nocones said:I'm wondering how long autonomous vehicles will be permitted to go until the insurance/autorepair industry lobbies start against them. If the rate of accidents drops as much as projected those industries stand to loose a lot.
The auto repair industry won't like autonomous cars but the auto insurance industry will love them - easy, standardized safety is their favorite thing. Remember that the auto insurance industry's ultimate goal is to insure zero risk for nonzero cost.
SVreX said:I didn’t actually ask if it would work or not, whether consumers would embrace it, or whether it was feasible in any way shape or form.
I asked who the leaders would be.
I am interested in a few opinions of some companies, and perhaps why you think they may have some success. Even if it is success in an industry that will never get off the ground.
People told me not to buy Apple when I did too. It was at it’s peak, no new ideas, blah, blah, blah. I made my own choices. And it has increased 5X sincec then.
I have made my decision. I’d like to invest in a few companies connected to the autonomous car industry. Any suggestions?
The difficulty will be not who is successful at this moment, but what the next developments will bring and maybe the ones after that.
Few originators of the automobile survived without being gobbled up along the way or changing management to an extreme degree.
Look at how long it took GM to become the dominant power it was( and then Roger Smith sold it all off). Fords real power was pre WW2.
I realize with technology things are moving at a faster pace, yet even the acceptance of that technology will be fought desperately by some.
My fear is that developments will come piecemeal from a variety of sources. That are quickly realized for what they are and bought up piecemeal by much bigger companies.
Look at the pace GM is developing the electric car. Fits and starts, with no one with the vision or power to see it through the slow and downturns. Total focus on profitability of the short term.
Tesla has that sort of drive but the car is only secondary. A means to an end to get to Mars. Tesla is and always will be cash starved to Musk’s real mistress.
Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Cell phones have only been mainstream for about 20 years. Smartphones are more like 10.
I see no reason why autonomous cars can’t become mainstream MUCH faster than a lot of people believe.
Doesn't matter. Like I said, I’ve got some money to play with, and this is how I’d like to play.
Doomsday predictions for Tesla are narrow minded.
I agree that Musk has many other aspirations, but he has no reason he has to sell cars in the US.
Europe and Asia are really big markets for him.
He’ll play here as long as he needs to, but he doesn’t need to.
I think Tesla is the clear leader here. Waymo might have more miles unattended but their problem is that Alphabet makes so much money from google and search and advertising that the autonomous vehicle thing will always be a sideline and they are famously unsentimental about their sidelines. As soon as it lags or is seen as not contributing to their mission it’s gone. For Tesla the cars are front and center.
Same with uber - they don’t even make cars, they made a sensor suite and software. That’s valuable but not as much so as the total package that Tesla makes. And uber makes way too much money from the ride sharing to really focus on anything else. It’s just as likely that uber will be the conduit to book a Tesla as they will actually bring an autonomous car to market.
Teslas not perfect and not risk free but you know that. Higher risk - higher potential reward?
Also, I feel like I have to say this: if your goal is to make money you’re better served by a diversified low fee index fund. But I understand “playing.” I’ve got some of that and it hasn’t made as much money for me as the index funds. But it’s not lost money either so ...
LIn reply to SVreX :
Please don’t feel I’m criticizing you. I enjoy your perspective and wish I was in the same position myself to take advantage of what I see coming. Plus like I said I’ve always guessed wrong on who to go with in the past, so I followed index funds and did very well as a result.
I have done “paper” transactions though, where I put Money on a particular company simply to follow the market and see what would have resulted. Two years ago it was Tesla and my “ investment” has not been kind. But you know the old saying, “past performance is no predictor of future”
My “investment” in Diamonds on the other hand••••••
SVreX said:Where there’s a will there’s a way.
Cell phones have only been mainstream for about 20 years. Smartphones are more like 10.
I see no reason why autonomous cars can’t become mainstream MUCH faster than a lot of people believe.
Doesn't matter. Like I said, I’ve got some money to play with, and this is how I’d like to play.
I do hope you are right about the pace of autonomous cars. I see that as the only real hope for traffic congestion and pollution.
