from Hacker News

Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars

by astigsen on 8/22/17, 9:40 PM with 85 comments

• by mabbo on 8/23/17, 1:04 AM

  One way to help prevent a winner-take-all situation is to have more open protocols for some of the hard problems. An example that I feel needs to be done right now: an open protocol for signaling intent.

  Today we have left and right blinkers, brake lights, the horn, and some 'body' language when you use the whole vehicle to show your intent. But with fully autonomous cars, we could be giving out signals that are rich with information.

  "My exit is soon, I'd like to change to the right hand lane everybody!"; "People up ahead of me seem to be stopping suddenly, watch out as I may need to do the same!"; "The right lane is blocked at 43.718045, -79.507663, pass the word back to everyone so they are prepared".

  If we can build an open protocol for how cars can share this rich information, then as more and more cars are autonomous, the roads will improve continuously. Even non-autonomous cars could start listening to this data and sharing it with the drivers.

  On the other hand, if we don't build an open protocol then we could start to see, for example, all the Waymo cars helping each other out- but not helping the Teslas or the GMs. There's a winner-take-all effect in action.

• by djyaz1200 on 8/22/17, 11:27 PM

  Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are) safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become even more heavily regulated, and there won't be any tolerance for testing unproven autonomous systems in the wild soon.

  Related... it will be interesting to see how well autonomous cars handle mechanical failures as they (and their tires) age. Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out).

• by Animats on 8/23/17, 4:15 AM

  There's considerable wishful thinking about autonomous cars. Not about the technology; that's coming along fine. (I used to work on that stuff.) About the business possibilities. There's a fantasy that there's a high-margin business opportunity in there somewhere.

  The most likely outcome in the near term is that self-driving is an auto accessory you can order for a car. That's what the car-makers have in mind, and most of them are talking about shipping it for the 2020-2021 model year. In that business model, it's not a big money-maker for whoever sells the self-driving technology. They get to be a Tier I auto parts supplier, squeezed hard on price.

  There's a lot of noise about "transportation as a service". Remember that Uber loses money, even after squeezing its drivers really hard and making them buy and maintain the cars. Actual "transportation as a service" is going to look more like car rental and Zipcar, and will probably come from companies that already operate fleets of cars. They already have "rent by the hour, day, week, or month". They're just adding "rent by the trip". Also, bear in mind that "transportation as a service" requires level 5 autonomy - no driver required - so the vehicles can move around empty to pick up a passenger. That's going to come a few years after Level 4.

  Autonomous cars don't require car to car communications. They don't need to be "connected" at all. Chris Urmson pointed that out when he was heading Google's self-driving effort. From a safety perspective, it might be better if they're not connected. The enthusiasm for car to car communications is coming from the infotainment and advertising people.

• by joewadcan on 8/23/17, 12:09 AM

  This is a great write up but misses how gov't regulation could actually force a winner-takes-all distribution. States (like CA and NV) have already started to draw up their own autonomous driving regulations and the DOT is planning to support this evolution with Federal standards.

  It's reasonable to assume that these standards will get more stringent over time as accidents, insurance, and compatibility become forced issues (likely though lawsuits). The companies that have the data and systems to meet these standards will be able to keep up but it'd be hard (read: impossible) for a new entrant to catch up after the initial players are further down the evolutionary curve.

• by salt-licker on 8/23/17, 3:21 AM

  This write-up overlooks that hardware integration is neither free nor easy. Tesla has a huge advantage over an 'autonomy in a box' model because 1. It only has to support 2 or 3 car models and 2. It has full control over all design decisions.

  Imagine trying to calibrate your third-party self-driving software for every different car geometry, sensor placement, transmission system, and steering sensitivity across a few different car manufacturers. If you screw it up for one car model, people die and it's your fault.

  Now let's say waymo chooses a sole partner to avoid this, GM, for example. Now waymo and GM have to work together to build a car, with a huge expertise barrier between the two teams. Will GM be willing to redesign their decades-old electronics platform around Waymo's self-driving system? Will Waymo put in the effort to make their sensors easily maintainable by GM mechanics? If the relationship doesn't last forever, much of this effort is wasted.

  Tesla has expertise on both sides and has a mandate across the organization to make the integrated system work. Not to mention a huge head start handling UX and safety regulations in the field. They may not have a monopoly, but I expect them to be the first to level 5 and the leader in autonomous driving market share for years to come.

