
Google, Detroit diverge on road map for self-driving cars - kyrra
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/30/uk-google-detroit-idUKKBN0F50BV20140630
======
ryandvm
It seems obvious to me that industry outsiders are going to have a drastically
different road map for self driving cars than the entrenched players.

Clearly the end game for self driving automobiles is far, far fewer cars in
the world. In 25 years, relatively few people are going to be owning cars at
all. You'll subscribe to a self-driving car service (or maybe your government
will run it) and whenever you want to go somewhere, you'll enter your
automotive needs into your mobile device and five minutes later the
appropriate self-driving cycle/car/truck/van will pick you up in front of your
house.

There won't be a need for every family to own 3 cars that spend 90% of the day
turned off and taking up parking space. Of course Google and Detroit aren't
going to see eye to eye on this...

~~~
x1798DE
I'm really not sure that this is the case at all. Taxis already exist in
basically every city in the US, as do vanpools, bus services and heavily
subsidized public transportation, but we still have significant rates of car
ownership. Self-driving cars do _improve_ on the "human-driven-car" model
because they have faster reaction times and the like, but the aspect of self-
driving cars where you don't have to be in control of the vehicle isn't
anything new.

It's certainly _possible_ that cost was the major driver of these sorts of
things, but my guess is that the convenience of having your own car ready at
all times will remain paramount. It's also plausible to me that airbnb-like
services renting out self-driving cars will be common, which would
simultaneously alleviate the need to own a car _and_ reduce the cost of car
ownership.

I imagine the switch to primarily self-driving car services will have a
greater impact in cities, where the density will be high enough that the
latency between wanting a car and getting one will be smallest. If a car has
to drive for 20 minutes just to pick you up and take you to the store to get
some milk, you'll probably just want your own car.

~~~
abruzzi
I've frequently heard the idea bounced around that self driving cars will
eliminate the need for ownership. I'm glad you mentioned taxis, because it
brings up something that has bugged me about this idea for a while. I live in
a metro area of 200,000. This metro area has exactly zero taxis. (We do have a
free ride services that is funded by the local city for getting the elderly
and disabled around, which probably has six cars.) The three reasons are size
density and wealth. As density goes down, mileage to get from point A to point
B goes up, which means costs go up. It also means that cars are potentially
occupied for longer periods, so you would likely need more cars to service the
same population in denser areas. So ultimately taxis are not economically
feasible here. So because you don't have to hire drivers, those costs go down
and potentially lower the barrier to entry, but you have potentially more
expensive vehicles, and higher maintenance costs that may somewhat offset the
savings. So you could charge more for the service here, but being a poor city,
would anyone here pay the extra costs? Enough to sustain the business model?
Or will we have to suffer with significantly worse service--wait an hour to
get picked up. I'm sure the business model would work in SF, NYC, Chicago, but
here it will have to come down a lot in cost. Also (to the parent poster,) I
just see the possibility that a migration like this could take place within 25
years just ludicrous.

~~~
ncallaway
"Also (to the parent poster,) I just see the possibility that a migration like
this could take place within 25 years just ludicrous."

Why is such a time-frame for this kind of a transition so ludicrous?

In 1989 cell-phones were uncommon and looked like this:
[http://phoneevolution.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/1.jpg](http://phoneevolution.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/1.jpg).

In 1899 there were about ~8,000 automobiles in the United States [1]. In 1924
Ford was producing over 2M Model T's per year [2].

In 1903 we saw the powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft by the Wright
brothers. In 1927 somebody flew an airplane across the Atlantic ocean. [3]

[1]
[http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_19th....](http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_19th.htm)

[2]
[http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_30.ht...](http://web.bryant.edu/~ehu/h364/materials/cars/cars%20_30.htm)

[3] [http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/wb-
timeline.html#1903](http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/wb-
timeline.html#1903)

~~~
Mandelbug
I would like to point out that all of your examples are of expanding
industries, not industries that underwent large societal, cultural, and legal
transformations into entirely different industries. Society, culture, and laws
are _made_ for expanding industries, they have to be evolved and rewritten for
industries of change.

So I am going to have to disagree, 25 years would have to be the most
optimistic kind of prediction, assuming that all players are willing and pro-
active, rather than passive and resistive (both in society and legally
speaking).

------
jccooper
Incumbents are correct that adding evolutionary features will allow maturation
of technology and public acceptance. However, you cannot use that route to get
to a completely autonomous vehicle. There will almost certainly be a red area
once you get to the "car only needs human attention X% of the time" phase,
where X will be somewhere between 60 and 1. Once the human is allowed to tune
out, they're going to and won't be able to come back fast enough in many many
circumstances. Heck, that happens today when X is 100.

