Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms.<p>This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more challenging and a number of years away.
I wonder how Uber drivers feel about working for a company that is actively trying to make them obsolete.<p>Not passing judgement or anything, just kind of a strange thing to contemplate..<p>Uber kept saying they were disrupting the taxi industry by letting more people participate when really in the end they're trying to remove the people from the equation altogether.
I saw one of these a month ago when I was biking around the North Shore (downtown Pittsburgh). Its cameras on top were far more conspicuous than the renders in the article, though.<p>This article said it would pick people up downtown, but how far would they go to drop off? The golden triangle is mostly grid-based, but go elsewhere in the city and the road topology gets jacked up fast (like Boston), especially in the south and west. Its idiosyncrasies took some getting used to, after living in flatter regions with gridded streets for several years (central Ohio, Salt Lake). In those places, if you want to go somewhere, you start driving in its general direction; in Pittsburgh, it's not uncommon to go in the opposite direction for a while, since the roads don't connect that way.<p>The article also mentioned bridges being a problem. In Pittsburgh, that's a big problem, since it supposedly has more bridges than any other city in the world.
Definitely not better road markings. I'm a Pittsburgh native, having spent most of my life there, and if anything the immaculate roads here in NorCal are a part of the ongoing skewed optimism regarding self-driving vehicles.<p>In Pittsburgh, you have potholes, ubiquitous construction (especially on PA-28), bridges (and I'm not talking Bay Bridge esque suspension bridges here), windy single lane dirt roads without markings, to say nothing of winter (snow usually obstructs what little markings there are 6-8 months out of the year), and a completely different driving style than in NorCal. Most people in Pittsburgh drive trucks or four-wheel drive Subarus (indeed, Pittsburgh has been a good niche market for Subaru -- they focus a lot of their advertising there). In Pittsburgh, roads only have two lanes max in each direction (and that's the highways). Even downtown has its fair share of dirt roads (near Allegheny River) and brick roads (roads that are made of bricks). I was shell shocked when I first moved to California and drove on the 101 with its 4 perfectly paved lanes filled with drivers exceeding 50 MPH.<p>Precipitation is a nightmare for self-driving cars' LADAR sensors, rendering them completely unusable. Drought-afflicted SV has zero precipitation, and Pittsburgh has almost as much as Seattle. Driving in snow is such a drastically different task/skill than driving in perfect weather that most people in California don't even know how to drive in Tahoe on their skiing trips (and the "snow" there is maintained by humans!).<p>If anything, us Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle researchers are the ones more grounded in reality. Elon hasn't even seen "the Turnpike" -- it is sad to say that the rather unfortunate fatal Tesla autopilot accident happened here in Pittsburgh.<p>As aside, Sebastian Thrun was in snow-laden Boston, and he and his lab also have a more realistic time estimate for driverless vehicles hitting the road than TechCrunch.<p>Anytime anyone in California complains about the roads (and believe it or not, people do complain about them here a lot), I just laugh.
It feels like a lot of what Uber does these days is just hyping up the stock price. Of course that is a very short term strategy, if your ever more audacious announcements keep falling flat. We saw a lot of this in the last throes of the dot-com bubble, before the inevitable implosion.<p>As for this announcement, does Uber have <i>any</i> credibility in this field, which combines the most individually complex AI, robotics and regulatory work that has ever been attempted? Hell, in any non-trivial engineering feats?<p>Also, Volvo has very active ongoing self-driving research going on. I have to wonder how much of this is Uber's supposed crack team of field experts, and how much is simply a partnership with Volvo delivering the technology.
Lots of hills, and will have plenty of ice and snow in a few months. It seems to me like a logical place to test the resilience of a self-driving system against some predictable corner cases.
