Uber Stops Self-Driving Car Pilot In San Francisco After The DMV Steps In (engadget.com) 151
93 Escort Wagon writes: San Francisco bicyclists can breathe a sigh of relief now that Uber has suspended testing of its autonomous fleet in the city. The company announced the decision after the California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the registration of the vehicles involved in the testing. Uber remains "100 percent committed to California and will be redoubling our efforts to develop workable statewide rules," the company said. A spokesperson for Uber told Recode, "We are open to having the conversation about applying for a permit, but Uber does not have plans to do so."
DMV offered to bend the rules for Uber. (Score:5, Insightful)
As per this article, [abc.net.au] the DMV tried to work with Uber to get permits for the vehicles.
The DMV told Uber that if it had obtained a permit, the regulator would have given the green light to the self-driving pilot. DMV director Jean Shiomoto said in a letter sent to Uber that she would "personally help to ensure an expedited review and approval process", which she said could take less than three days.
So it's not like the city was trying to stop Uber.
Another 20 companies exploring self-driving cars — including Alphabet's Google, Tesla Motors and Ford Motor Co — have obtained California DMV permits for 130 cars.
It seems its not difficult for other companies either.
Its just that Uber doesn't want to play by the rules, even when the rules are being bent for their benefit. The Recode article in the fine summary said it would be $150 per vehicle so it's not like they were trying to kill them with fees either.
Either that, or Uber knows it's autonomous car program is not ready for prime time.
Uber + Autonomous vehicles = Dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Its just that Uber doesn't want to play by the rules, even when the rules are being bent for their benefit.
I get the impression that is something of a cultural thing with Uber at this point. They're not even trying to get along. They are just acting the part of a bully and trying to do whatever they want. I think their corporate mantra is "better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" but they don't even bother with the forgiveness bit.
Either that, or Uber knows it's autonomous car program is not ready for prime time.
I think this is probably close to the mark. Uber getting involved in autonomous cars makes absolutely zero business sense. Their entire business model is based on an asset-light utilization of vehicles owned by the people that drive for them. They are basically a middle-man matching and scheduling taxi service. Actually owning the vehicles would cost a ton of money for no obvious benefit to Uber. Uber owning the vehicles (autonomous or not) would A) undermine their (absurd) argument that they aren't a taxi service and B) require a HUGE investment in assets and the attendant insurance, maintenance, upkeep, registration, and tracking. Uber has no infrastructure to do this nor do they have the capital to buy such a fleet.
Uber getting into autonomous vehicles smacks of marketing more than engineering. They want to project an image and seem hip but this is a project well outside their wheelhouse and they don't curently have the profits to support projects like this like Google or Apple or even Amazon does. I think they are trying to steal a page from the Netflix playbook and be ready for what they think will be the next industry evolution but it would make a LOT more sense for them to let someone else figure out the autonomous vehicle thing and just buy them when the time comes. They are a me-too entry into what is already a crowded field and they have no particular advantage in making autonomous cars and some very obvious disadvantages.
Re:Uber + Autonomous vehicles = Dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
Uber getting involved in autonomous cars makes absolutely zero business sense.
In a traditional business sense, of course it makes no sense. But that doesn't apply here. Uber is in a competitive industry with few barriers to entry, and very little profit, yet they have a market cap of $50B. How can they possibly justify that valuation to their investors? The only way is to convince them that there is something more: That self-driving cars are going to revolutionize transportation, and that Uber is going to play a major role in that, with plenty of profit for everyone.
From a publicity point of view, their defiance of the California DMV was pure genius. Uber got way more news coverage in California than they did for their earlier fully legal SDC rollout in Pennsylvania. They need to be perceived as a gutsy company aggressively pursuing new tech. They achieved that.
Valuation and network effects (Score:5, Interesting)
In a traditional business sense, of course it makes no sense. But that doesn't apply here.
Sure it does. The laws of economics are not suspended for the benefit of Uber.
Uber is in a competitive industry with few barriers to entry, and very little profit, yet they have a market cap of $50B. How can they possibly justify that valuation to their investors?
Uber is not a publicly traded company so they do not have a market cap in the conventional sense. Their valuation is based on an extrapolation from the percentage of the company purchased by investors and the price of that investment. If you buy 10% of a company for an investment of $5B then the company is valued at $50B. That doesn't mean that it actually would be worth that amount on the open market and it certainly doesn't mean they are actually worth $50B. It means the most recent investor felt it was worth that but it is dangerous to extrapolate that too far [wikipedia.org].
