SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Gene Marks, over at Forbes.com believes that Google is a great innovator, but keeps making the same mistake. He believes that both Google Glass and driverless cars are solutions looking for customers.
Google has brought us innovations — from search and maps to Gmail and collaboration services, that have literally changed our world. And great ideas keep coming from Google. Yet the company continues to make the same mistake. Over and over. I don’t mean the ones that result in product failures (and there have been quite a few over the years). I mean something a little more fundamental.
Take Google Glass. For those that haven’t seen it, it’s a pair of glasses that understands your verbal commands so that it can instantly perform tasks for you, like snapping a photo, taking a video, providing driving directions or searching a database. Glass is a great idea with great technology. It demonstrates the future power of the Internet of Things. There’s just one problem: no one is buying it.
The mistake [with driverless cars] is the same as with Glass: it’s a product without customers. It’s Google assuming that someday someone will actually buy a driverless car. Not a hobbyist or an eccentric millionaire. But a customer who actually needs or desires a driverless car. Someone who, given the choice of spending $30K on a car that they fully control and can go anywhere they want at any speed they want — or another, likely more expensive buggy that will only travel on certain routes at slower speeds and with less options. Hmm, which car would you buy?
However, despite the lack of immediate buyers, Marks believes that Google is well aware of the risks. It is the fact that it has huge financial resources which will allow it to continue until the markets change or are developed. Google is not looking at the next few years ahead, but rather at decades ahead when, it hopes, all the investment will prove to have been worthwhile.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:00AM
"driverless cars are solutions looking for customers"
Just because you don't want one doesn't mean the rest of us don't. I would gladly buy a driverless car, I'd even pay extra for it. Doubly so if I can send it back home for my wife to use while I'm at work! Then I'd only need one car instead of two. The fact that I can perform other tasks while the car is in motion is a huge plus.
I love to drive, but it gets boring really quick.
(Score: 2) by SrLnclt on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:09AM
Initially I was a skeptic. People like driving. The liability will kill it. How will it co-exist with regular vehicles? What about rain, ice, snow, etc.?
But the more I thought about it the more I like it. Not having to pay attention to the road constantly - especially on long trips. Being able to read the news or do other things on a phone or tablet on the way to work. Safety should actually improve. Even with some accidents, I will come to trust the technology more than every distracted idiot with a phone and a big mac. Large cities could re-purpose express or carpool lanes to driverless only. I could see large improvements for rush hour traffic in large population centers once enough people are using them. It may take a while, but the number of positives will eventually drive the customers towards it.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:12PM
People like driving.
Young people like driving. I'll bet TFA's author is under 30. Young people are adrenaline junkies. I started disliking driving around age 30, by the time I was 40 I was wishing for a driverless car. Now that I'm retired I'm begging for one; people are idiots and assholes, especially when behind the wheel.
When I drive down to St Louis, I set the cruise to three MPH under the limit, and I have a stress-free trip that takes an extra five minutes (do the math).
You are right: people eating, texting, drinking, and being dangerous assholes without the phone of big mac or screaming kids should make everyone want a driverless car.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Tuesday December 30 2014, @04:20PM
You naiuled it. There are milions of baby boomers out there who will still want to get around even though their eyesight and reflexes are on the cusp of significant degredation in the coming years. They will want, no, need driverless cars. I look forward to them getting all the kinks worked out before I get old.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:32PM
I could see this being a big plus in the rental car industry. I live in a tourist area and the "driving" done by some of these people (a friend of mine pegged them as Tourons) is frightening. Imagine a tourist being able to pick up a rental car at the airport and telling it "such and such a hotel" and being safely driven directly there.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Tuesday December 30 2014, @11:48PM
The one thing I'm looking forward to is the optimization that intra-vehicle communication and driveless cars will allow for in combination - just imagine the flow of traffic you can achieve when all the cars instantly knows when the cars nearby break or speed up (and not having to wait for it to become visually appearant)... and then to be able to have the entire lane of cars to adjust their speeds when the first car slams its brakes.
Now also imagine crossing (with cars) when being able to time it perfectly.. a lone car comming to cross a busy lane could have a gap created for it to slip through with minimal interruption in the flow of the other traffic (rather than having to stop entire crossing lanes)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @01:10AM
Doubly so if I can send it back home for my wife to use while I'm at work! Then I'd only need one car instead of two.
