Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car | Hacker News Reader

Google has reportedly stopped developing its own self-driving car

techcrunch.com

281 pointsdoener223 comments

Mmmmmmm maybe not, this just went public: http://waymo.com/

Thread on the HN front page right now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13168888.

The impression I get from the limited information on waymo is that their prototype is still just that.

A test bed for a platform that real car manufacturers can implement in their vehicle line-ups. I believe that's why you don't see controls in the prototype. It's unnecessary engineering R&D for what they are really focused on.

The R&D is prohibitively expensive and outside of the capabilities for many car makers.

I see Google and Apple selling to the Mazda's & Nissan's of the world. They focus on what they do well, Google works on the SDC backend.

And they get to learn more about us, where we go, who we meet, what we say.

their tagline is "we're building a safer driver" not "we're building a safer car". doesn't seem to contradict the techcrunch report.

It's fascinating to see Google and (purportedly) Apple move in a similar direction away from developing their own actual cars and instead building the software platform. It makes a lot of sense for Google, who have always struggled with selling products direct to consumers. It is more surprising for Apple, but makes sense if you look at how they can add the most value.

I'm looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Are cars going to be (even more) commoditised at the low end and differentiated by the platform on top of it (Apple, Google, Tesla) in the same way phone carriers were commoditised by the iPhone? My gut is that they won't (industrial design is a huge part of choosing a car manufacturer), so the dynamics between platform and carrier (Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, etc) are going to be fascinating to see unfold. The traditional car industry moves at such a glacial pace, yet you have two tech titans ceding a lot of control to them.

Of course, you then have the "apps" that will run on top of them, like Uber. How they interplay with it all is another dimension too. Tesla has fired the first shot here by restricting usage of non-Tesla car pooling services. It is a worrying thought to think that buying a BMW might mean I'm locked into only renting out my car through Apple-approved car riding services (and while I can't see Apple creating their own car pooling service, never say never).

Tesla seems to be the only player doing the entire stack from top to bottom. Very reminiscent of early Apple.

I wonder if a fully automated car might actually be a different product category than a "regular" car. I could actually see a decent market for (relatively ugly) self driving cars that are mostly seen as a means to get from A to B. In fact I'm not sure if the ownership model is right for this category. I could see renting/leasing these vehicles on a monthly base as a service and the competition being buying a monthly commute ticket for the train or something. I think my train ticket is in the vicinity of 180 Euro/month and all inclusive (insurance, maintenance) leases for midelevel cars are in the 300 Euro/month+gas range but prices go up a lot if you want to lease for <24 month. I could see paying 500-600/month for a self-driving car that I can also use for grocery shopping and other random stuff.

I can see that during a relatively short transition period but hope it won't remain that way. Once all cars are autonomous we can do incredible things. For example traffic lights to regulate traffic between cars will be obsolete. Cars can just adjust their speed way before the intersection so that they just miss each other at the intersection. Likewise we can avoid congestion by cars registering for their route in advance. We could raise the speed limits on freeways and other roads that only have cars on them or even remove them entirely since the cars will know better what their limits are than some blanket regulation. It also will be much safer, since self driving cars are likely to quickly become safer drivers, but we will also remove erratic behavior that humans display. For example there won't be no more people who cannot zip properly (currently the majority of US Americans), no more cars not speeding up properly on the freeway on-ramp and then slowing everyone down on the freeway, no more weird stopping and slow driving by drivers who are lost. This will make the overall traffic situation much more predictable and safer.

Your description of how things would work with no traffic lights would scare me to death. One errant car (mechanical failure, software bug or hacked) could cause multiple fatalities. Systems need to be resistant to disaster from perturbations like these.

"One errant car" already kills scores of people today. It really isn't that much different with autonomous vehicles. A stop light isn't going to prevent a distracted driver from entering an intersection. Mechanical or software problems already cause fatalities today.

That said I would still prefer to have a hands-on option with my car. Driving around an unfamiliar neighborhood looking for someplace to eat or maybe house hunting are examples of when you can't just pick a destination ahead of time. You want to drive slowly and decide where to go turn-by-turn.

Hands-on? You'll just tell your car, like a passenger would tell a hired driver.

Not to mention the fact that non-autonomous cars will continue to exist en-masse. People value the experience of driving a car (especially sports cars or classic cars, but even just the every day sedan) and I don't think that the advent of autonomous cars will eliminate that for a very, very long time.

Unfortunately you are probably right with that, especially in the US where people value individual freedom over pretty much anything else. I expect Japan and China to be first with having meat driven cars and the US and Germany to ban them last. Not banning them will come with a tremendous economic cost.

Sometimes stop lights are there so that people can walk across the street.

That's why I said "traffic lights to regulate traffic between cars"

Sorry I'm being a bit glib. What I'm poking at here is what I feel to be undue optimism about self driving vehicles. It almost appears as if people are describing the Beetle from Fahrenheit 451, with no irony intended.

What I'm getting at is that there seems to be a lack of critical thinking about the potential negatives of self driving cars. We know for example that transit by car is extremely price elastic, and it is easy to infer that a self driving car imposes a very low cost on drivers, so we should expect trips by car to increase if cars are self driving. Is this good or bad? Its hard to say. But we do know that more car trips increase demand for roads. Is this good or bad? If all self driving cars are going to and from similar locations, eg exurbs to job centers, will congestion decrease? If one no longer suffers the penalty of having to drive in congestion, will more people voluntarily sit in traffic, thereby saturating infrastructure?

I totally agree that those are all valid concerns.However, I am confident we will get those things figured out. Maybe the congestion won't be that bad because autonmous driving services might encourage ride sharing. I for one already sometimes use Lyft Ride for longer trips. Maybe we can increase incentives for that? Communities could create a fee for single passenger rides. In a way car pool lanes are similar to that and already might accomplish something like that. On the less punitive side I can see something like convoys decrease fuel consumption. My university in Paderborn, Germany was working on something like that for self driving trains over ten years ago. Of course it's much harder with cars, but we also have come a long way.

All was said is that traffic will be more predictable and safer, not that it won't have any possible negative effects.

>market for (relatively ugly) self driving cars that are mostly seen as a means to get from A to B.

You mean like a Volvo ;)

Perhaps not the prettiest car ever made, but looks OK to me: https://www.media.volvocars.com/image/low/194846/1_1/5

>> Are cars going to be (even more) commoditised

Self driving cars as a service are much better deal for the consumer. And they'll be more commoditized[1], same as taxis are, from the consumer perspective. On the other hand, building the car with the highest reliability , and the lowest cost of operation , is a hard challenge.

But: if electric cars are going to win, cars may become mostly batteries on wheels, so a lot of power will go to the battery companies, maybe even to the point they'll build the cars(like Samsung is working on).

And about Tesla: a lot of it's value is about brand. cars as a service kill branding(if everybody transports with a Tesla,it's nothing special) . Maybe that's one reason why they don't want their vehicle as a service.

[1]One thing i'm curious about : is taxi sharing realistic in a world of self-driven cars ? one guess: to make it viable, someone would have to build cars that are both shareable, but offer privacy for each of the passengers. And actually, this doesn't require self-driving to offer great value, so i wonder why aren't we seeing work on this?

Sharing isn't viable. I don't want my 20 minute taxi/CaaS ride to become 30+ minutes as we drive off my route to pick up another rider (and wait for them to come downstairs, pick their way across the slush, close their umbrella, and FINALLY get in the god damn cab)

> Sharing isn't viable. I don't want my 20 minute taxi/CaaS ride to become 30+ minutes as we drive off my route to pick up another rider

I drive for Uber part time and the majority of riders do choose the POOL option so I think you're wrong here.

