[lhorie]

The backstory that seems to have been forgotten here is that self driving cars are still a money bleeding endeavor. It's why Uber sold its own self driving division and it's something Cruise has said in the past still needs to be figured out.

Uber has pivoted to doing partnerships with any self driving player that is looking for a customer base. Waymo doesn't have the tech nor the desire to figure out logistics to compete with Motional or Cartken in the delivery space, for example. None of these players can instantaneously ramp up to millions of vehicles on the road; they physically don't have enough hardware and the age of money burning for growth at all costs is behind us. I can't imagine Waymo has bigger utilization than Bolt, or even Alto.

The way I see it, Uber is more like McDonalds: "easy" to copy from conceptual perspective but also a globally recognizable brand with an undeniably strong customer acquisition arm.

Waymo still has a lot to prove to themselves in terms of ROI. Customer acquisition would be even more expenses on top of the already expensive tech, partnering with Uber to offload these costs to a proven customer acquisition player makes sense for them.

[ra7]

> The backstory that seems to have been forgotten here is that self driving cars are still a money bleeding endeavor. It's why Uber sold its own self driving division and it's something Cruise has said in the past still needs to be figured out.

Uber sold their self driving division because they killed someone in Arizona due to negligence. And then Anthony Lewandowski happened. Those two incidents complete deflated Uber's hopes to have autonomous vehicle technology. I'm pretty sure they would still be pursuing self driving if not for those incidents.

[id00]

I think the more likely here is that Uber sold self-driving group (alongside other "big bets" like flying taxi research group) because of existential threat to the business during the start of COVID-19 which made them focusing on the main business (+eats) and sell parts that have no profitability in sight.

[lhorie]

That's exactly right. Uber self driving was burning through the tune of billions of dollars a year when covid reduced revenue by the tune of 70%. Not exactly sustainable w/ only a few billion dollars of cash on hand.

As terrible as a pedestrian death is, the reality is there's news about Tesla accidents and near-accidents on the news all the time and people still love the brand. Sometimes it's easy to forget that Uber/Amazon/M$/etc hating is not as widespread in the general population as it is among tech bros.

As for Otto, my understanding is Uber pivoted similarly on the freight side, with a partnership w/ Volvo Autonomous Solutions.

[astrange]

The self-driving division was done to attract investment because investors thought it sounded cool. It would have been bad for Uber's business to have them - Uber relies on not owning cars, which moves all the maintenance to the driver-owners. If you own a self-driving car you still have to maintain it.

[mrguyorama]

Did they even lose a civil suit for killing that person? They were not punished.

[mnd999]

> The backstory that seems to have been forgotten here is that self driving cars are still a money bleeding endeavor.

They also don’t work. At least not by any sane definition. Sure, if you’ve mapped the area in advance, nothing changed,the weather is nice and nothing unusual happens all might be okay but otherwise it’s a shitshow.

Human drivers are cheaper and more versatile. There is no point in this other than trying to persuade the markets Google hasn’t spanked millions on a dead end.

[laratied]

I wouldn't even get in a self driving taxi if it was free because of how cheap human drivers are. For me, to use a self driving taxi it would have to be so safe that we would be moving towards banning human driving anyway.

Otherwise, it is about as bad of a risk to reward bet as I can think of compared to human drivers.