9 ms·
They're sorta turning into a commercially viable DARPA. They take some really hard, large scale, problems; get the right people in a room and find solutions.
by mitchell_h 11y ago
They're sorta turning into a commercially viable DARPA. They take some really hard, large scale, problems; get the right people in a room and find solutions.
Also, cars are basically software at this point. Especially tesla.
- wiremine 11y ago"cars are basically software at this point" Really? A lot of the value add is software, but there is still a ton of hardware that goes into a car.
- spacemanmatt 11y agoTo the extent that a car cannot be a modern car without modern software, Google is a good candidate to add value to what is otherwise a commodity item. They won't have to innovate around automotive hardware.
- dredmorbius 11y agoA couple of tons, generally.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThat hardware is mostly commodity. You can do a lot of new things by bolting some computers and software to any car currently on the market.
- Crito 11y agoWhere exactly do you think those cars come from? People who immerse themselves in the software world too deeply gain a very distorted view of the world.
- sz4kerto 11y ago> Also, cars are basically software at this point. Especially tesla. No, not at all. In the case of cars with ICE the biggest challenge is still mechanical -- mostly related to environmental protection standards. To keep a BMW M5 Euro5 compliant you have to go a _long_ way. If you mean that you use software to design these cars then well, yes, I can agree. But the onboard software is still a very-very small part of the challenge. (Ask somebody who's actually in the car industry, especially if he's in the higher-end market, like someone from AMG, BMW M, etc.; just the cooling of these things is an art.) In the case of Tesla, things are slightly different, but not that much. The big thing here is the reliable electric motor, which -- also according to Tesla marketing -- is simple compared to an ICE, but in reality it's a big challenge to manufacture because high-powered electric motors need to be manufactured with incredible precision, otherwise they break quickyl and often.
- LoSboccacc 11y ago> To keep a BMW M5 Euro5 compliant you have to go a _long_ way to all armchair engineers, you can try out how to create low pollution high power engines in this game: automationgame.com
- jcfrei 11y agoI would argue that the main challenge is actually manufacturing. Building one or a hundred great cars is easy. Building hundreds of thousands great cars with millions of customized variations (like BMW, Audi, etc do.) is the difficult part. Tesla has been behind its promised number of deliveries in 2014 (http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/02/12/earnings-review-tesla-misses-its-delivery-target-for-2014-but-upbeat-about-2015-outlook/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2015/02/12/ear...). If Tesla wants to be a big player in the automotive industry they really need to keep optimizing their supply chain and manufacturing. The product itself is top-notch, no question about it.
- sz4kerto 11y agoThat's true. Also, most consumers don't realize that the reason why Tim Cook become Apple CEO and why Apple is doing so well financially is their finely tuned supply/manufacturing chain. At high volumes that can make or break a company. For example, VW will predictably do really well in the next 10-15 years as they've invested tons of money into optimizing their manufacturing; they use the same basic modules for a large VW and a small Seat.
- seanp2k2 11y agoYup, their MQB platform is pretty cool: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MQB_platform http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MQB_platform
- amalag 11y agoAnd imagine the deliveries increased an order of magnitude when they try to sell the model 3.
- 11y ago
- lectrick 11y ago> Also, cars are basically software at this point. Especially tesla. An ICE vehicle has over 10,000 moving parts. A Tesla has 20, or so. Source: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=387514 http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=387514 So tell me again how "cars are basically software at this point." Other than Tesla, I mean.
- joezydeco 11y agoHow many motors and actuators in one door of a Model S? The sunroof? The HVAC system? The driver's seat? The suspension? This "20 moving parts in a Tesla" meme seems like a really tilted interpretation of the actual numbers. A Tesla certainly has more than 20 moving parts, and an ICE engine certainly has less than 10,000.
- raverbashing 11y agoSeat adjustment alone has more than 20 moving parts easily Add to that Seatbelts, Climate control, door/window/lock mechanism, headlight adjustment, etc. Might not get to 10000, but it's certainly much more than 20.
- stonemetal 11y agoWhile I disagree with the cars are basically software at this point. bit I am pretty sure 9,000 of those 10,000 moving parts is controlled by software.
- lectrick 11y agoWISH I COULD EDIT: Yes, the "20 moving parts" seems like quite a bit of an underestimate, now. Would love to know the actual figure. It is certainly FAR less than a typical ICE vehicle, which is a welcome reduction in complexity.