You think there are few barriers to entry in their industry? I disagree. There are some pretty substantial network effects [wikipedia.org] in play here. There are only so many drivers and cars to go around and they are going to tend to gravitate towards the company which is most likely to have the biggest user base. Sure, users can in theory switch easily but what good is switching to a taxi service that doesn't have any drivers? Scale will matter here which is why Uber is trying to grow as fast as possible. Uber has something like the same advantage eBay has. The buyers and sellers will tend to gravitate to the largest platform. Frankly the self driving car thing is nothing but a pointless distraction from building their network as far as I can tell.
From a publicity point of view, their defiance of the California DMV was pure genius.
Perhaps but I think you'd have a hard time showing a causal relationship between that and Uber's bottom line.
They need to be perceived as a gutsy company aggressively pursuing new tech.
No they do not. They WANT to be perceived that way (for reasons that aren't entirely clear) but wants and needs are different things.
Re:Valuation and network effects (Score:4, Informative)
You think there are few barriers to entry in their industry? I disagree. There are some pretty substantial network effects in play here. There are only so many drivers and cars to go around and they are going to tend to gravitate towards the company which is most likely to have the biggest user base. Sure, users can in theory switch easily but what good is switching to a taxi service that doesn't have any drivers?
I don't use such services often, but when i do i go out of my way to use Lyft since they are at least a marginally less crappy company than Uber. A couple months ago i had to go on a series of business trips that required me to take Lyft back and forth to the airport multiple times. During those rides i noticed that most (or possibly all) of the cars had this weird white circles stuck to their windows with a small black box in the center and a "wire" coming out the side.
I mentioned them to my SO a little later, and she'd seen the same circles on the windows of a number of cars around town. We very tentatively decided that they were some kind of GPS tracker to try and get better location data, though it seemed odd that the sticker attaching the device to the window would be so large.
Fast forward a couple of weeks and we find out those are actually the new Uber logo. Which means that A: whoever is in charge of graphic design at Uber sucks and is incapable of coming up with a good logo, and B: there are drivers who have signed up for both Uber and Lyft and are switching between them on the fly, depending on who happens to have ride requests available at the moment. In fact based on (obviously biased) discussions i've had with Lyft drivers since then it's a very common practice. They prefer ride requests on the Lyft network since Lyft makes it easier to give tips but will happily pick up Uber customers as well if nothing better is available.
So getting drivers for a new service is not a real barrier to entry, the only issue is convincing customers to request rides using it.
Start of a monopoly? Maybe... (Score:2)
So getting drivers for a new service is not a real barrier to entry, the only issue is convincing customers to request rides using it.
That's the case now because a dominant player hasn't emerged just yet. But let's say hypothetically that Uber successfully gains enough of an edge that they are tying up a quorum of available drivers at a given time. This means that customers looking for a ride are going to increasingly not going to bother trying the smaller taxi companies because they will be less likely to get a ride when they need it. This means that the drivers are going to increasingly be forced to work with Uber and they've got a c
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There are only so many drivers and cars to go around and they are going to tend to gravitate towards the company which is most likely to have the biggest user base. ...
Frankly the self driving car thing is nothing but a pointless distraction from building their network as far as I can tell.
I'm going to disagree with your assessment that self driving technology is a distraction. As you said, getting more players onto Uber is far more valuable. I don't think Uber is looking to make the capital investment into a fleet of self-driving cars but rather that they're looking at self-driving technology as a means to secure more drivers once self-driving vehicles become mainstream. If a driver has a self driving vehicle and has a choice between Uber, which allows him to send out his self-driving vehicl
Conflating issues (Score:2)
I don't think Uber is looking to make the capital investment into a fleet of self-driving cars but rather that they're looking at self-driving technology as a means to secure more drivers once self-driving vehicles become mainstream.
If that is the case then it makes even less sense. Why not just wait for someone to develop the technology (plenty of others working on it) and then just buy it when it is ready if the only purpose is to supplement their driver pool. Uber doesn't bring any special capabilities to the table here. The ONLY reason to do the research on self driving cars is if you plan to either produce products or license the technology to others. Is Uber planning to get into the car manufacturing business? Are they plan
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They need to be perceived as a gutsy company aggressively pursuing new tech
Then why do they continually come off as a bunch of self righteous, entitled scofflaws?
