# "Uber needs self-driving cars to avoid ending up like the taxi industry..."



## 331303 (Sep 2, 2015)

...says big talking head. 
I'll just leave this here.

http://www.businessinsider.com/uber...utm_source=linkedinticker&utm_medium=referral


----------



## SECOTIME (Sep 18, 2015)

I think Uber believes they can keep doing what they're doing (driver wise) long enough to launch an autonomous fleet. If that is truly the case then they are in for one hell of a whoopsie.

They are going to spend an astronomical amount of money.

I see a bunch of pissed off taxi drivers, ex-uber drivers and common vandals all masked up and all it would take is a single puncture in one tire and game over until someone get's out there to fix it.

They also better have puke stations set up.. or a mobile vom-squad.. pax aren't going to like opening the door to find a seat full of vomit. No driver to clean it up.

Vomit sensors? Will the car even know?

I'm sure there will be cameras in these rigs but anyone can make a smurf account, get a ride in one of these autobots and totally ****ing wreck the interior. Human shit anyone? Graffiti? Slit seats?

Good luck with letting the public ride around in your unsupervised self-driving cars..

Wait until one of these things delivers a bomb.


----------



## Uberwagoner (Oct 11, 2015)

I think the limiting factor, even before the potential for vandalism stage, is how well can an automated vehicle handle unpredictable commuter or rush hour traffic? What about accidents? Debris in the road? Avoiding obstacles and random acts of human drivers? I would love to see what happens when an automated vehicle has to handle a sudden four lane lane-changer during the Fort Worth or Dallas rush hour, for example. Or deal with the rapid deceleration of traffic ahead or the rude driver who pops in front of the automated vehicle to fill the space cushion.

That would come before I would even bring up the risks of hacking the automated vehicles, vandalizing the automated vehicles, wrecking the automated vehicles, or even fraternity pranking the automated vehicles. Or even something simple like what happens when a passenger has a medical emergency mid-trip, especially if they are unable to verbalize their need for medical help or even hit an emergency button?

Of course, I would also love to see what an automated vehicle would do to reconcile a poorly placed pin on a map driven by GPS where the shortest route is through a fence in a newly constructed area, but the logical routing is to drive a complex route around the irregular residential campus on the irregularly planned streets. Or where the passenger places a pin on the wrong building and the automated car cannot find the passenger location. Or what about locked gates to gated apartment or residential home complexes? How does the automated car enter the passcode into the manual keypad on the pylon just before the gate? Or how does it navigate a construction zone with temporary routing changes, lane closures, ramp closures, bridge closures, and similar temporary changes to routing that may not show up in GPS mapping?

This is not Star Trek where a ship's computer can do just about everything without human intervention. Navigating a course or even a preplanned route is fine, such as a desert trek test. Dealing with the unpredictable is harder to code for, let alone deal with "black swan" events. Even satellite, FM, AM, cellular, 3G/4G/LTE, and GPS signals can be disrupted, blocked, or impaired by weather, concrete and steel structures such as ramps, parking garages, skyscrapers, and electromagnetic interference. How fault tolerant will the automated vehicles be?


----------



## JTull (Oct 15, 2015)

Will the pax still get Spotify?

All kidding aside, despite the numerous obstacles mentioned above, driverless cars are clearly the future. How soon that will happen is anybody's guess, I suspect we would see it in buses in planned routes before we ever see it on the uber platform.

Also I suspect a few socialist Scandinavian countries will just have fleets of these cars all over the city for the general populace to use and direct as they wish where they wish all paid for by the government, so bye bye uber in Copenhagen.


----------



## Uberwagoner (Oct 11, 2015)

I will believe it when I see it in operation. Theory is great, but application is greater.


----------



## Casuale Haberdasher (Dec 7, 2014)

Uberwagoner said:


> I think the limiting factor, even before the potential for vandalism stage, is how well can an automated vehicle handle unpredictable commuter or rush hour traffic? What about accidents? Debris in the road? Avoiding obstacles and random acts of human drivers? I would love to see what happens when an automated vehicle has to handle a sudden four lane lane-changer during the Fort Worth or Dallas rush hour, for example. Or deal with the rapid deceleration of traffic ahead or the rude driver who pops in front of the automated vehicle to fill the space cushion.
> 
> That would come before I would even bring up the risks of hacking the automated vehicles, vandalizing the automated vehicles, wrecking the automated vehicles, or even fraternity pranking the automated vehicles. Or even something simple like what happens when a passenger has a medical emergency mid-trip, especially if they are unable to verbalize their need for medical help or even hit an emergency button?
> 
> ...


