
Zoox, a Robo-Taxi Start-Up Taking on Google and Uber - simonebrunozzi
http://spectrum.ieee.org/transportation/advanced-cars/meet-zoox-the-robotaxi-startup-taking-on-google-and-uber
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minthd
And i though self driving car is a hard technological problem.

Silly me. It's a design problem.

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pjkundert
Yup.

We don't even have "cruise control" that is usable in the wintertime -- but we
just placidly believe every yahoo who claims to have solved the problem of
completely autonomous driving!

Have we ever heard of Unit Testing? It is unlikely that my 10-line function is
100% correct. But, I just _know_ that any random company's Autonomous Vehicle
is certainly able to handle black ice in a white-out. What could possibly go
wrong?

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comex
Unlike a privately owned autonomous vehicle, a taxi has very little need for
environment flexibility. The article says they're planning to start in a
"sunny city like Las Vegas", where there's unlikely to be much black ice...
and even if they operate solely in such sunny cities for a decade, there's
still enough market for them to grow huge. Of course, anyone who _can_ make a
vehicle that can handle white-outs will have an advantage, but I haven't heard
even Google claiming to have a handle on that.

~~~
minthd
Let's be more realistic here. In any weather condition - this thing will live
and die on reliability.

To get to the needed reliability(say 10x better than humans, i.e one accident
per 2.5 million miles you need to drive at least 25 million miles, but
considering the variety of situations this needs to be tested against , maybe
more than a billion miles). To solve this google has built a simulator
simulating all the roads of california(4 million miles) with a variety of
situations and is lobbying to get this approved as a way for testing. And
that's just for testing. You still have to solve problem!

Another data point - hyundai will be investing $70 billion in the next few
years and wants to hire 7000 new engineers to work on their self driving car
project.

This is not startup land.

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dm2
Here is some concept art from Zoox, I'm not sure if they have pivoted from
this idea or not though.

[http://ideas.4brad.com/world-goes-gaga-cool-concept-
prototyp...](http://ideas.4brad.com/world-goes-gaga-cool-concept-prototypes)

I'm glad autonomous and electric vehicles are quickly becoming a thing, this
will be great to have.

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Animats
I notice they're using 8 of the smaller Velodyne VLP-16 LIDAR units. Those
things have finally come down in size. The previous $100K version was too big,
too clunky, and too fragile.

Google is moving to that, too. I saw two Google self-driving cars today, of
different designs. The newer one has smaller Velodyne VLP-16 units at the
corners, and some big scanner, probably an HDL-32E, under a dome at the top of
the vehicle. The older one has the clunky old HDL-64E spinning around on top.

The LIDAR industry needs better designs and more volume. These are
experimental units produced in tiny quantities. They're not suitable for a
volume product yet.

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michaelt
Lidars need to get cheaper - so do decent RTK GPS receivers and IMUs. They're
all expensive at the moment because the economies of scale are so limited.

But you know what industry is great at economies of scale? The car industry.
You'll be able to get a sensor that outperforms that $100K sensor for $100
when they're fitted as standard on every car.

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sschueller
So in ten years LA will be a sea of crawling autonomous vehicles.

Where are the mass transit startups?

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Revex
Yes and no. Each individual won't have the need or financial incentive to own
an individual vehicle like today. There should be less vehicles overall.

Regardless of that, Uber is a mass transit startup, and so is this...

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digi_owl
Or people will own one for status and call upon another for various routine
tasks...

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acd
If there will be fully automated city taxis and automated rental of cars
similar to car pools for long distance travel then I think the car industry
will be in trouble. It will be more economical in the sharing industry to
share a newer car with others than to own your own depending on utilization
rate.

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nick_urban
“At the moment, mobility is crushing the soul: Don’t speed, don’t drink, don’t
text. [...] What inspires me... is giving back people their lifestyles, so
they can do what they want to do: texting, vegging out, drinking.”

Texting, vegging out, and drinking: truly the heights to which the soul would
soar if not crushed by the villain of driving.

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toomuchtodo
> Texting, vegging out, and drinking: truly the heights to which the soul
> would soar if not crushed by the villain of driving.

How about, "Providing efficiencies that would allow us to reduce the work week
from 5 days to 4, thereby providing more time for people to actually live
their lives"?

Whenever another self driving car or truck article hits hacker news, I cringe
at the inevitable post from someone who says "Ahh! Now they can code why the
vehicle drives itself! They can be even more productive!"

That is not what life is about. To _you_ , it might be, but the purpose of
life is not work. Work is simply a means of supporting yourself while you
experience life.

~~~
Gustomaximus
We are getting off topic but I agree advances today are a massive opportunity
to introduce a standard 4 day week. I feel this is much more short term
achievable social advance than the often mentioned basic income. I've had this
discussion a few times and the majority of people say a 4 day week is
impossible/unrealistic. I enjoy pointing out ~80 years ago we had a 6 day work
week and people were saying all the same excuses why we couldn't do a 5 day
week. And given for most of us corporate types, the work day is typically
going far beyond the 9-5 hours of a traditional day. Now our 40 hour week is
easily covered in the 4 days.

On a more personal note I'm wondering if your European. I find most Americans
are very work obsessed. The idea life is for living and a job is a means to
fund that is very foreign. I've found generally withing the first 10 minutes
of conversation with someone from the states Ive not met before, they will say
this phrase: "I love my job". I'm Australian and while we are heading toward
the US view we have a history of life is for living and I'd hate to see that
go.

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TheGRS
There was and still is a very big push in the States to find your life's
fulfillment in your work first. Its very ingrained into our culture these
days. I think it stems from the old cliche "if you love your job, you'll never
work a day in your life".

Doing work that you hate is maybe not frowned upon, but if you have that
sentiment people will strongly advise you to switch career paths to something
that you would find more fulfillment in.

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Gustomaximus
From the "I love my job" I get the feeling it's almost a career obligation to
have this view. The view good employees think like this and you're no good at
your job if you aren't passionate.

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rokhayakebe
Question: Would you rather be in an autonomous car or in a car driven remotely
by someone else?

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sdrothrock
I'd 100% rather be in an autonomous car. I wouldn't trust a car driven
remotely by someone else for a number of reasons:

1\. Latency

2\. Signal quality

3\. Driver attention (are they thinking about their bladder or stomach? Is
someone else talking to them? Did their phone ring? Unlike a real driver, I
can't tell.)

