The bigger picture is that Waymo is now the most interesting company in self-driving technology. If you want to do real work that is the place to be. I hear that people are also leaving Uber's efforts. I expect them to absorb the best people in the industry and building a real business from here.<p>Waymo has established a multi-year technology advantage over Uber. The best objections to Waymo winning are three-fold:<p>1) Google doesn't have the user-facing apps - The reality is that Google has a far larger surface area than Uber to consumers. They own Calendar, Maps, Assistant, Android, Gmail and each of these can be entry points into self-driving. "I see you have an appointment in 15 minutes, want me to order you a cab?"<p>2) Google doesn't have experience operating a physical business - This is something they will have to learn. Google has the choice of partnering/purchasing if needed to build fleet operations companies. There are some unorthodox acquisitions to consider here (Avis?). However, Uber and Lyft do not really have this experience either.<p>3) Google doesn't have a great track record of incubating new businesses - Amazon has a far stronger track record than Uber of bringing up new lines of business.<p>With the mismanagement of Uber over the past years, Uber is at significant risk of missing the next technology wave, the way traditional taxi companies missed the last shift. Uber might be holding the equivalent of second-generation taxi medallions as the third generation takes off.
You can see a clear correlation between the amount of Tesla stock being shorted and the number of negative Tesla press that shows up on sites like Hacker News / Reddit. It's surprising how blatant it is.
Personally I wish Elon would focus on The Boring Company and SpaceX. Tesla just isn’t going to matter that much in the long run, it’s never going to solve our transportation problems in the way TBC can.<p>I’d rather see 500,000 new homes in (or within 10 minutes of) San Francisco and cars just won’t make that possible.
I will never understand why people care so much about execs. It's not like they are the ones actually building and testing stuff or developing the new technology.
When you work for very intelligent and driven people, they tend to be disgusted with incompetence or in my case lack of drive, which is the same thing, I noticed. It is completely counter to what they are. This happened to me when I did not have the same passion as one of my supervisors (as a remote contractor working for other clients as well) and did not want to put the same level of care/hours and extremism as this person had. The intelligence part was debatable but he has his skills etc but I know he was certainly obsessed with moving forward as fast as possible and was a standout in his company because of it. You cannot blame him for his drive as in the end it brings results and its who he is from the core. But of course, I disliked him and still do. Regardless, so what. He still is doing well I'm sure. Elon is probably the most amazing human being to ever have lived in terms of intellect/drive/passion/ability etc that I've heard maybe besides Ghengis Khan so of course he is going to be so much more like that to absolutely repel others not inline with his pace and vision. He could be no other way.