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What does the vehicle energy source have to do with whether the vehicle is driverless or not? Why does this article seemingly conflate driverless technology wit

What does the vehicle energy source have to do with whether the vehicle is driverless or not? Why does this article seemingly conflate driverless technology with clean energy technology? Congrats to Cruise — more driverless vehicles & greener vehicles are a great thing, but I could have done without the activism.

swiley 6y ago
The securities market.
rtlfe 6y ago
Both are good. They're doing both. Might as well talk about both.
kube-system 6y ago
It's a marketing piece. They're not conflating technologies; they're enumerating their value proposition.
petermcneeley 6y ago
Is automating recharge easier than refill? What about the hundreds of extra watts of power consumed by the self driving brain (cpu gpu tpu)?
numpad0 6y ago
For some reasons investor type people tends to associate Lithium rechargeable battery with automation. Probably an inference from the fact that SDC stack prefers hybrids with linear acceleration, or could be another Kool Aid ingestion.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  I think it's because both of those things (battery EVs and driverless cars) are assumed to be "the future of cars", so they've been conflated together as future trends for automotive technology. You probably have Tesla to blame for that, as the company is pursuing both, and everyone is looking at Tesla. The technologies are orthogonal, but I do think it does make sense to pursue both of these things together. EVs are much more energy efficient. They will cost less energy to run. The choice to go to EVs also makes sense if you think about robotaxis, as EVs will require much less maintenance, they have much fewer moving parts. You also have the environmental argument to consider. Gasoline-powered Uber rides are not environmentally friendly. The general assumption is that robotaxis will decrease the price-per-ride to the point where there will be a big shift towards less people owning cars, and probably also less people using mass transit. That will mean less people taking buses and more people in cars. If all of your robotaxis are EVs, this is less of a concern.

swiley 6y ago

The securities market.

rtlfe 6y ago

Both are good. They're doing both. Might as well talk about both.

kube-system 6y ago

It's a marketing piece. They're not conflating technologies; they're enumerating their value proposition.

petermcneeley 6y ago

Is automating recharge easier than refill? What about the hundreds of extra watts of power consumed by the self driving brain (cpu gpu tpu)?

numpad0 6y ago

For some reasons investor type people tends to associate Lithium rechargeable battery with automation. Probably an inference from the fact that SDC stack prefers hybrids with linear acceleration, or could be another Kool Aid ingestion.

tachyonbeam 6y ago
I think it's because both of those things (battery EVs and driverless cars) are assumed to be "the future of cars", so they've been conflated together as future trends for automotive technology. You probably have Tesla to blame for that, as the company is pursuing both, and everyone is looking at Tesla. The technologies are orthogonal, but I do think it does make sense to pursue both of these things together. EVs are much more energy efficient. They will cost less energy to run. The choice to go to EVs also makes sense if you think about robotaxis, as EVs will require much less maintenance, they have much fewer moving parts. You also have the environmental argument to consider. Gasoline-powered Uber rides are not environmentally friendly. The general assumption is that robotaxis will decrease the price-per-ride to the point where there will be a big shift towards less people owning cars, and probably also less people using mass transit. That will mean less people taking buses and more people in cars. If all of your robotaxis are EVs, this is less of a concern.