As someone who worked in the industry, there are a couple of different approaches, incredible amounts of hype, and disappointing amounts of progress to fully autonomous vehicles.

* Tesla driver assistance features that they market as self-driving features. You need a driver that is alert and monitoring the vehicle because it can return control to the driver without warning.

* Waymo has launched limited L4 pilot in the "easy" Tempe, AZ area. They have remote teleoperation / monitoring but no driving in the car.

* ATG has prototypes that run with safety drivers

* Cruise has prototypes that run with safety drivers + they are working on tele-monitoring / teleoperation.

* Comma.AI has a consumer-available L2 driver-assistance device that you can add to your car to do ACC and lane keeping.

* Aurora has prototypes that run with safety drivers

* Zoox (bought by AMZN) has prototypes that run with safety drivers

* Smattering of other companies that are working on the tech, but are no where close to a product launch (Lyft, Toyota, Argo etc)

In general, there was a bunch of hype and bunch of money poured into the industry in 2016-2018. Others saw people pouring money into it and assumed a breakthrough was close and so they poured more money in. The cycle continued to spiral into huge multi-billion dollar investments into technology that is still IMO quite far away from a public launch. Turns out that several years later, it's really hard and no one is actually that close to useful AVs.

Waymo has a publicly available product launched, but I'm confident they are running that program at a significant loss.

Cruise has struggled to hit the milestones set in their funding deals to unlock the next levels of funding.

In my opinion, Comma is going to crush it in the next 2 years, Tesla will keep refining their AP tech, but still won't be FSD. I think autonomous robotaxis will be the norm eventually but not until after 2025.

> First we have tesla which already has a self driving car. They were the first to build one and now everyone is playing catch up, or are they?

They have a Level 2 system, which is certainly an impressive technical achievement, but not what most of us are thinking of when we think, "self driving." They are hoping to grow it into something more, but it remains to be see whether that will be possible. Other companies also have Level 2 systems, and, while I've personally never used any of them, some sources do report that Autopilot is not the best one out there, just the most hyped one. So, even if we are just focusing on assisted driving rather than self driving, I'm not sure one can say with too much confidence that they are the clear leader.

I would not interpret the existence of a functional consumer product as evidence of a technical lead in the race toward true self driving. Waymo never had any intention of commercially releasing a level 2 system. Their plan was to go straight to level 4 without any detours. Reports would seem to indicate that they are far, far ahead of everyone else on achieving that goal. It may be that they now have an unbeatable lead. Or it may be that some more direct competitor catches up. Or it may be that a company like Tesla or Cadillac is able to use profits and data collected from their commercial level 2 systems to accelerate their development and catch up. This, too, remains to be seen.

My intuition is that Waymo and Tesla dominate in the amount of data available to them.

Waymo seems to be closest to a robust 3D lidar based solution, but Tesla maybe be closest to 'a' solution, but the community is split on whether their 2D approach will work.

Then there seem to be a laundry list of companies that entered the market late, and are propped up panicking car companies which aren't sure which one of these companies is the real thing. So, they hedge their bets by taking a piece of all of them.

The solution will come out of 1 of the following:

1. A slow race to making a more and more robust vision system that is eventually good enough to get through regulation. In this case, the earliest to start and one with the most data will win. So, either Waymo or Tesla. By the time others get there, they will have captured the market and made billions.

2. Some smaller company has an 'a-ha' moment. Waiting for an a-ha moment doesn't sound like the most prudent investment decision, but the one that finds it will become a billionaire overnight. This change is so important (like Mapreduce) that it will quickly be reverse engineered and one of Google/Uber/etc. will release a self driving hardware kit + api or come pre-installed in cars like android auto. The solution transforms the vision field with a reach far beyond just cars.

Put down the kool aid. There are no self-driving cars.

> First we have tesla which already has a self driving car.

What 'self driving car'? I think you meant 'semi-autonomous cruise control' as there is no Tesla car that is fully 'self driving'.

