Lyft Self-Driving

https://www.lyft.com/self-driving-vehicles

by gwintrob • 9 years ago

202 161 9 years ago

elvinyung• 9 years ago

It's a Christmas miracle!

In more seriousness, I'm curious how well this is supposed to play with the other partnerships that Lyft already has? i.e. all together, is this suppose to represent one coherent effort to build L5 autonomous, or multiple parallel ones?

ukulele• 9 years ago

This really is the endgame for both Uber and Lyft. IIRC, Uber did $16B last year in revenue and paid something like $13B to drivers. Self driving vehicles will turn their current breakeven/loser business models into massive cash cows.

toomuchtodo• 9 years ago

Neither Uber or Lyft will reach full autonomy before exhausting their runway, unless a miracle occurs and they solve level 5 within the next 1-2 years (caveat: it could happen, but it’s very unlikely).

You can’t do hundreds of millions of dollars in raises forever without some proof of progress (or maybe you can if SoftBank is willing to pour money in for a decade).

At some point, someone is going to be left holding the bag when it’s evident that the last 20% is the hardest part (but mandatory for level 5 service).

yeukhon• 9 years ago

Not just that, getting self-driving approved with regulators is a major challenge. Also, to achieve level 5 we need not just algorithm improvement, our physical infrastructure need to be improved as well. On intersection, two human drivers wave at each other to decide who goes first. How should the human driver communicate with the machine? What should the machine do when there is a dog standing in the middle of a street? Move on and let a human driver take care of it? Isn’t that now a bystander effect? These are just some examples I am not sure if textbook definition of level 5 will address.

Going really extreme: in a car accident in a somewhat remote area, the driver might be able to get an injured passenger out if the passenger stuck. Now a fully autonomous car, there is only passenger. Yes, for sure this is extreme and perhaps likely a dramatic scene only, but it is one of those edge cases we can’t cover in a self-driving car.

zitterbewegung• 9 years ago

I don't think level 5 would be the next step for self driving automation. The biggest ground based fleet with very high autonomy is John Deere. Therefore, I would expect large commercial trucking to be the next logical target. It would cut their costs alone by changing how much their insurance policies and general efficiency. John Deere trucks almost drive themselves. So, I would see trucking be replaced first. It looks like Elon Musk wants to do that with their new set of Trucks. Since they would have the same sensors as the cars that would be a bunch of data to collect. It would also be a easier way to get proof of progress. But, at this point if you replace trucking you will get a large economic change because you are changing one of the largest source of jobs in America.

Then since you have proven that you could try acquiring Uber and or Lyft at a fire sale price because they couldn't come up with a solution in time and get their data and logistics.

adventured• 9 years ago

I'm curious what's going to inevitably eat into that potential margin. The most profitable large scale businesses are Visa and Facebook. After the corporate tax change, both should get near 50% net income margins (Visa is at 44% last quarter; Facebook was at 46%). I could see some of it getting competed away vs Lyft, given back to consumers in lower fares. Some to typical bloat with scale & age. Perhaps higher local taxes on their business, as the cities they make all their money in will hit them that much more if they're not employing drivers. And of course those millions of vehicles will have a high cost in terms of maintenance, replacement, vandalism, etc.

evv• 9 years ago

Clearly this is the thinking of both companies, but I'm not convinced it makes sense. The $13B that Uber paid out last year gave them access to a scalable network of ~7M vehicles, not just the drivers. Even if they reach level 5 autonomy before they run out of runway, how long will it take to build out a network of that size?

bookmarkacc• 9 years ago

Who ever gets self driving down first can get as many cars are they want. Two scenarios:

"Let Uber drive you to work for free then pay you to use your car for the day. We'll cover the gas!"

"GM is happy to partner with Lyft to be the first self diving car! GM Good. GM Hip"

greentrust3• 9 years ago

That's not 7M vehicles concurrently though. At any given time maybe there are a few hundred thousand trips happening. With self-driving cars utilization can go way up since they're not tied to a human. and. So I imagine Goog/Lyft/Uber etc would quickly acquire a fleet of 100k vehicles for a few billion dollars.

melvinmt3• 9 years ago

This really is the endgame for both Uber and Lyft.

I believe so too, but from a slightly different angle: I believe self-driving vehicles will literally mean the end for both Uber & Lyft (and they only accelerate their fate by investing into it).

To understand why: their inherent value is their ability to match human drivers with customers. They both do such a good job at it, that the switching costs between the 2 apps are quite low (first sign of weak competitive advantage).