As has been mentioned before, the idea of them doing self-driving cars seems like it will do more damage to them than keeping the current configuration. Their whole argument of "we're not a taxi service because reasons" completely dissolves if they are the ones who own (or finance) and operate the automobiles.
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As has been mentioned before, the idea of them doing self-driving cars seems like it will do more damage to them than keeping the current configuration.
This argument only makes sense if Uber, and only Uber, is capable of offering SDC rides. There is zero chance of that. If they do not move to an SDC business model, someone else will do it instead, and destroy them.
"Keeping the current configuration" is not their choice to make. The market will make it for them.
ROI for investors? (Score:3)
Uber will never be able to justify its valuation to investors.
They wouldn't be the first in that situation. I am inclined to agree but never is a very long time and I've seen more unlikely companies succeed. They have a lot of revenue which is actually the hardest part. Once you have that then profits are a possibility. Without revenues they are screwed. Whether the investors will make their money back kind of depends on how much they dumped in and what sort of margins Uber can make. Are they selling $2 bills for $1 or do they simply have to get to a certain sc
Re: Uber + Autonomous vehicles = Dumb (Score:1)
I agree with the never part, but this isn't about a fleet of self driving cars that will never work no matter what all the damned "futurists" who never see a problem with anything unless it's human think.
It's about publicity and stringing things along till the IPO at which point the snot nosed lawbreakers will try to cash out.
Hopefully even Wall Street is smarter than that now.
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Autonomous vehicles would be a whole new business model for Uber, but they do have some important pieces of the puzzle in their hand to make it work: 1) a "taxi replacement" business with all the scheduling and management infrastructure working, 2) a brand name that will get them instant customers for the business, and 3) a fleet of human driven vehicles that can handle the customer load until the expensive auto-driven fleet can ramp up to capacity. 4) wide geographic coverage/presence. Any other company t
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Yep, it is an easy transition for Uber to start adding autonomous cars and as they come online and start taking more of the share of passengers, they can just lower the rates so that human drivers start dropping out. Eventually as they have an entire fleet of autonomous cars the rates will be low enough human drivers won't do the work. Many industries will go this way, but taxis will be very quick as autonomous cars come on the market.
Re:Uber + Autonomous vehicles = Dumb (Score:5, Interesting)
Thing is, I don't think they _can_ lower the rates... I think the human drivers are already giving their vehicle depreciation away for less than complete compensation, and their time spent driving for free. People constantly comment on "how nice their Uber car was" - because it is new, and depreciating rapidly.
There's are many reasons why taxis are old, and smelly. 1) it's a commodity business with little consumer choice - almost nobody turns away the first taxi at the stand because it's older than the next one. 2) maintaining an old vehicle with 200K+ miles on it is less expensive than buying a new one, especially when you own the repair depot.
Miles put on old vehicles are much less expensive than miles put on newer cars.
Far from certain (Score:2)
Autonomous vehicles would be a whole new business model for Uber,
That might be fine if they had figured out a way to make their current business model profitable. Perhaps they will in due time but given the size of their losses so far that's not a certainty. It's rarely a good idea to try a second business model before you make the first one work.
Any other company trying to launch a robot driven taxi fleet without all of these pieces in-place will be at a significant disadvantage to Uber. Anybody who thinks that robot taxis are "the way of the future" would be wise to invest in or partner with Uber to make it happen.
I think that is far from a given. First off for Uber to have a sustainable competitive advantage they will have to find a path to profitability. Robot taxis aren't going to be a thing in even the most optimistic scenario for
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Everything in the future is far from a given.
The question is: can Uber attract investment in their plan?
The answer is up to the people with the money - I think they have a compelling enough case to separate hundreds of millions of dollars from willing investors. Is it a good idea, likely to succeed? Irrelevant, unless you are thinking about becoming one of those investors.
Predictability in business (Score:2)
Everything in the future is far from a given.
Not true at all. I can tell you with with a reasonably narrow set of error bars what the income and profitability of Coca-Cola Corporation will be for the next few years. Their business is very stable, predictable, and proven. I could probably make a pretty good guess what their balance sheet will look like 10 years from now.