As for Uber's situation, they had no chance. Mounted losses everywhere caused by the pandemic, government lockdowns and drivers who are now classified as Uber employees make the costs of it all unsustainable for them to justify keeping a 'self-driving unit'.

The only certain and sustainable long term players in this 'self-driving' or 'cruise control' game are Tesla and Comma.ai.

[https://medium.com/unikie/self-driving-cars-2020-and-beyond-...] helped me understand the major players in self driving vehicles and what they're upto.

Tesla does not use Lidar as a cost savings measure, and only uses camera output to determine how the car drives. It is unknown if this is enough to account for enough permutations of traffic, but they're calling it full self driving while using car owners as paying (!) beta testers.

AFAIK, no one is close to releasing an autonomous vehicle that can drive on par or better than an average human driver, but that several have a path to getting there.

I believe many companies can thrive until M&A whittles down that list. I don't think this is a first mover takes all kinda deal because safety will have to be proven over a long time allowing other entrants to prove their worth.

> First we have tesla which already has a self driving car

No, they don't. And it will take a while to get there.

I think there are multiple companies that can make something that works most of the time in good conditions, but you have to have a certain level of arrogance and self confidence to be the first to release it as a product.

Oh, I stand corrected

The channel has many videos with pedestrians such as in front of a Costco or busy stores, Waymos encountering weird construction setups sometimes leaving no full lanes available, and might have encountered bikes. Also, there are some during busy times instead of sleepy suburbs though admittedly not New York-levels of crazy.

I agree for Lyft but Uber pretty aggressively pushed the vision as necessary for their future when they were burning so much cash on ATG.

"only path" is a much stronger statement than you were reacting to, which is that it was the chosen strategy.

"If we are not tied for first, then the person who is in first, or the entity that's in first, then rolls out a ride-sharing network that is far cheaper or far higher-quality than Uber's, then Uber is no longer a thing," Kalanick said." - https://www.businessinsider.com/travis-kalanick-interview-on...

>And I also don't see a lot of fervent denials from Uber in this regard.

Why would there be? If it's helping their stock price or even neutral to it then why deny it and risk it going down?

Current competitors may go out of business. If there really is a niche, however, seeing off current competitors won't be the end of it. There's always someone else, who may not have burned so much VC.

The other option is that there will never be a sustainable business here.

You underestimate what you can extract from making the market larger and more efficient, which taxis could never do. Why don't people barter instead of paying huge sums to Wall Street to intermediate?

Hard to pay your execs and engineers insanely bloated Tech salaries on Taxi profit margins. It's a bubble ready to pop.The guy saying they will profitable in the next year is delusional.

Contrary to that, local profitable markets like Manhattan have had significant entrants eat away at Uber’s market share with companies like Juno scooping up the best customers and drivers. The same thing happened in many cities in the early 20th century before streetcar operators managed to get jitney cabs (the unlicensed pool taxis of their day) banned because too many teens would borrow the family car after school and drive in front of streetcars on profitable lines and scoop riders for nickels instead of dimes.

Uber and Lyft have a de facto duopoly amongst those hopping off planes because it’s hard to know that there are any other local options available.

Drivers are not exclusive to uber, no? There is no moat in this industry, and its going to face inevitability when it runs out of money.

once self driving arrives, the network effect is a lot less prominent, since the supply side can more easily be scaled

How long can they afford to fight it? It's not hard to spool up a rideshare competitor per say. When they pulled out of Austin several other rideshare companies popped up in their wake. If prices got exorbitantly high for the average user, I wouldn't be surprised if a company came in undercutting uber.

It’s actually charity by SoftBank and Saudi Arabia at this point, but yes, this is what it actually seems to be.

Amazon is also an investor charity to give us all one day shipping since the investors show no sign of wanting profit margins above 1%.

>the younger generations are less likely to own cars

There's nothing inherent about this. If the promised alternatives to owning cars turn out to be BS, the younger generations will have to own cars whether they want to or not.