Now, take away the difficult problem of finding human drivers at the right place and the right time. You now have self-driving cars that make no mistakes, have no scheduling issues, do not get tired etc. It’s way easier to fullfil demand. But, you’re not the only one working on this problem. Google, Tesla, (probably Apple too) are all actively working on the same problem. And they probably have 10X the computing/engineering/cash/data resources to solve this problem.

What are Uber/Lyft left with? A fancy app with a button (which they have already proven to easily clone). Not only that, they also have to compete with the native operating systems (and future devices) that the big corps control. They don’t even own their maps!

So yes, in 2023, you will probably be able to order a Level-5 self driving vehicle to your doorstep with a wink of your half robotic eye, but it will not be Uber or Lyft.

nemothekid• 9 years ago

Tesla has 10x the computing/engineering/cash/data resources to solve the self driving car problem than Uber? In revenue/market cap/profit Uber and Tesla are nearly equal in size.

The way I see it, Lyft and Uber are already "big corps", and there are likely several logistic concerns that give Lyft/Uber a major head start on Google despite Google's alleged software superiority. However, I don't see Google releasing a massive self driving fleet in San Francisco and simultaneously capturing significant market share overnight.

amelius• 9 years ago

Will there not be patent issues?

twelve402• 9 years ago

Uber owns their maps.

fragmede2• 9 years ago

A fancy app with a button

Yes but that app is branded Uber/Lyft, and while building an app with a button is easy, when was the last time you tried searching Bing or DuckDuckGo because Google Search was returning nonsense?

There's also question of mindshare; getting people to install an app and create an account is difficult enough, never mind B2B business contracts, such as uberpool being a recognized WageWorks commuter benefit, that are business-y to replicate.

There have been many solid competitors (both hardware and software) to the iPhone, but there's still only one Apple.

dorianm• 9 years ago

Looks like it's LIDAR-based, and it's a partnership with nuTonomy[1].

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/06/lyfts-self-driving-pilot-w...

deepnotderp• 9 years ago

Source for LIDAR based?

augustt• 9 years ago

There's a big spinning LIDAR on the 'engineers' page

jsjohnst8• 9 years ago

Everybody who isn’t crazy is still looking towards LIDAR, at least in some fashion, to get to level 5. I’m not saying it’s required, just that anyone taking safety seriously hasn’t ruled out possibly needing it.

jsjohnst8• 9 years ago

Lyft is investigating all methods to get to Level 5, ruling out or requiring a specific tech doesn’t make sense at this stage.

Game_Ender• 9 years ago

Based on their job openings [0] it looks like Level 5 is going head to head with Google, Cruise, and Uber and building a full autonomy software solution. Looks like they are close to square one though since they are hiring leads for essentially everything: localization, perception, prediction, and controls.

It's an interesting to see all the players trying to have an out if someone withholds either the transportation network, or self driving tech.

0 - https://www.lyft.com/jobs#job-openings

skywhopper• 9 years ago

To the extent this works anytime soon it will be so slow and inconsistent that it won’t be economically successful. Any driving service that works worse at night, in bad weather, or outside small well-mapped neighborhoods will not be comprehensive or reliable enough to be economically viable.

Also the idea that self driving cars will end traffic is a dangerous lie to tell. Self driving cars will do nothing to reduce traffic. If anything, self driving cars will increase car trips. And in fact in order to serve people with reasonable service times there will need to be _more_ cars on the road at all times which will more than soak up any additional capacity gained from tighter traffic patterns on restricted access highways.

elchief• 9 years ago

Love me that hacker ethos...

rocky11382• 9 years ago

He or she is definitely right about the second point. For more detail on the thought behind the second point, read up on the Jevons Paradox if you're not already familiar with it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I'm not convinced about the first idea, though. I think we shouldn't get confused with equating not covering all trips with lack of success. Even if driverless only works for commutes in one or two major cities I think that might be enough to call it a success, economical and societal.

TYPE_FASTER• 9 years ago

I think self driving cars will increase safety, and decrease accidents. I've read that accidents contribute for 25% of traffic congestion that exists today, so self driving cars could have a noticeable impact on decreasing drive times.

bennettfeely• 9 years ago

The only noticable impact will be as you watch fellow human drivers speed past you on the road.

Self-driving cars must follow the speed limit at all times.

How can a company program a car to break the law?

grecy• 9 years ago

Worst case scenario - the cars NEVER self-drive and always have a driver - the whole setup is exactly as economically viable as current taxis. From all reports, current taxi setups make a lot of money.