Once you find X, you're going to have to stop and/or back off a little on
automation. You can't just keep on pushing towards 0. I presume Google has
already found the X point during their program.

Google is ultimately right to be aiming at fully auto if the goal is fully
auto, not just "driver assistance." There's a big area where half measures
just won't work. I wager it'll take quite a lot of work to get to that goal,
but it at least seems achievable. And appropriate for an entity not already
"in the business".

~~~
Pxtl
Exactly this. The moment you make an autonomous vehicle where some period of
time can be done with no driver interaction, drivers _will_ fall asleep. What
do you do when it's time to get the driver back into the action, and they
don't respond?

If expressway shoulders were consistently safe to pull over upon, that would
be a good approach, but they're not.

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thinkmassive
"Some industry observers have suggested that Google should pair up with Tesla,
which is also developing self-driving technology and which shares Google's
Silicon Valley mindset."

I wish the article had expanded more on this topic. Both companies could make
significant gains by partnering and cutting out the old money from the
automotive industry. Not that I'm saying I hope that happens, I'm neutral on
that matter for now, but I'd like to see a lot more R&D done on autonomous
driving tech in my lifetime.

~~~
rondon2
It is much better to develop self driving technology in-house rather than risk
being stuck licencing technology from Google in perpetuity. The software is
the easy part. The regulatory and societal hurdles are the hard part and
Google is already working on that for free.

------
webmaven
Interesting quote:

 _" Moreover, a study by consulting firm KPMG last year found that American
consumers would trust brands like Google and Apple more for self-driving cars
than they would automakers."_

Which reminded me of this from a while back:

 _" Early concept research had made it clear that cueing the GM name resulted
in a substantially lower quality perception and credibility, whereas cueing a
Japanese name (such as Sony) did the reverse."_

[http://books.google.com/books?id=OLa_9LePJlYC&lpg=PA1946&pg=...](http://books.google.com/books?id=OLa_9LePJlYC&lpg=PA1946&pg=PA2001)

~~~
Pxtl
Too bad so many Asian brands seem hell-bent on destroying that good name with
cheap garbage. Vaio laptops, anyone?

~~~
nodata
Yeah give me an American Dell any day! Oh, wait...

~~~
Pxtl
They never had a good name in the first place to destroy.

------
eftpotrm
Driving home from visiting a friend recently I had a lightbulb moment on self-
driving cars; much as I really enjoy driving (heck, I've got a sports car),
the _second_ a mainstream car with an autonomous mode becomes remotely
affordable for me I _will_ buy it.

I confess I don't understand why the focus is so strongly on the taxi-
replacement market; it's interesting, sure, but largely unviable outside
metropolitan areas. It can't serve people who go shopping and want to use
their cars as lockers during the shop, or people who leave sports gear in the
car while they work then go to the gym later, or a number of other cases. Who
pays for them? It'd be an expensive business to set up and you'd have regular
arguments about taxi licenses that'd make the fuss about Uber look tiny. Who'd
clean them? You bet people would do unsavoury things inside them. No; it's a
small, awkward to serve.

Fit a 'self-drive' button to my next mainstream car though, and you have a
killer product. You can keep it just like your normal car whenever you want,
but when you don't - just press the button, program the navigation and do what
you want. That night I'd have slept. This evening I'd probably have read on my
way home from work. The technical challenges are no greater and it's much
easier to set up.

 _That 's_ a killer app, not an autonomous taxi. Your car, with an invisible
chauffeur on demand. The first manufacturer to properly pull it off won't be
able to keep up with demand.

~~~
sbierwagen
You have enough money to own a car, which implies you're old.

