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Uber Seeking To Buy Self-Driving Cars (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes from an article on Reuters: In order to save money from hiring drivers, ride-hailing service Uber has shown interest in placing a large order for self-driving cars, an auto industry source said on Friday. "They wanted autonomous cars," the source, who declined to be named, said. "It seemed like they were shopping around." Earlier on Friday, Germany's Manager Magazin reported that Uber had placed an order for at least 100,000 Mercedes S-Class cars, citing sources at both companies. [The top-flight limousine does not yet have fully autonomous driving functionality.] Another source familiar with the matter said no order had been placed with Mercedes-Benz. Diamler and Uber declined to comment. Auto industry executives are wary of doing deals with newcomers from the technology and software business who threaten to upend established business models based on manufacturing and selling cars. "We don't want to end up like Nokia's handset business, which was once hugely profitable... then disappeared," a second auto industry source said about doing a deal with Uber.
It only makes sense. Uber can reduce the largest cost of taxi services by eliminating the temperamental drivers. This way, they can provide a consistent service that is the same everywhere.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Replacing drivers will displace workers. See here for the feedback on that: https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
There is currently no such thing as a 'self driving car', and there won't be for decades to come, and even if there is sooner than that, it'll still require, by law, a qualified driver behind the wheel at all times.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Each group of vehicles will need a home base, probably with a mechanic, fuel, and place to store most (if not all) of the vehicles in case of disaster i.e. a flood/storm/blizzard when all cars are ordered off the road.
Right now, they have a ready made test market in Nevada (laws already passed), which they will most likely have to self-insure the vehicles. But they have the money to do it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Uber stated last July it was interested in buying every single autonomous car Tesla could build.
I can't believe people don't see what's going to happen when all the unskilled work either disappears or pays so little that you have a permanent underclass of people. Driving a cab is pretty much a last-resort job for people who need to moonlight or can't get any other job. It's unrealistic to think that all these people have the intelligence or resources to train for a higher-level job. Look at all the factory workers who can't get anything better than a home health care aide job. I'd sure hate to be thrown out after 20 years on an assembly line to clean up after dementia patients.
Don't be surprised when the "knowledge worker" jobs are gone too. I consider myself reasonably smart and a hard worker, but no job is immune to this. I also worry about a massive glut of middle-skilled people getting displaced. I work in IT services, and there are so many "customer account coordinators" and "relationship specialists" and "technical project enablers" who fit this mold. They're not deeply technical, most are ex-fraternity or sorority types from Big State University who partied their way through a business degree or maybe even an MBA, and they'll be absolutely screwed when big corporations get around to cutting them out too. The thing is this - those C students pay taxes, buy stuff with their salaries and have children. When the safety net of stable work is cut, no one is going to want to spend or procreate, and then we're really stuck.
I'm thinking it's about 50/50 that Uber will survive... however, the ride hailing idea is NEVER going to die. The desire for ride hailing companies to not pay employees, and instead invest in self driving tech is also not going anywhere. I think you put too much faith in "laws" which are in fact more like racketeering. The taxi laws are not in place to protect the taxi companies, they are in place to protect the customers and the general public. Once self driving tech is considered safer than human drivers (the bar is pretty low people...) then you will see the industry kick every last driver to the curb.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Yesterday was St. Patricks. Do you have any idea how many people threw up in cabs last night?
Ok, so let's go 10 years into the future and Uber actually has self-driving cars. And their Mercedes S-class picks up two drunk students. One barfs in the car on their ride home. They stumble out and go on their way.
Then that same car gets routed to it's next pickup, a well to-do couple from a fine dining establishment. They open the door, and.......
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Who didn't see this coming? Did people honestly think their business plan was to hire random people to drive their own cars? Right now that's the cheapest way to collect data. A year ago they went in and poached Carnegie Mellon's Robotics department (Those guys behind the Red Humvees in the DARPA autonomous vehicle project).
Taking vacation in Florida I can't wait for a self driving future over the current crop of aging drivers. Grandma doesn't need to own, maintain or anything a car. She just uses the Amazon Echo-ish device to order a car to take her to the store and home.
"the source, who declined to be named"
So ... "some guy said Uber wants to buy self driving cars instead of hiring drivers".
(1) Uber does not hire drivers; Uber uses contractors
(2) Uber is not a taxi company
(3) If Uber owned the cars, self driving or not, they damn well *would* be a taxi company
(4) Uber has no interest in *being* a taxi company, because that would cause them to fall under onerous regulations that the taxi companies have lobbied to put in place over the last century, as an anticompetitive measure to keep other taxi companies from coming into existence and competing against them.
