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How Google, Tesla, and Uber Could Team Up For the Driverless Taxis of the Future
cartechboy writes "Follow the thinking for a second. Google drops $258 million into the car-taxi app Uber. Google says it will make self-driving cars available within four years, based on its ground-breaking research into self-driving cars. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spoken with Google about driverless technology for future Tesla vehicles. So, are we watching the assembly of a massive driverless taxi service of the future? Battery-electric vehicles make excellent autonomous taxis (very few moving parts, low per-mile energy cost, and zero noise or emissions) Could Google use some of its cash hoard to buy Tesla outright (making Elon Musk its third largest shareholder in the process), then grab Uber and turn the whole thing into an app? Musk's goal has always been to transform the very nature of transportation. This might just do that."
More at 11.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Why would Musk become the third-largest GOOG shareholder if it was purchased if TSLA was purchased with cash? That doesn't make any sense.
No "JohnnyCab" tag?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Wobbly bridges, nonexistent highways, and GPS coordinate usage that looks like the clocks were off by about forty yards.
Think I'll pass.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Some arguments I've heard against driverless taxis/transport services:
1. People will dirty/graffiti/vandalize/steal the vehicles
2. What if it breaks down!!!
3. It'll get lost/not understand directions
4. Somebody will hide on board to attack the next passenger
5. People will do drugs/have sex/sleep in them(see #1)
I'll note that I don't believe any of these are can't be mitigated to the point that driverless taxis are practical, or are at least no more of a problem than manned taxis.
I don't read AC A human right
Who will make the "life-like" driver busts that can banter with eleven different sorts of inane chatter? JohnnyCab it is not!
No windows, the entire passenger area covered with advertising screens.
Is going to own the cans
The local council should own the cans of they are driverless
Will the courts / laws be ready in 4 years?
also one big / bad accident can lead to a big count case / even an order to stop useing the cars till the case can go though so things can get worked out without adding more victims to the penning cases.
Follow the thinking for a second. Outbox* collects people's mail, scans it, and delivers it to them in "a beautiful digital format". Outbox is located in Austin. Its founder has spoken at Capital Factory. President Obama has also spoken at Capital Factory. President Obama's government runs the Post Office. Clearly, Outbox, Capital Factory, and the President are going to replace the Post Office with Outbox.
Makes as much sense as the OP. Happy Friday!
*(I have no affiliation with them, I just live in Austin and see their silly cars driving around collecting people's mail and wonder why seemingly sane investors gave them money - I think this post answers the question!)
"The problem with Google's current approach is that the sensor system is too expensive" - Musk
He's referring to the expensive Velodyne rotating array of 64 LIDARs found on top of Google's cars. It's a useful device, but it's a research tool, not something that belongs on top of production vehicles.
What's needed is a compact solid-state 3D LIDAR for outdoor use. Advanced Scientific Concepts makes such things, but they're sold to DoD for about $100K each. Typical performance is 300 meter range, 128x128 pixels, 30 FPS. There's no fundamental reason the technology needs to be that expensive; it's just that the things are hand-made at a lab in Santa Barbara, CA. (I visited them a decade ago when we were doing a DARPA Grand Challenge vehicle. Back then, they had the technology working on an optical bench, but didn't have usable hardware yet.) This technology needs to be turned into a mass market product. The current generation Kinect, (which is a true LIDAR, not a trianguation sensor like the previous model) does roughly the same thing, but with a less sensitive sensor and a weaker laser. Eventually somebody will put enough money behind this to get it right.
OK, tinfoil hat perspective time:
Do we want to be driven around in a fleet of self driving cars, dispatched and tracked mercilessly by Google, thereby integrating a search history of your entire life, equipped with full time video, GPS and everything else they can jam into it??
And of course all of this gets handed over to the government, if not granted a direct feed.
That almost is cyberpunk.
Just saying, but this creeps me out.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Imagine a carshare service like Zipcar, but instead of having to make reservations, go to the lot, etc, you open an app, say you need a car, and it just shows up a few minutes later. You run your errands, go home, and the car goes away. And you only pay a (mostly?) flat yearly subscription for the service.
City folk would jump on such an option, and probably even some suburbanites.
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
fugg yes, JCVD!
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
How about english speaking psychopaths?
I want to buy one for travel into work. Ok, I want to be able to tint the windows so I can surf for porn on the way in. You married guys know what I'm saying.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
1st caveat: I am very cheap and never pay for anything that I don't feel like I need.
Is there enough demand for services like this? I have lived in very large urban areas (Toronto) where the public transportation (taxis included) are well used and well implemented. But I still see dozens of empty taxis (at all hours) queued up near theaters, bars, conerts and other similar venues waiting for clients. Empty/Idle taxis are losing money.
I always hear on the radio that taxi companies wanting the city to allow more licenses to be given out, so it appears that there is demand for these services. But alas, i always see a lot of them idle.
I have had to take a taxi 3 times in my life. All three times the fare was over $20. If I were to replace my bike and car for taxis and public transportation it would cost me more then $800 per month, which is almost as much as rent!
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Simple solution: Have an app for your 'calling' your taxi that also asks for the destination(helping you confirm that the system can actually get you there before you wait for the taxi), or give it to the dispatcher(who checks for improbable destinations/problems), and the system automatically selects one with sufficient charge to reach you, your destination, and back to the charging station with sufficient overhead. Worst case, it'll likely have dropped you off already before it dies. 'Emergency mode' should have it find a safe spot for the emergency charge/tow vehicle.
If it's a 'hail' taxi and you have to give the destination in the vehicle it can arrange for another taxi to intercept you even as it informs you that it unfortunately doesn't have sufficient charge for the whole trip, but in 15 miles you can transfer to a vehicle that does.
