Uber?

Quote: terapined

Was a huge convention in town?

Its not just conventions and those conventions do not have to huge. Ever since that South By South West ride sharing incident its become more and more obvious that ride sharing service often exacerbate traffic jams and often fail at high use times such as a play ending. Add in a rain storm or something and ride sharing programs can be vulnerable to outages.

Recall the defacto trauma burden shifting that took place in Las Vegas during the Mandalay Bay sniper incident? It was only because so many of those cell phones defaulted to DIFFERENT mapping programs that victims were directed to three different hospitals. People unfamiliar with Vegas who used their Los Angeles purchased cell phones to type in "hospital" were using different mapping programs and that constituted an automatic load sharing for wifi traffic as well as an automated load sharing for hospitals.

Many phones already have both Lyft and Uber on them, but resilency is best in a South American service and oddly enough in the local "Lyft type" program in Austin, whose name I fail to recall.

Little old ladies at walmart are just as expendable as those overworked underpaid uber drivers who will soon be replaced by driverless Uber owned vehicles. Personal preferences? Unmanned air shuttles are already in use somewhere so I doubt personal preferences will matter much or past habits.
Remember when gas lights replaced kerosene lamps in hotel rooms? Alof of weary travelers blew out the gas and went to sleep....permanently! It didn't stop the electrification of hotel rooms.

Quote: AZDuffman

I never got why they wanted to do this in the first place. Why would you leave a model where someone else owns the cars and takes care of them to add all that capital and labor cost?

I suspect there is some big DOD or Darpa money involved. I can't imagine the expense of trying to roll this program out privately? Something along the lines of Solyndra or Tesla?

The driverless monorails around the Seattle airport work quick and efficient already. All they need is a track, which would be relatively easy to install along the interstates, or figure something out with the railroads. This tech is to much in one bite.

Quote: petroglyph

I suspect there is some big DOD or Darpa money involved. I can't imagine the expense of trying to roll this program out privately? Something along the lines of Solyndra or Tesla?

I never gave that thought but might well be. Something is driving it, no sensible businessman would be doing it on their own. While owning the cars would maximize revenue the ability to surge schedule cannot make up for the cost.

Quote: AZDuffman

I never got why they wanted to do this in the first place. Why would you leave a model where someone else owns the cars and takes care of them to add all that capital and labor cost?

In my opinion Uber is trying to leverage their front runner , first mover position to create a different business model that's not so easy to replicate. It's not that hard to start a ride sharing business. Both Uber and Lyft left Austin for about a year because Austin started requiring fingerprint based background checks for drivers. About four companies filled the gap quite well including a non profit start up.

Quote: JimRockford

In my opinion Uber is trying to leverage their front runner , first mover position to create a different business model that's not so easy to replicate. It's not that hard to start a ride sharing business. Both Uber and Lyft left Austin for about a year because Austin started requiring fingerprint based background checks for drivers. About four companies filled the gap quite well including a non profit start up.

I see the not so easy to replicate but also ask "why would you want to?" I see the whole self-driving car thing along with it's car-sharing component as what happens when too many over-educated people get too much money to try too many things. Bunch of techies trying to solve the scientific problems but nobody asking the basic questions:

1. Where will all these cars be staged?
2 Will John Public trade his personal car for a ride in one that might be dirty, smelly, etc from the last rider?
3. How much labor to keep all these cars roadworthy?
4. Assuming it is all correct, will the consumer accept this, or do they want their car where they can store their stuff?

Ford is getting ready to go down the tubes saying they are going to be a "mobility company" not a "car company." While I accept that there are urban areas where owning a car makes no sense. most of the market will probably stay as it is for more than a generation. *SIGH* What keeps happening in the USA. Too many MBAs who never figuratively graduate and treat their business as a case study assignment for a class.

Here's a pic of the woman just before she
was hit. I would have hit her for sure, so
would anybody. But it doesn't matter,
the word is out that robot cars kill people.

Quote: Evenbob

Here's a pic of the woman just before she
was hit. I would have hit her for sure, so
would anybody. But it doesn't matter,
the word is out that robot cars kill people.

It should have had it's high beams on. It over drove it's headlights.

Quote: Evenbob

Here's a pic of the woman just before she
was hit. I would have hit her for sure, so
would anybody. But it doesn't matter,
the word is out that robot cars kill people.

Reminds me of when I was in AZ, some idiot on a bike was walking it across SIX LANES of traffic, against the light. I rolled down my window and yelled "HOPE YOU GET HIT!" He gave some swear words back. Cyclist somehow thinks he was entitled to jaywalk. Looks the same here.

Quote: petroglyph

It should have had it's high beams on. It over drove it's headlights.

It probably doesn't need a lot of white light to navigate. Might not even have high beams those are for human eyes.