Very few of my age cohort have a driver's license. Even if we had the time and
money to get licensed, due to student loan debt we can't afford a car, or
insurance, which is much more expensive for the young.

~~~
TwiztidK
I'm pretty young (22) and the overwhelming majority of my peers are licensed
and usually have cars (disclosure: I don't have one myself). Although I do
believe youth car ownership rates are much lower than in the past, there are a
lot of places where it is near impossible to live without a car. The cars
young people drive are usually cheap and old (potentially hand-me-downs from
their parents or older siblings) and they only have liability insurance, but
it is possible for a lot of people.

------
lovemenot
This discussion should probably start from commercial rather than passenger
vehicles. In the latter category the driver is usually the owner as well as
the cargo and the principle agent (my driving pleasure). There is an inherent
distortion in the discussion around what the current drivers imagine they'd
want.

Commercial vehicles live or die on their economics alone. Separating concerns
in this way makes the issues clearer. Assuming they become established in the
commercial market, producers can then address the consumer market. At that
point, car drivers may rationally decide whether they'd prefer to pay the
prevalent market premium for _not_ using a self-driving vehicle.

Amazon might never deliver by drone, but the market for micro-deliveries by
autonomous, wheeled vehicle could be huge.

------
ChuckMcM
This reads a whole lot like an industry that has lost touch. If you read some
of the stories out of SpaceX when they talked about Aerospace companies
quoting 6 months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a part, that
SpaceX turned around and did in a few weeks, you realize that there is the
status quo, and the folks who don't accept the status quo, and the people who
try to enforce the status quo but have forgotten (or never knew) why it was
that way in the first place.

Self driving cars are sexy and all but there is so much that could be done
with a much simpler system.

The old 'personal rapid transit' ideas come to mind. For those too young to
remember, that was a system where the cars would show up at the station when
paged. The cars were on tracks but travelling either on a 'through' track (no
stops) or pulling into the station when passengers enter/exit. Built using
rubber wheels on a paved "track" such a system could be built more cost
effectively than highways (no trucks) and with much better efficiency than
metros (your car stops at your entry station and exit station only.). All the
technology to build that exists today, and it would be massively more
efficient than BART, but it isn't even being advocated.

~~~
iandanforth
If you think Detroit is out of touch and slow moving I can hardly believe
you're advocating getting hundreds of municiple governments involved.

------
Shivetya
Google doesn't have the experience with liability that traditional automobile
manufacturers are and I bet they tend to brush over items that made the other
guys pause.

Its one thing to deliver ads and mail, a simple mistake or improper product
usage by the end user doesn't hurt someone, but cars are a whole different
ball game.

and don't underestimate that some people who get in one will try to cause
problems.

~~~
x1798DE
>Its one thing to deliver ads and mail, a simple mistake or improper product
usage by the end user doesn't hurt someone, but cars are a whole different
ball game.

Except for when they released Google Buzz and exposed a bunch of private data
to the world, endangering some people who were relying on their trust in
google to keep themselves hidden from abusive exes and/or various other
dangerous sorts of person. Oopsie!

------
twotwotwo
There's a big mapping problem that could maybe be solved by selling cars that
have plenty of sensor hardware--can figure out curb positions to the inch and
all that--but at first only use it for semi-autonomous features (lane assist,
auto emergency braking, etc.). As people drive them, they're recording a ton
of data that can be sent back to the mothership to build detailed maps will be
useful to provide full-autonomous driving later.

Google might effectively pay for the data and field testing they're getting
from early users by charging a lower price than you'd ordinarily expect for
all that fancy hardware.

I don't know how all this will, in fact, play out; I'm just saying driving
assistance and full autonomy don't have to be rival approaches.

------
higherpurpose
This is why I think the major "car companies" of the future won't be the
current "auto companies", but the current major tech companies. The "tech"
part is going to become increasingly a bigger competitive advantage, while the
"auto" part will be completely commoditized, and you'll see current car
companies going bankrupt or being bought out by the major tech companies. I
think Tesla is mostly part of the "tech companies" than the auto companies.

~~~
noir_lord
> while the "auto" part will be completely commoditized

To some extent this is already the case with some manufacturers, many models
across a range are built on a consistent _platform_
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_platform](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automobile_platform)

There is a point where physical improvements on platforms are well into
diminishing returns and the bigger improvements are in software and control
(the classic "software is eating the world" thing applies here).

I don't have a problem with this but I suspect the automotive industry might
;)

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gregpilling
“We’d say, ‘Well you don’t really know that much. And we’re not going to put
our name on a project like that because if something goes wrong, we have a lot
more to lose.’” \----- I think that says a iot about the automaker point of
view. They have experience with being sued for defects decades later, and they
know the story of Audi and alleged "unintended acceleration"

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pjspycha
I just don't see computers being able to be better drivers then humans.
Especially when dealing with something a programmer hasn't thought of or
situations which are hard to predict.

I would definitely would prefer my taxi driver to be a person than a computer.
(and honestly the trip would take twice as long in the city with a computer
driver)

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stuaxo
Just work with a car company from a different country that isn't so backwards.

I'm sure Volvo would be interested with their focus on safety.

