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by TillE 3008 days ago
Every engineer on this project at Uber knows very well that their car completely failed in one of its most basic expected functions. It's incredibly obvious, and a number of independent experts have said as much.

I'd be fairly surprised if there's any real appetite at Uber to continue with this now. It was never anywhere near their core competency.

3 comments

> core competency

3 years ago Uber hired ~50 specialists from CMU to work on autonomous vehicles. I'd call that a core competency.

https://www.theverge.com/transportation/2015/5/19/8622831/ub...

Core focus, competency implies being competent. With this I’m less convinced.
My measure of core competency is capability + capacity. (Tesla and Ford, for example, do not have the same core competencies, and to your point, have core focus in each of the others.)
Interesting question is if the LIDAR was not being used because of the settlement with Google and agreement not to use any of the contested tech.
It was never anywhere near their core competency.

Maybe not directly, but is Uber's current business model sustainable without some form of self-driving technology replacing their human drivers?

In the short term, yes, but the moment someone else gets a self driving car they’ll be destroyed.