GM Cruise raises $1.15B at a $19B valuation from Softbank and Honda
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
I wonder if they're underestimating its importance or if there might be internal fighting within GM.
This is another advantage Tesla has being all in towards the goal.
While owned by General Motors, no. But with Softbank buying in, maybe GM is backing away from Cruise.
Is this another the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund investment via Softbank? They seem to have become the world's largest source of dumb money.
Is there anybody, anywhere, yet who is deploying self-driving cars without "safety drivers" or insisting the driver remain active at the wheel? Cruise, no. Waymo, did for a while, then backed off. Volvo was supposed to be deploying by now but backed off. There are a few self-driving shuttle buses, but they're really slow, like 10mph, except when on dedicated pathways.
Companies that are claiming they will deploy in volume in the next two years are bullshitting. Nobody has Level 3 self driving working reliably in test yet. Let alone Level 4 or 5.
SoftBank was already a big investor in Cruise.
They could have it as a standard feature on their cars rather than a high trim level on one.
GM seems to think it's important since they bought Cruise in the first place, but instead of seeing failure on this as an existential threat it seems more like a side project for them.
From the outside this seems like a bad strategy and will only succeed if it turns out self-driving is impossible (which seems unlikely).
Digital cameras were toys until suddenly they weren't and then Kodak died - even though they had invented the digital camera in the first place.
It's not enough to have the tech, you have to prioritize it in the business. Xerox PARC is another example of this type of failure.
[1] https://mashable.com/article/super-cruise-cadillac-ct5-sedan...
It still seems like they’re being pretty slow about it.
I remember the QuickTake and all that. Yes, those small pixelated images weren’t the same quality as film but they had other benefits instead.
Self driving cars currently aren’t in a state where they can do anything, even waymo still has safety drivers.
Because dumb cars with dumb humans in them kill far more than self driving cars do.
which is exactly why removing people out of the equation is the best way to solve the problem. even fully educated and hyper responsible person is not immune to judgement lapses, hallucinations, heart attacks, strokes, losses of consciousness and many more modes of failure.
what's worst - even if i'm 100% sure about myself, even if i take myself out of the equation - there are still thousands murderous humans driving around me.
humans should not be driving cars.
Wait a min, when did this happen ? and who is Dan Ammann. Why would you move Kyle Vogt into a CTO position. This is bizzare.
These guys could completely flame out without ever getting anything of value out into the market.
Still Cruise's disengagement rate is astonishingly high: 1000 disengagements every 0.19 miles[1], according to the Wall Street Journal ;-).
The reason some larger companies don't have reports is because they either didn't do autonomous testing in CA (many test in AZ) or that they do not consider their tests "autonomous" ( level 4 or above). This is the case for Tesla autopilot.
https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2019/02/13/update-dis...
The latest noise by Musk about Tesla's FSD is purely to raise money and take away the focus that he can't produce cars profitably. Nothing else
Also they've been operating in demanding conditions compared to Waymo.
eg NYC rush hour https://twitter.com/DrCamiloOrtiz/status/1114328048915099649
Lane change in heavy traffic https://twitter.com/hamids/status/1120472369762590722
while when reporters "Followed a Waymo Self-driving Car for Miles' the Waymos seemed to have some issues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spw176TZ7-8
This is the point that Waymo reached in 2012 if I remember correctly.
It is also worth pointing out that Tesla's ability to run software on its fleet of hundreds of thousands of cars gives them a huge advantage regarding data collection. If their cars are truly as safe as they claim (a huge if and one we have no real public proof of yet), the lack of having this report on disengagements in California is not going to be a stumbling block in getting regulatory approval.
EDIT: Since I am being downvoted, I looked up the regulation [1]. Teslas likely don't to qualify as "autonomous vehicles" according to definition b. Although that is a pretty bad definition in my opinion. Also I am not praising Tesla here, just pointing out that their ability to avoid this regulation is not an indication of the quality of their self-driving tech.
[1] - https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/d48f347b-8815-458e...
the lack of having this report on disengagements in California is not going to be a stumbling block in getting regulatory approval.
Actually, if Tesla hopes to legally sell self-driving cars in CA, that is going to be a huge stumbling block.
Tesla has sold over 50k Model 3s in California in 2018[1]. Regulators would be ridiculous if they put more value in the data from 111 Waymo vehicles compared to the data from tens of thousand of Tesla vehicles.
And once again, I am not saying Tesla is leading here or has superior technology. But people like you are letting their bias against Musk and Tesla cloud their judgement on this issue.
[1] - https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-s-su...
