Uber's efforts to shed itself of all liability and risk in terms of employees and assets is legendary; but they could still find themselves going up against the IRS on the question of whether drivers are employees or freelancers. Most especially with drivers that they referred to auto-financing. The theory being that having a requirement for a minimum standard of car and providing finance referrals would be similar to requiring "independent contractors" to wear uniforms.
It seems incredibly unwise to finance a $20,000 USD vehicle hedging on some third party (of which you have zero control over) to provide enough for you to pay it through.
If you then manipulate things such that they are effectively unable to meet their obligations because you are jerking them around they are certainly going to be able to find a lawyer who will take their case. Particularly if you were referring them to the auto-dealership and pre-qualifying them for financing.
https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele...
And you can find examples from almost every car company. They all have projects going back decades looking at autonomous technologies. Some you see today e.g. parallel park assist, crash avoidance, lane/stop sign detection etc.
Today, unless your title is "Director of self driving car research" you can't just go take one for a spin. Again, they're coming, they are the future. Uber wouldn't have cleaned out Carnage Mellon robotics department if it didn't still require original research.
Majority (all?) of the road testing has been on fairly controlled roads with "normal" circumstances, ie. not a blizzard with iced roads, hydroplaning, debris falling in front of the vehicle at speed, etc.
Longevity of the vehicle - it's doubtful a driverless vehicle purchased today will still be on the road (and safe!) 10-15 years from now (there's an awful lot of computing and sensors in place, but would a computer that old still perform safely -- ie. would you use your computer from 15 years ago as your daily-use work machine? no - so why trust your life to it?), whereas majority of vehicles on the road today are 10-15+ years old. Sensors are expensive and prone to natural wear, etc.
What about sensors frizzing out and providing false-readings? Similar circumstances have destroyed $100 million spacecraft missions, let alone some $20K vehicle that's several years old and neglected by the owner. Even military-grade electronics and sensor arrays are not "fool proof" and totally "failsafe" -- and you know the quality, robustness, redundantness, etc.. of the electronics going into self-driving vehicles are not on par.
The moment the first human casualty occurs do to some software/hardware failure, there will be serious ramifications for the self-driving world.
Just want to add to the discussion a reminder that this is said about literally every new piece of technology that has ever happened- the first human casuality from riding a horse, first human casualty from driving a car, etc.
It's interesting to note that we're expected to lose our minds over the first human death with New Technology Y, when Old Technology X is typically killing humans all the time.
Also out of curiosity– re: longevity, why would a driverless car have to be on the road for 15 years? Why not just update/retrofit/repair/replace every year or so?
Spacecraft and military equipment are used in really extreme settings! Also can't driverless cars update themselves, go for repairs themselves, etc?
Also I'm guessing it wouldn't make a lot of sense for regular folks to own their own driverless car. They'll just use one at the touch of a button whenever they need to. When renting becomes THAT cheap, ownership makes less sense (for most people, at least).
My $0.02
Exactly, call me when they're killing 1.2 million people a year[1].
The number of people killed by automobiles is completely fucking insane and the only reason we're cool with it is it mostly doesn't happen to someone a large number of people care about and if it does we can hum, haw and then lay blame on someone (who is probably dead).
1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-re...
We're largely talking about only the US market here -- in which only (and I say that word relatively) 32,000 people died in any sort of automobile related accident last year (including siting in their driveway idling and somehow died).
To put this in perspective, the common Flu (a totally vaccinatable, preventable, and treatable illness) killed more than 52,000 people in the US last year alone.
In reality, automobiles in the US are the safest they have ever been since 1949, and automobile related deaths have dropped more than 26% since 2005 alone.
According to the CDC, automobile related deaths are not even in the top 10 leading causes of death in the US.
Last year, heart disease was responsible for 596,577 US deaths last year alone. Stroke claimed 128,932 US lives. Diabetes took 73,831 american lives. Suicide robbed 39,518 people their life last year -- in excess of 7,000 more than died by automobile related accidents.