Sometimes I wonder if people talking about this "inevitable unprofitability" have used ridesharing recently. At least around SF, prices were steadily going up for the past couple of years.

The younger generation is always more likely to go to cities. As they get older they move out. And buy cars.

Are they willing to pay the actual cost, though?

I know that where I live I've started blanching at how much it actually costs to take an Uber, which is now approaching what taxis cost.

> the younger generations are less likely to own cars. Public infrastructure is never going to fill the gap except in certain urban areas.

And Uber/Lyft work reliably only in urban areas. "Younger generations" will inevitably grow older and may want to move out of tiny, expensive city apartments to larger accomodations outside the city. Guess what. Public infrastructure fills the gap much better than Uber/LyfBolt do (at least in Europe).

Waymo is running self-driving cars with paying passengers and no backup drivers right now in Phoenix, and last I checked we don't have general AI yet.

https://www.reuters.com/article/waymo-autonomous-phoenix/way...

Sure, you can move the goalposts and say it's not "true" self-driving until it can handle all environments and weather conditions and whatnot, but self-driving cars are here. The question is how fast they'll go mainstream.

Not human-level AI, though. Plenty of animals do fine with challenging navigational problems. Birds fly through forests, catch or evade other birds, cross continents, etc.

Prior to this deal, Uber had a couple of billion (at the value of this deal) in a self driving car company named ATG. After this deal, they have a couple of billion in a self driving car company named Aurora.

If there are competitors (e.g., Waymo) that have self-driving that's significantly cheaper, then Uber and Lyft can't compete. So it's a huge potential threat to their businesses. And if self-driving makes rides much cheaper, that can significantly boost the size of the market. But that does not imply that they can't be successful and profitable businesses in a world without self-driving cars, which is the frequently-made claim in the top post.

Can't speak for Lyft leadership, but I think Travis and Dara have very different perspectives on self driving.

As for the existential threat narrative, consider that there are many places that sell cheaper/better food than McDonalds, and yet, McD is everywhere. I don't think technical merit alone is going to win the rideshare pie.

Well, if they were only afraid of them, rather than needing them, they're in decent shape, 'cause the last few years have kind of given the impression that self-driving cars aren't coming any time soon. They've been "90% here" for at least ten years but that's not enough.

So if they invent the first reasonable self-driving car, they can sell those and provide service for them. Ideally TCO would be lower than a human driven car so basically a third party could buy and manage the fleet for Uber and Lyft. Neither company would need to own the cars to reap the benefits of making them.

How do drivers make any money while keeping the overall price less than a taxi? Factor in fuel and maintenance, and drivers are already getting pretty screwed on these platforms.

Aerospace doesn’t have a monopoly except that strictly regulated industries prefer having one passenger plane manufacturer because they’re easier to watch. Nor do ICs (there’s at least four big fabs and three big CPU producers).

The ones that work own moats like land or government licenses. But Uber doesn’t have that.

What does walmart have a monopoly on? Are they no longer cheaply priced?

No. This isn't a software company.

if you really have self-driving taxi and it is cheap, I don't think it is difficult to acquire customers, since customers are not loyal to taxi brands, they are loyal to price

when has Google been known to do that?

Erm, there's the word "beta" in the name. Of course you want to test it with someone in the driver's seat.

They're ahead of other players because they have:

1. Hundreds of thousands of cars on the streets with FSD hardware

2. More data than anyone else

3. Their own neural network accelerator chip.

It's definitely bordering on Level 4 at this point. If you're claiming it's L2 then you simply have no idea what Tesla has been up to.

I'm not convinced any of those would last even hours without an army of SRE's holding them together.

