
Uber’s Vision of Self-Driving Cars Begins to Blur - plasticchris
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/19/technology/uber-self-driving-cars.html
======
Fricken
I have no idea what's going on internally at Uber ATG, but they weren't doing
well before the killing of Elaine Herzberg. There was a pattern amongst
Autonomous driving outfits funded by well-heeled and impatient companies
jumping in to the game late, going balls-to-the-wall, and mostly just wasting
a lot of cash and resources on a gigantic clusterfuck. We can include Apple,
Baidu and Uber in this category. Baidu has since done a reboot. I have no idea
where Apple is at in terms of tangible progress, and then there's Uber.

The companies doing well are Waymo, Cruise, and Zoox, and one thing common to
all three of these is that they started small a few talented people and scaled
up in stages when it appropriate.

A testament to the whole 'just because 1 woman can make a baby in 9 months
doesn't mean 9 women can make a baby in 1 month' analogy.

~~~
dalbasal
Very true.

The over-exuberant business version of this is money-men types who see
companies as a collection of investments and cash flows. This leads them to
think of business problems in "resource allocation" terms. If company X's is
bad at UI, customer service or whatnot than this will be fixed by "investing"
more in it.

Here they see a big juicy prize: first to market with self driving taxis. They
understand that it's risky but they still assume a very strong correlation
between the amount of money going in, and the probability of their big juicy
prize coming out.

The whole approach is a bad idea in new technology. Instead of thinking in
expiremental, creative-discovery terms, they have a very precise destination
and they try to brute force a way to that destination with money.

~~~
adrianN
It worked pretty well for the Manhattan Project and the Apollo missions. I
think that you're romanticizing technological progress a bit if you don't
believe that more money (often) leads to more progress.

~~~
oh_sigh
Both of your examples where government-run "monopolies" \- that is, if you
were a physics or rocketry expert, you didn't have much of a choice of which
organization to join in order to build an A-bomb or rocket.

~~~
jonny_eh
And it's likely you got kicked out of the competition's country for being
Jewish. America got super lucky.

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chollida1
I posted this a while ago

    
    
        https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14317214#14317443
    

> 1) Drop self driving cars completely. YOu aren't getting there first,
> second, or anywhere close to third, just partner with a car company and call
> it a day.

> 2) Settle Google's lawsuit, hopefully 1 will help

> 3) Hire a new CEO, Sheryl Sandberg is almost certainly not available but
> someone who can show that change will and is happening internally.

They've completed 2 of the 3 things I thought they needed to go public.
Dropping their own self driving car program was the third.

They need to have their story figured out when they go public as investors
will want to know if they are all in or all out on developing their own self
driving cars.

I can't see them going public with their current strategy for self driving
cars, its a huge money pit with not much to show for it currently.

~~~
dharmon
The problem is they need a story like self-driving cars to maintain the
(inflated) valuation long enough for existing investors to get out. Taxi rides
alone are not nearly enough.

I think they are aware that they don't have a chance at it long-term. A
partnership isn't as sexy, but might be enough to eek out a $50B valuation.

~~~
aphextron
>The problem is they need a story like self-driving cars to maintain the
(inflated) valuation long enough for existing investors to get out. Taxi rides
alone are not nearly enough.

This is pretty much it. Making an Uber clone is absolutely trivial, and they
are being outcompeted in every single international market which has one. They
also have zero customer loyalty, people will happily switch to another app the
moment there is competition.

~~~
paulie_a
It seems like it would be difficult to clone their terrible GPS usage and
mapping. Most drivers use Google maps in my experience.

And now with Uber express pool it is pretty much guaranteed it will tell you
the wrong location. If it says northeast corner, just go to the south west
corner.

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Rotdhizon
I would never trust an Uber backed autonomous car system. They should have
been shut down after it came out that they were cutting corners on safety and
tech to get the program as far along as they could before it caught up with
them. I can't believe Uber still exists at all with the negativity and
corruption associated with the brand.

~~~
wiremine
> I would never trust an Uber backed autonomous car system.

I agree, and it makes me wonder how this is going to shake out. In the
automotive industry it's very common to have the tier 1s provide LOTS of tech
to the OEMs, but it's typically isn't branded. Interiors, infotainment,
brakes, etc. It feels like self-driving subsystems will be the same thing.

So, I might not trust Uber-branded systems, but I might trust Apple or
Microsoft (Just to use some common brands as placeholders). Would we trust
those systems more than the OEM-branded systems?

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shriver
Uber seem to have two really key problems:

The first is that self-driving is super difficult, they don't really have the
expertise, and a lot of their progress seems to have come from being able
disregard proper safety procedures. So to move forward with it they'd need to
fess up to investors that it'll take much longer than anticipated and it'll be
much more expensive. That'll damage the company value significantly, and it's
not really relevant to what the core of the business is doing right now. I
actually find it fascinating - Uber has built an app that disrupts the
traditional taxi marketplace. Separate to that they've got a division working
on a produce to disrupt Uber's current market place.

