Hacker News Reader

Comment by fixprix | Hacker News Reader

The problem is neither Waymo or Uber make their own cars, and the cars they use weren't purpose built for self driving. Both of those points give Tesla a huge economic and competitive advantage in the long run. Uber/Waymo are the middlemen, once OEMs start building their own purpose built self driving vehicles there's a good chance Waymo/Uber get factored out of the equation.

View on HN

Not if OEMs don't have the technology. Making cars is the easiest part of self driving. Once you have the tech, you can farm the manufacturing out to many OEMs (like Waymo is doing with Hyundai and Geely) and then OEMs become the middlemen.

If Waymo continues to grow their OEM partner pool, then presumably they'd have a better ability to put cars on the road than Tesla. I'd say right now it's "advantage Tesla" but could easily see this flipped on its head if Waymo announces more partnerships soon. Could very easily see them partnering with major US automakers like Ford or Stellantis (lol maybe even GM, but that seems extreme)

> I'd say right now it's "advantage Tesla"

Tesla self-driving doesn't exist and will only work on Tesla vehicles if they ever develop the capability.

Waymo self-driving works now and has been demonstrated on multiple vehicles. Waymo could utilize the manufacturing capacity of the entire auto-industry.

Oh yeah, I totally agree. Should have specified. That advantage only applies to making vehicles. In terms of driving, operation, and pretty much everything else, clearly 'advantage Waymo'

What’s the advantage of owning the full stack? Some margin on the base machine? Is that that huge a factor?

Ask Apple?

Apple doesn’t own any factories to make their hardware. Their vertical integration goes as far as hardware design and software.

Pretty much exactly what companies like Waymo are trying to do.

It's fair to say that Tesla's vertical integration is even deeper. Might Microsoft Windows or Google Android be a better example than Apple? Does Waymo actually specify the entire vehicle (i.e. have it's own engine design) or just the systems added to the vehicle?

Indeed, Windows or Android are a better example than Apple. Waymo only designs the systems added to the vehicle, but they do have input over some parts of the vehicle design. Geely (Zeekr) is building a purpose-built robotaxi for them that's based on their SEA-M platform, but with Waymo customizations.

I'm not sure Tesla level vertical integration is really necessary.

But the point there is that by controlling the stack Apple can improve the overall UX, from encryption to battery life or what have you. What’s the equivalent in self-driving cars? Better handling?

Perhaps. More broadly, reduced constraints. Written differently, being able to choose the layer at which you solve the problem.

An example of this is that in robotics, the ability to properly insert a piston into an engine block without damage to the piston or block was an unsolved problem for some time in robotics. Doing so using machine vision and robotics control theory required engineering constraints that resulted in a too slow and expensive a mechanism for mechanized assembly lines.

Because of the total control of the assembly line, this problem was solved in the physical space through a reactive physical assembly using two connected planes (I'm sorry but I'm having a hell of a time tracking down a reference) rather than in software.

Cars are commodity. The brains/driver is the value.

Well seeing that Tesla self driving cars are all smoke and mirrors and has been for years and Waymo os operating now…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com