
The race for autonomous cars is over. Silicon Valley lost - Shivetya
http://www.autoblog.com/2017/02/21/race-for-autonomous-cars-is-over-mcelroy-autoline-opinion/
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an0nym1ty
_One billion people get in and out of a car every single day. They go to work,
they go home, they shop, they play, they do a billion different things.
Knowing where they 're going and what they're doing can be very valuable. And
then it can be sold to anyone._

It will be a sad day if and when real innovation loses to the sale of personal
information for the purpose of surveillance and advertising.

~~~
thatcat
It was a sad decade. Seems like smartphones accomplished this and more for a
signifigantly lower price.

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_ph_
Funny that an article that claims the Silicon Valley lost uses a quote by Elon
Musk to argue its point. And using some of the Apple rumors as another
indicator. I would not declare the race for the autonomous car over, until
there exists one street legal autonomous car. And currently, Tesla is at least
among the possible candidates for this achievement.

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Fricken
Of all the car companies (including Tesla), General Motors is the only one
that appears to really have it's shit together, though this is liable to
change.

I agree that the OEM's in general have done a better job of responding to the
threat from the valley than the valley has done of adapting to the challenge
of manufacturing things made of atoms.

But the race. It hasn't even begun. We aren't even clear about what the
starting positions are.

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danbruc
Having a look at the history of autonomous cars [1] may be illustrative, the
summary reads as follows.

 _Experiments have been conducted on automating cars since at least the 1920s;
promising trials took place in the 1950s and work has proceeded since then.
The first self-sufficient and truly autonomous cars appeared in the 1980s,
with Carnegie Mellon University 's Navlab and ALV projects in 1984 and
Mercedes-Benz and Bundeswehr University Munich's Eureka Prometheus Project in
1987._

Autonomous cars are far from a new idea and companies and institutions spend
serious amounts of time and money on this. The technology did not make it into
production because it was not quite good enough, to expensive or the required
computing power took up to much room. But if you started looking into the
subject in the late 2000s or even later, then you are certainly late to the
party and established car manufacturers and suppliers might have quite a head
start for you to catch up.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars)

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coldcode
So said the phone companies about cellphones in 2005.

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dr_faustus
Teslas "autonomous" tech is pretty much on par with the tech used by the
classic OEMs. The difference is mainly in (sometimes misleading) marketing and
the fact that Tesla is willing to accept higher risks. This might be good in
terms of "pushing the envelope" but it can bite you badly if your immature
systems are responsible for a growing number of accidents.

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carlmungz
_Last year in the U.S. market alone Chevrolet collected 4,220 terabytes of
data from customer 's cars. McKinsey forecasts that this could grow into a
$450 to 750 billion market by 2030_

Is there _any_ data these big companies will not collect?

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holydude
disclaimer : i am not an american

Except they did not. US == technology, innovation, risk, success / failure.
Europe == traditional engineering, lack of innovation, fear.

For the sake of argument the automakers are incapable of making an
infotainment that would not suck. I do not quiet understand how can people
think that traditional automakers while good at making cars, logistics and
selling would better and more competitive in TECHNOLOGY than people from
Silicon Valley. Also SV is not trying to make money and compete with
automakers at this point. They are in it to win in the long run.

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mtgx
Tesla is technically from Silicon Valley. And it's the leader of the pack on
this.

I think Apple under Steve Jobs would've pulled it off as well, especially if
Steve decided to go "thermonuclear war" on Musk for "stealing" his employees.
But with Tim Cook the chances were much smaller. Tim Cook still hasn't started
moving Macs to ARM, and Steve Jobs would've probably done it like 2 years ago.
Windows is actually going to do that first, even though it's significantly
harder for Microsoft to pull it off than it is for Apple. Microsoft tends to
support legacy stuff a lot longer, and it has a lot more to support.

~~~
maxerickson
Tesla's autonomous stuff is the most prominent in the media. It's not at all
obvious that this translates into any sort of technical advantage.

~~~
Fricken
I'm surprised at how little attention Tesla has given to the idea of
robotaxis. At the time they decided getting Mobileye's chips into every Tesla
would be a good idea they should have started a dedicated L4 development
program, with the big spinning lidars and everything else.

The idea of taking an incremental approach has been abandoned by every serious
player _except_ Tesla. Musk is more interested in sizzle than steak. Selling
cars and keeping investors excited near term seems a bigger priority than
being ready for the day L4 becomes a real thing.

Properly validating a fully autonomous car isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.
Tesla is acting like a hare, but I'm betting on the tortoises.

~~~
_ph_
Tesla has robotaxis clearly in mind with their technology. They made several
statements about a possible taxi like service based on their cars. They think
they can achieve complete autonomy with their current tech package. They also
hinted that your tesla could drive itself to service appointments. I don't
know whether they actually manage to pull this off, but they clearly intend
to.

~~~
wernerb
Having the car drive itself away is in my mind one of the most important
features to get increase 100% electric market. You can have the car drive to a
charger and automatically drive back once full, mitigating a shortage of
charging stations as people leave their cars there long after they are charged
100%.

