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Comment by Oculus | Hacker News Reader

Tesla (or insert company willing to go big on electric cars) and Google really need to team up on this. Self driving cars have the potential to completely do away with owning personal cars. Imagine a new public/private service that allows people to travel where & when they want without having to deal with the hassles or cost of owning a car. With the added centralization, the headaches that electric cars cause can be eliminated with a bit of logistics planning (cars are interchangeable so low battery cars can go straight to a charging station instead of wait for their owners to take them to one).

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The video suggests these cars are probably being built in Tesla's factory - the white-painted walls and red-painted machinery are pretty unique to Tesla. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqSDWoAhvLU#t=58

(Also note that "Rotary Lift", the brand seen at that point in the video, is the exclusive supplier of vehicle lifts to Tesla - http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tesla-motors-chooses...)

The NYTimes reported that they'll be built in Detroit;

"Google is having 100 cars built by a manufacturer in the Detroit area, which it declined to name. Nor would it say how much the prototype vehicles cost. They will have a range of about 100 miles, powered by an electric motor that is roughly equivalent to the one used by Fiat's 500e, Dr. Urmson said. They should be road-ready by early next year, Google said."

They could have used Tesla's facilities for the first prototypes though. My money for the first production run is on a niche house like Roush, or potentially Chrysler since these little cars share components with the Fiat 500e.

This suggestion comes up whenever the topic of self-driving cars arises, but I wonder if access to a fleet of self-driving cars would be more akin to a cheaper taxi service than a replacement for car ownership. I suspect that many people would still prefer to own their own (self-driving) car rather than rent one from a fleet only when required. However the privately owned self-driving car could still drive itself to the nearest charging station when not in use so I agree with your premise that self-driving and electric car technology has some synergies. Being a high-tech automaker, Tesla would be an obvious licensee for Google's self-driving technology once it matures.

Fair observation, but I think this sort of centralization will come after maybe 2 or 3 generations (40 - 60 years). With a long enough timetable I believe the sentiment behind private car ownership will dwindle until it becomes a hobby akin to collecting telegraph machines.

I'm reminded of a talk I attended about entrepreneurship by the founder of zip cars. She talked about how everyone she talked to would suggest she partnered with car companies. So that's what she did. She would go around talking to all these car companies, and then tell potential investors that's exactly what she was doing. It made for a great story.

Of course the truth was, in the meetings the car companies had no interest in working with her. From their point of view, zip car was a threat to their business. The little bit of money they may make from an exclusive contract would be smaller then all the people who might have bought cars, but didn't.

But the story about the meetings was nice.

I think Google wants to do a similar thing to Tesla. Maybe have a few of their own vehicles but bet big on the technology. They can then sell it to the big car manufacturers. With Tesla it's their battery technology, with Google it's their sensor technology.

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