GM's Cruise aims to turn self-driving into a billion-dollar business:
Seven years ago, hype about self-driving cars was off the charts. It wasn't just Tesla CEO Elon Musk—who has been making outlandish predictions about self-driving technology since 2015. In 2016, Ford set a goal to start selling cars without steering wheels by 2021. The same year, Lyft predicted that a majority of rides on its network would be autonomous by 2021.
None of that happened. Instead, the last few years have seen brutal consolidation. Uber sold off its self-driving project in 2020, and Lyft shut down its effort in 2021. Then, last October, Ford and Volkswagen announced they were shutting down their self-driving joint venture called Argo AI.
Today, a lot of people view self-driving technology as an expensive failure whose moment has passed. The Wall Street Journal's Chris Mims argued in 2021 that self-driving cars "could be decades away." Last year, Bloomberg's Max Chafkin declared that "self-driving cars are going nowhere."
But a handful of well-funded projects have continued to plug away at the problem. The leaders are Waymo—formerly the Google self-driving car project—and Cruise, a startup that is majority-owned by GM.
[...] But I think the pendulum of public opinion has now swung too far in the pessimistic direction. Self-driving technology has steadily improved over the last few years, and there's every reason to expect that progress to continue.
"It's definitely happening a lot slower than people anticipated back in 2017," industry analyst Sam Abuelsamid told me. "But that doesn't mean that there isn't progress being made."
"I would not be surprised if by the end of 2025, each of those companies is operating in 10 to 12 cities across the US to varying degrees of scale," Abuelsamid added.
[...] During the industry's early years, every self-driving vehicle had a safety driver behind the wheel. If a car encountered a situation it wasn't sure it could negotiate safely, it would signal to the driver to take over.
Once cars went fully driverless, this was no longer an option. Instead, when a Waymo or Cruise vehicle encounters a situation it isn't sure how to handle, it will slow down and stop. Sometimes, the situation will resolve itself and the car can move again on its own. Otherwise, the vehicle phones home and asks for remote guidance.
[...] As their technology has matured, Waymo and Cruise have both gradually pushed their services into denser and more chaotic areas. Waymo now serves downtown Phoenix. And as we've seen, it serves Sky Train stations near the airport, if not the airport itself.
[...] While Waymo and Cruise have steadily improved their technology, the commercial rollout of that tech has been excruciatingly slow. Now both Waymo and Cruise are coming under pressure to expand more rapidly.
The reason: Projects like Waymo and Cruise are fantastically expensive. GM said last year that it expected to spend $2 billion on Cruise in 2022. Waymo hasn't disclosed its spending, but with 2,500 employees, its annual costs are likely north of a billion dollars.
[...] So far, the strategy of avoiding freeways, downtowns, and airports has made Waymo and Cruise safe but unprofitable. Eventually, I expect their software will improve enough that they can operate in these challenging environments safely and confidently. But there's no guarantee this will happen within the next year or two. So the leaders of these companies may come under pressure to push into these more challenging environments before they're ready.
[...] I expect some readers have found this article frustrating because I have barely mentioned Tesla's Full Self Driving software, which Tesla fans view as the industry leader. This is because I view Tesla as operating in a different market from Waymo and Cruise. Tesla is building a driver-assistance system that is designed to be used only with direct human oversight, while Waymo and Cruise are trying to build cars that can drive entirely on their own.
[...] I think a big reason Tesla fans have a misperception that FSD is ahead of Waymo and Cruise is that Tesla's FSD operates in more situations, including freeways. But that misunderstands what's going on. Waymo has been testing its technology on freeways for more than a decade; it has just been doing it exclusively with safety drivers. Tesla only tests its vehicles with a driver behind the wheel, so of course FSD is able to go on the freeway, too. But this isn't evidence of Tesla's superior performance on freeways; it just reflects Waymo's more cautious approach and different business model.
[...] Tesla also isn't laying the necessary groundwork to operate a driverless taxi service. Taxi companies need to develop relationships with taxi regulators, police and firefighters, and other officials in cities where they operate. They also need teams of drivers and mechanics in each city to respond when a driverless taxi gets stranded.
As far as I can tell, Tesla hasn't started doing any of this. And that suggests to me that the company isn't serious about entering the driverless taxi business. Rather, Tesla is building a driver-assistance system similar to (if perhaps more advanced than) those offered by other automakers. There's nothing wrong with that. But it means that Tesla isn't a direct competitor to Waymo and Cruise.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:42AM (2 children)
Of course they are going to keep pounding away at self-driving killmobiles, because that will enable big companies to get rid of piles of truck/vehicle drivers. That means big money, even if a regular consumer does not buy it.
And of course, someone is going to keep hyping it. It involves "AI" after all.
Here, let me grab that fucking pendulum and I'll shove it up your exhaust pipe.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:52AM
Just read through the Ars link, which is long. Deep inside they get down to following the money -- while one of the companies looks to make a billion dollars selling rides next year (or so), their annual costs are still several times larger. In other words, far from profitability.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:24PM
I think the first commercially successful company is one that can see the reality. Self-driving trucks on the long highway stretches between cities, then on the outskirts of a city they meet up with a driver to negotiate the route to the final destination.
i.e. Two cities A and B
Driver in city A takes a truck out to a truck park on the highway to B. Lets it go and gets in a truck from B to drive it somewhere in A. On the outskirts of B, in another truck park, another driver lets his truck drive to A but picks up a truck driving into B and guides it to its destination.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Saturday June 03 2023, @12:00PM
Hype be damned, whether it is pro-self driving, or anti-self driving.
The self driving vehicles are coming. They're just not coming in the next 3 months. Or 3 years, for that matter. Thirty years from now, most cars will be self driving, but MBAs and investors can't see that far into the future. Few are willing to adopt strategies 3 or 5 years into the future, let alone decades.
Of course, you can't project into the future when you are catering to public opinion.