
Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source - martinshen
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-uber-idUSKCN0WK1C8
======
msoad
TLDR: It's not self driving. It's data collecting cars for now.

I know a little bit about this. It's not "self-driving" car per se. You know
with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars. But to get
there we need a lot of data. Uber and Lyft saw all the rides on their systems
and thought if we had a lot of sensors in cars and recored all of that we
could have the winning factor for self driving cars which is data.

In order to record that data they need customized cars. They also need to own
the car to own the data associated with it (this is my assumption).

~~~
gaur
> You know with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars.

Why not? Doesn't the Google car have a near-spotless record with minimal human
intervention?

~~~
ghaff
Under a very limited set of conditions. Anyone who believes that this
translates into door-to-door general driving without a human even present
anytime remotely soon is... optimistic.

~~~
RealCasually
Living in Mountain View and driving with Google's self driving cars every day,
I have to say I think they are quite a bit further than you give them credit
and those conditions appear to be less limited than you are letting on here.

~~~
datawrangler
Something I've long wondered: howwell do they deal with inclement weather?

~~~
agildehaus
They do well in rain but snow remains a problem, not due to icy roads (at SXSW
Chris Urmson said they do well on slick roads) but that the "better than GPS"
LIDAR-based location tracking stops working when snow is on the ground.

The car simply cannot figure out where it is when there's a significant layer
of snow on the ground because the reference maps stop looking like what the
car is seeing.

[https://youtu.be/Uj-rK8V-rik?t=46m22s](https://youtu.be/Uj-rK8V-rik?t=46m22s)

------
mmakunas
Maybe I'm missing something but that number sounds hard to believe. An S-Class
in the US is $100K. Even if a stripped down "utility" version was available at
$50K that's $5B worth of cars. Yes, it's a "long term" order (i.e., not paid
for and delivered at once), but that seems way beyond anything even Uber would
do.

~~~
adamt
The deal is probably similar to the way an airline buys planes. E.g consider
when Ryanair bought 200 737s for $22Bn [1] which is about the same in it's
entire market cap.

An order like this is probably:

* For a delivery spread over 10+ years

* The vehicles will almost certainly be leased/finance

* Each vehicle will probably assume a 5+ year working life and have a residual of about perhaps 25% of list after 5 years given the likely mileage

* There will be a big initial discount given the size of the order

So assume each car, is $100k new, but given an order that size is perhaps a
40% discount. So that's a $60k sale. After 5 years, the car is perhaps worth
20k.

So the unit economics are that each car costs (before financing costs) 40k
over 5 years, or $8k a year. This is a relatively low cost given the number of
rides it can take and the cost of the driver who will be driving it.

On that basis is doesn't sound that expensive.

[1] [http://corporate.ryanair.com/news/news/14908-ryanair-
places-...](http://corporate.ryanair.com/news/news/14908-ryanair-places-order-
for-up-to-200-new-boeing-737-max-200-aircraft-worth-up-to-22bn/?market=en)

~~~
BinaryIdiot
> After 5 years, the car is perhaps worth 20k.

No way. Absolutely no way. Looking online I'm seeing estimates of 300,000 to
500,000 miles per year in a taxi. If Uber is even NEAR that max, this car is
going to have 300,000 miles on it. Hell even 150,000 is a _ton_ of miles on a
used vehicle.

Looking at KBB with a base S-Class that's 5 years old with 300,000 miles
you're looking at roughly $12k in "good" condition (because, let's face it,
people are going to be in this thing constantly and "good" is the rating the
majority of used cars are in when they're sold).

Then factor in that Uber is not going to become a used car company (at least I
would imagine they wouldn't) they're going to have to sell even lower than KBB
to a third party so that third party can make any money. So I'd bet one of
these cars would end up selling for $6k to $8k depending on mileage and
condition after 5 years.