Uber? No idea. Anyone who tells you they can tell you what Uber's profitability will look like is full of crap. Especially when we are talking about them building a business around
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The main problem with investing in Uber is that it is so well known that it will likely get a higher valuation than it is truly worth, given the risk of failure. So, I won't likely be investing. But, many people will.
The safer thing to invest in are all the companies that will benefit from Uber's robot driver ramp up and probable failure.
Doesn't mean they're bad, or evil, just typical.
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Actually owning the vehicles would cost a ton of money for no obvious benefit to Uber. Uber owning the vehicles (autonomous or not) would
[..]
I'll agree but for a different reason. Banks and car manufacturers will be in a better position to own these vehicles, leasing them to whoever wants to run a Uber-enabled taxi service. With self-driven vehicles, human drivers cease to take a cut of the sales, but other types of company will step in to make money from their assets.
The benefit for Uber is to carry being seen as the tech people that facilitate business and take their slice of the cake, while avoiding that investment in cars, insurance, mai
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Alas... Demand for Users isn't constant.
Going into this assuming a constant 20 hour per day usage of every car in the fleet is called looking at things with rose colored glasses.
Knock that down to 6 hours a day, to have enough cars to accommodate the extremely busy times, and then idle a portion of the fleet waiting for the next call (probably by parking all over the city and powering up the closest car to the next fare).
Now you're down to $32,000/year.
Now subtract:
Insurance.
Gas or or power recharging
Inspec
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Going into this assuming a constant 20 hour per day usage of every car in the fleet is called looking at things with rose colored glasses.
He isn't, he's assuming an average of 20 hours at $15/hour. Given their current rates, that's assuming that about 10 minutes of each of those hours will be spent transporting a passenger. At peak times, it's going to be a lot more.
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The post I was replying to specifically believed Uber could get 20 hour per day, 7 day a week, 50 week a year utilization out of their cars.
That's the only way their $105,000/year/car calculation works out.
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This is stupid. Here's his quote.
"Even if you estimate that they average a measly $15/hr with their autonomous cars, working an average of 20 hours per day, 50 weeks/yr, that's $105,000 per year. I think that's what they call profitable."
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Overly optimistic (Score:3)
saying "actually owning the vehicles would cost a ton of money for no obvious benefit to Uber" is not true. Simple math shows they would make a killing. Even if you estimate that they average a measly $15/hr with their autonomous cars, working an average of 20 hours per day, 50 weeks/yr, that's $105,000 per year. I think that's what they call profitable.
I'm a certified cost accountant. Lot of problems with your analysis.
First off there are no autonomous vehicles to buy and we don't know when there will be. It is unlikely they will be cheap especially at first. Even once they become available there will be regulations and legal issues to sort out before they can become a viable business. It's going to be a while.
Second you did not consider costs at all. We don't know what the cost of an autonomous vehicle will be. You did not consider costs at all. Y
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But they have one important thing: A use for a crippled self-driving car. You could imagine the first generation of SDCs being perfect and drive anywhere on any road under any conditions. I very much doubt it, extremely few projects manage a "big bang" transition. But say you have a taxi service and you know that this particular downtown ride is all mapped out, well marked pre-tested roads and the sun is shining on dry asphalt, let's send our self-driving service. Everything else outside that box you get a
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Uber getting involved in autonomous cars makes absolutely zero business sense. Their entire business model is based on an asset-light utilization of vehicles owned by the people that drive for them. They are basically a middle-man matching and scheduling taxi service.
Uber is a software middleman dependent on utilizing vehicles and smartphones owned by others. Once the smartphone and (autonomous) vehicles start being produced by the same companies (Alphabet, Apple, etc), then there is no more need for Uber -- ridesharing is trivial compared to autonomous vehicies
So Uber eneeds to look like its developing autonomous vehicles in order to keep the hype up prior to its IPO.
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Ridesharing is indeed trivial in comparison to autonomous driving. But having years of optimizations, pervasive brand recognition in the ride-hailing market, and an existing fleet of human-driven cars that they can augment with self-driving vehicles as they become available, all combine to give Uber a powerful first-mover advantage in the market.