Those who fear loss of their driving privilege simply fail to understand how self driving cars will be implemented.
For decades the horse and cars existed side by side. In fact in some parts of the nation they still do, I refer to Amish country. There are still plenty of horses ridden as a hobby or raced in various forms.
However autonomous cars won’t be kept at your house except for a few large estates. Instead you’ll wake up and decide today I want to drive a Ferrari. And one will appear at your door ready to go, oh you may have to order a cheap commuter car for a month or two to stay on budget.
Or you can select any one of a nearly infinite selection for whatever is your pleasure. If you want to “own” your own race car, it’ll be at a nearby race track. Where you can self drive to your hearts content. Sensors will detect when you “crash” and dispatch an ambulance/ rescue vehicle to deal with the event. Instead of waiting for corner workers and other support people to staff the event.
Was thinking about the insurance situation again and there's something I didn't consider. Although it will make car insurance more profitable, it will also bring a lot of disruption on the auto insurance industry, as auto manufacturers start offering insurance plans like Volvo has and Tesla is planning to.
dculberson said:I think Tesla is the clear leader here. Waymo might have more miles unattended but their problem is that Alphabet makes so much money from google and search and advertising that the autonomous vehicle thing will always be a sideline and they are famously unsentimental about their sidelines. As soon as it lags or is seen as not contributing to their mission it’s gone. For Tesla the cars are front and center.
Same with uber - they don’t even make cars, they made a sensor suite and software. That’s valuable but not as much so as the total package that Tesla makes. And uber makes way too much money from the ride sharing to really focus on anything else. It’s just as likely that uber will be the conduit to book a Tesla as they will actually bring an autonomous car to market.
Teslas not perfect and not risk free but you know that. Higher risk - higher potential reward?
It could also be argued that having other stable businesses allows for a more pragmatic and prudent approach to developing/fleshing out the tech before unleashing it for public consumption. Uber for example is rapidly burning through investor cash. They lose money on every ride. Their only hope for profitability and survival is eliminating the human drivers from the ride share equation. So they're highly motivated, but there's a thin line between motivated and desperate and the wrong corporate culture can lead to poor decisions and short cuts. We saw this when that Uber autonomous tester killed that pedestrian. Their tech wasn't mature enough to be in that situation, and their corporate policies weren't robust enough to require industry standard safeguards that could've prevented something like that. The result was a PR nightmare and several months of canceled testing that put them even further behind.
Tesla is in a somewhat different situation than Uber being a vehicle manufacturer, but their future is certainly far less certain than some of the other players in the realm. Their history of using customers as beta testers for a less-than-perfect semi autonomous tech suite would give me pause. Perception is a huge part of getting autonomous driving to become mainstream, and everything from minor issues to major ones that have resulted in accidental injury or deaths will make it more difficult ot gain widespread acceptance. Their insistance that autonomous driving can be achieved without lidar is a big gamble. It could greatly reduce costs of autonomous systems and speed up development time, but it could also backfire and lead to a system that's seen as "irresponsible" or "Unsafe" by the buying public if it's not peerless from the start. And again, that's assuming the company survives it's other issues.
Google, Ford, GM, Bosch, Delphi, etc can afford to be more prudent and cautious about their product development and release because the businesses have a more stable foundation. You might sacrifice some potential gains for less risk of failure though.
Uber is definitely off my radar. They are on the fast track to self destruction. They spent their 10 year history developing millions of business partnerships with their owner/operators (drivers), and have now come to the point where their business model is dependent on stabbing those business partners in the back and taking their livelihoods.
No, I don’t trust Uber for a millisecond.
STM317 said:dculberson said:I think Tesla is the clear leader here. Waymo might have more miles unattended but their problem is that Alphabet makes so much money from google and search and advertising that the autonomous vehicle thing will always be a sideline and they are famously unsentimental about their sidelines. As soon as it lags or is seen as not contributing to their mission it’s gone. For Tesla the cars are front and center.