Personally, I think drunk driving isn't that much of a factor: drinking is a relatively short term kind of planned activity. What I think has a much bigger impact is long term stuff, like the desire to live downtown and/or housing prices (with downtown condos and midtown townhouses being more affordable than big detached homes in burbs)

I know families that are rather against the idea of owning a car and arrange housing around that consideration. They prefer to rely more heavily on public transit and the occasional car rental or cab/rideshare.

I wouldn't say that, no. Other factors might reduce car ownership, of course, but I meant only to address the larger question of Uber's potential market. Another major use case is the airport, because airport parking has become egregiously expensive and cost-cutting favors rideshare infrastructure over parking (which is a good thing land-use-wise). There's also "transit in taxi out" trips because it's cold at night and people are tired and don't want to walk/wait/transfer, which grow as public transit is expanded, another trend that is likely to continue because the reduction in air pollution from electrification makes urban areas more desirable, as well as various secular trends pointing towards urbanization that may or may not continue (some recently reversed by the covid-19 pandemic) -- environmentalism in particular seems like it won't go away.

In any case, plenty of people are enthusiastic about a world where owning cars is less popular, so it's a common refrain.

Uber seems to be expanding into food delivery and other logistics, where trust is still valuable so a middleman can be useful, but it’s hard to say how well it’ll work.

What’s the mechanism?

Eg A road is accessible from 5am to 8pm. Outside those times traffic conditions change. Humans setup cones and control the flow of traffic. 2 lanes becomes 1 lane for all traffic. And traffic is managed so that depending on what direction you’re going, your driving against the normal flow of traffic.

This is a real scenario in a moderately busy area. Times may be wrong. The road is not blocked. But you have to take direction from a person. In fact this sort of temporary traffic change is fairly common especially due to road works.

They may not be making a profit, but they are booking some revenues, in the sense that people are paying money, right now, for rideshares.

This is not really a dynamic in aircraft programs, where delivery of aircraft takes years.

That’s actually a high hurdle to clear. Looking at fatalities per hundreds of thousands of miles driven humans are insanely good at driving. Using the 2018 NHTSA number of 1.13 deaths per 100 million miles driven, avg speed of 60 mph, 20 predictions per second, that equates out to an autonomous system can make a fatal mistake on average about every 120 billion predictions.

$10 is also a pretty wrong number for "hamburger". Looking at this ordering form, I see $2.49 for a mcdouble and only $1.39 for a basic hamburger. And the mcchicken is $1.19

(Though wow, mcdouble was half that 2-3 years ago. Big mac hasn't really changed.)

"app-based routing" is a mirage anyway. When you request an Uber ride, your request is advertised to drivers in the area, who can choose to accept it. There is no routing happening.

Sure, the driver then drives a route given to them to by the app, but so does everybody else, just in that case, the app is Google Maps.

AFAIK, the only routing cleverness is that the end of a shift, drivers can request to only take passengers who are heading in the direction of their own home. That's useful.

Medallions alone should be enough to make a difference. The efficient use of time probably has much less of an effect on earnings, if true.

If my guess is correct, it seems that you have missed a chance to work on relatively popular AS/400 servers ... :-)

As a former IBMer you missed nothing.

IBM is a terrible work place if you are technically inclined, if you are a slime ball of a manager it’s perfect for you.

IBM "Midrange", aka AS/400: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System_i

They were an interesting - but dead - sideline of computing evolution. I never used one, but they had a interesting object-based (instead of file based) operating system.

I guess it wasn't a real country after all.

Also a problem that when solved completely changes their business model (not owning cars) into a different one (owning robot cars) that’s much less profitable and they have no expertise in.

As time goes on I find more and more parallels with designers and legal/policy writers.

One just builds a specification of a technical system while the other builds a specification of a societal system.

Societal systems just have much more legacy code and inertia with very little in the way of mechanisms for in house testing at scale. There's no development server, just keeping tabs on competitors (ie other countries) to see how the change in production (ie a new law introduced) had second order effects.

Ubers not been one to shy away from legal skirmishes though.

