On: Toyota's Gill Pratt on Self-Driving Cars and the Reality of Full Autonomy

[Mistletoe]

It's funny, Uber is betting the farm on autonomous cars becoming reality and reading this reminds us of just how far away that is.

[stale2002 → Mistletoe]

What? This article is talking about level 5 autonomy. AKA, "works literally everywhere and all the time".

Uber only needs to get to level 4 to change the world.

[falcolas → stale2002]

If Uber gets to only level 4, it still needs drivers to handle those cases that the car can't handle. Doesn't really change the world.

[Gargoyle → Mistletoe]

Uber's main use cases aren't necessarily the "hard miles" discussed in the article.

[Neliquat → Gargoyle]

Being a taxi seems even more rigourous, your point is invalid.

[Gargoyle → Neliquat]

Uber knows the pickup and destination of every trip before it begins. Which means they know the route before it begins. Which means they can assess route and conditions to see if they are suitable for autonomous cars.

So they roll out slowly, expanding the possible trips covered as their technology advances.

Since they have such fine control over which routes and which conditions the cars will be expected to perform in, they're actually ideally positioned to work with this technology.