Will be neat to see where this goes. But I'm reminded of some Amazon guys that were supposed to revitalize the supply chains. My memory is that that didn't work out so well.
This isn't somehow a new industry because some Waymo engineers decided to make a company.
This may be an instance of companies not having enough capital or talent to fend off new entrants.
Talent will flock to the new and exciting. The place where they can get the bigger exit and work with the coolest people.
A newcomer in the heavy equipment space will have similar challenges and advantages. Funny enough, a lot of heavy equipment works very similar to cars with their CAN (and other) Buses for control and feedback.
Yes, Tesla was valued more for potential growth. But it was also the kind of potential growth that I'm not sure is viable outside of consumer spaces.
If you have numbers on this, I'm game to see them. Just because I find it hard to believe doesn't mean I think it is impossible.
https://publications.turnerandtownsend.com/international-con...
It is completely idiotic to kick people out for smoking weed on their own time. And then you wonder why you have trouble filling these positions. People use drugs and have since before humans were human, get over it.
For example look at how detailed the structure and weld arrangement is for modern cars, vs. back when robots only just started to take care of the frame welding on the assembly line.
Or how optical HDMI cables are affordable because they use fully automated UV-cure-resin-glued fiber alignment straight from the cable end into the optoelectronic chips, without needing optical connectors or any other human-labor to get the light path connected up. That's how they manage to do it the conceptually easiest way: amplifier->laser->fiber->photodiode->amplifier, and repeat for the 4 high-speed pairs. Also handing the low speed communication channel separately with just normal wires as signal degradation isn't an issue for that.
Or for example 3d printer infill: that's something no one would do manually in such a way, but if it's just automated it's quite desirable/efficient.
App rental e-scooters: they rely on automation to organize even when parked "pretty much anywhere they're not gonna block traffic", and as such become relevant for even short trips.
If you have an unsupervised robot that lays bricks for you to build up a house, you can get away with smaller bricks (and thus a lighter/cheaper machine needing a smaller crane to lift up/out of higher floors), than if you need a human to supervise it.
Smaller machine if slower means more machines, meaning cheaper production of the machines due to scale.
Auto-feeders for nail guns in construction means more smaller nails as placing 3 in a row takes barely longer than just 2. Especially if the nail gun could, say, run like an optical mouse and automatically trigger at a configured spacing while dragged along a surface with the trigger held down.
What if we could bring massive infrastructure projects down from the billions to the millions? Wouldn't that be a great thing for all of society?
What if we could build new power plants, connect all cities with HSR, rebuild all our old bridges, add thousands of new skyscrapers, and do it all under budget?
Think about what steel did for society. Automated construction is the next highest order step function change. It'll be insanely good for society.
Directly, there are few if any jobs that are not getting done due to lack of HSR today.
Indirectly, people project a ton of benefits to having HSR.