7 ms·

They are good at building cars, but I would argue they are not good at building tech. Self driving is a technology issue. If the tech superstars at Waymo/Apple/

by leesec 8y ago

They are good at building cars, but I would argue they are not good at building tech. Self driving is a technology issue. If the tech superstars at Waymo/Apple/whoever aren't even close to solving it, why would the software people at GM/Honda be?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
"Hi, this Jane from the procurement department of GM North America. We might be interested in licensing your software. Please give me a call back so we can set up a meeting." They don't need to build tech. They can buy it. GM can write some pretty big checks. They flat out bought Cruise just to cover their butts. When I was an intern at a defense contractor ~1/10th the size of GM my cube was across from procurement. I think a lot of people here don't understand the kind of scale companies like this play at. Your problem isn't "how do we pay for this" it's "will anyone sell me all this all at once or sign a contract to provide it all over the timetable we want". You make bets on how many times around the earth the welding wire you'll buy next quarter will go. GM shipped ~10 million vehicles in 2017. That means they had to sign a contract with someone to supply approximately an Exxon Valdez worth of motor oil and another of ATF just for their factories.
- fastball 8y ago
  Isn't that exactly what a deal is? This wouldn't be a loss for Waymo if everyone was licensing their software.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- xiphias2 8y ago
  Waymo is far the best self driving tech and nobody has the money to buy it, as Alphabet is not selling (it's the first real diversification from ads revenue). GM is few years behind, but hopefully those few years are not enough for Waymo to create a monopoly.
  - jplayer01 8y ago
    GM really isn't far behind.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
  - blackoil 8y ago
    Self Driving is not only a technical problem, it will be a people/marketing/legal/political problem. By the time these will be solved, GM/Tesla/Toyota should have competing solutions.
    - uluyol 8y ago
      Exactly. Non-Waymo companies have the benefit of Google/Waymo taking care of many of these obstacles for them.
      - mikejb 8y ago
        But they have the problem of getting solutions adapted to Waymo's strategy. They'll likely push for safety tests and requirements that they can pass; others will have to adapt to that.
  - lossolo 8y ago
    > as Alphabet is not selling They will license/sell it eventually when/if they will get it to work. What else would they do with that tech ? Last time I've checked Alphabet did not produce any cars or had any infrastructure to do that on scale.
  - dekhn 8y ago
    I think cloud is google's first real diversification from Ads. Nobody looks at Waymo as a revenue center.
    - shimon 8y ago
- agency 8y ago
  Wait so who is actually going to build the technology?
  - Harvey-Specter 8y ago
    Cruise Automation presumably, which is owned by GM.
Fricken 8y ago
Cruise Automation was cofounded by Kyle Vogt, a YC alum who cofounded, built Justin.TV, which became Twitch, and sold to Amazon for a billion dollars before starting Cruise with Daniel Kan, which was acquired in early 2016 by GM. It's a tech company. It employs it's share of tech superstars. Vogt himself participated in the Darpa challenges as a robotics undergrad at MIT, before dropping out to do Justin.TV.
twblalock 8y ago
The only logical outcome is that the big car companies continue to build the majority of cars when (if) self-driving cars are ready for the mass market. Waymo is not going to build millions of cars a year like GM and Ford and Toyota. Big car companies can buy startups in the self driving space, which is what GM did with Cruise. Or they can license the software from Waymo or other companies who are working on it. Self-driving software can be just another thing car companies buy from suppliers, like transmissions and brakes.
- jacksmith21006 8y ago
  Waymo parent has over $100B in cash and less than $5B debt. Would expect they will just but a car company or at least a line. They are going to market with a robot taxi service. Shared commercial offering later this year in Arizona and then San Fran and mountain view. Alphabet does not do a dividend or need material buybacks to prop up share price.
misterhtmlcss 8y ago
I think you are oversimplifying. 'Tech' as a commonly applied label typically involves widgets and software. Not large manufacturing and supply chains that involves world trade, weather, regionalism, human resources in the hundreds of thousands and years of planning to work with many similarly configured partners. Tesla for all it's glory isn't the greatest endorsement for Tech as some (not necessarily you) like to claim and I like Tesla. Everyone that says car companies don't move fast seems to be picking and choosing the facts that suit their own bias towards 'traditional' industries. Car companies only look slow on the outside, but they really aren't when you look at the totality of their products scope. For example car companies go through millions of dollars in just testing alone with nearly every country operating their own testing center. They need to be weather tested in so many different environments, they need to meet regulatory hurdles that are different from state to state to State. It's just massive what goes into what they need to do just to get the right to sell their product in a region or country. Yet they do all this with significant upgrades to models that are now coming nearly every 3 years. I remember when it went from 10 years to 5 years. Wow! I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions. I think Waymo is far more likely to be in the sidelines than people think, but we'll see; I could be wrong.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  I fully agree. There's tons of stuff moving fast when you look on the inside. Everyone aware of what the cutting edge is in their field and working to implement that within their own little niche of responsibility. From the outside it's like watching a large military cargo plane. It's so big that it looks slow no matter how fast it's going. That said, GM (or any other BigCo) realizes when it doesn't have a capability and either decides to not pursue it, spin it up themselves internally (like in the case of EVs), license it, or buy someone who has it (e.g. Cruise). >I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions. Was that back when you could look at a picture of a Saturn and tell what temperature it was when the picture was taken? ;)
forkandwait 8y ago
They are tech, just not silicon valley tech. More engineers per capita in Michigan etc.,etc.
- someguydave 8y ago
  I would vastly prefer to drive a car that's been tested by engineers in Michigan rather than the precious folk in Silicon Valley.
wlesieutre 8y ago
The software people at GM aren't a part of GM's existing tech groups. They went and bought a (YC-backed) self-driving startup, Cruise Automation, to get this effort going. I think the combination of Cruise's expertise on self-driving tech combined with GM's on cars makes for a pretty serious competitor, assuming the two can work together effectively.

