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Comment by ok_craig | Hacker News Reader

So the 3d radar used by Google costs $75,000, but it seems unlikely they'd try to sell the tech to the mass market at that price. How likely is it that this is just the price of their R&D units, and that they'll have that reduced significantly for production models? What do you HN-ers think is a reasonable price for this kind of technology?

In any case, congrats to the student! His work sounds impressive.

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IMO, there is some market for private self driving cars at almost any price, if it's usable and legal. The minimum volume at which they can be produced, legalized may be too high though for any kind of niche luxury market though.

The path to substantially replacing human driven cars though is (I think) some sort of driverless taxis. The price where driverless taxis take over is probably somewhere around where the cost per km of driverless is lower. That could be pretty high. Assuming other operational costs are similar to regular taxis $150k-$200k for a driverless vehicle that lasts 3-5 years sounds viable.

Driverless cars have been sitting around the edge of our consciousness as "experimental but interesting" for a long time. But, the economic changes they introduce are potentially enormous, wide. I think there's a good chance that privately owned cars become rare, for example. General purpose cars may go away. A golf cart is just fine for going 5-10 miles in urban traffic.

This space is big enough for Google/Ford/IBM sized giants to emerge in. Makers of the cars, makers of the driver, makers of the UI, operators of the taxi companies, who knows what else. Maybe makers of digital roadsigns. Maybe selecting destinations from a screen creates the kind of effect Adwords has had.

> A golf cart is just fine for going 5-10 miles in urban traffic.

I hadn't thought of this. Imagine Google buying garages all over NYC and filling them with driverless Smart cars (or similar). A button is added to your phone's Google Maps app, so that in addition to "Get Directions" and "Navigate", you also have the option of "Pick Me Up".

So, you search for where you want to go on Google Maps and tap "Pick Me Up", with the option of telling it how many people are in your party. Within 5 minutes enough Smart cars for your party stop within 20 feet of you, even if you've already started walking, thanks to your phone's GPS. You get in the car, which has no steering wheel, and touch "Go" on the in-dash touch-screen to start the car driving to your destination.

I could get used to that.

Exactly.

Driverless is not just doing things the way we have been but without operating the car. It changes everything. The economics. The culture. etc.

Self driving trucks would be interesting, especially in the US where there are pretty long routes that don't need much driver interaction.

Stuff with fixed and repeating routes like buses (or airport shuttle buses) are also interesting imo

It would also be cool if down the road (pun not intended) a care could detect if the driver is drunk and switch to selfdrive mode.

The thing that makes me think of taxis is the the driver cost/total cost ratio is high, so removing the driver is a big deal.

Buses and long haul trucks are already pretty highly optimized in that the driver's time is a relatively smaller component of the total cost. Also, the total cost is much lower.

What about LIDARs that aren't mounted on cars themselves but on streets which all cars can connect to. This will limit the useful range of such cars, but imagine manhattan decked out in these things and taxis or busses that only work in Manhattan. Could still have huge savings, especially if combined with computer vision as a fallback.

Edit: To be honestly my idea's probably not worth pursuing. I fully expect the cost of LIDARs to come down drastically in the next five years.

I rather expect that latency and bandwidth would be significant issues there, not to mention jamming attacks.

That would probably save money, but it'd be one of those large cash amount up front initiatives that tax payers wouldn't agree to until every other car already self drives.

I think you are right about it being R&D cost. I'm sure its more than a webcam even at scale but I think that both probably have their pros and cons. How do the cams work the morning after a snowstorm when everything is white vs the radar system? I could see both being in-use with one being used as warm backup based on road conditions. Never the less still sounds like the guy knows his stuff.

I think that the first Google car will be very expensive anyhow. One of the reasons is, that you can fit a $40k sensor package into a $400k car. And going with a similar argument, self driving is probably a feature that warrants a 10% - 30% markup, so for a $40k car somewhere between $5k and $15k.

That might very well be the average markup the general public is willing to pay, but don't discount the niches that will tolerate a much higher premium - these will provide the initial traction.

Someone that is legally blind might gladly pay an additional $40k on top of a $30k car. So might someone with a two hour commute, or that likes to get drunk a lot.

How much is it worth to have police cars that can drive themselves back when an officer is injured? Maybe the asking price, maybe not. But you can be sure it will be considered.

Segmenting the market based on need, versus average car spend, seems to me a much better way to look at it.

There is a company I can't remember at the moment that claims they will provide a $4k LIDAR for cars.

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