That's just brilliant.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by len_harms on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:22AM
then I'd only need one car
You are only touching on the implications of driverless cars.
It would mean the entire trucking industry would go from drivers only driving 10-13 hours a day to the trucks rolling 24/7. You would need about 1/2-2/3 less trucks in your fleet depending on how you run your business. That is huge with less personal running it to boot. Less human regulations. All around the trucking industry will benefit the most first. I expect interstate driving to be first.
You could share a car with a bunch more of your family. Like say your kids and parents too.
The entire roadside motel/hotel industry would implode as people would sleep in their cabins/cars. It would not go away but it would be seriously dented.
Anyone who thinks 'this is a solution looking for a problem' is probably just trolling for clicks. There is a large segment of the population who would want control. But there would eventually be a whole generation that grew up with it. They would just see it as something old people do.
But right now neither of those items is close to being 'done'. They are just starting. v0.3 of a product is usually not ready yet but shows a lot of promise.
(Score: 1) by typhoon on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:54AM
Totally agree, I'm another who will buy a driverless car once they are stable.
Driverless cars will/could:
- save me a fortune in transport costs using public transport. I know I should use PT, but it sucks and I hate it.
- evolve the taxi industry and make things like Uber a totally different company. Pre-booking your morning commute will be great.
- several family who live close together could share private cars.
- getting home by summoning the family car from home to you saves your partner from doing it. Even better for folks who have kids.
- totally change courier/delivery services. Far better than drones.
Once the cars are approved, perhaps road based drones might also handle a lot of uses too.
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:14AM
It wouldn't surprise me if driverless cars caused a huge dent in the auto industry as well. Sales would be huge going in as people replaced their existing horribly dangerous cars with driverless models, but once that transition has taken place, there would be far less demand for cars overall (fewer crashes, more sharing, and smaller fleets to name a few reasons). I certainly believe that we're in interesting times and I look forward to seeing this technology mature.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Techwolf on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:29AM
>It would mean the entire trucking industry would go from drivers only driving 10-13 hours a day to the trucks rolling 24/7.
I drive a truck for a living and I have seen this spew out so many times and is just so out of touch with reality. Here is my views on that.
First off, I would LOVE to have auto-cruse. Note what I said there, auto-cruise, not auto-drive. What I want is to be able to get on the interstate and hit cruse and not only will it keep speed, but also drive. This tech will be out in a few years I think. This alone will prevent many single truck crashes where the driver just simply feel asleep at the wheel or more common, failed to realized what was going on around him due to lack of sleep.
What about the full auto-drive people say will put us out of work? Not going to happen for many decades. Current autodrive tech can not handle city streets and many state roads with a big truck. Currently it can handle it using a car, but can't a truck due to all new variables, many roads are not designed with large trucks in mind, so have to do a lot of forward predicting of the road ahead of the truck. Like sharp S curves where oncoming traffic may not fit with the truck in it. Right hand turns where the truck has to swing wide, but also figure how to do that with the opposing traffic lane next to it. I have literally stop the truck in the middle of an stop-lighted intersection and directed traffic from the cab of the truck to clear a way so I can complete my turn. Basically, a truck break many minor laws getting to and from shipper/receivers, the big one is crossing the white/yellow line or taking up two lanes, blocking traffic from blocking the truck(swinging wide for a right turn, but do in a way the trailer blocks traffic from trying to pass on the right side). City cops never bother trucks due to they know the trucks have to do that, and in some cases, help them out of a jam. DOT and state cops however...is another rant for another post. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:18PM
I used to write the software that automated your logs. My job was to automate yours. I fully expect it to be the interstates first especially places like the midwest or the outback of Australia. They probably will use a in/out town depot drop off procedure. To minimize intown driving for awhile. With local guys running the trucks from the out of town pads to the local drop offs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_driver#Truck_driver_problems_.28U.S..29 [wikipedia.org]
This is why the LTL and private fleets will go hog wild with it. Driver fatigue and drug usage is rampant. I saw a guy this weekend who said to his waitress and I quote "I just got done driving 18 hours". WELL out of spec both daily and driving. Yet his logs probably showed 10-11 hours. The bigger fleets will not even blink at the cost as it will ROI in 2-3 years. One truck roll saved and they probably have already paid for most of the fleet. I assisted in about 4 truck recoveries in my time automating this stuff. Full load recovered. That alone paid for itself.
