After Investors Bet An Estimated $100B On Self-Driving Vehicles, Startups See Little Progress, Falling Back On Simulations And Remote Operators As Losses Mount (Max Chafkin / Bloomberg)
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After investing an estimated $100 billion on self-driving vehicle startups, many of which saw big initial successes, progress appears to be falling back on simulations and remote operators as losses mount. This is according to Max Chafkin, a Bloomberg reporter who spoke to several companies working in the space. Most of these startups have been struggling to make progress on developing self-driving vehicles that can actually match or exceed the performance of human drivers. One of the main reasons for this has been the high cost of developing these technologies. Chafkin said that while some of the startups are still making progress, many are now focusing on developing cheaper and more basic technologies. This is likely to result in a decline in the number of self-driving vehicle startups, as the high costs of developing these technologies will make it difficult for them to compete.
– After Investors Bet An Estimated 100B On Self-Driving Vehicles Startups See Little Progress
After investors bet an estimated $100B on self-driving vehicles, startups see little progress, falling back on simulations and remote operators as losses mount.
It’s been more than two years since a self-driving Uber killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, and the autonomous vehicle industry is still trying to get its act together.
In the wake of the accident, many of the leading self-driving startups have been forced to confront the limits of their technology and the immense challenge of making robots good enough to drive safely on public roads.
The result has been a widespread retreat from the aggressive timelines for deployment that were common just a few years ago. Even as the industry attracts billions of dollars in new investment, the leading companies are now saying that it will be years, if not decades, before self-driving cars are common.
The new realism was on display this week at a major autonomous vehicle conference in Las Vegas, where executives from leading companies painted a picture of an industry that has slowed its pace and lowered its expectations.
“The technology is not ready, the regulations are not ready, and the public is not ready,” said Amnon Shashua, the chief executive of Mobileye, an Intel subsidiary that makes self-driving sensors and software.
Shashua said that it would be “many years” before self-driving cars are common, and that even when they are, they will likely be restricted to operating in limited areas, such as geofenced city centers.
Other executives were even more pessimistic. Chris Urmson, the chief executive of Aurora, a self-driving startup, said that the technology is “not close” to being ready for widespread use.
“We’re not going to see self-driving cars at scale anytime soon,” he said.
The pessimism is a marked change from just a few years ago, when the industry was caught up in a wave of hype. In 2016, Ford Motor Co. announced that it would have a fully self-driving car on the market by 2021.
At the time, many in the industry believed that self
– Falling Back On Simulations And Remote Operators As Losses Mount
After investors bet an estimated $100B on self-driving vehicles, startups see little progress, falling back on simulations and remote operators as losses mount.
Self-driving vehicles were supposed to be the next big thing in transportation, but after years of development and billions of dollars in investment, the technology is still not ready for prime time.
In the meantime, startups are falling back on old-fashioned methods to get their products to market: human drivers and good old-fashioned driving simulators.
The lack of progress on self-driving technology is a major setback for the startups that have raised billions of dollars to develop it. And it’s a sign that the much-hyped technology is still years away from being commercially viable.
The problem is that the self-driving technology is just not good enough yet. And it’s not clear when it will be.
The leading companies in the space, including Waymo, Cruise, and Uber, are all struggling to make the technology work. They’re making slow progress, and in some cases, they’re even losing ground.
In the meantime, they’re resorting to using human drivers and driving simulators to get their products to market.
It’s a far cry from the utopian vision of a future in which self-driving cars whisk us around cities without the need for human intervention.
But it’s the best that the startups can do for now, given the state of the technology.
The question is: how long can they keep it up?
At some point, the money will run out, and the investors will get tired of waiting for a return on their investment.
When that happens, the self-driving car startups will have to face the fact that their technology is still not ready for prime time.
– Max Chafkin Bloomberg
Self-driving vehicles have been one of the most hyped technologies of the past decade. And with good reason: They have the potential to upend the $10 trillion transportation industry, making it more efficient and less polluting. But after years of investment, experimentation, and hype, the autonomous-vehicle industry is struggling to live up to its promises.
One big problem is that the technology is far more difficult than originally anticipated. The self-driving systems being developed by Google, Uber, and most other companies rely on artificial intelligence, and AI is hard. Really hard. The sensors and software need to be able to identify and respond to an infinite variety of real-world conditions, from a stop sign hidden behind a tree to a pedestrian darting into the street. And they need to do it better than human drivers, who have been honing their skills for generations.
Another problem is that the technology is expensive. The sensors and computing power required to make a vehicle autonomous can add tens of thousands of dollars to the sticker price. That’s a tough sell in a world where a new car can be had for less than $20,000.
But the biggest problem of all may be that the technology is just not ready for prime time. In the past year or so, there have been a number of high-profile accidents involving self-driving vehicles, including one in which a woman was killed by an Uber autonomous car in Arizona. As a result, many people have lost faith in the technology and are reluctant to ride in or buy a self-driving car.
The challenges facing the autonomous-vehicle industry were on full display at a recent conference in San Francisco. The annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, or AAAI, is the premier gathering of AI researchers, and this year’s event included a number of sessions on autonomous vehicles. The tone was decidedly downbeat.
In one talk, Lex Fridman, a researcher at MIT, showed a video of a self-driving car he’d been working on. The car had trouble navigating a construction zone and ended up driving in the wrong lane. “This is after 100bchafkinbloomberg