by leesec 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

"Hi, this Jane from the procurement department of GM North America. We might be interested in licensing your software. Please give me a call back so we can set up a meeting." They don't need to build tech. They can buy it. GM can write some pretty big checks. They flat out bought Cruise just to cover their butts. When I was an intern at a defense contractor ~1/10th the size of GM my cube was across from procurement. I think a lot of people here don't understand the kind of scale companies like this play at. Your problem isn't "how do we pay for this" it's "will anyone sell me all this all at once or sign a contract to provide it all over the timetable we want". You make bets on how many times around the earth the welding wire you'll buy next quarter will go. GM shipped ~10 million vehicles in 2017. That means they had to sign a contract with someone to supply approximately an Exxon Valdez worth of motor oil and another of ATF just for their factories.

fastball 8y ago
Isn't that exactly what a deal is? This wouldn't be a loss for Waymo if everyone was licensing their software.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
xiphias2 8y ago
Waymo is far the best self driving tech and nobody has the money to buy it, as Alphabet is not selling (it's the first real diversification from ads revenue). GM is few years behind, but hopefully those few years are not enough for Waymo to create a monopoly.
- jplayer01 8y ago
  GM really isn't far behind.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- blackoil 8y ago
  Self Driving is not only a technical problem, it will be a people/marketing/legal/political problem. By the time these will be solved, GM/Tesla/Toyota should have competing solutions.
  - uluyol 8y ago
    Exactly. Non-Waymo companies have the benefit of Google/Waymo taking care of many of these obstacles for them.
    - mikejb 8y ago
      But they have the problem of getting solutions adapted to Waymo's strategy. They'll likely push for safety tests and requirements that they can pass; others will have to adapt to that.
- lossolo 8y ago
  > as Alphabet is not selling They will license/sell it eventually when/if they will get it to work. What else would they do with that tech ? Last time I've checked Alphabet did not produce any cars or had any infrastructure to do that on scale.
- dekhn 8y ago
  I think cloud is google's first real diversification from Ads. Nobody looks at Waymo as a revenue center.
  - shimon 8y ago
agency 8y ago
Wait so who is actually going to build the technology?
- Harvey-Specter 8y ago
  Cruise Automation presumably, which is owned by GM.

