bigfoot12
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Post by bigfoot12 on Mar 13, 2017 14:01:17 GMT
If you thought that the driverless market would be worth $70Bn in 13 years would you launch a $15.3bn takeover today? It seems a high price given the assumptions, but maybe the company does other things?
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Post by jevans4949 on Mar 14, 2017 15:32:46 GMT
Driverless cars are coming. If this company has some significant designs which are working, of course Intel wants some of that.
The big companies in the business at present are Google, whose main expertise is software, and Tesla, which has many interests, but mainly in battery-powered cars. Intel's expertise is in semiconductor chip design and manufacture. They will want to be selling those to Ford, GM, Peugeot, etc.
In fact, as with other computers, there will eventually only be 2 or 3 basic designs deployed worldwide.
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toffeeboy
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Post by toffeeboy on Mar 14, 2017 16:42:50 GMT
I was at a conference last year and one of the speakers was a developer working for Microsoft, he posed an interesting theory in that like you say the driverless car business could be worth 70$ billion but drone technology is really taking off at the moment. Very soon we might be have our parcels delivered by drone, next will taxi drones as is there really much difference between delivering packages to deliver humans. This will then move on to short distance transport drones so the big companies will develop this technology as they realize that the driverless car could be extinct before it hits mass market stage. Of course this could be Microsoft downplaying it because Google are so involved but it is an interesting thought.
Personally don't think that either will majorly take off (no pun intended)
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jo
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Post by jo on Mar 14, 2017 17:04:11 GMT
I assume that navigation will be a great more sophisticated than I can at present imagine. However, when I read about driverless cars, I can't help thinking how simple TomTom's etc still sometimes are at getting you from A to B, even after a couple of decades of tech progress.
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skippyonspeed
Some people think I'm a little bit crazy, but I know my mind's not hazy
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Post by skippyonspeed on Mar 14, 2017 17:42:35 GMT
If ever driverless cars are all that is available in the future, I shall become a carless driver. I think driverless motor cycles could be much more fun
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jonah
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Post by jonah on Mar 15, 2017 6:14:30 GMT
I was at a conference last year and one of the speakers was a developer working for Microsoft, he posed an interesting theory in that like you say the driverless car business could be worth 70$ billion but drone technology is really taking off at the moment. Very soon we might be have our parcels delivered by drone, next will taxi drones as is there really much difference between delivering packages to deliver humans. This will then move on to short distance transport drones so the big companies will develop this technology as they realize that the driverless car could be extinct before it hits mass market stage. Of course this could be Microsoft downplaying it because Google are so involved but it is an interesting thought.
Personally don't think that either will majorly take off (no pun intended)
www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2017/02/15/a-drone-carrying-human-passengers-prepares-to-take-flight-in-dubai/?utm_term=.9163393d6211Personally I expect driverless cars or at least driverless trucks to happen. That will impact employment economics. Which one will replace current taxis I don't know, but I'm pretty sure one will in the relatively near future.
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Post by bracknellboy on Mar 15, 2017 9:27:32 GMT
One of the biggest hurdles to driverless cars is getting in place the legal frameworks in which they will operate. Where we are today, that is probably a substantially greater problem then having the technology to make it happen.
As someone who gets travel sick at the drop of hat unless I'm in control, a future where autonomous vehicles are not only the norm but the only viable option is a horrific one. But its coming.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Mar 15, 2017 10:08:05 GMT
Personally I expect driverless cars or at least driverless trucks to happen. That will impact employment economics. One of the biggest hurdles to driverless cars is getting in place the legal frameworks in which they will operate. Where we are today, that is probably a substantially greater problem then having the technology to make it happen. <nods> Driverless vehicles on public roads are going to be a LONG way behind driverless technology in off-road vehicles. By that, I mean industrial vehicles, agricultural vehicles, and the like. Right now, there are still human beings in tractor cabs, in fork-lift cabs, in mining truck cabs, in any number of similar vehicles that don't have those regulatory issues. Sure, they can operate to a certain degree of autonomy - but within very rigid parameters. Until they start to become ubiquitous, then we can take it as read that the technology is not public-ready, and the legislative environment won't follow. Doing the day-to-day easy bit is, well, easy. It's the edge cases that are the hard bit. The bits where human pilots still take over from autopilot...
