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Secretive Startup Zoox Is Building a Bidirectional Autonomous Car From the Ground Up (bloomberg.com)
A secretive Australian startup called Zoox (an abbreviation of zooxanthellae, the algae that helps fuel coral reef growth) is working on an autonomous vehicle that is unlike any other. Theirs is all-electric and bidirectional, meaning it can cruise into a parking spot traveling one way and cruise out the other. It can make noises to communicate with pedestrians. It even has displays on the windows for passengers to interact with. Bloomberg sheds some light on this company, reporting on their ambitions to build the safest and most inventive autonomous vehicle on the road: Zoox founders Tim Kentley-Klay and Jesse Levinson say everyone else involved in the race to build a self-driving car is doing it wrong. Both founders sound quite serious as they argue that Zoox is obvious, almost inevitable. The world will eventually move to perfectly engineered robotic vehicles, so why waste time trying to incorporate self-driving technology into yesteryear's cars? Levinson, whose father, Arthur, ran Genentech Inc., chairs Apple Inc., and mentored Steve Jobs, comes from Silicon Valley royalty. Together, they've raised an impressive pile of venture capital: about $800 million to date, including $500 million in early July at a valuation of $3.2 billion. Even with all that cash, Zoox will be lucky to make it to 2020, when it expects to put its first vehicles on the road.
If this company had the actual autonomous driving bit of the problem sorted, it wouldn't matter whether their vision for the product involved climbing into a 20 year old corolla through the sunroof. They don't seem to be offering any new breakthrough with regards to delivering a reliable and affordable self-driving solution.
I always wondered what it would have been like to live through the first dot com bubble. Now I realise that is involves real engineering getting pushed aside to make way for the hype merchants.
Yet another startup promising yet another car of the future while producing yet again nothing.
The spot for loudmouth marketeer in the car industry is taken. Musk has solidly cornered that position. And even he has more to show than some frames on wheels.
If you want to produce the car of the future, great. Absolutely. But don't call before it's done. We have had so many stories of so many startups pipe dreaming up what could be, I think it's about time we move on to actually, you know, making something that can be sold. Anything else just ain't interesting anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.