3 ms·

Manufacturing is well-understood, self-driving is research. Dumb cars = flip phones shortly.

koolba 7y ago
I doubt that will happen. The paradigm shift for a “smart” car vs just a car is nothing like a flip phone vs a smart phone. Besides being able to drive you home when you’re drunk, what can you smart car do for you that you couldn’t already do with a regular car? Cruise for parking? These are just minor conveniences and for large swathes of the population, they’re likely not welcome either.
- jaggederest 7y ago
  > No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i... I think you're significantly underestimating the impact it would have.
  - koolba 7y ago
    Yes and you can recreate Dropbox with SSH, rsync, and cron. We’ve all read these played out comments over and over... So what game changing functionality do you think smart cars provide?
    - jaggederest 7y ago
      I don't think it's possible to understand from this point in time. I suspect it will be enormous - think advent of the automobile or airplane. One of my bets is that it will result in people moving away from the city - one of the major drawbacks of rural life is driving distance.
- grey-area 7y ago
  What can a smart car do that a 'regular' car can't? Save millions of lives by being safer driving than humans? Drive you home the rest of the time? Drive you cross country overnight while you sleep? Come and pick you up at the airport after a holiday? Make you money during the day as an autotaxi while you're not using it? Save your life by avoiding accidents you didn't see? Radically bring down the cost of taxis and car hire for those who don't own a car? In our lifetimes all cars will be electric driverless cars in at least some countries. It may not be Tesla but the future is coming.
  - maxxxxx 7y ago
    No question this is coming. But I think the current car manufacturers are very well positioned to ride that wave. I don’t see much room for startups there.
    - grey-area 7y ago
      Software is eating the world. Will be interesting to see how it plays out - it's quite possible other manufacturers will see the light and start producing autonomous cars (they certainly have a production advantage at the moment), but I think the advantage Tesla has is that they own the whole stack and know where they're going.
    - bobsil1 7y ago
      They’ll mostly go out of business. They’re 7 years behind Model S and staffed with MechE’s not ML researchers.
      - phkahler 7y ago
        That's cute.
  - koolba 7y ago
    > Save millions of lives by being safer driving than humans? That’s not a perceptible change. It’s a wonderful thing and I’m all for people not dying, but people aren’t suddenly going to notice the difference. It’s not like people entering a car think “Am I going to die?!” every time they go to work. > Drive you home the rest of the time? Again I don’t see this as being more than a convenience. At beta it leads to more screen time zoning out with a Netflix a la train commuting. > Drive you cross country overnight while you sleep? The vast majority of people can’t afford to take a week off to travel across the country so they would not notice this. > Come and pick you up at the airport after a holiday? Again a convenience, not a major change. One can already call an Uber from the airport. > Make you money during the day as an autotaxi while you're not using it? I don’t see this being as popular an idea as people make it out to be. The phrase “Make money while you sleep” has been pitched for years and in the case of renting your car out overnight, doesn’t factor insurance costs and the race to the bottom on pricing . Once that catches up there won’t be much money to be made. > Save your life by avoiding accidents you didn't see? Again this is a great thing but not perceptible to the daily user. > Radically bring down the cost of taxis and car hire for those who don't own a car? It’s already lower than the cost of ownership thanks to VC money. > In our lifetimes all cars will be electric driverless cars in at least some countries. It may not be Tesla but the future is coming. Electric has nothing to do with “smart”. It can be a gas engine. It can be a fuel cell. It could be something we don’t even know about yet.
maxxxxx 7y ago
Manufacturing is understood and still hard because you have to execute well every day. With software once you are done it’s easy to replicate. Guess why the phone market is donated by hardware manufacturers? Because it’s hard to produce a phone at low cost and good quality. Same is true for cars. The development is relatively easy but producing is hard.
- bobsil1 7y ago
  Your idea of what a car is going to be, is wrong. It’s going to be a special-purpose mind on wheels, and no one knows how to develop one yet.
dillonmckay 7y ago
I do agree with this sentiment. The used luxury car market has out-dated electronics that cannot be upgraded. Not as bad as epoxying an iPad2 to the dash, but close enough. Meanwhile, I think Tesla’s are at the equivalent stage of the original iPhone or the 3gs. We still have a way to go before this is a commoditized standard.

