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As individuals we are never going to own self-driving cars. If buying the hardware is even an option to begin with, there's going to be a hefty fee to subscrib

As individuals we are never going to own self-driving cars. If buying the hardware is even an option to begin with, there's going to be a hefty fee to subscribe to the required 'cloud based' self-driving service. (And there's certainly no way individuals/small businesses will be able to buy such a car and run a self-driving taxi service profitably when a megacorporation could have all the income from all the cars)

exhilaration 3y ago
What about comma? https://comma.ai/ https://comma.ai/ Seems like our old friend geohot built exactly what you want. Positive HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971
- bluescrn 3y ago
  If it became popular it'd be regulated out of existence
  - rpmisms 3y ago
    Diesel tuners are still very popular.
- shkkmo 3y ago
  That is only a level 2 autonomous driving system, with capabilities on par with many other stock manufacturer driver assistance system. Having an open source alternative is coolsl, but it doesn't really bear on the argument I think is being made. I think the argument is that we won't see the same availability beyond level 3, since level 4 is the first step where a human is not required behind the wheel. This means you probably need subscription to have a remote human who can step in and take control in edge cases, at least until we develop AGI. Even then, I suspect the economics of running a full AGI from each vehicles will make a subscription mandatory.
hahajk 3y ago
I still believe the free market can work for self driving cars. If there's demand for offline self driving cars, someone will make them. Probably someone in Asia will make them affordable. But I believe regulatory capture and anti-competitive tariffs are likely to make affordable, buy-and-use cars impossible to sell in the US. Regulations will likely change annually, like they do for cars right now. The govt will be worried that China has control of our morning commute. I hate being cynical, but cars do seem like a lost cause.
gghffguhvc 3y ago
Never seems too strong here. In 2000 years when it has been maybe 1500 years since a human turned a steering wheel I can see a situation where an individual owns a self driving car like thing. Even well before some such future, the type of people who buy Bugatti Veyron will still want to buy something unique and out of reach of the 99.99% of the population. Maybe that is human driven but what if human driven becomes illegal?
woodruffw 3y ago
I don't have strong opinions about self-driving cars in this context, but the pattern of this argument doesn't track: you can omit "self-driving" and the underlying premise is still the same (that companies have an incentive to lease rather than sell objects to capture service revenues). But the reality is that people do own cars, and no car manufacturer that I know is also trying to become a taxi operator (except maybe in the indirect investment sense). Or in other words: sales in a market aren't affected by the abstract possibility of vertical integration, because any entity that attempts to vertically integrate will be undercut by other parties making sales at the same time.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  The pattern is that hardware is sold but software is now rented, it must be a 'revenue stream', not a one-off sale. Cars were hardware. But now contain ever-increasing amounts of software. With self-driving cars, the software is the main feature.
  - shagie 3y ago
    Software that is a one off sale is rarely profitable to do as that comes with the additional cost of updates and patches. The development cost of the updates and patches has to come from somewhere - either significantly marking up the initial purchase cost to fund the on going development (side bit: when a one time purchase server shuts down people are up in arms about that) or with some form of subscription model. If a driverless car maker can be liable for the software that they released some time ago and didn't update, then the funding of that development effort has to come from somewhere. If some of the compute or data updates is in the cloud, that comes with an ongoing cost. Compare with getting a DVD with a database of road updates once a year ( https://ford.navigation.com/product/Catalog/2023-Green-DVD-Map-Update/sku/Honda%20Green%202023/en_US/HondaNA/USD https://ford.navigation.com/product/Catalog/2023-Green-DVD-M... ) and the "this road is closed" ( https://www.wyoroad.info/pls/Browse/WRR.STATIC5?SelectedDistrict=1#Baggs https://www.wyoroad.info/pls/Browse/WRR.STATIC5?SelectedDist... ) or "there is heavy traffic, a different route is suggested" services. Those come with an ongoing cost somewhere.
nradov 3y ago
Individuals can buy self-driving cars from Mercedes-Benz today. They are only level 3 autonomous, but the manufacturer does assume legal liability for incidents that occur during autonomous operation (traffic tickets may be a separate issue). There is a hefty subscription fee for the Drive Pilot service. https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot

exhilaration 3y ago

What about comma? https://comma.ai/ https://comma.ai/ Seems like our old friend geohot built exactly what you want. Positive HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36927971

bluescrn 3y ago
If it became popular it'd be regulated out of existence
- rpmisms 3y ago
  Diesel tuners are still very popular.
shkkmo 3y ago
That is only a level 2 autonomous driving system, with capabilities on par with many other stock manufacturer driver assistance system. Having an open source alternative is coolsl, but it doesn't really bear on the argument I think is being made. I think the argument is that we won't see the same availability beyond level 3, since level 4 is the first step where a human is not required behind the wheel. This means you probably need subscription to have a remote human who can step in and take control in edge cases, at least until we develop AGI. Even then, I suspect the economics of running a full AGI from each vehicles will make a subscription mandatory.

hahajk 3y ago

I still believe the free market can work for self driving cars. If there's demand for offline self driving cars, someone will make them. Probably someone in Asia will make them affordable. But I believe regulatory capture and anti-competitive tariffs are likely to make affordable, buy-and-use cars impossible to sell in the US. Regulations will likely change annually, like they do for cars right now. The govt will be worried that China has control of our morning commute. I hate being cynical, but cars do seem like a lost cause.

gghffguhvc 3y ago

Never seems too strong here. In 2000 years when it has been maybe 1500 years since a human turned a steering wheel I can see a situation where an individual owns a self driving car like thing. Even well before some such future, the type of people who buy Bugatti Veyron will still want to buy something unique and out of reach of the 99.99% of the population. Maybe that is human driven but what if human driven becomes illegal?

woodruffw 3y ago

I don't have strong opinions about self-driving cars in this context, but the pattern of this argument doesn't track: you can omit "self-driving" and the underlying premise is still the same (that companies have an incentive to lease rather than sell objects to capture service revenues). But the reality is that people do own cars, and no car manufacturer that I know is also trying to become a taxi operator (except maybe in the indirect investment sense). Or in other words: sales in a market aren't affected by the abstract possibility of vertical integration, because any entity that attempts to vertically integrate will be undercut by other parties making sales at the same time.

bluescrn 3y ago
The pattern is that hardware is sold but software is now rented, it must be a 'revenue stream', not a one-off sale. Cars were hardware. But now contain ever-increasing amounts of software. With self-driving cars, the software is the main feature.
- shagie 3y ago
  Software that is a one off sale is rarely profitable to do as that comes with the additional cost of updates and patches. The development cost of the updates and patches has to come from somewhere - either significantly marking up the initial purchase cost to fund the on going development (side bit: when a one time purchase server shuts down people are up in arms about that) or with some form of subscription model. If a driverless car maker can be liable for the software that they released some time ago and didn't update, then the funding of that development effort has to come from somewhere. If some of the compute or data updates is in the cloud, that comes with an ongoing cost. Compare with getting a DVD with a database of road updates once a year ( https://ford.navigation.com/product/Catalog/2023-Green-DVD-Map-Update/sku/Honda%20Green%202023/en_US/HondaNA/USD https://ford.navigation.com/product/Catalog/2023-Green-DVD-M... ) and the "this road is closed" ( https://www.wyoroad.info/pls/Browse/WRR.STATIC5?SelectedDistrict=1#Baggs https://www.wyoroad.info/pls/Browse/WRR.STATIC5?SelectedDist... ) or "there is heavy traffic, a different route is suggested" services. Those come with an ongoing cost somewhere.

nradov 3y ago

Individuals can buy self-driving cars from Mercedes-Benz today. They are only level 3 autonomous, but the manufacturer does assume legal liability for incidents that occur during autonomous operation (traffic tickets may be a separate issue). There is a hefty subscription fee for the Drive Pilot service. https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot