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These cars could be so freeing for so many segments of society. I agree with everyone that reducing the commuting annoyance would be awesome - imagine not havin

These cars could be so freeing for so many segments of society. I agree with everyone that reducing the commuting annoyance would be awesome - imagine not having to worry about parking your car in the city anymore. You drive in on a highway at 90mph, get dropped off and then the car goes home or onto another task or gets shared out. Amazing. I'm even more excited about getting the elderly out of their homes safely, and getting drunk people off the road altogether. It's easy to play out the use cases and see why Uber is investing in this area and why it feels threatened by this technology advance.

higherpurpose 11y ago
I think Uber sees self-driving cars much more as an opportunity than a threat - unless they are afraid they won't be able to buy self-driving cars from anyone but Google, and Google won't sell to them. But I'm sure there will be quite a few suppliers by the time they need the cars [1]. [1] - https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-million-autonomous-electric-110000053.html https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-milli...
- jpatokal 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure Google would love to sell Uber some cars: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-into-uber-its-largest-deal-ever/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-i...
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Google Ventures and Google are separate arms of the same company. Ventures invested, but Google proper is working on their own service to compete against Uber. Note how easy it'll be for Google to flip the "Uber" provider in Google Maps to their own service.
- inthewoods 11y ago
  Short term I agree with you, but longer term I'm not sure. Short term, they lower costs massively. Longer term, a majority of people have self-driving cars. If I live in the suburbs, I either keep it all to myself, or loan it out when I'm not using it. If I live in the city, then I likely don't own a car - but instead call on a car as I need to. These probably come from both individual lending their car, and from groups/companies that are setup as a service. Either way, these cars are likely to be network agnostic - meaning they'll lend themselves out to Uber, Lyft - whoever. So while costs will go down, it could lead to a big margin compression. Meanwhile, the arms seller (Google, whoever) makes money on each car being sold. Makes sense, therefore, for Uber to continue to focus on capturing the market - their installed consumer base (and their brand) is their strongest asset going forward.
  - deegles 11y ago
    I could see people buying "priority" access to the self driving car fleet. People who don't mind waiting or don't need to move around during peak hours would just have lower costs.
  - nocarrier 11y ago
    I think people focus too much on Uber replacing consumer transportation. I think they're going to branch out into transport of goods and eat into the trucking industry in a major way, in addition to whatever they do with consumer transportation. A lot of the commoditization concerns that you'd have with transportation don't apply as much to transport.
agumonkey 11y ago
It's akin to single user vs time sharing OS back in the 60s. I wonder how more efficient would society be with fluid allocation of transport. Many of us like the idea, I also talk about it to some people, surprisingly they have no knowledge of the SDV projects (Google or other), even driving instructors. So far it adds to the trust and legal issues, public awareness seem quite slow for such a thing.
Touche 11y ago
That would be incredibly wasteful. Double the cost of gas, double the environmental damage, much worse traffic because cars are going home by themselves with no passenger, then returning to get the passenger later.
- defilade 11y ago
  Not really. In a future of self-driving cars most people won't even own their own car so most of these cars will be shared - essentially automated taxis. So after the car drops you off it will go to its next call or park somewhere until someone calls it.
  - secabeen 11y ago
    I think that will be the case for most families second car, but not their primary. People will own one family car, that's feels comfortable and contains personal items. The second car (today used largely for commuting) will be self-driving.
  - Touche 11y ago
    Maybe in big cities where the wait time is short. How is the car going to park itself? The grandparent's point was about how annoying trying to find a parking space is. Can self-driving cars parallel park yet? Can they detect a strip where parking is only allowed between 9-4 and it's 4:30? Can they detect fire lanes? EDIT: Also, are these automated taxis really going to be more affordable than owning your own car? Taxis are incredibly expensive today. Sure you save a lot of money when you don't have to pay a driver, but is it really enough to make car ownership undesirable?
    - 6d0debc071 11y ago
      > Can self-driving cars parallel park yet? Non-completely-self-driving cars can do that: https://youtu.be/xpUqj_IHYp0 https://youtu.be/xpUqj_IHYp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-rxJkVzUxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-rxJkVzUxI :) > Can they detect a strip where parking is only allowed between 9-4 and it's 4:30? Can they detect fire lanes? I don't have specific examples, but I know that it's possible to read signs easily, (as in you can write a program to do it yourself with no great techno-wizardry,) and I don't see any reason they couldn't use that data.

higherpurpose 11y ago

I think Uber sees self-driving cars much more as an opportunity than a threat - unless they are afraid they won't be able to buy self-driving cars from anyone but Google, and Google won't sell to them. But I'm sure there will be quite a few suppliers by the time they need the cars [1]. [1] - https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-million-autonomous-electric-110000053.html https://www.yahoo.com/autos/s/uber-ceo-tesla-sell-half-milli...

jpatokal 11y ago
I'm pretty sure Google would love to sell Uber some cars: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-into-uber-its-largest-deal-ever/ http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/22/google-ventures-puts-258m-i...
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Google Ventures and Google are separate arms of the same company. Ventures invested, but Google proper is working on their own service to compete against Uber. Note how easy it'll be for Google to flip the "Uber" provider in Google Maps to their own service.
inthewoods 11y ago
Short term I agree with you, but longer term I'm not sure. Short term, they lower costs massively. Longer term, a majority of people have self-driving cars. If I live in the suburbs, I either keep it all to myself, or loan it out when I'm not using it. If I live in the city, then I likely don't own a car - but instead call on a car as I need to. These probably come from both individual lending their car, and from groups/companies that are setup as a service. Either way, these cars are likely to be network agnostic - meaning they'll lend themselves out to Uber, Lyft - whoever. So while costs will go down, it could lead to a big margin compression. Meanwhile, the arms seller (Google, whoever) makes money on each car being sold. Makes sense, therefore, for Uber to continue to focus on capturing the market - their installed consumer base (and their brand) is their strongest asset going forward.
- deegles 11y ago
  I could see people buying "priority" access to the self driving car fleet. People who don't mind waiting or don't need to move around during peak hours would just have lower costs.
- nocarrier 11y ago
  I think people focus too much on Uber replacing consumer transportation. I think they're going to branch out into transport of goods and eat into the trucking industry in a major way, in addition to whatever they do with consumer transportation. A lot of the commoditization concerns that you'd have with transportation don't apply as much to transport.

agumonkey 11y ago

It's akin to single user vs time sharing OS back in the 60s. I wonder how more efficient would society be with fluid allocation of transport. Many of us like the idea, I also talk about it to some people, surprisingly they have no knowledge of the SDV projects (Google or other), even driving instructors. So far it adds to the trust and legal issues, public awareness seem quite slow for such a thing.

Touche 11y ago

That would be incredibly wasteful. Double the cost of gas, double the environmental damage, much worse traffic because cars are going home by themselves with no passenger, then returning to get the passenger later.

defilade 11y ago
Not really. In a future of self-driving cars most people won't even own their own car so most of these cars will be shared - essentially automated taxis. So after the car drops you off it will go to its next call or park somewhere until someone calls it.
- secabeen 11y ago
  I think that will be the case for most families second car, but not their primary. People will own one family car, that's feels comfortable and contains personal items. The second car (today used largely for commuting) will be self-driving.
- Touche 11y ago
  Maybe in big cities where the wait time is short. How is the car going to park itself? The grandparent's point was about how annoying trying to find a parking space is. Can self-driving cars parallel park yet? Can they detect a strip where parking is only allowed between 9-4 and it's 4:30? Can they detect fire lanes? EDIT: Also, are these automated taxis really going to be more affordable than owning your own car? Taxis are incredibly expensive today. Sure you save a lot of money when you don't have to pay a driver, but is it really enough to make car ownership undesirable?
  - 6d0debc071 11y ago
    > Can self-driving cars parallel park yet? Non-completely-self-driving cars can do that: https://youtu.be/xpUqj_IHYp0 https://youtu.be/xpUqj_IHYp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-rxJkVzUxI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-rxJkVzUxI :) > Can they detect a strip where parking is only allowed between 9-4 and it's 4:30? Can they detect fire lanes? I don't have specific examples, but I know that it's possible to read signs easily, (as in you can write a program to do it yourself with no great techno-wizardry,) and I don't see any reason they couldn't use that data.