
Lyft and Waymo Reach Deal to Collaborate on Self-Driving Cars - josephpmay
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/14/technology/lyft-waymo-self-driving-cars.html
======
zitterbewegung
I guessed this would happen in a previous comment. Lyft being second fiddle in
the ride sharing business has allowed them to take advantage of all of Uber's
accumulating missteps. Partnering with GM and now Google it seems that this
will be like android. Waymo provides self driving car software . Lyft is like
a cell phone carrier providing logistics and the network, and GM provides cars
(hardware) which would be like Samsung.

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321265)

------
keeptrying
Waymo will have the first self driving cars on the road.

They are so ahead of everyone.

I think everyone including regular car companies buy the tech from Waymo in
the short term.

~~~
puranjay
I'm curious where Tesla fits into this scheme. In terms of road miles, I
reckon Tesla would have Waymo beat easily. They have far too many cars on the
road and thus, way more data.

Does this factor into the quality of self-driving tech at all?

~~~
ma2rten
As of 2013 Google's self-driving cars collected about 1 GB per second of data
[1], today it must be even more. There is no way Telsa can upload nearly as
much data from customer's cars. I also belief that their team is smaller and
they started much later.

[1] [http://www.kurzweilai.net/googles-self-driving-car-
gathers-n...](http://www.kurzweilai.net/googles-self-driving-car-gathers-
nearly-1-gbsec)

~~~
erikpukinskis
You shouldn't need to upload the entire 1gb. The central AI can query the cars
to get just the bits it has questions about. Part of the AI's job is learning
which data to care about and which data to ignore.

The fact that the trees got new leaves again this year and it's dark at 2am
and the sign at the Chinese Restaurant is still red don't to be relayed.

More data isn't automatically better. The hard part isn't getting some magical
quantity of data the hard part is asking the right questions of it.

A self driving system needs to solve this problem (the frame problem) anyway.
So you get intelligence compression for "free".

In a sense, intelligence _is_ compression.

~~~
solipsism
This is naive. You don't know what data you will care about in a year. The
ability to have and keep _all_ the data is incredibly valuable.

~~~
sqeaky
Why do so many on HN feel the need to structure their responses like this:

> Something Rude. Real argument, which is stronger with first sentence
> removed.

You may be right (or wrong, I don't know) but opening with rudeness or insults
makes it more difficult to have meaningful conversations.

~~~
solipsism
Rudeness? Insults? I said "this is naive", not "you are naive."

Surely we're all adults and can talk about ideas candidly without having to
beat around the bush and tell each other little white lies.

A while ago you told someone, "You speak in broad generalizations that miss
many points and make many faulty assumptions. "

Any difference between your statement and mine comes down to how individuals
respond to specific words. How about we rise above such pettiness and focus on
the subject matter?

You've added nothing to this discussion and have wasted people's time.

~~~
sqeaky
> You've added nothing to this discussion and have wasted people's time.

What is your response doing?

------
pgodzin
With how much Google had previously invested in Uber, without the Waymo
lawsuit it's safe to say this deal would have been struck with Uber instead.
Has nottt been a good few months for Uber, and Lyft has really taken
advantage.

~~~
Fricken
In June 2015 Uber acquired a bunch of mapping assets from Bing, and hired away
~100 engineers from Bing's mapping program to develop their own maps (I don't
know what the current status is on that initiative), which was the first
signal that, for whatever reason, Google and Uber weren't planning any sort of
long term strategic partnership. But Google holds itself to high ethical
standards, and I doubt Google expected to Uber to behave so badly. I mean,
Uber has always behaved badly, but up until the point they stopped being the
underdog we were all cheering Uber on.

------
alistproducer2
When I use lyft now, I'm coming across drivers that only drive for lyft. The
tide has definitely shifted against Uber. I'm not really sure there's a way
back at this point. The one advantage Uber had was network effect, but in my
experience that has diminished. Lyfts come just as fast as Ubers now because
they have enough drivers on the road to support the response time. I'll never
go back to Uber.

~~~
nodesocket
I'd say this assessment is clouded by your own judgements of Uber. Uber is
vastly larger than Lyft. I've taken Uber's all over the world (Europe, South
America), Lyft barely has market penetration in rural areas of the United
States.

I recently bet my friend who is supremely confident that United Airlines
business will be significantly impacted due to the passenger incident. Thus
far, it appears United is doing just fine[1], in fact they may be on pace for
a blowout Q2 quarter. Money in the bank.

Moral of the story... These types of negative incidents (In my opinion I call
it the constant outrage complex) rarely affects finance fundamentals of solid
businesses. If you want to take a moral stand against Uber you are absolutely
entitled to that and that is fine with me.

[1] [https://www.thestreet.com/story/14125827/1/united-
reports-7-...](https://www.thestreet.com/story/14125827/1/united-
reports-7-4-increase-in-revenue-passenger-miles-in-april.html)

~~~
CPLX
But the finance fundamentals of Uber are truly horrible.

Their only explanation for literally lighting billions of dollars in funds on
fire to subsidize rides is supposedly to consolidate market share. If they
don't have a defensible position and they lose money on every transaction what
exactly do they have to show for it?

~~~
quonn
> literally lighting billions of dollars in funds on fire

Figuratively. But even that's not true, since customers have saved real money
and spent it elsewhere.

~~~
CPLX
Literally.

Usage #2: [https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/literally](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/literally)

~~~
ysavir
Well that's.... Sad. I think I will take what little authority I (don't) have
and veto that definition, seeing as it _literally_ defeats the purpose of
definition #1.

And I was invoking definition #1 there, in case that wasn't clear.

~~~
Asooka
It's not quite as bad as you think, literally is usually used figuratively in
"A is literally B" to indicate that while A is obviously not literally B, the
outcome that A will have will be practically the same as that from B.

~~~
eric_h
That's actually a pretty reasonable defense of what I've generally considered
a cringe worthy usage of the word "literally".

------
neosat
This could be a longer term death blow for Lyft, ironically. If Google has the
self driving tech, the car & car partnerships, the money, maps, access to end
consumers, what exactly does it need Lyft for? Lyft will be a vehicle for
Google to kickstart and test this out with a current ride sharing network
before Lyft is cut off ...

~~~
fragmede
And when Facebook came out with Google Plus, we all switched away from
Facebook, right? All the engineering genius in the world couldn't do enough
for Google Plus (hint: it's not the engineering), why would they do any better
with supplanting Lyft unless they copied Uber and lit money on fire by
offering free rides for a year like they did with (domestic US) phone calls.

~~~
amyjess
To extend your comparison, look at how much better buying YouTube was for
Google than starting Google Video was.

~~~
MarkMc
Both Facebook and YouTube have very strong network effects protecting them
from competition. A self-driving taxi service would have no network effect - a
better analogy is to the airline industry.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Here's the thing. The end game is that Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers are out of
a job as chauffeur.

However, the self-driving cars remain a capital expense that someone has to
finance. I couldn't Google up numbers easily, but it looks like the number of
ride-hailed vehicles is in the multiple millions in the US. 1,000,000
autonomous cars at $50,000 each is a $50 Billion-per-million capital expense.
I'd guess that the capital is out there, but would it be that raising and
deploying that much capital takes as long as developing the autonomous
technology? Globally, why wouldn't this be a $1 Trillion spend? Can Uber and
Lyft pull that off?

~~~
dguest
> The end game is that Uber, Lyft and taxi drivers are out of a job as
> chauffeur.

This is true, but as someone who grew up somewhere where there's snow on the
ground 6 months out of the year, I'm wondering how we're going to deal with
more extreme driving conditions. How reliable are these self-driving cars in
ice and snow? Is there even a strong economic reason to solve this problem
right now?

My concern is that we'll end up with a fleet of cars that work great 90% of
the time, and then flat refuse to drive when they fall outside their design
envelope. At that point driving will be a niche market: the pool of drivers
for emergency vehicles (which can't just take the day off when it's snowing),
and services in rural areas (where detailed maps and standard heuristics may
fail) will be the only permanent workforce. Meanwhile anyone else with a
licence will have to step in as a chauffeur when conditions get bad.

~~~
linkregister
Considering most of the U.S. (primary market for self-driving cars)
experiences snow and ice several months of the year, why wouldn't engineers
spend time to make this work well? Is there something inherent about adverse
weather that makes humans better at it?

The evidence is that anti-lock brakes and variable traction controls have lead
to a reduction in crashes in adverse weather conditions. Driving in snow and
ice is hard. Why wouldn't a system that can make much finer and frequent
adjustments outperform people? The only thing that is really holding back
self-driving systems is the computer vision aspect, which is mitigated with
Lidar and by further research into computer vision improvements.

------
omarforgotpwd
Uber and Lyft are pretty much the exact same thing in markets where both are
available. hell, they even have the same set of drivers as many drivers sign
on to both. I think time will prove that Lyft was quite undervalued compared
to Uber, especially as autonomous vehicles hit the market.

~~~
mattnewton
Personally, there are nicer touches in the Lyft app- the colored signs, color-
accurate picture of the make and model of the car, and generally friendlier
driver instructions make getting into the car and riding more pleasant for me.

~~~
omarforgotpwd
Not to mention the fact that you can easily tip, knowing how tough things are
for drivers with base pricing.

~~~
yellow_postit
My personal view is that the rates should be set such that tipping is not
expected. That remains the main draw of Uber for me.

~~~
azernik
Lyft actually has higher rates (for the driver) than Uber.

~~~
linkregister
Can you add information? Their websites both claim that drivers earn 25% of
the fare.

------
flylib
this will most likely amount to nothing or very little, waymo is also
launching their own competing service at some point and lyft has other
suppliers for cars (GM/Cruise), this will most likely be a stop gap and used
as a a good headliner grab for both companies, just look at what happened to
the short lived Lyft/Didi/Grab partnership that went up in smoke

------
gremlinsinc
I feel like Lyft is the underdog coming back to strike the killer blow to
Uber... The year Uber has had I wouldn't be surprised to see them disappear
altogether by 2018/2019\. Lyft seems to be doing things a lot better, but
helps that their CEO isn't out starting fires instead of putting them out.

~~~
sikosmurf
Interesting. I feel like there is no way Uber would be on the brink of
bankruptcy and not be able to fundamentally change the problems that have
persisted so far.

I guess what I'm getting at is that a company valued at 69 billion dollars
going out of business in less than 2 years _should_ be a surprise to
_everyone_.

~~~
ridgeguy
Valuation differs from cash in the bank.

Uber could be valued at a gazillion $, but if it can't make payroll in 90
days, it's got a problem that would be tough to fix, given the apparent lack
of a profitable business model.

~~~
tim333
The recent figure for what it's worth (end 2016):

revenue $6.5 billion

losses excluding China $2.8 bn

$7 billion of cash on hand, along with an untapped $2.3 billion credit
facility (bloomberg)

So they are not going bust tomorrow but whether they can build a real business
from that is quite questionable.

~~~
bigbugbag
Talk about biased numbers and interpretation.

Revenue is growing but losses are growing too, so revenue is not growing fast
enough.

7 billions of cash means Uber will be broke in less than two years depending
how much faster losses are growing compared to revenue.

Investors might become hesitant until they know where the lawsuit with google
is going.

My interpretation is that, unless Uber finds a way to reverse steam and become
profitable they are still around today but are on the way out and might be
gone tomorrow.

------
panzer_wyrm
That is just rubbing salt in the self inflicted wounds.

I think that this could probably be the first real danger for Uber, especially
if their self driving cars effort is killed.

The major costs in taxi operation are fuel and humans. Electricity solves the
first, self driving second.

And they can even escape regulation if they present themselves as ultra short
term rent a car service.

~~~
prostoalex
> The major costs in taxi operation are fuel and humans.

What about vehicles themselves?

~~~
BigJono
It'd be a factor, but not a major one.

Say you expect to spend $30,000 on the car and $20,000 on repairs over a
lifetime of 10 years (that's probably well on the high side, say you picked
out a shitbox that always breaks down).

At $15/h wage and $50/week in petrol, running the car 40 hours a week
(probably on the low side, a lot of taxi drivers I know have 2-3 drivers to a
car and would run it more like 120 hours), you're looking at $195,000 in
wage/petrol expenses over those 10 years. Almost 4x the total cost of the car.

~~~
prostoalex
The lifetime of a vehicle is better expressed in terms of miles, not years,
and for most models probably ends up being close to 200,000 miles. While a
generic vehicle owned by an average family will take 10 years to reach that, a
for-hire vehicle gets quite a bit more mileage.

