One guess: the routing problem(the vehicle routing problem) is a core computer science problem, for decades. Tons of research have been done about it. I don't expect Google or Uber to have any breakthroughs there, because it's pure luck. But maybe they will, or maybe they'll will ackuire someone. Let's put it down to pure luck.<p>But assuming no brekathrough happens: one company that has tons of experience in that field is UPS, they are just finishing building a new system for running their vehicle-routing for 50K routes in the US daily, ~120 points per route, i.e. 600K customers daily. They invested ~$300 million in that system(and they employe hundreds of phd's) and they say it will give them a savings of less than 1% of revenue - just to get a sense how mature those systems are.<p>On the other hand, it seems that have larger access to customers could enable much more ideal routes, both in cost, customer time and maybe social factor(if social matches will be part of ride sharing). So i believe that to be key to winning.<p>And i don't think anybody can beat Google in marketing to android users, and even in the US, with iPhone's 40% share(but more wealthy users) - that's avery big advantage for Google.<p>On the other hand, i think Google prefer not to start a huge service that employs many people, and than have self-driving cars make them unemployed and suffer the huge reputational damage. So they won't go into true shared taxis like ridewithvia.com seems to be doing very sucsessfuly, and instead stick with wazer-rider , enabling drivers to give a lift to poeple for some very modest fee.<p>So to a certain extent, the winner in that battle would be determined by which approach of those two will win.
Uber actually transports people.<p>Ford actually builds cars.<p>Google... likes letting smart people do smart things.<p>While Ford may be the underdog in the race, I like its chances. It has the operational experience to take a "works-in-concept" to "works-in-reality". The software part, while difficult, is not the hardest part of "TaaS". The systems part is.
The takeaway I get is that Uber has an edge on Google in the race for a fully automated taxi service, because the have had more time to work on a more sophisticated routing algorithm.<p>I am skeptical. As the article points out, it will take a considerable amount of time to deploy any service, once the automated driving is good enough. If Google gets to commercially viable automated driving sooner, it will have plenty of time to refine their own routing algorithms during the rollout.
I would be surprised if the planning part is the most difficult part of autonomous cars. Embodied intelligence is really nowhere yet. I've seen Google using particle filters to represent other cars.<p>AI is just not advanced enough to cope with leaves on the road, a pedestrian who wants to cross or not, a broken traffic light, a criminal who want to steal your car, etc.<p>And everything as a service... Really, if we would have something that awesome as an autonomous car, wouldn't we want to own it!?<p>I would! I want to talk to it. And I would like to have a bed and a bath in it and have it go on a road trip with awesome beaches, castles, and sunsets.
About the only modification I would add to TaaS is making ride-sharing optional -- a personal preference of mine, that might prove worthy of a premium. If I liked sharing space with others, I would take a bus to work.