Uber says Pool is at 20+% of the rides. Huh, I stand partially corrected!

I think most people would prefer no delays and a private ride. But the savings of pooling is too large for many to ignore.

So you mean, most people absolutely do prefer no delays and a private ride, since the other ~80% of Uber riders don't do the POOL option.

The market exists for both though. It's a smart move to offer this option. It's more energy economical and fiscally responsible. There's certainly even people who have the time but not the money.

Pool is not an option everywhere (even in the same city). In areas where it is available it represents a majority of my trip requests.

a shared ride has to have at least two occupants. With 4 passengers on average, 20% shared rides would mean 50% of user.

The Uber Pool service doesn't require you to actually be matched. If there doesn't happen to be another rider going in the same direction, you still get the cheaper fare and it's counted as an Uber Pool ride.

Pool also appears to be the default option now, so I on a recent trip accidentally got a pool a couple times. I didn't know the first time, and forgot the second.

Second time was also a 'pool' with no additional riders, so it was a happy accident for a cheaper ride. Perhaps people bet on that as well?

If we're imagining a pleasant future where self-driving cars have solved congestion, isn't some kind of car pooling going to be necessary?

It's fundamentally silly for millions of commuters to each travel in their own car, and robot cars aren't going to fix that. Buses make massively more efficient use of road space (when they're reasonably full, anyway).

Robot cars should reduce accidents, and parking problems will go away, but they won't magically reduce congestion on commuter routes. But car-pooling will.

Valid point, car pooling would definitely be a good thing. And I think people would be more willing if it was more efficient than it is. Uber Pool does not seem to match people very well. Scheduled rides could probably be very optimized, so its two minutes out of the way, for each person, and no one really minds. Also optimizations like, if the rider isn't there yet, don't even go for them and pass them on to the next car. Definitely plausible, but a pain in current formats.

You just described a bus.

Something like Uber for buses would be great!

Imagine an existing excellent bus network, like London's, but with completely dynamic routes, and a variety of bus sizes suitable for different times of day. Open the app and tell it where you're going, and it tells you which bus stop and bus number you need.

Uber tried this in Toronto already (called Uber Hop). I believe they had to stop as it is illegal to compete with the municipal bus system eyeroll.

https://newsroom.uber.com/canada/meet-uberhop/

Not quite. Buses have fixed static routes. I described dynamic routes optimized to minimize delays for all users, while being picked up and dropped off at the exact address they want to be at, rather than some static bus stop.

> If we're imagining a pleasant future where self-driving cars have solved congestion, isn't some kind of car pooling going to be necessary

Maybe, maybe not. Small one-person "pod" cars that link up into road trains automatically are also a possibility, and have basically the same benefit for congestion as sharing without actually sharing the same pod.

That could work, but I'd bet against it! In the medium term at least.

It would be a big R&D problem to make it work at all. Even if it worked, is a train like that really going to be as efficient as a bus? And finally, even if those obstacles are overcome, it seems like everyone has to buy the same model (or at least compatible models, and who's going to make that happen?) to get decent economies of scale.

On the other hand -- in-flight refueling is a kind of similar problem that sounds similarly unlikely, but actually works!

On the other other hand, that's a very specialized (and I'm guessing very expensive) system that isn't used by commercial airlines. I think pod-trains will go roughly the same way.

Though, with a self driving car sharing would not necessarily mean you both need to use it at the same time. The car could pick you up, drive your 20 minutes, then drive to the other person on its own and drive their 20 minutes. "Serial sharing" not "parallel"

> someone would have to build cars that are both shareable, but offer privacy for each of the passengers

The type of sharing you are writing about is not what the comment I was replying to was writing about.

I agree FWIW and I think you'll see CaaS co-operatives start up.

> I think you'll see CaaS co-operatives start up

That's assuming that autonomous cars as a product (rather than a service) enter the free market at all.

Most of people outside the 5% value cash over times. I've seen a lot of people begin to use UberPool in India who would have earlier commuted by partly open and definitely unsafe motor rickshaws. With pooling, they get an air conditioned car ride.

In Honiara, moderately well off people will own a car and then lease* it to a taxi driver so that it can make them money throughout the day. It works out really well if you need to get your kids to school, as the taxi driver will take them or pick them up without disrupting your work commute.

I think it depends where you live. In a dense city like New York existing pool services work very well indeed - the diversion to pick up is usually brief, and the savings considerable.

Whether Apple pursue the hardware route remains to be seen. They only changed their strategy, probably to develop the core self-driving technology first then worry about the design of the car later.

I don't think this is all that surprising to be honest. Google is (by and large) a software development and services company, not a car manufacturer. If they make their own autonomous vehicles, that means they then have to handle everything from safety testing to customer support and sales in addition to the self driving car technology itself.

By working with existing car manufacturers, they can focus on their part of the deal (the technology) and let someone who knows about designing, building and selling cars do the rest of the job.

Working on self-driving cars, much like working on advanced robots, requires tight integration between the software, sensors, and motors. These aspects cannot really be developed independently, especially if you want to end up with an optimized system that could be a product.

Safety is a part of this, too.

Google has ~10 years of experience in self-driving cars. They also have acquired many robotics companies. Surely, they know this.

[edit: reorder]

> Google has ~10 years of experience in self-driving cars. They also have acquired many robotics companies. Surely, they know this.

Really I think Google loses steam very easily when key people leave the team. I don't believe they have the mgmt infrastructure to keep the ball rolling when people get bored, run into hurdles, etc....

20% time and individual project ownership at Google X have helped to make Google a famous employer, but I do get the sense that the drawbacks are becoming more visible as the company grows and people move on.

Some of this is undoubtedly belt-tightening, but it's a lot easier to ax a specific project when it had a few fervent advocates who are no longer around. I'd be surprised if this wasn't a factor in the high project churn Google is known for.

But the reality of the product/market is that it will be a transitionary stage between assisted self-driving cars -> full robotic cars. There have been a number of complex highly technical products that have components developed independently and integrated at the end (fighter jets, space shuttles, etc).

It's possible Google will want to acquire one of the car companies to full do vertical integration. But that is not entirely necessary right now.

And given the whole complex regulatory and distribution constraints in the marketplace for automobiles it's good to have a partnership with a car company who has years of experience dealing with those issues.

I agree this move isn't surprising, but disagree with the assertion that Google is a software development and services company.

Google is first and foremost an Internet Search Advertising company, so far it has been the thing keeping the lights on. I expect that if it had felt it could make the transition into self driving car company it would have. But it helps to remember a little bit of history here.

Google was, for the most part, the very first company of significant size to invest in self driving cars. They did that at the behest of Sebastian Thrun who was working there. It made some big headlines and it certainly added to Google's "glow" as a place where the future was happening. And then it ran into the sludge that is Google's inability to actually make "products" that aren't a web page. And as it did people started slipping away, first Sebastian, then Chris, then a big exit to what was Otto, Etc.

While Google was sitting in that quagmire of their inability to execute on a product vision, Tesla came in, announced auto pilot, deployed autopilot, updated it to do many of the things Google could actually do, announced self drive, deployed the hardware for self drive. Basically all executing on a product strategy while Google argued internally about whether or not their "car" should have a steering wheel or not.

What I've read in the news so far it sounds like Google is spinning off what is left of that group as Waymo (that seems like it is a sort of PIP for groups at Google) and trying to sell it off to someone.