POST # 3/Uberwagoner: "Ahoy!" and
Welcome to the UP.Net
Forums from Mostly Dark...overnight...
Marco Island, on Florida's Wild SSW Coast.

Nice work for an Introductory Post!
I consider myself to be the UPNF's
"Welcome-Wagoneer"....so nice choice
of User Name, too. Anybody who harbors
a boatload of skepticism about the Natter-
ing Nanob of Northridge is O.K. in my
book. Tricky Nicky hasn't fooled everyone.

Bison Admires.
Bison Inspires!


----------



## doyousensehumor (Apr 13, 2015)

"This move comes at a time..." let me finish that.. (when the drivers strike) 

Uber sees us as disgruntled drivers who take things out of context right? But look at the timing of his statement! 

Soon to enter: Uber, Phase 3. "The drivers are becoming enough of a problem, but we have a solution to that!" With the the help of lobbiests and the support of The People, the laws will adapt to accomidate the UberRobot. One state at a time. "You are either with us, or against innovation!"


----------



## Casuale Haberdasher (Dec 7, 2014)

331303 said:


> ...says big talking head.
> I'll just leave this here.
> 
> http://www.businessinsider.com/uber...utm_source=linkedinticker&utm_medium=referral


POST # 1/331303: Nice work with the
Hyperlinked Article from
"Business Truthiness/Fluffer"....sigh.

It ALWAYS is an appetite killer seeing
Eddie Munster's Hairline with his
"What, me worry?" Alfred E. Newman
goopy expression and Former-President-
of-Iran-wardrobe.

Am I the only SKEPTICIAN that noticed
Fratty Boi's furious backpedalling on
the 5, 10, 15, 20 God-only-knows-how
many years until the Rollout of The 
TeslaAutoBot ?

Mentoring Bison: Hating on Travis.


----------



## Lag Monkey (Feb 6, 2015)

Uber can't wait to get rid of us. Travis was heckled at this conference by Uber driver protestors. That must have been amazing to see I wish I could of been there. Also he said tipping was unfair and awakward.


----------



## FlDriver (Oct 16, 2015)

I was discussing this with a rider the other day- both of us wondering how an automated Uber would work. Would riders be comfortable getting in a car without a human driver?

Sure, the car might do the actual driving better than a human, but what about all the other stuff, like finding the rider, greeting them, understanding where they want to go if they didn't enter it already, dropping them off at a specific spot at the mall, and many other things.

Plus Uber would have to pay a fortune to build a fleet of self-driving cars and it would take an awful lot of rides for that to be cheaper for Uber than the current system is.

I could see it happening eventually, but not in the next 5 years. Maybe 15.


----------



## ubershiza (Jan 19, 2015)

Driverless cars is it a travis ego thing?
If I had billions and wanted to be know for being a visionary what better way than be the first company with a fleet of them. Coke and hoes gets old fast.


----------



## everythingsuber (Sep 29, 2015)

Wondering if a driverless car will double park to allow passengers to get in or out of a vehicle? The drunk girl that falls asleep on the way home?
I doubt any one is going to win an election on a We are not going to let people drive their own cars policy. There will never be a political party in power that refuses to allow people to drive their own cars there will never be a perfectly well organised transport Utopia that doesn't require some sort of human input to apply commonsense.

Anyone investing in this ideology that thinks otherwise is still waiting on the paperless office and a cashless society.


----------



## Tim In Cleveland (Jul 28, 2014)

I heard Travis doesn't want to own the driver-less cars. He wants people to buy them and use them with Uber. That way, he can continue deny being a transportation company. He will screw those investors over just like he does drivers.


----------



## Ca$h4 (Aug 12, 2015)

Uber hasn't got the memo yet.

http://www.foxsports.com/motor/stor...-t-be-ready-until-2030-at-the-earliest-102815


----------



## Hackenstein (Dec 16, 2014)

Yeah, wouldn't want to be like an industry that's employed actual Humans for 100 years.