One expense that people tend to leave out is the cleaning, both on the inside
and outside. Someone has to take care of those car washes, and while cheap,
they add up.

With the driverless model I see those expenses increasing, as without a
chaperon passengers are more likely to eat, drink, puke, and in general
misbehave (source: I've been inside some BART and LA Metro cars).

~~~
pg314
> With the driverless model I see those expenses increasing, as without a
> chaperon passengers are more likely to eat, drink, puke, and in general
> misbehave (source: I've been inside some BART and LA Metro cars).

You're anonymous in a metro, you won't be in a driverless car. They can charge
you for the clean-up.

------
scep12
Undoubtedly the market for ride sharing built with autonomous vehicles will
afford for multiple winners -- but this certainly looks like a strong
contender for the first.

~~~
Moshe_Silnorin
I think it will be a commodity market. Not excited as an investor, very
excited as a customer though.

~~~
avaer
If it's a commodity like telecoms -- and not like rice -- then I'm not too
excited as a consumer either.

~~~
ju-st
Telecoms do have a natural monopoly, ride sharing does not.

------
taneq
And the moral of this story is that no matter how big you are, if you piss off
enough people, you're gonna have a bad time.

~~~
mattnewton
Pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered.

------
sgustard
What do you see as the build vs buy preference here? Are you better off being
Uber and investing billions in self-driving technology (assuming an ideal
world with no lawsuits or misconduct), vs Lyft partnering for the same
features? Frankly, I don't see the advantage of a software and logistics
company going off on a robotics and AI track. Self-driving will take decades
but eventually will become commodity technology.

~~~
problems
If we're not extremely careful about it, it may not become commodity
technology, it may rest solely in the hands of a few companies who maintain
full control of it.

All it would really take is a few big successful players who are behaving like
Tesla (you're not allowed to use self-driving for ride sharing) and a few
nasty failures from smaller players before regulators crack down and say
"okay, you now need to meet these extremely stringent guidelines and provide
an enormous sum in insurance" which would basically inhibit competition. It's
a nasty mix of capitalism and regulation that can kill a market before it
really starts.

------
had2makeanacct
If only Lyft could expand to more countries I'd love to try it.

------
ars
I wish Lyft didn't have tips, it's the one thing keeping me from rooting for
them to win.

~~~
an_account
It's super easy not to tip with Lyft though. I almost never do, unless the
driver was especially good (provided good conversation, recommendations, etc).

~~~
easilyBored
Technically you don't have to tip at e restaurant either (large parties
excluded). Try going back there and see the service you get.

Lyft should show the total of tips every 20 trips or so they had no chance of
guessing who tipped and who didn't. Or openly state that a 15% tip would be
appreciated and the passenger knows that it's the ride +15%.

~~~
fragmede
FYI Lyft drivers are paid out every $50 or every week, so they don't know
exactly who is tipping (unless you like them enough to tip $40 on a $10 cab
ride).

[https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/213830188-Express-
Pa...](https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/213830188-Express-Pay-)

Lyft is intentionally fuzzy about ride pricing, so even though the driver
total is shown real time, it's hard for them to know how much the rider was
charged given surge pricing.

------
asafira
Since GM owns a bit of Lyft equity, is it not weird that Lyft is doing this?
Maybe this is a sign that Cruise is quite far behind, and the best Lyft can do
to prepare for the future (whether with Waymo or GM) is to use Waymo tech?

People are also speculating that Alphabet might buy Lyft, but it's not clear
that Alphabet wants to be the first party involved in hiring contractors for
cars. (I understand these are autonomous cars, but will they really be
transitioning that soon?)

~~~
bmcusick
It's not weird at all. Lyft (like Uber) wants to be the universal middle-man,
not an in-house captured app of General Motors. They want to be the
marketplace where consumers of transport call up the nearest self-driving
resource, whether that's Cruise/GM, Waymo, or someone else.

------
steveb0x
Aww. Their LIDAR unit looks like a tiny sombrero

[https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/13/technology/how-
se...](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/12/13/technology/how-self-driving-
cars-work-1481671863640/how-self-driving-cars-
work-1481671863640-master495.png)

------
gshulegaard
It would appear that Lyft is making some strong ties with Google as of late.
Between this and the announcement of the Lyft partnership with IBM and Google
to work on some sort of Kubernetes router mesh [1] I am starting to see a
trend.

