June 20, 20195 yr 12 minutes ago, GCrites80s said: If cars get re-framed as tech, car companies can lose all the money they want like tech Also, Kroger. Grocery delivery will never be profitable, but now Kroger gets to lose money. Because it's tech.
June 20, 20195 yr On 4/15/2019 at 9:17 AM, KJP said: A big downside of driverless cars I hadn't considered before..... Whether or not it's a "downside" is in the eye of the beholder. To some it would be one, to others it would be an upside. Yang clearly considers it one.
June 20, 20195 yr 58 minutes ago, jmecklenborg said: Also, Kroger. Grocery delivery will never be profitable, but now Kroger gets to lose money. Because it's tech. It will eventually be profitable, because there is a demand for it. It was said that Amazon could never be profitable. The founder of Federal Express laid out it's basic business model in a 1965 college project and the professor was very unenthusiastic.
June 20, 20195 yr Just now, E Rocc said: It will eventually be profitable, because there is a demand for it. We do not pay ourselves to fill our own shopping carts. We do not pay ourselves to drive to and from a grocery store. 1 minute ago, E Rocc said: It was said that Amazon could never be profitable. Amazon's retail product delivery business is still not profitable. Amazon is profitable overall because of its web services business, including cloud computing, which has absolutely nothing to do with warehousing and distributing consumer merchandise. 10 minutes ago, E Rocc said: The founder of Federal Express laid out it's basic business model in a 1965 college project and the professor was very unenthusiastic. Fedex ,UPS Air, etc., are zero-sum games. They stole cargo business away from passenger airlines. So we get packages a little cheaper and faster but we pay more for airline tickets.
June 20, 20195 yr 34 minutes ago, E Rocc said: It will eventually be profitable, because there is a demand for it. Are you serious? The demand for things that are unprofitable is UNLIMITED! When profit increases demand goes DOWN!
June 20, 20195 yr 1 hour ago, jmecklenborg said: We do not pay ourselves to fill our own shopping carts. We do not pay ourselves to drive to and from a grocery store. Amazon's retail product delivery business is still not profitable. Amazon is profitable overall because of its web services business, including cloud computing, which has absolutely nothing to do with warehousing and distributing consumer merchandise. Fedex ,UPS Air, etc., are zero-sum games. They stole cargo business away from passenger airlines. So we get packages a little cheaper and faster but we pay more for airline tickets. Not really. They improved the level of service, and they took business away from competitors. That's how progress happens. It's not "zero sum", especially for those of us who don't fly often. (It should be noted that they also, quite likely, decreased the need for business travel).
June 20, 20195 yr 53 minutes ago, GCrites80s said: Are you serious? The demand for things that are unprofitable is UNLIMITED! When profit increases demand goes DOWN! Someone usually figures out a way to meet demand. If the demand goes down some due to the price going up, the concept still exists. And will evolve.
June 20, 20195 yr 1 hour ago, E Rocc said: Not really. They improved the level of service, and they took business away from competitors. That's how progress happens. It's not "zero sum", especially for those of us who don't fly often. (It should be noted that they also, quite likely, decreased the need for business travel). Progress is progress if people only compare one or two metrics that "prove" their point. When a new stand-along business chips away at a side business of a legacy industry, people tend not to think it's a big deal, when in fact it can be the straw that breaks the camel, and that camel has a cascading effect across broader realms. The appearance of air mail (and to some extent trucking enabled by the interstate highway system) undermined the overall finances of railroads because their debt ratings were predicated upon the assumption that that source of revenue would always be there. The loss of the post office business was devastating to every railroad in the United States and was a big reason why we lost passenger rail service and are left today with the hapless Amtrak. Not only did they lose the revenue, they suddenly had to pay more to borrow money. Same thing with commercial airlines. We would have more commercial air service and tickets would be cheaper if airlines could risk flying planes with few passengers but a belly full of frivolous merchandise.
June 21, 20195 yr 18 hours ago, jmecklenborg said: Progress is progress if people only compare one or two metrics that "prove" their point. When a new stand-along business chips away at a side business of a legacy industry, people tend not to think it's a big deal, when in fact it can be the straw that breaks the camel, and that camel has a cascading effect across broader realms. The appearance of air mail (and to some extent trucking enabled by the interstate highway system) undermined the overall finances of railroads because their debt ratings were predicated upon the assumption that that source of revenue would always be there. The loss of the post office business was devastating to every railroad in the United States and was a big reason why we lost passenger rail service and are left today with the hapless Amtrak. Not only did they lose the revenue, they suddenly had to pay more to borrow money. Same thing with commercial airlines. We would have more commercial air service and tickets would be cheaper if airlines could risk flying planes with few passengers but a belly full of frivolous merchandise. That's kind of how capitalism works, and is the reason that most advances and improvements in methods come from capitalist systems. Taking this logic to not too great of an extreme, once could say that telephones undermined the post office business (and destroyed the telegraph) because communication no longer required either writing letters or using morse code. As for the railroads, when they had no competition they could be as timely (or untimely) as they wished. There was also the impact that cars had on the buggy whip industry, electricity on gas lamps, and computers on the adding machine business. This of course makes planning more difficult, so the planner mindset will oppose change. But major progress by any definition depends on change.
