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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

Alternative headline: "Lyft invests $100 million in self-driving car maintenance hubs." By centralizing cleaning and routine maintenance to it's centers Lyft is laying the ground work to provide a place for self-driving vehicles to return to between revenue service.

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People keep saying the Lyft and Uber endgame is self driving cars, but there are not going to be fully autonomous self driving cars for at least 10 years. It's not a realistic business plan and I very much doubt that's actually the strategy at these companies.

Where does the number “10 years” come from? 5 seems plausible to this non-domain expert

5 is maybe doable in a limited context, e.g. in residential neighborhoods of American cities. No way for the rest of the world though. The road systems are too complicated.

Seems like that's plenty enough to be a large and growing business, though?

Snow.

Not even. We are at least 5-10 years away from operational fully autonomous cars being used in production in the bay area. There's really no timeline at all for when we might have an operational autonomous car that can handle driving conditions more severe than light rain.

10 is optimistic IMHO. The popular 80/20 rule is at work here. It's going to take a lot of time to get the rest 20% right. For example, how long it's going to take to solve the driving on the snowy roads?

I, for one, have never taken a Lyft from San Francisco to Tahoe.

"On the roads" doesn't mean "Every single road in every single market around the globe"

I agree, but I'm not sure the valley does. I recently did a phone interview with an autonomous car company in Silicon Valley where the recruiter told me the company's goal was to put a level 5 autonomous vehicle on the streets by 2020. Ultimately I declined an on-site interview for other reasons, but when weighing their offered compensation, I didn't value those RSUs a penny over $0.

Yeah, the article content doesn't hold up the headline. It does not sound one bit like Lyft is investing in its drivers. That would have to mean something a lot more grand than "cheaper oil changes" or better car maintenance. A giant multinational multi-billion dollar corporation is not investing in you if they just help your car get less wrecked.

It would mean they are funding post-secondary education. It would mean they are funding your healthcare, or giving you a major raise.

I love Lyft, but this headline is a disaster, it's a pure native ad for Lyft and totally doesn't belong on HN.

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