The second problem is that if they choose not to do autonomous driving their
entire business proposition needs re-establishing. Can they actually make
money doing what they're currently doing? Or are they doomed to sink huge
venture capital sums into acquiring market shares, only to fail to reach a
dominant enough position to actually raise prices and make bank. And part two
to that question: Can they achieve that profitability and a good enough return
to be worthwhile for investors before someone who does succeed in disrupting
the taxi business with self-driving cars.

~~~
WilliamEdward
One problem I can see is that they're trying to implement autonomous cars too
fast, and secondarily they're trying to replace Uber X with them. If they
treated auto-cars the same way they treated Uber Black, and make it a more
luxury choice with a higher price, they could slowly implement this into their
business over time, one car at a time. I personally would pay more for an
auto-car. But the big crux is your first point, and the solution in my mind is
for them to just be way way slower and ensure full safety precautions. I don't
think they have to dismantle the division nor do I think autonomous cars are
out of the realm of possibility.

~~~
drywater
Why would one pay a higher price on a driverless ride?

~~~
sushid
I mean if the data says they're safer on average, I'd pay a bit more? And it'd
do away with loud blasting of the driver's favorite genre in the car, turning
off the AC and rolling down the windows when I'd prefer it on, aggressive
acceleration, etc. that you see with some UberX drivers.

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lx3459683
Self driving cars are not going to happen in established cities for a very,
very long time.

The only thing that could make it happen is a giant like Google/Alphabet
investing enough cash to lobby governments to repurpose existing
transportation infra to only belong to self-driving cars. But that's also the
doorway to a dystopian future where megacorps run entire countries.

~~~
emodendroket
By the time you're building self-driving car-exclusive tunnels and the like,
you really are getting very little benefit over a train system to justify
doing it, especially when you take emissions into account.

~~~
maym86
Right. We already have a great solution to many of the autonomous vehicle
problems. Trains and busses.

~~~
morsma
As a European living in the states. Trains and buses are not a substitute for
a car, not even in Europe.

~~~
emodendroket
How many Americans drive to and from an office in a city center at the same
predictable hours every single day? We're certainly underutilizing trains.

~~~
maym86
Even shared bus services can made into something desirable with the right
marketing and investment. The large tech companies provide luxuary coach
services with WiFi to their workers and the people riding them are seemingly
very happy with the services.

~~~
emodendroket
I mean, let's be honest here: a lot of people don't want to ride the bus
because they associate it with poor people and don't want to share a vehicle
with them. There's a lot of legacies of America's social problems getting
tangled up with this question.

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Dwolb
Uber is way way far out of their league here.

Imagine being a software and services company trying to build one of the most
mechanically and electronically complex items that humans have ever built with
a team that has only built prototypes and not having the war chest of
continuing positive cash flow to fund development.

Not even looking at the strategy of it all, this program sounds like it needs
to be dumped in favor of partnerships.

~~~
chrisseaton
> with a team that has only built prototypes

This is normal for research isn't it? If someone before you has already built
a working version of something, then it isn't research any more. And Uber
hires extraordinarily qualified AI researchers doesn't it?

~~~
InitialLastName
I think what they're saying is that usually teams don't go that far out of
their industrial strength. In a way, Uber here is going from being cell phone
app developers to making automotive hardware, which is a big shift. Shipping
hardware past the prototype phase is __HARD__ in ways that shipping a software
app/building a marketplace isn't (not saying the latter aren't hard, but the
two tasks take very different types of organizations).

~~~
icebraining
_Uber here is going from being cell phone app developers to making automotive
hardware_

But why would they do that, instead of hiring other developers? Surely
Levandowski would have an idea of who to hire.

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tambourine_man
It’s amazing how fast and radically the narrative shifts.

An year or so ago self driving cars would be here _anytime now_.

Now it’s almost consensus that it’s not for going to happen in the next
decade.

~~~
jonknee
Counterpoint, it's happening now with Waymo.

~~~
Fricken
Waymo's initial commercial deployment is imminent but is now a good 6 months
behind their initial announcement last November. Waymo is still using safety
drivers most of the time, and the commercial deployment will likely be
confined to members of their EZ rider guinea pigs. It's very exciting seeing
how far they've come, but for every new region they hope to roll out in
there's going to be a ton of work. AI can interpolate but it cannot
generalize.

We're past peak hype and sliding into the trough of disillusionment.

~~~
tigershark
Why is 6 months behind if they said that they will launch a commercial service
this year?

~~~
Fricken
Last November Krafcik said "In a few months". A few months later in March it
was changed to "Later this year." Rumours circulated that they had planned for
this month, August, which were corroborated by a big Bloomberg puff piece and
a ballyhooed partnership announcement with the Valley transit authority, that
came out late July, but still no deployment. They're hung up on something.

