
Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions - mtgx
http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your-seatbelts-googles-driverless-car-is-worth-trillions/
======
Cushman
I've been saying this to anyone who will listen for years. I really believe
this technology will touch _everything_. Real estate markets will shift
dramatically as the average commute time halves or quarters. Transport costs
will plummet, making every single physical object cheaper. Public transit will
be dirt cheap, always punctual, and take you absolutely anywhere. Tens of
thousands of people each year will escape death; _millions_ will lose their
jobs.

Safe to say I'm really, really excited about the future.

~~~
pkorzeniewski
You're missing one important factor - many people, me included, just like to
drive cars and they don't treat them as "transport vehicle only". I would
refuse to use a driverless car even if it would be more economic, more safe
and would transport me faster.

~~~
lucian1900
Would you use an optionally driverless car? On long trips you could just take
a nap, but you could have your fun driving any time.

However, at some point the safety factor may force you to stop driving. I
wouldn't want you to be driving, when a machine could do it better.

~~~
sopooneo
Many will not take such a rational approach to the safety issue. Every
driverless car fatality will get _huge_ press. No one I know has ever died in
an airplane, but quite a few I know are afraid to fly.

~~~
lucian1900
Indeed, public perception will be an issue. I still have hope that people will
get over it.

------
h2s
Holy shit. Forbes is an absolute cesspool of a website.

There are about three paragraphs of text, and then I have to pony up another
ad impression by clicking through to the next page in order to keep reading.
All the while, two _enormous_ fixed nav bars follow my every move at both the
top _and_ the bottom of the page. Meanwhile a veritable flotilla of fixed-
position "social icons" on the left beg me to help Forbes advertise their
content. And to the right of the article? Adverts as far as the eye can see.
Even within that center column, the content is occasionally interrupted with
links to other unrelated content. And below the article text itself are a
bunched of "Sponsored Content You Might Like" links doing their very best to
look similar to "Related Stories".

What's going on here? Is this what it takes for Forbes to turn a profit?

~~~
tzs
Their print links[1] are pretty good though. Normally, I object to linking to
print pages because they usually are formatted in a way that makes them
unreadable (e.g., very tiny font and very wide columns), and often provide no
way to reasonably find the non-print version if you want to look for things
like comments and related articles.

However, the Forbes print link uses a reasonable font and a reasonable column
width, and has at the bottom a link to the non-print page. (It does invoke a
print dialog, which is a bit annoying).

[1] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-
your...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2013/01/22/fasten-your-
seatbelts-googles-driverless-car-is-worth-trillions/print/)

------
moocow01
The market is worth trillions... not Google's solution. One thing tech
reporters seem to have failed at recognizing is that this research has been
taking place at every major car company out there - many many others are
legitimately in the race. Ultimately its the manufacturers that get to pull
the trigger on how driverless cars will become driverless.

~~~
coopdog
Still, I can't help but feel that maybe Google have the final piece of the
puzzle. We've had computers and sensors powerful enough for decades, only
Google have all of that maps data, polished again and again by android users
using maps (and now Ingress) to make it more reliable.

Google almost specialise at crunching massive data into useful products, and
building reliable supersystems from millions of unreliable subsystems.

Car companies might have some software knowledge these days but they really
are a long way from the capabilities Google has. They solve car problems, but
it might turn out that this is an information system problem.

~~~
millstone
Can you elaborate on how you think that map data is important? I would expect
that mapping data at best gives you a route - something the user could supply.
Naively, I would think that the hard problems are responding to obstacles in
the road, cross walks, stop lights, etc., where map data won't help much.

~~~
mtgx
Even Google's own data isn't perfect. A couple of years ago someone even tried
to sue Google for "getting her on a highway" and then having an accident. I
think she was walking, and obviously she can't blame Google for not noticing
the highway!