Same with uber - they don’t even make cars, they made a sensor suite and software. That’s valuable but not as much so as the total package that Tesla makes. And uber makes way too much money from the ride sharing to really focus on anything else. It’s just as likely that uber will be the conduit to book a Tesla as they will actually bring an autonomous car to market.
Teslas not perfect and not risk free but you know that. Higher risk - higher potential reward?
It could also be argued that having other stable businesses allows for a more pragmatic and prudent approach to developing/fleshing out the tech before unleashing it for public consumption. Uber for example is rapidly burning through investor cash. They lose money on every ride. Their only hope for profitability and survival is eliminating the human drivers from the ride share equation. So they're highly motivated, but there's a thin line between motivated and desperate and the wrong corporate culture can lead to poor decisions and short cuts. We saw this when that Uber autonomous tester killed that pedestrian. Their tech wasn't mature enough to be in that situation, and their corporate policies weren't robust enough to require industry standard safeguards that could've prevented something like that. The result was a PR nightmare and several months of canceled testing that put them even further behind.
Tesla is in a somewhat different situation than Uber being a vehicle manufacturer, but their future is certainly far less certain than some of the other players in the realm. Their history of using customers as beta testers for a less-than-perfect semi autonomous tech suite would give me pause. Perception is a huge part of getting autonomous driving to become mainstream, and everything from minor issues to major ones that have resulted in accidental injury or deaths will make it more difficult ot gain widespread acceptance. Their insistance that autonomous driving can be achieved without lidar is a big gamble. It could greatly reduce costs of autonomous systems and speed up development time, but it could also backfire and lead to a system that's seen as "irresponsible" or "Unsafe" by the buying public if it's not peerless from the start. And again, that's assuming the company survives it's other issues.
Google, Ford, GM, Bosch, Delphi, etc can afford to be more prudent and cautious about their product development and release because the businesses have a more stable foundation. You might sacrifice some potential gains for less risk of failure though.
I think you misunderstand the high end of the automotive market. Ferrari is anything but reliable, yet so highly desired, people put down payments on cars that not only don’t exist but likely won’t be made!
Jaguar pulled itself up from little more than a garage build company to a multi billion dollar industry attracting the attention of GM, Ford, and ultimately Tatra. Doing exactly that, using their new customers as beta testers. For every one they lost more were eager, indeed frantic to join that group. Today some of those same early cars are approaching $200,000 in market price as buyers who missed their chance at $5700 outbid others to get one of the remaining XK-E ‘s or XK120’s
I’m not sure what that says about car buyers, except perfection isn’t a priority, desirability is.
In reply to frenchyd :
A person that buys a Ferrari is willing to put up with higher maintenance costs because they only require the owner to give up something that they have an abundance of (money). The cost/benefit calculation is very different when it comes to personal safety. Glitchy autonomous tech can (and already has) been fatal for drivers and bystanders. It doesn't matter how trendy, or prestigious the tech is if it's seen as flawed and unsafe. Nobody has an abundance of lives to mitigate the risk of things going wrong. The cost is much greater than some cash/inconvenience.
It's critical for these companies to be responsible in their development, or people will be hurt/killed. It's entirely possible that they may become statistically safer than human drivers and still be shunned by the general population for simply seeming unsafe. Not only does the tech have to work, (and meet pending legal requirements, etc) but they have to convince people that it's safer as well which may be the toughest battle. Telsa and Uber have already had some bad PR, and just 19% of the public would put their kids into an autonomous vehicle right now.
STM317 said:Google, Ford, GM, Bosch, Delphi, etc can afford to be more prudent and cautious about their product development and release because the businesses have a more stable foundation. You might sacrifice some potential gains for less risk of failure though.
I don't exactly disagree with you, but have "prudent and cautious" companies often been the market leaders in new technology? I think that tends to describe companies like Kodak in the 21st century more than the leaders of a transportation revolution.
dculberson said:STM317 said:Google, Ford, GM, Bosch, Delphi, etc can afford to be more prudent and cautious about their product development and release because the businesses have a more stable foundation. You might sacrifice some potential gains for less risk of failure though.