Your job is a dead end job in 10-20 years. They *will* autmoate it. They *are* working on it. They can jam a rack of computers into the cab of a truck. Local guys have a bit longer but they are working on that too.
DOT and state cops however
I bet... I have heard a few doozies over the years. My favorite was dudes pointing at the box and saying 'my logs are in there' and the cop waives them on :)
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:35AM
There is a large segment of the population who would want control. But there would eventually be a whole generation that grew up with it.
Probably not.
Oh, I agree many will use these for the boring commute. Maybe as a second car.
But driving is fun. People like to drive. Perhaps not all those people living in the inner city, dependent on, and well versed in mass transit, and therefor never learned to drive or never owned a car. These are the people who will RENT, but never own a self-driving car.
But once you get out of the city core, people like to drive.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by quacking duck on Tuesday December 30 2014, @06:13AM
I'm hearing a surprising number of people say they would buy a driverless car in an instant. This ranges from friends who have long drives each way to work, to the number of 16-25 year olds who have no intention of getting a drivers license. Used to be that almost every suburb dwelling kid wanted to learn to drive the moment they hit 16.
Obviously this is a regional anecdote and anyone can change their mind later in life; a friend in her 30s just got her own license and car after saying for years that she wouldn't.
I personally like to drive, and have a manual even. But there's times even I wish I could just hit a Knight Rider-like Auto-Cruise button.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:16AM
It still remains to be seen if you will be able to operate one without a drivers license.
If it has any form of manual operation, brakes, gas pedal, steering wheel, I'm saying no.
Same goes for sending your kids to school in it, or coming home drunk, even if in the back seat.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday December 30 2014, @02:13PM
The driverless semi won't happen; you need a human to protect the cargo, even if the truck is driving itself.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @04:59PM
A dude shows up and puts a shotgun in your window do you give them the load or do you die for it? Most drivers give up the truck and the police pick the truck up 1-2 days later. In south america for awhile it was you could end up dead in a ditch even if you gave up the load. Most of them have gps/radios on them that beacon every 5-10 mins.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:09AM
"driverless cars are solutions looking for customers"
Just because you don't want one doesn't mean the rest of us don't. I would gladly buy a driverless car, I'd even pay extra for it.
Amen to that. I know I'm in the minority with this, but I actually dislike driving and would love to be able to have a car without needing to drive the fucking thing.
A similar argument could be made for the Glass. It's not a solution looking for a problem, it's a solution to the wrong problem. It's made to appeal to the twitch/justinTV/etc streaming crowd, because that's a demographic that will happily give Google even more data to use and profile them with, rather than being a useful product to a larger group.
I've said it before, but the problem with Glass for me isn't that it's useless, it's that its intended use case is wrong. I don't care for the recording aspect, but I'd love a low-profile personal HUD I could attach to (sun)glasses that acts as an extension of a mobile phone. Unobtrusive to others and providing useful info real-time to me without having to pull out and look at a phone. Sort of like a visual equivalent of bluetooth earpieces. I don't want recording capability, but I'd love to be able to get navigation info, messages, etc. without having to hold or constantly look at a phone.
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:22PM
The best example of a wearable HUD I've ever heard is working on a car. If you have a recording of how you took something apart that you can reference for putting it back together, not to mention searchable manuals and schematics, that makes the job much easier and more fluid. The best part being that you don't have to stop what you're doing to pull up a reference.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:29AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by TK on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:18PM
One problem that would have to be addressed is cleaning the cars after use.
Not a big problem, though. It would be trivial to have a person sitting at say, a gas station, with a vacuum and a sponge that checks every car in the area after a fare and either cleans it or sends it on its way. In the suburbs of Chicago where I live, practically every gas station in my area has its own automatic car wash, so this is even easier to implement.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:35AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by Anal Pumpernickel on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:20PM
I'll buy a driverless car if and only if it isn't filled with proprietary software and privacy-invading 'features' (like tracking and phoning home).
(Score: 1) by Translation Error on Tuesday December 30 2014, @03:42PM
(Score: 1) by art guerrilla on Tuesday December 30 2014, @06:57PM
two words:
uber driverless cars
okay, three words:
uber driverless cars legalized
okay...
nevermind...
i can see that as a great thing when you go to another city, call up a driverless car on your tablet/smartphone app, and have it whisk you around an unfamiliar area without getting lost, wasting time, etc... sounds pretty damn great to me...