~~~
cbr
Lowering the sale price to $7k only bumps the per-year cost to Uber from $8k
to $10.5k.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
True which is a $250k difference if my numbers are even correct (I mean I
think they're closer than parent's but who knows). But $250k isn't _that_ much
when the company is a billion dollar company.

~~~
jaycroft
A difference of 250m, rather than 250k, which again, I guess still isn't that
much for a 60 billion dollar company. Total depreciation on these is going to
eat up up a billion in value a year, or only about 2% of market cap, assuming
they keep or grow their valuation.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
Oh man how could I make such a mistake? I got thrown off by the lack of zeros.
I can't even edit it. :(

------
dsr_
I am reminded of Lucent, who built the best hardware for the end-user ISP
market in the form of the Ascend MAX TNT, which would terminate a DS3, break
it into individual dialup lines, and handle all of them as modem calls. Cool
stuff.

It's just that they sold all this stuff to ISPs who didn't have any good
credit lines, so Lucent extended them credit (bing! interest payments!) using
the MAXen as collateral.

When the ISP dialup market collapsed, the ISPs returned the equipment in lieu
of payment. That equipment had no value whatsoever, because anybody who wanted
one and could afford one already had two.

Presumably there's some sort of secondary market for cars -- but a hundred
thousand black S-Class is about what they've sold in the US over the last 7
years combined.

~~~
bliti
The maintenance cost of these cars in the US is high. Whoever is making this
deal should probably stop by the Lexus dealership before they sign any papers.

~~~
lsc
> The maintenance cost of these cars in the US is high.

You are correct, of course, but I think the majority of that would go away if
you hired the mechanic yourself and bought parts direct. My theory is that
most of the German luxury vehicle surcharge is the "hey, it looks like you've
got money, how about you give me some of that" surcharge.

I mean, I've owned a BMW 325is and a Toyota Sienna. Similar vehicles in that
the vehicles had similarly sized engines/transmissions and brakes to match.

Sure, my experience agrees with your assertion in that rolling into the
mechanic in the 325is is going to cost me north of twice what rolling into the
mechanic in my Toyota Sienna will cost me.

But if you are doing the work yourself? the German car isn't any harder to
work on. If anything, I think the german mechanical aesthetics agree with me
in ways that make working on it easier than working on a Japanese car. Sure,
they need a little bit more love in that they're just not as advanced as a
Japanese car, or at least not as much effort is put into maintenance free
operation, so you need to do more to keep them running, but that difference
isn't huge. Parts are also not hugely more expensive than similarly specc'd
parts on the toyota (e.g. brake rotors cost about the same on my 325is as they
did on my toyota sienna; they were similarly sized, too; it's just the 325is
was a much smaller car, so stopped dramatically better.)

I mean, I'm generalizing about German luxury vehicles from my experience with
another brand, but yeah, if you hire your own mechanic, I bet most of the
maintenance cost differences become much smaller.

~~~
bliti
I'm a mechanic and software guy. Your theory is incorrect. German parts and
labor generally cost more. Mostly due to complexity. An S-Class has more on-
board electronics than the average Boeing. They begin to have issues after the
2 year mark and are not cheap to fix. Even if you have your own shop and
parts. The 325 you had is a simpler BWM that did not carry such complexity.

~~~
lsc
I'm not saying you are wrong; the new cars might well be way more complex in
ways that might cause people to spend more time troubleshooting, I wouldn't
know.

I haven't dealt with anything really more complex than the early 'aughts
toyota... at least up until that point, the electronics made it way easier for
a shadetree mechanic like me to solve problems. There's all sorts of ways to
get diagnostic codes out of the thing; on the bmw, you did this dance where
you turned it on, then floored the gas a certain number of times, and then the
'check engine' light would tap out a code you could look up in the manual,
just like beep codes on a motherboard. On my Toyota, I hook up the OBD thing
and it gives me a code I can plug into google and get youtube videos of how to
fix it. I've never dealt with an electrical problem more complex than one of
the the (what do you call them? the short wire things that go from the coils
to the spark plugs on the bmw) going out of spec in terms of resistance, but
that was pretty easy to diagnose with the manual and multimeter.

But if it really is the complexity that creates the cost, why was it so
expensive to pay someone else to service my simple 325is?