If the cars can self-drive lets say 25% of the time, then the whole setup is that much more economically viable.

Turing_Machine2• 9 years ago

outside small well-mapped neighborhoods will not be ... economically viable.

Hmm... but aren't the small well-mapped (and high-density) neighborhoods where almost all the money is?

You see way more conventional cabs roaming Manhattan and the Chicago Loop than you do on a county road outside Minot, North Dakota.

Also, there's no reason they couldn't keep some human drivers for trips outside the dense core regions. The apps know where you're going before the car is even dispatched, after all.

"This guy is going from the Art Institute to the Field Museum... send him a robocar." "This guy is going from O'Hare to a farmhouse on the outskirts of Kankakee... send him a human driver."

sidcool3• 9 years ago

Why can't Lyft just partner with Waymo? Supposedly they have the best solution right now.

adjkant2• 9 years ago

They are.

https://outline.com/qMtpFx

sidcool3• 9 years ago

This is cool! I somehow missed this part. Uber's in dock if this takes off well.

xandar11• 9 years ago

I'm skeptical about all this.

Hubert Horan [1] has done a great job exposing Uber's failed business model in 11 part series on NakedCapitalism ("Can Uber Ever Deliver?"). Same goes for Lyft.

When it comes to self driving cars, why should Uber or Lyft have any massive advantage over other players and what makes us think it won't turn into something like an airline industry which has been unprofitable for most of their history?

[1] http://horanaviation.com/Uber.html

tlb• 9 years ago

The airline industry is unprofitable mainly because the pilots capture most of the money. Their union gives them nearly unlimited pricing power.

It's possibly that self-driving cars won't be profitable, but it certainly won't be for the same reason.

There's reason to believe it'll be a winner-take-all market, because more data leads to lower crash rate which (in a world of rational consumers) will make them more popular, in a self-reinforcing cycle.

arcticfox• 9 years ago

Once we hit a minimum threshold of safety, don't you think other factors will become more important? Since when do consumers make choices solely based on safety? We would only see one type of car on the road if that was the case, whoever was winning the crash and avoidance tests that year.

alasdair_• 9 years ago

The airline industry is unprofitable mainly because the pilots capture most of the money. Their union gives them nearly unlimited pricing power.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average salary of a Commercial Pilot is $73,490 per year.

This seems low given the sheer number of hours of training involved.

brians• 9 years ago

If that were true, we’d expect the nonunion carriers to do fantastically. But Frank Lorenzo has broken N unions and driven N airlines under. We’d expect the regional carriers, which often pay under $40k to pilots, to do great—but they fail more often than the big carriers paying $100 to $150k.

But your last point is interesting. AlphaGo Zero suggests that for many situations, the return to more data levels off very quickly—after all, humans all learn to drive reasonably well with a certain amount of training. The early phases may have this self-reinforcing bit, and there may be an early dominant player, but we should expect that twenty years in anybody will be able to make a self-driving car that is as safe as modern air travel.

nradov3• 9 years ago

This shouldn't be down voted, you are correct about the airline part. For details see the excellent explanation by Philip Greenspun, an engineer who switched careers to become an airline pilot.

http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines

greentrust3• 9 years ago

A hypothetical – since flights are relatively expensive, people usually just go for the cheapest option, so airlines race to the bottom and lose profits. With autonomous vehicles the cost of a ride will be very inexpensive–a few dollars probably–so consumers may focus less on cost in favor of brand loyalty, cool cars, etc, leaving room for providers upsell certain services and profit (turning a $4 ride into a $5 isn't a bad profit margin)

ttul• 9 years ago

I know I will. I’m not going to ride in the Crapton Expresss.

Someone4• 9 years ago

I’m sure they will try to hide that by offering subscriptions, loyalty cards, better chairs, larger cars, larger monitors, Netflix, faster rides, etc, but the competition will go wherever the demand is and offer that $5 ride for $4.50.

I’m not sure how well they will be able to diversify their product while keeping the economies of scale. If 10% of your customers is willing to pay for more leg space, can you get by with 10% of your fleet being larger cars, or does that affect the waiting times of that 10% too much, and do you need to make most of your cars larger?

Also, if you pay $1 extra per trip on your commute, that’s a nice smartphone each year.

pwaai2• 9 years ago

This makes me think and I'm pretty excited about it...

How far off/difficult would it be for Tesla to create their own ride sharing app?