But with self-driving cars, it's different. A car landing on a highway, when
it's not supposed to be there, and then getting into an accident, is not good
news. So that's why I think accurate map data will be very important for this.

~~~
Someone
Mapping data will be important, but not to prevent accidents. Maps will not be
100% accurate, so even with perfect maps, cars will end up on roads they think
aren't highways while in fact, they are. There also will be newly one-way
streets that aren't in the mapping database yet, roads closed due to
construction or accidents, etc. Yes, both will be rare, but multiplied by
millions of cars (necessary to get the 'worth trillions' part)? Not so.

So, let's say you are driving a vehicle that isn't allowed on the highway but
incorrectly takes one. How do you think maps will help with the "and then
getting into an accident" part?

------
maym86
The world will be a better place:

Blind people, disabled people, people unable to drive in any way will be more
independent.

No need for expensive parking in a city. Car can go somewhere else cheaper.
Expensive land used for parking can be better utilised.

You can rent your car out to others while you’re not using it. No real need
for personal car ownership. Why pay to own when you can rent whenever you need
from car manufacturers or rental companies? Get the car that best suits your
needs for a particular day at your door when you need it.

Cars spend a lot if their life doing nothing. The car will be fully utilised
and always in service making the most of the valuable resources used to build
it.

A car no longer needs to be car shaped. You can have cars for specific needs.
A bar car if you want!

Traffic efficiency when everyone has them. The road network can be utilised
more effectively as the cars will be able to share data and calculate the best
route.

You can spend more time doing other things like looking at their adverts.

They will be safer. Computers won’t make the mistakes caused by humans doing
stupid things like sending text messages while driving. Drink driving. The
won’t break the speed limit etc.

------
autarch
I think the implications are huge, but I question the 90% reduction in cars
figure.

While it's true that most people don't drive their car most of the time, when
they do drive, most of them are driving within a relatively small time window.

I could imagine a 25-50% reduction in the number of cars, but I just don't see
90% happening unless it's accompanied by a huge increase in people working
from home or working non-standard hours.

~~~
rogerbinns
You haven't taken into account car pooling. Driverless cars can do adhoc car
pooling. I can even see things like local 4 seater driverless cars picking you
up, and taking you to another 10 (or more) seater vehicle for the rest of your
journey. (By definition the congestion is because a lot of people have
overlapping routes.)

Additionally you are no longer to blame for your commute since the driverless
system would be responsible for timing, in much the same way trains are to
blame for timing now. I'd also expect the driverless system to have variable
pricing - need to get to work by 9am instead 9.15am and it is $5 more out of
your pocket. Ultimately your employer is paying that and they have an
incentive to only do so if it is valuable.

~~~
moconnor
Many people don't like sharing a car with strangers; I doubt this will change
as quickly as the technology.

~~~
evoxed
It wouldn't be long before every car used in this way became like a small
limousine. The efficiency of driverless cars would easily outweigh the cost of
such a redesign.

------
gfodor
I'm going to disagree with other posters that Google is not going to own this
market. It's hard to think of another company that is even close to being able
to execute on this. It's the ultimate big data problem. The in-house
experience of Google at running computing infrastructure is a must-have for
this type of system to work.

~~~
defrost
Rio Tinto.

Not for general public driving, of course, but for fleets of trucks and
excavators that operate globally 24/7.

At various sites they are already operating driverless equipment using tech
developed in house.

For what it's worth, oil & gas & mineral exploration work drove a large part
of the civilian development of tools like Google Earth / Google Maps in the
decades prior to the first public offerings by Google (who acquired their tech
from others (the chaps from Sydney for Maps, Keyhole for Earth)).

~~~
gfodor
I still see it as orders of magnitudes off in complexity. You're talking about
a system for autonomously controlling every motor vehicle in the U.S., or even
the world -- that's effectively the end game. Google is among the handful of
companies that has the computing infrastructure to have a "pulse" on the world
at all times, and within those companies they are heads and shoulders above
the rest in terms of being able to implement large scale, distributed
information processing algorithms with low latency at that scale. It's a very
rare, maybe completely unique cross section of capabilities. Google is better
suited to solving this problem in many ways than any other problem they're
currently solving.

The point is the capabilities I'm talking about have nothing to do with cars
and everything to do with computing. Pointing to another company doing
autonomous vehicles as a counterexample is kinda-sorta missing my point.

~~~
defrost
> You're talking about a system for autonomously controlling every motor
> vehicle in the U.S.,

Not _a_ (single) system, rather one such system _per_ car - standard protocols
for inter system comms are yet to arrive and each vehicle needs to react to
local changes such as pedestrians w/out reference to an external global
computing infrastructure.

It's not a big data, massively interconnected problem at all - the elegance
comes from local smart behaviour - even for broader problems like optimal
pooling.

Others can enter the driverless vehicle market and there are companies like
Akamai Technologies that could provide any required interconnect. Google is a
player, but by no means the only player.

