
Emails show Kalanick's suspicions about Google's self-driving cars - malandrew
http://www.businessinsider.com/emails-uber-wanted-to-partner-with-google-on-self-driving-cars-2017-7
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vivekd
Kalanick was absolutely right to be panicking about self driving cars. The
reason we pay a little more for taxis and ubers is that we have to pay for the
person driving the cars. With a self driving taxi service, and no need to pay
for a driver, the cost of hiring a ride would become much cheaper disrupting
uber's business.

* This post was Edited in reply to comment with an edit deleting criticism about intellectual property

~~~
factsplease
Could you please keep your statements truthful. There is no proof that
Kalanick or Uber stole anything from Waymo. There is an ongoing and unresolved
court case to determine that. It's only appropriate to make such a statement,
if it's proven that Uber stole anything. This is HN not reddit.

Thus far, all we know is that Levandowsky alledgedly took files as leverage to
make sure Google paid him the bonuses Google was late on, but he was
expressively forbidden by Kalanick from bringing any of those files to Uber.
All the discovery performed so far has turned up zero evidence that any files
from Waymo ended up at Uber.

It's not uncommon for legacy companies to sue newer, more nimble and more
promising companies over IP issues when they lose star performers. It also
happened to Google when Paypal sued them for trade secret theft when promising
senior talent left Paypal to join Google Wallet:

[https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/26/paypal-lawsuit-
google/](https://techcrunch.com/2011/05/26/paypal-lawsuit-google/)

It's perfectly okay to recruit promising talent from other companies with
better offers so long as the recruiting company keeps everything kosher via
due diligence that ensures the talent does not bring intellectual property
from the previous employer to the new company. All evidence made public thus
far suggests the Uber did its due diligence here and made sure nothing
belonging to Waymo made its way to Uber.

~~~
ultimateedition
Are you a bot? The comment you replied to made no mention of Waymo or
stealing.

~~~
factsplease
No, not a bot. The original comment made allegations of IP theft by Kalanick.
It has since been edited.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Are you an Uber employee?

~~~
malandrew
I've read the comment you're replying to a few times, and I'm curious why it
matters if they are or not. For the purpose of contributing to this
discussion, have they stated anything false or misrepresented anything? If so,
you should present that as a retort instead, instead of questioning their
identity.

Furthermore, for authors of comments critical of Uber, do you also go out of
your way to ask if they work for a competing company like Waymo, Google, Tesla
or Lyft?

Let's ask you that same question. Are you a Waymo, Google, Tesla or Lyft
employee or shareholder?

~~~
malandrew
Nevermind. I can answer that question for you. You're a Tesla shareholder.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13354703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13354703)

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xiaoma
How unusual is it for venture units like this to collect data from the
companies they've invested in and then scale up competitors to the successful
ones?

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Aron
Travis also tried to partner with Tesla on this by using Tesla as a source for
the vehicles (not sure who was responsible in this case for the software --
prolly uber), and Musk declined. Soon thereafter, Musk published his grand
plan part 2 for Tesla, which included a home grown ride-sharing network where
in grand Musk style they are going to do everything themselves.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If you have the vehicles, why partner with someone who just wrote a platform
you can replicate yourself? Uber has no value to those doing the actual self-
driving work. They are the MBA in your startup to the CTO building the actual
product.

~~~
SilasX
That's like saying, if you make cars, why let Avis take the profits from
renting them out? In both cases, because that car related business (rentals or
ride hailing apps) is outside your core specialty.

~~~
toomuchtodo
May the most efficient vertically integrated conglomerate win then.

~~~
malandrew
So to play devil's advocate if that's how you believe things will play out...
what happens to the existing car companies once new car sales start dropping
precipitously? There are more car manufacturers that will be fighting over the
same shrinking pie of new car sales than there are global TNCs. Their
valuations will likely drop to the point where they could become an
acquisition target for Uber. The only competitive advantage Tesla has is in
batteries, and that will likely become a commodity insofar as TNCs are
concerned far before it's a competitive advantage. The daily driving distances
a battery needs to support for TNC use is a lot lower than an individual
looking to do long road trips.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Uber won't last long enough to acquire a traditional automaker before
technology creates a death spiral for those automakers. I'm wrong if they can
find additional investors willing to gamble on the expected duration of time
till that happens (~5 years at least).

Tesla has a product people will buy today (with ~25% margins!), as well as a
team to transition to ridesharing in the future. They're collecting millions
of miles per day of autopilot data and that'll only increase with the model 3
rollout.