~~~
bliti
Factors such as location, brand, and demand are important. Fixing BMWs is
generally more complex than fixing a comparable Japanese or American model due
to specialty tools, software, and complexity. Their wiring system is closer to
what you'd find on a data center than what you'd find on the typical car.

I currently still turn wrenches as a hobby and work on higher end Euro cars
(Ferrari, Porsche, etc.) and it only gets worse. :)

------
encoderer
The S-Class is an interesting choice. I'd wager that most people have never
been in a car as nice as an S Class before -- no comparison really to the town
car people associate today with Uber Black. The back seat has massage, heat
and cool, individual entertainment options, power recline. Some of these
things could be customized, but Mercedes isn't going to tarnish the reputation
of their flagship sedan so Uber can have a more utilitarian taxi.

~~~
jgrahamc
The S-Class is a very common model for a taxi in Germany.

~~~
timme
No it's not. Most of them are E-classes.

~~~
wimagguc
Quick fact-check, both E-Class and S-Class are common in Germany:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_by_country](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_by_country)

~~~
doczoidberg
I am from germany. I have never seen a S-Class taxi.

~~~
patrickk
I've actually seen a Porsche Panamera taxi in Germany.

------
nikkwong
Another concern for uber is what are people going to do to the inside of these
driverless cars now? Passengers today are respectful to ridesharing vehicles
they sit in--because the owner of the vehicle is close at hand and the human
connection commands some respect. But when its just a group of (maybe drunk)
passengers in an empty vehicle--where's the accountability?

~~~
mixedbit
Passengers won't be anonymous and Uber already has reputation system. Also you
can already rent a car, and rented cars are usually not vandalized.

~~~
chc
Car rentals are fairly expensive. People tend to take better care of things
they've put a lot into. Case in point, rental cars tend to be in much better
condition than the back seats of taxis, which in turn are in better shape than
the back seats of buses. I think people's concern is that single rides in
self-driving cars might even rank below buses.

~~~
alextgordon
Still, Uber knows who you are. If you damage their car they can invoice you.
Presumably they will have CCTV in these things?

------
jfoutz
Uber has some of the best researchers in the world. I'd bet Mercedes builds
the cars, specialized with Uber specified additional sensors and hardware for
self driving. Uber customizes the source to deal with tough driving
conditions, and turns the code back over to Mercedes.

Uber gets it's fleet, Mercedes gets the tech. It's getting competitive.
Mercedes will get the tech perfected, but this kind of deal could get them
there much faster. Access to Uber's team, and more importantly mountains of
data that Uber is taking the risk for will probably speed up refinement of the
tech.

~~~
BinaryIdiot
This has to be the answer if the rumors are actually true (the article does
say one source said this, one source said this wasn't happening).

All auto companies need to get into the self driving space. Uber wants to get
into this space for transporting people. If Uber and a car company work
together Uber could get a discount, help develop the tech and share with the
car company; it's a huge win for both sides.

At least that's how I'd try structuring the deal. You know, from my billion-
dollar-company-CEO-arm-chair.

------
archildress
Uber is an interesting company for a number of reasons, but here's the part
that interests me the most:

Uber operates in a grey-area legal environment in the cities it operates in.
Uber's defense / view on this is that they generate such a societal positive
in terms of jobs that it outweighs the legal constraints.

But, when your goal is to eventually use a fleet of self-driving cars and
eliminate the job possibilities for drivers, isn't that a moot point?

~~~
usaphp
> "über's defense/view on this is that they generate such a societal positive
> in terms of jobs that it outweighed the legal constrains"

I doubt they care a bit about the amount of jobs they are creating, I would
say their view is "they generate such a positive amount of cash that it
outweighs the legal constrains" and if they see a possibility of removing
their highest expense of getting that cash - they won't bat an eye on doing so
because they already have a history of doing stuff that is on the edge of
legality/morality.

~~~
danvoell
I think it will be very interesting to see what happens with self-driving car
regulation. I foresee the money going from taxi drivers -> Uber -> Gov/Uber
Split & no more jobs.

------
mlrtime
Mercedes/Audi/BMW taxis are common in Germany. This doesn't mean you'll be
able to order your S class in NYC/SF any time soon.