June 21, 20195 yr ^All of those things you listed were better what what came before, not lateral moves or side quests like we see with today's "tech innovation". Most "innovations", inventions and whatnot aren't actually all that usable or feasible. That's how it's always been and probably always will be.
June 22, 20195 yr 21 hours ago, GCrites80s said: ^All of those things you listed were better what what came before, not lateral moves or side quests like we see with today's "tech innovation". Most "innovations", inventions and whatnot aren't actually all that usable or feasible. That's how it's always been and probably always will be. Perhaps, but a lot of improvements come off of lateral innovations and side quests. Stepping to the side clears a path in front of you.
July 11, 20195 yr $45M autonomous vehicle testing center opens EAST LIBERTY — Everything about the intersection at the new autonomous vehicle testing center looks ordinary — asphalt, traffic lights, road signs, two sedans, an SUV and a bus — until a fake car wrapped in foam and canvas runs a red light and nearly gets t-boned by a speeding Tesla. The Tesla automatically brakes, swerves and avoids a collision. The 20-second demonstration was part of a grand opening event Wednesday to show off a new SMART Center, a 540-acre autonomous vehicle test site on the grounds of the 4,500-acre Transportation Research Center. More below: https://www.whio.com/news/45m-autonomous-vehicle-testing-center-opens/FjBmjHZGx0LFR8E6Fzp65N/?fbclid=IwAR2vJjUpvkETwzrB67pV40C-dJfdGJ00pXU062iQyX6v4xct1oQQXsrWj6g “To an Ohio resident - wherever he lives - some other part of his state seems unreal.”
August 7, 20195 yr Somebody please adopt Tesla: https://www.adoptapet.com/pet/25989112-cincinnati-ohio-kitten
March 20, 20205 yr The Failure Of This Self-Driving Truck Company Tells You All You Need To Know About Self-Driving Vehicles While competitors expended effort adding machine learning-based features such as enabling trucks to change lanes on their own, Seltz-Axmacher said he threw resources into safety engineering. The company was the first autonomous trucking company to submit a Voluntary Safety Self Assessment to the U.S. Department of Transportation. But a problem emerged: that safety focus didn’t excite investors. Venture capitalists, Seltz-Axmacher said, had trouble grasping why the company expended massive resources preparing, validating and vetting his system, then preparing a backup system, before the initial unmanned test run. That work essentially didn’t matter when he went in search of more funding. “There’s not a lot of Silicon Valley companies that have shipped safety-critical products,” he said. “They measured progress on interesting features.” But it isn’t just safety tech that venture capital isn’t interested in, according to Seltz-Axmacher, it’s possibly the entire idea of investing in autonomous vehicles period. That’s because VC firms have been dumping money into self-driving startups for years now and starting to realize that maybe this whole self-driving thing isn’t around the corner. https://jalopnik.com/the-failure-of-this-self-driving-truck-company-tells-yo-1842417033
April 13, 20205 yr https://electrek.co/2020/04/12/tesla-robotaxi-plan-2020-pending-regulatory-approval/ Musk says Tesla is awaiting regulatory approval for their robotaxis or whatever the fancy term they're using now. Still reiterates a 2020 timeline, but I'm going to go out on a lamb and say Tesla will have 0 self-driving robotaxis on the road on 12/31/20. Very Stable Genius
July 20, 20204 yr "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
December 4, 20204 yr https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-full-autonomy-2021/ Stop me if you've heard this before...but Musk is "extremely confident" Tesla's will be fully autonomous, wait for it, "next year." Quote Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes that his all-electric automaker will have the ability to release a fully autonomous functionality in “some jurisdictions” next year. It would be a huge development for not only Tesla, but the future of autonomous driving as a whole. https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/03/tech/autox-robotaxi-china-intl-hnk/index.html Quote Self-driving robotaxis are taking off in China https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/8/21507814/waymo-driverless-cars-allow-more-customers-phoenix Quote Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet, announced it will be opening up its fully driverless vehicles to all customers of its ride-hailing service in Phoenix, Arizona. Previously, the company only allowed a select few people. Now, over a thousand people will get to ride in a Waymo vehicle without a human safety driver in the front seat. Waymo has been testing its vehicles in the Phoenix area since early 2017. Its self-driving cars operate in an approximately 100-square-mile service area that includes the towns Chandler, Gilbert, Mesa, and Tempe — though its fully driverless cars are restricted to an area that is half that size. In late 2018, the company launched a limited public ride-hailing service called Waymo One, but the only customers to get access were people who had first been vetted through Waymo’s early rider program of beta testers. Waymo said it has around 1,500 monthly active users from both programs, the same number it reported in December 2019. Self-driving cars already exist...just not from Tesla. Very Stable Genius
December 4, 20204 yr Even those aren't a big deal since they require monitoring. The technology has to be full 100% L5 in order to be safe since turning passengers into monitors doesn't work since they turn into Homer Simpson in Sector 7G rather than trained airplane pilots monitoring gauges.
