6 ms·

The economics of a ~$500k car supported by $2.5 million per year of personnel, all to undercut an immigrant working as a 1099 contractor for… a few bucks an hou

The economics of a ~$500k car supported by $2.5 million per year of personnel, all to undercut an immigrant working as a 1099 contractor for… a few bucks an hour saved? The math never worked and it still doesn’t work.

RankingMember 3y ago
Isn't the idea that the cost of the car would go down over time with economies of scale while providing a safer means of transport? Not saying that's the current reality, but that's the goal isn't it?
- ska 3y ago
  >Isn't the idea that ... Sure, in the sense that's the idea behind lots of things. But there is an awful lot of handwaving about how to concretely get there. The overall goal of using self-driving technology to reduce human deaths and injuries is clearly admirable. What's less clear is a) if it is technologically achievable and b) if any of the current efforts are scaled appropriately to get there over a decade or two. The early self-driving hype was pretty depressing to behold. It was obviously an Apollo sized or bigger effort, and people were actually getting traction with the laughable idea that we'd "get there" in 2-3 years with a few 10k of engineers (or less, I'm estimating conservatively).
  - bdsa 3y ago
    How many people were involved in engineering in the Apollo program?
    - ska 3y ago
      400-500k total staff by some estimates, it's a little hard to know where to draw the lines, and a little hard to do apples-to-apples. Also about 5% total GDP applied which is crucial.
  - FullyFunctional 3y ago
    Exactly this. It is still unclear if this is even possible to do, which means betting the company (GM and Tesla) on it is irresponsible. Of the current efforts, the only that I have heard very positive things about is Waymo.
- dvt 3y ago
  > while providing a safer means of transport Cars are safer than they've ever been; looking at some statistics, we have halved the fatality rates since 1980. So I'm not exactly sure claiming "it's safer" is really much of a selling point. GP is correct that the money has never really made sense, other than in the context of logistics (automating semi trucks maybe?). Given that even the safest of transport modes (say, the metro in London or Paris) still needs to have a conductor (for potential emergencies), it's hard to see the fully driverless dream ever materializing.
  - david-gpu 3y ago
    > Cars are safer than they've ever been Not if you are outside the car. Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities have increased steadily in the US over the past ten years [0] due to ever increasing car sizes and speeds [1]. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal/trends.html https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal/trends.html [1] https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...
  - Tiktaalik 3y ago
    Safer for whom? Pedestrian fatality rates have exploded upward in recent years in the united states, at the highest rates in 41 years. up 77% since 2010. Cars are inherently unsafe but we refuse to disengage from this failed model despite the solutions (ie. public transit) being right there for decades and decades. Self driving public transport in contrast is a solved problem. Vancouver's driverless Skytrain has been serving customers since the early 1980s (as you say, requiring a driver only in the rare exception of some emergency or technical malfunction).
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    Autonomous metro trains in some cities don't have a conductor. Copenhagen's metro doesn't, for example. London's system is particularly old and deep, and lacks space for emergency walkways.
- rented_mule 3y ago
  The price will definitely come down. But not enough for taxi/ride-share companies. Many drivers for ride-share companies make less than nothing once you account for consumables, maintenance, and depreciation of their vehicles. That last one is often left out of the discussion. Many such drivers stop being drivers when their cars wear out because they don't make enough to pay off a car loan before the car wears out. In many cases, this means the companies are getting the cars at below cost with drivers thrown in for free. The premium for self driving hardware isn't likely to be negative anytime soon. Self-driving eliminates the drivers and therefore the people providing part of the cost of the cars. There are certainly exceptions, often well publicized by the companies, of drivers who figure out how to exploit the algorithms to make decent money. But when too many figure this out, the companies adjust the algorithms to contain costs, leading right back to the above.
kube-system 3y ago
A technology in the R&D phase is almost never profitable until later matured, that's why engaging in that type of business is called an investment. Once upon a time there was probably someone who said it was silly to spend a couple million dollars to do the job of a secretary making 50 cents per hour, but now here we are, typing these comments with computers.
- dmbche 3y ago
  Pretty certain computers weren't created to replace secretaries - it's just one of the ways computers changed the world. Self driving is not even claiming it would have much of an effect of the world. A few points more efficient, cutting a bit of costs - not changing the human experience at it's core.
  - mohaine 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure the families of the 38k people who died in car crashes last year (US alone) would disagree with this not changing the human experience at it's core.
    - david-gpu 3y ago
      Let's not automatically assume that self-driving cars will be safer than the average driver in the foreseeable future. Right now the best way to reduce car fatalities is reducing the number of cars by eliminating single family zoning mandates, building safe cycling infrastructure, improving public transit frequency, allowing mixed-use buildings and walkable neighborhoods. Boring stuff, yes, but unlike self-driving cars, it is something we already know how to do.
    - AlexandrB 3y ago
      What about actually making public transit usable? That doesn't require years of R&D and solving several "unknown unknowns". Instead we get companies doing R&D of unproven technologies on public roads because no one wants to build more rail. For some eye-popping numbers, check out the automotive deaths/100,000 people for the US (12.9) vs. Denmark (3.4)[1]. Denmark doesn't have some magical AI that makes all their cars safe, just better infrastructure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
deelowe 3y ago
The market opportunity is many of orders of magnitude larger than taxi/rideshare programs.
s08148692 3y ago
If Tesla succeeds in their FSD ambitions (vision only), and they are actually correct that HW3/4 (current tesla hardware) is capable of full self driving, the economics will make sense, and we're a software update away from having millions of self driving taxis already on the roads That's a lot of ifs, so I'm not at all saying its right around the corner, but it's within the set of possible outcomes. V12 is looking quite promising, but then again so was V11 and V10
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  The problem with Elon Musk constantly over promising and under delivering on this is that it's impossible to tell how close Tesla actually are. A year? A decade? Who knows! The CEO's statements on the matter are best treated as random noise.
  - kwhitefoot 3y ago
    > it's impossible to tell how close Tesla actually are. Isn't this true of all the other players as well.
- hnav 3y ago
  I think lidar is going to get cheaper much faster than tesla figures out vision-only FSD. Consider that solid state lidar capable of scanning a room is integrated in smartphones today.
ra7 3y ago
You are inflating cost of the car by at least 2x. GM had a plan to bring down the cost by manufacturing Origin, but recent events have put a stop to that.