Fricken 8y ago

Cruise Automation was cofounded by Kyle Vogt, a YC alum who cofounded, built Justin.TV, which became Twitch, and sold to Amazon for a billion dollars before starting Cruise with Daniel Kan, which was acquired in early 2016 by GM. It's a tech company. It employs it's share of tech superstars. Vogt himself participated in the Darpa challenges as a robotics undergrad at MIT, before dropping out to do Justin.TV.

twblalock 8y ago

The only logical outcome is that the big car companies continue to build the majority of cars when (if) self-driving cars are ready for the mass market. Waymo is not going to build millions of cars a year like GM and Ford and Toyota. Big car companies can buy startups in the self driving space, which is what GM did with Cruise. Or they can license the software from Waymo or other companies who are working on it. Self-driving software can be just another thing car companies buy from suppliers, like transmissions and brakes.

jacksmith21006 8y ago
Waymo parent has over $100B in cash and less than $5B debt. Would expect they will just but a car company or at least a line. They are going to market with a robot taxi service. Shared commercial offering later this year in Arizona and then San Fran and mountain view. Alphabet does not do a dividend or need material buybacks to prop up share price.

misterhtmlcss 8y ago

I think you are oversimplifying. 'Tech' as a commonly applied label typically involves widgets and software. Not large manufacturing and supply chains that involves world trade, weather, regionalism, human resources in the hundreds of thousands and years of planning to work with many similarly configured partners. Tesla for all it's glory isn't the greatest endorsement for Tech as some (not necessarily you) like to claim and I like Tesla. Everyone that says car companies don't move fast seems to be picking and choosing the facts that suit their own bias towards 'traditional' industries. Car companies only look slow on the outside, but they really aren't when you look at the totality of their products scope. For example car companies go through millions of dollars in just testing alone with nearly every country operating their own testing center. They need to be weather tested in so many different environments, they need to meet regulatory hurdles that are different from state to state to State. It's just massive what goes into what they need to do just to get the right to sell their product in a region or country. Yet they do all this with significant upgrades to models that are now coming nearly every 3 years. I remember when it went from 10 years to 5 years. Wow! I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions. I think Waymo is far more likely to be in the sidelines than people think, but we'll see; I could be wrong.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
I fully agree. There's tons of stuff moving fast when you look on the inside. Everyone aware of what the cutting edge is in their field and working to implement that within their own little niche of responsibility. From the outside it's like watching a large military cargo plane. It's so big that it looks slow no matter how fast it's going. That said, GM (or any other BigCo) realizes when it doesn't have a capability and either decides to not pursue it, spin it up themselves internally (like in the case of EVs), license it, or buy someone who has it (e.g. Cruise). >I remember when the assembly got so complicated that cars were squeaking due to the materials rubbing against each other. So in comes material science guys trying to get that sorted in all weather conditions. Was that back when you could look at a picture of a Saturn and tell what temperature it was when the picture was taken? ;)

forkandwait 8y ago

They are tech, just not silicon valley tech. More engineers per capita in Michigan etc.,etc.

someguydave 8y ago
I would vastly prefer to drive a car that's been tested by engineers in Michigan rather than the precious folk in Silicon Valley.

wlesieutre 8y ago

The software people at GM aren't a part of GM's existing tech groups. They went and bought a (YC-backed) self-driving startup, Cruise Automation, to get this effort going. I think the combination of Cruise's expertise on self-driving tech combined with GM's on cars makes for a pretty serious competitor, assuming the two can work together effectively.