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I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. They know it's a long way off, they're just trying to hit enough mile

I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. They know it's a long way off, they're just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. Perhaps with the exception of Tesla, who I have no explanation for. Self-driving cars are so far down the totem-pole in my opinion--if we're going to have to rework our roadways in order to accommodate self-driving cars, why not just innovate there? A roadway can be MUCH smarter than a car. Each segment of smart road is unique, and only has to worry about itself and whatever cars are present in the area. Smart roads could be managed by a few operators (in fact one operator could shepherd many road segments). Each smart car has to be able to account for all possible kinds of roads. Smart cars each require an operator who is essentially just sitting there waiting for the car to fail (and therefore the failures become more catastrophic as the tech gets better, since trust rises and attention spans fail). Put the tech into the ROADS, and just let the cars listen.

Tsarbomb 6y ago
I agree with you 100% but I'll try to condense what I think is the biggest hurdle for buy in. People want "their" car to be smart, they don't want "our" roads to be smart. I'm generalising but I hope you get what I'm saying.
- twodave 6y ago
  I get it--pride. But mostly, it's easier to sell.
ahartmetz 6y ago
Software would be great... if it worked. It's going to take a very clear failure of all self-driving software for anyone to even possibly invest in smart roads. Smart roads don't seem to be a startup thing to do - massive friction (like most infrastructure) and no promise of fantastic profits. Imagine the investors' horror of building smart roads a few years before someone figures out a pure software solution. It's hard to be sure that it won't happen.
aeturnum 6y ago
At a technical level, I think smart roads are more straightforward. However, I think a purely technical analysis ignores why self driving cars have been so popular. The cost of replacing the entire US road system with "smart" roads would doubtless be astronomical - as well as increase the maintenance and infrastructural requirements. We've probably had the technical capabilities to create self-driving-capable roads for years, but the costs are probably too high for people to take it seriously "at scale." Machines that do things "as well" as humans in similar roles have been a science fiction staple for over a century. That machines do focused tasks much, much better than humans haven't stopped people from searching for "drop in" replacements for tasks that currently use a human. Suddenly, the scale is on the level of a single vehicle - very manageable if it works. That's why people were so willing to spend billions of dollars to avoid spending trillions on all that road replacement - because they wanted the worlds they saw in science fiction.
- paxys 6y ago
  You don't have to replace the entire road system. A hybrid model can also exist. Complicated city streets can be "smart", while self driving tech can be good enough to traverse long stretches of highways (which it can basically already do).
  - enos_feedler 6y ago
    Great! Do you want to sit in the first city council meeting and bring up this topic? :P
jtolmar 6y ago
> Just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. A few years back, during the peak of the self-driving hype cycle, I considered doing exactly this. I think with a small team of sensor and Bayes filter experts, a car outfitted with expensive but off-the-shelf sensors, and about a year of dev time, you could get a car that self pilots 95% of the time on a wide suburban road in clear conditions. That extra 5%, other road types, and worse visibility conditions would each take you far more effort than that. But if your goal was just to show results fast and get acquired, it'd be easy to convince people you were almost there. > A roadway can be MUCH smarter than a car. If we're building specialized roadways, you can steer a vehicle with two strips of metal tied together by wooden boards. And it can travel twice as fast as a car while holding a hundred times the passengers. And it was invented 200 years ago.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  > At best, I think, we decrease emissions associated with them. Amen to that. It just shows how crappy our economy is that we don't have trains, pneumatic tubes, and other old school technology that hasn't been beat everywhere.
Hydraulix989 6y ago
> I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. To that extent, was this acquisition actually a liquidity event for the employees or just an effective "change of ownership"?
- jy1 6y ago
  Lyft was already public for them.

Tsarbomb 6y ago

I agree with you 100% but I'll try to condense what I think is the biggest hurdle for buy in. People want "their" car to be smart, they don't want "our" roads to be smart. I'm generalising but I hope you get what I'm saying.

twodave 6y ago
I get it--pride. But mostly, it's easier to sell.

ahartmetz 6y ago

Software would be great... if it worked. It's going to take a very clear failure of all self-driving software for anyone to even possibly invest in smart roads. Smart roads don't seem to be a startup thing to do - massive friction (like most infrastructure) and no promise of fantastic profits. Imagine the investors' horror of building smart roads a few years before someone figures out a pure software solution. It's hard to be sure that it won't happen.

aeturnum 6y ago

At a technical level, I think smart roads are more straightforward. However, I think a purely technical analysis ignores why self driving cars have been so popular. The cost of replacing the entire US road system with "smart" roads would doubtless be astronomical - as well as increase the maintenance and infrastructural requirements. We've probably had the technical capabilities to create self-driving-capable roads for years, but the costs are probably too high for people to take it seriously "at scale." Machines that do things "as well" as humans in similar roles have been a science fiction staple for over a century. That machines do focused tasks much, much better than humans haven't stopped people from searching for "drop in" replacements for tasks that currently use a human. Suddenly, the scale is on the level of a single vehicle - very manageable if it works. That's why people were so willing to spend billions of dollars to avoid spending trillions on all that road replacement - because they wanted the worlds they saw in science fiction.

paxys 6y ago
You don't have to replace the entire road system. A hybrid model can also exist. Complicated city streets can be "smart", while self driving tech can be good enough to traverse long stretches of highways (which it can basically already do).
- enos_feedler 6y ago
  Great! Do you want to sit in the first city council meeting and bring up this topic? :P

jtolmar 6y ago

> Just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. A few years back, during the peak of the self-driving hype cycle, I considered doing exactly this. I think with a small team of sensor and Bayes filter experts, a car outfitted with expensive but off-the-shelf sensors, and about a year of dev time, you could get a car that self pilots 95% of the time on a wide suburban road in clear conditions. That extra 5%, other road types, and worse visibility conditions would each take you far more effort than that. But if your goal was just to show results fast and get acquired, it'd be easy to convince people you were almost there. > A roadway can be MUCH smarter than a car. If we're building specialized roadways, you can steer a vehicle with two strips of metal tied together by wooden boards. And it can travel twice as fast as a car while holding a hundred times the passengers. And it was invented 200 years ago.

Ericson2314 6y ago
> At best, I think, we decrease emissions associated with them. Amen to that. It just shows how crappy our economy is that we don't have trains, pneumatic tubes, and other old school technology that hasn't been beat everywhere.

Hydraulix989 6y ago

> I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. To that extent, was this acquisition actually a liquidity event for the employees or just an effective "change of ownership"?

jy1 6y ago
Lyft was already public for them.