2200 autonomous miles driven in public CA roads, with a ridiculously high disengagement rate of 1/430 miles. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/495c1aa7-2a3b-4dd8-8922-f33470605cfb/ZooxInc.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/495c1aa7-2a3b-4dd8... For comparison, in the 12 months ending in Nov 2017, Waymo drove 352000 autonomous miles in CA public roads, with a disengagement rate of 1/5600 miles. This article is a joke...
- curuinor 8y agomercedes has about 1 disengagement per mile. zoox is a respectable third, actually, behind cruise/gm. https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/02/01/disengagement-report-2017-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly/ https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/02/01/disengagem...
- dawhizkid 8y agoAre these reports all self reported? Does CA audit?
- alex_young 8y agoWhat about environment? Is waymo doing this kind of mixed urban / highway driving? They seemed pretty confident when they had a reporter ferried back and forth.
- Fricken 8y agoDisengagement rates are self-reported, and the guidelines are loose. There isn't a whole lot to infer from them.
- dmix 8y agoThey incorporated in 2014... probably didn't start serious development until they were properly capitalized in mid 2015 (with $40 million in July 2015 and $250 million in Oct 2016 [1]). Waymo started 9yrs ago. It's not bad being in 3rd place against Google and Cruise/GM in a few years. This type of thing can improve rapidly as they start doing real-world testing... which you cite yourself has merely begun (on real roads mind you, not testing in closed environments). 2200 miles is hardly anything to measure against. Which sounds like months of testing vs Waymo's years. Not to mention they are developing full new vehicles as well, not just the driving AI software. Which might be highly valuable to a major car company who could acquire them at a significant multiple. This type of pessimism based on a single metric is toxic and naive regarding how tech companies are built. ...Not to mention there was no claim in this article that they were at Waymo's level or anything but at a very early stage of development. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zoox#section-locked-marketplace https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/zoox#section-locked-...
- sorenjan 8y agoSo an idea guy that just needed some programmer to code together his revolutionary idea actually found a programmer, a PhD from Stanford no less, to agree to it?
- veryconfident 8y agoEver since I first discovered this project, I have known they have a solid vision and best of all can be trusted to deliver above spec. They think with the metal tube box, not outside of it. And this is the real value they are bringing to the auto war.
- floatrock 8y ago...what does any of that mean?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ironfootnz 8y agoAnother unicorn willing to be a sellout to big companies.
- wruza 8y agoNothing but rage I feel looking at videos like this. Unbearably confident man in a flat cap speaks about the technology of the century like it’s nothing, and his handheld scientist (who actually google blah google stanford) will make sure that shit get to work. Reporter never feels wrong or sceptic as he’s born yesterday morning. “Hey, Jesse, double-check your AI doesn’t hit trucks like these fools, okay?” — smiling man in flat cap unpacks last pack of hundreds into counting machine, reloading misdetected papers back as it counts to 500. “We’re to ship next year, two years max. Jesse and I work hard here to deliver. We already drove the entire SF via keyboard, now just wait. Man, that’s gonna be a thing!” A whole essence of investments fraud, dragged to the edge of the sense. And they politely call it ‘pitch’ in this thread. So cute.
- KKKKkkkk1 8y agoLevinson, whose father, Arthur, ran Genentech Inc., chairs Apple Inc., and mentored Steve Jobs, comes from Silicon Valley royalty. If the reports that Apple is building a similar product are true, there's a hell of a conflict of interest here.
- mikestew 8y ago(Because he chairs Apple, Arthur Levinson hasn’t seen any of this. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he says. “It’s just better to keep a little distance and read about Jesse in the newspaper.”)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Animats 8y agoThat's a decent level of performance. Local driving, freeway, local driving, without (apparently) manual intervention. Building a little vehicle for local transport is reasonable. At least five other companies have built minibuses for parking lot shuttles and such.[1] Nobody seems to have more than pilot installations. This is embarrassing. Under 25MPH self driving ought to be within current technology. At low speeds, you can stop fast enough that predicting the behavior of others isn't necessary. Navya has a few installed systems, but they're either on dedicated roads or under 10mph. [1] https://craft.co/local-motors/competitors https://craft.co/local-motors/competitors
- flukus 8y ago> This is embarrassing. Under 25MPH self driving ought to be within current technology The fact hat it's not tells you all you need to know about self driving vehicles. I'd expect full autonomous vehicles about a decade after we can hit these easier targets.
- Animats 8y agoGoogle built a little car without manual controls that was capable of under 25MPH travel in areas such as senior communities. They used to run it around Mountain View. But they decided not to proceed with that as a product. Google didn't want to run a car factory. The "fake it til you make it" startups aren't succeeding at this.
- Albert500 8y agoI Am a professional Private Investigator (Certified Hacker) that specializes in exposing cheating spouses, Lying Business associates and every other ethical Hacking or Tracking related issues. Am truly a cyber genius in these chosen field, I can help catch a cheating spouse(s) by Hacking remotely and tracking their communications like calls, Whats app, Facebook, Text messages, Emails, Skype, Snap Chat, Instagram, Viber, Email and Password and many more Social Media. If you are having any doubts in your affairs and relationship please I will advise you to contact me as soon as possible. Text\whatsapp > 786 708 9974 Email> theredhackergroup@gmail.com