Also, I don't see how it matters in the slightest who makes the smartphone - that's offering nothing but a data portal to the central servers. Anything with a web
Re:Uber + Autonomous vehicles = Dumb (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, i think automated vehciles make it even more clear that Uber is not a taxi service. Its a car rental agency. You are renting a car for a very short period of time, charged by both time and mile. Like some existing rental agencies they will pick you up where you are, except the car doesn't need a person to do that... or to return itself once you are dropped off.
Their only real asset is the software that handles pickups and drop offs and the code that handles surge pricing. All that works with an automated car service just as well as it does with their current service.
They would have no employees to pay either which should more than cover the cost of maintaining and even paying for the vehicles. The real issue is how to deal with capacity, having enough automated cars on hand to handle rush hour and what to do with them when you don't need as many cars on the road.
That said, I see no reason why they would want to develop these cars themselves, why not let someone else do the heavy technical lifting and just buy the cars when they hit the market?
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Actually, i think automated vehciles make it even more clear that Uber is not a taxi service. Its a car rental agency. You are renting a car for a very short period of time, charged by both time and mile
So... a traditional taxi service is a rental agency / chauffer business then?
Seriously, when you are charging money to take a person from point A to point B that is a taxi and is regulated by specific laws. You can wiggle all you want and re-label what the transactions are for, but the end result is what matters. It's sort of like Congress calling tax a fee just so they can say "we didn't raise taxes", the end result is the same...
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If zipcar offered automated vehicles and you could get them to pick you up and then return themselves to their parking spot after you dismiss them, would they really be running a taxi service?
Is the fact that its metered by the mile and not the minute the difference? Is that really a good reason to have different regulations? As long as the car is safe its hard to justify additional regulation.
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If zipcar offered automated vehicles and you could get them to pick you up and then return themselves to their parking spot after you dismiss them, would they really be running a taxi service?
Yes, they would actually. If you aren't driving then you are being driven. Hence a taxi ride...
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I get the impression that is something of a cultural thing with Uber at this point. They're not even trying to get along. They are just acting the part of a bully and trying to do whatever they want. I think their corporate mantra is "better to beg forgiveness than ask permission" but they don't even bother with the forgiveness bit.
Why not? That strategy worked in the last election...
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"Uber getting involved in autonomous cars makes absolutely zero business sense"
Er... if this is truly your thinking, you'd make a very poor CEO.
Self driving technology will make companies like Uber completely obsolete unless they either get on the badnwagon, or find a partner - and there aren't many left. Tesla is already working on building their own autonomous ridesharing fleet to compete with Uber. Ford has also purchased a ridesharing company. BMW is starting their own. Lyft is partnered with GM.
This is
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lease cars to their drivers sounds like a good way to make bank till the courts say they are not 1099's and you have pay them at least min wage on W2 so they may be forced to buy back the cars / can't lease them out or have to cover costs that push drivers under the min wage.
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but the courts have said uber drivers are not 1099's. Also uber says we are not an taxi.
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Perhaps, but they've got to survive a few years until the actual autonomous vehicles arrive. They already exist in certain controlled situations, e.g. warehouses with automated forklifts. I expect automated trucks to show up before automated cars because the incremental cost would be less, so you can afford a fancier system. And it would save tremendous amounts of money. You'd probably still need one driver on a long haul, but not a shift change, and no down time. The fully automated cars will be a yea
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The "culture" argument sounds like a smokescreen. Licensed testers need to report their problem events (to much discussion online) and from what we've seen reported -- running red lights and hooking across bike lanes -- this would reveal that their system is not currently up to quality. Frankly if it's doing those kinds of things, it needs to still be confined to test tracks.
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They have to report *once a year* and the report is pretty low content - take a look at the disengagement reports on the DMV website - they're typically 1 line long.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report
They don't need to report infractions (running a red light) unless it disengages.
They do have to report accidents within 10 days, but there's nothing special about the OL316 reports
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316+
I note that in C
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Except their cars weren't autonomous by California law, as they required active monitoring by a person.
CA law
“Autonomous vehicle” means any vehicle equipped with technology that has the
capability of operating or driving the vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring of
a natural person,
Re:DMV offered to bend the rules for Uber. (Score:4, Informative)
I think Uber needs to hire new lawyers.
These cars are in fact equipped with technology that has the capability of operating without the human being there. That fact that Uber mandated a person had to sit in there and monitor it isn't the point, these vehicles have that capability, and thus do fall under this law.
That's why they just got their registrations revoked.
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By that argument, so is a standard Tesla.
They clearly need constant monitoring (and better drivers doing the monitoring).
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Teslas need a weight in the drivers seat to operate I thought, and don't they turn off if you take your hands off the wheels now? The first would necessarily mean they cannot operate without a human monitoring the vehicle.
There's subtlety there, maybe CA DMV could make a case for it but I believe Tesla would win on that point.
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They seem to want to stick to their roots here as well and avoid regulation, but at some point the same regulations you want to avoid are the ones that can give you a competitive advantage. In this case, they can be an early mover in the licensed self driving vehicle market, which can be a barrier to entry for future competitors as those regulations will most certainly evol
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Uber is big enough, they've analyzed the permit option and it's not attractive to them - that's why they're not planning on getting one even after they've been shut down. "Open to talks" means they want something in the permit changed. Not much to see here, unless Uber actually speaks up about why they don't want a permit.
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I didn't read it that way. Under the law it really did appear that Uber had a valid point that they weren't operating their cars fully autonomously since there was a driver at the wheel ready to take over control like with Tesla's and other manufacturer's cars. It isn't at all clear if all the other manufacturers have autonomous permits for their driver assist technologies like self braking. It seems the permit should only have been necessary when transitioning to fully autonomous operation with no dri
Finally (Score:2)
That first video where their car drove through a hard-red light, and with a pedestrian in the crosswalk was scary.
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That first video where their car drove through a hard-red light, and with a pedestrian in the crosswalk was scary.
As a computer expert, autonomous cars are just plain scary. I don't trust computers, I know how they work.
The big news: Uber follows the law (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder what kind of serious problems Uber has with their self-driving cars that they suspend the testing without fuss over something as trivial as breaking the law. This must be one of the very first times.
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Call me when Uber WILLINGLY follows even common-sense laws.
You mean stuff like 6-mo safety checks, proper vehicle insurance, mandatory first aid(usually level C, though some places allow level B) and so on? I agree. Their entire belief that the laws don't apply to them because "they don't believe they're a cab company" when yes, they are. And those regulations and laws exist because back when cab companies were new -- the whole lack of regulation, vehicles in poor repair causing deaths, etc. Has already happened.
For those that don't know the first aid levels th
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Call me when Trump sets up an illegal email server with Top Secret emails on it - connected to the internet.
Call me when Clinton does. The FBI investigated and found no meaningful wrong doing. Stop pretending that this is a thing that matters. Your favorite asshole won the election. Let it go.
Then lies about it.
You're seriously going to pretend that Trump doesn't lie constantly? You are seriously going to pretend that Trump doesn't break any laws?
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I'm, sorry, but the AC won't be able to call you, since you did not leave your phone number, or any other contact info. In fact, I suspect you and the parent are both the same person.
I'm a fan of Uber (Score:5, Insightful)
But really fuck them for this. Taking down a taxi cartel by breaking laws designed to prop up a monopoly is one thing.
Not abiding by a permit with dangerous test vehicles on the road is quite the other.
Wow, they're actually submitting to authority? (Score:1)
Half expecting a snarky, "We don't accept the DMV's cancellation of our registration, and will continue to test these cars while we seek resolution with them".
Here's the bike problem (Score:3)
The "San Francisco bicyclists can breathe a sigh of relief" comment surprised me until I saw that Uber has a problem with turning right across bike lanes [engadget.com]. This certainly isn't a problem for all self-driving cars. In the South Bay I've seen a self-driving car do exactly the right thing: signal, merge into the lane when it turns from solid to dashed, stop at the red light, and then turn. That's a lot better than the average human at the same intersection; seeing someone signal and merge and stop would be quite unusual.
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DMV requirements (Score:5, Informative)
The CA DMV has this page listing the requirements for testing self driving cars. They are not onerous. Speculate as you will why Uber doesn't want to comply. It could be anything from having to report incidents on a per yearly basis to not allowing commercial operation (eg not picking up actual customers) or even just a general "fuck you, we're Uber".
Application Requirements for Autonomous Vehicle Tester Program [ca.gov]
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Or it could be that Uber doesn't believe their cars are Autonomous since they still need drivers.
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Or it could be that Uber doesn't believe their cars are Autonomous since they still need drivers.
Given that the DMV has the power revoke the registration of the Uber vehicles (and has done so in this case), what Uber thinks is irrelevant.
Given that Uber has not even tried to appeal this and is instead pulling out of CA suggests that Uber knows how tenuous their claim is.
"oversight" is its own opposite (Score:2)
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Just sit back and feel your ass grow.
Law Breaking (Score:5, Insightful)
If you or I drove down a California street without a valid driver's license, the penalty would be anything from a ticket (first time offense, no injuries to others) to an arrest (multiple offender, injuring people) and possible incarceration.
If the standard penalties were applied to whichever Uber executive authorized the law-breaking, then Uber would come into compliance rather quickly.
Re:Law Breaking (Score:5, Insightful)
That is a general problem when it comes to laws broken by companies. No-one is personally responsible, no-one really cares. At worst the company goes bankrupt and those responsible take their severance packages and move on to the board of another company.
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Only if it included executive pensions and severance pay.
Smart move for them (Score:2)
I don't agree with Uber's business model, but they have explicitly stated from day 1 that regulations don't apply to them, "this time it's different", we're disruptors, etc. A move like refusing to follow the DMV's process will be seen by the company's true fans as a big middle finger to those "corrupt Luddite government organizations." It's the equivalent of taking your ball and going home.
What will probably happen next is Uber will wallpaper smaller non-CA state/city officals' offices with money until the
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I see why too - so many people I meet in the tech sector are classic Ayn Rand devotees who basically want the government dismantled anyway. Most techies are obsessed with automation and productivity and have no idea that basically every business in the world has to follow rules, pay corrupt officials, and has startup costs.
Quote Of The Month!
Cars that don't have autonomous should be banned. (Score:2)
San Francisco bicyclists can breathe a sigh of relief now
Yes, much better not to have cars that will automatically try to avoid hitting bicycles. People are much more reliable than machines... well except for the hundreds of thousands of times every year when people driven cars they hit people, other cars, and other stuff.
Sarcasm... yes. As a society we should be mandating adoption of this technology and improving it, not treating it like a safety threat to be slowed down. In the next 5 years there should be a prohibition against allowing any car on the market
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If the Uber cars are really capable of avoiding cyclists, why does Uber not just say so? Also if their cars are so teachable why don't they just go through a couple proper turns with a pilot and resolve that issue forever more? If anything, regulation is highlighting some real glaring gaps in their implementation here and that's a good thing.
Uber is saying that these are not autonomous cars as defined under the California regulations. For the purposes of the regulations these are cars with driver assist technology being operated by licensed drivers. For regulatory purposes this should be regulated the same way as all the other car companies that are offering some sort of driver assist technology. It would be a mismatch if you make Uber go through some licensing/certification process intended for fully autonomous vehicles if they are not full
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As long as Uber is putting these cars on the road intending for them to one day be autonomous and in the name of training them to be autonomous, then they should be technically ready to be autonomous. If they are not technically ready to be autonomous then they need to go back to the drawing board and get better hardware.
I've never heard a better description of a catch 22.
So, should we take every car off the road that has collision avoidance technology just because car manufacturers are collecting data with the intent of someday making the cars fully autonomous? This is technology meant to save lives. Seat belts and airbags also had their problems and failed to save lives under particular circumstances and with defects, but if we had used your criteria of provable perfection then a lot of people would be dead that didn't
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Seat belts and airbags are not an apt comparison because they were always intended to be a cheap and basic solution. Autonomy is the exact opposite of that. It is hard to see if it can ever be adopted to the extent that will save a significant amount of lives. Therefore it shouldn't even enter into consideration at this point.
In what way is putting an explosive charge to inflate a bag in the steering wheel seem like a basic solution? That is some very precise engineering.
I don't see a few cameras, maybe a bit of lidar, with some coding to not hit stuff as too complicated. If you code it the right way then worst case it should stop when it sees something in its path. Cars are very complex systems already.
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Self Driving Pilot (Score:2)
only Uber (Score:2)
Re:Pirst Fost (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck Uber
I will second this. It seems almost every time I see a car pulling some bonehead maneuver in traffic, it's an Uber. Almost every time some jackass is sitting in a lane, blocking traffic with their hazards on, it's an Uber. Almost every time I see someone jam on their brakes and dive for the side of the road, it's an Uber.