That supposes that we've reached the flattening upper section of the S-curve of technology, right about now. There's nothing that suggests that. Various techs do reach that stage periodically, but nothing indicates that technology in general does, quite the contrary.

And what the past sees as hard often becomes less hard (I'm not going to say easy, because technology is never easy) in the future thanks to the accumulation of knowledge and increased speed of processing data.

Maybe so, but there isn't much evidence of a slowdown while there is a lot of evidence of acceleration, such as time to new tech, re: hunter gatherer to agriculture to industrial revolution to information revolution to potentially genetic/biotech/AI revolution in the future.

It's like nuclear power. It just has to continue regardless of how many deaths since the number of deaths will be lower than other methods, in this case coal and fossil fuel deaths, and in the case of self driving, manual driving accidents.

I wouldn't want to work on the AS/400 systems, but its Technology-Independent Machine Interface (TIMI) was basically Android Runtime decades before flip phones were even a thing: ship all of your userspace binaries as bytecode, and compile that bytecode to optimized machine code for your CPU at program installation time.

They are most certainly not a discontinued product. We just purchased a brand new Power9 server at work. The model we purchased was just released. Everyone at work still calls it an AS400. They are bulletproof and run many large businesses today. They are also not mainframes but are a class of machines called minicomputers.

IBM AS/400 is not discontinued, but rather has been rebranded as IBM Power System: https://www.ibm.com/it-infrastructure/power.

Like your article says, most of those deaths are things like less people smoking, and small increases in treating/early detection of specific cancers. But the underlying problem hasn't been solved. That is an evolution, not a revolution. Which is my point - less and less revolutions, more and more money spent, for small evolutions.

> Most other progress depends on cheap energy and governmental policies, which we’re getting again.

Which, again, isn't scientific progress. If it's a sociological problem it's not really a scientific breakthrough - it could have been solved decades ago if the will was there.

In fact I'd say we can gain MORE from sociological improvements, not pie in the sky science.

Of course no one can predict the future, that's true of anything. Not really an argument. We can only go by previous data - and previous data shows that we are anomalous, a tiny blip throughout time.

Did they change the number? The comment says one pedestrian death per 200 million miles right now, which is in the right ballpark and gives you a chance of 0.25%

1 out of 6 traffic fatalities is a pedestrian. Roads are designed poorly, ice exists, cities are built on steep hills, and people walk at night on the side of county highways.

only assuming a random naive model. how careful you are and how dangerous the location also matter.

25%

It’s the fundamentally different kind of danger from machines. They make mistakes we can’t understand.

I can understand a person being distracted, reacting slowly, not seeing me, etc. I can also mitigate this risk. Crossing the street I can make eye contact with a person and be really confident that they aren’t going to run me over.

Walking in front of a robot? I have no internal model for the kind of mistakes they make. It seems equally likely in any circumstance that they’ll make the mistake of running me down, and there is nothing i can do to avoid it.

I would say that, when I think about it occasionally, I am kind of scared by the possibility that someone will hack into all the self-driving machines (from a particular vendor) and make them all do something terrible at once—before anyone has time to deploy countermeasures.

Which is ironic, because this is the kind of automation they've been building into planes for years and consequently air travel is safer than it's ever been.

737 Max fiasco notwithstanding - it's worth mentioning that MCAS had nothing to do with flying the plane, only making it feel more like the 737NG to its human pilots

corrected- thanks. I hate being off by two orders of magnitude.

Depending on what you consider young, it's the #1 cause for ages 15-24, #2 for ages 5-14 in the US.

Okay, let's use another example: lifts don't move until the doors are closed. If the lift thinks the doors are open, it won't move. If it did, it would be an out of control situation just as quickly as a car misbehaving at 60 mph is. The expectation is that autonomous cars must be cautious.

I see your point but for me at least, my gut feeling is the autonomous cars are just scarier because they're moving at 60 miles per hour. Maybe it's irrational but this whole discussion isn't about rationality its about gut feeling