It's pretty obvious that about the stupidest thing Uber could possibly do is buy self-driving cars. If self-driving cars ever become a viable thing, then Uber will most likely *contract* with the owners of the self-driving cars, rather than owning the cars themselves, and that way they can remain a ride sharing service, rather than getting sucked into the morass that is the taxi industry.
More shitty, abusive-of-human jobs, according to their detractors, about to b3 replaced by machines to take the risk.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
"We don't want to end up like Nokia's handset business, which was once hugely profitable... then disappeared,"
then don't partner with Microsoft because that is exactly what killed Nokia's handset business.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Whatever technology is used it's would be a huge crash course that would most certainly remove the majority of the bugs and make the system more robust and secure city by city. Every inch of road would be mapped. The kinks could be worked out a lot faster than if they took the conservative route of slowly migrating driving from manual to auto.
P.S. It would also mean that some gas stations would be contracted and need to have someone on staff for Full Service for these self driving cars. Or maybe provide a discount if the rider was willing to pump gas.
NASA Seeking To Buy Rocket for Mars Mission
In light of the rarity of these things, today and in the foreseeable future, some expect disappointment. Like the self-driving car, the Mars Rocket is a figment of the imagination. There are models, there are concept prototypes, there are proposals but there is no such thing for sale.
There is hope for the Rocket, but the massive infrastructure and legal wrangling and upset to powerful corporate interests will leave the Self-Driving Cars in limbo for a very long time.
...omphaloskepsis often...
There is currently no such thing as a 'self driving car', and there won't be for decades to come, and even if there is sooner than that, it'll still require, by law, a qualified driver behind the wheel at all times.
There's already a self-driving tractor-trailer in Nevada.
... force Uber to comply with the same laws and regulations as taxis, which is what Uber is.
I agree, and this announcement is significant because it signals that Uber is abandoning the claim that their drivers are just contractors. They are not only admitting that their drivers are employees but that they are also going to be providing the cars. This puts them in exactly the same status as taxis, except they're still trying to avoid the laws that cover taxi service.
and questions about liability
In this case, there would be no question as to the liability. Not only would the manufacturer be sued, so would Uber. There would be no innocent party (driver/owner) who was depending on the over-hyped hyper-reliability of autonomous vehicles.
[...] When the safety net of stable work is cut, no one is going to want to spend or procreate, and then we're really stuck.
Modern economics isn't a science, it's a jumble of overlapping theories and schools of thought.
By popular economic theory there will be massive starvation and general collapse.
There are different schools of thought which include a guaranteed minimum income, which would give people a life of leisure to pursue whatever they liked. As more and more automation took over, we could have a sci-fi utopian society where everyone's basic needs are met.
That's a worthy goal. Carping about "this change will reduce jobs" is ineffective and pointless.
We should instead try to change the existing "schools of thought" to bring about that utopia.
Well, you aren't far from the truth. The population on the planet is not sustainable if robots work. It is even not sustainable now, but we still have the subhumans on the subcontinent breed like no tomorrow. While there is still some small piece of work, there will be some money changing hands, and there will be breeding. But averaged over all, humans are poor, wretched, hungry mass, doomed to mere existence with short life span.
Humans are by nature (especially in the past) are r-selectors. The future, where robots case of everyone if a future of K-selectors. We have been moving gradually from r to K in accelerated pace in the last 400 years, and especially in the last 100. What the last 100 has given us is the r-selector numbers, with the quality of life of K-selectors. This is not sustainable. To complete our journey as species to K-selectors the majority will have to simply die off.
And naturally these days it will be the heads of corporations, (the owners of robots) who are significantly further into the K-selector status. As, only the execs and few employees at the top, and their immediate families will be granted by evolution, the K-selector status, because of their wealth. All the regular employees, will be left without work, and therefore if they do not revert back to r-selectors and start basic self-sustaining agriculture, will need to perish.
This has been so in ancient time - for early Eguipt to prosper they had to enslave Nubians, and other folk, though they had rich and fertile valley around Nile; for Rome (republic and early empire) to prosper, they had to kill and steal from most of Europe and Mediterranean leaving it in poverty; for the medieval feudal to prosper they had to reap (steal) all the products of the labour of their serfs; for the medieval Arab and Turkish empires to prosper to steal from the enslaved Christian territories turning the people to slaves; for the early US to steal from Africa and enslave human beings as well; for the Albion Empire to prosper they had to steal from most all people in the territories (like 1/3 of the planet); for contemporary US to prosper they have to steal from most rest of the world; and for the select few in US to prosper, they have to steal from most rest of their fellow country man.