I mean both Lyft and Ubers "moat" seems to be their app which is not defensible against a market leader in autonomous cars that can simply switch on a new marketplace for its userbase and whole lot of other folks that can't afforda tesla but wants to be picked up and dropped off by one.

Would it be far fetched to see Tesla's market cap will combine Uber and Lyft on top of their existing market cap.

I mean it's a matter of time for Tesla...thanks to Uber's aggressive campaign efforts in spreading ride sharing, city management will be more than familiar and open to new innovators....plus Elon Musk's reputation (he might outsource some SpaceX to your city, you never know) riding him to the stratosphere....

fragmede2• 9 years ago

How far off/difficult would it be for Tesla to create their own ride sharing app?

Tesla's suburban HQ in the hills may be less appropriate (due to lack of density), or possibly more (easier to drive in suburbia vs the city), but at least one other manufacturer - Cruise, now owned by GM, is running internal trials, with hopes of opening it up soon.

https://readwrite.com/2017/08/10/cruise-self-driving-app/

thisisit2• 9 years ago

This whole thing reminds of Buffett, Charlie Munger and the textile mill machinery story. I need to find the exact link for it though. Here's what I can remember from top of my head:

They were offered more "efficient" machinery, which could manufacture more textiles than the old machines. "It will pay for itself" was the pitch. But they refused as more efficient machines meant they had to pass on the savings to the customers. With lower prices, machinery was not exactly going to pay for itself.

I guess that will be the case for Uber and Lyft too. Any efficiency with low enough barrier will mean no one is reaping profits rather passing it on to the customers and hence making less money.

Edit:

Found the link:

https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/a-lesson-on-worldly-wisdom/

lgas2• 9 years ago

I don't understand why they would have to lower prices just because they bought more efficient machines. That defeats the point (as mentioned) but has two obvious solutions that I can think of: keep prices flat, or raise prices.

corruptbytes• 9 years ago

I don't think self driving cars will ever have a low enough barrier. You need data to train the cars, and you need a lot of data.

Google is mining millions of captchas for their self driving cars, they could publish their algorithms for it too, but unless you have access to all that beautiful training set, it wouldn't be much of use.

I have no idea how lyft or uber is going to get that much data, maybe potentially buy paying drivers more to stick sensors on their cars to collect insane amounts of data? But it's gonna be a tricky thing to get right

sytelus• 9 years ago

The most important part:

Detailed cost data from studies of traditional operators in Chicago, San Francisco and Denver showed that 58 cents of every gross passenger dollar (fares plus tips) went to driver take home pay and benefits, 9 cents went to fuel and direct fees, 18 cents went to vehicle costs and the remaining 15 cents covered corporate overhead and profit.

This in essence states that taxi business has upper limit of 15% margin. That's very low however that does not mean Uber or Lyft like businesses are fundamentally flawed. It just means Uber/Lyft has to just figure out how to survive with, say, 10% margin and they have opportunity to drive out higher margin traditional businesses. The nationwide volume can still yield great profitability (just like Amazon model). So Uber/Lyft are perfectly viable and profitable businesses, at least in theory.

Also notice that driver comp is 58%. That's massive. Self-driving will absolutely change the landscape. I would highly doubt that vehicle ownership would be as important as it is now once self-driving becomes norm. It's similar to everyone doesn't own water well any more because you have water on-demand at any time you want.

Someone4• 9 years ago

”So Uber/Lyft are perfectly viable and profitable businesses, at least in theory.”

AFAICT, Horan doesn’t dispute that there is business there; he disputes that it is worth their valuation. If, say, they can make a hundred million dollars of profit a year, long term, that is a viable and profitable business, but not one that’s worth tens of billions of dollars.

And vehicle ownership? I think it is extremely hard to predict what will happen. Many people currently see their car as an extension of their home. If (possibly a big if) self-driving cars aren’t a lot more expensive, they may not want to give that up. Where else would people keep their sweets to eat during their commute, spare jacket, running shoes, tennis rackets, golf clubs, kids toys (let alone kids seats)?

There also may be extra stuff people may want to keep in _their_ self-driving car, for example a computer gaming system, a yoga mat or fitness machine (once self driving cars are safe enough, compulsory seat belts laws can go away)

omarforgotpwd• 9 years ago

GM owns 9% of Lyft, and also acquired Cruise, a YC company working on self driving tech. Since you can't invest in Lyft or Uber today, I would advise people to buy GM. I own about 5 times more Tesla stock than GM but I think GM is a really great value today trading at a P/E of less than 7. With the economics of this business transforming fundamentally over the next decade, making cars more of a "tech" business, I think you could see both revenue and earnings multiples increase dramatically. But who knows I could be wrong.

sidcool3• 9 years ago

Having recently watched the 'the big short', this is understandable and terrifying at the same time.

mherdeg2• 9 years ago

If there's a 90% reduction in accidents, who will be providing the donor organs? What will happen to the average lifespan of people with certain chronic illnesses?

lanna• 9 years ago

Are you truly suggesting we allow young, healthy individuals to die in car accidents to harvest their organs?

