Lyft is building a self-driving platform with auto supplier Magna | Hacker News Reader

Lyft is building a self-driving platform with auto supplier Magna

techcrunch.com

33 pointscoloneltcb12 comments

This seems to me like it would be an extremely short-term play, wouldn't it be? Company X gets an early source on self-driving cars and begins taking over Ubers market. Then consumers start getting self-driving cars. And someone else develops an app to let those people rent their cars when not being used and destroys Company Xs market. In the extreme, a company pops up and offers people free or drastically reduced cost self-driving cars so long as they dedicate a certain number of hours a week to the self-driving rental network. At the end of the day, the whole rideshare thing is an information service. A few servers running an API that client apps can communicate with. And the servers are optional. Building a purely p2p version of it would be slightly more challenging, but one would think market forces might pressure towards that. And at that point, only the people actually offering value, the ones providing vehicles, will be the ones making money from ridesharing.

I suspect there's a lobbying plan from Uber and others to make sure end consumers can't actually buy self driving cars.

In a similar vein to auto franchises restricting Tesla sales in certain states.

People stop owning cars once SDC is dominant is the theory

I’m extremely skeptical lyft is replacing anyone’s car. The “sweet spot” is cities, and you probably already didn’t need a car if lyft is all you need.

Meanwhile, leaving the city would be extremely expensive and unreliable with lyft.

>I’m extremely skeptical lyft is replacing anyone’s car. The “sweet spot” is cities, and you probably already didn’t need a car if lyft is all you need.

I got rid of my car because of uber/lyft.[1]

I'm in a "city" in that I'm in silicon valley[2]; Public transit here is woefully inadequate; before uber/lyft, calling a taxi usually took several tries and several hours. I mean, I knew one guy who rode his bike everywhere? but he was bothering me for rides all the time before uber/lyft.

Uber/lyft is often faster than driving yourself, mostly due to the fact that I don't have to worry about parking. But for me? the important part is that I don't have to worry about paying attention. I can sit in back and read or whatever; it's actually quite relaxing.

I now use safeway delivery or amazon fresh for groceries, and I consider that to be a pretty big improvement in my quality of life; I don't spend time in line anymore, and I get fresh vegetables twice a week.

As far as I can tell, not having a car and getting driven everywhere costs me about as much as owning a late model moderately nice car and driving myself; I've owned some nice cars in the past, but driving a nice car just doesn't compare to being driven, when it comes to comfort. It's like the most stressful part of my day just goes away.

>Meanwhile, leaving the city would be extremely expensive and unreliable with lyft.

Absolutely true. Same with hauling things. I rent a truck when I haul things, and rent a car if I want to go camping or something. My normal 'out of town' trips, though, I either take the train, (my parents live near Sacramento) or an airplane, and if necessary, rent a car at the other end.

I mean, I totally acknowledge that some people really enjoy driving and enjoy owning a car, but certainly some people prefer to be driven. I prefer to be driven. Personally? Uber/lyft could become between 1.5x and 2x more expensive before I seriously considered driving myself again. Maybe more, though at that point I would put more effort into optimization.

[1]I still have a motorcycle, but it's an old bmw; really my hobby is fixing it more than it is riding it.

[2]The south bay - really, it's more "suburbia" than city. If I lived in San Francisco or the rest of the area serviced by BART, getting by without a car would be a lot more realistic.

There's ways around outright bans. Like the London fees to get a car inside the city limits. I expect Uber, Lyft, and friends have lots of lobbying plans.

I fully expect individual ownership of cars to get much less attractive over the next 50 years or so. Thankfully, I'll be long dead. The big brother implications on freedom of movement are chilling.

You can't take a self-driving Lyft to the airport or the self-driving bus terminal?

I don’t think either go to where I would like to spend time. If you want to go into the country, you need a car. A bus could get you to a place, but everything would be so spread out you’d have to hitchhike or use crazily expensive taxis—i’m talking 1$/minute here.

But, I see your point about going to other large public transit areas and I agree wholeheartedly. It’s already about twenty times cheaper to BART to SFO than to grab a lyft. Yet I grab the lyft anyway....

re-read what I wrote

The info-link to Magna is wrong. This is Magna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_International

Is this another round of investment, from Magna, or has this already been accounted for in the previous raise?

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