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Comment by ragebol | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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?

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 then they have a chance of winning

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.

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