I can understand self driving cars eventually being practical on long simple roads.<p>But I can't even imagine how one could get to my house. My road has cars parked on both sides. Sometimes vans. Sometimes they almost block the road. Sometimes there is a car coming the other way and you have to look for a space to pull into to so they can pass, or maybe back up 1/4 of a mile. Or hope the other car does.<p>There are cones and roadworks quite often.<p>I have significant difficulty driving down there, I don't see how an automatic car could any time soon at all.<p>This might not be an issue if <i>I</i> owned the car. I could turn it off and drive down there myself but an automatic taxi couldnt do that unless there was a driver waiting in the car to do that if required. And if there is, he might as well drive it all and save thousands of [currency]
Are self-driving cars legal in the United States by law, or just due to the absence of law? Seems like vehicular traffic has always had fairly tight regulations around their operation, but I'm stunned by the speed at which cars that drive themselves are hitting the road. Sure, we've had cruise-control, and cars have been adding things like auto-braking and lane-assist. Have they just taken that feature-creep further to facilitate self-driving under existing laws? Or are they simply able to do-so because they all necessitate a human driver to supposedly be alert, awake and aware? Maybe I missed it, but to me this just seems like something that would warrant some discussion before self-driving vehicles are allowed on the roads, even if the conclusion is the same.
What is smart with Uber pushing this tech is they have incentive to test a lot with a human operator, they can earn money driving people during the test, but Google doesn't earn anything when they do, limiting their tests.
As someone that follows lots of tech "trying to see the future" - to me Uber has the greatest hope of bring driving to the mainstream due to a number of factors.<p>First, they have a lot of experience with litigation and working with local laws.<p>They need to replace drivers, but unlike truck drivers - Uber will drive anywhere.<p>Unlike trucks, there's the potential to allow the passenger to drive the car.<p>Many more key reasons why Uber's efforts are worth watching, but really do hope they're able to make serious progress in bring autonomous vehicles to the mainstream.
I'd love to sit in one of those cars and see how well the cars can drive themselves, especially during the winter. It's just a really awesome experience being in a self-driving car - it'd be amazing if you could just hail one with an app.<p>The acquisition of Otto is interesting. I think Anthony Levandowski is incredible and the trucking industry is perfect for automation given the state of the technology and for logistical reasons. But it seems odd that Uber wants to branch out at this point.
It's interesting that they chose Pittsburgh. Having grown up there and they having lived in many different places since, I have learned to appreciate having learned to drive on those roads, especially during winter.<p>Many roads in Pittsburgh, and western PA in general, can be very curvy and have tight-radius. They're also often steep.<p>The on-ramps are peculiar because merging traffic must yield, visibility can be poor, and since some on-ramps can have tight radius and be steep, it makes it a little more challenging to merge. However, all of that is not that difficult to learn. It's much more interesting when you add in a foot of snow and ice and blowing snow.<p>Also, Pittsburgh is an 'older city' so large parts of it were built before cars. Highways have been 'bolted on' in some places, especially the ones that bisect downtown. Many people unfamiliar with Pittsburgh can get lost when coming in from 376 because on entering downtown, there are several quick exits and lots of lane switching.<p>It makes sense since CMU is there and a lot of robotics people, but interesting nonetheless.
> "Supervised by humans in the drivers seat"<p>Ah, borrowing from the Musk marketing playbook, just say "self-driving" often enough, and enough uninformed people who have never seen contemporary luxury assisted-driving features will be impressed. Calling out Autopilot as "souped-up cruise control" is a nice touch.<p>> For now, Uber’s test cars travel with safety drivers, as common sense and the law dictate. These professionally trained engineers sit with their fingertips on the wheel, ready to take control if the car encounters an unexpected obstacle. A co-pilot, in the front passenger seat, takes notes on a laptop.<p>That doesn't seem very scalable. How many cars are in this so-called "fleet"?<p>Is there anybody working on autonomous vehicle tech that believes there's any substance here, or is it just adverjournalism?
Last summer I saw one of these autonomous Uber cars driving on a side road when I was leaving my office in the Lawrenceville neighborhood in Pittsburgh.<p>Was tempted to motion to jump in front of it to see how the car would react, but didn't...
Doesn't this upend Uber's whole model of non-ownership of vehicles and rejection of liability? Unless the driver is just there to be liable for having "allowed" the AI to intentionally hit something or someone!<p>Also, as a NYC driver, I wonder how aggressively a self-driving car could legally be programmed to defend its lane. I'm picturing Uberbots sitting still in traffic while streams of human drivers gleefully cut them off. City driving is basically a game of chicken every 10 seconds; winning at chicken depends on convincing your opponent that you are willing to have an accident.
This is a no-lose situation for Uber.<p>If it goes well, then Uber has suddenly pushed forward autonomous driving and set itself at the forefront of commercial adoption.<p>If it is a disaster and many accidents result, Uber will set back driverless cars by a decade, burying it under a wave of pessimism, allowing their current business model to persist well into the future.