I doubt that will happen. The paradigm shift for a “smart” car vs just a car is nothing like a flip phone vs a smart phone. Besides being able to drive you home when you’re drunk, what can you smart car do for you that you couldn’t already do with a regular car? Cruise for parking? These are just minor conveniences and for large swathes of the population, they’re likely not welcome either.

jaggederest 7y ago
> No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame. https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod https://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-i... I think you're significantly underestimating the impact it would have.
- koolba 7y ago
  Yes and you can recreate Dropbox with SSH, rsync, and cron. We’ve all read these played out comments over and over... So what game changing functionality do you think smart cars provide?
  - jaggederest 7y ago
    I don't think it's possible to understand from this point in time. I suspect it will be enormous - think advent of the automobile or airplane. One of my bets is that it will result in people moving away from the city - one of the major drawbacks of rural life is driving distance.
grey-area 7y ago
What can a smart car do that a 'regular' car can't? Save millions of lives by being safer driving than humans? Drive you home the rest of the time? Drive you cross country overnight while you sleep? Come and pick you up at the airport after a holiday? Make you money during the day as an autotaxi while you're not using it? Save your life by avoiding accidents you didn't see? Radically bring down the cost of taxis and car hire for those who don't own a car? In our lifetimes all cars will be electric driverless cars in at least some countries. It may not be Tesla but the future is coming.
- maxxxxx 7y ago
  No question this is coming. But I think the current car manufacturers are very well positioned to ride that wave. I don’t see much room for startups there.
  - grey-area 7y ago
    Software is eating the world. Will be interesting to see how it plays out - it's quite possible other manufacturers will see the light and start producing autonomous cars (they certainly have a production advantage at the moment), but I think the advantage Tesla has is that they own the whole stack and know where they're going.
  - bobsil1 7y ago
    They’ll mostly go out of business. They’re 7 years behind Model S and staffed with MechE’s not ML researchers.
    - phkahler 7y ago
      That's cute.
- koolba 7y ago
  > Save millions of lives by being safer driving than humans? That’s not a perceptible change. It’s a wonderful thing and I’m all for people not dying, but people aren’t suddenly going to notice the difference. It’s not like people entering a car think “Am I going to die?!” every time they go to work. > Drive you home the rest of the time? Again I don’t see this as being more than a convenience. At beta it leads to more screen time zoning out with a Netflix a la train commuting. > Drive you cross country overnight while you sleep? The vast majority of people can’t afford to take a week off to travel across the country so they would not notice this. > Come and pick you up at the airport after a holiday? Again a convenience, not a major change. One can already call an Uber from the airport. > Make you money during the day as an autotaxi while you're not using it? I don’t see this being as popular an idea as people make it out to be. The phrase “Make money while you sleep” has been pitched for years and in the case of renting your car out overnight, doesn’t factor insurance costs and the race to the bottom on pricing . Once that catches up there won’t be much money to be made. > Save your life by avoiding accidents you didn't see? Again this is a great thing but not perceptible to the daily user. > Radically bring down the cost of taxis and car hire for those who don't own a car? It’s already lower than the cost of ownership thanks to VC money. > In our lifetimes all cars will be electric driverless cars in at least some countries. It may not be Tesla but the future is coming. Electric has nothing to do with “smart”. It can be a gas engine. It can be a fuel cell. It could be something we don’t even know about yet.

maxxxxx 7y ago

Manufacturing is understood and still hard because you have to execute well every day. With software once you are done it’s easy to replicate. Guess why the phone market is donated by hardware manufacturers? Because it’s hard to produce a phone at low cost and good quality. Same is true for cars. The development is relatively easy but producing is hard.

bobsil1 7y ago
Your idea of what a car is going to be, is wrong. It’s going to be a special-purpose mind on wheels, and no one knows how to develop one yet.

dillonmckay 7y ago

I do agree with this sentiment. The used luxury car market has out-dated electronics that cannot be upgraded. Not as bad as epoxying an iPad2 to the dash, but close enough. Meanwhile, I think Tesla’s are at the equivalent stage of the original iPhone or the 3gs. We still have a way to go before this is a commoditized standard.