You should be asking yourself what will happen to the average lifespan of those who won't die prematurely in a car accident.

mherdeg2• 9 years ago

Heavens no -- I don't think society should allow anyone die in car accidents, young and healthy or otherwise. It's abundantly clear that driving is too dangerous by far.

But that doesn't stop me from wanting to know what the US will look like in a future with self-driving cars. Will we, for example, find such a severe shortage of donor hearts that certain unlucky people live less long? Will we prioritize research that could improve treatment diseases which, untreated, lead to organ transplants? Or will we consider changing laws to allow donors to be compensated for organ transplants? (which have all kinds of icky side effects but could help avert a crisis if there were one).

I genuinely don't know what the effects of fewer road deaths will be on transplant wait times and wonder how this externality (if there is one) will be handled.

pokstad• 9 years ago

We will be forced to invent a new popular fad that kills people as cleanly as possible: jumbo size brain piercings

jordache• 9 years ago

The traffic elimination claim is disingenuous. Surely they anticipate that as the avg traffic goes down, that just opens up for more volume of vehicles, thus reintroduces traffic problems

kbos87• 9 years ago

Today, the competitive advantage in this market goes to whoever has the largest network of drivers and can summon a vehicle quickly and at a low cost to a waiting passenger. The tech is marginally better or worse from Lyft to Uber to competitor X, and the ride quality is similar enough.

When self driving cars become a reality, I don’t see the technology or the data becoming a real sustainable competitive advantage for any one player. Once the last technical hurdles have been overcome and society has adapted in whatever way it needs to, it just won’t be that difficult for every auto manufacturer to figure out how to get in on the game.

Fragmentation across local markets also has to come into play at some point. It’s only a matter of time before cities and towns get their acts together and figure out how to extract revenue to at the very least cover the real but indirect costs they are incurring as a result of ridesharing. They could pretty easily make it next to impossible for their non preferred vendor partners to operate in a city.

em3rgent0rdr2• 9 years ago

I recently read a couple (long) articles basically arguing that the simple answer to transportation woes is not about self-driving cars and hyperloops, but basic simple steps to make cities more pedestrian friendly and improvements to mass transit:

http://www.kevinklinkenberg.com/blog/autonomous-vehicles-a-v... https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/12/what-elon-mus...

So I tend to not get excited about Lyft/Uber and autonomous vehicles when presented as a solution for transportation. Whether they will be successful companies is a separate question.

smt884• 9 years ago

Walking and mass transit suck for people who are: traveling with kids, obese, disabled, short on time, carrying groceries, elderly, and/or in a place with bad weather. That's not even mentioning people who can't afford to live in dense, central urban environments.

Self-driving, solar cars solve all problems of mass transit and are far cheaper, since they use existing roads.

sandworm1014• 9 years ago

And anyone with more than a handbag to carry. Many workers travel with tools. Im going to training next month and have to bring about 80lbs of various stuff with me. Hauling that in and out of busses, not to mention finding places to secure it while i sleep/eat, wouldnt be much fun. But it all fits in my car nicely. And no, i cannot send it by courier.

hanbura3• 9 years ago

Self-driving, solar cars solve all problems of mass transit and are far cheaper, since they use existing roads.

They don't solve the arguably most important issue: road capacity. A bus that takes the same space on the road as 2-3 cars seats 30 people (and holds another 30 standing). Self-driving cars enable somewhat more efficient traffic patterns, but they will have a hard time overcoming the order-of-magnitude lead that buses have.

And that's not even mentioning subways, those don't impact roads at all and move staggering amounts of people

so332• 9 years ago

The NYC subway accounts for 5 million trips each day, taking millions of cars off the road because they don’t need to exist in the first place.

Traveling with kids? Something people do with public transit and walking every day.

Promoting walking encourages healthy lifestyles; promoting driving (or just sitting in a car and not doing anything) encourages the opposite.

Elderly or disabled people take public transit all the time.