~~~
gfodor
It's both. Its hyperlocal real-time understanding and eye-in-the-sky big data
analysis to keep everything running smoothly. Think about where you end up
10-15 years after this technology comes out: "cars" driving on multi-level,
many-laned highways travelling 150-200mph a few meters apart, traffic flow
coordinated to optimize energy usage and minimize time to destination. It's a
hard problem and not solvable via local agents alone.

~~~
defrost
> It's a hard problem and not solvable via local agents alone.

Oh, Really?

Ants seem to do okay.

Following your, umm,, solution of critical external hyper networked global
oversight it seems there'd be the mother of all traffic accidents if the
servers went out.

Biologically emergent local behaviour seems wonderfully adept at converging on
globally optimal solutions via local agent actions. Perhaps you're right,
maybe Google is the only company capable of replicating the efficiencies of
termite mounds.

------
anigbrowl
That's why the CA legislature pssed legislation to allow self-driving cars on
public roads with such unusual alacrity - this is a technology we want to
ensure gets a foothold in California, both for direct revenue flowing to the
state and for the second order economic gains that would result from wide
deployment - environmental improvements, lower accident rates, and new service
markets. EDIT: as well as the ongoing perception of economic and technological
leadership, which has taken a bruising after our per-student educational
funding fell to an embarrassing 49th in the nation.

~~~
tokenadult
_after our per-student educational funding fell to an embarrassing 49th in the
nation_

I had heard that funding levels in California, as ranked against other states,
had fallen in recent years, and that is surely embarrassing to Californians,
who historically have taken pride in generous state funding for schools up to
and including universities. But of course even more embarrassing to California
in the years that I have been an adult have been the poor results in
California schools, even compared to funding levels there that were higher
than in some other states. I wish the school administrators in California well
in learning how to spend their resources better. I note that the Gates
Foundation studies of effective schooling practices often include schools in
California in the study samples, and I hope actionable data lead to better
results.

------
chimpinee
Combine driverless cars with electric motors. Add a few driver-free high speed
tunnels which connect to the existing road network (I assume tunnelling will
eventually be cheaper than building new roads). Then we'll have a growing,
backwards-compatible high speed freight distribution system which delivers to
the doorstep. And as cars get quieter and pollution free (locally) our cities
will suddenly become civilised places to walk around in, breathing freely.
Maybe we'll hang out like philosophers in the market squares of Athens or
Florence :-)

------
tluyben2
So how many years are we talking until we see them in the US? Europe? Asia?
Not seeing 1 or 2 with millionaires in them but when I buy any car I have the
option, or, even better, it's mandatory driverless (which makes sense as the
roads would be safer with only driverless cars there)?

For me, this would actually be a solid reason to move to the country they have
it first. I find driving an absolute waste of time, but busses and metros and
trains are just not a good substitute unless almost empty and comfortable
(which most are not).

~~~
elchief
Sergei Brin of Google has promised < 5 years for an average joe. And that was
6 months ago.

~~~
tokenadult
Sergey Brin's actual statement was "You can count on one hand the number of
years until ordinary people can experience this" as transcribed from an
interview.

[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9231707/Self_driving_...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9231707/Self_driving_cars_a_reality_for_39_ordinary_people_39_within_5_years_says_Google_39_s_Sergey_Brin)

That is an ambitious prediction, and I wonder what that suggests about the
cost of the self-driving system, as fewer and fewer cars look affordable to
many "ordinary people" these days. I think Brin, being a billionaire for
several years now, may have a warped sense of what "ordinary people" can
really afford, so I give it ten years till I'm likely to be able to buy a car
with self-driving features. But that means I can buy at most just one more car
without self-driving features (to replace a car that threatens to fail at any
moment, after almost 170,000 miles of driving since 1999), and then the next
car I buy will be a self-driving car. Cool.

~~~
chrisfromto
"Ordinary people" could certainly afford to ride in driver-less taxis.

------
spc476
Hmm, no mention of the disruptions in employment due to driverless cars. There
go taxi drivers, bus drivers and a big segment---truck drivers, so I would
expect a large push back from the various unions (I'm extrapolating from _The
Box_, a history of container shipping).

~~~
elchief
America still has unions?

------
jmspring
The next several years should prove "interesting" for the car market.
Driverless cars and assorted state DOT departments pushing for black boxes in
cars on the basis of tracking milage are both going to see pushback from the
general public.

I've bought two new cars (and 1 used) in the last 15 years. The oldest lasted
11 years and 256000 miles. The used was a truck when I bought my house. The
newest is a diesel wagon getting 40+ miles to the gallon, I don't plan on
selling it anytime soon.

I will be loath to add GPS for purposes of tax calculation (sure it can be
done based off registration or other means -- at least the GPS data isn't
there). And, I don't predict any incentive to move people from driving their
own cars to self-driving cars.

