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So 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.
by throwaway48476 2y ago
So 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.
- tzs 2y agoMaybe the meant sales per capita? The US population at the end of that data was 1.5 times what it was at the beginning, but the sales haven't gone up anywhere near 1.5 times.
- Retric 2y agoHe's probably thinking of this graph of car sales: https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-since-1951/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/199974/us-car-sales-sinc... But, buyers are moving from cars to SUV's.
- 2y ago
- PKop 2y agoWhy make something up like this?
- jfoster 2y agoIf taxis got bigger it would cut into personal sales, yes, but it creates a new revenue stream whereby they take a cut of every ride. The price anchor in that new revenue stream traditionally accounts for the cost of having a human driver, which a self-driving car doesn't need, so they would likely be off to a really good start in terms of profitability. Especially considering they have already paid for a significant amount of the R&D.
- bobthepanda 2y agothat's a sunk cost fallacy and that assumes that the software spending on Cruise is salvageable. They never really restarted Cruise robotaxis after suspending the testing last year.
- jfoster 2y agoThat's true. Their technology direction is probably not efficient. You can see something similar happening with Waymo. If it were actually scalable & in sight of a promising ROI, why wouldn't Alphabet fund it themselves rather than bringing in outside investment?
- bryanlarsen 2y agoAs long as passenger miles stay equivalent, switching from personal cars to taxis would not significantly reduce car sales. Every car sold does about 100,000 to 250,000 passenger miles. Every taxi does about 200,000 to 500,000 miles. Due to deadheading, a taxi does almost 2 miles for every passenger mile.
- 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