Imagine what will happen when we combine decentralized car use with autonomous driving. Uber is already cheaper than driving yourself around, but think how affordable it would be if no Uber driver was needed at all.
Uber is only cheaper than driving yourself around if you points of comparison involve low-mileage use cases, a high-density area, an expensive car, and expensive gas. In other words, a wealthy individual who lives in San Francisco, New York, Chicago, or LA.
For everyone else, Uber is far more expensive than owning their own car.
LA isn't a high-density area - it's very spread out, with lots of low-medium density housing.
How is Uber doing in LA, I wonder? Just watching it here on HN, you could be forgiven for thinking it was SF-only (due to the demographics of the site)
The LA metropolitan area may not have as high a density as SF, NY, or Chicago, but that's primarily because it's several times the geographic size of those metropolitan areas and includes lots of uninhabited space. Many parts of LA are just as dense as similar areas of SF, NY, or Chicago.
Te type of customers who would use Uber in LA live in the high-density areas (generally K-town, Hollywood, West LA, and DTLA), and Uber does well in those areas. For anyone living in the low-medium density areas, i.e., the suburbs, Uber simply isn't economical.
I lived in Santa Monica, which wasn't too high density, but I recall that taxi prices were absolutely outrageous. Hopefully Uber has caused those to drop some.
This is what excited me about Google buying part of Uber -- self-driving Uber taxis. Combine that with electric vehicles that can intelligently remove themselves from the swarm of cars and be replaced by a charged vehicle, and you have on-demand, cheap, and potentially environmentally more sound taxis.
Why do you think the consumer will see any significant price benefits from automation instead of having the profits diverted to shareholders, executives or as reinvestments?
Google isn't the only company developing autonomous cars. Multiple car companies have own working prototypes. So it doesn't look like there's any monopolization of the technology itself. It seems likely that the capital cost of an autonomous car will be roughly comparable to the capital cost of a normal car.
Sure, but a self-driving car by itself is of fairly limited utility in a taxi operation; the advantage that they provide comes with the data gathering and analysis system that provides centralized control of the fleet. Automation, as it matures, should drive down the per-car cost and drive up the competitive advantage of the player that can expend the most on central resources.
When you reduce the relative importance of the per-unit cost and drive up the relative importance of centralized costs, you make a market that has stronger natural tendency to form a monopoly, because there is more of a positive feedback loop reinforcing the position of the leading player.
I disagree with your assessment that Tesla doesn't have any new technology that will improve their efficiency over Nissan.
Tesla builds their own powertrains and battery management systems, which are good enough that other automakers license or purchase these components from them.
I also believe that Tesla has efficiency advantages due to the high degree of automation they've built into their factories, as well as the lack of dealership markups. Tesla's profit margin on the Model S is excellent compared to many other automakers, which leads me to believe that they will also be able to offer more for less with the Model 3.
I think the fact that Tesla "gave away" all their patents is a sign that this isn't a battle over technology, but a game of marketing, branding, and efficient manufacturing. I seriously doubt Tesla has some secret factory sauce that Nissan (who's been building cars for decades) doesn't have access to.
I disagree with this. The key isn't the technology but building the better driving experience.
If someone comes out with a vehicle with on demand torque, a 0-60 time under 5.5s, excellent handling, and most importantly, great styling and interior, I'd consider it. Tesla vehicles are able to stand on the merits of the driving experience, EV or not. That's not something no other EV manufacturer can currently say.
Aside from it being available via Amazon Instant, note that HBO Go is listed as a partner, announced as "coming soon". It is an act of remarkable honesty that Amazon put HBO Go with no checkbox, as most vendors would have put a checkbox with a superscript indicating that it was coming soon.
This is an incredibly misleading title. Tesla owners will undergo no inconvenience, since the item being replaced is the wall adapter, not any parts on the car.
Apple's idea behind their App Store is that every app is reviewed to make sure it's up to their standards. They also provide a myriad of built-in UI elements and a Human Interface Guide that is supposed to direct developers in the design of their app interfaces.
One could postulate that Apple can fix third party apps by altering the available UI elements and interface guidelines. In fact, this type of alteration was done for iOS7 to guide developers into updating their app aesthetics to match iOS7.
Tesla's Falcon doors are not the same as Gull-wing doors.
They have an additional joint which minimizes the horizontal space required, so you won't hit the car next to yours while getting in and out.
Would much prefer to be able to see the actual number of each thing, even if it's at the bottom.
I instead found myself trying to extrapolate the number by staring at the "since you loaded this page" number and observing the difference as it changed each second.
