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Uber throws in the towel
- Thread starter Cosmacelf
- Start date
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Yep. I shared the news in the "autonomous progress" thread.
I think we are seeing the consolidation begin. Uber was never going to be able to compete with companies like Waymo and Cruise.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Why do you say that (not a snark) ... are you basing that on horrible work culture or something else ?
I'd say - it wasn't a predestined thing. The accident killing the pedestrian basically did them in. The accident itself can be traced to their work culture ... though could have happened to anyone (can still happen with a Tesla) ...
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Basically, Uber's FSD was horrible and they were not showing enough progress to justify the cost. Here is some data from the 2018 CA DMV Report:
We see Uber was far behind with 26,899 autonomous miles and an abysmal 0.4 miles per disengagement. In contrast, Waymo did over 1.2M autonomous miles with 11,154.3 miles per disengagement. Cruise did 447,621 autonomous miles with 5,204.9 miles per disengagement.
Fast forward 2 years to the present and what do these companies have to show in terms of progress. Uber had nothing to show for it. They had a fatal accident in 2018 and basically shut down. Meanwhile, Cruise and Waymo made significant progress with their FSD and are deploying robotaxis. Waymo has a driverless commercial ride-hailing service up and running in Phoenix. Waymo is also planning to launch Waymo One in CA soon. Cruise is poised to launch driverless commercial ride-hailing in SF. Cruise has the Origin, their custom built robotaxi designed from the ground up. Cruise is also expanding their autonomous driving to Phoenix.
Bottom line is Waymo and Cruise are demonstrating progress and growth. Uber has not. That's why I don't think Uber had what it takes to compete with Cruise and Waymo.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Uber basically didn't want to test in CA because of reporting (just like Tesla). For someone like Uber (i.e. taxi service) that itself is not great - but par for the course considering the work culture.
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
I would add to my last post, yes, Uber had a terrible work culture not conducive to making progress with FSD IMO. The fatal accident shut down their FSD. Bad work culture + bad FSD = bad news.
But also, while Uber probably did have some talented engineers on their staff, Waymo has 2000+ engineers and access to Google Brain and DeepMind for powerful ML. So I don't think Uber had the resources needed to compete with the likes of Waymo or Cruise.
I would add that while Tesla has a small staff, Tesla has a good work culture, excellent ML engineers, access to a lot of data and the ability to design and build the necessary hardware like the FSD computer and Dojo in house. These are all big advantages that Tesla has over Uber.
So I just don't see Uber as having what it takes to succeed in FSD. And now we see that they did not, since they folded and sold their autonomous driving to someone with better chances.
Daniel in SD
(supervised)
I wish someone would give me a 40% stake in Aurora. There's a chance it will be worth more than nothing.
I'm surprised Uber's tech is worth anything let alone $4 billion.
Cheburashka
Active Member
I don't really see what Aurora, who apparently is much further ahead than Uber in FSD development, gains from this deal. My assumption is they are banking on Uber as a partner to commercialize and that is why this deal is worth so much.
It came with a $400M "investment" and, yes, having Uber, Softbank, Denso, Toyota, ...etc... as partners was key for eventual commercialization.
I gather Aurora must have done a fair bit of due diligence.
I gather Aurora must have done a fair bit of due diligence.
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