I know Uber is cool and cheap and convenient for its users. But the drivers are amateurs, and it shows. They don't know where they're going and will pull over anywhere, blocking traffic, to pick up their fares. Because of the draconian, passenger-centric rating system, the drivers are terrified of offending their passenger and will become a nuisance on the road to keep them happy. Taxi's are at least marked, so you expect them to be pulling over in traffic. But Ubers look like any other car, leaving other drivers to wonder why this guy is suddenly slamming on the brakes and double parking in the middle of a busy street.
Uber sucks for anyone not using the service. I'd like to see the taxi companies step up their game to counter Uber. But unfortunately, it's the taxi industry's fecklessness that made room for Uber in the first place.
Re:Pirst Fost (Score:5, Insightful)
This article is not about Uber drivers. It's about Uber without drivers.
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This article is not about Uber drivers. It's about Uber without drivers.
That will be an improvement, if they can get it right!
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From what I remember, this Johnnycab experiment ends in flames and explosions.
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But who's gonna fly it, kid? You?
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Uber sucks for the drivers, too... if they can pull this driverless thing off it will be better for so many people. Taxi drivers can retrain and get better jobs, and the clueless volunteers who drive for Uber can stop giving away the equity in their car for 90% return in fare payment - after expenses.
Re:Pirst Fost (Score:4, Insightful)
Taxi drivers can retrain and get better jobs
If retraining and getting a better job is an option for unemployed taxi drivers, why isn't it a good option for employed taxi drivers?
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Taxi drivers can retrain and get better jobs
If retraining and getting a better job is an option for unemployed taxi drivers, why isn't it a good option for employed taxi drivers?
Because employed taxi drivers are employed? What are they going to pay the landlord and the grocer with while they retrain?
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if they can pull this driverless thing off it will be better for so many people. Taxi drivers can retrain and get better jobs, and the clueless volunteers who drive for Uber can stop giving away the equity in their car for 90% return in fare payment - after expenses.
What better jobs? They've all been automated away.
Someone has to fill the gas tanks and/or plug in the charger cables on the driver-less UBERs.....
And design and build the driverless cars, and service them, and recycle them, and administrate, regulate and inspect the businesses that do these things. In a future world, every automated taxi might be inspected by a human operator for quality control as often as three times a day... they won't be out there risking their lives and interacting with the public, but they could be checking the cleanliness and safety of the vehicle and holding it to a higher standard than today's taxis. In that same future wo
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In a future world, every automated taxi might be inspected by a human operator for quality control as often as three times a day... they won't be out there risking their lives and interacting with the public, but they could be checking the cleanliness and safety of the vehicle and holding it to a higher standard than today's taxis.
Yeah, right.
The only passenger livery vehicles that will see this level of service will be the replacements for the sedan services. Right now, without a subscription those services cost approximately $60/ride in a high density city where the mileage is low. Let's pretend for a minute that a monthly subscription for that same metro area, with a reasonable amount of use, is that price per day instead of per ride, and that they're even polite enough to not charge commuter-customers for weekend use. That'
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Somebody watched Blade Runner too many times.
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Almost everything in your list is napkin "yeah maybe we can automate that". Until you can make those things happen, that's just pessimistic thinking. Maybe in 100-150 years everything will be automated - but it isn't not, and whining about what's EVENTUALLY coming isn't helping anyways. For now, take a job that is still relevant, until there are none.
Re:Pirst Fost (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, their soul sucking jobs are stopping them from retraining. If you spend 12 hours a day waiting on fares, you can't be studying or practicing other skills.
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same in NYC
except the drivers aren't amateurs. all the professional drivers here are the worst at following the rules. always been that way.
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As bad as Uber drivers may be, Taxi drivers are no better. At least around here, they're probably the worst, most poorly behaved drivers on the road. I took a cab home from the airport, a while back, and the idiot was speeding up the curb lane, speeding, pushing amber lights, cutting people off, etc... and then had the gall to be pissed off when I refused to tip him (I do not reward bad behaviour... had he driven like a sane person, I would have tipped him adequately). When I'm driving myself, I basically g
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Funny you've just described every car for hire service in the world be it Uber, limousine, local taxi's, or that douche bag with diplomatic plates blocking the street at lunchtime today.
Nothing what you said is limited to Uber. It is almost universal in low paid, low skill, transportation services.
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