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Comment by sdan | Hacker News Reader

Wow... that was pretty unexpected.

But to be honest they haven't done anything too notable within the last year (Plus.ai is pretty much the biggest thing I can think of right now and maybe Ike in the trucking space).

Really interesting to see how everything in the AV space plays out: Deepscale/Drive.ai were both aquihires, Cruise/Torc/Argo/Aurora were bought out mostly, and the others are either just starting (Ghost and Voyage) or doing something that aids them (Renovo).

So essentially: either you're bought out by an OEM or funded by VCs hoping to get acquired (I don't think you can surivive in this space without being bought out or aquihired).

Disclaimer: I worked at Renovo.

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sdan:

> But to be honest they haven't done anything too notable within the last year

Per the article:

> The company was the first to complete a fully unmanned truck trip on a 9.4-mile stretch of public highway and claims to have set a speed record for an unmanned truck, reaching 55 mph, in June 2019.

I'll admit that their telepresence human driver isn't ideal for self-driving vehicles. Its strategic merits, and product merits are very arguable. But it does follow a familiar model in automation progression, and I'd imagine that quite a few investors would have been interested. Likely just came down to timing and potentially valuation or other details. Can really hurt when an investor pulls back at the last minute.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22013700 for a take on that from baremetrics founder.

Forgot it was them who did it, thanks for reminding me.

Zoox was supposed to announce a new funding round by the end of last year, and still crickets. The further into 2020 we get the more I think they might not get any more money.

I actually loved what they were (and still are doing).The only thing that concerns me about them is this:

1. Ousted one of their CEOs the day they got funding (something dirty like this)

2. Making their own car (which I guess isn't too far fetched, but Cruise seems to be much further along even though they did the whole thing in secrecy)

Cruise has GM manufacturing behind it, too.

One reason having an OEM backing is one of the only ways to survive in this space.

Just checked out the demos on their website. I have always been curious what graphics they use to represent what car sees. Are there any open source versions of these out there to explore ?

All this stuff is internal. However, there is always Uber AVS (avs.auto).

Stiching cams like this has started to hit the back up camera market. Takes a few hours of setup. Stop at an RV dealer and check out the cams systems on the $$$$ units.

Oct 21, 2019 https://www.axios.com/zoox-self-driving-car-fundraising-52aa...

That's the bridge round while the close the actual round, as it says in the article you linked.

Interesting, it looks like I am out of the loop, haven’t heard about most of these except cruise and aurora. Where do you think Zoox falls on this spectrum?

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