# Wait, Who Even Asked for Self-Driving Cars in the First Place?



## jocker12 (May 11, 2017)

The path to the place the automotive world is now-embroiled in breathless discussions about a new technology that everyone in the world needs to prepare for _right now_-actually began in another industry's yard. Self-driving cars didn't spring from any automotive minds, as some might expect, but rather, from a military yearning for battlefield efficiency. It began, for all intents and purposes, with the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 150-mile desert race announced by the Pentagon's military-technology R&D agency in 2002 and executed in 2004.

Not a single vehicle finished that first race, but in the same event a year later, five did. That staggering leap forward in autonomous-driving capability in just one year-in an off-road race, no less-showed how fast this technology has moved. It also shows exactly where the seeds for our current infatuation were sown. That is, not at Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, or Audi-but rather at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, NC State, Ohio State, and a slew of other schools and technology firms populated with robotics engineers and software geniuses all gravitating toward Silicon Valley, to be snapped up by Google, Apple, Uber, and others. To the extent that there was an auto-industry presence in the original Grand Challenges, it was as primarily in providing the mules for these brainiacs to install their hardware and software.

But that doesn't entirely explain the current industry-wide obsession with autonomy, given that those events were held roughly 15 years ago. Just five years ago, nobody in the auto industry-let alone the public-was really speaking about self-driving cars as a practical near-future reality at all. Nowadays, it's all you hear about (right alongside electric cars); with Google all over the technology and Apple possibly so, fantastic driverless concept cars peppering auto shows, and Teslas and Cadillacs ably chauffeuring us down highways...or with Uber mowing down pedestrians in Arizona, depending on your interpretation of our current state of progress.

So what brought on the current surge in interest in autonomous driving, and the seemingly frantic, if not desperate, pace of development? Technological readiness? That's a part of it, sure-though it still has extremely far to go in terms of truly being able to navigate all driving conditions, regardless of how impressive highway driving might seem. *Government mandate? Not at all*. While military interest originally spurred the technology on in the early Aughts, *the government has been reactionary*-if you could even call it that-in its urging of autonomous technology, despite the massive safety benefits it could ultimately bring. *Consumer interest? Another big *_*no*_, at least broadly speaking. As is the case with electric cars, consumers haven't actually asked for autonomy directly, and while studies show that consumers appreciate the safety benefits early semi-autonomous features provide, they've yet to prove that consumers are all that excited about turning over the act of driving to a machine. Seems some people actually _like_ driving, if you can imagine. (Or at least they're wary of computer drivers.)

That essentially leaves the car manufacturers and the tech industry as the ones foisting this upon us, actual demand be damned-and indeed, the race to autonomy currently looks a lot like a very recent case of very explicit one-upmanship between these two industries.* Or more pointedly, a panicked, full-stop realization by the carmakers that the tech industry was about to totally eat its lunch*. So in spite of the fact that the auto industry has historically shown little interest in taking driving away from its customers, and in spite of the fact that there's no definitive interest in or demand for autonomous technology-remembering, of course, that _benefits_, safety, convenience or otherwise, don't always equate to _demand_-every major manufacturer has cozied up to autonomy startups, opened their own "mobility" research and development centers in Silicon Valley, and aggressively announced their hot pursuit of autonomous driving technology.

*So that means, of course, that it's entirely Silicon Valley's fault. Sort of. *

"The answer is multidimensional," said autonomy engineer Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University. "Google has actually been at this a long time. I rode in one of their cars in 2012, and the Grand Challenges happened well before that. But I do think we hit a tipping point in approximately 2015 due to many factors. Elon Musk was gaining steam [with Tesla], commercial drones were becoming hot, and in general there was a tangible shift in the hype surrounding anything that has to do with artificial intelligence. In the World Economic Forum in the past 3 years, AI has gone from a curiosity to a centerpiece of conversation."

