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Uber Stops Self-Driving Car Pilot In San Francisco After The DMV Steps In (engadget.com)
93 Escort Wagon writes: San Francisco bicyclists can breathe a sigh of relief now that Uber has suspended testing of its autonomous fleet in the city. The company announced the decision after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the registration of the vehicles involved in the testing. Uber remains "100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules," the company said. A spokesperson for Uber told Recode, "We are open to having the conversation about applying for a permit, but Uber does not have plans to do so."
As per this article, the DMV tried to work with Uber to get permits for the vehicles.
The DMV told Uber that if it had obtained a permit, the regulator would have given the green light to the self-driving pilot. DMV director Jean Shiomoto said in a letter sent to Uber that she would "personally help to ensure an expedited review and approval process", which she said could take less than three days.
So it's not like the city was trying to stop Uber.
Another 20 companies exploring self-driving cars — including Alphabet's Google, Tesla Motors and Ford Motor Co — have obtained California DMV permits for 130 cars.
It seems its not difficult for other companies either.
Its just that Uber doesn't want to play by the rules, even when the rules are being bent for their benefit. The Recode article in the fine summary said it would be $150 per vehicle so it's not like they were trying to kill them with fees either.
Either that, or Uber knows it's autonomous car program is not ready for prime time.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That first video where their car drove through a hard-red light, and with a pedestrian in the crosswalk was scary.
I wonder what kind of serious problems Uber has with their self-driving cars that they suspend the testing without fuss over something as trivial as breaking the law. This must be one of the very first times.
But really fuck them for this. Taking down a taxi cartel by breaking laws designed to prop up a monopoly is one thing.
Not abiding by a permit with dangerous test vehicles on the road is quite the other.
The "San Francisco bicyclists can breathe a sigh of relief" comment surprised me until I saw that Uber has a problem with turning right across bike lanes. This certainly isn't a problem for all self-driving cars. In the South Bay I've seen a self-driving car do exactly the right thing: signal, merge into the lane when it turns from solid to dashed, stop at the red light, and then turn. That's a lot better than the average human at the same intersection; seeing someone signal and merge and stop would be quite unusual.
Its just that Uber doesn't want to play by the rules, even when the rules are being bent for their benefit.
I get the impression that is something of a cultural thing with Uber at this point. They're not even trying to get along. They are just acting the part of a bully and trying to do whatever they want. I think their corporate mantra is "better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" but they don't even bother with the forgiveness bit.
Either that, or Uber knows it's autonomous car program is not ready for prime time.
I think this is probably close to the mark. Uber getting involved in autonomous cars makes absolutely zero business sense. Their entire business model is based on an asset-light utilization of vehicles owned by the people that drive for them. They are basically a middle-man matching and scheduling taxi service. Actually owning the vehicles would cost a ton of money for no obvious benefit to Uber. Uber owning the vehicles (autonomous or not) would A) undermine their (absurd) argument that they aren't a taxi service and B) require a HUGE investment in assets and the attendant insurance, maintenance, upkeep, registration, and tracking. Uber has no infrastructure to do this nor do they have the capital to buy such a fleet.
Uber getting into autonomous vehicles smacks of marketing more than engineering. They want to project an image and seem hip but this is a project well outside their wheelhouse and they don't curently have the profits to support projects like this like Google or Apple or even Amazon does. I think they are trying to steal a page from the Netflix playbook and be ready for what they think will be the next industry evolution but it would make a LOT more sense for them to let someone else figure out the autonomous vehicle thing and just buy them when the time comes. They are a me-too entry into what is already a crowded field and they have no particular advantage in making autonomous cars and some very obvious disadvantages.
The CA DMV has this page listing the requirements for testing self driving cars. They are not onerous. Speculate as you will why Uber doesn't want to comply. It could be anything from having to report incidents on a per yearly basis to not allowing commercial operation (eg not picking up actual customers) or even just a general "fuck you, we're Uber".
Application Requirements for Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program
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Fuck Uber
I will second this. It seems almost every time I see a car pulling some bonehead maneuver in traffic, it's an Uber. Almost every time some jackass is sitting in a lane, blocking traffic with their hazards on, it's an Uber. Almost every time I see someone jam on their brakes and dive for the side of the road, it's an Uber.