- treelovinhippie 11y ago> They're sorta turning into a commercially viable DARPA. This. Google and other companies at its scale don't need to worry too much about focus. They can just use the excessive amount of revenues made via software to throw resources at solving global problems and turning scifi into reality.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoScifi into reality: Terminator and Minority Report are great visions for our future. -_-
- TeMPOraL 11y agoSaid someone who has Star Trek referenced in their nickname... Not every sci-fi vision is a dystopia.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoOh, the Federation, where the world isn't run by corporations? Yeah, Google is not working on that future.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoGoogle is working on turning sci-fi technology into reality, not sci-fi politics. In the absence of a Third World War, a warp flight and subsequent first contact with the Vulcans, leveraging existing economy seems to be the best strategy for that.
- personlurking 11y agoIsn't Star Trek about everyone basically working for the government (ie, in the military)?
- TeMPOraL 11y agoNo; Star Trek focuses on the "military" branch (Starfleet), but the majority of the population of United Federation of Planets are civilians.
- pinaceae 11y agoand, so far, they suck at it. search with ads is their core product, ages old. gdocs for enterprise makes some money. wave, glass, car - pie in the sky, detached from any real product or monetization strategies. once search tanks, and the trends in mobile are pointing in that direction, how will google finance their DARPA? PARC did not save Xerox, HP Classic is broken up and gone, MS R&D is another sinkhole with no output... They can't even handle acquisitions. Android is slipping away, Nest is a disaster, etc. Focus is really hard once you scale.
- kamaal 11y agoSearch is still very very big, we might just be at the very beginning of it. Search doesn't mean finding something on a website. Search means finding music, places,<meaning full information> etc . And they are doing great with things like Youtube, Maps, Gmail, Hangouts etc. >>once search tanks, and the trends in mobile are pointing in that direction That won't happen any time soon, not even in the foreseeable future.. The nearest competitor to Google is Bing, and that is joke. >>They can't even handle acquisitions Which ones? Youtube, Maps, Android ... >>Android is slipping away Android is going to put Google in the position Microsoft was in the 90's and early 2000's. Android is running away with the market in countries like China and India. Google has a lot of time at their hands. Unless they start making very big mistakes over years consistently, they will do fine.
- pinaceae 11y agohttp://thenextweb.com/google/2014/08/05/google-under-threat-as-forked-android-devices-rise-to-20-of-smartphone-shipments/ http://thenextweb.com/google/2014/08/05/google-under-threat-... yup, China and India totally will save Google, AOSP is no issue at all.
- bradleyjg 11y agoBell labs under AT&T during the Ma Bell era is the precedent. Although they weren't able to fully capitalize on all their inventions, shareholders did just fine and society reaped spectacular rewards.
- kybernetyk 11y ago>a commercially viable DARPA. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the only subdivision that makes any significant money for Google the Adwords business?
- Phlarp 11y agoMostly yes, Adwords is still the elephant in the room. Android is modestly profitable and now Youtube is finally eeking out profit for them, but all of these cash flow sources are firmly rooted in showing ads to captive eyeballs.
- chambo622 11y agoI'm curious what you mean by "Android is modestly profitable." Google doesn't charge OEMs (or anyone) for Android.
- eclipxe 11y agoPlay store
- chambo622 11y agoGot it
- Phlarp 11y agoThey get a cut of app store sales, and additional third parties pay them to display ads within mobile apps using admob. Although it isn't hard to come up with other ways for them to extract more money out of android, I can't imagine a lack of willing buyers for all sorts of information they could harvest from the billion or so deployed devices.
- bryanlarsen 11y agoThey certainly do charge for Android. AOSP is free, but that only includes a small part of what is shipped on an Android Phone. If you want all the apps (Mail, Play Store, etc.) you have to pay.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoI was thinking more like an commercially nonviable PARC equivalent. Google does lots of things but hasn't actually spun any of them into viable businesses yet. That was sort of PARC's thing in the 80's let the engineers/scientists build amazing stuff, don't worry about if it was manufacturable or not.
- dragonwriter 11y ago> Also, cars are basically software at this point. That may be the interesting bit of cars for you, but hardware is still a pretty important part of cars.
- robotresearcher 11y agoDARPA does absolutely no research itself. It's a funding agency.