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Makes you wonder why autonomous trucking isn't the full and dedicated focus of Google et al. Vastly easier to accomplish, and arguably a bigger societal impact
by adam_arthur 4y ago
Makes you wonder why autonomous trucking isn't the full and dedicated focus of Google et al. Vastly easier to accomplish, and arguably a bigger societal impact than autonomous passenger vehicles.
Plus it just makes sense to solve an easier problem first and work it into the broader solution later
- dilyevsky 4y agoIt’s possible they are asleep at the wheel
- iepathos 4y agoCurious why you think trucking would have a bigger societal impact? As to why Google et al. are aiming for passenger vehicles, there about 4 million semi trucks in the US and over 290 million passenger vehicles.
- adam_arthur 4y agoAnd whats the economic value of 1 mile driven per truck vs passenger vehicle? Cheaper truck transport also opens up more cost competitive manufacturing, factory placement. All of these will be highly deflationary. In a remote work world a large percentage of the workforce only has to travel for discretionary, not economic reasons.
- renewiltord 4y agoFor a venture, you want the value that you can capture to drive direction, not all the externalities and I think with trucking that's small. It makes sense for the US Gov, just not for Google.
- xnx 4y agoWaymo is doing trucking too. It's probably a 98% overlap with the skills their driver (the Waymo software) needs for driving passenger vehicles. Automating driving is so difficult, it's a mystery why anyone thought all but the largest, most advanced, and best funded software companies could succeed.
- krupan 4y agoBecause maybe it's not vastly easier to accomplish
- readthenotes1 4y agoWith tons more liability per accident...