How the failed deal with Waymo left Ford in the lurch | Hacker News Reader

How the failed deal with Waymo left Ford in the lurch

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94 pointsFricken39 comments

Disclaimer: I work for a Ford competitor, but have no first-hand knowledge of this deal.

I'm thinking about the concept of 'frenemies' and jumping to some unsupported conclusions.

In tech you may have a turnaround of weeks or months for some products. In automotive, you may plan a new vehicle for 5 years and then in some cases produce it for up to 10 years after that, and then continue to support that vehicle for 10 more years.

Also, automotive customers do not support the idea of moving quickly and breaking things (excepting some Tesla customers).

This leads to relationships like 'frenemies' not making much sense in auto manufacturing. If you can't trust the other party to be there for years, you don't start a relationship.

Now the mostly baseless speculation: It seems that Mark Fields felt that Ford brought a lot of value to a potential Ford-Google partnership. I assume Fields though Google would understand and value that as well, and it seems that Google did not value that, leading to misunderstanding and frustration.

I don't know any serious business that embraces 'breaking things' when a bit more effort and time ensures that nothing gets broken.

It goes along with CEOs who wear T-shirts to work.

What's the word for this kind of phrase? One where the author of the sentence has some kind of skewed world view, and we get to see a glimpse of it?

I think you're looking for "realism".

Parapraxis, or Freudian slip maybe?

A yes, suits. Magical garments that grant +10 to product stability.

"move fast and break things" is not suppose to be taken literally, it's tongue in cheek. It means, "while you move fast, you can make mistakes, break things, learn from those mistakes, correct and deliver faster."

This is more understandable in software which is more disposable, but the same concept can still apply in other industries. It applies more in the research phase before development of the actual product.

Yes, I'm sure the first manufacturer of ABS systems figured that was the way to go.

Really, the only branch of industry where this kind of attitude makes sense is infotainment. Everywhere else - when there is money by paying customers on the line - it is as good as handing your customers to the competition.

There have been a lot of problems with software/firmware in the auto industry. Each instance has not been the end of the particular company in that case.

Software is hard, and firmware is harder. Every modern car has computers to handle a number of very important systems (ignition, diagnostics, ABS, traction control, throttle, speed plate, and so on). Break-fix cycles are almost unavoidable in today's world. It happens with lowly kitchen appliances, and it happens with cars, trucks, airplanes, boats...

Yes, but those were mistakes that were not part of the operational attitude of those companies, they did not see them as 'normal' but rather as 'abnormal and to very much be avoided'.

It's the normalization of failure that's the problem here.

I disagree. R&D in any industry needs to encourage risk taking. The key is to contain the risks within R&D and never allow them to leak into production.

R&D that is not willing to break things will stagnate.

> The key is to contain the risks within R&D and never allow them to leak into production.

Then you're out of touch. The whole 'move fast and break things' refers to production.

Even Facebook disowned it. Now they say "move fast with stable infra." http://mashable.com/2014/04/30/facebooks-new-mantra-move-fas...

Breaking things only makes sense when the stuff you built is small enough to not matter much (it's a tradeoff, etc)

What is revealing is that a former office furniture CEO from sleepy West Michigan is apparently much more hip on Silicon Valley technology than the whole of Ford.

This is how entire industries get disintermediated.

Could have been understanding the culture as much as the tech. Cuts both ways though. Google isn't great at selling into non-tech Fortune 500 companies.

The auto companies everywhere except Tesla are so far behind.

Lived in Detroit most of my life. When discussed, the big 3's problems get brushed away irrationally.

But it's worse than the future catching up with the auto companies. I feel like the execs don't even know how to market to their customers.

Comparing Mary Barbra's unveiling of the Bolt to Elon's Model 3 was night and day. Elon had a teleprompter but he spoke like a normal guy about things he and I am interested in.

On the other hand Mary's speech was stiff and read word for word. They used early 90's cutting edge graphics in the background at one point. They talked about the history of GM which no one cares about. It felt like it was directed at share holders not customers.

A lot of ideas about how to run a car company will change. I'm not sure the big 3 will make it.

Well, the big 3 are all currently profitable, so they have that going for them. I'm not sure how Tesla is going to make it as they continue to overpromise, underdeliver, and hemorrhage money.

I do agree with you though that Tesla is far better at marketing.

Tesla has had repeated success raising money by going to the financial markets, so, it appears that enough fools are willing to invest to sustain them until now and for a while longer.