------
liaukovv
To me it looks like self-driving problem turned out much harder than
anticipated by most players at first(10 years ago?)

~~~
51Cards
Which kind of amazes me that it wasn't obvious. When I start to think of
vision recognition issues, poor conditions, missing signs, markings, etc.,
unpredictable human drivers... then all of the edge cases I alone have seen in
30 years of driving... I would definitely have put the problem on the very
edge of what might be solvable. And that's today, not 10 years ago. What
amazes me more is that companies like Google have come as far as they have. My
kudos to those who sought to tackle it.

~~~
bloorp
Yeah... Just yesterday I was driving at night, through road construction, with
a torrential downpour, and nowhere to pull off, and it was freaking scary. And
I remember just thinking, "This kind of thing happens to me maybe a few times
a year and there's no way in 30 years that we're going to trust autonomy with
this"

~~~
allannienhuis
but isn't that part of the point? I doubt any automated system would consider
driving in those conditions 'safe', so it would deal with the situation by
pulling over to a safer spot and stop driving. Humans make terrible risk
decisions in cases like that - continuing to drive in horrible snowstorms,
etc, when the risks a way higher than our already-risky roads in normal
conditions.

By not having the human make that decision, you save lives, even if some
people arrive home late.

It does raise the point of 'rescue' in certain dangerous conditions like
winter storms. Extreme rain in the dark can probably normally be waited out,
but snowstorms and other road-closure type conditions probably warrant a
different proactive rescue type response if we'll have riders with no driving
ability in self-driving cars.

~~~
Piskvorrr
"Not driving in the insane conditions when humans are foolish to do so anyway"
would IMHO allow routine drives in good weather in known terrain without
roadworks, about half the year. Which is a great and magnificent improvement,
in all honesty - that is, once we can get the marketing types to cool down
from their current hype "it drives itself, full autonomy, everything and a
pony*!!!!!!!"

~~~
51Cards
I think this is a critical point. We need to reign in the customer's
expectations that have already been set too high. They're already expecting to
just get in and go anywhere while watching things on their phone or reading a
book... soon. We already see this with people posting videos of sitting in the
passenger seat while their Tesla rips down the highway in traffic.

Like anything it should be a graduated phase in. It will handle some of the
conditions some of the time, and in time it will get better. It would be like
me being frustrated I can't carry on a conversation about philosophy with my
Google Home. "... but you said I could talk to it and ask it questions!!!"

~~~
Piskvorrr
Expecting a conversation on philosophy would be completely understandable - if
the vendor sold it to you with the tagline "it has all the parts it needs for
a philosophic conversation!" Google Home doesn't do that, Tesla does. (Musk
doesn't even try to weasel around it: says "full self-driving features", Tesla
marketing materials repeat. That is, in my opinion, a blunt lie.)

------
otakucode
Did Uber figure out that if anyone can buy self-driving cars that their golden
utopia vision of booting all drivers and simply maintaining a fleet of self-
driving roving vehicles doesn't make sense? Did they figure out that someone
else can run servers just as well as Uber and offer people the opportunity to
lease out their self-driving cars, utterly destroying Ubers market (they would
have to charge far more to maintain the whole lifespan of the self-driving car
where someone only renting theirs out for a few hours a week would happily
take far less)? Or have they just generally realized self-driving cars will
never work because no company in the software space is capable of dedicating
the years of testing necessary to make a truly reliable product, while those
willing to cut every corner will be first to market.... and will proceed to
destroy the market by turning society against them after some of their poorly-
designed vehicles smear a few toddlers across the sidewalk.

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S_A_P
Wasn't Uber's autonomous program basically a bunch of Carnegie Mellon
researchers? My initial thought was that they actually had some of the best
people in the field working on this problem. I vaguely even remember some
criticism of Uber because they had plucked so many of the prominent
researchers that there was brain drain at the university. What happened?

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tonyquart
I personally think there are so many flaws in these self-driving cars safety
features. There are quite many review by car owners on Youtube, forums, etc. I
have also read an article that talks about this at
[https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-
accid...](https://www.lemberglaw.com/self-driving-autonomous-car-accident-
injury-lawyers-attorneys/). I think until car companies fix these flaws, I
myself will not try one of these cars.

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bogomipz
The article states:

>"The company, valued at $62 billion, has racked up billions of dollars in
losses since it was founded in 2009 and needs to persuade investors that it
can eventually create a sustainably profitable business. The self-driving
efforts, which have been losing $100 million to $200 million a quarter, do
little to help that case."

Can anyone say or speculate what percentage or Uber's losses are a result of
the ATG efforts? Would they be profitable without it now?

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jgalt212
What I don't get is why Travis thought whomever developed self driving cars
wouldn't sell them to all comers? And even if the first guy didn't, under the
guise hoping to create a vertically integrated monopoly, the 2nd, 3rd, 4th ...
vendor would.

