4 ms·

Well... "In December 2020, Lyft announced that it will launch a multi-city U.S. robotaxi service in 2023 with Motional." https://www.reuters.com/article/autos

Well... "In December 2020, Lyft announced that it will launch a multi-city U.S. robotaxi service in 2023 with Motional." https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-selfdriving-lyft-idUSKBN28Q2H2 https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-selfdriving-lyft-idUSK...

ra7 6y ago
They also have a partnership with Waymo to provide autonomous rides. Ultimately, I think Lyft, Uber and the likes will just become a provider/maintainer of robotaxi rides, while the actual tech will be done by Waymo et al.
- repsilat 6y ago
  Google tells me that Uber takes a 25% cut for human-driven rides. So a rider's fare is 3:1 driver to Uber. If (just to make the math easy) you need to pay a robot a third of what you need to pay a human, I wonder whether the negotiation would come out closer to 1. One part Uber, one part driver (so Uber's cut maintains its value) or 2. Still one part Uber, three parts driver, but the values are all lower and the total volumes higher. I'd think it would need to shake out closer to the latter case than the former to keep Uber in the game, for a few reasons: - Self-driving car companies are software companies. They can make Uber clones, given enough resources and time. - There isn't really a two-sided marketplace bootstrapping process. These companies have enough capital to put a lot of cars on the road, and I don't think the economies of scale are actually that big -- there isn't much cross-benefit from scale in disconnected cities, and inside a given city you need 4x as many cars to halve wait times so the scale benefits tail off sharply. And I bet there's little brand-loyalty. - If there are few self-driving car companies in a market, they'd have relatively large market power, so they could dictate rates more effectively than an atomised driver pool. Shrugs, it could happen if the rates were low enough, but I suspect it won't. But I'm probably greatly underestimating the benefits of partnership -- dispatching is probably easy, and AV companies will necessarily be savvy with regulators, but customer-interaction and "app surface-area" are likely places where the existing players have a real leg-up. That said, the labour market is pretty porous in the Bay Area...
  - cma 6y ago
    3:1 of the gross goes to the driver. Much less after driver expenses like wear and tear, gas and insurance.
    - lumost 6y ago
      that's the rub of a robotaxi service. A hypothetical taxi launchable today would probably have ~30 billion R&D 1:10 remote safety operator ratio (1p employees, not contractors). 100K Bill of materials/vehicle for the lidar sensors etc. Compare this with an externally owned 8 year old vehicle being driven by someone who doesn't confer liability to the company. Even if the dream was realized there likely isn't a viable business for robotaxis until the cars are on the road for 10-20 years.
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
        Vans exist, and rides can be pooled in denser areas. I imagine a 24-hour robovan with multiple paying passengers at a time would pay itself off relatively quickly. People here like to whine that this would be recreating the bus, not realizing that the reason buses suck is because they have rigid departure schedules, and fixed startpoints and endpoints. People mainly take Ubers over the bus because they're much more flexible.
tananaev 6y ago
Lyft still works with third party partners, like Motional and Waymo to provide self-driving services on the platform. L5 division was a separate effort to have own self driving car.
Traster 6y ago
Yeah, I remember when the company I worked for continually made forward looking projections that were ridiculous whilst in the process of negotiating a sale. Including the pressure not to report anything that would need to be raised as part of the acquisition.
ghaff 6y ago
Urbanites have self-driving. They just need to pay a sub-minimum wage driver to do it. Oh, real self-driving you say. That's going to be on a subset of highways in a subset of weather conditions.
- wombatpm 6y ago
  And it will happen with trucks first. Either a lead truck running a convoy or remote piloting via drone technology. Why? Because a truck does 500 miles per day. A self driving truck can do 1000. Amazon cannot exist without long haul trucking
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Perhaps. A lot of "long-haul" trucking is called trains.
    - mNovak 6y ago
      In the US at least, trucks are by far the dominant means of transport, at 5x more freight than trains (slightly out of date, and by value): [1] https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-numbers https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-num...
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  - nradov 6y ago
    Many long haul trucks carry two drivers and can do more than 500 miles per day.
draw_down 6y ago
Yeah, and every divorcee promised to be with their spouse forever. Sometimes it doesn't work out, my friend.