December 4, 20204 yr Quote Musk has even said himself that Tesla would slowly roll out FSD and Autopilot features in foreign markets, and that they would not be available until it had figured out a way to standardize traffic laws with FSD’s software. I still worry that self-driving car makers are going to push for laws that allow self-driving cars to exceed the posted speed limit, which is an incredibly dangerous slippery slope. Musk's argument would be, "human drivers routinely go 10 MPH over the speed limit, self-driving cars should be allowed to do the same." If this happens, it will be a real slap in the face for urbanists who are trying to get speed limits lowered in order to make streets safer for humans.
December 4, 20204 yr 2 minutes ago, taestell said: I still worry that self-driving car makers are going to push for laws that allow self-driving cars to exceed the posted speed limit, which is an incredibly dangerous slippery slope. Musk's argument would be, "human drivers routinely go 10 MPH over the speed limit, self-driving cars should be allowed to do the same." If this happens, it will be a real slap in the face for urbanists who are trying to get speed limits lowered in order to make streets safer for humans. From Tesla's own 10-K: Quote There are no federal U.S. regulations pertaining to the safety of self-driving vehicles Very Stable Genius
December 8, 20204 yr Uber Has Severed Its Ties To A Supposedly Profitable Autonomous Future After spending years and billions of investor dollars trying to get its autonomous robotaxi fleet off the ground, Uber has cut its losses and dumped the problem child division on a Silicon Valley startup called Aurora. As part of the deal, Uber will invest an additional $400 million in Aurora, paying the new company to distance itself fiscally and legally from the disaster that Uber’s autonomous project has become. Uber has always been an unprofitable taxi service and has said that the path toward profitability is replacing its expensive human drivers with self-driving robot cars. That’s how the company managed to keep getting investors to funnel billions into the company — the promise that it would someday make a profit by kicking hard-working Americans out of their gig economy jobs. Without this autonomous hardware and software, Uber has admitted that it has no idea how the company will ever turn a profit. more: https://jalopnik.com/uber-has-severed-its-ties-to-a-supposedly-profitable-au-1845829447
December 8, 20204 yr ^Yeah everything I predicted 5+ years ago is happening. The tech bros don't care, though - their general optimism for all things tech can never cool down. It's like, even though it's been proven repeatedly that autonomous driving isn't going to exist for decades, I had someone just tell me they're going to buy the Tesla truck sight unseen because it'll allow them to talk more to customers while driving. I'm like, uh.
August 18, 20213 yr Details, details..... "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
August 19, 20213 yr I would expect better from Bloomberg. L3 is the best you can hope for in the next few years and that's not even close to 99%. L5 is mandatory for it to not be a parlor trick.
October 20, 20213 yr "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
November 12, 20213 yr "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
November 13, 20213 yr ^ In addition to that, I think it would be a good idea for cars to verify the operator has a valid license, registration, and insurance that is up to date. It would be tougher to integrate, but would probably be even more effective at saving money and lives. I know I've been crashed into three times, and all three times the other drive was at fault, had no insurance, and had a suspended license. I read once that the majority of people stopped for DUIs were already suspended, as well.
December 29, 20213 yr "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
March 28, 20223 yr Elon Musk sez that Tesla's "full self driving" mode still can't deal with streetcars. You know, those giant vehicles that travel along a predefined route on tracks embedded in the road.
March 30, 20223 yr You can take a driverless taxi ride in many places - parts of China, San Francisco, Phoenix, I think Lyft or Ford started offering them in Miami. None of those rides will be in a Tesla, of course. But autonomous, driverless taxi rides do exist now. Very Stable Genius
April 21, 20223 yr On 3/23/2022 at 1:57 PM, Dev said: The only thing that can get me to drive more is the ongoing lack of transportation options. I wish I could ditch my car permanently.
April 22, 20223 yr On 4/21/2022 at 10:07 AM, gildone said: I wish I could ditch my car permanently. About once a month I rehash the thought of how I could go as car-lite as possible. It's always the same barriers every time.
