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Comment by dcgudeman | Hacker News Reader

"Prior to the judge’s ruling, San Francisco-based Uber indicated it had a long-term solution to the debate about driver classification: driverless vehicles. Uber said earlier Thursday it plans to begin testing autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh as soon as this month, featuring technology that would eventually make human drivers obsolete."

Well I guess that's one way to accelerate innovation lol

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However, you can't just put in more money into development of a technology and get linear returns. Eventually you're gonna hit diminishing returns, so there's not too much they can do to accelerate it beyond what they're already doing (except adding more researchers, possibly).

I would be surprised if Uber gets very far with their autonomous vehicle testing, especially in difficult driving conditions where LIDAR and sensors don't perform so well, until they can't reliably export it to other markets. There are some of the smartest minds in the world working on this and still haven't figured it out, and Uber's researchers are no exception. And this also completely disregards the legislation side of things, which would prove to be a huge obstacle as well, even with Uber's obscene amount of money they pour into it.

To their advantage:

1) Plenty of cash coming in for research

2) Use to skirting laws that get in their way - so they may just start cutting back on costs later. Maybe have the human operator remote in, instead of actually sit in the car.

Number 2 is a good idea until you realize most uber drivers are lower income people with relatively high latency connections. Add in that most of them will probably be on WiFi and its a non-starter.

I was thinking more about adding a high-quality custom a/v/control setup directly to the car, with "drivers" going to some office with a crap-ton of monitors.

That is a lot of trust you are putting into the cell network.

Do we have any evidence that Uber would be any good at pulling that off? So far their core competence has been finding more or less creative workarounds for local laws. That's not exactly the quality that I look for in a supplier of autonomous driving services.

Are Uber's customers even ready for driverless taxis? It's one thing to trust your Tesla, when you're behind the wheel and can re-take control. It's another mental leap to get in the back-seat.

I would be hesitant to trust a new technology developed by a company with a record of skirting laws and regulations.

>it plans to begin testing autonomous vehicles in Pittsburgh

How are they going to convince the owners of the autonomous vehicles to lend them their cars for free? :-)

Wouldn't this change Uber, since now they'd have to make a massive capital investment to operate?

Uber wants to own the self-driving cars, rather than use other people's cars.

This does indeed change their business significantly, because now they have to buy and operate all of those cars themselves, rather than being "just an app" that takes a commission from what the drivers make.

If Uber is not careful with cost management, it could very well sink the company.

They could work with leasing companies, or even with private individuals / companies who own the vehicles and get a cut of the usage.

It seems unlikely to me though.

Why partner with Uber when you can keep the margins yourself (Like GM, Ford, BMW, and Tesla, all who can build the vehicles and have signaled they will be offering autonomous vehicles). Without a factory to make their own vehicles, Uber has no advantage.

In all of this I have to wonder what their drivers (current and prospective ) think of these plans.

If the human drivers become painpoint this innovation is going to go a lot faster. I think driver of the world can untie and pressurize the government to stop this innovation in infancy :P

Stopping innovation is what I'm all about!

Actually I dislike uber because of how they flout regulations and hurt workers. But if they get rid of the workers altogether, It would be hard to complain. Especially if fairs become a fraction of the price.

What regulations have they flouted? I'd be interested to learn more because I hear this claim occasionally but haven't heard the details behind it. Could you share more details?

They provide a taxi service without a proper taxi license.

Could you be more specific? In which jurisdiction do they provide a taxi service without a license? Could you provide a source?

Many (most?) jurisdictions differentiate between for-hire-vehicles and taxis, and Uber doesn't operate unlicensed taxis as far as I know. I don't want to claim to know everything about Uber - but services like their black car and UberX service are not considered taxis in most jurisdictions that I'm aware of, for a number of reasons including because they accept only rides that were arranged in advance, they have no special paint job or advertising, etc. According to Quora, Uber does operate "UberTaxis" and those are actual medallioned taxis: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-an-Uber... - so it seems to me that Uber's classic services were never regulated by taxi laws to begin with, and the actual taxi services they have now comply with them.

I'd like to learn more about this topic though, since I find the boundary between business and law interesting in this case, so I will be glad to review further details if someone can provide them. (I have no connection to Uber nor that industry except as a once-in-a-while customer.)

Uber has been condemned in several euro countries for operating illegal services and bankrolling their drivers when they get caught.

Googling 'uber pays lawyers to drivers' also gives matches for NA although I didn't look the details.

The only reason taxi license (and most other licenses in general) exist so that one group of people can monopolize a business without worry of competition. And with that you get smelly rude taxi drivers.... who drive away if they don't like your destination and are crazy drivers. If uber is guilty of "flouting regulations", that makes me like them even more.

May be it is the licensing requirement that is more ridiculous here.

Especially if fairs become a fraction of the price.

I wonder if prices will drop that much. Is owning and maintaining a massive fleet of driver-less cars really that much cheaper than just paying a bunch drivers that own and maintain their own car?

Yes it is.

First, efficiency of utilisation: Driverless cars can be driven around the clock (modulo maintenance and refueling time), so car depreciation/maintenance gets amortised amongst more passengers.

Second, efficiency of scale in maintenance: It is extremely unlikely that the maintenance costs that uber drivers take on - buying parts retail and taking their car to the nearest garage for repairs - are lower than what would be a dedicated factory-like maintenance shop for thousands of automatic cabs.

And third of course: direct wage costs of the driver once you subtract car maintenance from fares is still a lot bigger than zero, so eliminating that saves money.

Note, that most of those points: Buying parts, cars, repairing is stuff they don't pay a dime for now. They only pay a wage to drivers. The structure of their cost changes completely - which is very hard to make any sane calculations on.

And if they are not first with driverless cars, big national cab-companies are also in the run.

The latest Tesla masterplan includes a global fleet of self driving taxis too.

Driverless cars can be driven around the clock

So in theory can normal cars. Many taxi companies (and I'm assuming at least some Uber drivers) share one car between 2-5 drivers to maximize the time on the road.

The other aspect you're not considering is that even after you take economies of scale into account a driverless car will almost certainly cost more than the market price of the current median Uber car. I'm guessing that $3000-5000 will get you a perfectly Uber-worthy car that will give you years of fairly trouble free use. What will a driverless car cost?

And that is ignoring the fact that most Uber drivers would have owned and maintained a car even if they had had a different job, so the only 'cost' is the marginal cost of extra maintenance being used as an Uber car causes.

Also I wouldn't be surprised if maintenance costs will also be higher at least in the short-to-medium term due the complicated and experimental nature of the components involved.

So even if there are long term savings I imagine that they will take a long time to materialize and even longer to show up in fare-prices, unless Uber decides to subsidize driverless fare to kick start the market.

Taxi's drive around looking for fares. Uber can better optimize the time used through an algorithm. I'm betting there's a lot of time wasted for cabs that rely on street hails.

I don't know. Uber is probably thinking about it. Also it would be a lot harder to skirt taxes when they own the cars. They don't have a choice but to be ahead of this.

Yes. I am aware of people who want to blow up all the bulbs because it hurts the candlemakers.

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