RankingMember 3y ago

Isn't the idea that the cost of the car would go down over time with economies of scale while providing a safer means of transport? Not saying that's the current reality, but that's the goal isn't it?

ska 3y ago
>Isn't the idea that ... Sure, in the sense that's the idea behind lots of things. But there is an awful lot of handwaving about how to concretely get there. The overall goal of using self-driving technology to reduce human deaths and injuries is clearly admirable. What's less clear is a) if it is technologically achievable and b) if any of the current efforts are scaled appropriately to get there over a decade or two. The early self-driving hype was pretty depressing to behold. It was obviously an Apollo sized or bigger effort, and people were actually getting traction with the laughable idea that we'd "get there" in 2-3 years with a few 10k of engineers (or less, I'm estimating conservatively).
- bdsa 3y ago
  How many people were involved in engineering in the Apollo program?
  - ska 3y ago
    400-500k total staff by some estimates, it's a little hard to know where to draw the lines, and a little hard to do apples-to-apples. Also about 5% total GDP applied which is crucial.
- FullyFunctional 3y ago
  Exactly this. It is still unclear if this is even possible to do, which means betting the company (GM and Tesla) on it is irresponsible. Of the current efforts, the only that I have heard very positive things about is Waymo.
dvt 3y ago
> while providing a safer means of transport Cars are safer than they've ever been; looking at some statistics, we have halved the fatality rates since 1980. So I'm not exactly sure claiming "it's safer" is really much of a selling point. GP is correct that the money has never really made sense, other than in the context of logistics (automating semi trucks maybe?). Given that even the safest of transport modes (say, the metro in London or Paris) still needs to have a conductor (for potential emergencies), it's hard to see the fully driverless dream ever materializing.
- david-gpu 3y ago
  > Cars are safer than they've ever been Not if you are outside the car. Pedestrian and cyclist fatalities have increased steadily in the US over the past ten years [0] due to ever increasing car sizes and speeds [1]. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal/trends.html https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/fatal/trends.html [1] https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/transportationsafety/pedestrian_safety/i...
- Tiktaalik 3y ago
  Safer for whom? Pedestrian fatality rates have exploded upward in recent years in the united states, at the highest rates in 41 years. up 77% since 2010. Cars are inherently unsafe but we refuse to disengage from this failed model despite the solutions (ie. public transit) being right there for decades and decades. Self driving public transport in contrast is a solved problem. Vancouver's driverless Skytrain has been serving customers since the early 1980s (as you say, requiring a driver only in the rare exception of some emergency or technical malfunction).
- Symbiote 3y ago
  Autonomous metro trains in some cities don't have a conductor. Copenhagen's metro doesn't, for example. London's system is particularly old and deep, and lacks space for emergency walkways.
rented_mule 3y ago
The price will definitely come down. But not enough for taxi/ride-share companies. Many drivers for ride-share companies make less than nothing once you account for consumables, maintenance, and depreciation of their vehicles. That last one is often left out of the discussion. Many such drivers stop being drivers when their cars wear out because they don't make enough to pay off a car loan before the car wears out. In many cases, this means the companies are getting the cars at below cost with drivers thrown in for free. The premium for self driving hardware isn't likely to be negative anytime soon. Self-driving eliminates the drivers and therefore the people providing part of the cost of the cars. There are certainly exceptions, often well publicized by the companies, of drivers who figure out how to exploit the algorithms to make decent money. But when too many figure this out, the companies adjust the algorithms to contain costs, leading right back to the above.