The above is in addition to the "independence" baked into the American culture
about the open road and the automobile.

~~~
vecinu
_The above is in addition to the "independence" baked into the American
culture about the open road and the automobile._

Do you think there is something inherently wrong with the feeling of
independence and happiness attained from the car culture in the US?

I am still dubious that self-driving and non-self-driving cars will be able to
share a road in the future. If this doesn't happen, I doubt Americans will
freely give up their 'right' to drive the way they want.

~~~
warfangle
Not the parent, but I do think there is something inherently wrong about it.

I grew up around cars, driving cars (heck, my college job was the
stereotypical pizza delivery guy). I live in a metropolitan area where I can
go just about anywhere I need to with the swipe of a card and waiting a few
minutes on a train platform. The feeling of independence that I didn't need to
worry about the CV boots on my axles screwing up and costing me hundreds in a
replacement axle. The feeling of independence that I'm not contributing
significantly to pollution. The feeling of independence that _getting out and
walking somewhere_ gives me. The feeling of independence that I get to read a
book on my commute instead of staring at the ass-end of an SUV jettisoning
metric tons of fumes while in stop-and-go-traffic.

Do I wish I had a car for getting out of the city and into the countryside
sometimes? Well, sure.

That's what zipcar is for.

I _do_ admit that the feeling of driving is exhilarating. Pushing the pedal
down, feeling the engine rev, connecting with the road through the tires.

For the majority of uses, I can see driverless cars completely taking over.
And for those who want to drive endless country roads? Well, driverless cars
will probably be built to drive with the expectation that every other car on
the road is being driven by a drunken teenager on a methamphetamine binge. For
liability purposes.

And in certain parts of the country, you can still see horse-drawn carriages
clopping along the shoulder.

So you'll [the quintessential driver, who just wants to drive because of some
ass-backwards ideal of freedom which is actually more crippling than freeing]
will be just fine.

If not? Well, we have four-wheeler specific mudding "roads" out there right
now, don't we? I could see the blue ridge parkway, for example, being a
driver-only road (it is incredibly fun to drive).

~~~
overgard
You're lucky. It's a luxury to live in an area with effective mass
transportation.

A lot of people aren't so lucky.

The freedom a vehicle provides those people is quite real.

~~~
Someone
Counterargument is that people exerting their freedom to own a car has built a
society where areas without effective mass transportation are common, thus
forcing others to also buy a car.

Suburbs would have been built differently if not for private car ownership. LA
would not exist in its current form.

------
gadders
One overlooked factor is how much marital discord this will save.

"I drove last time, it's your turn to drive." "But they'll be serving just
beer. You don't even like beer." etc etc

I also look forward to the day when you will be able to go to the pub, get
absolutely wankered, and still be able to get home safely without waiting for
cabs.

------
lylemckeany
Like some others have mentioned, the title is somewhat misleading. There is no
feasible way that Google ends up owning the entire market. And I'm not talking
about the actual cars, because they're definitely not getting in the car
making business. Even when it comes to the software, they could only be the
only provider in the market if it becomes a government regulated monopoly.

As a side note, I think the resistance to driverless cars will be a big
psychological stumbling block. I can't ride in the passenger seat of a car
without hitting the "brakes" and pressing my foot into the floor. It will be
tough to break habits and to trust that the software is safe.

------
gfodor
One of great ironies of the 21st century is going to be that humanity had to
build autonomous flying drones before it could build autonomous cars (to
develop the algorithms), and autonomous cars before it could build flying cars
(because average people could never be reasonably expected to pilot a flying
car.)

But mark my words in 2100 we will, at last, have flying autonomous cars (or
something that can be described that way.)

------
logn
"Because people consistently underestimate the implications of a change in
technology—are you listening, Kodak, Blockbuster, Borders, Sears, etc.?"

Um, are you listening Ford, Hyundai, Honda, GM? Can't wait until they
legislate their way back to competitiveness with google.

~~~
taligent
All of those companies have had self-driving car projects for a decade now.

Might want to pay attention.

------
clarky07
The interesting part about this is everything mentioned was about saving money
on things. It sounds like it could destroy a few trillion in revenue. I don't
think it is actually worth trillions to google though. (Obviously it could be
worth a lot though)

------
fourstar
Sensationalist headline but I can conclude that Google and SpaceX are the tech
leaders of our generation. Love hearing about companies focused on the future.
To think that potentially this guy who has to depend on other people to take
care of him and drive him places, or he has to take the bus, won't have to
because he can hop into his self-driving car and be independent.

------
jacques_chester
This assumes Google will have the market to itself.

Cars aren't like search. It's not a winner-takes-all market.

~~~
anigbrowl
Google's not selling cars. It's selling automotive technology that will soon
become standard in cars.

~~~
GIFtheory
The solution is much farther off than Google would like you to believe. As in,
we'll be lucky if driverless cars become feasible before fusion becomes
commercially viable.

~~~
onedev
Please don't make statements like that without providing your reasoning
(whether right or wrong).

~~~
GIFtheory
I've worked on autonomous cars, and no, I am not a crank. I could go into
technical reasons why this is nowhere near ready, but there is no need. The
onus is on Google to prove that they have the technology (or that it will
arrive soon), and proof has not been forthcoming. I'm not even claiming that
Google is claiming that autonomous cars are almost here--I am saying that
people should take their carefully controlled demos with a grain of salt.

------
rayiner
Pedantry: not "Google's Driverless Car" but rather "Google's IPR on Driverless
Cars" ([http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/12/16/google-granted-
pat...](http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/12/16/google-granted-patent-for-
driverless-car-technology)).

------
weltall
honestly, isn't this the future you imagined? it's amazing how we see this for
the first time and are initially underwhelmed or blase.

------
OGinparadise
_Fasten Your Seatbelts: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions_

Amazing! He studied and compared all other driver-less cars to Google's and
came to this conclusion.

I know a writer getting paid for clicks wouldn't forget that virtually every
major car company is working on
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driverless_car#History>

~~~
dmix
Xerox's GUI was worth trillions.

~~~
kamaal
Just like how Xerox was unable to realize the value of what they had. Its very
possible the car makers too, might think on the same line.

Sometimes you need a outsider to show you how powerful your own work can be.

------
thoughtcriminal
We'll all be dead from toxic smog before Google's driverless cars get
anywhere.

I think the idea is extremely shortsighted. It's a technological feat but not
a creative one. It just produces more cars, more fuel-burning and more roads.
It's more cars and that will produce more pollution.

Ultimately, it solves nothing. You want to stop deadly car crashes? Help save
wildlife from excessive roads and urban sprawl? Stop driving. Live and work
locally. But that would take _real_ change.

~~~
jaggederest
> We will need more roads, more cars and that will produce more pollution.

Nope. Less. Cars-per-person will nosedive from almost 1:1 in the US right now
to maybe 1:5 - that means the embodied energy wasted on cars will go down.
Per-mile energy costs will go down too, if cars are driven efficiently.

It also enables the large-scale conversion of the US car fleet to electric
propulsion. Cars can recharge themselves and aren't range limited because you
can swap cars rather than waiting.

It's huge. It's as big as the invention of the car was. All the human hours
wasted on moving things from A to B will gradually go away.

~~~
thoughtcriminal
That's a lot of ifs, and making a lot of assumptions. We don't have this kind
of time.

For God sakes, _please_ snap out of your delusion.

~~~
r0s
You're deluded if you think car culture in the US can change significantly
anytime soon. Call me a cynic, and I'll call you a fool.

If you want to throw around platitudes, why not address the real problem:
uncontrolled population. Or does that make you uncomfortable?

~~~
thoughtcriminal
No Mr.Pot, overpopulation isn't the problem. Greed and misallocation of land
and resources is the problem. Too many cars is a problem. And you calling the
kettle black is a problem.

I don't drive, you do, therefore you are uncomfortable with the reality that
you are destroying the environment and the air and shifting the responsibility
elsewhere.

~~~
r0s
No, allocation of resources depends entirely on scarcity, because no working
system of fair distribution will ever happen in the real world. Unless you
rely on charity to take care of everyone, which I guess is your solution. More
likely you haven't thought about it.

Cars don't have to be internal-combustion.

You have no moral authority, just shrill accusations.

Your lack of driving is a lame dodge for your destructive, hypocritical, blind
consumerism; which is doing far more damage than a car ever could. Feel free
to defend your lifestyle here and pretend you don't shit all over the third
world as much as the average American. You're fooling yourself though. Either
you work for a company that does a ton of environmental damage, or your
parents do, and they pay your bills (more likely). You pay taxes to a
government with a massive military machine that destroys the environment and
subsidizes the worst companies. But maybe your lack of car makes you special.

~~~
thoughtcriminal
You don't know what you're talking about. I don't live in the US.

~~~
r0s
I sure wherever you live you're shitting on the third world just as much as
the US.