I don't exactly disagree with you, but have "prudent and cautious" companies often been the market leaders in new technology? I think that tends to describe companies like Kodak in the 21st century more than the leaders of a transportation revolution.
Probably not, and that's a good point. But how often does that new tech have potentially fatal consequences for the user too? It's easy to pump out a software update that extends the range of a vehicle or shortens charging times, or updates the user interface with cooler graphics. Digital cameras and smartphones revolutionized industries, but nobody's safety is threatened if those have bugs, so they can be tested more quickly and released without much rigor. Having people's lives and physical safety in their hands is not something that Silicon Valley is used to.
For Tesla (and their investors), this is all about striking a balance between "disrupting" the market with new tech, and being prudent enough to make sure the tech is mature when it hits the market. It's a fairly high stakes gamble. If they're successful with their camera only approach, and can get regulators and the public to buy into the safety of their feature it could have huge payoffs. But if they're wrong, or it can't function safely in many places, situations, or weather conditions then they'll have big issues. It's much more risk/reward in my opinion than a Google or GM approach that has gone through rigorous testing.
I'm not saying whether it's right or wrong to invest in Tesla or any of the other companies chasing autonomous driving tech. But a potential investor needs to consider everything about the company, their tech strategy, the social/regulatory environment it will be released into/ and the investor's risk tolerance before deciding on a path forward. Choose accordingly to your observations and risk tolerance.
In reply to STM317 :
I agree. Public perception of safety is important. I don't think this will be addressed with statistics, facts, or logic.
It's more likely that it will come into widespread acceptance through events that alter public perception, similar to another form of transportation that changed the entire character of city development and planning- the elevator.
Users didn't trust them. They didn't want to be hoisted many stories in a box hanging from a rope or cable. This meant there were no high rise buildings. Buildings did not exceed 5 or 6 stories- so people could walk up the stairs.
This didn't change when Elisha Otis invented the safety brake. It changed when he publically demonstrated it at the 1854 World's Fair by being hoisted above the crowd, and cutting the rope that was supporting him.
It was almost 100 years later before the first automated elevator. Again, people did not trust machines to do the work of an elevator operator.
Stats don't convince people. Dramatic demonstrations do.
Autonomous cars will have a similar demonstration that will alter perceptions dramatically. It won't be a safety record- it will be a publicized cross-country autonomous trek, or a tractor trailer negotiating an inner city, or some such thing. When the time is right, changing people's minds won't take very long.
STM317 said:In reply to frenchyd :
A person that buys a Ferrari is willing to put up with higher maintenance costs because they only require the owner to give up something that they have an abundance of (money). The cost/benefit calculation is very different when it comes to personal safety. Glitchy autonomous tech can (and already has) been fatal for drivers and bystanders. It doesn't matter how trendy, or prestigious the tech is if it's seen as flawed and unsafe. Nobody has an abundance of lives to mitigate the risk of things going wrong. The cost is much greater than some cash/inconvenience.
It's critical for these companies to be responsible in their development, or people will be hurt/killed. It's entirely possible that they may become statistically safer than human drivers and still be shunned by the general population for simply seeming unsafe. Not only does the tech have to work, (and meet pending legal requirements, etc) but they have to convince people that it's safer as well which may be the toughest battle. Telsa and Uber have already had some bad PR, and just 19% of the public would put their kids into an autonomous vehicle right now.
Ferrari owners give up more than money. They lose reliability, and time. Plus being the source of jokes when their new Ferrari is hauled in on the back of a truck.
Considering the early days 19% is wonderful. I doubt. Even 2% of the general public accepted aviation as safe this much past the Wright Bros. first flight.
I don’t disagree that development work needs to be done before its accepted, but there will be two general approaches to the whole process.
First will be the leaders and developers.
Followed by the buyers and sellers of technology.
Those are the ones to fear. Those who place profit and return on investment ahead of development and safety.
Nothing is safe. People regularly make serious fatal mistakes. Technology isn’t perfect, look at Boeing as a classic example.
But headlines and sensationalism aside flying is still massively safer than driving, and that has accepted technology for decades.