I know Uber is cool and cheap and convenient for its users. But the drivers are amateurs, and it shows. They don't know where they're going and will pull over anywhere, blocking traffic, to pick up their fares. Because of the draconian, passenger-centric rating system, the drivers are terrified of offending their passenger and will become a nuisance on the road to keep them happy. Taxi's are at least marked, so you expect them to be pulling over in traffic. But Ubers look like any other car, leaving other drivers to wonder why this guy is suddenly slamming on the brakes and double parking in the middle of a busy street.
Uber sucks for anyone not using the service. I'd like to see the taxi companies step up their game to counter Uber. But unfortunately, it's the taxi industry's fecklessness that made room for Uber in the first place.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Uber will never be able to justify its valuation to investors.
They wouldn't be the first in that situation. I am inclined to agree but never is a very long time and I've seen more unlikely companies succeed. They have a lot of revenue which is actually the hardest part. Once you have that then profits are a possibility. Without revenues they are screwed. Whether the investors will make their money back kind of depends on how much they dumped in and what sort of margins Uber can make. Are they selling $2 bills for $1 or do they simply have to get to a certain scale and/or cost targets? Hard to say. In any case their profits will have to be rather substantial for the investors to not take a haircut.
This article is not about Uber drivers. It's about Uber without drivers.
In a traditional business sense, of course it makes no sense. But that doesn't apply here.
Sure it does. The laws of economics are not suspended for the benefit of Uber.
Uber is in a competitive industry with few barriers to entry, and very little profit, yet they have a market cap of $50B. How can they possibly justify that valuation to their investors?
Uber is not a publicly traded company so they do not have a market cap in the conventional sense. Their valuation is based on an extrapolation from the percentage of the company purchased by investors and the price of that investment. If you buy 10% of a company for an investment of $5B then the company is valued at $50B. That doesn't mean that it actually would be worth that amount on the open market and it certainly doesn't mean they are actually worth $50B. It means the most recent investor felt it was worth that but it is dangerous to extrapolate that too far.
You think there are few barriers to entry in their industry? I disagree. There are some pretty substantial network effects in play here. There are only so many drivers and cars to go around and they are going to tend to gravitate towards the company which is most likely to have the biggest user base. Sure, users can in theory switch easily but what good is switching to a taxi service that doesn't have any drivers? Scale will matter here which is why Uber is trying to grow as fast as possible. Uber has something like the same advantage eBay has. The buyers and sellers will tend to gravitate to the largest platform. Frankly the self driving car thing is nothing but a pointless distraction from building their network as far as I can tell.
From a publicity point of view, their defiance of the California DMV was pure genius.
Perhaps but I think you'd have a hard time showing a causal relationship between that and Uber's bottom line.
They need to be perceived as a gutsy company aggressively pursuing new tech.
No they do not. They WANT to be perceived that way (for reasons that aren't entirely clear) but wants and needs are different things.
If you or I drove down a California street without a valid driver's license, the penalty would be anything from a ticket (first time offense, no injuries to others) to an arrest (multiple offender, injuring people) and possible incarceration.
If the standard penalties were applied to whichever Uber executive authorized the law-breaking, then Uber would come into compliance rather quickly.
If the Uber cars are really capable of avoiding cyclists, why does Uber not just say so? Also if their cars are so teachable why don't they just go through a couple proper turns with a pilot and resolve that issue forever more? If anything, regulation is highlighting some real glaring gaps in their implementation here and that's a good thing.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
As bad as Uber drivers may be, Taxi drivers are no better. At least around here, they're probably the worst, most poorly behaved drivers on the road. I took a cab home from the airport, a while back, and the idiot was speeding up the curb lane, speeding, pushing amber lights, cutting people off, etc... and then had the gall to be pissed off when I refused to tip him (I do not reward bad behaviour... had he driven like a sane person, I would have tipped him adequately). When I'm driving myself, I basically give cabs no quarter. Where I'd slow down a hair to be courteous to another driver to let them merge... with a cab? never. They shat their bed, and now have to live with it.
IMHO, the regulations should be changed so that any car that passes the various standards (Safety, meter accuracy, insurance, etc... ) should be allowed to be a cab. The Taxi cartels need to be done away with, but also companies such as Uber need to operate in an adequate regulatory environment to preserve public safety. Rates should be regulated, and drivers should be fairly compensated. And any traffic fines should be strictly enforced, and doubled, for professional drivers.
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
Taxi drivers can retrain and get better jobs
If retraining and getting a better job is an option for unemployed taxi drivers, why isn't it a good option for employed taxi drivers?
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if they can pull this driverless thing off it will be better for so many people. Taxi drivers can retrain and get better jobs, and the clueless volunteers who drive for Uber can stop giving away the equity in their car for 90% return in fare payment - after expenses.
What better jobs? They've all been automated away.
Someone has to fill the gas tanks and/or plug in the charger cables on the driver-less UBERs.....
And design and build the driverless cars, and service them, and recycle them, and administrate, regulate and inspect the businesses that do these things. In a future world, every automated taxi might be inspected by a human operator for quality control as often as three times a day... they won't be out there risking their lives and interacting with the public, but they could be checking the cleanliness and safety of the vehicle and holding it to a higher standard than today's taxis. In that same future world, you could choose which cab you hail based on its user ratings - auto-cabs that show up reeking of vomit and dog urine and/or vibrating harshly under braking or with dysfunctional climate control, would probably get less business.
Actually, their soul sucking jobs are stopping them from retraining. If you spend 12 hours a day waiting on fares, you can't be studying or practicing other skills.
saying "actually owning the vehicles would cost a ton of money for no obvious benefit to Uber" is not true. Simple math shows they would make a killing. Even if you estimate that they average a measly $15/hr with their autonomous cars, working an average of 20 hours per day, 50 weeks/yr, that's $105,000 per year. I think that's what they call profitable.
I'm a certified cost accountant. Lot of problems with your analysis.
First off there are no autonomous vehicles to buy and we don't know when there will be. It is unlikely they will be cheap especially at first. Even once they become available there will be regulations and legal issues to sort out before they can become a viable business. It's going to be a while.
Second you did not consider costs at all. We don't know what the cost of an autonomous vehicle will be. You did not consider costs at all. You didn't consider the cost of fuel, the cost of insurance, the cost of engineering, the cost of administration, legal costs, the cost of maintenance, the cost of financing, the cost of regulations, and a host of other costs. Profits are revenue minus costs so until you properly consider costs your analysis is farcical. I can generate huge revenues by selling $2 bills for $1. I'll also be bankrupt in no time at all.
Third, demand will not be constant and average utilization is unlikely to be anywhere close to your rosy estimates. A substantial portion of the time the car is going to be driving unoccupied to pick up passengers. It's going to have down time to refuel. It's going to have down time for maintenance. It's going to break down now and then. It's going to get vandalized. There are going to be substantial periods where there are no fares to get. The list goes on and on. You are assuming an extremely naive best case scenario that is unlikely to exist in the real world.
$105K sounds like a lot but consider that even if we take your overly rosy assumptions about utilization and assume the car averages a modest 20mph during that time period it will cover something like 140,000 miles during that year. So you will have to replace the vehicle in just over a year most likely even assuming it performs exceptionally well. Few cars last much beyond 200K miles. We have no idea how reliable the navigation equipment on an autonomous car will prove to be. My guess is that there will be all sorts of problems with sensors going bad, getting covered with gunk and snow, etc. An autonomous vehicle will almost by definition be less reliable than an identical vehicle without the extra equipment.
Finally, I stand by my statement that there is no competitive advantage to Uber in owning their taxis. It adds a lot of cost and reduces their margins. What's to prevent GM from simply making and operating their own taxi service? Not like Uber is going to get self driving cars cheaper than GM will. Uber's advantage right now is that they don't have to buy any cars. There are only so many drivers and cars out there to utilize and Uber is the biggest fish in that pond. This gets them network effect advantages and keeps their costs (relatively) low. If they have to buy the cars then the network effect advantages of tying up all those cars as Uber drivers (rather than Lyft) goes away. Then they are just another taxi service with some fancy cars. It takes a huge amount of money to buy a gigantic fleet of cars which then has to compete against what they already had. It makes no sense.