[djloche]

the question is one of responsibility in the case of accident. is it the owner of the car? or the driver? what happens when there is no driver? well, my guess is that TSLA the manufacturer of the auto-driving software is going to be liable in place of the driver, and as such, they have every right to say, nope, no using our auto-pilot for commercial activity unless it is on our own network where we can self-regulate to make sure we are liable for as few of problems as possible.

[draugadrotten]

When Tesla say you can't drive passengers commercially it is probably because of liability concerns. Insurance for taxis are much higher than insurance for personal vehicles.

Volvo CEO said already in 2015 that Volvo will accept full liability whenever one of its cars is in autonomous mode.

http://fortune.com/2015/10/07/volvo-liability-self-driving-c...

[bubblethink]

>what happens when there is no driver? well, my guess is that TSLA the manufacturer of the auto-driving software is going to be liable in place of the driver, and as such, they have every right to say, nope, no using our auto-pilot for commercial activity unless it is on our own network

Why does this argument hold true only for self-driving cars, and not current cars ? As such, self-driving cars are just a point in continuous evolution. Current cars are already quite different from what they were a few decades ago. Why is now a good time to draw a line ? Every change in this eveolution goes through government approval. If it is approved, it should be safe enough for everyone.

[grkvlt]

It sort of does hold for current cars. Generally a driver (in most cases, a human) must obtain a further license or some form of government permission/authorization to drive a vehicle for commercial purposes like a taxi or other passenger carrying service. This seems to be simply pointing out that the same restriction will apply to the software-based driver in a Tesla...?

[bubblethink]

There is no legislation about ride sharing/taxi with self driving cars. So whether or not an extra authorization is needed by the owner of the car is a different issue. Here Tesla is asking you to not engage in ride sharing unless Tesla gets a cut. i.e., Even if the government and insurance companies allow you to do so, Tesla won't unless you hand over your cut to them. Is there more to it than that ? Tesla is getting approval to make a car road legal. An insurance company may underwrite insurance for various purposes including taxi. Why do I need tesla's permissions to combine a road legal car for taxi purposes ?

[grkvlt]

Because Tesla is assuming responsibility (that is, guaranteeing fitness for purpose, and all the ramifications that come with that) for the car being able to drive you under the same circumstances as any other private person driving. They would be taking on much more (legal, insurance, etc.) risk if they were to allow the car to drive as a passenger carrying, fare accepting, commercial entity, therefore it seems fair that they require you to use their managed system to (I assume) mitigate and/or manage that risk. I would guess that it would also be possible, eventually, to license the autopilot software for your own arbitrary commercial use.

[djloche]

The line is "software provided by the manufacturer is driving" vs "person is driving".

When you cede control of the steering, braking, acceleration, and even watching the road to software, you are no longer driving.

[bubblethink]

This has been happening slowly in a lot of areas already. We went from manual transmission to automatic transmission without much fanfare. Even with the current self-driving trend, it is happening pretty slowly with various assisted technologies. I doubt things will change overnight.