You say this like the car companies aren't developing self-driving technology too. They are - they just don't need or want to shout about it as they don't want to cannibalise the existing market until it's necessary.
They clearly are a player in the self-driving cars market. They may not be a player in self-driving research. These things can both be true at the same time.
I think that's the distinction driving the confusion here.
Uhm, it seems like the auto industry is still letting its imagination run away with self driving cars.
I don't see how a patent like this can be granted if we still generally don't have working self-driving cars. Even Tesla is getting forced to admit that "Full Self Driving" isn't really full self driving.
Not everyone trying to make self-driving cars a reality aren't looking to enter the manufacturing and distribution business though.
There's a case to be made that is self-driving technology becomes commoditized then GM, Ford, etc. will be the "winners". I don't think that's the assumption the non-manufacturing companies are operating under. Time will tell.
I think you mis-read - I'm saying they did have a self-driving car project, not that they didn't. And it goes without saying that it's nowhere near production-ready, nobody has that. It wouldn't surprise me if they had canned it.
It seems that they are following the same direction as Google's and focusing on the software and self-driving equipment as opposed to building a car from scratch.
They are developing the technology to make car self-driving. They are not developing the cars. They use Toyota Prius and I think some Lexus model too. I could see them partnering with Tesla to make it the first company to use the technology though.
Even if this were true (which, I'm skeptical about), just because they have autonomous hardware and a "self-driving car team", doesn't mean that's the product that they will put on the field.
Look at it this way. If you're building a software platform for autonomous vehicles, then you're going to need to do some (or a lot) of R&D in autonomous hardware, but that doesn't necessarily mean that autonomous hardware is the ultimate product.
They are far, far behind in autonomous driving business. They tried to catch up, by being super reckless, and they killed a person.
Using self driving car to justify their valuation is very risky - it's huge project, tons of competition, no idea about when it could even become a product, etc.
Can someone explain why non car companies are buying self driving car tech? Do they think they will end up with some sort of kit they can just attach to existing cars? Are they trying to pivot into being car manufacturing companies? Or is this just a play to develop the AI then sell that to someone else?
Google and Apple are going to licenses their autonomous tech. Tessa, GM and Volvo are going to sell autonomous cars.
No one who reaches stage 4 is going to build tens of millions of their own cars within months and build the parking/service infrastructure nationwide to boot. No one is going to download their app till they do.
The idea that the company that is first and best at developing autonomous tech is going to also simultaneously build huge factories and make good cars is ludicrous.
This is not a great article. It's based around Ford admitting they're not a software company, that they won't be able to compete effectively in this space. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
This does not mean that self driving cars "aren't going to happen" -- in fact, the progress by industry leaders has been methodological and constant. The evidence clearly shows that it is happening, and has every indication of continuing to happen. Five years ago people were incredulous that a computer could pilot a car at all. Now, everyone has conceded that this is possible and the criticisms are about how a computer pilots a car and whether it should make more risky maneuvers. This is exactly what we would expect progress to look like.
As progress continues, companies will learn whether or not it is profitable to develop competing products, or concede to market leaders. Ford has conceded. Rivian has conceded. They will license technology developed by other companies with more capable technical teams.
Neither of those companies make cars.. The article is about actually putting a "self-driving" (however they define it) car through a proper manufacturing engineering environment to develop something that can scale to hundreds of thousands of cars per year.
Redesigning the software of a production car and actually integrating the tech at the factory-level gets you much closer to a mass-volume car than making some fancy software with a sensor package that you bolt to the top of a minivan.
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