~~~
jdietrich
My thoughts exactly. Uber are struggling to get a foothold in Europe because
of regulation. I suspect the plan is to become a traditional taxi or limousine
operator in these hostile markets, leasing cars to licensed taxi drivers.
Using S class rather than the more common C class cars would fit with their
existing Uber Black service.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> in these hostile markets

"markets where regulations are enforced"

------
f_allwein
This is the (German) article this is based on:

[http://m.manager-
magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082...](http://m.manager-
magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082886.html)

It says they plan to buy "a six digit number of cars", and they're only
interested in self driving cars.

~~~
bertil
It Daimler can deliver cars that are able to handle Uber rides without a
driver, including driving empty to location (considering Uber would send a
destination location) then 100k vehicle does not sound like a lot. That feels
like a big if, though.

Having a deal in stock rather than cash also makes sense: it is unlikely that
many people would buy cars from Daimler or anyone if Uber charges at cost (gas
+ maintenance).

~~~
f_allwein
no pressure on Daimler then...

~~~
saalweachter
It's like a Kickstarter, but with several billion dollars.

------
williamcotton
How does this benefit Uber?

Imagine Daimler can produce 100,000 self-driving cars. They would continue to
produce and sell self-driving cars to other people as well. They could sell
self-driving cars to Lyft. Individuals could operate their own self-driving
car services. They could organize in to cartels and have a single app that
competes with Uber or Lyft.

Uber is destined to be a commodity in an open marketplace of taxi services as
soon as they adopt self-driving cars. Their primary roll right now is as a
labor organization. They currently create the economic incentives needed to
attract a fleet of drivers. Self-driving cars are not motivated by economic
incentives. Uber can't control the sale, distribution and organization of
self-driving cars.

All that riders care about is being able to reliably get from one side of town
to another. They'll know that they can trust Daimler self-driving cars,
regardless of the dispatcher.

We're going to end up right back to where we started, with a commodity system
of private taxi dispatchers and a productive industry of automobile
manufacturers, with an emphasis on the automatic nature of this new form of
transportation.

Daimler is the big winner here if they can bring a self-driving car to market.

~~~
sirkneeland
I think the other function Uber serves is not just an aggregator of supply (of
cars and drivers) but of demand (passengers). It is far from a trivial effort
to have a sufficient amount of users know of your app/service, download and
install it, trust it enough to add payment details and use it.

While not quite as insurmountable an obstacle as, say, making a new smartphone
platform (sorry Palm/Nokia/BlackBerry/Microsoft), it is enough of one to make
this far from a perfect, liquid market.

~~~
username223
> I think the other function Uber serves is not just an aggregator of supply
> (of cars and drivers) but of demand (passengers).

I think you misunderstand Uber. Most of its perceived value is in arbitrage
between drivers' perceived and actual costs of car ownership: drivers mostly
think in terms of wages minus cost of gas, ignoring all of the other costs.
Given that business model, I doubt Uber is actually looking at buying these
cars. They will presumably force drivers to buy or lease the cars themselves.

~~~
williamcotton
So do individuals buy or lease self-driving cars in the future? Would they
then set up their self-driving car to take instructions from Uber's central
dispatch service in exchange for a cut of the profits?

Currently both Uber and Lyft handle the task of vetting drivers and making
sure there is a good experience for their customers. They organize and control
the labor required for a good experience for the riders.

