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GM believed Kyle Vogt when he was hyping up their tech by having small, meaningless deployments in a dozen cities and promising $1B revenue by 2025. Then they h
by ra7 2y ago
GM believed Kyle Vogt when he was hyping up their tech by having small, meaningless deployments in a dozen cities and promising $1B revenue by 2025. Then they had that incident and GM found out exactly how far behind Waymo they are. Waymo is now giving 175k rides every week and expanding to new markets every year. No other robotaxi company in the entire country giving rides to the public.
Now they've gone back to what I think GM's original plan was for acquiring Cruise — using their tech for passenger cars. Selling cars is GM's bread and butter. This wasn't going to end any other way.
- throwaway48476 2y agoSo stupid. If something has proved to be possible then you as number 2 can hire people from 1 to replicate it. China is built on this principle.
- lateforwork 2y agoRight here in the US, this is how Bill Gates built Microsoft.
- Wytwwww 2y agoWhat Waymo is doing is very localized and really only suitable for self-driving taxis and not normal cars. Not clear if that would help GM to sell more cars in the short to medium term (and obviously their execs have no reason to care about anything else).
- throwaway48476 2y agoA taxi is a car. The taxi industry is by itself profitable. GM should be in thr business of making money, with or without cars.
- bobthepanda 2y agothere's a significantly lower volume of taxis sold than personal cars sold, and if taxis got bigger in the way the self driving utopians foresaw, it would significantly cut into their personal car sales.
- throwaway48476 2y agoCar sales in the US go down every year and have since the 90s, were past peak car. They need to find a new market.
- floxy 2y agoI'm not seeing that trend in this data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA ...maybe you are meaning something more specific?
- dgfitz 2y agoI think the brave throwaway48476 doesn’t have a source.
- throwaway48476 2y agohttps://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAUPSA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAUPSA This had the slope I remember.
- bobthepanda 2y agoa lot of Detroit's manufacturing these days is in Canada and Mexico.
- hibikir 2y agoHe is right if you look at cars, vs vehicles, but that's due to sales moving to larger vehicles that don't count as cars. But when it comes to self driving or electrification, the difference between car and truck isn't significant. Therefore, vehicles sales being up is what matters.
- Wytwwww 2y agoThat's an entirely new market for them. They are struggling even in their core area of expertise and trying to compete against Waymo, Uber, Lyft etc. would be like flying to the moon for them.
- Animats 2y agoRemember what happened to the Google employee who tried to leave and take some of the technology with him.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski
- lsaferite 2y agoThere's leaving with what's in your head and there's M. Levandowski. Very different things.
- Grazester 2y ago...So he wrote down a few notes and tried to take them with him -sarcasm-
- renewiltord 2y agoHe was pardoned by the President. I enjoyed that. Pretty random one to pardon.
- Animats 2y agoGood connections: "In its announcement this week, the White House said Levandowski's full pardon was supported by the billionaire pro-Trump tech businessman Peter Thiel."[1] [1] https://www.newsweek.com/anthony-levandowski-donald-trump-full-pardon-google-trade-secrets-theft-1562904 https://www.newsweek.com/anthony-levandowski-donald-trump-fu...
- renewiltord 2y agoMakes sense.
- acchow 2y agoProbably China will always outpay Cruise so you see migration from Waymo to Chinese companies, but not to cruise
- slt2021 2y agoChina is far more ahead than Waymo in terms of passenger-miles
- achierius 2y agoHuh? Cruise was paying $400k+ for like 3YoE. I don't think China is paying more than that.
- rangestransform 2y agoChina isn’t paying more but definitely isn’t paying less, Didi pays competitive salaries in the bay (but strongly prefers mandarin proficiency)
- paxys 2y agoAnd how much is that $400K of equity worth today?
- BoorishBears 2y agoCruise had extremely competitive base, and you're in a thread trying to partially attribute their downfall to a lack of comp: so how much that equity is worth after a downfall is a bit of a non-sequitur
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoThat would require paying more than competitors and that’s unacceptable to anyone except for the successful companies that commonly do just this. I’m serious about this point too. Eg. Intel pays less than half of what tsmc in Taiwan pays for similar jobs on a ppp basis after 20years of wage freezes and cuts at intel. They can’t poach any talent and investors want more layoffs and wage freezes next quarter to fix the decline they see. GM is similar. It’s not going to turn around and start competing in the high end labor market reasonably. It can’t. The big shareholders would sack the ceo in seconds. Think GM could ever compete with Google (Waymo) in a market where ai engineers can earn ) 1m/yr? Ha! The MBAs wouldn’t allow it for a second.
- AnotherGoodName 2y agoTo follow up on above I’ll give a clear example. $77k/yr hardware engineer degree required job at intel in a high cost of living area for anyone wondering how dire the situation is at these uncompetitive companies. https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Intel-Corporation/job-titles/Integrity-Engineer https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Intel-Corporation/job-titles/Inte... They unsurprisingly rate ‘very easy interview’ on glassdoor since they’d hire no one without lowering the bar significantly. I would never begrudge anyone working at these broken companies either fwiw. You just have to be aware it’s a job you have while looking for a reasonably paying job. If anyone wants a lesson in the core place the rot starts consider maybe there’s a reason intel is struggling to achieve what it’s much higher paying competitors achieve. A very similar story plays out for GM, Boeing and the other rotting companies. Short term focus leading to non-competitiveness in the labor market leading to poorer results in all aspects. GM is not going to win this. They can’t due to a focus on production lines using minimum wage staff and applying that to knowledge work.
