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I agree, it will be slow. These Waymo cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A local pizza place in the middle of a small community will not be able to s

I agree, it will be slow. These Waymo cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A local pizza place in the middle of a small community will not be able to support the cost of a driverless car as compared to the cost of a local high school kid with a $500 Civic. Same with semis, companies invest in their truck fleets expecting millions of miles out of each truck. It will take time to change all that over, and the cost/benefit will take time to tip towards self driving. It will happen, but like seat belts, lead free gas and air bags it will take decades before they are the majority of vehicles on the road.

mupuff1234 5y ago
> These Waymo cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Any source on that claim? I thought they reduced the costs of lidar to be in the order of a few k.
- cowvin 5y ago
  https://www.motortrend.com/news/self-driving-cars-faq-can-i-buy-one/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/self-driving-cars-faq-can-i-... Waymo claims they will cost somewhere in the 150k range.
  - mupuff1234 5y ago
    Sounds like the Jaguar (without the waymo tech) is a large chunk of that 150k.
    - iancmceachern 5y ago
      Those Jags start at $40k, to regular people. No doubt cheaper if you buy hundreds at a time. So the self driving tech is $100k+.
      - mupuff1234 5y ago
        From checking now it seems like the base price for consumers is 70k. But regardless, I think even 100k is still quite different than "hundreds of thousands".
walnutclosefarm 5y ago
If an autonomous car costs multiples of what a human driven car costs, then adoption by consumers will, as you say, be slow. There is some upside to an autonomous personal vehicle, but it's not profoundly compelling. For starters, if it's your car, taking you someplace, you have to be in it anyway. You only get a benefit when you could be in it and doing something more beneficial than getting yourself where you're headed, while in transit. Sounds wonderful for commuting, but when push comes to shove, I doubt it'll shake loose the dollars for the majority of commuters. But taxi and like delivery fleets are whole 'nother matter. Here the cost of the driver is substantial, and being able to eliminate that cost compelling. For that same reason, I think you're likely wrong about trucks. I suspect that autonomous - at least for the over the road portion of tips - will be highly compelling. American industry loves to substitute capital for labor costs, and that exactly what autonomous trucks do
- iancmceachern 5y ago
  I agree, it's interesting, I can't believe I didn't see it this way before. In the same way a company can easily justify investing in automation in a factory to improve the efficiency or remove hand labor in production line its the same for trucking and other situations where the vehicle is a tool, not a family car. It seems that if the tech existed, if a company could buy an autonomous 18 wheeler, then they could easily justify and get the capital to buy said trucks, thereby effectively replacing future labor costs with capital expenditures that they can depreciate. So in this situation the limiting factor isn't money, it's ability to deliver trucks. The current entire world production capacity of 18 wheelers is driven by current market demands, its not capable of replacing the entire world fleet of trucks in a year, or even 5. So we will be autonomous truck rate of manufacturing limited. Just some napkin calcs. In the US alone there are a total of 12.5 million heavy trucks registered (1). There were 288k heavy trucks manufactured in the US last year, up 20% from the last year (2). That works out to 43 years to replace the current fleet at the current production rate. It also passes the gut check because you'd expect to see trucks manufactured in the 80s to still be running, not so much trucks from the 70s. So even if we double production rates, it would be 20 years before we can replace all heavy trucks. That won't meet demand. My takeaway is that there is a lot of money to be made in an add on solution that can somehow add the value of autonomous driving without manufacturing a new truck. This is low hanging fruit. It's a big deal to build and tool up an automotive plant. It's a different story when your bolting on a few parts and adding complex software controls. You don't need million dollar presses, welding robots, etc. You just need a few key components sourced from existing suppliers (motor drives for steering, brakes) a computer, likely with some nvidia edge computing stuff, and some fancy software that is hard to make initially, but easy to install on millions of trucks with the above hardware. This is a much more easily scalable business than making whole trucks, and therefore has potential to capture more market share faster, and ultimately could meet the demand faster. In a rate limited situation anything to increase that rate adds value, and I argue that this business model has a lower cost of entry, is more easily scalable, and avoids many of the pitfalls of starting an automotive/truck company. It'll be a combination of both new autonomous heavy trucks and retrofits I imagine. 1. https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/ourroads/large-trucks-and-buses-numbers#:~:text=Nearly%2012.5%20million%20commercial%20large,vehicle%20miles%20across%20the%20U.S https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/ourroads/large-trucks-and-buses-nu.... 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/412815/heavy-truck-production-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/412815/heavy-truck-produ...
pengaru 5y ago
> compared to the cost of a local high school kid with a $500 Civic. Not to mention the kid with the $500 Civic is almost certainly delivering faster than any autonomous vehicle will, robots won't chase lols and tips.
- iancmceachern 5y ago
  And the teenager is smarter, more capable of bobbing and weaving around traffic and neighborhood kids riding their bike.

mupuff1234 5y ago

> These Waymo cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Any source on that claim? I thought they reduced the costs of lidar to be in the order of a few k.

cowvin 5y ago
https://www.motortrend.com/news/self-driving-cars-faq-can-i-buy-one/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/self-driving-cars-faq-can-i-... Waymo claims they will cost somewhere in the 150k range.
- mupuff1234 5y ago
  Sounds like the Jaguar (without the waymo tech) is a large chunk of that 150k.
  - iancmceachern 5y ago
    Those Jags start at $40k, to regular people. No doubt cheaper if you buy hundreds at a time. So the self driving tech is $100k+.
    - mupuff1234 5y ago
      From checking now it seems like the base price for consumers is 70k. But regardless, I think even 100k is still quite different than "hundreds of thousands".

walnutclosefarm 5y ago

If an autonomous car costs multiples of what a human driven car costs, then adoption by consumers will, as you say, be slow. There is some upside to an autonomous personal vehicle, but it's not profoundly compelling. For starters, if it's your car, taking you someplace, you have to be in it anyway. You only get a benefit when you could be in it and doing something more beneficial than getting yourself where you're headed, while in transit. Sounds wonderful for commuting, but when push comes to shove, I doubt it'll shake loose the dollars for the majority of commuters. But taxi and like delivery fleets are whole 'nother matter. Here the cost of the driver is substantial, and being able to eliminate that cost compelling. For that same reason, I think you're likely wrong about trucks. I suspect that autonomous - at least for the over the road portion of tips - will be highly compelling. American industry loves to substitute capital for labor costs, and that exactly what autonomous trucks do

iancmceachern 5y ago
I agree, it's interesting, I can't believe I didn't see it this way before. In the same way a company can easily justify investing in automation in a factory to improve the efficiency or remove hand labor in production line its the same for trucking and other situations where the vehicle is a tool, not a family car. It seems that if the tech existed, if a company could buy an autonomous 18 wheeler, then they could easily justify and get the capital to buy said trucks, thereby effectively replacing future labor costs with capital expenditures that they can depreciate. So in this situation the limiting factor isn't money, it's ability to deliver trucks. The current entire world production capacity of 18 wheelers is driven by current market demands, its not capable of replacing the entire world fleet of trucks in a year, or even 5. So we will be autonomous truck rate of manufacturing limited. Just some napkin calcs. In the US alone there are a total of 12.5 million heavy trucks registered (1). There were 288k heavy trucks manufactured in the US last year, up 20% from the last year (2). That works out to 43 years to replace the current fleet at the current production rate. It also passes the gut check because you'd expect to see trucks manufactured in the 80s to still be running, not so much trucks from the 70s. So even if we double production rates, it would be 20 years before we can replace all heavy trucks. That won't meet demand. My takeaway is that there is a lot of money to be made in an add on solution that can somehow add the value of autonomous driving without manufacturing a new truck. This is low hanging fruit. It's a big deal to build and tool up an automotive plant. It's a different story when your bolting on a few parts and adding complex software controls. You don't need million dollar presses, welding robots, etc. You just need a few key components sourced from existing suppliers (motor drives for steering, brakes) a computer, likely with some nvidia edge computing stuff, and some fancy software that is hard to make initially, but easy to install on millions of trucks with the above hardware. This is a much more easily scalable business than making whole trucks, and therefore has potential to capture more market share faster, and ultimately could meet the demand faster. In a rate limited situation anything to increase that rate adds value, and I argue that this business model has a lower cost of entry, is more easily scalable, and avoids many of the pitfalls of starting an automotive/truck company. It'll be a combination of both new autonomous heavy trucks and retrofits I imagine. 1. https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/ourroads/large-trucks-and-buses-numbers#:~:text=Nearly%2012.5%20million%20commercial%20large,vehicle%20miles%20across%20the%20U.S https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/ourroads/large-trucks-and-buses-nu.... 2. https://www.statista.com/statistics/412815/heavy-truck-production-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/412815/heavy-truck-produ...

pengaru 5y ago

> compared to the cost of a local high school kid with a $500 Civic. Not to mention the kid with the $500 Civic is almost certainly delivering faster than any autonomous vehicle will, robots won't chase lols and tips.

iancmceachern 5y ago
And the teenager is smarter, more capable of bobbing and weaving around traffic and neighborhood kids riding their bike.