In contrast take contemporary Russia, and before that USSR - they don't really prosper - people were/are still mostly equal (some more than others), but if almost no one has their labour fruits stolen from them, they are only limited to the wealth they create personally, which is not much - not dying out of hunger, but not having great life span or anything.
Believe it or not, it is actually the repuglican politics (their principals, not their particular execution) that keep us from getting one step deeper. The repuglicans are actually way closer to a socialist policy than their counterparts. The demoncrats of today are much more pro-corporate than those of the past and much less ordinary person social and merit awarding than the repugs.
Just live with it, it is evolution, it is normal for a species to decrease their needs and demands from nature, thus becoming K-selectors, and there is no more effective way of decreasing your species impact than to just reduce numbers significantly.
The Star Trek pipe dream universe needs little more than 2-3M humans. Actually all of them work as well, there is no one that doesn't. The crew of the ships, the colonist forces and the farmers, all those work, they are not on basic income.
Nokia didn't go out of business because of accepting large orders for handsets. They went belly-up because they were slow to react to innovation by their competition.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
We have a system of separate 'taxis' and 'mini-cabs'. Taxis tout for business on the street, clutter up railway stations and airports waiting for customers and are relatively expensive. Alternatively you can phone a mini-cab to come and collect you. Cheaper per mile - just can't tout for business - you have to book it via the office.
Along comes Uber and confuses the distinction. You book the ride via the app - fulfilling the requirement to be a 'mini-cab' - but the Uber cars can be hovering waiting for a client in a more aggressive way than traditional mini-cab. And being able to do it all trivially easily makes it as painless as getting a proper taxi. So we end up with a well regulated new competitor to both taxis and mini-cabs - and a lot of upset taxi drivers.
I think it's sad that reactionary assholes down vote a comment that states the facts and not opinion, simply because they disagree with the facts.
1. Uber is a taxi service.
2. Uber declines to follow the rules of taxi services (right or wrong)
3. Local municipalities are cracking down on Uber, as are several (and counting) countries.
These statements are factual.
I have used Uber and will again. But that does not mean I am blind to the contradictions in the Uber Group Think vs. Reality.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
the death of humanity, if every company can replace everyone with robots & AI pretty soon nobody will have a job, humans are being obsoleted
the Luddites are right, Ted Kaczynski was right about technology, i did not agree with Ted's methods but his philosophy is spot on, high tech will eventually destroy us if were not careful
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
quick hack on some Chinese fender-flappers will probably aim for baby strollers. death wish three ways. four, if you count idiot investors. you have been warned
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
And by "driving test" I mean the exact same test that humans do, by following the instructions of a human examiner who is talking to them.
And let us not forget the texting morons, the gabbing imbeciles, the makeup artists, the doped up Cretans, the drunks, the wankers, the eaters, the video watchers. I cannot wait for autonomous cars. I like to drive, and pay attention, but it is getting crazy out there. Thirty thousand dead each year in the US. The cars are safer but the people are far more dangerous with all their distractions and bad habits.
Volvo has a good practical road map to autonomous cars. And critically the company is willing to accept liability for accidents in their autonomous cars. They will soon have real world testing in Gothenburg -- 2017 -- with ordinary drivers in the car. The Volvos will drive themselves under certain conditions -- usually when driving is the most boring -- and will cue the drivers to take the wheel when the situation warrants, or if the driver simply wants to drive. If the car cannot get the driver's attention when things have gotten too complex for it... it will pull over. I am not a shill for Volvo but have been following the autonomous car story across the board and the Swedes are kind of sticking this IMHO This is what I am talking about
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
So we are to believe a company that operates through contracters to avoid being classified as a taxi company has on the spur of the moment ordered somewhere between 5 and 10 billion dollars (that is assuming not top of the line and no premium for self driving) worth of S class Mercedes. smells like utter bullshit to me.
100,000 Mercedes S-class?
1. that's a $10 billion order.
2. that's the entire S-class production for I'd guess a year.
3. Almost nobody buys $100k S-class as taxis. That sort of outlay only makes sense if you can go without a driver completely. Given the state of automation of the current S, you still need a driver, and at that point you might as well spend $50k on an E-class (a common cab) instead.
The taxi laws are not in place to protect the taxi companies, they are in place to protect the customers
Wishful, naive thinking. The fact that NYC taxi medallions reached a high of $1.1 million each is clear proof that taxi companies captured the regulatory authorities decades ago (to the obvious detriment of both customers and customers).
Maybe you don't understand supply and demand.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.