ra7 6y ago

They also have a partnership with Waymo to provide autonomous rides. Ultimately, I think Lyft, Uber and the likes will just become a provider/maintainer of robotaxi rides, while the actual tech will be done by Waymo et al.

repsilat 6y ago
Google tells me that Uber takes a 25% cut for human-driven rides. So a rider's fare is 3:1 driver to Uber. If (just to make the math easy) you need to pay a robot a third of what you need to pay a human, I wonder whether the negotiation would come out closer to 1. One part Uber, one part driver (so Uber's cut maintains its value) or 2. Still one part Uber, three parts driver, but the values are all lower and the total volumes higher. I'd think it would need to shake out closer to the latter case than the former to keep Uber in the game, for a few reasons: - Self-driving car companies are software companies. They can make Uber clones, given enough resources and time. - There isn't really a two-sided marketplace bootstrapping process. These companies have enough capital to put a lot of cars on the road, and I don't think the economies of scale are actually that big -- there isn't much cross-benefit from scale in disconnected cities, and inside a given city you need 4x as many cars to halve wait times so the scale benefits tail off sharply. And I bet there's little brand-loyalty. - If there are few self-driving car companies in a market, they'd have relatively large market power, so they could dictate rates more effectively than an atomised driver pool. Shrugs, it could happen if the rates were low enough, but I suspect it won't. But I'm probably greatly underestimating the benefits of partnership -- dispatching is probably easy, and AV companies will necessarily be savvy with regulators, but customer-interaction and "app surface-area" are likely places where the existing players have a real leg-up. That said, the labour market is pretty porous in the Bay Area...
- cma 6y ago
  3:1 of the gross goes to the driver. Much less after driver expenses like wear and tear, gas and insurance.
  - lumost 6y ago
    that's the rub of a robotaxi service. A hypothetical taxi launchable today would probably have ~30 billion R&D 1:10 remote safety operator ratio (1p employees, not contractors). 100K Bill of materials/vehicle for the lidar sensors etc. Compare this with an externally owned 8 year old vehicle being driven by someone who doesn't confer liability to the company. Even if the dream was realized there likely isn't a viable business for robotaxis until the cars are on the road for 10-20 years.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 6y ago
      Vans exist, and rides can be pooled in denser areas. I imagine a 24-hour robovan with multiple paying passengers at a time would pay itself off relatively quickly. People here like to whine that this would be recreating the bus, not realizing that the reason buses suck is because they have rigid departure schedules, and fixed startpoints and endpoints. People mainly take Ubers over the bus because they're much more flexible.

tananaev 6y ago

Lyft still works with third party partners, like Motional and Waymo to provide self-driving services on the platform. L5 division was a separate effort to have own self driving car.

Traster 6y ago

Yeah, I remember when the company I worked for continually made forward looking projections that were ridiculous whilst in the process of negotiating a sale. Including the pressure not to report anything that would need to be raised as part of the acquisition.

ghaff 6y ago

Urbanites have self-driving. They just need to pay a sub-minimum wage driver to do it. Oh, real self-driving you say. That's going to be on a subset of highways in a subset of weather conditions.

wombatpm 6y ago
And it will happen with trucks first. Either a lead truck running a convoy or remote piloting via drone technology. Why? Because a truck does 500 miles per day. A self driving truck can do 1000. Amazon cannot exist without long haul trucking
- ghaff 6y ago
  Perhaps. A lot of "long-haul" trucking is called trains.
  - mNovak 6y ago
    In the US at least, trucks are by far the dominant means of transport, at 5x more freight than trains (slightly out of date, and by value): [1] https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-numbers https://www.bts.gov/newsroom/2017-north-american-freight-num...
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- nradov 6y ago
  Many long haul trucks carry two drivers and can do more than 500 miles per day.

draw_down 6y ago

Yeah, and every divorcee promised to be with their spouse forever. Sometimes it doesn't work out, my friend.