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Comment by high_derivative | Hacker News Reader

For one, Cruise has essentially disintegrated over the past few months? All key execs left https://fortune.com/2023/12/13/general-motors-cruise-executi..., massive layoffs, founders left.

Cruise is done.

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Happy to bet on this (and indeed I have, by buying GM stock). Cruise is definitely dealing with a huge, self-inflected PR disaster here. But all signs I have seen is that their tech is very advanced (although, as previously noted, probably a bit behind Waymo). Cruise and Waymo are heads and shoulders above their competitors, and there won't be only one winner (if for no other reason than the threat of anti-trust), so Cruise is likely to succeed.

Again, if you have data that shows Cruise is behind Waymo by a lot, or is behind any other company, please link it.

Could be a good bet, very asymmetric. The question to me is if the execs are leaving because they know Cruise doesn't have it technically and the jig is up, or if it's really more temporary. Hard to know from the outside. It's also hard to translate Cruise's much worse human-intervention numbers (vs Waymo) into a quantative measure of 'behindness' in terms of how difficult it is to catch up.

That's why it could be a good bet. Or not.

The event precipitating executives leaving related to the single accident and the deceptive behavior by Cruise surrounding it. To my knowledge, the data shows the tech is good (at least as safe as human drivers) and rapidly improving. But I agree it's hard to know from the outside, and that the sensibleness of the bet definitely depends on the fact that the potential upside is so massive.

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