And the Big 3 have had big success in getting large near zero interest rate loans and liens of liquidity provided by tax payers directly and the issuance/sales of t-backs on behalf of tax payers. Financially speaking, the shenanigans of Tesla and the Big 3 aren't too dissimilar…

Ford didn't get a bailout, nor did they need the cash for clunkers assistance.

This isn't true. Ford actually took out a bigger loan than GM. In fact, Ford still owes the government over $6 billion when the other automakers have repaid their debts.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2011/09/19/ford-loo...

> Elon had a teleprompter

Elon Musk says he won't read speeches from a teleprompter [1]

[1] - http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-spacex-2016-4

Reading this article my conclusion is that "autonomous self-driving vehicles don't work at present". Ford management had the belief that they do work and therefore wanted to press ahead with a go-to-market plan. Google management knows they don't work and so back-pedaled. Deal fell apart as a result.

That conclusion is almost certainly incorrect. Internal communications at Google indicate strong confidence in the approach and viability of the cars. There was constant crowing about hundreds of thousands of miles driven autonomously (with the only at fault accident being the car committing the egregious sin of expecting an overtaking public bus to yield for an indicated merge). A recurring internal criticism is that they have been ready to go to market for a while, but are proceeding with extraordinarily caution. Google probably wants a repeat of the Personal Computer market: open, agile, competative. There's a hint of this in the way they structure deals (quietly helpful, non-exclusive). "You want the technology? Sure. You want exclusivity? Nope." If Uber had asked for a technical partnership instead of straight up stealing the tech they'd probably have gotten what they stole and more with a smile and a high five.

Interesting this website is "not secure". I remember that chrome was going to start doing this, but the first time I actually saw it happen.

We had this issue on our sites for a short time; all in all, it was very effective at forcing a much higher business priority for the fix.

Hopeless on the part of Ford.

This article makes Google look really bad.

We don't have Google's full perspective. But hearing that Ford brought an army of staffers in big gas guzzling Lincoln Navigators to make a splashy presentation and do a big deal, while Waymo was largely an advanced engineering team taking a careful smaller experimental approach... well then sure Google didn't handle the fantasy corporate deal that Ford imagined well at all.

Google had the pick of the litter between all the top car companies. Ford just thought they were way farther ahead than they were, the 'leak' to the press certainly didn't help, and were too focused on making a deal to impress Wall St instead of treating it like a collaborative tech project, which clashed with Google.

Ford's business development totally failed because they didn't understand the 'customer', what Google wanted out of the deal.

From the perspective that Google was feeling out the top automotive companies, while Ford acted like they already made the biggest deal in the self-driving car industry - when they really hadn't, they don't seem too bad to me at all.

Does it? The article made it sound like Ford's main goal was to appease Wall St, whereas Google was focused on actually building the damn thing.

That's my take on the situation too.

"At the time, none of the major automakers had spelled out a serious plan for getting fully self-driving cars on the road."

Even if it had worked out, a deal with Waymo would not have been a "serious plan". This deal only amounted to throwing money at a hype factory in order to gain credibility in an imaginary market. Waymo hasn't proven it's even on track to create a workable product in the next decade. Google in particular has a proven track record of having a very short attention span. They won't make a good partner in the long run, no matter what. Carmakers like Ford would be a lot better off playing the long game on this, focusing on building out practical semi-automated safety features in the proven iterative manner they know, and growing their own expertise in self-driving engineering in-house.

Google have been doing this for longer than anyone else and have logged an order of magnitude more miles (cf. all their competitors combined). They also have by far and away the most accurate/reliable technology as evidenced by their dis/engagement stats. They are years ahead of everyone else. As a separate company they would be valued at ~$70 billion- with huge upside

I don't see how people could be tricked to buy a google car with the expectation of the controlling software being obsolete in a couple year and left unupdated as the sensor technology improves.

That alone makes google a risky partner for any serious automaker - they're better of as a partner to a leasing agency than a seller.

Ha! You have a point there.

I think Tesla actually has more miles logged, although that's explicitly not autonomous. I bet Tesla is a close second in terms of tech and the ability to bring full autonomous control to market.

Ford outsources a lot of work of this type, as does everyone else. However Ford does watch their partners (how much I don't know. My studies of Honda says Honda is concerned about their suppliers, but I never got interested enough in the subject to see how/if it generalizes)

I don't know how you can accuse Google of having a short attention span when it comes to self-driving cars. They've been working on this since 2009.

Google does launch experimental projects and does kill them off if they fail, but I don't see why you think this would be true with Waymo.

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