And this is super important when raising the $2B Tesla is seeking.
Tesla is the only one actually attempting to empower individuals with FSD tech. Everyone else has given up and/or wants to monopolize it for private fleets. Everyone claims to be shooting for the same FSD capability. Different strategies is, of course, wrongly conflated with "fraud."
I tend to think Tesla is behind Waymo. It's hard to say beyond that. But for actual mass deployment of serious hardware, no one is ahead of Tesla.
Charlatan in 2019: The previous version by nVidia was such garbage (processing 1.5 fps, really?). Teslas built right now has all the hardware required for FSD.
Charlatan, a few minutes later: We are working on the next version of FSD hardware (that'd most definitely render 2019 obsolete)
There is Musk, the sometimes engineer, then there is Musk, the charlatan. An Engineer would never claim 'the latest hardware will be the greatest ever'
What I find so fascinating about this discussion is how Tesla is necessarily the most transparent player yet everyone else (with the same stated FSD goals) is given a pass due to secrecy. I suppose that means secrecy works.
Again you got ahead of yourself with the Tesla hype.
Also, Elon always promised hardware upgrade if needed.
We're talking about the holy grail of AI in the automotive industry, not a SaaS side project.
This isn't assigning the Summer Vision Project in 1966.
Everyone knew that this was going to be a monumental problem, and the only person in the room who was claiming they already had all the tools to solve the problem (a problem that no one else is even willing to say they fully understood how to approach yet) is also the guy with a record for lying through his teeth so much there's a term for it.
I'm excited to see real attempts at FSD. Not from the company that gets most of it's hype from AP1, which used the same sensor suit GM was putting in cars years ago for off-label applications so they could go around waving "autopilot", which resulted in easily preventable deaths.
There's a guy in a village next to me that is "attempting to empower individuals" with energy medicine (healing people with the touch of his hands). Everyone else, including medicine researchers, has given up on this.
Maybe people who've paid for the Tesla FSD package will receive what I imagine when I hear "full self driving". Or maybe, like No Man's Sky backers, they'll get something they're less happy with.
Tesla claim they have all the hardware for FSD, but FSD is still science fiction. It literally doesn't exist. Waymo is closest but they use Lidar, which Tesla's aren't equipped with.
Maybe Tesla will work it out and make a great self driving car on cheap hardware. I'll believe it when I see it
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-waymo-selfdriving-focus/w...
Tesla’s most recent FSD video took place around Palo Alto. The same area where its 2016 video was filmed.
[1] Except that situation with cars is much worse than with laptops, as you can continue using a laptop while it's charging.
What is funny is when they try to convince people that a Tesla actually is a luxury car, which it quite obviously isn't. Model S lacks some meaningful amenities that a Hyunday at half the price has, build quality would make a Yugo gag, and if it does break down or gets in an accident you might be waiting months for it to be fixed. But I guess it's nice to convince yourself that there were some reasons you've paid $60K for for something less practical than a Yaris...
Nope. Great EV. Vastly overpriced golf cart as a car.
With a Tesla, they can deliver incremental value, without having to be able to handle every possible scenario.
Also aren’t Cruise and Waymo in same boat touting progress to raise money?
https://www.thestreet.com/story/10544259/1/not-your-fathers-...
(Obligatory discliamer: I work for GM / Cruise)
[1] https://www.cadillac.com/world-of-cadillac/innovation/super-...
This kind of thing is waaay beyond what went on during the dot-com bubble, where there was a lot of value being created without any business model either.
There's probably some value in locking themselves in as the exclusive provider of Cruise-enabled cars
Economy of scale and bigger r&d with a shared platform is better than getting out innovated by Uber/google
1. Stability for the project. A self-driving R&D project internal to a larger company risks getting killed over the N years it takes to do the work without any payoff.
2. The investment probably looks better on the parent corporations budgets. They aren't sinking billions of dollars into R&D, they're investing in a third party which is sinking billions into R&D. The shares might even look good, if non-liquid, on paper.
3. Segments liability away from the larger company. When all self-driving cars in the world make a left turn at the same time due to an obscure calendar bug, it's just GM Cruise that gets sued out of existence.
Saw one of those making a left turn in San Francisco last week. The driver was cranking the wheel. It was not autonomous.
No. It’s an app-based taxi hailing service.
Revenue would drop, profit would rise. Eventually, the market reach an equilibrium.
Note they could also just raise the share they take for themselves and prices simultaneously. If prices go up 20% and they up their fee from 20% -> 33%, their income goes up 60% and their unit economics look a LOT better.