Cummings goes on to argue that we're in a bubble, particularly around artificial intelligence, the key tech enabling behind autonomy. "While there is certainly a lot of great potential for AI, it is* generally grossly misunderstood and overrated across the business sector*," she said. "*People want to believe it's a magic bullet but the reality is it is just another tool in the tech toolbox and not the panacea they are hoping for*."

But the catch-up mentality is also a key factor in the current frenzy, according to Tasha Keeney, a researcher and autonomy analyst at ARK Invest. "After the DARPA Challenges, technology players, namely Google, started working on autonomous tech and were really the trailblazers," she said. "Daimler and Volvo had been working on semi-autonomous features too for some time, but were moving very slowly. For a while most OEMs were saying that autonomous cars would never happen, or would emphasize how many years and years away it was, or how dangerous autonomous cars could be."

She found this unsurprising, given the fact that traditional OEMs really weren't equipped to develop autonomous cars, lacking both the software expertise and the talent to push the technology along. "If you think about it, it was really in the OEMs best interest to scare the public away from autonomy because they were unable to tackle those projects themselves," Keeney said. "Then, *the OEMs got scared*. They realized autonomous cars were coming whether they participated in that movement or not."

Ultimately, the impact of all this fast-track development could fully justify the automakers' concerns. ATK thinks the auto industry will experience "severe consolidation" over the next decade, and if the carmakers don't have successful electric and autonomous platforms, many of them will not succeed. Throw in the fact that scrappy startups are digging in with solid results, and you have a perfect layup for full-scale industry transformation.

"Tesla contributed to those fears because it emerged as a successful startup in an industry that typical squashes startups," Keeney said. "Tesla was built from the ground up as a software powerhouse and it's uninhibited by the dealer network, so it's much more nimble than traditional OEMs-and so are technology companies like Google. The typical design cycle for an automaker is five years, but Tesla is shrinking that to one to two years."

So in the end, what began as a dusty desert race dominated by scrappy, tech-savvy innovators could very well be won by...well, those same scrappy, tech-savvy innovators. They'll just likely be far richer by the end of it all.

You can read the entire article at http://www.thedrive.com/tech/20408/wait-who-even-asked-for-self-driving-cars-in-the-first-place


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

jocker12 said:


> The path to the place the automotive world is now-embroiled in breathless discussions about a new technology that everyone in the world needs to prepare for _right now_-actually began in another industry's yard. Self-driving cars didn't spring from any automotive minds, as some might expect, but rather, from a military yearning for battlefield efficiency. It began, for all intents and purposes, with the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 150-mile desert race announced by the Pentagon's military-technology R&D agency in 2002 and executed in 2004.
> 
> Not a single vehicle finished that first race, but in the same event a year later, five did. That staggering leap forward in autonomous-driving capability in just one year-in an off-road race, no less-showed how fast this technology has moved. It also shows exactly where the seeds for our current infatuation were sown. That is, not at Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, or Audi-but rather at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, NC State, Ohio State, and a slew of other schools and technology firms populated with robotics engineers and software geniuses all gravitating toward Silicon Valley, to be snapped up by Google, Apple, Uber, and others. To the extent that there was an auto-industry presence in the original Grand Challenges, it was as primarily in providing the mules for these brainiacs to install their hardware and software.
> 
> ...


Yeah, sorry about that. It was me.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

jocker12 said:


> The path to the place the automotive world is now-embroiled in breathless discussions about a new technology that everyone in the world needs to prepare for _right now_-actually began in another industry's yard. Self-driving cars didn't spring from any automotive minds, as some might expect, but rather, from a military yearning for battlefield efficiency. It began, for all intents and purposes, with the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 150-mile desert race announced by the Pentagon's military-technology R&D agency in 2002 and executed in 2004.
> 
> Not a single vehicle finished that first race, but in the same event a year later, five did. That staggering leap forward in autonomous-driving capability in just one year-in an off-road race, no less-showed how fast this technology has moved. It also shows exactly where the seeds for our current infatuation were sown. That is, not at Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, or Audi-but rather at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, NC State, Ohio State, and a slew of other schools and technology firms populated with robotics engineers and software geniuses all gravitating toward Silicon Valley, to be snapped up by Google, Apple, Uber, and others. To the extent that there was an auto-industry presence in the original Grand Challenges, it was as primarily in providing the mules for these brainiacs to install their hardware and software.
> 
> ...


