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These are seriously big and well funded companies. Why do they need to share development? If Cruise can build a working prototype as a startup so can BMW. What

These are seriously big and well funded companies. Why do they need to share development? If Cruise can build a working prototype as a startup so can BMW. What is going on? Part of me wonders if self driving tech ended up being harder than expected. These companies can't get it to work but also don't want to be left behind. Collaboration makes perfect sense. Pure speculation.

bnt 8y ago
Cost control. They are already working together on various different things. In the high end market, it doesn’t matter if you have your own self-driving software or you co-develop. People who purchase a Mercedes vs BMW select base on different things like brand loyalty and perception. To me (personally), I would always pick BMW over an Audi or Mercedes, even if they all came from the same groupation / factory, because it’s the brand I care about.
- fauigerzigerk 8y ago
  >In the high end market, it doesn’t matter if you have your own self-driving software or you co-develop. Maybe. But what if it turns out that everything other than the core intelligence, communication and software platform features turn out to be low margin components? What if these key functions turn out to be the only differentiator of any substance and the rest is just marketing blurb and a bit of component assembly?
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Then companies that traditionally make their money with hardware will have a hard time accepting that. There are millions of lines of code in a modern car, but car manufacturers don't see themselves primarily as software companies.
    - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
      Exactly. And let's not forget that car makers are also losing their key powertrain competency to electrification. If they don't commit to really owning some of the new tech then there will be nothing left of them. In my view, these traditional car makers are a slow motion train wreck of epic proportion. How on earth can BWM and Daimler decide to pay more than 5% dividend instead of investing every last cent they earn into surviving the current technological revolution? Apparently they have decided to die and pay out what's left to shareholders. This may be a legit strategy for a private equity fund, but if I was a German polititician or trade union official I would be horrified.
      - riffraff 8y ago
        Basically all diesel cars in the world use the common rail system that was developed at FIAT, sold to Bosch and licensed to everyone else. Licensing an electric powertrain technology is not that different, there is a lot more in a car than the powertrain. Likewise, MacBooks are more than their intel cpu.
        fauigerzigerk 8y ago
        I'm not talking about licensing some basic patents. The question is, what will be that high margin thing that's worth optimising the heck out of for years and decades to come? And who will own the customer? Who will define the software platform that creates all the stickiness and benefits from all the network effects? If car makers continue down the path they are on now, they will own none of it. Like publishers, they will be reduced to go begging for the help of regulators to impose some form of Google tax.
        thefounder 8y ago
        There are not many differentiators on cars now either and we still have a range of "different" cars/brands. What makes you think the electrification will change anything(considering all cars will run the same self driving software)?
        8y ago
    - cromulent 8y ago
      Ford seem to be moving in that way. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/
- acct1771 8y ago
  ...did you just admit you buy BMW just for the perception of buying BMW?
  - crooked-v 8y ago
    Compare an $80,000 Mercedes to an $80,000 BMW and you're not going to find much in the way of objective material differences. At that point your choice will mostly come down to personal preferences about dash layouts, precise seating styles, the sound of the engine, the precise feel of the pedals, etc, which all pretty much fall under "brand".
    - nicoburns 8y ago
      Those things are real differences in how the car ia designed. If it was the brand you cared about, then you would buy BMW even if you didn't prefer those things in BMWs.
      - crooked-v 8y ago
        They're real differences in how the car is designed, but barring some outliers, they're not differences that are objectively better in one or the other. I consider those kinds of design choices to be things that fall under "brand" as a whole.
DeonPenny 8y ago
They aren't tech companies. It's like asking why satellite makers don't build their own rocket. The algorithms used in most cars whether it's deep RL or something even more specific isn't easily understood and worst yet scalable by many people. Say nothing for the custom hardware google uses in the form of TPUs.
- ThePhysicist 8y ago
  While they are surely no leading innovators in deep learning saying they are not tech companies is a bit ridiculous, as they innovate in many areas of technology. Sure, VW and Daimler don’t produce their own chips (as far as I’m aware) as they rely on partners like Bosch to do it for them. Bosch sensors and ICs are found in many devices btw (even iPhones I think). So I’d argue there’s plenty of innovation here, just nothing that is very visible for most folks in “tech”. Btw Tesla’s cars use electronic and mechanical parts from around 40 different German suppliers if I remember correctly.
  - orbifold 8y ago
    They absolutely design their own chips, typically the precise details are outsourced. But they are actively developing chips from MCUs (motor control units) up to simple things like seat heating sensors. At the moment they have pushed the German government to invest billions in German made inference accelerators for cars, to not be solely dependent on foreign chips by NVIDIA and Intel for that.
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  Nobody who is sane uses deep reinforcement learning for autonomous vehicles, far too dangerous. Remember, the first 99% is easy, it's the last .999% that's hard.
- ascar 8y ago
  That's a very narrow definition of tech companies. I wouldn't be surprised if VW, BMW and Daimler together employ more software engineers than Google or Apple. Don't forget that modern cars use over a hundred micro-controllers.
simion314 8y ago
Why not? I mean this companies already have many parts of the car designed and built by third parties, there is no need to have everything designed and built by themselves. So if you have 3 big companies collaborating you will have more money and maybe more important more training data for the self driving program. Now Uber,Tesla and Google do not share their data(probably the data is not compatible either) but if this data was shared progress could have been faster and lives could have been saved.
bsaul 8y ago
We hear a lot those days in Europe how Germany rested on old school industry during the last two decades, and failed to anticipate the big changes coming. They relied a bit too much on « good old german quality » without trying to rethink itself. But it could be just jealousy speaking, since germany has been doing so well compared to the rest of us, i don’t know.
- riffraff 8y ago
  Berlin is more or less the capital of the continental Europe startup scene too. I'm pretty sure they'll be fine even if old German industry declines.
  - bsaul 8y ago
    I’ve heard so many cities claiming to be the capital of europe’s start up scene. I’ll believe it once one of those city manage to build a competitor to any GAFA.
- skgoa 8y ago
  Those people don't understand that a lot of "german" manufacturing is happening in low cost countries. The bulk of the manufacturing remaining in Germany is highly automated. I suspect it's mostly an optics/ignorance issue. If you never set foot into a modern factory, you could legitimately believe that german industry had not changed, simply because it's the same names as decades ago. But once you get the chance to take a peek behind the curtains, you quickly realized how high-tech those "dinosaurs" are.
heisenbit 8y ago
There are certainly multiple reasons for it: - Commoditize the stuff you don't want to compete on. I don't think German companies want to compete on self driving - they are positioning their product as a premium product and thus compete on performance, quality and emotions. - Have a common interface to the outside - there is more to self driving than sensors and software: Legal framework, insurance market, road standards, parking standards, home garage standards, refueling standards. These external partners need to change and if too many competing priorities and possibly contradictory demands are coming nothing will change. Self driving is certainly harder than it looks. If your market is the world and not just the relatively empty and wide grid streets in the US things are even more complex. I'm sure there is some fear of losing out. More however I think about the limited upside: The cost for developing self driving vs the later ability to charge for it is very limited from a car manufacturers POV: Sensor's are bought in and software is either bought or very expensive to develop and run. Differentiation is minimal: Either considered safe or can't be sold. Self driving here has different economics from EV.