----------



## Huberis (Mar 15, 2015)

SECOTIME said:


> I think Uber believes they can keep doing what they're doing (driver wise) long enough to launch an autonomous fleet. If that is truly the case then they are in for one hell of a whoopsie.
> 
> They are going to spend an astronomical amount of money.
> 
> ...


They will likely license the technology, they will still avoid owning the car.


----------



## Huberis (Mar 15, 2015)

Whoever owns these cars may need to hire paid babysitters at night. They may need to put people on the streets of towns and cities such that if behavior gets out of hand the car pulls itself over so that the nearest employee can walk up and sort out the mess. Who knows? What you are seeing expressed here is one of the reasons rates trend toward the basement as markets mature. They don't own the cars and as a result can price in a way that they aren't likely to be disrupted. Why? So they can develop other technologies. Pretty simple.


----------



## Taxi Driver in Arizona (Mar 18, 2015)

By the time driverless cars are on the road, Uber will be a distant memory like Napster and Enron.


----------



## JHawk (Oct 27, 2015)

Uberwagoner said:


> I will believe it when I see it in operation. Theory is great, but application is greater.


Apparently one of the biggest challenges to the engineers of the fledgling self driving cars is that the cars are "too perfect" in terms of following the rules of the road to the letter of the law and putting too high of a premium on safety. The theory is great because you have a concrete standard to write the software too....in reality the engineers have to make their algorithms a bit more like a "human driver" which is a much broader target to try and hit

)I'd post a link to an article about this, but guess I'm still too new?)



FlDriver said:


> Sure, the car might do the actual driving better than a human, but what about all the other stuff, like finding the rider, greeting them, understanding where they want to go if they didn't enter it already, dropping them off at a specific spot at the mall, and many other things.


This also speaks to the unquestioning faith that the ride-shares have in the infallibility of their customer base. It assumes that the riders won't ever make a mistake in using the rider app, or will be aware enough to double check their inputs. Ever pull up in a driveway and waited for a pax to come out, only to eventually see your pax come out of the house next door or across the street because they didn't double check the address that the app requested the ride from when they dropped the pin?

Makes me think that while Uber might think they currently have headaches on their hands with regard to grumpy drivers, the self-driving cars could potentially create and shift the source of those headaches onto their rider base. Since the riders are their source of revenue, I'm not so sure if they can apply their "No-Soup-For-You" approach with the ease that they do with the driver pool.


----------



## Tim In Cleveland (Jul 28, 2014)

Will the driver-less cars waste 20 minutes at Taco Bell?


----------



## everythingsuber (Sep 29, 2015)

Tim In Cleveland said:


> Will the driver-less cars waste 20 minutes at Taco Bell?


Maybe 20 minutes at the wrong pick up point or looking for a legal spot to park?


----------



## Casuale Haberdasher (Dec 7, 2014)

Taxi Driver in Arizona said:


> By the time driverless cars are on the road, Uber will be a distant memory like Napster and Enron.


POST # 18/Taxi Driver in Arizona:...+1


----------



## Ayad (Jan 1, 2015)

Funny how the concern about getting behind the times as a pretext for the need to get rid of drivers is only voiced by one company. The fantasy of fully self driving cars as a realistic transportation option may or may not materialize. What is more likely, however, is the increasingly smarter cars as evidenced by the multitude of car manufacturers going in that direction. These don't require the elimination of drivers.


----------



## Fuzzyelvis (Dec 7, 2014)

JHawk said:


> Apparently one of the biggest challenges to the engineers of the fledgling self driving cars is that the cars are "too perfect" in terms of following the rules of the road to the letter of the law and putting too high of a premium on safety. The theory is great because you have a concrete standard to write the software too....in reality the engineers have to make their algorithms a bit more like a "human driver" which is a much broader target to try and hit.


It's the same reason a seeing eye dog has to have enough gumption to think for itself. You can train a dog to follow directions perfectly, but a dog that will refuse to go into the road when the owner is insisting to do so because it knows a car is coming is what you need. A dog that will absolutely do exactly what it's told all the time is not going to be safe.

The dog has to do what it's told UNLESS it deems it's not a good idea. Even when the owner is getting irritated and telling the dog everything is fine.

Teaching a car to obey the traffic laws except when it's better not to?

Until we have better AI that's not happening. And AI that good scares me.