I left in 2010 and the self driving car group was about a year old (and I tried to join it but they turned me down :-() Here it is 2016 so 7 years of development. A number of actual vehicles were produced, a number of cars were modified, I'm guessing there were about 150 people in the group at its peak. Just doing back of the envelope conversations for that group I'm guessing Google invested at least $300M in the effort. And now its scrap.

I appreciate that it is a really hard problem, and I appreciate that it was pretty far off Google's expertise spectrum. I also appreciate that they take "big bets" even when they fail. But given where Tesla is, and where they are, I worry that even if one of their big bets is a "winner", Google won't be able to execute on it. Just like Xerox couldn't execute on the personal computer and GM on electric cars. Once you get to be too big to win, what do you do?

Yes, perhaps, but the counter to this is that they could "benefit from the closed system of vertical integration" that seems to be all the rage these days. I could envision a scenario where they partner with existing manufacturers for a couple years, then "courageously" break off and produce their own vehicle in order to "control the process".

That would be one hell of an ecosystem to bootstrap, even starting with a partnership with an existing company, even for Google. Building "a" car isn't that hard. Building a car that conforms with all regulations, has had all the testing done on it, can be manufactured at any useful scale, and, oh, also is something that people want to buy, is not a problem that should be underestimated.

(Yes, props to Tesla. They did it. Well... mostly, at least, but it's at least a reasonable guess they're on a success trajectory. It's still a hard problem.)

It would probably be easier for Google to manufacture their own computing hardware from scratch, and as far as I know, they don't do that. Yes, they get it customized because they are a big customer, and they've at least dabbled in phone hardware, but even that wasn't "from scratch". I've got a 2013 Nexus tablet, and it's got all sorts of things in it that aren't from Google.

As big as Google may be, they are not infinitely big, and they have the paradoxical problem of being too successful to take on every little business. Large profitable businesses can't economically afford to take on new businesses that are significantly less profitable than their current businesses, because the rational business decision then is to reallocate the resources being given to the unprofitable sub-business and give them to the profitable sub-business to make more profits. [1] The car industry is very hit-driven due to the need to sell enough cars to overcome massive fixed costs, but even at in their most profitable years I'm not sure the car companies came even close to Google's profitability. I'm not taking the time to look that claim up, because I'm sure that even if they did, they never did it year after year after year the way Google has.

[1] Obviously I'm simplifying a complex thing here. I understand that's a complicated topic, but details would be an unimportant-to-my-point waste of time for all.

Large profitable businesses can't economically afford to take on new businesses that are significantly less profitable than their current businesses

Whoa there, isn't that completely backwards? Who can afford to invest in new businesses if not large, profitable companies?

because the rational business decision then is to reallocate the resources being given to the unprofitable sub-business and give them to the profitable sub-business to make more profits. [...] Obviously I'm simplifying a complex thing here. I understand that's a complicated topic, but details would be an unimportant-to-my-point waste of time for all.

(Edit to add: I think that apparent paradox is easily resolved by thinking in terms of long-term versus short-term investment.)

I agree there are complications, but fundamentally, big profitable companies are the ones which have spare resources to invest.

One problem is company culture and skill sets, and the difficulty of ramping up in a new area, but that's why big tech companies try things like internal "startup incubators" with lots of autonomy. Amazon in particular seems really effective at expanding into new areas.

It's not clear to me that Amazon actually has one business line that is both huge and so massively profitable that it prevents them from spreading out. They are huge, but they don't make the profits that Google, Microsoft, or Apple does.

I wouldn't be surprised to see AWS get spun out as it continues to grow in the next 3-10 years, because unless the trajectory of that subbusiness changes, it threatens to become the business that is too profitable to put resources anywhere else.

But Amazon has explicitly chosen to keep its margins tight, and aggressively invest for expansion. In a sense they choose not to make huge profits. They're famous for it!

I still don't buy your general point. It's true that some large companies have run into trouble because they were afraid of damaging their core product. But that's a risk everyone's aware of now -- the whole "innovator's dilemma" thing.

What's an example of a large successful company that was thereby prevented from spreading out? I don't mean companies that failed due to complacency, or overly rigid business practices, but where their size actually worked against them.

(Hmm, possibly we really mean the same thing, we're just describing it in different ways...)

You aren't simplifying, you're misrepresenting. A company wants to invest in projects with an expected return exceeding it's cost of capital for the project. It doesn't matter if you lower your overall rate of return.

To give a concrete example, imagine I have a hotel in New York generating profits of $50 mn/year. If it required an investment of $100 mn to build hotels, making another one in Atlanta that generates profits of $10 mn per year would still be sensible if these exceed the financing costs. My return on (book) assets would fall from 50% - 30% but my profits would rise from $45-50 mn.

Tax, risk and use of management time can complicate the issue but your point isn't first-order correct...

Your example doesn't apply because my point applies to different businesses, not just "investments" in general. A hotelier buying or building another hotel is just expanding, not investing in different businesses. A hotelier that is making 10% RoI in the hotel industry would be ill-advised to take on a car rental business that makes 3% RoI, because that car rental business won't be free, and they should be investing that money where they can make 10% RoI.

Google, paradoxically, by having such a good RoI on ads has a hard time taking on other businesses. This is a big part of why they spun so much stuff off; if they stay within Google, business forces would tend to starve them despite the abundance of resources that at first glance seem to be available. It's why you see companies so often cut product lines that are profitable, but not as profitable as something else... or, to put that another way, this isn't something I'm hypothesizing about how it might happen because of the theory, it's a thing that happens all the time. I've seen at least two major passes of it at the company I work at.

Ok so if a business a) has limited management bandwidth and many promising options or b) has a particularly cyclical/risky business model that results in a high cost of borrowing then you're right.

These are somewhat linked to profitability as you say, but a safe slow-growth company generating massive profits (eg Coca-Cola) doesn't face this.

I've got a 2013 Nexus tablet, and it's got all sorts of things in it that aren't from Google.

The majority of components in a car are not manufactured by the car maker.

> Building "a" car isn't that hard.

Tesla deserves plenty of accolades just for getting to the point where they are producing multiple models of vehicle that conform to or exceed modern standards of quality .

However, Tthey have only managed to build "a" luxury sedan, "a" crossover SUV, and will soon be building "a" budget-luxury sedan. The real challenge is in attaining and sustaining the pace of development maintained by the rest of the industry. The automotive industry at large keeps a rolling cycle of refreshes and replacements on a roughly 3/6 year timetable (refreshed after 3 years, replaced after 6). Some niche models (Jeep Wrangler, Mazda Miata) stay in production far longer than that average but a 3/6 cycle is also a bit too long in ultra-competitive categories such as the compact crossover segment.

This is where I see Tesla beginning to struggle as their entirely bootstrapped operation has struggled to meet deadlines. That is cause for concern as it places their current lineup at a competitive disadvantage as their competition has gone through at least 1 refresh, if not a full replacement, since the design of their most recent model (Model X) was set in stone.

The Model S design was largely set in stone by 2009, 2010 at the latest and the Model X design was mostly locked in by 2012, 2013 at the latest. It took 3 years for both of those designs to actually reach showroom floors (2012 and 2016 respectively) so while the clock hasn't run out in terms of production life, the designs themselves are beginning to become dates. I don't just mean "design" as in styling, I mean it as the all-encompassing architecture of the vehicles.

