5 ms·

That 2% is not the person in the vehicle, it’s cruise employees. It doesn’t scale because it is paid employees intervening instead of the customer driving. It s

That 2% is not the person in the vehicle, it’s cruise employees. It doesn’t scale because it is paid employees intervening instead of the customer driving. It scales in comparison to ride sharing competition but not in terms of people owning the vehicles.

sroussey 3y ago
That 2% is much cheaper than going for five nines immediately. Nice bridge until then.
- amluto 3y ago
  The real long term issue IMO is that this type of system fails pretty badly if the wireless network fails over a largish area.
polishTar 3y ago
Other ridehail products like uber or lyft have 100% human intervention all the time. I think that's what the parent comment is referring to.
Rebelgecko 3y ago
They'll just do what the robo-food delivery startups are doing and outsource the driving to people in other countries who make $5/day
dventimi 3y ago
> it [does not scale] in terms of people owning the vehicles Can you clarify what you mean here?
- tcoff91 3y ago
  If you sell a ton of these cars, having employees controlling 2% of the time means your costs become enormous rather quickly. You would have to have a subscription business model for this to make any sense where the person buys the car and then has to keep paying monthly for self driving.
  - nrclark 3y ago
    Cruise is aiming for a robotaxi market, not for consumer vehicles. In their business plan, they own and operate fleets. In that kind of model, it’s possible that they can get away with 4% human control. Another way to put that is that they would have one operator on duty for every 25 cars.
  - dventimi 3y ago
    Cruise is a subscription model.
  - rcxdude 3y ago
    No-one credible is talking about selling self-driving cars to consumers for a long time. Taxi services make much more economic sense and are all-around more comfortable from a liability perspective as well.
joshjob42 3y ago
They could spend $75/hr on employees and the cost per car-hour would be just $1.50. That's nothing. 3.5M people work as truck drivers in the US, enough, in principle, to drive ~175M cars at the same time assuming 2% of cars need help at any given moment, ie ~60% of all the cars and trucks in the entire country being driven simultaneously. Presumably though they'd be able to shave that down a few fold between where they are and dominating transportation nationwide (should they ever do so). So, it's pretty scalable in practical terms. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/america-keeps-on-trucking.html#:~:text=More%20than%203.5%20million%20people,occupations%20in%20the%20United%20States https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/america-keeps....
- silisili 3y ago
  This is true, but the numbers inflated even. There's no way they'll pay these people more than $15 or $20 an hour once it scales, which probably further helps your point.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    It does have a much better work/life balance than most driving jobs, though.
    - silisili 3y ago
      True, but depending on how it ends up, it could be about 6000x more stressful. Like every 10 seconds being flipped into a new near crash scenario.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

sroussey 3y ago

That 2% is much cheaper than going for five nines immediately. Nice bridge until then.

amluto 3y ago
The real long term issue IMO is that this type of system fails pretty badly if the wireless network fails over a largish area.

polishTar 3y ago

Other ridehail products like uber or lyft have 100% human intervention all the time. I think that's what the parent comment is referring to.

Rebelgecko 3y ago

They'll just do what the robo-food delivery startups are doing and outsource the driving to people in other countries who make $5/day

dventimi 3y ago

> it [does not scale] in terms of people owning the vehicles Can you clarify what you mean here?

tcoff91 3y ago
If you sell a ton of these cars, having employees controlling 2% of the time means your costs become enormous rather quickly. You would have to have a subscription business model for this to make any sense where the person buys the car and then has to keep paying monthly for self driving.
- nrclark 3y ago
  Cruise is aiming for a robotaxi market, not for consumer vehicles. In their business plan, they own and operate fleets. In that kind of model, it’s possible that they can get away with 4% human control. Another way to put that is that they would have one operator on duty for every 25 cars.
- dventimi 3y ago
  Cruise is a subscription model.
- rcxdude 3y ago
  No-one credible is talking about selling self-driving cars to consumers for a long time. Taxi services make much more economic sense and are all-around more comfortable from a liability perspective as well.

joshjob42 3y ago

They could spend $75/hr on employees and the cost per car-hour would be just $1.50. That's nothing. 3.5M people work as truck drivers in the US, enough, in principle, to drive ~175M cars at the same time assuming 2% of cars need help at any given moment, ie ~60% of all the cars and trucks in the entire country being driven simultaneously. Presumably though they'd be able to shave that down a few fold between where they are and dominating transportation nationwide (should they ever do so). So, it's pretty scalable in practical terms. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/america-keeps-on-trucking.html#:~:text=More%20than%203.5%20million%20people,occupations%20in%20the%20United%20States https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/06/america-keeps....

silisili 3y ago
This is true, but the numbers inflated even. There's no way they'll pay these people more than $15 or $20 an hour once it scales, which probably further helps your point.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  It does have a much better work/life balance than most driving jobs, though.
  - silisili 3y ago
    True, but depending on how it ends up, it could be about 6000x more stressful. Like every 10 seconds being flipped into a new near crash scenario.
deleted 3y ago
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