This is _exactly_ the use case I think self-driving cars are perfect for: a shared fleet of cars continuously picking up and dropping off passengers within cities – eliminating the need for parking and allowing cities to reclaim that ROW for other uses (bigger sidewalks, bikeways, parklets/seating, or even dedicated bus lanes and light rail for high capacity routes, maybe even housing in some spots), finally allowing vehicles to become a crucial supplement to higher capacity public transportation rather than a competitor to it, and hopefully decrease the amount of space dedicated to cars (think highways and sprawl in addition to parking) within cities.<p>I hope they can pull this off.
No release date or price or anything? I honestly don't even know what this is. Is it for the city or for the individual? What are its capabilities? I sure would love ANY concrete details. This is all just tech marketing speak, same old bullshit.
Is there a rule these days that your startup isn't allowed to clearly describe what its product is?<p>Anyway, I guess this is an unmanned self-driving taxi service. Looks good, honestly. If it's significantly cheaper than a taxi with human driver, then maybe it really could help people not need to own a car. Especially if they can optimise routes to get more people riding at once.<p>Having to hunt for what the thing actually is also got me to notice the small disclaimer though:<p>> All on-road images of the Origin are renderings.
> With the Origin’s ability to drive day and night and last for more than a million miles, we’ll be able to cut up to $5,000 in transportation costs per San Francisco household, per year.<p>What counts as a transportation cost? Do average San Franciscan households have $5k of local (i.e. replaceable with a robocab) transportation costs? We're one of the US cities with the most households without vehicles [1].<p>But even looking at the US average, $5K would be a big promise.<p>E.g. a quick search finds claims [2] that average US households are paying $250 in gas per month (-> 3k per year). That same source says the household average for transportation (including planes, trains, ships, vacations) is $9k.<p>For comparison, an SF muni pass with bart within the city is $98/month.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-vehicles-by-city-map.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-budget#transportation" rel="nofollow">https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-budget#transp...</a>
I got to ride on one of Lyft's self-driving taxis during last year's AWS conference.<p>If Lyft (and most of the other commentary on self-driving cars) is an accurate picture of the current state-of-the-art, then let's just say the tech has a long way to go before its ready for the kind of everyday use that we're being hyped up for.
The big concern is human drivers hitting it. Like the Las Vegas autonomous car that was backed into by a truck within the first hour of going live. [0] For example, does it have a side impact safety rating?<p>I also noticed on their technology page [1] they say that they have "Deep Resources"<p>>> We have raised $7.25 billion in committed capital from General Motors, Honda, SoftBank, T. Rowe Price, and others. These investments help shave years off of our timeline to launch all-electric, self-driving vehicles at scale.<p>$7.25 Billion?<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7pV4vxD1bs" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7pV4vxD1bs</a><p><a href="https://www.getcruise.com/technology" rel="nofollow">https://www.getcruise.com/technology</a>
I would love for this to exist but don't really trust Cruise to get there. I see their cars around SF every day and almost always see someone with hands on the wheel. And one time I ran into one in self driving mode in an area with construction it was driving really erratically and scared me (biking).
This mode of transport is very similar to how people ride Jeepney's in my country, the Philippines. I didn't see anything on how it would pick the routes, but I can tell you that it can get pretty smelly in there without windows.<p>Jeepneys are great though, I hope this mode of transport catches on.
$7.25 Billion - <a href="https://www.getcruise.com/leadership" rel="nofollow">https://www.getcruise.com/leadership</a><p>Yep, same GM, now add Honda and Son-sama and we're ready for act 2: <a href="https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/p-I8GDklsN4</a><p>Just in time for global warming<p>Anecdotally, Cruise has been cruising around the city for years like they're helping rebuild Apple Maps or something.<p>Now we know, hard to miss the big launch, getting out of the 47 Van Ness and seeing the usual special event at SVN West.<p>How ironic it was at the old Honda dealership and less than 1/2 block away from the homeless navigation center.<p>Seeing as homeless folk ride free in MUNI, I have to wonder will they get to cruise in Origin, too? Maybe good Breed PR gesture.<p>Probably not. Wrong use case.<p>If they crash and burn hopefully the IP will be worth something. Otherwise seppuku time.<p>All the data from tooling around the city has got to be worth something.
Medium post that goes with this: <a href="https://medium.com/cruise/the-cruise-origin-story-b6e9ad4b47e5" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/cruise/the-cruise-origin-story-b6e9ad4b47...</a>
The fact that it looks symmetric could be confusing to other traffic. You can't tell which side is front, and thus where it is (most probably) going.
Incredible tech from the videos through the technology page and the medium post :O<p>Their UI looks incredibly sexy
<a href="https://medium.com/cruise/the-disengagement-myth-1b5cbdf8e239" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/cruise/the-disengagement-myth-1b5cbdf8e23...</a><p>Also the quality of their simulator, I've never seen anything like this in production.
I guess my question is - how would I use this with 3 kids, wife and car seats? I only have 2 kids now but hoping for a third sooner or later. I guess I would go in the category of “people who couldn’t use this on the daily”.
Not a single job role open for security. Hope they've solved the adversarial attacks against ML before these hit the road. The rendered images look great though!