If the adoption of driverless cars succeeds this translates into less automobiles sold by manufacturers to the general public. Won't the auto manufacturers then need to increase the price of each unit sold? Eventually wouldn't Uber's savings from no longer having pay labor costs be lost due to auto makers increase in price per unit of each(now driverless) car sold?<p>This seems to be a lot exposure for Uber unless they get into the manufacturing business which seems like a rabbit hole. This type of exposure is the same as say a music streaming business that has to pay for content - i.e your business model is predicated on favorable enough terms from a third party in order to make a profit. And we've seen that the way around this is by being vertically integrated such as what Netflix has done with creating its own content.
What happens if someone is in one of these and it needs gas?<p>What happens if these things get a flat tires?<p>What if the police want to pull one of these things over?<p>Can drivers exit this thing at will or are they trapped until some computer in California thinks it is safe?<p>Uber does know that their drivers do lot more then drive
I wonder how this will affect crime. With a driverless car, if someone wanted to hold you up, all they have to do is walk in front of the car, which will then obediently stop.
Forget Self-Driving Cars. Airbus Says a Legit Flying Taxi Is Coming<p><a href="http://time.com/money/4456617/flying-cars-taxi-self-driving-cars/" rel="nofollow">http://time.com/money/4456617/flying-cars-taxi-self-driving-...</a>
Uber has to work on self-driving technology, but in a certain way doesn't self-driving technology seem like something that will eliminate Uber's market advantage?<p>Right now, Uber is the go-to choice in most areas because of network effects. They have the most drivers because they have the most users. They have the most users because they have the most drivers. In a world of self-driving vehicles, anyone with capital can buy a fleet to blanket a city. If you can finance a self-driving vehicle for $400/mo, it's not that hard to launch in a new city. Sidecar operated in my top-10 city with what seemed like 5 drivers. That was too few and it was terrible (given that a lot of the time they might not be on-duty). But if one could get 20 self-driving vehicles for $8,000/mo, it's an easy way to launch. If adding new vehicles is as easy as going to a local dealership and putting down your VC money, you could get more on the road within a day to meet demand. In the early days, you could keep a close eye on demand and over-provision a little.<p>Self-driving vehicles change the market from being one of network effects (where Uber has a huge advantage) to one of capital spend. Uber does have a lot of capital, but what if GM wants to get into the game? GM gets cars at cost and GM has a brand that people know/trust (they're not some no-name I'm-Uber-Too).<p>Worse, it's a market of variable capital expenditure. With cable TV/internet, a lot of the costs are fixed costs (actually laying all the cable and such). With wireless service, there's a limited amount of spectrum and a lot of fixed costs creating the network. With self-driving taxis, it seems like the vast majority of the costs are variable costs that go up with the number of riders. There's really nothing stoping a city from having dozens or even a hundred different self-driving taxi companies. I doubt it will be hundreds as it's hard to run a good company, but it does mean there won't be a good opportunity to push high margins onto consumers. An attempt at high margins would mean another company scooping up that business.<p>I guess I just don't see how Uber maintains high enough margins in what will become an incredibly price-competitive market where it's relatively cheap for new players to join. If Sidecar could have spent $8,000/mo to launch in my city with good coverage, they would have made users happy rather than frustrated that there were no drivers around. They could have been successful. $96,000 isn't a lot of capital needed to start up for your first year. A Dunkin' Donuts franchise costs more than that to start up (from a little Googling). At $5/ride, vehicles would only need to do 3 rides a day to justify a $400/mo price tag. Even at $2/ride (less than public transit), you'd only need to do 7 rides a day for that $400/mo vehicle. That doesn't deal with fuel costs, but you can see how you don't need a lot of usage to cover the cost of the vehicle. If you think about fuel costs on a Prius and a maybe a 5 mile average trip (which seems quite long), you're talking about 1/10th of a gallon or around 20 cents for fuel. A trip that might cost $15 on UberX drops to under $2.50 at-cost for a service that isn't popular (its vehicles only do 7 rides/day) and way lower cost for popular services. So, Uber is going to have to push its margins way down (and keep them down) to prevent someone from wanting to enter a market that requires such little capital.