The idea that we could squeeze a few pennies out of the taxi biz by eliminating the driver is an idea about as well thought out as getting Lasik eye surgery in Bangladesh. Hey it's cheap right? But wait... now I'm blind!!!


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> The idea that we could squeeze a few pennies out of the taxi biz by eliminating the driver is an idea about as well thought out as getting Lasik eye surgery in Bangladesh. Hey it's cheap right? But wait... now I'm blind!!!


Mark Twain: "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt"

Drivers are the biggest expense by far for a taxi company.


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## jocker12 (May 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> The idea that we could squeeze a few pennies out of the taxi biz by eliminating the driver is an idea about as well thought out as getting Lasik eye surgery in Bangladesh. Hey it's cheap right? But wait... now I'm blind!!!


Self driving cars is a Carnegie Robotics graduates idea. To be more precisely, Anthony Lewandowski's obsession and looking at it today, his story of failure.

Up to 2015, Uber had no plans for SDC or TNC and Lewandowski used the data accumulated while at Google to push for it, scare the car manufacturers with the "disruption" which many idiots thought Uber was good at.

The fundamental difference here is that car sharing was immediately embraced by the public because of the convenience and because of the opportunity of replacing the highly outdated taxi cab industry, while autonomous cars disruption is highly underdeveloped, inconvenient, highly limited and dangerous, reason for the general public to reject it.

Interestingly enough, the car manufacturers are not the brilliant type guys but they got to the level where their product, despite inherent mishaps addressed by the lawmakers and the regulators, is incredibly safe in The infrastructural frame existing today.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Mark Twain: "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt"
> 
> Drivers are the biggest expense by far for a taxi company.


All you ever do in reply to me is say I'm dumb but you never say WHY the points I make are "dumb"

Probably because you can't


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> All you ever do in reply to me is say I'm dumb but you never say WHY the points I make are "dumb"
> 
> Probably because you can't


Read the post again. If you still can't figure it out, I'll help you.

_Mark Twain: "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt"

Drivers are the biggest expense by far for a taxi company._


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## jocker12 (May 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> All you ever do in reply to me is say I'm dumb but you never say WHY the points I make are "dumb"
> 
> Probably because you can't


You know when somebody is well beyond the lowest level of incompetence the moment they try to sound smart but end up entirely humiliated - The Quick 10: 10 Things Mark Twain Didn't Say (and 10 he did) - http://mentalfloss.com/article/26512/quick-10-10-things-mark-twain-didnt-say-and-10-he-did


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Read the post again. If you still can't figure it out, I'll help you.
> 
> _Mark Twain: "It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt"
> 
> Drivers are the biggest expense by far for a taxi company._


You said my ideas are dumb (and me, but I'll let that slide)

You never once said WHY they were dumb except "this is going to happen exactly as I said just because"

Even now, all you did was the exact same thing



jocker12 said:


> You know when somebody is well beyond the lowest level of incompetence the moment they try to sound smart but end up entirely humiliated - The Quick 10: 10 Things Mark Twain Didn't Say (and 10 he did) - http://mentalfloss.com/article/26512/quick-10-10-things-mark-twain-didnt-say-and-10-he-did


The closest I got to him providing any kind of explaination for his views was him saying that the biggest expense for a taxi company are drivers. Ok, so what? There's a reason why that's the case there buddy.

Is he trying to say that because it's such a huge expense it begs to be cut? I suppose little things like anesthesia isn't really important for surgery, let's cut that out, too.

I don't know if the Tomato is just talking trash or if his bragidocio is an indication of the direction that Waymo is really moving in but if it's real.. oh my!

But go ahead... keep going down the road to train wreck. I'm excited to watch.


