
One year old Pony.ai raises $112M Series A to build autonomous car future - rbanffy
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/15/one-year-old-pony-ai-raises-112-million-series-a-to-build-autonomous-car-future/
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ztratar
$112M for... geofenced self-driving? Is that the main differentiator, or did I
read that wrong?

I don't get their competitive advantage. Sure, he worked at Baidu and led a
team there, but this is a LOT of money for a very small chance at anything
competitive. 2 years to reach the market?

Where do they think Baidu, Google, Tesla & Uber will be in 2 years?

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gizmo
Their main differentiator is that they are China-first.

China doesn't want to miss the boat on any new innovation, and their
investment approach is to invest in literally everything, to maximize the
likelihood of backing a winner. Tencent bought 5% of Tesla just months ago.

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Waterluvian
Hypothetically say they have unlimited investment dollars. Can it do harm to
invest in everyone?

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nostrademons
If you pump unlimited investment dollars into unlimited investments, what
tends to happen is that your investees and their employees/suppliers walk off
with a lot of money and don't produce any goods or services that result in a
sustainable competitive advantage. This is basically the definition of a
bubble, and has happened over and over again, from Bitcoin to mobile to
subprime mortgages to Web 2.0 to .com to AI to savings & loans. You need some
sort of financial constraint - usually the threat of bankruptcy - to create an
incentive to invest _efficiently_ , where you make choices about where to
allocate resources such that your firm is more competitive than everyone else.

Spreading a small amount of money across a large number of investments within
a sector usually works out pretty well, though. This is a diversified
portfolio, and basically it means you're betting that _someone_ in the sector
will succeed without taking a position on _who_ that will be. If you know that
the market exists and the technology is attainable, it makes a lot of sense.

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dawhizkid
I understand the economic value of self-driving to ridesharing cos but I get
this feeling that the car itself is what needs to be "disrupted" and not the
fact that a car is or isn't driven by a human. Self-driving doesn't solve the
problem of traffic, congestion, pollution (from gas self-driving), etc etc.

I hope hyperloop become reality in the not too distant future and make it
feasible/practical for workers living 100mi+ away from urban job centers like
SF/NYC/LA to live in distant lower cost communities and comfortably commute
into work.

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dingo_bat
> Self-driving doesn't solve the problem of traffic, congestion, pollution
> (from gas self-driving), etc etc.

Doesn't it? Looks to me it will (except pollution).

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dawhizkid
How does it solve traffic/congestion issue? Because they drive in a way that
is more efficient than human-driven cars?

I envision many years or decades where having both self-driving and human-
driven cars on the road at the same time is going to be a nightmare for
everyone...

Also humans regularly drive slightly over the speed limit (at the flow of
traffic). I wonder if self-driving cars would be programmed to drive exactly
at the speed limit, which means they'd actually be slower.

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montrose
This is the biggest series A I've heard of. It may be the biggest ever.
Admittedly, series A rounds are now de facto series B rounds, but even so,
this is very big.