While Tesla's offerings have several unique attributes which cannot be found in any of their closest competitors, one can only push an old design for so long before it becomes completely unappealing to consumers, even when sold at break even prices. I dare say that such a scenario may be playing out with the Model S as its sales had slumped leading up to the 2016 refresh that boosted sales, yet the bump still fell short of that model's best sales quarter which occurred back in 2015. The fact is that the Model S was designed to achieve the minimum level of refinement expected of a 2010-era, $65,000 luxury sedan with the silent, powerful electric powertrain being the plan to make up for its shortcomings in the areas of ride quality and interior fit and finish. Now that ~7 years have passed, the high end, mid-size sedan offerings from mass market brands have caught up to the Model S in many areas.

The Model S may smoke a Nissan Maxima in straight line and the Maxima can't hold a candle to the silence of the Tesla's powertrain but it also costs ~$35,000. In my opinion, it also has a better finished interior and more up-to-date styling than the Model S. We can argue all day over these points but you have to admit that manufacturers like Nissan are at least getting within striking distance in certain areas with cars costing half the price. Tesla needs to seriously step up their development game lest they be left behind with woefully dates products that simply cannot be discounted enough to remain appealing.

Google will want ad revenue from the captive audience in the self driving car. Control the self driving car ecosystem in the long term and avoid the cost of manufacturing and compliance in the short. I like the assumption that they will "come back" into the space, because it's a great play.

I have the same response to people who claim Tesla will take over ridehsaring once they have a self-driving car (as opposed to just selling to existing ones that have already built a customer base and worked out the domain specific problems).

Because clearly Uber would succeed over a manufacturer who actually makes self driving car. Aren't there already almost 8-10 ridesharing options available in Austin after Uber and Lyft vacated?

Uber and Lyft are the WebVan of this decade.

Just like GM prefers to run taxi services rather than just focus on making cars and selling them to th highest bidders (including taxi companies)?

Uber profit margin: 0.

GM/Ford Profit Margin: 9-12%

Tesla Profit Margin: 22.8%

Go where the margin is.

Which, by those very figures, would be in selling cars to ridesharing services, not competing with them.

Why would Musk and Tesla sell cars to ridesharing services when they can collect a piece of the revenue that they share with Tesla owners who participate on the Tesla Network rideshare service? Why should Tesla allow Uber or Lyft to profit off of its extensive autopilot work? They shouldn't, and they won't.

The same reason GM lets car rental agencies "profit off" its development of new features: power seats, Onstar, media center, voice nav, better steering, heated seats, etc.

Which is to say, it doesn't, if you measure it right: they charge as much as they can for a car with features x/y/z; once you impute out who is making how much profit from what, you find that GM is profiting from the Onstar, and Avis is profiting from the rental service (matching cars with temporary-use customers). To the extent that Avis can rent cars at a premium with Onstar, that profit is mostly eaten by the extra price.

At no point does GM think, "Merely sell our cars to rental agencies? There go the Onstar profits!"

In just the same way, if Tesla sold cars to Uber/Lyft, they would still be the ones profiting from the SDC premium.

As for Tesla owners participating in the rideshare network: they can probably get a lot steadier renting of the car's off-hours if they have access to an established platform rather than waiting for riders to add another app that only gets rides from the few spare Teslas in the area.

> As for Tesla owners participating in the rideshare network: they can probably get a lot steadier renting of the car's off-hours if they have access to an established platform rather than waiting for riders to add another app that only gets rides from the few spare Teslas in the area.

I could go out today and borrow ~$100K to purchase vehicles and put them on Uber, but I'm not; I'm waiting for Tesla network to leverage up.

That is Tesla's stated intent, so it isn't much of a leap to think they'll try to do that.

I suspect Google got cold feet when they started considering the liability issues once this goes mainstream. Even their millions of miles road tests were done at low speeds near their campus.

I suspect Google never planned to be a car seller, they had their own vehicle because they wanted less baggage and friction while de veloping/proving the technology. Google will occasionally make concrete products where they see it beneficial to their software-baaed service focus, but they really don't seem to want to be in that kind of business except peripherally.

They're focused on moonshots. They would have managed the liability like any other company for the prospect of transforming transportation as we know it.

A lot of Google's testing was done on US 101 and other interstates at highway speeds, insomuch as there wasn't a traffic jam at the time.

Highspeed testing is important. Also the complexity of the traffic is. Some say that the high speed of the German Autobahn is what made German premium cars so technically advanced. As soon as you get faster than 130-150 km/h most cars will let you know they weren't built for this. BMW, Daimler or Audi make 230 km/h ++ feel safe and sound (which I often think they shouldn't). A Tesla for example can't perform autonomous driving here as easily because the variances in speed require sensors that detect cars in further distance, quicker and in more detail.

A quite ride at speed only really means it's a luxury car. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Ford, et. al have had plenty of experience making cars that can go fast, and they also make luxury cars.

In any passenger car, getting in a wreck at 100 km/h or above is more than likely a fatal event. "5 Star" safety ratings and the EU equivalent are only for 30~55 km/h crashes. Granted, even highway crashes involve some braking before impact, but the faster you go the more difficult it is to slow down enough to a 'safe' speed before impact.

Besides, the sensors on cars are more than capable of driving at 150 KM/H. While they cannot "see" as far as a human, they require much less time to process what they do see.

> Besides, the sensors on cars are more than capable of driving at 150 KM/H. While they cannot "see" as far as a human, they require much less time to process what they do see.

And then you get something like the adaptive cruise control on my BMW.

The bloody thing controls like a human just learning to drive - only focusing on what's right in front of it, instead of the general road situation, and making correspondingly jerky and drastic (albeit safe) maneuvers.

I often have to look ahead for it, and turn it off when I see a situation brewing that will entice it to drive like a moron. Then I handle that situation (typically by doing essentially nothing, e.g. just coasting for a few seconds), and turn it back on.

From what I understand their vehicle was limited to 25mph, how did they do the highway speed testing?

That's the Koala-type. The first iteration were modified Lexus', and self-driving in highways is much easier than in cities, so it's attacked first.

Google uses Lexus cars for highway-speed testing.

Just like the did with smartphones. Maybe that's why most Android phones aren't that good.

> Maybe that's why most Android phones aren't that good.

I'm assuming you're talking about the phones themselves and not Android as an OS, but your statement is pretty sketchy. I'm no expert, but most Android phones that I'm aware of in the same price range as the iPhone are up-to-par or have superior hardware. Many carriers sell cheap Android phones as well, that are "not as good" because iPhones are expensive. So yeah, 90% of Android phones may be "not as good" as an iPhone, but Apple isn't selling new devices to the under-$500 market, and of course the cheaper phones aren't as good.

Galaxy series phones are fantastic.

at exploding

The Galanxy Note 7 was the one with the problem, the flagship phablet, not the flagship phone.

Fascinating. Neither of my Edge 7s have blown up yet. Should I request a refund?

The problem is few car companies want to partner with Google because Google asks to collect too much data from all of their customers - not that I blame the car makers.

Do you work in the car industry? This seems like a very inside thing to both know and casually drop on Hacker News.

car companies don't particularly seem to mind data collection if you look at newer "connected" features.

"Google’s self-driving car team preparing to spin out from Alphabet’s X"

[http://www.recode.net/2016/12/7/13875208/google-x-self-drivi...]

on HN yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155600

I'm wondering what this pivot will do the morale in the Chauffeur team. There has been so much turbulence in the team with several key members leaving to form their own company because they were so frustrated with the pace. I can't imagine partnering with a traditional automaker will increase the pace.

I think this is the Android playbook. Partner with phone/car manufacturers and let them do what they do. You got to worry about customizations/fragmentation but I am not sure if that is going to be an issue for a 'behind the scenes' technology. You got to somehow tie this into Android Auto (license this?) for an integrated environment and integrations with phones or onboard maps (to get the search dollars).

