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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.
Not only that, it has the amazing innovation of an oversized button on the steering wheel labeled "get out of the way you f*&king idiot!" to communicate with pedestrians.
Still trying to figure out what problem autonomous driving is trying to solve.
Well at least that's easy: it's the problem of road casualties/deaths, the vast majority of which are caused by driver error of one sort or another.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I have a backup system for that on my cars.....it's a bumper sticker:
"Horn broken.....watch for finger...."
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Bidirectional vehicles make good sense for deliveries, I've posted about that here before. But do they make any sense for transporting passengers? I don't think that they do. The majority of people want to be seated facing forwards. Even though I don't generally get carsick, so do I. I just prefer to see where I'm going.
An automated delivery vehicle ought to have roll-up doors on all sides (so you don't have to step into it to get things out of it) and move bidirectionally, so that it never has to even think about how it will turn around. It just doesn't! This solves whole classes of problem. But I don't think it makes enough sense if you're transporting passengers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Yeah. That isn't how the real world works. How much "savings" have you received lately?
Metric buttloads. An equivalent TV to the one I purchased 3 years ago can now be had for less than half the price. The average car costs less today (when adjusted for inflation) than the average car did in 1999, despite having far more features, more power, and much better fuel economy. A decent computer costs half as much today as it did in 1999, even when not adjusted for inflation, and again with far better performance. Air travel is cheaper than ever. Gasoline prices (ignoring increased taxes, and adjusting for inflation) have held surprisingly steady despite growing demand and the depletion of easy-to-access sources. Most consumer goods have dropped in price, and the price of home delivery is now so low that it's "free" (ie. bundled into the price of the goods, which are still somehow cheaper or as cheap as buying them in a physical store).
Just about the only thing that has gotten significantly more expensive over time is housing, and this is an issue of supply and demand (ie. not really amiable to cost savings via increased efficiency).
But yeah, aside from all that, you're right, savings NEVER get passed on to the consumer ...
I mean I get how they could be marginally useful for navigating in tight quarters like crowded parking lots. But when on the road, all I can think of is this video.
..about a startup with a custom designed headquarters and a $16,000 refrigerator
A real engineering startup would have good tools, but an ugly, old building and a Costco refrigerator
This dude is a wannabe Steve Jobs