Hacker News Reader

Comment by asdf21 | Hacker News Reader

As I said in the other thread a few days ago, Uber should obviously be shorted, both in the short and the long-term.

Their investors are simply trying to hedge their losses by bringing this stock public.

Uber's entire valuation hinges on the idea that they will be in the big three of autonomous driving, and I simply don't think they A) Can sustain long enough to achieve this, B) have a large enough Moat to prevent outside competition from jumping in (which already happened to their ride-sharing all over Asia) and C) They bet on the wrong horse with LIDAR, vision (camera arrays) will be the future of Autonomous driving.

View on HN

Why is Lidar the wrong horse? Because Elon Musk made a slideshow and you drank the Koolaid?

I don't like Uber but as far as autonomous driving is involved, Uber and Waymo use Lidar AND camera arrays versus Tesla only using camera arrays. I don't see at all how that is a deal breaker.

^ this.

Just because humans can operate a car with vision-only capabilities doesn't mean that we shouldn't use LIDAR. Every redundancy will be highly valued when human lives are at stake, and we've seen many times with Tesla how cameras alone can be fooled.

I think Elon is correct with an important caveat.

If you are pursuing the Tesla self driving car business model which is selling a mid range luxury self driving car directly to the end consumer (and potentially operated for 4-6 hours a day as an autonomous taxi) then the cost of sensors is paramount.

If you are pursuing other business models such as Uber and Lyft and Waymo, where the taxi will be purchased as a fleet, fleet managed by the operator and operated 24x7 for 5 years straight, then the cost of camera sensors + LIDAR suite will be full amortized over the 5 year life of the car and therefore be somewhat of a rounding error in the total investment return.

Elon may be right, but he isn't saying that because he thinks he's right. He's saying cameras are the only way because it's the only thing equipped on Teslas right now that are supposedly "autonomous ready".

To admit otherwise would be disastrous for stock price and future sales. And to include lidarr at their current sale price would not be possible.

Fundamentally, if a product can exist without an expensive component, it will beat solution's that contain that expensive component.

> it will beat solutions that contain that expensive component

It will beat comparable solutions that contain that expensive component.

The fundamental question is if a product that can exist without an expensive component (lidar) will ever be of the same quality as the one with it.

Self driving cars that are 99.999% safe in a human environment do not exist. Cheaping out on sensors will not improve the safety.

> Uber's entire valuation hinges on the idea that they will be in the big three of autonomous driving

No, not even close. Their valuation is as a convenience provider. Their work in the autonomous space it an alternative revenue model, something they can sell/ license to car makers. They can gather a lot of road and driving data through their apps. Anyone who invested in them because of their autonomous driving research is even dumber than those who invested because they'll take over the rideshare market. Uber is a good idea, but it's ALWAYS been a bad investment due to their burn rate.

I believe the point is that when autonomous vehicles are allowed on the road then those companies can undercut Uber's cost by whatever % they pay their drivers (≈40%?).

It's more of survival for Uber to get their own autonomous driving technology than it is an alternative business model. Without it they'll get priced out of the market.

If you were correct, then Uber's valuation would be much much lower. They aren't profitable currently and their professed path to profitability is autonomous.

Can they simply raise the ride price ? To the point of not losing money ? The only other player, at least in the US is lyft and lyft has to rise their price too if they don't to keep loosing money. Customer won't go back to use old fashioned taxi.

Long term short ? nothing should ever be a long term short.

No.

A company should be a long term short if you think that it is on a one-way path to going bankrupt.

But if it continues operating, be aware that the stock market as a whole goes up most of the time, and a rising tide tends to lift all boats. So odds are good that any individual operational company will go up over time.

What happens if you have a short on a stock and they go private / get delisted / get acquired before the number is hit?

If they go private or acquired, you get the difference (positive or negative) between your short and the price at which this happened.

If they get delisted, you make a pure profit on your short.

Why not both? LIDAR and cameras both have their applications

I mean, they can still pursue a vision plan or a lidar vision combo. If we get to self driving cars there will still be competition there though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com