No, this is Ruth Porat saying, "silly engineers, we need businesses that MAKE money, lets get smart."

...Alphabet's stock price is going to go higher, but the trade-off here is talent walking away. Given the HN post the other day about the CFO, I'm sure there's much more to come - google's not going to be a company where the dreamers go for much longer. Lets see how it goes...

And they will always suffer from fragmentation issues while Apple suffers from a super-high profit margin.

So we're going to have cars identical to our phones and seemingly all of the same problems that come along with that system.

I am hopeful that since a car can cause damage, and loss of life it will put under a stricter code. So they do have to meet a higher bar of safety and standards that are just not required on a phone. Fragmentation is going to be more of the car manufacturer branding... the underlying core engine will likely be the same.

I am curious if there ever will be a consumer grade Google Pixel Car. There is a risk it will compete with their partners, but it could have a niche if it is intentionally undersold (for example, one or two colors at most).

> I can't imagine partnering with a traditional automaker will increase the pace.

Right? I was thinking exactly the same. One would think that having a car built in-house enabled them to iterate that much quicker. Then again, Google is full of smart people, so there surely is a reason behind this decision.

  One would think that having a car built in-house
  enabled them to iterate that much quicker.

There tends to be a pretty clear separation between the self-driving sensors and brains ('the new stuff') and the car platform ('the old stuff').

As long as you're willing to have some sensors and actuators visible (i.e. you're working on a prototype rather than a consumer-ready product) there's not much technical value added from building a custom car vs modifying an existing one. Indeed, it can easily slow you down as now you have a bunch of work to do developing a new car.

The car that won the DARPA grand challenge was fairly close how it came off the production line - except for an off-the-shelf electrical actuator system developed for disabled drivers, an off-the-shelf secondary alternator to power all the sensors and computers, and a bunch of sensors bolted to the roof rack.

The reasons to build your own are business/PR rather than technical/development speed. For example they can make it look cute and unaggressive which might be good PR; or insist on a public transport style vandal proof design for an on-demand business model. These might be good reasons, but they're business reasons not technical reasons.

Everybody is rushing to develop their own self-driving car, then they change their minds in various ways, then team members change who they work for, some of them quit and start their own company, some fail, some got acquihired. They give deadlines and cannot meet them. Everyone is dying to be first in the market or something like it. Feels there is so much greed. I don't get it, what's the big fuss, why must everyone hurry? Can't they be just calm and progress in a sensible manner. I don't expect this thing to turn out to be winner takes it all. Automative industry is much like a close knit society where they depend on similar resources. It's not exactly the same as posh start up culture.

Simple: everyone is looking for the next big platform. The smartphone revolution came by surprise to most and it has taken years for companies to catch up. Everyone is racing because they don't want to be caught with their pants down again.

The size and value of cars as a platform can't be emphasised enough.

It goes way beyond hardware. Whoever controls the car as a platform in theory controls the services layer that would be built on top of it (ride sharing, delivery etc.) and also the captive attention of the cars' occupants outside their phone. Then there is the data that comes from a device that takes you wherever you want to go, with tons of internal and external sensors to get data on occupants (unique identification will be trivial for audio ads, etc) and their external environment.

My guess is Google sees the rather low margins of cars and would much rather focus on what is likely substantially higher margins (and far less capital outlay) on the software side which is much more closely aligned their core strength.

And thus we continue to build the panopticon around ourselves. It's a 20th century dictator's wet dream, but self-imposed.

Exactly that. If one company (especially one with high production capacity) would now release a fully functional self driving car, they could dominate the car market for the next decade. Orders for trucks, delivery vehicles, uber etc would alone max out production for several years. If done by a major player (e.g. Toyota, GM, VW), they could probably get legislation in some states changed quickly if they can proof that their system is safe.

Catching up isn't easy, you won't be able to just reverse engineer it.

What you're suggesting is that the first self-driving car manufacturer (as long as its cars are rolling off the lines of one of the major players) will dominate (parts of) the fleet sales market. That's not insignificant, but it's not the car market. I think you're underestimating how resilient the existing driving paradigm will be among consumers (i.e. the people buying personal cars and driving fleet vehicles).

> Catching up isn't easy, you won't be able to just reverse engineer it.

No, but the California-based employees with an understanding of that system will be able to get a nice payday when they start working for a competitor.

So if Google has this tech, isn't this move basically saying "Hey boys, I've got this sexy stuff. Who's going to be the highest bidder?".

Is there still a no politics policy on HN?

-- POLITICS BELOW-- Also it'd be interesting to see in the Age of Trump if Google would be red-taped if tries to sell the tech overseas, Trump would probably solicit bribes from the Detroit people to put up such a law.

No, all of the major auto manufacturers have pared down their spare capacity (and dealership networks) to save costs. So even if Toyota, GM, or VW invented an affordable fully functional self driving car tomorrow they wouldn't be able to dominate the market. It would take years to build up additional factory capacity, giving competitors a chance to catch up.

The first person to succeed will usher in a new transportation revolution and become insanely rich.

But I think a certain amount of hubris is what's causing all these companies to take a swing and then back out once they realize what they're up against. It's not an easy nut to crack. The software in itself is incredibly complicated, not to mention the politics involved, and all the special interests you have to win over before you can even pass go. But then the fact that you need to attach it to a car means you also have to compete in one of the largest and most competitive industries that ever existed.

Big risk/reward situation. Althoug the reward is possibly gigantic. It's not even clear that it's possible as described yet, imho. i.e. Fully autonomous vehicles. It's somewhat likely to be a winner takes all situation in terms of market share, patent ownership. I'm exaggerating slightly but I can't see there being more than a couple of big winners in this space.

Google has been working on this for over a decade, I think it's fair to say that they are taking it slow.

Is that surprising? I never assumed that Google was planning to build actual cars with this tech. I suppose I never really thought that deeply about how it would roll out, but if I had, I would have guessed partnerships with others in the industry.

If they can nail "self-driving tech" as well as they've nailed search, they'll potentially earn licensing fees from all vehicles, rather than from the slice of vehicles they'd manufacture themselves (with a long, expensive learning curve ahead of producing quality vehicles).

At first glance, Google becoming a car industry supplier like Delphi or Bosch seems just as weird. I kind of was expecting them to eventually go for the robocab business, with the steely bits manufactured by some Chinese OEM or underutilized plants in Detroit, Wolfsburg or wherever. It could be nicely phased in in limited access, limited range, low speed settings like e.g. island resorts.

But repeating the Android model, generously handing over software to whoever wants it so that they get a huge market share seems so much more consistent. This is Google, after all. If people can "ok Google" their car to actually take them to search results, Google's stranglehold on local business discovery will be even stronger than it is today. And on the reverse side, when it came to the point where people would "Hi Audi, take me to...", they could get quickly pushed of large parts of the search/decision market that originally emerged from web search and that they then so carefully extended to Maps, Android and voice assist. If cars become "Siri-smart", drivers won't use Google maps anymore. Seen like this, Google's self-driving endeavors suddenly appear like a forced defensive move, very much unlike the quirky billionaire's moonshot hobby vibe surrounding other parts of X.

> I kind of was expecting them to eventually go for the robocab business

Google's already using Maps to commoditize ride services (which will transfer to robocabs once they are on offer), so I can see them having the front and back end of that business while all the boring bits in the middle are commodities provided by others.

With Google's shift to provide answers, not just information, Maps seems like a crutch.

If I'm in a fully autonomous car, I don't want to look at a map. I want to tell my assistant where I want to go and not worry about the rest.

This would be akin to providing the answer (getting you from A to B) without the information (poking at a map).