Think about a rider in a world where Lyft and Uber are both dispatching self-
driving cars. What's the difference between the services if they're all using
Mercedes S-Class SelfDrivers? The rider knows that all Mercedes S-Class
SelfDrivers are the same experience. There's no question of if the driver is
trustworthy or competent. Uber and Lyft would be providing the exact same
commodity experience of sending a self-driving car to your location to then do
your bidding in exchange for money.

~~~
username223
> So do individuals buy or lease self-driving cars in the future? Would they
> then set up their self-driving car to take instructions from Uber's central
> dispatch service in exchange for a cut of the profits?

In Uber's perfect world, yes. And Uber will do its best to hide the true costs
of insurance, depreciation, regular maintenance, etc. from owners and lessors,
just like they do today. It's worth understanding that Uber only works as long
as it doesn't own any cars, or employ any drivers. If they switch over to
owning some self-driving cars, they'll have to maintain and insure them.

------
tyingq
The magnitude here is pretty impressive.

I found this list of sizes for existing commercial fleets. They would be
besting UPS for total fleet size if all 100k were on the road at once.
[http://www.fleet-
central.com/content/pdf/AUTOF_top300commerc...](http://www.fleet-
central.com/content/pdf/AUTOF_top300commercial.pdf)

------
alvern
This makes a lot of sense. S-class cars already have the sensors for self-
driving in highway conditions. Uber UATC is actively working on the software
for autonomous drivers.

This is a large scale capital investment in a safe luxury service that Uber
can sell in certain markets. I'm betting the s-class needs very little
hardware to wire into what UATC is developing.

------
iandanforth
Anyone know how this volume compares to a Mercedes dealer's volume over 5 or
10 years?

~~~
jmatthews
Large dealers in california sell around 1200 S classes per year. More common
dealers sell between 200 and 300 per year.

Or were you comparing that to total volume? Market leaders sell a bit over a
thousand per month.

~~~
iandanforth
Awesome, thanks, that helps bring some perspective.

------
Animats
Why would Uber want to buy non-self-driving cars? Right now, they have their
drivers buying the cars for them. Their current business model shoves all the
capital costs down onto the driver. If Uber owns a lot of cars, their business
model looks far different, more like Hertz. This will reduce their valuation
substantially.

~~~
foobarqux
Because they are going to lease them out to drivers to compete with Lyft,
which earlier this week announced a similar program.

~~~
Animats
Uber already has a financing deal for drivers.[1] This may just be a mod to
that plan.

[1] [https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/](https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/)

~~~
foobarqux
I think it's a response to Lyft, whose plan is more convenient because it
allows drivers to rent the vehicle.

------
dsr_
For the sake of comparison: the three largest US rental companies: Enterprise,
Hertz and Avis together own about 2 million cars, have about 15,000 locations
(most of which are competitive with each other), and have about $25 billion in
annual revenue.

Why do I bring up rental cars, a market usually considered distinct from taxi
and limo services? Because without a driver, there's no difference.

Uber is trying to crush the taxi market, but in an age of self-driving cars it
needs to watch out for the rental car giants who will happily extend their
daily-weekly rental cycles down to per-trip rentals, with pickup and drop-off
anywhere in the country. The giants already have purchasing arrangements with
the major auto manufacturers, supply chains, maintenance facilities, and
parking lots to use as buffers.

~~~
swiley
Someone (their insurance? Them?) Won't let you rent until you're 25.

------
sixQuarks
Very telling that Uber is trying to go with Mercedes, when Tesla is really
their first choice. It's an open secret that Elon Musk will be launching an
Uber competitor using Tesla vehicles. I expect a "surprise" announcement from
Tesla within 18 months.

~~~
akhatri_aus
The other thing is Tesla can't make this volume of cars yet & it carries a
certain amount of risk for such a large deal.

They only made about 50,000 cars last year and have capacity for around 90000
this year. Even if Uber's order was spread on a number of years, Tesla will
have trouble filling the order.

------
vnchr
At that scale, customization is a given. Uber could leverage their own
robotics resources together with Mercedes' to speed up autonomous vehicles
time to market which Uber stands to benefit from substantially enough to
justify this kind of investment.

------
spaceflunky
At that kind of volume, would it make more sense to have MB develop a bespoke
car for Uber?

The S-Class is a great car, but I'm sure there are Uber-specific improvements
that can be made. Why would you order some many of something 'off-the-shelf'?

~~~
toomuchtodo
I don't think you'd find any manufacturer who would tool up for a bespoke car.
Uber either needs to buy an existing manufacturer with existing large scale
capacity, or build out their own capacity. And we've seen with Tesla how much
and long that capacity takes to build out for only 100K vehicles/year.

Uber is capital chasing a potential treasure chest. Google, Tesla,
GM/Lyft/Cruise are the real players it appears.