May 19, 20223 yr Am I the only person that steers clear of Tesla's nowadays? I've seen enough stupid videos that make me seriously wonder if Tesla "drivers" are statistically more prone to crash into everything.
August 4, 20222 yr "In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage." -- John Steinbeck
August 4, 20222 yr On 4/22/2022 at 10:24 AM, Dev said: About once a month I rehash the thought of how I could go as car-lite as possible. It's always the same barriers every time. I'm almost carless, and will be fully carless next year. It took a lifetime of choices about where to live and where to work and ultimately will only happen when the last kid moves on to college.
August 4, 20222 yr 3 hours ago, KJP said: One of my biggest fears with self-driving cars is that we're going to end up with a dual system where there is one set of laws that applies to human-driven cars and a different set that applies to self-driving cars. For example, with speed limits, I worry that automakers will argue "everybody drives 5-10 MPH over the speed limit anyway" and try to get a law passed to allow self-driving cars to "legally" go 5-10 MPH over the posted speed limit. Similarly, with this patent, it seems like they are going to argue "human drivers don't always stop at marked crosswalks" and spin it as, "this is actually safer because we will be announcing to the pedestrian that we're not going to stop" (as the car blows through the crosswalk at full speed).
October 26, 20222 yr Another one bites the dust: The write-off of Argo drove Ford’s third-quarter earnings down, to a loss of $827 million loss, compared with a $1.8 billion profit from a year earlier. “It’s become very clear that profitable, fully autonomous vehicles at scale are still a long way off,” Ford finance chief John Lawler said during a call with reporters Wednesday. https://www.wsj.com/articles/ford-to-take-2-7-billion-charge-on-argo-driverless-startup-stake-11666816138?mod=lead_feature_below_a_pos1
October 26, 20222 yr It's like the metaverse. Alleging demand doesn't mean that people are craving these advances. Inexpensive hybrid and electric cars should be the focus as opposed to autonomous driving, much like augmented reality should be Facebook's goal, not the Metamatrix.
October 26, 20222 yr I'm pretty sure it was an "autonomous" electric car that hit the Kingsdale MCL since there was a weird puddle that caused a chemical reaction that turned the black carpet a weird mix of orange, yellow and maroon. Ordinary ICE fluids wouldn't do that except maybe battery acid.
December 22, 20222 yr Tesla behind eight-vehicle crash was in ‘full self-driving’ mode, says driver San Francisco crash is the latest in a series of accidents blamed on Tesla technology, which is facing regulatory scrutiny The police report said the vehicle was traveling at 55mph when it shifted lane but braked abruptly, slowing the car to about 20mph. That led to another vehicle hitting the Tesla and a chain reaction of crashes, according to Reuters. [...] The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which is investigating Tesla after reports of braking “without warning, at random, and often repeatedly in a single drive”, did not immediately comment on the San Francisco crash.
December 23, 20222 yr If I see a Tesla on the highway anymore I just assume it's going to go out of control and burst into flames.
December 23, 20222 yr NHTSA has been asleep at the wheel (pun intended) for years on this technology. Pretty sure more Teslas have caught fire than Ford Pintos (someone did try to track all of the public news stories on Tesla fires a few months ago, I think). Out of nearly 3.2 million Pintos produced, an estimated 27 caught fire. Very Stable Genius
December 23, 20222 yr We also outlawed 3 wheelers when 600 people total died even though they are safer, more useful and more fun than guns.
March 31, 20232 yr This thread is over 10 years old yet self-driving cars don't exist. A car still hasn't driven itself from LA to NYC. Ford is done: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ford-is-withdrawing-a-self-driving-car-petition-following-skepticism-over-near-term-prospects-7b0e4c4f?mod=home-page
April 14, 20232 yr This forum seems to be pretty negative on self driving cars overall, I'm not sure all of that is justified. Ignoring the question of how far off the technology is, the thought I've been having recently is that driverless cars will actually be a boon for cities as they will allow a lot more people to go car free by simplifying car rentals. I'd wager there's a lot of people living in walkable or semi-walkable areas that don't need a car for 85% of their life tasks; however, a lot of these people still own a car because it's too much of a hassle to rent a car to get groceries or visit grandma. With driverless cars you could call the car through an app on your phone, it would show up and pick you up, and you could keep it for an hour, a day, a weekend, or just a few minutes. That would be an absolute game changer for anyone who can almost go car free but for a few things. Granted, full self driving is likely still a ways off, but I think their impact on North American cities will be generally positive by reducing the need to own a car. The same car could be used all day and effectively shared by several people reducing the need for parking space. People will still probably own cars in rural and suburban areas, but I think the math will flip for a lot of urban and near urban residents. They may not be an urbanist's ideal dream, but I think they will be a positive step in the right direction.
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