• by dgregd on 8/23/17, 8:18 AM

  So much talk about LIDAR and other sensors. Why nobody talks about obvious idea of Road Object Message Bus? ROMB is a protocol where each road object (a traffic light, a sign, a car, etc.) can transmit info about itself. A car could broadcast its direction vector, intention to turn, any non ROMB moving object it sees. A traffic light could broadcast current state and when it is going to change. That additional information would greatly enhance overall security, especially during rain and snow conditions.

  Self-driving is such important (just after eliminating combustion engines) that we could upgrade existing cars with cheap ROMB boxes. Vehicle GPS tracking system costs about $30. ROMB box would cost about $60.

  Let's say a car ROMB received info about the white truck, while your car cameras and vision recognition systems see just a cloud and any truck in 50 m range, that conflicting info should cause the car to slow down.

• by ghaff on 8/22/17, 10:28 PM

  This makes sense--and is quite consistent with what I've heard around some efforts being far more open (ahem) to open sourcing their code than their data.

  A lot probably comes down to the size of the moat. If some fairly modest dataset is "good enough" that implies needed data will be widely available can be used by anyone for their automation algorithms. (Regulation could also force some level of standardization at this layer.)

  Alternatively, truly vast data sets could turn out to be the difference between decent assistive driving systems, autonomy on highways, and more broadly useful and enabling self-driving technology. Such data sets could end up being outside the capabilities of a few companies who got there first.

• by stephengillie on 8/22/17, 11:43 PM

  Given the lack of network effect in cars already, it's not likely we'll see a huge explosion of inter-car connectivity anytime soon. Even Tesla see their cars largely as individual machines, and not nodes on a highway network.

  Example: Driving with cruise control on at 60 mph. The car in front is going ~59.5 mph, so you slowly gain on them. Why do the cars not communicate their speed, so your car can adjust speed to maintain a safe distance? Even cars of the same brand can't do this today. What will be the catalyst for this changing?

• by dalbasal on 8/23/17, 8:45 AM

  Interesting questions posed, and relevant. Centralizing forces like network effects can be very powerful in technology fields, and they're constantly evolving. We don't have generations of experience to draw predictions from, like traditional manufacturing. Data aggregation advantages seems to be something companies believe in, and are pursing.

  From full-autonomy onwards, it is very hard to predict anything. There will still be manufacturers of course, but the manufacturer-consumer structure of the market could completely change. I think there's a decent chance personal ownership will decline.

  Removing drivers from ride-services will drive down costs, a lot. Probably enough to change ownership incentives and market dynamics.

  If that happens, 2nd order effects will also be big. People act very differently when they pay per-km explicitely, even at reduced rates. Tolls (economists love tolls, btw) become more palatable when rolled into a per km price. There might be fleets of little, light cars servicing city centres.

  In this chaotic context, I think it's hard to predict anything about market structure.

• by mikhailfranco on 8/23/17, 9:39 AM

  Combining maps with road journey data is already an oligopoly, based on: first mover advantage, economies of scale, network effects, satnav products/apps, in-car systems, mobile device OS oligopoly, fleet management data and value added data analytics.

  The 3+1 companies of sufficient scale to dominate the market are: Google (Android), HERE (was Navtek, was Nokia), Tom Tom (Apple iOS), and Inrix (startup) - which does not create its own maps, but has captured enough driving data to compete with the Big 3.

  The only other major map provider is Microsoft Bing, but it does not (AFAIK) have significant products based on driving data, although it does have 'T-Drive' and various other research efforts. Losing the battle for mobile OSes has crippled its efforts.

• by anovikov on 8/23/17, 9:12 AM

  Important point is that software for self-driving is subject to virtuous cycle because the more it is in use, the more information it collects and the better it becomes. Which in turns means more use... And it can go out of control with one supplier dominating the market completely.

• by petra on 8/22/17, 11:37 PM

  Let's say you're a strong company ,one that can manage to achieve a lead of, say 5 years over competitors with the tech. Does anybody think you won't(most likely) manage to bind yourself to a stable competitive advantage in this industry, if such exists ?

• by amelius on 8/23/17, 12:57 PM

  > winning LIDAR doesn’t give leverage at other layers of the stack (unless you get a monopoly)

  Patents are effectively a grant of monopoly.

  Also strong vertical integration can still ruin the market.

• by nostrademons on 8/23/17, 6:33 AM

  Planet Labs is the big wildcard in mapping. When Google first mapped the world, they had to hire thousands of contractors to drive cars down every street, and even pretty metropolitan areas would be updated once or twice a year. Now, there's a company with a fleet of a couple hundred satellites that's imaging the whole world every day, with a resolution of about 10 feet. Not sure on their pricing - I think it's a lot - but the capital cost of building an accurate physical map has gone down dramatically.