~~~
bergie
There are contract manufacturers also in the automobile industry. For example
the Finnish Valmet Automotive has been building Porches, and is now doing some
MB cars.

[http://www.valmet-
automotive.com/automotive/cms.nsf/pages/in...](http://www.valmet-
automotive.com/automotive/cms.nsf/pages/indexeng)

~~~
toomuchtodo
A quick Google search didn't find me their manufacturing capacity, but I'm
curious if it approaches what Uber might need to compete.

------
bsbechtel
If this is true, this is an incredibly risky move. I know self-driving cars
are more or less inevitable at this point, but there are hundreds of unknowns
that still need to be figured out. How will passengers treat the vehicles?
What happens when there is a problem, and there isn't a human present? How
secure will the cars be? Is the 'call a car from an app' business model the
one that will win? Committing this amount of capital this early in the game
seems like a big gamble, unless there are a large number of contingencies
worked into this deal.

~~~
searine
>How will passengers treat the vehicles?

As a mobile drug/prostitution marketplace.

~~~
shostack
Wonder what level of surveillance these will have. Surely that would be an
excellent data mining opportunity.

------
kin
It's probably more along the lines of: "Whenever you guys are done making it
fully autonomous, we want 100,000 of 'em to replace our drivers"

If that was the case, the volume makes sense. Makes zero sense to buy 100,000
of today's model and watch it depreciate in value while providing none back
'cause you still need a driver.

------
SeeDave
I'm kinda curious how it's possible for an organization to go through all it
takes to produce self-driving cars (engineering, qa, logistics, sourcing,
etc.) but is unable to build an app to find riders for these cars and manage
yield of available seat-space.

Not really seeing the value-add of Uber at that point beyond the brand and
historical data about customer rides as transportation is so fungible.

It's not entirely impossible that Uber/Lyft will engage in a race to the
bottom while a bold automaker (such as Tesla) offers to buy out Lyft for it's
trip data... to then stand on the sidelines as Uber goes bankrupt... to then
purchase their data during liquidation.

I could be wrong, but it will be interesting to see where Uber executives take
the company.

------
nashashmi
I am not surprised if Uber is going in this direction. In fact, looking at
what Uber has done so far , Uber has already planned for this sort of future
in 10-20 years.

Look at what Uber has done:

* Uber buys Nokia Here Maps for their map part and for their street imagery part.

* Uber hires robotics department.

* Uber knows today's business is supposed to be the transition phase to going into a zipcar like car-on-demand service.

There aren't too many data points here, but the only thing I can glean from
this is Uber wants to have robotic cars to pick you up and drop you off and
will plan that future by storing street imagery, instead of that LiDAR based
method the others are doing.

------
konschubert
In the German source[1] it is very clear that the order is under the condition
that Mercedes delivers an autonomous self-driving vehicle.

It is also clearly stated there that Daimler is not expecting to be able to
deliver such a car before 2020.

Basically, Uber said: "Once you're able to build a self-driving S class, we
will buy 100.000 of them". And Daimler said: "We will come back to it."

[1][http://m.manager-
magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082...](http://m.manager-
magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082886.html)

------
pcl
Wow, I wonder what a contract like that looks like, and how many years the
payments and deliveries are spread out over. Assuming a massively-discounted
price of $25,000 per car, that comes to $2.5 billion!

~~~
csours
The lowest I could imagine them selling for is 45k per car. 25k isn't a
discount, it's a loss.

------
ebbv
If Uber really is buying 100,000 cars, or anywhere near that number, it
totally undermines their argument that they are a ride sharing app and not a
straight up taxi/limo company.

------
ams6110
At that quantity, an S class is the badge on the trunk, otherwise whatever
Uber wants it to be. Likely the technology for automation, but maybe not all
the luxury bells and whistles.