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## jocker12 (May 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> You said my ideas are dumb (and me, but I'll let that slide)
> 
> You never once said WHY they were dumb except "this is going to happen exactly as I said just because"
> 
> ...


It was amazing to read how a Waymo troll was diregarding a Waymo SDC monitor when according to the Waymo car getting thru a red light video poster, Waymo said the driver took over and run the red light.

According to troll logic, the main problem where he or she works is himself or herself. Brilliant to admit what an entire internet tells you - how incompetent you are!


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> You said my ideas are dumb (and me, but I'll let that slide)
> 
> You never once said WHY they were dumb except "this is going to happen exactly as I said just because"
> 
> ...


You said: "The idea that we could squeeze a few pennies out of the taxi biz by eliminating the driver..."

This is one of the dumbest things you've ever said. Squeeze a few pennies, are you nuts? 60 to 70 percent of operating a taxi company goes to paying the driver.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> You said: "The idea that we could squeeze a few pennies out of the taxi biz by eliminating the driver..."
> 
> This is one of the dumbest things you've ever said. Squeeze a few pennies, are you nuts? 60 to 70 percent of operating a taxi company goes to paying the driver.


You ever hear of the term hyperbole? Look it up.

It's like trying to explain gravity to a chicken.


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> You ever hear of the term hyperbole? Look it up.
> 
> It's like trying to explain gravity to a chicken.


Please explain to the class what you were trying to say then. Your point was drivers are 70 percent of the taxi company's expenses?


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## jester121 (Sep 6, 2016)

jocker12 said:


> ... fantastic driverless concept cars peppering auto shows, and Teslas ... ably chauffeuring us down highways...


(Not counting the times they veer off into concrete barriers and kill people.... or deliberately rear-end semi trailers.... or ..... )

But otherwise yeah, Teslas are doing a fabulous job.

What a *****.


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

jocker12 said:


> It was amazing to read how a Waymo troll was diregarding a Waymo SDC monitor when according to the Waymo car getting thru a red light video poster, Waymo said the driver took over and run the red light.
> 
> According to troll logic, the main problem where he or she works is himself or herself. Brilliant to admit what an entire internet tells you - how incompetent you are!


Can someone translate this?


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Please explain to the class what you were trying to say then. Your point was drivers are 70 percent of the taxi company's expenses?


Class is in session

The term hyperbole is when you exaggerate to make a point. For example when you say "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse" are you literally going to eat a horse? No of course not. But to express how hungry the person was he exaggerated.

Now, when I said "these companies are trying to squeeze a few pennies" did I literally mean the savings would be small? No.

I meant that the foolish endeavor to save money at the expense of doing stupid stuff is tantamount to trying to "only save a few pennies"

Ever hear of the term "penny wise pound foolish?" It refers to the act of saving a little bit of money short term but losing a lot of money long term.

This is the path Waymo is on and if your PR talking points are any indication they don't even know it.


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## transporter007 (Feb 19, 2018)

jocker12 said:


> The path to the place the automotive world is now-embroiled in breathless discussions about a new technology that everyone in the world needs to prepare for _right now_-actually began in another industry's yard. Self-driving cars didn't spring from any automotive minds, as some might expect, but rather, from a military yearning for battlefield efficiency. It began, for all intents and purposes, with the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 150-mile desert race announced by the Pentagon's military-technology R&D agency in 2002 and executed in 2004.
> 
> Not a single vehicle finished that first race, but in the same event a year later, five did. That staggering leap forward in autonomous-driving capability in just one year-in an off-road race, no less-showed how fast this technology has moved. It also shows exactly where the seeds for our current infatuation were sown. That is, not at Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, or Audi-but rather at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, NC State, Ohio State, and a slew of other schools and technology firms populated with robotics engineers and software geniuses all gravitating toward Silicon Valley, to be snapped up by Google, Apple, Uber, and others. To the extent that there was an auto-industry presence in the original Grand Challenges, it was as primarily in providing the mules for these brainiacs to install their hardware and software.
> 
> ...