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bigfoot12
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Post by bigfoot12 on Mar 15, 2017 10:36:48 GMT
Right now, there are still human beings in tractor cabs, in fork-lift cabs, in mining truck cabs, in any number of similar vehicles that don't have those regulatory issues. There are mining trucks (in Australia - I think) which are fully autonomous and unmanned. (Which proves your point.)
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Post by oldnick on Mar 15, 2017 11:23:12 GMT
One of the biggest hurdles to driverless cars is getting in place the legal frameworks in which they will operate. Where we are today, that is probably a substantially greater problem then having the technology to make it happen. As someone who gets travel sick at the drop of hat unless I'm in control, a future where autonomous vehicles are not only the norm but the only viable option is a horrific one. But its coming. Does that mean you can't bear to travel in taxis or buses? The legal framework for those modes of transport is already established - the passenger can only be held responsible for an accident if they contribute to it - an argument for completely automatic vehicles rather ones where a passenger can take over control. In the right circumstances a flock of driverless vehicles should be safer than the equivalent density of human drivers - but they must never mix!
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Post by bracknellboy on Mar 15, 2017 19:25:53 GMT
Correct - I hate it. The number of times I've got out after a taxi journey to/from airport/hotel etc feeling considerably 'less than well' shall we diplomatically say are numerous. Likewise buses (even more so for some reason, possibly because less chance of having clear line of sight to the road ahead. Worse, I get bored pretty easily: so inevitably on a journey of more than a few minutes I want to pull out a paper/ipad/smart phone or similar, and the act of looking/reading those means I rapidly end up resembling kermit the frog. The idea that I could somehow make productive use of the idle time available as a passenger in a driverless vehicle is a complete nonsense - unless it is also equipped yet-to-be-invented infallible travel sickness avoidance technology. And while I am in the minority, I'm sure its not an exclusive club of 1.
That isn't the issue I was referring to. In both those cases the passenger is simply a customer of a service provider; liability (unless proven otherwise) lies with the service provide i.e. the taxi/bus company etc. However, if we are talking private vehicle ownership and driverless cars (i.e. simply slotting autonomous vehicles into the current norm of private/individual ownership) its a different story. In today's world, if you go into the back of me its your personal fault (well, I would say that wouldn't I). On the other hand if you are travelling in an automonous Skoda that you own, and I'm travelling in an autonomous Aston Martin that I own (I like to think it would be that way around), and despite all the tech you still go into the back of me, who has liability ? You ? Skoda ? The retailer you bought it from ? And what if technology means that cars are not fully autonomous, but have some interdependence (inter vehicle signal/data sharing) ?
None of which is insurmountable (unlike my reaction to being a passenger), but requires a good deal of work. It may also act as an extra accelerator/incentive to a move in the provision/consumption model for cars i.e. to an 'as a service' model rather than ownership.
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Post by oldnick on Mar 15, 2017 19:31:57 GMT
I'm going for joint liability - knock for knock, except I get the replacement Aston, and you...
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Post by bracknellboy on Mar 15, 2017 19:39:52 GMT
And of course the other aspect is the issue of liability for compliance with road rules etc. If my Aston Martin was speeding, or ran a red light, who's liable ?
We are currently in a world where say 99.9% of accidents and breach of road rules are down to owner/driver responsibility, and a legal (and commercial) framework which is predicated on that. That is flipped on its head with autonomous vehicles.
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Post by oldnick on Mar 15, 2017 20:02:39 GMT
Assuming that a fully autonomous Aston could break the law, I think Aston would be liable. If the car were semi-autonomous it would depend on whether the action was as a result of the driver taking over or not. It sounds like a publicity suicide mission for semi-autonomous vehicle manufacturers.
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bigfoot12
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Post by bigfoot12 on Mar 15, 2017 20:31:42 GMT
And of course the other aspect is the issue of liability for compliance with road rules etc. If my Aston Martin was speeding, or ran a red light, who's liable ? We are currently in a world where say 99.9% of accidents and breach of road rules are down to owner/driver responsibility, and a legal (and commercial) framework which is predicated on that. That is flipped on its head with autonomous vehicles. It should be easy to work out who is liable because there will be video footage from several angles, GPS data, radar or lidar and many other sensors.
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