------
brebla
The critical question facing our driverless future is liability. Who owns the
risk? If the individual owner is liable, you can imagine the upshot - slow
adoption rates, high premiums. If the seller/programmer is liable, expect
consolidation. It feels like this is the question of our time. To pay for
consolidated services - spotify, netflix, uber, Bernie Sanders - or to remain
an individual and accept inefficiency as a natural cost of freedom.

------
justsaysmthng
Just a shower thought, but if the car makers can make self-driving cars, can't
they also implement their own versions of Uber ?

Why would they even sell the cars, when they can rent them out and make much
bigger margins ?

Uber's current strength is it's database of drivers, but since we're talking
self-driving cars here, that become irrelevant.

It's not like Mercedes or BMW lack brand recognition in the transportation
space...

~~~
akavel
It is actually suggested in the article: _" Earlier this week Mercedes rival
BMW said it was considering launching its own ride hailing service in what
would amount to a rival business to Uber."_

------
mtgx
They should make sure that in the contract it says the cars are virtually
unhackable, too, or Daimler-Benz is responsible for any liability from
security breaches:

[http://qz.com/642648/the-fbi-is-warning-drivers-your-car-
may...](http://qz.com/642648/the-fbi-is-warning-drivers-your-car-may-be-
vulnerable-to-hacking/)

------
carlosnunez
I hope they use these for more S-Class UberBlack service. I wanted to get
driven in one for our anniversary but found it difficult.

------
ethana
The S Class has been Mercedes platform for autonomous driving cars. The
current generation actually has a very capable installed sensors for
autonomous mode. Per
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fhDqgh6DClo](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fhDqgh6DClo)

------
Johnie
"Loss-making Uber would make drastic savings on its biggest cost -- drivers --
if it were able to incorporate self-driving cars into its fleet."

Umm, don't they get the cars for free now? How many rides will the cars need
drive to break even compared to cheap drivers and no capital cost now?

------
sandra_saltlake
They still have all of those regular drivers,It's hard to come up with a huge
number of cars on the spot once self-driving cars are available.

------
qaq
That's huge order 100K is what they sell in a year. So if spread over 10 years
this would mean they are buying 10% of S-class cars produced each year.

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nodesocket
Wow, that's a huge amount of capital to spend upfront. Wonder if this is for
their black service or more targeted in Europe.

~~~
pbreit
What gives you the impression it would be an upfront expenditure? My guess is
it would be a 5-20 year deal and likely include financing.

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hodder
If/when someone develops fully reliable, fully autonomous cars, what makes
them need Uber?

~~~
BinaryIdiot
They wouldn't but that's like saying computer manufacturers don't need the OS
manufacturers anymore. They wouldn't necessarily _have to have_ Uber but Uber
providing the payment, route planning and logistics and someone else providing
the vehicle seems like a pretty good match.

Though I'll admit the self driving vehicle delivery is probably another level
of difficulty than Uber's current capability. But I suspect Uber and the car
manufacturer may work on the self driving together.

------
arepb
One of the weaker lead quotes I've ever seen.

------
SilasX
Wait, is the S-Class even a legit SDC?

------
pmlnr
self-driving Uber cars? What could possibly go wrong?

...

 _There comes a point at which the helpfulness of technology becomes a form of
oppression: walled gardens, predictive services making the wrong predictions,
and every social platform forcing us to use our real names. It 's cute when
it's small, but what happens when self-driving cars can collude with the
cops?_

[https://motherboard.vice.com/read/one-
star](https://motherboard.vice.com/read/one-star) ( previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11149653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11149653)
)

~~~
pmlnr
Downvotes? Lol. Start reading some oldschool science fiction: those are to
point out possible outcomes, both bad and good, of technical evolution.

Self driving cars in our current world, in our current system will not go
well. We need changes in the heads first.

------
ape4
I know Uber calls their service "Black". But in hot climates white cars make
more sense. Burn less resources keeping cool.

~~~
golergka
Their cars are white in Tel Aviv (as all taxis, in fact).

~~~
ape4
Is the service there called UberBlack?