Short on time or carrying a bunch of groceries? Live out in the far suburbs? Then public transit isn’t for you. But it takes passengers who aren’t short on time off the roads, making your trip faster.

Edit: Cities with bad weather have adapted the cities to support public transit and walking (think covered, elevated walkways in Asia).

It’s not a zero sum game. Self driving cars will be great. Public transit is great (and can be great in more places 0if cities made more investment). Both can and should exist.

petre2• 9 years ago

These are all examples of European mass transit users. We even have places designated fir disabled, injured and elderly people on every bus, tram and metro.

hanbura3• 9 years ago

High-density housing with shopping and offices in walking distance would be massive steps towards solving Americas transportation problem. But this goes against the current US culture, so I'm not holding my breath.

Better public transit is also great, but that's also hard to deliver in low-density suburbia.

I agree that autonomous vehicles and Uber/Lift won't make travel times shorter. But they might help make the trip better because you can use the time better despite being in a car.

lewisinc• 9 years ago

What you'd be arguing for is, instead of revamping the way cars work, revamp the cities themselves. I feel like the market tends to side with whatever is the "lowest initial cost of entry" when picking which direction to go in, as much as I don't agree. So, between the choices currently available - what is the option that is the lowest barrier of entry financially?

intopieces• 9 years ago

America doesn’t want this. We vote against these designs time and time again. Nothing short of China style totalitarian urban restructuring will make US cities walking utopias.

kelnos11• 9 years ago

I live in a US city, and I still don't understand why this is the case. It completely baffles me why people would prefer to sit behind the wheel in stop-and-go city traffic, deal with pedestrians, cyclists, traffic lights, one-way streets, and parking, instead of designing and developing the city so everything they need is a short walk or at worst a quick transit ride away. It just seems like madness, like people are deliberately making their lives significantly worse, and they see the effects of that decision literally every day.

woolvalley• 9 years ago

Self driving cars are the mass transit of low-density suburbia. Electric AVs in the next 10 years would be a significantly cheaper solution than remaking US infrastructure & political culture to be more transit friendly. That is why americans are especially excited about them.

petre2• 9 years ago

What's wrong with having a bus + driver service low density suburbia today, than a number of self driving cars? Even a minibus.

cdancette• 9 years ago

While it seems obvious that autonomous driving is not a solution to urban transportation (cities are already crowded with cars), it can be a great one for long distance transportation. Roads are simple / cheaper to build than vacuumed tubes or railroads.

andy_ppp• 9 years ago

Has anyone seen anything to suggest this will happen for sure in 10 years? I’m sure there will be improvements in safety with these features but there are basically zero AI demos out there that are what I’d call good. For example Siri and even Google Assistant quickly show how limited they are after years and years of real world use. If these rely on the same Deep Learning technology won’t it just be the same limits apply to this much harder problem?

hanbura3• 9 years ago

Why should driving be a harder problem then being a universal assistant (Siri's promise)?

Siri's potential problem field is huge, driving is a well defined, limited problem field.

alexbeloi• 9 years ago

Siri/Alexa/GoogleAssist etc. work well in constrained situations (e.g. changing music, turning stuff on/off, pop culture quiz questions), they have trouble parsing more general/complex questions.

Many researchers I've talked to believe the initial self-driving car deployments to the public will be have to be very constrained: fixed routes, possibly isolated self-driving car lanes, only allowed in clear/daytime conditions.

nojvek2• 9 years ago

And its probably going to be here earlier than we think.

Essentially train carriages on tarmac :)

KKKKkkkk1• 9 years ago

Could someone explain what we're seeing here? I've seen self-driving startups do staged demos of self-driving cars, but this seems to be the unveiling of a self-driving car web page.

michalnaka• 9 years ago

"Last year, nearly 6 million Americans sold their cars and switched to ride sharing. This year, almost 6 million plan to do the same thing."

No source citied on this or any of the other assertions made on the landing page.

simonjgreen• 9 years ago

I envisage the manufacturers bypassing third party's entirely. Rather than buying or leasing car, you subscribe to your manufacturer of choices plan for a car as a service. Eg subscribe to Tesla. Quick trip, model 3 appears and drives you there. Longer trip? Model s does the job. Family holiday? Model x picks you all up. At the end of the day the car returns itself to the pool.

tonyquart• 9 years ago

I've just read https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accid.... Since few years ago, the only thing that made me interested to these autonomous cars is the laws that regulate these cars. I think the government haven't fixed the laws, so it's still an interesting topic to be discussed next year.

Lyft Self-Driving

Related Stories