bnt 8y ago

Cost control. They are already working together on various different things. In the high end market, it doesn’t matter if you have your own self-driving software or you co-develop. People who purchase a Mercedes vs BMW select base on different things like brand loyalty and perception. To me (personally), I would always pick BMW over an Audi or Mercedes, even if they all came from the same groupation / factory, because it’s the brand I care about.

fauigerzigerk 8y ago
>In the high end market, it doesn’t matter if you have your own self-driving software or you co-develop. Maybe. But what if it turns out that everything other than the core intelligence, communication and software platform features turn out to be low margin components? What if these key functions turn out to be the only differentiator of any substance and the rest is just marketing blurb and a bit of component assembly?
- adrianN 8y ago
  Then companies that traditionally make their money with hardware will have a hard time accepting that. There are millions of lines of code in a modern car, but car manufacturers don't see themselves primarily as software companies.
  - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
    Exactly. And let's not forget that car makers are also losing their key powertrain competency to electrification. If they don't commit to really owning some of the new tech then there will be nothing left of them. In my view, these traditional car makers are a slow motion train wreck of epic proportion. How on earth can BWM and Daimler decide to pay more than 5% dividend instead of investing every last cent they earn into surviving the current technological revolution? Apparently they have decided to die and pay out what's left to shareholders. This may be a legit strategy for a private equity fund, but if I was a German polititician or trade union official I would be horrified.
    - riffraff 8y ago
      Basically all diesel cars in the world use the common rail system that was developed at FIAT, sold to Bosch and licensed to everyone else. Licensing an electric powertrain technology is not that different, there is a lot more in a car than the powertrain. Likewise, MacBooks are more than their intel cpu.
      - fauigerzigerk 8y ago
        I'm not talking about licensing some basic patents. The question is, what will be that high margin thing that's worth optimising the heck out of for years and decades to come? And who will own the customer? Who will define the software platform that creates all the stickiness and benefits from all the network effects? If car makers continue down the path they are on now, they will own none of it. Like publishers, they will be reduced to go begging for the help of regulators to impose some form of Google tax.
        thefounder 8y ago
        There are not many differentiators on cars now either and we still have a range of "different" cars/brands. What makes you think the electrification will change anything(considering all cars will run the same self driving software)?
        8y ago
  - cromulent 8y ago
    Ford seem to be moving in that way. http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/ford/
acct1771 8y ago
...did you just admit you buy BMW just for the perception of buying BMW?
- crooked-v 8y ago
  Compare an $80,000 Mercedes to an $80,000 BMW and you're not going to find much in the way of objective material differences. At that point your choice will mostly come down to personal preferences about dash layouts, precise seating styles, the sound of the engine, the precise feel of the pedals, etc, which all pretty much fall under "brand".
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    Those things are real differences in how the car ia designed. If it was the brand you cared about, then you would buy BMW even if you didn't prefer those things in BMWs.
    - crooked-v 8y ago
      They're real differences in how the car is designed, but barring some outliers, they're not differences that are objectively better in one or the other. I consider those kinds of design choices to be things that fall under "brand" as a whole.