- BoorishBears 2y agoMy Cruise offer was the highest of the 3 AV companies I got offers from. Cruise was known for great comp and worse working conditions/tech when I was searching
- jamiequint 2y ago[flagged]
- ra7 2y agoNope. But feel free to add something substantial to what I said.
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- jamiequint 2y ago[flagged]
- ra7 2y ago[flagged]
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- standardUser 2y agoAd hominems aside, it's easy to cheerlead Waymo since they stand alone as the nation's only commercial robotaxi service. They're expanding, their track record is exceptional, and having used them a handful of times they definitely leave an impression.
- schiffern 2y agoWaymo's strategy traded "do robotaxi early" in exchange for big penalties in cost-per-car (LIDAR) and cost-per-city (requirement for millimeter mapping). Yes it gets them early service in a small number of cities, but it dramatically kneecaps their ability to scale to the entire planet.
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- atomic128 2y agoA quick search of Hacker News brings up many warnings, presumably from engineers inside the company. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=reTensor https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=reTensor It was well-known and well-leaked that something was wrong with Cruise.
- seltzered_ 2y agoRelated: https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.io/post/3kdca25huko2e https://bsky.app/profile/niedermeyer.io/post/3kdca25huko2e -> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-02/safety-numbers-on-autonomous-cars-just-don-t-add-up https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-02/safety-nu... (2018) https://safeautonomy.blogspot.com/2023/10/a-snapshot-of-cruise-crash-reporting.html https://safeautonomy.blogspot.com/2023/10/a-snapshot-of-crui... (2023)
- Animats 2y agoCruise started as "fake it til you make it", with a drive down the Great Highway in San Francisco. The ideal public road - several miles of straight road with no cross streets. They managed to parlay that into an acquisition by GM and board seats on GM's board. Then they didn't deliver. Waymo hasn't left blood on the pavement. Cruise and Tesla have.
- CamperBob2 2y agoWaymo hasn't left blood on the pavement. Cruise and Tesla have. As long as we're clutching our pearls and being overdramatic, how much blood have the humans left on the pavement in the meantime?
- Veserv 2y agoOn a normalized basis in the USA? 1 fatality per ~4000-5000 years of driving. 1 injury per ~60-70 years of driving. Can you point to scientifically rigorous evidence, at least reaching the bare minimum of fit for publication, of the absolute level of safety of those systems and where they stand in comparison? How many people am I allowed to kill or injure before I need to run scientific studies on unproven and empirically fatal technology?
- genewitch 2y agoThis rebuttal is fine, i guess, but to answer your final question: At least 1645 deaths if your government is british. I forget the US numbers, but globally you can kill upwards of 30,000 people with unproven and empirically fatal technology.
- Veserv 2y agoReally, you are arguing that I get to kill 1645 in the UK before I have to show any scientifically rigorous evidence? I get to do 1645 drives and kill the passenger every time before anybody cares? That is not only insane, but empirically false in the USA as people cared very greatly about Cruise injuring people during the development process. You have to be answering the question: “Assuming we already know for a fact that the technology is safer than a human driver, then, if scaled to all drives, how many can die annually and still be morally justifiable?” My question is: “How many do I get to kill before I need to figure out if I am killing fewer people?” That is the basic question to be asked during the development process of any unproven dangerous technology to minimize sacrifices to technological dead ends.
- ec109685 2y agoThere was so much noise about autonomous vehicles in SF from first responders and other officials. There was a segment that dismissed this as histrionics about self-driving cars. As soon as Cruise closed up shop, the complaints went way down.
- iknowstuff 2y agoMy fav was when a bus driver killed a pedestrian but Muni blamed Cruise for his death because it was allegedly blocking responders. They managed to completely shift media blame from bus drivers to evil robocars. https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/12/muni-bus-killed-san-francisco-man-at-center-of-robotaxi-firefighter-dispute/ https://sfstandard.com/2023/09/12/muni-bus-killed-san-franci...
- wahern 2y agoI took cruise at least a dozen times, back when they were giving free rides from downtown SF late at night, originally advertised as a promotion for restaurant and hospitality workers going home. (I was just hacking late into the night ;) I lived on the other side of town, so it was about a 6 mile trip. I can't speak to their technology, but generally speaking Cruise seemed too cautious, both in the aggressiveness of the driving, and in how quickly the company capitulated. I've taken Waymo a few times and what stands out to me is how aggressive Waymo cars are. As a passenger this aggressiveness makes them feel more sophisticated, not to mention faster, but the cars also spook pedestrians to a greater extent as they nose their way into traffic or through turns. Nonetheless, Waymo has been more adept at moving past bad publicity than Cruise, including in the face of accidents. Above and beyond whatever technological shortcomings there may have been[1], I think there was a management and business development mismatch between GM and Cruise. Cruise manifestly worked well enough. With better management--more honest, but also more aggressive--it could have been a contender; heck, it was (is?) the only proven competitor to Waymo for autonomous public taxi service, at least in the U.S. [1] In 3 Waymo trips remote intervention was required once, which is a comparable ratio to my Cruise trips.
- whiplash451 2y agoSome it could also be cold math of expected gains vs expected losses. The expected gains are growing slowly, but the major blunder of last year has made the expected losses skyrocket.