Global Rich Folk who invest in new technology to become richer 
And local, state and federal governments because it's the rich people that keep them in office. 
Seriously, is this new 2 u?
Sad


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## transporter007 (Feb 19, 2018)

iheartuber said:


> Class is in session
> 
> The term hyperbole is when you exaggerate to make a point. For example when you say "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse" are you literally going to eat a horse? No of course not. But to express how hungry the person was he exaggerated.
> 
> ...


Of course, all your years in building, or being involved in, multi billion international companies support your conclusions. Dude, ur not even qualified to clean to toilets in any multi national billion dollar organization because u couldn't pass a drug test.

OR did u read an article in the trustworthy M E D I A

Sad


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

transporter007 said:


> Of course, all your years in building, or being involved in, multi billion international companies support your conclusions. Dude, ur not even qualified to clean to toilets in any multi national billion dollar organization because u couldn't pass a drug test.
> 
> OR did u read an article in the trustworthy M E D I A
> 
> Sad


I'll give you the experience in real estate development. No doubt you have that experience.

But no one can take away or belittle my transportation experience.

Are you really that thick headed that you're embarking on a disaster but your ego is so huge you don't even see it?

Sad.


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## goneubering (Aug 17, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> I'll give you the experience in real estate development. No doubt you have that experience.
> 
> But no one can take away or belittle my transportation experience.
> 
> ...


This sort of reminds me of the video showing Dara trying to do rideshare except it wasn't even an actual real world ride. I think upper management is sometimes disconnected from how the real world functions and their underlings are afraid to tell them the truth because everyone is on this exciting Changing The World high.


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> But no one can take away or belittle my transportation experience.


Everyone can belittle your transportation experience. You're trying to equate downloading an app and accepting pings with running a transportation company. That's like saying you ran a construction business because you help paint the neighbor's fence.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Everyone can belittle your transportation experience. You're trying to equate downloading an app and accepting pings with running a transportation company. That's like saying you ran a construction business because you help paint the neighbor's fence.


If you did more than the 450 lifetime rides you did as an Uber driver you would know there's a lot more to it than that.

But hey thanks for playing


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> If you did more than the 450 lifetime rides you did as an Uber driver you would know there's a lot more to it than that.
> 
> But hey thanks for playing


When you can't make a coherent argument so you just make shit up, that's about as sad as it gets.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> When you can't make a coherent argument so you just make shit up, that's about as sad as it gets.


I still believe you are Greg Rogers who, on his corporate bio page, said he did 450 lifetime Uber rides

But since there's no proof I'll just say good day to you sir

Either way, I'm sure the lifetime number of rides you did in your time as a driver were equally low


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> I still believe you are Greg Rogers who, on his corporate bio page, said he did 450 lifetime Uber rides
> 
> But since there's no proof I'll just say good day to you sir
> 
> Either way, I'm sure the lifetime number of rides you did in your time as a driver were equally low


According to you I'm also part of Waymo's PR department and in bed with big real estate. You can't make a coherent argument so you try to discredit the other party by making personal attacks.

Yet you don't know anything about the other party so you just make shit up and then use the shit you just made up to try to discredit them. How sad it that? Space cadet city.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> According to you I'm also part of Waymo's PR department and in bed with big real estate. You can't make a coherent argument so you try to discredit the other party by making personal attacks.
> 
> Yet you don't know anything about the other party so you just make shit up and then use the shit you just made up to try to discredit them. How sad it that? Space cadet city.


I never said all that- not exactly

Here's what I did say:

You work for a firm hired to gather data on how SDCs are going to impact society

This firm was hired by a group of real estate developers who want to see SDC taxis not only eclipse Uber but eclipse car ownership so that in the future when they build hi rise buildings they no longer have to build parking and the extra square footage can be used to build retail or whatnot and make mo money mo money.