DeonPenny 8y ago

They aren't tech companies. It's like asking why satellite makers don't build their own rocket. The algorithms used in most cars whether it's deep RL or something even more specific isn't easily understood and worst yet scalable by many people. Say nothing for the custom hardware google uses in the form of TPUs.

ThePhysicist 8y ago
While they are surely no leading innovators in deep learning saying they are not tech companies is a bit ridiculous, as they innovate in many areas of technology. Sure, VW and Daimler don’t produce their own chips (as far as I’m aware) as they rely on partners like Bosch to do it for them. Bosch sensors and ICs are found in many devices btw (even iPhones I think). So I’d argue there’s plenty of innovation here, just nothing that is very visible for most folks in “tech”. Btw Tesla’s cars use electronic and mechanical parts from around 40 different German suppliers if I remember correctly.
- orbifold 8y ago
  They absolutely design their own chips, typically the precise details are outsourced. But they are actively developing chips from MCUs (motor control units) up to simple things like seat heating sensors. At the moment they have pushed the German government to invest billions in German made inference accelerators for cars, to not be solely dependent on foreign chips by NVIDIA and Intel for that.
deepnotderp 8y ago
Nobody who is sane uses deep reinforcement learning for autonomous vehicles, far too dangerous. Remember, the first 99% is easy, it's the last .999% that's hard.
ascar 8y ago
That's a very narrow definition of tech companies. I wouldn't be surprised if VW, BMW and Daimler together employ more software engineers than Google or Apple. Don't forget that modern cars use over a hundred micro-controllers.

simion314 8y ago

Why not? I mean this companies already have many parts of the car designed and built by third parties, there is no need to have everything designed and built by themselves. So if you have 3 big companies collaborating you will have more money and maybe more important more training data for the self driving program. Now Uber,Tesla and Google do not share their data(probably the data is not compatible either) but if this data was shared progress could have been faster and lives could have been saved.

bsaul 8y ago

We hear a lot those days in Europe how Germany rested on old school industry during the last two decades, and failed to anticipate the big changes coming. They relied a bit too much on « good old german quality » without trying to rethink itself. But it could be just jealousy speaking, since germany has been doing so well compared to the rest of us, i don’t know.

riffraff 8y ago
Berlin is more or less the capital of the continental Europe startup scene too. I'm pretty sure they'll be fine even if old German industry declines.
- bsaul 8y ago
  I’ve heard so many cities claiming to be the capital of europe’s start up scene. I’ll believe it once one of those city manage to build a competitor to any GAFA.
skgoa 8y ago
Those people don't understand that a lot of "german" manufacturing is happening in low cost countries. The bulk of the manufacturing remaining in Germany is highly automated. I suspect it's mostly an optics/ignorance issue. If you never set foot into a modern factory, you could legitimately believe that german industry had not changed, simply because it's the same names as decades ago. But once you get the chance to take a peek behind the curtains, you quickly realized how high-tech those "dinosaurs" are.

heisenbit 8y ago

There are certainly multiple reasons for it: - Commoditize the stuff you don't want to compete on. I don't think German companies want to compete on self driving - they are positioning their product as a premium product and thus compete on performance, quality and emotions. - Have a common interface to the outside - there is more to self driving than sensors and software: Legal framework, insurance market, road standards, parking standards, home garage standards, refueling standards. These external partners need to change and if too many competing priorities and possibly contradictory demands are coming nothing will change. Self driving is certainly harder than it looks. If your market is the world and not just the relatively empty and wide grid streets in the US things are even more complex. I'm sure there is some fear of losing out. More however I think about the limited upside: The cost for developing self driving vs the later ability to charge for it is very limited from a car manufacturers POV: Sensor's are bought in and software is either bought or very expensive to develop and run. Differentiation is minimal: Either considered safe or can't be sold. Self driving here has different economics from EV.