Remember, city taxi; it shouldn't be driving huge distances.
Another point would be that a Tesla Model S has enough range to only need 2 hours of fast-charge to exceed the average daily mileage of a NYC taxi.
I don't read AC A human right
Even with #4 you have the problem that while he's not hidden, attacks by cabbies themselves against passengers aren't unknown.
I don't read AC A human right
If you can build autonomous cars you can build autonomous robots ( at what point are they the same thing?).
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
For the entire idea to even be feasible, let alone economical and profitable, all three companies have big hurdles to beat. Google has to prove that it's technology can be deployed affordably over a large fleet of cars. Tesla has to prove that it can mass produce their vehicles at a price point that makes this scheme economical. Uber has to figure out how it's going to get through all the strict taxi regulations in each city; they barely have peace in a few metropolitan areas now, but if you talk about automated cars, that will completely freak the vested interests out. And all three will need to figure out the liability issues surrounding automated cars. If something happens, who will pay for it?
The very original concepts of the self driving car was that not everyone would need a car anymore, and they could be mass transportation. Just summon with a smart phone, and a close one will come. Or scheduled one for the week to get to work. Etc. No one specific is "revolutionizing transportation". If anyone takes credit for this, the people who think he did something special are all idiots. Hey, any programmer could write an ap now to summon automated cars now. Call it future ap, and have people book some automated cars ahead of time.
God spoke to me
since we're clearly dealing with hypotheticasl that aren't going to happen I'd just like to point out that unicorns are far more efficient than electric cars, they just eat candy and poop rainbows.
Google already has technology to retrofit existing cars into self driving ones -- which is MUCH better. The google tech can be licensed to every car manufacturer .. they can watch the market for a few years then buy one (ex: motorola). .. if I remember correctly at their current growth rate in 2 years they consume 110% of all Lithium ION production. .. and I guess we all get to use hand cranks for our cell phones .. which should make texting while driving even more dangerous. .. even if you include the time required to submit to the app store and get it approved. Why would Google buy Uber if it was going to immediately obsolete the uber business model with self driving cars? .. and taxi medallion revenue for cities, so that's just what either company need .. oh and getting a self driving car LICENSED to pick up passengers .. the form you'll need to fill out for that that hasn't even been invented by the bureaucracy yet.
Most manufacturers are already busy adding collision, proximity, velocity sensors to their cars for self parking -- so the in-vehicle wiring is already there.
Tesla's business model doesn't scale, the problem with electric cars is the lack of batteries. Tesla is going to hit a massive shortage of Lithium ION
Telsa as far as I know hasn't launched a mini-van and Elon doesn't strike me as the type of person who's interested in making them.
Building the uber app should take a first year intern at Google maybe 20-45 minutes
Uber's business model is disruptive to taxi's
The biggest thing holding back self driving cars is insurance. Insurance rules have to be written, that's regulated on a state to state basis uber's business model covers all states, so far only 2 states (CA and NV) have any sorts of rules for self driving cars, and at least in CA they still require a person to be in the drivers seat.
There are like a billion reasons this 3-way technology circle jerk is even less likely than Bill Gates decided to take back his old job, and/or Steve Jobs cryogenically frozen brain being thawed out and put in Balmers body.
If Friday the 13th is like april fools and I was trolled, then my bad. Otherwise the OP is an idiot. And the mods should pull this down.
nuff said
No, I don't know what rodent pussy looks like.
And I don't think they'd be much fun if they were driverless. Besides, Elon Musk has stated several times he would not sell the company until at least the more affordable 3rd generation Tesla was on the market.
Taxi drivers will go the way of the Dodo bird within our lifetime. Over here in Europe, car sharing is massively on the rise. In my city, for example, there are a couple hundred smarts, and I can find the nearest one available using an app on my smartphone, walk up to it, rent it right there without going into any office, drive it to my destination, and just leave it there for the next guy to pick it up.
Just add self-driving to this and you have a perfect city-wide coverage. Not only because I could use it more like a taxi (i.e. let it drive me, instead of driving myself), but also because the cars could automatically move themselves to hotspots where they are needed, so you would always have one nearby - or could call one to your destination.
Then there is already an app that crosses transportation methods. I enter where I want to go, it knows where I am from the GPS in my phone, and it will calculate my options to getting where I want to go, taking public transport, car sharing and taxis into account.
Add Siri to the mix and in just a few years, things will go like this:
"Siri, I want to go visit my parents."
"You can take the bus in 12 minutes, or I can get you a car. Going by car will be 18 minutes faster."
"Get me a car, please."
"Car rented, will be at the door in 6 minutes."
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
When this future arrives, the taxi fare will be zero. But there will be a video camera that will record you in the cab all the way, and a robot will rifle through all the papers and bags you are carrying and record it. Then it will upload it all to your google+ account and nag you to share it with rest of the world. And somehow it will figure out from all this, what you want to buy next and pitch ads to you all along the ride.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
They already have rental cars and this doesn't happen with them.
There's a small difference: the current programs of car-sharing that you constantly swap around (like Switzerland's Mobility, Germany's DB CarSharing, French AutoLib, etc.) all have NON self driving cars. That requires by law that at least one person (the one behind the wheel) is more or less sober.
That means that currently at least someone realise what is happening inside the car and can try to disciplin the rest of the drunken crowd if things start getting out of control.
self-driving taxis require no sober driver. only someone approximately capable to push an app's button to call the cab.
thus when boarding, the whole passenger team could be completely fucked up. And in this state, they might find funny to throw beer cans at each other or whatever. Nobody is going to try to be at least a little bit responsible or adult.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]