----------



## Oscar Levant (Aug 15, 2014)

Uberwagoner said:


> I think the limiting factor, even before the potential for vandalism stage, is how well can an automated vehicle handle unpredictable commuter or rush hour traffic? What about accidents? Debris in the road? Avoiding obstacles and random acts of human drivers? I would love to see what happens when an automated vehicle has to handle a sudden four lane lane-changer during the Fort Worth or Dallas rush hour, for example. Or deal with the rapid deceleration of traffic ahead or the rude driver who pops in front of the automated vehicle to fill the space cushion.
> 
> That would come before I would even bring up the risks of hacking the automated vehicles, vandalizing the automated vehicles, wrecking the automated vehicles, or even fraternity pranking the automated vehicles. Or even something simple like what happens when a passenger has a medical emergency mid-trip, especially if they are unable to verbalize their need for medical help or even hit an emergency button?
> 
> ...


and you're just scratching the surface. what happens if somebody hits one of these vehicles rear ended sideswipe or whatever what are the insurance implications? How do you get out of your car and get the insurance information from a driverless car?

I just don't see these cars hitting the road anytime soon-- by the time they figure it out they will invent antigravity or something else and cars will be moot.


----------



## Da' Future is here (Nov 30, 2015)

It will happen. I can shoot down every point here with one single answer. Money! Every driver is a lab rat in there successful test of how much money is to made when they take there biggest overall expense out of the equation. You! Look at the evaluation they received with the platform already in place. Do you think its because Uber is going to cut your rates down a couple pennies more. Its because those evaluations are made on the x-factor of not having to pay you anymore. Imagine the gross amount of money could be made if they would not have to pay your large cut. They insure you for the most part already and still turn a pretty profit even after losing out on most of the fare. Pay tickets for you even though you take the lions share of the money. Its a wash in their eyes compared to the claims already paid due to human liability. With the lawyers and lobbyist they have in place already, they'll probably get a discount on there policy for losing the human drivers. Wake up people! This is silicon valley were talking about here. You don't think they will have every camera known to man on these things to correct the faults you speak of. Don't believe me. Look up the start up Knightscope and its security robots that in a few years will be the end of security industry shortly. With these robots roaming your town, you don't think its cheaper to pay a team of IT specialist in every county to mark troubled areas of interest where a tree has fallen or a road has closed? Your own local governments might pay a premium to have these cars drive around and function as monitoring service to cut down on police force needed. The cost of mass producing these cars will be a fraction to what they pay you already. Travis wants to get these on the road before we catch up and start clamoring for unions and health benefits. He's banking on this country's lawmakers taking to long to catch up to the injustice placed upon our backs before he eliminates us all together. I'd like to welcome you to the new Uber economy but were not apart of it.


----------



## UberTaxPro (Oct 3, 2014)

at least it would end the rating system right?


----------



## humandriver (Sep 16, 2014)

Well as it is right now, Uber skims 20% out of a pool which they put almost no money into, and they have almost no liability. Owning a fleet of cars, even electric cars will require staff (benefits, insurance, payroll), real estate, infastructure, more insurance. It isn't as clean of an operation then.

And your point is immediately disqualified when you say "it'll cost a fraction of what they pay you." You have that backwards, chief. We pay them.


----------



## itsablackmarket (May 12, 2015)

Tim In Cleveland said:


> I heard Travis doesn't want to own the driver-less cars. He wants people to buy them and use them with Uber. That way, he can continue deny being a transportation company. He will screw those investors over just like he does drivers.


Seems Uber is really in the business of burning investors.


----------



## JHawk (Oct 27, 2015)

Tim In Cleveland said:


> I heard Travis doesn't want to own the driver-less cars. He wants people to buy them and use them with Uber. That way, he can continue deny being a transportation company. He will screw those investors over just like he does drivers.


The way I understood Uber's comments is that they would like to create/hire/partner with a type of fleet operator that would be responsible for managing the auto-car fleet in each market. Having individuals buy cars and put them on the Uber platform is no different than the current scenario, where Uber has to pay the lions-share of the fare to the driver. By having one person control, say, 1000 cars and put them on the platform, Uber can lower the rates even further because they're only having to compensate one single entity or "partner" for the use of 1000 cars, as opposed to 1000 driver "partners" for the use of 1000 cars.



humandriver said:


> Well as it is right now, Uber skims 20% out of a pool which they put almost no money into, and they have almost no liability. Owning a fleet of cars, even electric cars will require staff (benefits, insurance, payroll), real estate, infastructure, more insurance. It isn't as clean of an operation then.