Exactly. Search, Maps and now Android (with and without voice assistant) are basically methods to sell influence on our decisionmaking. When cars become the day to day search interface for drivers/riders, Google will be in a much weaker position for that.

Except if they somehow achieve a relationship with hardware companies as symbiotic as in Android smartphones. Just being a backend search provider would be a step back for Google, because that is pretty much a commodity transaction where gatekeepers can negotiate for a sizable slice of the pie (see Firefox).

There are a ton of ambiguous place-names.

This. The point is to sell a few hundred million licenses for the software, as software companies like to do.

Car companies likely don't want to further increase already large R&D budgets to build their own self-driving tech, so the "synergies" of doing this are excellent.

I think the insane part of Google's original plan was the "no steering wheel" part, not the fact that they wanted to manufacture the cars themselves. There are so many corner cases. I can't imagine that they would get the tech working 100% out of the gate without needing some sort of manual override.

For a little 25MPH mini-car, full automation was and is quite practical. Google could have manufactured those things and put them on campuses, senior communities, and such. About five companies are already making slow-speed autonomous shuttle vehicles, most of which have no manual controls.

Surely you can have some level of manual override without a steering wheel.

>I never assumed that Google was planning to build actual cars with this tech

They did seem to hint that they were going to. They did invest in their own, in-house built prototypes. If you start here: https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/faq/#q4 , you'll see the types of partners they were talking about working with. These aren't automakers.

But they are working with other car makers.

Regardless, Google kick-started a lot of other car makers to start developing self-driving cars or made it OK for other car makers to be more public about their efforts.

Similarly to Tesla in pushing EV's in other car makers.

> Regardless, Google kick-started a lot of other car makers to start developing self-driving cars or made it OK for other car makers to be more public about their efforts.

Exactly! This part of Google's legacy is severely under appreciated. People were rolling their eyes when Google originally presented their plan. Amazing how quickly it went from science fiction to reality.

I'd say it was the Darpa Grand Challenge that kickstarted it, not Google.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

I have the feeling Google never had a real plan behind this research project. Tesla's plan is clear. Uber's plan is clear. What is / was Google's plan?

Why can't it be the similar to the Uber or Tesla plan? Just because Alphabet make the bulk of their revenue from sticking ads in front of eyeballs doesn't mean that's how they have to continue making money.

You're absolutely right, but my point is that didn't plan with such a business model in mind but just went with it.

> What is / was Google's plan?

Track where everyone goes, all the time? (Except they already do this with Android GPS) Show them ads?

I agree, it seems not fully fleshed out.

Prevent people from being required to watch the traffic, thus giving them more time to use their phone/tablet, thus show them more ads.

But actually I believe the thing that started the project was more like "let's try to do it" just the same way they started their search engine ... for the first years they didn't have a business plan there either.

I learned about that "science fiction" in 1996 when I was an intern at back then called DASA (Daimler Aerospace), before the merger with Chrysler.

They worked on that science fiction already back then. They developed the basics for the radar back then. Without those developments and vision we had no commodity radar sensor available today.

I'm actually stunned. Google's initial announcement was 2012, around the same time as the Oculus Kickstarter. Tesla have stated they expect to enable full automation within a year.

So potentially we've gone from 0 to retail fully-automated vehicles in the same time it's taken to get VR headsets into mainstream usage. If you'd asked me to predict the timescales for these two developments I would have added a decade on to the former.

Which tells me there's something fundamentally wrong with the automotive (for these specific examples, but there are others) industry.

Edit: typo.

Eh, other companies were heading towards the same goal in smaller increments (and more slowly). First it was cruise control, then emergency auto-braking, then assisted cruise control, then lane assist, then lane change assist, then object identification with cameras, etc... It's just that they didn't publicise their goal of 'the car will do all the driving'. It was the same logical endpoint though.

This is true but I think the development in the tech industry kind of kicked it into high gear. Of course I still don't see manufacturers effectively beta testing tech with real drivers like Tesla. Car companies don't like huge risk they like churning out features slowly and predictably.

The profit incentive isn't there. Cars as a Service will drastically reduce overall car sales so why would you expect a car company be at the vanguard of a movement that will gut their industry?

Because the major car makers are in competition and being the dominant player in the new movement might be better than their existing position, let along standing by while another player leads the movement.

Because then they have a chance of winning

I just want to mention that I think Google's partnership with Fiat-Chrysler is badly picked. The engineering of FCA is unimpressive and their process pretty much kills innovation within their company. I may be wrong but I see FCA surfing the google hype train.

Perhaps that's on purpose. If they partnered with an automaker known for great engineering, they might butt heads with their counterparts.

How does this news fit with this piece? "Waymo: Google’s Self-Driving Car Company Is Finally Here"

https://www.wired.com/2016/12/google-self-driving-car-waymo/...

Sounds to me like two fundamentally different ways?

I've been thinking of spending some time on an idea for a personal transport vehicle. I can imagine the safety and testing regulations being onerous and everything else that goes with making and selling any form of automobiles not for the faint of heart.

Seeing as how giant cos like Apple and Google are exiting the "making" space of vehicles, is it crazy to even toy with an idea of building a vehicle that moves people?

Even Elon Musk admitted it was crazy to take on cars. I suppose it's one of those industries that looks simple from the outside because we're so familiar with the user side, but the manufacturing of which is surprisingly complex.

As someone who's worked for one of the big 3, the supply chain and logistics is mind-boggling. Not to mention what it takes to create factories that can put out vehicles at the rate of the big guys. I don't think Google or any other software company could compete without completely retooling their entire company. It's not something you can do as a side project.

To add to this: when GM tried to copy the Toyota model it took them 20 years and they still went bankrupt.... And now Tesla is using the factory that was created for that original purpose.

Presumably you'd want to take your idea to a company that values it, and has experience in the safety and testing part. Tesla is not that big, and other smaller car makers have entered the field.

It's ludicrous to assume Google doesn't have the power to enter the car market if it wants to, it's influence over government is legendary. It could buy off the regulatory issues, at this point.

If Google isn't entering the car market, it's because Google doesn't want to enter the car market. Likely because it's not a high margin industry.

Why do you think Google want this information to be out? A - Because they are lagging behind and don't want to look like they played and lost. B - To seek partnerships through Techcrunch. C - They don't want a non-working B2C product, but sell a B2B one instead, because they doubt their capacity of making it happen alone.

So Google's ad revenue business subsidized the education of thousands of people who took their newly acquired knowledge of autonomous vehicles to the big car companies.

Aside from the Ad business Google is more like Stanford than any actual business.

The people who left from Google's self-driving car division walked in the door as the world's leading experts on the subject. I'm not sure you can say that they learned everything from Google.

Consider it funding general research then. Same result.

Duplicate. Earlier submission here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13165111

Also, the title is incorrect.

Thanks, we've updated the title to what the article says.

This has to be considered a failure on some grounds at least. Why haven't they made an acquisition to bolster their shortcomings? They bought boston dynamics which failed. I am guessing they just did not see the ROI in getting into car manufacturing. Instead they see themselves as an "Android for self driving cars" company there by building their systems/software for cars, drones, etc.

http://waymo.com/ - sure doesn't look shelved.

This decision will be beneficial for the relationship between Google and the car manufacturers. Google will no longer be a competitor.

Whether or not there will be a first mover advantage remains to be seen. It certainly feels as if Tesla has such an advantage for the electric car market with the huge amount of pre-orders placed for the Model ≡.

