[oillio]

The takeaway I get is that Uber has an edge on Google in the race for a fully automated taxi service, because the have had more time to work on a more sophisticated routing algorithm.

I am skeptical. As the article points out, it will take a considerable amount of time to deploy any service, once the automated driving is good enough. If Google gets to commercially viable automated driving sooner, it will have plenty of time to refine their own routing algorithms during the rollout.

[jessaustin]

An interesting HN comment on vehicle routing from yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12400611

My sense is that this problem is solved to a much greater extent than automated driving is.

[fudged71]

Uber has the advantage because they have been "Doing things that don't scale" and have a large knowledgebase of how to effectively operate a taxi service, with customer info/ratings as well. User experience trumps routing algorithms.