I can't help but wonder if it might have been wise for them to wait until they had widespread approval and adoption of self-driving cars. Completely disrupting mass transit will threaten a very large number of people's bottom lines, and many of those people have the ability to make things difficult for Google. Not least among these are auto manufacturers.
Honestly, my prevailing theory is that this highlights how much further we really are from practical self-driving cars than Google's marketing department wants us to think. I think the self-driving car project needs to always sound 'a little over a year away' as good PR for Google, though they know it's much further from being truly serviceable.
The self driving companies won't go after buses first because they haven't already gone after buses first. Google's been using the mid-large size vehicle for years now. It is much smaller, more manueverable, better acceleration, lower costs to procure, and yet another benefit is you're not limiting yourself to wherever the buses happen to have to go. Buses have to stop/start on the whims of the driver, so is Google going to make a self-driving bus but still have a driver there to make it start/stop? Where is the efficiency gain? Where is the helping of the handicapped or uncapable that they achieve with personal vehicles? I think all the companies in the space have it right, personal vehicles first, as well as freight vehicles, and then trains/planes/buses later since they already have skilled drivers that we'll have to retain anyway.
It's because car companies don't want to take the a big bet and try to do it all at once. That's why every deal Google has tried to make with auto-makers has fell through. Google wants to rush to the finish line and create a fully self-driving car. But the time-frame to be able to deliver that is fairly unknown due to a number of issues.
Auto-makers want to do smaller R&D projects that they can deliver to consumers within a few years of start (instead of a decade+). Things like adaptive cruise control or self-braking. These are things that were just a few years of R&D and are shipping now.
They are different paths to the same goal. We don't know the outcome yet, Google or the auto-makers may get there first. But we do know that auto-makers will have sellable features in the mean time while Google just has pretty marketing videos and demos.
What Google is bringing (that the article mentions) is the discussion about fully self-driving cars. This discussions means laws are being passed to facilitate the technology. It also means that the NTSB, insurance companies, and others involved in the auto industry are talking about the impacts of what a self-driving car means within our current system. So hopefully by the time they arrive, the rules and laws will be caught up with it. It also means consumers are talking about it and becoming aware of the possibility, which helps motivate others to work on the same projects. It may also mean that consumers are less wary of the technology when it actually does arrive.
Google had come out saying they don't believe that an incremental approach will lead to fully driverless cars; at some point the leap has to be made. Sooner rather than later in Google's case.
Given that Google doesn't make cars, I don't really see how they would go about commercializing L3, even though it's well within their capacity from an innovation standpoint.
I really don't think they expected the auto industry to respond so aggressively with their own proprietary autonomous driving OSs, determined to shut Google out.
At this stage their only option is to get to six sigma level 4 in a way that leaves everyone else scratching their heads wondering how Google did that. It's going to take a lot longer than Google anticipated.
Now Google could probably release level 4 quite soon in a limited capacity that's more an amusement park ride than a relable, profitable transportation service, but it's probably smarter for them to keep their eye on the prize and keep plugging away at it. They're in too deep to throw in the towel.
Oddly I'd trust Google more with a self-driving car than say Uber or Tesla. Kind of glad they're making progress and expanding. The industry as a whole seems reckless to me tho.
The problem is funding: let's say funding a self-driving project takes $5B-$10B and 15 years, until it starts to become a real, scalable business.
And that's probably optimistic.
Who will fund that ?
I wonder if Google was too ambitious. Maybe if they focused all the effort on making trucks that could only ride the highway safely, in limited conditions, they would have had a working business by now.
Tesla's 'master plan' is pretty easy to understand externally and gives a clear path/vision forward. How Google plans to actually use their autonomous car tech is unclear from the outside (and I suspect also unclear on the inside).
Tesla's focus on manufacturing and using already sold cars to train their software was a really good plan. Google can't really compete with that even with their fleet of waymo mini cars - it also leaves the big problem of manufacturing cars unsolved (partnership? licensing?).
This seems especially tricky when any car manufacturer that plans to exist in a couple years is already building out their own software divisions with a focus on autonomy.
I'd suspect the engineers see that the management plan isn't going to win so they'd rather jump ship to someone that's doing a better job of it.
This seems to be a recurring trend with Google - get in early with something good, but then let others eventually catch up and beat you.
Even so, I wonder if they might do better not to draw attention to the disaster that "easy car sharing (or similar concepts)" + "self-driving car" could be for car sales. Maybe I'm underestimating car companies in assuming that the haven't already anticipated this (although in that case, why aren't we seeing resistance), or maybe Google holds them in even lower esteem.