kube-system 3y ago

A technology in the R&D phase is almost never profitable until later matured, that's why engaging in that type of business is called an investment. Once upon a time there was probably someone who said it was silly to spend a couple million dollars to do the job of a secretary making 50 cents per hour, but now here we are, typing these comments with computers.

dmbche 3y ago
Pretty certain computers weren't created to replace secretaries - it's just one of the ways computers changed the world. Self driving is not even claiming it would have much of an effect of the world. A few points more efficient, cutting a bit of costs - not changing the human experience at it's core.
- mohaine 3y ago
  I'm pretty sure the families of the 38k people who died in car crashes last year (US alone) would disagree with this not changing the human experience at it's core.
  - david-gpu 3y ago
    Let's not automatically assume that self-driving cars will be safer than the average driver in the foreseeable future. Right now the best way to reduce car fatalities is reducing the number of cars by eliminating single family zoning mandates, building safe cycling infrastructure, improving public transit frequency, allowing mixed-use buildings and walkable neighborhoods. Boring stuff, yes, but unlike self-driving cars, it is something we already know how to do.
  - AlexandrB 3y ago
    What about actually making public transit usable? That doesn't require years of R&D and solving several "unknown unknowns". Instead we get companies doing R&D of unproven technologies on public roads because no one wants to build more rail. For some eye-popping numbers, check out the automotive deaths/100,000 people for the US (12.9) vs. Denmark (3.4)[1]. Denmark doesn't have some magical AI that makes all their cars safe, just better infrastructure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

deelowe 3y ago

The market opportunity is many of orders of magnitude larger than taxi/rideshare programs.

s08148692 3y ago

If Tesla succeeds in their FSD ambitions (vision only), and they are actually correct that HW3/4 (current tesla hardware) is capable of full self driving, the economics will make sense, and we're a software update away from having millions of self driving taxis already on the roads That's a lot of ifs, so I'm not at all saying its right around the corner, but it's within the set of possible outcomes. V12 is looking quite promising, but then again so was V11 and V10

AlexandrB 3y ago
The problem with Elon Musk constantly over promising and under delivering on this is that it's impossible to tell how close Tesla actually are. A year? A decade? Who knows! The CEO's statements on the matter are best treated as random noise.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  > it's impossible to tell how close Tesla actually are. Isn't this true of all the other players as well.
hnav 3y ago
I think lidar is going to get cheaper much faster than tesla figures out vision-only FSD. Consider that solid state lidar capable of scanning a room is integrated in smartphones today.

ra7 3y ago

You are inflating cost of the car by at least 2x. GM had a plan to bring down the cost by manufacturing Origin, but recent events have put a stop to that.