The headline is a bit misleading, it looks like Google is not going to manufacture self driving cars, but will develop self-driving technology. I'm not sure how this is a surprise.
If Google develop the car, they need to do all the end user support. This is not in the DNA of Google. If they provide the technology to a car manufacturer, they can extract a fair amount of money from them and they do not have to deal with direct end user support.
When my car has a problem, I want to talk directly with someone to get it fixed.
Google has ventured in that area though, just take a look at Pixel, their smartphone.
But the scale difference between developing a smartphone and a car is quite a big step. I am not that surprised though, getting into the car market is difficult and unsure. Just doing the technology part seems to make more sense imo.
Yes: and just take a look at how many people are unhappy with the support they get on their Pixel[1]. The number of people who would be able to tolerate Google's level of hands-off with a car, where the expectation is typically "for the first couple years if anything is even slightly weird you can drive it to your local dealer and someone's job is to try to make you super happy", is going to be much much much lower than the number of people who are currently tolerating it with consumer electronics.
I'd say the big difference here is running costs. I've worked with automotive clients (Ford, GM, Renault etc) for a while, and that's a big factor for them, especially in the lease market. Also given that a car is not a 'throw it away and hand the customer a reconditioned unit' item, repairs become far more expensive and time critical.
The sheer drag of maintaining a network of repairers, keeping them stocked with (Sometimes huge) spare parts, managing repair times etc is astonishing. I can see why Google and Apple would want to lean on established players instead of going it alone.
I would be excited to see acquisitions or serious partnerships from both Google and Apple. By partnerships, I expect something like what Google did with its Nexus devices. For example, a google car, manufactured by and advertised with Volvo, but with its own brand, logo, etc.
It would be different if they already had an attractive car on the road, but they haven't. Just look at how much time and money it takes for Tesla to create a profitable vehicle for the masses. The R&D costs for autonomous driving are small in comparison.
If comma.ai can (sort of) create an autonomous vehicle with just a couple of employees and Tesla can go fully autonomous with a sensor suite that's 5% of the cost of Google's, how much money is there to be made for Apple and Google? Even if the quality of their self-driving setup is 10x better, they will have a hard time selling it.
The technology Google uses is about to become way cheaper. I may be wrong, but from what I've read about the development of LIDAR systems, I estimate the prices will drop in the next few years. I think we're at a similar point where we were a couple of years ago with accelerometers and gyros, before MEMS became commonplace.
Even if I am wrong and the tech breakthrough will not happen, I think the economies of scale that kick in for the large-spread usage of Google's approach would make it competitive enough.
I, personally, believe that Tesla's approach for full autonomy is insufficient.
There are other companies out there having functionality on par with Tesla, on cars, on the road. Google's capabilities are superior in almost every way. Not yet commercial, but if it gets there(very likely), it'll be a bet that pays off. They have a ton of training data and experience in the field.
All the more, I think Tesla's functionality will not lead to Level 4 autonomy within the next decade because fo a false-start approach.
A company like Google has the scale and experience to create a regulatory landscape in which a car even 10% less safe will be forbidden on public roads. They might even look good doing it.
As geohot discovered, cars are sold to consumers only after they are sold to regulators. Tesla understands this, but if someone else builds a safer car, incumbents' experience may be rendered academic.
The problem with this scenario is that modern cars are already safe enough that it will literally take decades to gather enough data to prove a statistically significant 10% safety increase from autonomous cars, even if you sell millions of them.
Keep in mind the NHTSA safety statistics you frequently see quoted are for the entire car population on the road, with a significant portion of 10-15 year old cars which are less safe than new cars. Even 25 year old cars without crumple zones and airbags is something you see on the road every single day.
Those have to do with fatality rates, not accident rates(1 accident per 250,000 miles).
>> statistically significant 10% safety increase
For a sample size of a million cars , each year is 15 Billion miles, i.e. 60,000 accidents per year, vs 54000 accidents per year is statistcally significant.
Fatality rates are what's recently been discussed, e.g. related to the Tesla AutoPilot crash.
If you switch to measuring "accidents", two big concerns pop up: 1) who defines what an accident is? and 2) if we get autonomous cars that end up in less minor accidents but same or more number of fatalities, is it really worth it?
We could extend it to "fatalities and accidents where someone is left permanently disabled", which is pretty unambiguous and does measure the most important factors. But I'm afraid (or rather, glad) that this won't give you an orders-of-magnitude increase in statistical samples as you get when counting all accidents.
I'd imagine it would be incredibly difficult to get that kind of regulation without all the other existing manufacturers having the same incentives to support it.
I think it's smart business. This is very akin to Valve partnering with HTC for VR headset manufacturing. Let someone who knows hardware do hardware and you can focus on R&D and ideation.
Google's koala cars were never intended to be the beginning of an automobile manufacturing venture, they're just an example of the form factoer for vehicles Google would like to see built by existing manufacturers, running Google's Autonomous OS and sensor suite, on a Google branded transportation network.
Google has been pursuing partnerships with car makers for years, so I'm not sure what part of this report from The Information even counts as news.
Google will presumably announce formally their strategy for spinning Chauffeur off into an independent, revenue generating Alphabet subsidiary in just a few hours, sometime later this morning.