I would say this is absolutely a political decision and a marketing decision. Google has gone to great lengths to help the public feel comfortable with autonomous cars, right down to the 'cute' buggy look of their vehicles. The trick is to move slow enough so people's interest out paces their fears.
The implications for self driving cars is nothing short of an existential threat for so many people in this world. As we know, it's just the beginning.
Similarly, Apple moved very slowly in introducing the iPad even though the under technology had been available for years. They started with the iPod, then advanced to the iPhone. At the time the iPhone caused a great amount of tribulation. People were very uncomfortable and large portions of the tech sector predicted it would be a monstrous failure. Their apprehension was cloaking a deep-seated unfirmiliarity (and maybe some fear). Once the iPad finally did arrive it was easily digested by the market. That was the mistake HP and windows made when they introduced the tablet in 2001. People had no concept of what a tablet is or how to integrate it in to their lives, so it was a miserable failure.
The lesson is don't move so fast that you scare your ultimate market, the people.
It's good. From the article they mentioned that manufacturers didn't want to work with Google on self driving cars.
They didn't want to sit back and just let them monetize their customer's driving habits. Some manufacturers err on the side of customer privacy whilst others would prefer to own the revenue stream.
In the article there is this idea that Google will get auto makers to actually make cars that use Google technology - a bit like the 'Android' model in a way, co-opt everyone except 'Apple' and 'Microsoft'.
This contrasts with the Elon Musk attitude where the auto makers can be consigned to the dustbin of history - there isn't going to be some hideous GM/Chrysler/Ford effort 'powered by Tesla technologies' because at heart Elon Musk really does not want to do business with them.
As I understand it there are many companies working on the self driving car with all of Google's rivals going for an iterative approach, e.g. a car that can stay in lane, park, not go over the speed limit or hit the car in front. However, this is not 'driving', i.e. in a city with lots of pedestrians around. Only Google are going for the everything always automated being the product, the rivals are going for just the 'easy' bits with a view to adding the features later. The problem with this later approach is that people expect the car to do all of the driving, they get their phones and laptops out, hence, when they have to take the wheel they are not exactly prepared for it. So the Google approach is better.
If I was CEO of Hyundai (or any other manufacturer) I would just wait for Google to launch 'Android for cars' and go with that rather than do the Volvo/BMW/Mercedes iterative approach.
It does, and I wondered why Google hadn't targeted it first. Its simpler,and there is a compelling business case.
I wonder if their decision was driven by political savvy - self driving cars help the blind/elderly, and automate work most people are glad to see automated. Self-driving trucks are going to have a major employment impact which will likely draw political resistance.
Is the premise here that Google could already have market ready self-driving car tech that they could be selling but they're going slower to make people comfortable? This is the first time I've heard such an argument. It's very interesting if true. Are there any data points to back that up?
I think its the other way. Taking the plunge to 100% self driving is going to take a very long time. Google's systems seems to require elaborate 3d mapping of the entire road. In the poor states like where I live and where many people live on dirt roads that streetview has never seen (and some that don't even show up on Google maps), it is going to be a long time before fully automated driving is a proper 50 state solution.
This on the other hand is something that could show up in cars in 5 years, and provide meaningful benefits far before Google is ready.
That conclusion is almost certainly incorrect. Internal communications at Google indicate strong confidence in the approach and viability of the cars. There was constant crowing about hundreds of thousands of miles driven autonomously (with the only at fault accident being the car committing the egregious sin of expecting an overtaking public bus to yield for an indicated merge). A recurring internal criticism is that they have been ready to go to market for a while, but are proceeding with extraordinarily caution. Google probably wants a repeat of the Personal Computer market: open, agile, competative. There's a hint of this in the way they structure deals (quietly helpful, non-exclusive). "You want the technology? Sure. You want exclusivity? Nope." If Uber had asked for a technical partnership instead of straight up stealing the tech they'd probably have gotten what they stole and more with a smile and a high five.
I'm not as pessimistic. I think Google is taking its time since a bad accident would be a PR disaster. Given how big a deal this is, it makes sense for them to take it slowly, and I don't think we can read much into this in regards to the state of their self-driving tech.
Its a race between UBER building/acquiring self-driving capabilities vs. Google spreading to all the markets.
Sadly, as much legislative power as Google may have, I think we may be in an age where its easier to create the technology of self-driving cars then to get through the political/regulatory red-tape that UBER has been fighting through for years. That's probably an exaggeration, but given the how many other companies are dabbling in the self-driving space now, it may be less innovative than a few years back. On the other hand, I don't thing political/regulatory barriers are any easier to get through.
At least we have two big players trying to solve a big problem, so hopefully we'll benefit in the end.
reply