For purely selfish reasons I want their entire business model to not be viable. Because if they can't make their business model work in taxi's then perhaps it definitely won't work for freight arrangement. I can only hope.

I still worry a little about Amazon's entry into my industry, but I really doubt they are going to ruin the whole thing.

@fresconews - Mark Beach

Autonomous Uber Volvo is sleepy.

bloomberg article - apparently the Uber Volvo wasn't at fault.

Uber Volvo not at fault, but also not capable of responding to a threat coming at it from the side apparently.



Implied in this statement is that, had a human driver taken over, they could have avoided the accident.

I think this summarizes it the best:



Autonomous vehicles are hard, and it's going to be messy until someone figures it out. People will die, both because of faults from other human drivers and problems with the autonomous software.

I hope companies don't stop because of that.

clown show

Maybe it is implied that Ubers system for alerting the driver to take over was not fast enough. I think even with an alert engineer by the wheel you will have to account for at least a second to takeover, maybe 2-3seconds.

http://jalopnik.com/the-judge-in-the...aro-1793908051
&
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/3...vandowski.html

Ain't lookin good...

May Uber go down in flames!

Hilarious. Uber had to have known, or ought reasonably to have known. They are ****ed.I suspect their only out may be to offer Google a substantial portion of the company.

I can't believe how asleep at the wheel Google is. Where is their corporate espionage??? How the **** can someone just steal all their proprietary technology, sell it to a competitor for a half a billion, then only find out because of an accidentally cced email??

With cucks like the current or former Google CEO/CTO in charge, it's a certainly that the Chinese have stolen all their proprietary technologies, which they're probably sharing with various Chinese companies like maybe Baidu, and have multiple backdoors into everything.

Google has a good sense of timing. Wait until it's evaluated at $68B, and then strike. Wait for the fruit to ripen. Uber playing checkers while Google playing chess imo.

i think they got levandowski dead to rights, uber? not sure, but it will be interesting to see how far google wants to take this


http://jalopnik.com/the-engineer-in-...-mi-1794001559

damning evidence:

http://nypost.com/2017/04/07/uber-ha...s-and-drivers/

Prices have certainly gone up in the west side of LA since they moved to upfront pricing. Although I think the majority of those hikes are related to the "booking fees" jumping by 85% over the last year or so.

Also my client keeps saying I have these 10 dollar Visa Credits and they never get applied. Uber support told me tough luck, it's an error on their end. Annoying.

Drivers like me in L.A. have noted this over the past few months. It's hard to know how often they do it, but I have confirmed with multiple passengers that the price they paid was largely over the price paid to the driver (after Uber's cut is factored in, obviously). I'm thrilled to see this lawsuit, and cannot wait for a passenger to file a concurrent lawsuit on behalf of passengers!

The prices wildly fluctuate in Santa Monica these days. Sometimes you'll be told there's some type of surge pricing, but that only seems to show up when fares are 3x normal. Even stranger is that UberPool is generally offered at the same price as UberX of late. Almost feels like they're trying to get me to not use Uberpool now.

If you don't get paired up during a Pool ride, the price is virtually the same:.85c/mi for pool versus .90/mi for X, and the same .15/minute rates. You 'save' with pool if you get matched up well. IF both are being picked up and dropped off relatively close, your price will be roughly half of the X price. If the second passenger is only going 10% of the way as you, he will save lots whereas you wont save much.
So, for a short SM to SM fare for example, the pool rider won't save much because you wont get matched often. And if you do get matched up by another person on your short route, you'll save roughly half (if they're going as far as you), but the ride will take you twice as long. for short rides, the whole picking up another person thing lengthens the ride a lot.

The driver is supposed to take over when he/she thinks that the car is doing it wrong. There is no alert.

Out of curiosity, are you making enough to make rent and eat at least one meal per day?

I used to drive full-time, when I could make $30/hr gross, and about $20/hr net after all is said and done (taxes/depreciation). Now, I drive about 12 hours a week, during the rare times where i can hit $25/hr+ ($16/hr+ net). I haven't driven base rates in 2.5 years (surge/promo rides only). Meanwhile, my wife makes great money and I have side projects.

Drivers giving rides for base rates fail at math. They are grossing about $18/hr and netting $10/hr tops. Their wear and tear is worse than mine, so this might be generous.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...osses-continue

They wouldn't have so many bookings if prices reflected reality. In other words, without 'subsidizing' rides for passengers/drivers alike through investor money, they wouldn't have as many bookings.

Well obviously. The end game is autonomous logistics.

This won't happen anytime soon though. How many years can they blow cash?

That is pretty much the giant question.

Considering how well they fundraise. Probably a very very long time.

Google will have self driving cars on the road before Uber. Who will fund Uber when another autonomous rideshare company is already up and running?

Another VTOL: