4 ms·

> The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of autonomous taxis and make money. Probably Waymo >

> The question is not, who has the first taxi on any public road anywhere, but who first can launch 10000 of autonomous taxis and make money. Probably Waymo > Waymo so far is just a gigantic money fire, and even if you assume their autonomy works, many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all. Waymo has incredibly few ours driven on public roads outside of a limited area. and Alphabet / Google is a money printing machine, if they get to self driving first it’s pretty much over for their competition. > many people have made arguments that the businesses case is really not very solid at all So self driving technology isn’t a solid business model? Why are so many companies trying to do this? What’s stopping Waymo from patenting this after they get to an acceptable threshold and selling it to their competitors?

nickik 6y ago
> Probably Waymo Waymo has spend 10+ years and they can now barley driven in possibly the easiest location in the world, a location where they have logged millions of miles. Waymo focuses on the easiest thing first. The technology on their car is incredibly expensive both now and to scale it to 10k, 100k, 1M vehicles is a huge challenge, both capital and manufacturing. They are like a rocket company who says, we have this amazing air-frame, launch pad, software we only need to figure out the engine, then we are gone make money. I place my bets on the company that has million of cars on the road, seeing every corner case possible in every location, because that is the real challenge to overcome if you actually want to have many 1000s of cars in every city. Plus the sensor suit and compute power in a Tesla maybe cost a few 1000$, scalable to 10s of millions of vehicles. I don't think either of them is really close to self driving, but at least Tesla is focusing on the right problem with a scalable solution. > What’s stopping Waymo from patenting this after they get to an acceptable threshold and selling it to their competitors? If their technology actually works they would want to dominate the self driving taxi market and not sell it to the competition. Their competitors would then have to install this whole Waymo hardware suit, making it not very practical for OEMs and normal cars. Uber or Lyft might be costumers, but why would you sell it to them if you could just replace them. Waymo has burned money for 10+ years, signing a few licensing deal for a slightly better Mobile Eye will not give the return they are hoping for.
- gbronner 6y ago
  Hardware costs will go way down. Lidar @ 100$, cheaper chips, cheaper sensors, etc. They are still in a learning phase -- they charge enough so as not to distort rider behavior, but they expect to lose money on each ride. Apart from that, why build cars when you can sell the system to everyone?
  - kanwisher 6y ago
    Lidar requires accurate maps, using vision allows Tesla to drive on roads its never seen
    - gbronner 6y ago
      You can use both if you want to. Tesla went with cameras only because they thought Lidar was too expensive. Not having lidar has directly caused a bunch of autopilot crashes, so I expect they'll add it.
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  > Waymo focuses on the easiest thing first. Hilarious to hear this come from someone rooting for the guys who took an off the shelf LKA + ACC system that couldn't handle stationary objects, turned it on full-time, and called it "Autopilot". Of course the decision to essentially misuse that sensor suite killed a few people but that's neither here nor there right.
- altacc 6y ago
  > Waymo has burned money for 10+ years I don't think you can disparage Waymo and cheerlead Tesla on the basis that you think Waymo a money fire whilst ignoring that Tesla is massively in debt and has yet to post a positive annual net income. Tesla has burnt money for 17 years and it's recent profitable quarters are only the beginning of a turnaround that is not yet anywhere near sufficient to recoup it's losses. In the meantime legacy car manufacturers are catching up with Tesla's offering and providing ever stronger competition. The coronavirus has disrupted production & made sales numbers confusing, but Tesla has lost its top spot in markets it led until recently. Tesla has been great PR for EVs and an important early market innovator, but it is by no means guaranteed long term success in either self-driving or car production.

nickik 6y ago

> Probably Waymo Waymo has spend 10+ years and they can now barley driven in possibly the easiest location in the world, a location where they have logged millions of miles. Waymo focuses on the easiest thing first. The technology on their car is incredibly expensive both now and to scale it to 10k, 100k, 1M vehicles is a huge challenge, both capital and manufacturing. They are like a rocket company who says, we have this amazing air-frame, launch pad, software we only need to figure out the engine, then we are gone make money. I place my bets on the company that has million of cars on the road, seeing every corner case possible in every location, because that is the real challenge to overcome if you actually want to have many 1000s of cars in every city. Plus the sensor suit and compute power in a Tesla maybe cost a few 1000$, scalable to 10s of millions of vehicles. I don't think either of them is really close to self driving, but at least Tesla is focusing on the right problem with a scalable solution. > What’s stopping Waymo from patenting this after they get to an acceptable threshold and selling it to their competitors? If their technology actually works they would want to dominate the self driving taxi market and not sell it to the competition. Their competitors would then have to install this whole Waymo hardware suit, making it not very practical for OEMs and normal cars. Uber or Lyft might be costumers, but why would you sell it to them if you could just replace them. Waymo has burned money for 10+ years, signing a few licensing deal for a slightly better Mobile Eye will not give the return they are hoping for.

gbronner 6y ago
Hardware costs will go way down. Lidar @ 100$, cheaper chips, cheaper sensors, etc. They are still in a learning phase -- they charge enough so as not to distort rider behavior, but they expect to lose money on each ride. Apart from that, why build cars when you can sell the system to everyone?
- kanwisher 6y ago
  Lidar requires accurate maps, using vision allows Tesla to drive on roads its never seen
  - gbronner 6y ago
    You can use both if you want to. Tesla went with cameras only because they thought Lidar was too expensive. Not having lidar has directly caused a bunch of autopilot crashes, so I expect they'll add it.
BoorishBears 6y ago
> Waymo focuses on the easiest thing first. Hilarious to hear this come from someone rooting for the guys who took an off the shelf LKA + ACC system that couldn't handle stationary objects, turned it on full-time, and called it "Autopilot". Of course the decision to essentially misuse that sensor suite killed a few people but that's neither here nor there right.
altacc 6y ago
> Waymo has burned money for 10+ years I don't think you can disparage Waymo and cheerlead Tesla on the basis that you think Waymo a money fire whilst ignoring that Tesla is massively in debt and has yet to post a positive annual net income. Tesla has burnt money for 17 years and it's recent profitable quarters are only the beginning of a turnaround that is not yet anywhere near sufficient to recoup it's losses. In the meantime legacy car manufacturers are catching up with Tesla's offering and providing ever stronger competition. The coronavirus has disrupted production & made sales numbers confusing, but Tesla has lost its top spot in markets it led until recently. Tesla has been great PR for EVs and an important early market innovator, but it is by no means guaranteed long term success in either self-driving or car production.