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Did Silicon Valley Lose The Race To Build Self-Driving Cars? (autoblog.com)
schwit1 quotes Autoblog:
Up until very recently the talk in Silicon Valley was about how the tech industry was going to broom Detroit into the dustbin of history. Companies such as Apple, Google, and Uber -- so the thinking went -- were going to out run, out gun, and out innovate the automakers. Today that talk is starting to fade. There's a dawning realization that maybe there's a good reason why the traditional car companies have been around for more than a century.
Last year Apple laid off most of the engineers it hired to design its own car. Google (now Waymo) stopped talking about making its own car. And Uber, despite its sky high market valuation, is still a long, long way from ever making any money, much less making its own autonomous cars. To paraphrase Elon Musk, Silicon Valley is learning that "Making rockets is hard, but making cars is really hard."
The article argues the big auto-makers launched "vigorous in-house autonomous programs" which became fully competitive with Silicon Valley's efforts, and that Silicon Valley may have a larger role crunching the data that's collected from self-driving cars. "Last year in the U.S. market alone Chevrolet collected 4,220 terabytes of data from customer's cars... Retailers, advertisers, marketers, product planners, financial analysts, government agencies, and so many others will eagerly pay to get access to that information."
Last year Apple laid off most of the engineers it hired to design its own car. Google (now Waymo) stopped talking about making its own car. And Uber, despite its sky high market valuation, is still a long, long way from ever making any money, much less making its own autonomous cars. To paraphrase Elon Musk, Silicon Valley is learning that "Making rockets is hard, but making cars is really hard."
The article argues the big auto-makers launched "vigorous in-house autonomous programs" which became fully competitive with Silicon Valley's efforts, and that Silicon Valley may have a larger role crunching the data that's collected from self-driving cars. "Last year in the U.S. market alone Chevrolet collected 4,220 terabytes of data from customer's cars... Retailers, advertisers, marketers, product planners, financial analysts, government agencies, and so many others will eagerly pay to get access to that information."
Slashdot should really put in a filter for every article submission that's in a form of a question, and not allow it to go through until the submitter changes it. These blatant click-bait headlines are irritating as fuck.
Longer answer: Since nobody's crossed the finish line so far, I'm not sure why anybody would want to speculate about the winner.
Retailers, advertisers, marketers, product planners, financial analysts, government agencies, and so many others will eagerly pay to get access to that information.
Where are the legislators who will put a stop to this crap? Stricter laws that limit what data may be collected, for which purposes, and with whom and in what form it may be shared. And stiff penalties for violations or for culpable data breaches. I suggest public drawing and quartering.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Also there are way more regulatory hoops to jump through to build a system that goes into a car. Detroit has been doing it for 100 years, so they know how to play the game.
Silicon Valley can do it... it's just that most Silicon Valley Investors don't have the patience to grind through the many years it takes to clear regulatory requirements.
Silicon Valley can make bullshit up, but when it comes to actually making something real not a single actual engineer can be found.
Perhaps this is just my perception but I've always thought the plan was to develop the technology and then license it to car manufacturers. Did anyone honestly think that some technology companies were actually going to manufacture entire cars without any experience in the field of manufacturing let alone automotive manufacturing?
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
given that they had "infotainment" systems in cars that haven't even caught up to what amateurs were doing in the 80's and 90's... pretty sure the automakers don't have a snowball's chance in hell.
Gates knew in 1980 that he wanted to supply the software for the PC, not the hardware. The SV guys want the same deal for cars. Other than Tesla, most of them will end up partnering with existing car companies for manufacturing, sales, and maintenance.
And you think the car companies are that stupid ? If they ever manage to create self driving cars you can bet your ass these thing will not depend in any critical fashion on some third party shit firmware/software. It will all be done in house.
The problem with software companies (silicon valley) is that they design bottom of the barrel software. You can't have that in systems that have to be safe for passengers. Do Microsoft, Apple and & co. design avionics software ? No. For the same reason they will never design the equivalent for cars. It's not in their genes. Keeping people alive has a cost, and software companies want everything else but not that cost.
Where are the legislators who will put a stop to this crap?
In the EU parliament.
I trust the likes of Toyota, GM, Ford, et al above the likes of Google, Apple, Uber or Lyft. Companies that have actually had to manufacture their own stuff as opposed to simply sourcing it from the best combination of upstream Chinese suppliers.