It's still a crazy Pandora's-box-can-'0-worms because while the auto-cars remove the driver from the equation and lower the cost to a degree, there are still going to be tremendous costs associated with maintaining a fleet of cars on a 24/7 basis. It's a smart move on Uber's part to pass all of the liability along to the fleet operator. The real question then becomes how does an operator properly evaluate that risk/return equation. My sense is when you talk about dealing with a person/company who is smart and experienced enough to consider a multi-million dollar investment and partnership, that entity is going to have a greater grasp of the real costs associated with the operation. Currently, Uber operates from the position that most of the drivers don't understand the true costs associated with driving, over time, at the current rates. This works to Uber's advantage. Uber might potentially lose that advantage when matched against someone who knows what they're doing.

There's also an issue of leverage. It is difficult for drivers to organize or strike because of the size of the driver pool. Even if you believe the advocacy/strike posts that say tons of drivers stayed off the road during the strikes....there's just as many people saying there were still tons of cars on the road. If the cars fall under the control of a single entity, one person or company may possess the ability to remove the entire fleet from the streets at the touch of a button.


----------



## Oscar Levant (Aug 15, 2014)

Da' Future is here said:


> It will happen. I can shoot down every point here with one single answer. Money! Every driver is a lab rat in there successful test of how much money is to made when they take there biggest overall expense out of the equation. You! Look at the evaluation they received with the platform already in place. Do you think its because Uber is going to cut your rates down a couple pennies more. Its because those evaluations are made on the x-factor of not having to pay you anymore. Imagine the gross amount of money could be made if they would not have to pay your large cut. They insure you for the most part already and still turn a pretty profit even after losing out on most of the fare. Pay tickets for you even though you take the lions share of the money. Its a wash in their eyes compared to the claims already paid due to human liability. With the lawyers and lobbyist they have in place already, they'll probably get a discount on there policy for losing the human drivers. Wake up people! This is silicon valley were talking about here. You don't think they will have every camera known to man on these things to correct the faults you speak of. Don't believe me. Look up the start up Knightscope and its security robots that in a few years will be the end of security industry shortly. With these robots roaming your town, you don't think its cheaper to pay a team of IT specialist in every county to mark troubled areas of interest where a tree has fallen or a road has closed? Your own local governments might pay a premium to have these cars drive around and function as monitoring service to cut down on police force needed. The cost of mass producing these cars will be a fraction to what they pay you already. Travis wants to get these on the road before we catch up and start clamoring for unions and health benefits. He's banking on this country's lawmakers taking to long to catch up to the injustice placed upon our backs before he eliminates us all together. I'd like to welcome you to the new Uber economy but were not apart of it.


I can't see how driverless cars are going to improve Uber's bottom line. Uber will have maintain a fleet in each region it operates, hundreds of thousands of vehicles, they'll need thousands of technicians, maintenance crews, admin support, supply depots, wharehouses, payroll departments, and on and on, and all that depreciation on top of it. How many large tranportation fleet operators are still in business today? Yellow cab is now broken up into bits, tiny companies here and there and the name is in the public domain, checker is long since out of business, name one large one that's still in business? I can't think of any.

How many instances are there going to be when someone gets in a car, and the damn thing doesn't quite behave like it is supposed to ( no way can programmers think of everything ), and who does the rider talk to? I wouldn't ride in one, and that's the thing, who are going to ride in driverless cars? some might, as a novelty, but the first time someone gets fustrated in riding one ( and that is going to happen, you can bet on it ), they'll never ride in one again. 
See, getting fustrated with a driver is not the samething as getting fustrated with a machine. What do people do when they get fustrated with candy dispensers? They kick them, eh?

These things are going to get vandalized, and that will add to expenses, etc etc. I dont think Uber is thinking this through.


----------



## UberXking (Oct 14, 2014)

Self driving vehicles will be like driving with your grandma. It will take 20% longer to complete a trip. Much to slow to keep pax content.
Many years of initial use on campuses and large companies where they will be a welcomed alternative to a bicycle or walking.


----------

