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Comment by JimTheMan | Hacker News Reader

Hard disk drives were the size of washing machines. I don't see how they will ever be practical!

Not comparable at all. Autonomous driving isn't obviously a viable business. It's not because computer programs can't drive well, it's because the and workforce infrastructure required to maintain and operate the expensive fleet may be less efficient than a human maintaining their own vehicle.

Isn’t the implication there that Uber works because the drivers shoulder more costs and make less money, but Waymo won’t work because they have to shoulder all the costs?

I'm implying that drivers are more efficient at cleaning and maintaining, refueling, storing, repairing, and replacing their cars they own than the complex systems of personnel maintaining a much more expensive fleet of cars they don't own or give a shit about.

Are you also implying that people who maintain vehicles for a living do a worse job at it than the owners doing it themselves? I would say the opposite is true.

Plenty of companies around the world have well-maintained fleets of vehicles. Trucking businesses, bus companies, train companies, even some taxi companies with salaried drivers, ...

No, I'm implying that people who maintain their own cars do it more efficiently. The simple stuff like cleaning has to be done by someone. It's not about doing a "worse job," it's about doing a more expensive job.

Waymo is replacing human drivers with a capital-intensive fleet business, a substantially more expensive vehicle, and still a large number of remote assistance staff, fleet operators, safety engineers, incident response, operations staff, etc.

But I'm not saying they can't beat a human driver, I'm just saying it hasn't been proven that they will. It may only be that the highest demand markets will provide a sufficient enough utilization to make it economically viable.

You also have to be some completely isolated sociopath to not see the very obvious political and economic risks if this does indeed become successful

No amount of lobbying will help you win against a million drivers suddenly out of work

Well, washing machines were once the size of washing machines; and they still are.

Some technologies scale, some don't, at all. Your point is moot.

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