This is all taken directly from what you told me (unless you were lying)

Now, you are not DIRECTLY working for Waymo and you're not THEIR official "PR guy" but let's just say that it benefits all parties involved for you to speak highly of them. Sort of a pro bono PR guy if you will.

Putting 2 and 2 together I think your job is to just really "gather intel" of which you have received a mountain from me alone. You insult people just to get any reaction at all because you have found that being nice gets you zero info.

I was only half-joking when I said that you are/were trying to "sell" the SDC dream. Full disclosure I don't know for sure if that's one of your missions. I would imagine it must be but again I don't know for sure.

What I do know is that if you were telling the truth about being hired by real estate developers who's endgame is to see society collectively decide to abandon car ownership, then I'd imagine my ideas and theories didn't go over very well. If you/they have ever reacted to my posts in anger/frustration or just plain on the defensive, that would make sense to me.

That about sums it up


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> I never said all that- not exactly
> 
> Here's what I did say:
> 
> ...


Who gives a shit? I'm me and I don't even give a shit.

iheart: self driving cars won't work cause Tomato said x but I put two and two together and Tomato was lying cause neither the Pacifica nor the I-pace were in production two years ago and Waymo was still Google and Alphabet wasn't even created yet so there wasn't a stock split and...


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## Karl Marx (May 17, 2016)

jocker12 said:


> The path to the place the automotive world is now-embroiled in breathless discussions about a new technology that everyone in the world needs to prepare for _right now_-actually began in another industry's yard. Self-driving cars didn't spring from any automotive minds, as some might expect, but rather, from a military yearning for battlefield efficiency. It began, for all intents and purposes, with the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 150-mile desert race announced by the Pentagon's military-technology R&D agency in 2002 and executed in 2004.
> 
> Not a single vehicle finished that first race, but in the same event a year later, five did. That staggering leap forward in autonomous-driving capability in just one year-in an off-road race, no less-showed how fast this technology has moved. It also shows exactly where the seeds for our current infatuation were sown. That is, not at Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, or Audi-but rather at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, NC State, Ohio State, and a slew of other schools and technology firms populated with robotics engineers and software geniuses all gravitating toward Silicon Valley, to be snapped up by Google, Apple, Uber, and others. To the extent that there was an auto-industry presence in the original Grand Challenges, it was as primarily in providing the mules for these brainiacs to install their hardware and software.
> 
> ...


*
Technology and its discontents*

https://www.economist.com/blogs/openfuture/2018/04/open-progress


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Who gives a shit? I'm me and I don't even give a shit.
> 
> iheart: self driving cars won't work cause Tomato said x but I put two and two together and Tomato was lying cause neither the Pacifica nor the I-pace were in production two years ago and Waymo was still Google and Alphabet wasn't even created yet so there wasn't a stock split and...


I'll take your "who gives a s-" comment to mean that I was spot on.

As for your second comment, it's a little off. Let me clarify:

I never said SDCs won't work. I said if Waymo is trying to get into the taxi biz using robo cars and get it all launched by this year and be such a hit that they take over Uber within a year - THAT is what is not going to work, for many reasons that I've already stated.

SDCs "mostly" work well right now. If you wanna buy one and use it to take you back and forth to the grocery store that's one thing. But you're talking about building a taxi service that will rival Uber. So in that case, "mostly working" is not good enough.

Your problem is that you're biting off more than you can chew. And it's pretty obvious.


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> I'll take your "who gives a s-" comment to mean that I was spot on.
> 
> As for your second comment, it's a little off. Let me clarify:
> 
> ...


You've said self driving cars are 10, 20, 30 years away, if ever, for the last year. I give you credit for realizing that was absurd. Problem is your new position:

SDCs "mostly" work well right now. If you wanna buy one and use it to take you back and forth to the grocery store that's one thing. But
you're talking about building a taxi service that will rival Uber. So in that case, "mostly working" is not good enough.​is almost as absurd. Once again you're just making stuff up with nothing to back it up.

You won't be able to buy a self driving car for probably two years.

You seem to think saying: "they mostly work," is a good fallback position. It's not. They simply work. Period. You're trying to find a tactical retreat, there is none. They work. It's over.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> You've said self driving cars are 10, 20, 30 years away, if ever, for the last year. I give you credit for realizing that was absurd. Problem is your new position:
> 
> SDCs "mostly" work well right now. If you wanna buy one and use it to take you back and forth to the grocery store that's one thing. But
> you're talking about building a taxi service that will rival Uber. So in that case, "mostly working" is not good enough.​is almost as absurd. Once again you're just making stuff up with nothing to back it up.
> ...


You are correct. I am guilty of making previous statements that were not 100% clear and as such I gave you the wrong idea. When I said "SDCs are decades away" what I meant was the kind of world YOU want SDCs to be is decades away. That is, a world where SDCs are so omnipresent that they eclipse car ownership. If you're talking about an SDC that's available for sale and easy for anyone to obtain that is absolutely here already (sort of- it's not exactly "easily obtainable for everyone"-yet)- this kind of SDC is already either here now or just around the corner.

But for the purposes of this discussion that matters little. The only way an SDC will mean anything to Uber drivers or UP is if it becomes so big that it puts Uber out of business. But THAT is what is decades away.



tomatopaste said:


> You seem to think saying: "they mostly work," is a good fallback position. It's not. They simply work. Period. You're trying to find a tactical retreat, there is none. They work. It's over.​


Huge difference between something that "works" and having it work on a large scale involving a taxi business. I thought that was understood but I see now I have to spell it out for you.

That's like trying to use a golf cart as a tank in combat.


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> You are correct. I am guilty of making previous statements that were not 100% clear and as such I gave you the wrong idea. When I said "SDCs are decades away" what I meant was the kind of world YOU want SDCs to be is decades away. That is, a world where SDCs are so omnipresent that they eclipse car ownership. If you're talking about an SDC that's available for sale and easy for anyone to obtain that is absolutely here already (sort of- it's not exactly "easily obtainable for everyone"-yet)- this kind of SDC is already either here now or just around the corner.
> 
> But for the purposes of this discussion that matters little. The only way an SDC will mean anything to Uber drivers or UP is if it becomes so big that it puts Uber out of business. But THAT is what is decades away.


Nonsense. Phoenix Uber drivers are dead this year. San Francisco Uber drivers are not far behind. How many Phoenix and San Francisco Uber drivers are going to move into Los Angeles before LA becomes untenable? When Uber pulled out of Austin, drivers went to Houston and Dallas and San Antonio.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Nonsense. Phoenix Uber drivers are dead this year. San Francisco Uber drivers are not far behind. How many Phoenix and San Francisco Uber drivers are going to move into Los Angeles before LA becomes untenable? When Uber pulled out of Austin, drivers went to Houston and Dallas and San Antonio.


Yeah but here's the funny thing about that...

There is ZERO evidence to back up what you're saying. You can say it all you want but that doesn't make it true.

Customers jumping all over robo taxi cars is what's gonna make "Uber Phoenix drivers dead within a year" not just some bs coming out of your mouth.

And as of now there is zero evidence that will happen.


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> Yeah but here's the funny thing about that...
> 
> There is ZERO evidence to back up what you're saying. You can say it all you want but that doesn't make it true.
> 
> ...


You mean other than the video of Waymo's CEO telling you they're going to do exactly that?

Video:
3:38 to 3:58






*Waymo CEO*:
We're going to start with a transportation service that is similar to the ride hailing companies that you know well today.

*NY Times*:
Let's talk about that. So you've got a trial going in Phoenix right, and you've said you're going to release a service before the end of the year.

*Waymo CEO*:
That's right.