"We are excited to announce that we are working in partnership with both
Google and IBM to bring Envoy to Kubernetes. Fun fact: there are now more
people working on Envoy at Google than there are at Lyft! We have a lot of
other things planned with Google that we will be able to share more about in
the coming months."

[1] [https://eng.lyft.com/envoy-7-months-
later-41986c2fd443](https://eng.lyft.com/envoy-7-months-later-41986c2fd443)

~~~
fragmede
Only Lyft and Google know how much non-engineer time is going into that
though. Google gives engineering quite a bit of leeway to use whatever they
want, rather than necessarily foist something on them that a manager bought
over a round of golf. (Envoy is open source.)

~~~
gshulegaard
I think it will be interesting to follow Google's presentations at GlueCon:
[http://gluecon.com/](http://gluecon.com/)

------
touchofevil
If Alphabet really wants to mess with Uber, why don't they just buy Lyft and
offer lower ride pricing/higher driver pay for as long as it takes to put Uber
out of business?

~~~
msoad
That's going to take a lot of dollars..

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
It also would send a strong message to everyone they ever partner with in the
future.

~~~
r00fus
Partner with and then have steal intellectual property from, you mean? That's
a precedent Google would like to have set. It's like a public hanging of
bandits.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
Bingo, I could have phrased that better, this is exactly what I meant. I was
thinking of the message as "partner with us and try to screw us and you're in
for a world of hurt, partner with us and treat us well and we'll make sure
you're taken care of"

------
passivepinetree
I know Uber still has higher market share overall, but this is another strike
against them. I wonder what the end of the ongoing trial will bring...

------
joering2
Honest question: why there is no reverse type bidding system for picking a
ride?

Let me tell you when im going and where to, where i am and what time i need to
be there. Then you have x amount of hours/minutes to bid. The lowest bid gives
me ride, unless i want to click few more checkboxes like [x] verified rider
[x] minimum 4.5 star rider, etc.

~~~
tmh79
People prefer the "click button, get transit" UX for its simplicity.

~~~
r00fus
Well all except the Surge pricing. That at times can feel like highway
robbery.

------
tmh79
Biggest open question: what is the long term value of Lyft to Waymo?

To me, this seems like a way for waymo to pilot autonomous technology for
customers with low initial investment, but I don't see the long term value
that Lyft provides once testing is complete.

~~~
fencepost
It may end up being a question of whether Alphabet wants to be in the business
of providing rides or simply in the business of providing tech. There will be
a company that owns vehicles, books trips, handles payments, etc. It might
make sense to bring it in house, but there are also good reasons to have it
separate.

------
subdane
New York: drivers have lyft and uber apps/logos running/displayed.

------
eloisant
What would be the benefit for consumer if lyft/uber switch to driverless cars?
Are we going to see a huge price drop or just a bump for these companies
profits?

~~~
drKarl
Probably enough price drop to beat competitors and attract most of the market
share, and still have a higher profit, which would be a win-win except for
competitors

------
Animats
Waymo has other tests going. 100 self-driving minivans are being built with
Chrysler. These may be the ones for the self-driving test in Phoenix AZ.

------
rrm1977
I believe the technology is still need development on different perspective
especially the people acceptance. It is early to sign such deals.

------
skdotdan
This will be huge for Waymo and the Lyft killer or the other way around
depending on whether self-driving technology becomes a monopoly or a
commodity.

------
beastmaster64
what about tesla

------
jonthepirate
Google please buy Lyft for 25b in cash and stock.

~~~
skdotdan
Why?

------
beatpanda
Didn't Lyft also do basically the same thing in China? I feel like Lyft is a
living testament to collaboration being a better business strategy than
domination

~~~
MaxLeiter
I think the outcome of this Uber vs Lyft battle in a few years will be a
better testament - who knows, maybe Lyft will fall and Uber will stay at the
top.

~~~
speedplane
They are both losing money at such a tremendous rate, it's hard to tell how
far Uber is ahead of the competition. wWe'll only know once the VC and PE
money starts to dry up, and they'll be forced to go public and release much
more information. Then investors will start demanding at least a path towards
profitability.