As it filters down into surface transportation lives will be saved. I’m old enough to remember when children were left on their own in the back seat without even seatbelts. But then annual deaths due to auto accidents were more than twice what today’s are in spite of less than 1/2 the population and 1/4 of annual miles traveled.
GameboyRMH said:Was thinking about the insurance situation again and there's something I didn't consider. Although it will make car insurance more profitable, it will also bring a lot of disruption on the auto insurance industry, as auto manufacturers start offering insurance plans like Volvo has and Tesla is planning to.
Insurance companies are used to change. Fatalities are less than 1/2 of their peak in spite of 2X the population &1/4 the miles traveled.
New technology such as intelligent cruise control, blind spot sensors, back up camera’s has to have reduced claims.
The occasional glitch in developing autonomous is really trivial, and to be expected.
SVreX said:In reply to STM317 :
I agree. Public perception of safety is important. I don't think this will be addressed with statistics, facts, or logic.
It's more likely that it will come into widespread acceptance through events that alter public perception, similar to another form of transportation that changed the entire character of city development and planning- the elevator.
Users didn't trust them. They didn't want to be hoisted many stories in a box hanging from a rope or cable. This meant there were no high rise buildings. Buildings did not exceed 5 or 6 stories- so people could walk up the stairs.
This didn't change when Elisha Otis invented the safety brake. It changed when he publically demonstrated it at the 1854 World's Fair by being hoisted above the crowd, and cutting the rope that was supporting him.
It was almost 100 years later before the first automated elevator. Again, people did not trust machines to do the work of an elevator operator.
Stats don't convince people. Dramatic demonstrations do.
Autonomous cars will have a similar demonstration that will alter perceptions dramatically. It won't be a safety record- it will be a publicized cross-country autonomous trek, or a tractor trailer negotiating an inner city, or some such thing. When the time is right, changing people's minds won't take very long.
You are absolutely right but for more than a decade they had Autonomous cars running up and down a dedicated freeway just north of San Diego. And that was 20 years ago!!
Auto pilot on airplanes has been in place for more than my 70 years on earth. I flew a WW2 era C47 with it operating.
Relevant article about how companies might profit from autonomous driving vehicles.
As we have veered away from the original posit beware of evangelists they'll always tell you what will go right and never say what WILL go wrong.
In Vancouver we know nothing about autonomous systems, oh snap we do all the rapid transit is sans operator, system works great until there's a problem then it's an unmitigated E36 M3 show.
GameboyRMH said:The only thing special that Nvidia is doing is building computers specialized for running autonomous cars in a form that's meant to survive being installed in a car. So if you want something off the shelf to run your autonomous car, they're your best option. Nothing that AMD or even Intel couldn't get into if they wanted to, and nothing Bosch couldn't start doing next week from an assembly perspective.
I came here to plug Nvidia. They have a strong presence in automotive beyond autonomous already. I have heard rumors locally in silicon valley that Robert Bosch and Denso are partnering with/licensing from them. So even if the driving computer has a Bosch or Denso part number on there is a good chance there will be an Nvidia chip set running it. The GPU and mobile CPU businesses are so competitive, I suspect they are going amazing tough competitor for any automotive supplier to steal a socket from.
I like Tesla and put some mad money into the market with them at just under $300/share...so I'm losing right now pretty good.
I'm fine with being in for the long haul, but the better play would have been to buy and sell 10 times over the past year...I watched it go to 374 or whatever recently and didn't sell.
It's very volatile, and I think there are some 'bad actors' trying to manipulate the stock price. (not complaining, it seems to be the way of the world).
I have a tdameritrade account for the little I do. I like it. (My real money is in mutual funds in IRAs).
Other stocks that have done better for me recently are baba (alibaba) and ford..
As a company I think they have done some very shrewd things tying up their lithium supply and they don't have some of the problems legacy automakers face like future pension obligations and required old school dealer networks.
Short term looks bad though...might be time to buy :).
jamscal said:It's very volatile, and I think there are some 'bad actors' trying to manipulate the stock price. (not complaining, it seems to be the way of the world).
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