In 2009, approximately a grand total of 2,436,652 died in the US of all causes (including natural causes). Of that number, automobile related deaths only accounts for 1%. Of the entire US population, we're talking about 0.0096%...
According to the CDC, in 2012, 10,322 people (or 31%) of all automobile related deaths were alcohol-related deaths. Another 18% of automobile related deaths are attributed to drugs other than alcohol in the same year. That accounts for just about 50% of all vehicle related deaths, leaving the true automobile related deaths due to accident at a shockingly low number (relatively) of about 15,000 people per year.
All of this is to say, relatively speaking, automobile related deaths are not a significant concern anymore. It does not make logical nor financial sense to do anything significant in this sector while ignoring or not increasing efforts in these other much more significant areas.
So, to counter your original assertion -- no, it's not "completely fucking insane"... the amount of people dying from the common Flu is.
Sources:
[1] http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
[2] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/09/guns-tr...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...
[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/top-causes-of-death-united-st...
[5] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
[6] http://www.cdc.gov/Motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impai...
Throw in the fact that Uber, whose relationship with lawmakers is best described as "it's complicated", is about the last company you'd want to be leading lobbying efforts to allow unmanned self-driving cars on city streets, and it's a fair bet they're not expecting their self-driving cars to be anything more than valuable IP at the time they exit.
There would become a significant cost burden to the owner if this was what was necessary. Most people can't afford to do multiple thousand dollar repairs to their vehicles every few years. Currently replacing the ECU in most modern vehicles will run you close to $1,000 after parts and labor, and these are the very "dumb" kind of car computers (comparatively).
> When renting becomes THAT cheap, ownership makes less sense (for most people, at least).
This may make sense to someone living in a big city, but when you shift to the suburbs or a more rural area, renting would become a significant inconvenience. In my experience, people living in big cities are the ones who often do not own vehicles and/or rent and/or use things like Uber/Lyft and/or Zip cars. Suburbians (which is where majority of our population lives in the US) would not be able to take advantage of this type of service for a number of logistical reasons.
The first iterations will be expensive, triple the cost of a normal car perhaps? that's ok if they get 10x the use. When you put in that kind of investment, it's ok to have dedicated staff for maintenance. You also get to learn a lot about failure modes, when and how to do upgrades, there's lots of good stuff that can happen there.
Google is in a pretty unique place. They have the data to make them work. They can afford a large staff to maintain the cars. They can afford flight data recorders for the cars. They can afford to create an insurance subsidiary. Insurance is cheap if you can prove robot cars never cause accidents. They can afford these things in dollars, technical talent, legal talent, and international reach.
Uber is lucky because it's not google's core business. They've got a lot of cash, but they don't (afaict) have the depth of resources to throw at the zillion problems that will inevitably come up. The only piece google lacks is the focus. It's google's game to lose.
Longevity might be a problem, but it's reducible to an investment decision, the vehicles don't necessarily have to last 15 years unmodified to be practical.
Vehicles are not "investments" as they diminish in value rapidly after the initial purchase. A 6 month old vehicle is not worth what a brand new one is. The reason we have so many older vehicles on the road (>10-15+ years of age) is simply because majority of citizens cannot afford new vehicles.
Replacing parts in modern-day "dumb" cars is incredibly expensive. If you radio goes out, you're looking at close to $1,000 just in parts and labor. There's few repairs that eat less than $500.
Most vehicle owners neglect their current "dumb" car, let alone a rolling piece of computer equipment.
Vehicles will last fewer years. They will be more expensive (in both initial cost and maintenance). Aged vehicles won't be reliable nor safe to operate.
These are the realities driverless vehicle proponents are simply not considering.
Uber could easily approach Volvo but then again there is no competitive advantage to. The car companies are interested in volume sales not building cars to niche specifications.