I was starting to get the feeling, looking at Google's lidar-on-the-roof design, that they were getting a bit obsolete before even making it to market, having suffered from the curse of being first and having to build on older tech.

Does anyone seriously believe that seld-driving cars are only a few years away?

So far I have only seen them working in nicely controlled environments (American suburbs or highways, nice weather, clear road markings, etc). And even then they drive slowly and awkwardly.

How will they handle the narrow roads in British towns, the unwritten right-of-way rules on Swiss mountain roads, the scooter avalanches of Vietnamese cities, the pot hole riddled streets of Russian cities, etc?

I think this is just an other case of Silicon Valley folks not realizing what's outside of their bubble.

Silicon Valley has plenty of fog, narrow and winding mountain roads, darkness, bad road markings, etc.

Trust me they are nothing compared to the poor road conditions, lunatic drivers or dangerous weather you'll find in the rest of the world or even the USA.

They realised they would actually have to provide customer support and that they couldn't quietly ditch a car after 18 months.

Death by pivot

> The Information reports that Google’s self-driving car unit — known internally as Chauffeur — is working with establish automotive names to develop cars which will include some self-driving features, but won’t ditch the steering wheel and pedal controls.

Self-Driving cards to self-driving technology was the exact same news which was reported out of Apple "Project Titan" too. It seems to be a trend in this self-driving car space.

Manufacturing and legislation is difficult enough, but how did Apple/Google plan distribution? Servicing? It is not comparable to consumer tech, very few would buy a car where it is unsure if this is only a hobby and if it it will be supported 5 years down the road. The incumbent car companies have a massive advantage.

Google has a huge disadvantages in support. You can't automate car service and simply ignore customers in that business. It would be a massive overtaking for Google to try to provide customer service.

> working with establish automotive names

Is that a typo in the article or some esoteric grammar for avoiding the past participle of 'establish'?

The update to this article is more or less here: https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/13/googles-self-driving-car-u...

So many leeway for Tesla. Uber's only hope for beating Tesla's car sharing feature was working with Google. Uber is not even profitable yet, they can't invest in this category yet. Tesla going to steal the show, already Apple-like cult forming around it.

Uber's only hope for beating Tesla's car sharing feature was working with Google.

How do you figure? Uber is currently working with Volvo on autonomous cars, and when it comes to producing safe, reliable cars that people want, in volume, I'd personally bet on Volvo over Google.

Uber bought Otto, an autonomous vehicle startup that was created by many of the Google X car folks. I think Uber is doing fine.

It seems a bit strange to go the software only route when Tesla and Uber already have working hardware & software.

Apple and Google missed the chance to spend their piles of cash and buy either Tesla or Uber. Now it is too late. All four are going to be battling head-to-head.

I hope this means that the didn't feel they had the legal expertise to get through the regulatory controls. Hopefully this is not related to legal issues around responsibility for accidents, insurance, etc.

Wow. But they probably try to achieve the same strategy as with Android. It could work out very well. Sadly it seems in contrary to Android it won't be open source.

Makes sense.

I don't think Google ever (OK, in the past couple of years) really intended for self-driving cars to happen, or expected self-driving cars to happen (within a few decades).

What it was (and what Project X seems to be these days), was a great way to attract talent.

"Wanna work in a company which makes self driving cars, internet balloons, 20% time, and robots" sounds way cooler than "Wanna work in Doubleclick v.2"

>I don't think Google ever (OK, in the past couple of years) really intended for self-driving cars to happen, or expected self-driving cars to happen (within a few decades).

Self-driving cars will roll-out to select markets within the next couple of years.

Google just doesn't want to manufacture the vehicles.

You know what would be cool ? Deepmind working with Tesla , with their best engineers on this team.

All these side projects are just to keep certain developers busy until Goog figures out what to do with them. There was never any intention of making a viable car. Just R&D to figure out what can be done that would then be applied to Goog's ad business.

Slightly off-topic, but:

> While Google may be taking its pedal off the gas for self-driving vehicles

Is it considered OK to include obvious puns like that in a seemingly serious publication?

It would have been preferable with a better pun, but adding a touch of levity to otherwise dry topics in serious publications is always welcome.

Yes. Even The Gray Lady includes jokes and puns in their headlines all the time.

The Economist stuffs everything full of puns.

The headline is a bit misleading, it looks like Google is not going to manufacture self driving cars, but will develop self-driving technology. I'm not sure how this is a surprise.

Well, given how deep its pockets are and its past propensity to try on big projects, I'd say it was surprising.

What's more surprising is that both Apple and Google seem to have ended up in this same place.

If Google develop the car, they need to do all the end user support. This is not in the DNA of Google. If they provide the technology to a car manufacturer, they can extract a fair amount of money from them and they do not have to deal with direct end user support.

When my car has a problem, I want to talk directly with someone to get it fixed.

> This is not in the DNA of Google.

Google has ventured in that area though, just take a look at Pixel, their smartphone.

But the scale difference between developing a smartphone and a car is quite a big step. I am not that surprised though, getting into the car market is difficult and unsure. Just doing the technology part seems to make more sense imo.

Yes: and just take a look at how many people are unhappy with the support they get on their Pixel[1]. The number of people who would be able to tolerate Google's level of hands-off with a car, where the expectation is typically "for the first couple years if anything is even slightly weird you can drive it to your local dealer and someone's job is to try to make you super happy", is going to be much much much lower than the number of people who are currently tolerating it with consumer electronics.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13145400

That's the difference between want and need.

When my Pixel won't start, I am a little less contactable for a while.

When my car won't start, I'm not getting to work.

Both are a significant investment that may contribute to income.

This may be a level of service you expect, but isn't something traditionally handled by the manufacturers.

It's handled by the ecosystem the manufacturers created though, and the manufacturers play a very prominent role in maintaining that ecosystem.

This, however, is something Google could trigger themselves as well. ...probably by cooperating with current producers.

Yes, but as OP pointed out, it's not in googles DNA to do such a thing.

I'd say the big difference here is running costs. I've worked with automotive clients (Ford, GM, Renault etc) for a while, and that's a big factor for them, especially in the lease market. Also given that a car is not a 'throw it away and hand the customer a reconditioned unit' item, repairs become far more expensive and time critical.

The sheer drag of maintaining a network of repairers, keeping them stocked with (Sometimes huge) spare parts, managing repair times etc is astonishing. I can see why Google and Apple would want to lean on established players instead of going it alone.

I would be excited to see acquisitions or serious partnerships from both Google and Apple. By partnerships, I expect something like what Google did with its Nexus devices. For example, a google car, manufactured by and advertised with Volvo, but with its own brand, logo, etc.

It would be different if they already had an attractive car on the road, but they haven't. Just look at how much time and money it takes for Tesla to create a profitable vehicle for the masses. The R&D costs for autonomous driving are small in comparison.

If comma.ai can (sort of) create an autonomous vehicle with just a couple of employees and Tesla can go fully autonomous with a sensor suite that's 5% of the cost of Google's, how much money is there to be made for Apple and Google? Even if the quality of their self-driving setup is 10x better, they will have a hard time selling it.

The technology Google uses is about to become way cheaper. I may be wrong, but from what I've read about the development of LIDAR systems, I estimate the prices will drop in the next few years. I think we're at a similar point where we were a couple of years ago with accelerometers and gyros, before MEMS became commonplace.

Even if I am wrong and the tech breakthrough will not happen, I think the economies of scale that kick in for the large-spread usage of Google's approach would make it competitive enough.

I, personally, believe that Tesla's approach for full autonomy is insufficient.

Tesla approach led to real world usage. I tend to think Google started with the wrong approach.