Video:
22:00 to 23:00

*Waymo CEO*:
There certainly are enough markets to give us a long runway in terms of cities and markets to launch into. We're very optimistic how things will end up here in California as well. We do have a plan to move from city to city and what you'll see in our ramp plan in our launch plan is we'll be tackling incremental complexity, incremental weather. *I should say that we'll be launching not with just a low speed, again I want to make this point clear, we're not going to be launching with a 25 mile per hour product or one that's focuses on a very very small geographical area or one that only picks up at certain points and only drop of at certain points. We're talking about a full speed service that serves a very large geographical area with essentially unlimited pickup and drop off points.* And our idea is to scale with that as the product specification to other markets that have increasing complexity as we go.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> You mean other than the video of Waymo's CEO telling you they're going to do exactly that?
> 
> Video:
> 3:38 to 3:58
> ...


Bs is bs whether it's you who says it or the Waymo CEO.

Also- all the CEO says in this video is that Waymo will launch in Phoenix this year. Not that after launch it will be a big hit, nor that consumer demand will be off the charts, nor that Phoenix Uber drivers are "walking dead".

That's all BS you gave us on your own.

Also John K is 56- but he looks 86!! Ha!


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> Also- all the CEO says in this video is that Waymo will launch in Phoenix this year. Not that after launch it will be a big hit, nor that consumer demand will be off the charts, nor that Phoenix Uber drivers are "walking dead".


Because he doesn't have to. Anyone with half a brain understands it's a grand slam home run. Maybe at the next vaunted UP community meeting you can get everyone to put their brains together and you'll all be like:


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Because he doesn't have to. Anyone with half a brain understands it's a grand slam home run. Maybe at the next vaunted UP community meeting you can get everyone to put their brains together and you'll all be like:
> 
> View attachment 225745


So let's review:

The reasons you have to prove that the average Phoenix resident is going to jump all over taking a robo car is:

1. Because the Waymo CEO said they are launching this year

2. Because "anyone with half a brain just knows that's a slam dunk"

Oh my.

Does Waymo apply for loans this way too?

Chase Banker: I see you are applying for a business loan. Ok, what evidence do you have that this business plan will give us a return on our investment?

Waymo CEO: come on, I shouldn't even have to tell you! Anyone with half a brain already knows!


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> So let's review:
> 
> The reasons you have to prove that the average Phoenix resident is going to jump all over taking a robo car is:
> 
> ...


Why do people always think they can get away with a half-assed recap just because it's Friday? You can't.

1. Waymo has been driving in Phoenix with no one in the driver's seat since November. They are probably up to 1 million miles a month by now.
2. Uber does 5 million rides a day in the U.S. Waymo has already ordered over 20k self driving cars and vans. That's enough to do 1 million rides a day.
3. Tomato is all-knowing-all-seeing


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Why do people always think they can get away with a half-assed recap just because it's Friday? You can't.
> 
> 1. Waymo has been driving in Phoenix with no one in the driver's seat since November. They are probably up to 1 million miles a month by now.
> 2. Uber does 5 million rides a day in the U.S. Waymo has already ordered over 20k self driving cars and vans. That's enough to do 1 million rides a day.
> 3. Tomato is all-knowing-all-seeing


1. Does this prove that customers will decide to ride with a robot more than they already ride with Uber, in Phoenix or anywhere? NO

2. OK, great. Waymo ordered a bunch of cars. So what? Does it prove customers will use the service? NO

3. Tomato is a fool


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## tomatopaste (Apr 11, 2017)

iheartuber said:


> 1. Does this prove that customers will decide to ride with a robot more than they already ride with Uber, in Phoenix or anywhere? NO
> 
> 2. OK, great. Waymo ordered a bunch of cars. So what? Does it prove customers will use the service? NO
> 
> 3. Tomato is a fool


Once you realize self driving cars work, the discussion is over. It's done.


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## iheartuber (Oct 31, 2015)

tomatopaste said:


> Once you realize self driving cars work, the discussion is over. It's done.


Again, working well enough to move across town is one thing.

Working well enough to power a fleet of taxis that will do (by your prediction, not mine) so much business it will eclipse Uber is something totally different.

I have not now nor ever have I "realized" that self driving cars today work "that" well. Maybe they will in decades. Maybe not even ever.


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