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Comment by filereaper | Hacker News Reader

Uber bet the house on self-driving cars, that's what was supposed to make all of this sustainable.

Seems all these efforts have failed, and I'd be curious how many short positions are out there against them.

I've been at the receiving end of these Uber & Lyft shortages. Can't get a ridershare below $80 at SFO after 9pm even if you've pre-scheduled one. The drivers also keep cancelling in an attempt to pump rates higher. Its incredibly frustrating.

I've pretty much given up and now rent a car when I would have taken an Uber when I'm out of town.

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> I'd be curious how many short positions are out there against them.

As of 6/15, about 5% of the UBER float was sold short, and the put/call ratio is .439 according to thinkorswim. Short interest will be reported again on 7/15. For comparison, 10% of ABNB and LYFT are sold short, with a similar p/c ratio.

I see Cruise cars all the time in SF - it definitely does not feel like all of the self-driving efforts have failed.

Cruise operates in a very few markets for which their specialized self-driving cars have been designed for live testing. They have received special attention and care to have extremely up-to-date local information and are closely managed by operators. It is indeed very encouraging that Cruise is operating this local taxi and soon a local shuttle with almost completely driverless capabilities..

But keep in mind, this doesn't mean they work anywhere else in the country or world. What will happen to them in bad weather or some damage to the vehicle or a flat tire or navigating a scene cordoned off by police, or a parade? What happens when they do not have the meticulously groomed information? Likely, Cruise will manually tell the vehicle to avoid the area, shut the vehicle down, or take over control remotely.

Self-Driving cars are designated into technology levels 0 through 5[0], from no capabilities, to "simple" lane-keeping and/or cruise control, to autonomous with caveats

I don't know exactly which technologies Cruise is using to achieve their mostly autonomous taxi, as that information is worth the billions invested in the company, however from what I have been able to gather, they still use a remote safety operator in some instances. The safety operator can take control of the car if a safety problem presents.

The cruise cars in SF are essentially bespoke for their market. If you take it to Wichita or Maryland, these things will likely not be able to manage the environment. The self-driving capabilities are still unable to reach SAE level 5, fully autonomous driving in all conditions.

Its easy to look at Cruise and conclude, "We've arrived!" but I would still caution restraint, as it has been possible to operate autonomous vehicles with extensive constraints for many years, such as autonomous rail.

[0] - https://www.sae.org/news/press-room/2018/12/sae-internationa...

I'm not saying "We've arrived", I'm saying that this doesn't look like failure.

Cruise is a different company. Uber was developing their own self-driving cars, and gave up last year [0]. That's the failure they're talking about, Uber was betting on their self-driving cars saving costs in the long run since they'd not need to pay drivers anymore.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/12/uber-sells-self-driving...

I know Cruise is a different company.

As for selling off their self-driving division, I don't get how that's a failure or giving up, given that the article lists an explicit 400M investment. The article (rightly) points out that Uber doesn't need to own self driving to benefit from it, and given that it's a hard problem, they spun it out into its own company that can receive independent funding.

Maybe you can just chalk "failure" up as a superlative regarding the doe eyed gushing public perception of this developing technology.

Sure, that would be reasonable, though the two posts citing failure seem to be talking much more explicitly about the attempts - "all these efforts have failed", "gave up".

If it's "people expected this to already be done and it isn't" yeah sure, of course.

Great, when do Cruise and all the others actually come out of R&D and solve the issues faced by me and others on this thread.

Otherwise you're beating a dead horse.

Others in this thread? Beating a dead horse? Am I missing something? I'm the only comment in response to yours, which is a top level comment. I see no other conversation on the topic.

Anyway, my point is that self driving is clearly not in a "well, it didn't work" state - it's ongoing, and seems to be making good progress. I have no timeline for you.

I think it's relative. The technology is progressing, but as you said no one has a timeline. So if you're a company betting billions (and billions) of dollars on getting self-driving out the door in 5 years, and now it's year 5 and you have no timeline... "well, it didn't work"

>Seems all these efforts have failed

What? It's still actively advancing every year. This is like saying manned missions to Mars have failed. We're not there yet but the steps we're taking aren't "failure"

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