There are other companies out there having functionality on par with Tesla, on cars, on the road. Google's capabilities are superior in almost every way. Not yet commercial, but if it gets there(very likely), it'll be a bet that pays off. They have a ton of training data and experience in the field.

All the more, I think Tesla's functionality will not lead to Level 4 autonomy within the next decade because fo a false-start approach.

A company like Google has the scale and experience to create a regulatory landscape in which a car even 10% less safe will be forbidden on public roads. They might even look good doing it.

As geohot discovered, cars are sold to consumers only after they are sold to regulators. Tesla understands this, but if someone else builds a safer car, incumbents' experience may be rendered academic.

The problem with this scenario is that modern cars are already safe enough that it will literally take decades to gather enough data to prove a statistically significant 10% safety increase from autonomous cars, even if you sell millions of them.

Keep in mind the NHTSA safety statistics you frequently see quoted are for the entire car population on the road, with a significant portion of 10-15 year old cars which are less safe than new cars. Even 25 year old cars without crumple zones and airbags is something you see on the road every single day.

>> crumple zones and airbags ..

Those have to do with fatality rates, not accident rates(1 accident per 250,000 miles).

>> statistically significant 10% safety increase For a sample size of a million cars , each year is 15 Billion miles, i.e. 60,000 accidents per year, vs 54000 accidents per year is statistcally significant.

Fatality rates are what's recently been discussed, e.g. related to the Tesla AutoPilot crash.

If you switch to measuring "accidents", two big concerns pop up: 1) who defines what an accident is? and 2) if we get autonomous cars that end up in less minor accidents but same or more number of fatalities, is it really worth it?

We could extend it to "fatalities and accidents where someone is left permanently disabled", which is pretty unambiguous and does measure the most important factors. But I'm afraid (or rather, glad) that this won't give you an orders-of-magnitude increase in statistical samples as you get when counting all accidents.

I'd imagine it would be incredibly difficult to get that kind of regulation without all the other existing manufacturers having the same incentives to support it.

Also, how do you manage supply chain costs?

I think it's smart business. This is very akin to Valve partnering with HTC for VR headset manufacturing. Let someone who knows hardware do hardware and you can focus on R&D and ideation.

Not that to me. They might just realize a Google branded car is not going to sell well as a BWM.

Well, maybe because they built prototype cars and used them in their PR?

Google's koala cars were never intended to be the beginning of an automobile manufacturing venture, they're just an example of the form factoer for vehicles Google would like to see built by existing manufacturers, running Google's Autonomous OS and sensor suite, on a Google branded transportation network.

Google has been pursuing partnerships with car makers for years, so I'm not sure what part of this report from The Information even counts as news.

Google will presumably announce formally their strategy for spinning Chauffeur off into an independent, revenue generating Alphabet subsidiary in just a few hours, sometime later this morning.

Sounds like you are deeply familiar with this industry so you would be one of the people not surprised by this :-)

More than that, the Lexus they used kinda vanished from my eyes, all I saw was Google and a car, and Google became a car maker in my mind.

This was known and expected.

See, "Everything other than the highway is really hard, and Tesla already beat us all to market there."

The only way this could have worked was to push cyclists and meat-drivers off the road and hand the bulk of the decision making to something centralized. I'm so thankful this vision appears to be dying.

Dying? The article says Google will be concentrating on selling their tech to existing car makers rather than producing their own car. Nothing more. Which makes perfect sense. Personally I never thought Google building the entire car was their planned end game.

The article is marketing speak.

It's dead. That's how they talk when they kill a product but don't want to say that.

Which doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I suspect a self driving car, on city streets, without general AI, is impossible.

It'll only work on prepared, limited access roads (like highways).

Next step: Instrument highways for self driving cars.

In-City self-driving cars is dead.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

I also think he does. Currently all new cars come with some kind of automated assistants, some even semi-autonomous. Unfortunately they are much less reliable than humans. They are still struggling with "easy" problems like keeping in lanes and occasionally I have to "fight" with the lane-assistant because it tries to push me out of the lane I'm driving, particularly in turns, bad roads or in bad weather conditions. I'm not counting the number of times when it just shuts off because it can't "see" the lanes or the lanes are "too complex" for it.

Or take the traffic-sign recognition systems. Seems easy, right? Not so fast. All the systems I tried made a lot of severe mistakes. For example sometimes they were thinking speed limit signs painted on the back of trucks or buses were real ones. Or they struggled when they saw too many signs or signs partially covered by something else.

Recently I watched a test of a semi-autonomous Mercedes S500 in a typical big-city traffic. During a 10 minute test-drive it managed to "unconciously" change the lane and drive 2 lanes for some time. And also it would have passed a crossing on a red light, if the operator didn't intervene. Nice try, but the car industry is still very far from making fully autonomous driving a reality.

I think he does.

We must let go delusional thinking that with current AI we can safely throw autonomous car in a dense urban area.

Using autonomous car to improve mobility in rural area (eg. for elders people) would prove much more applicable as a paid service and complemental to public transportation.

But if mainstream geeks and investors keep dreaming about K2000 they will be deceived by current AI.

> We must let go delusional thinking that with current AI we can safely throw autonomous car in a dense urban area.

Given the capability which Tesla currently demonstrates, it seems extreme to call the idea of full autonomy with current AI technologies delusional. With their current progress, full autonomy in production seems reasonable within a few years.

https://vimeo.com/192179727

I only see some nice data-visualizations added in post-production and spice-up with a feelgood song after a successful ride.

As for capability and reasonable aspect, I will be much more interested in reading post-mortem reports of the fatal crash under a truck by road safety organizations when (and if) they come out...

And as it turned out Uber AI now cross red light: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CdJ4oae8f4

Distinguishing verifiable facts from marketing is actually important...

Google's been safely driving cars around in a dense urban environment for a while now.

If you check, you see that they have only been driving in limited parts of the journey (the easiest parts obviously).

It's not an end to end trip.

The cars are also unable to handle unexpected changes in traffic lights, or road signage.

They are very very far from being able to drive entirely independently.

Cars are a capital intensive, low margin business. Self driving isn't going to change either of those much.

Compare revenue and net income:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/F/key-statistics https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GOOG/key-statistics

Alphabet makes $19.07 billion of net income on $85.54 billion of revenues.

Ford makes $7.25 billion of net income on $153.4 billion of revenues.

Self-driving will happen. Bicyclists will probably profit because the people on the phones will no longer crash into them, since their cars are doing the driving. Meat drivers would be insured out of the "market".

Someone (I think Jeremy Clarkson) has compared cars to horses. Horses used to be just utility animals, mistreated, etc. With the advent of cars they became sport and leisure animals, well-treated and owned only by rich people. Manual driving cars will probably still exist, but for sport and leisure, and just like horses, confined to racetracks.

My guess is existing auto (and other) manufacturers have all but locked up world's supply chain of raw materials necessary to make it feasible to manufacture automobiles at large enough scale.

If I were Google (if they seriously want to consider getting into manufacturing their own products) I would look into starting a chain of junk yards and refineries.

It's just a very capital-intensive business with long turnaround times on new hardware designs. It would take not only a lot of investment, but also a large delay on Google's part to get their own car out the door.

It's also requires a lot of know-how, that takes long time to build up.

Building electrical cars removes some of the difference because the traditional drive train is a large chunk of engineering. (Hint, China can't design good engines yet, so they are buying companies with people that do.)

If I remember correctly ABB patched together a electric drive train technology demo car 20+ years ago including a drive by wire system with electric steering and brakes. They probably mostly did it to show off their high voltage pmm controllers.

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