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A comment on Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest. Parent comment

Re:Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest by loceng on Monday November 13, 2017 @06:11AM (#15685661)
IPO is good for Uber - not for society though, who will be the ones to capture the losses.

Also, Tesla often is brought up in this competition - usually mentioned between Uber and Lyft and Chinese companies - however Tesla is positioned to dominate here. I wouldn't doubt that they're working on the apps internally to create the shared vehicle system that Elon speaks of. How many vehicles could Tesla create AT COST spending the $2B / year that Uber is burning? Where Tesla has a fleet of assets on the road ...

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Re:Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest by kogepathic on Monday November 13, 2017 @07:10AM (#15685906)
> How many vehicles could Tesla create AT COST spending the $2B / year that Uber is burning?

While I don't disagree, I think the major question here is "how many vehicles can Tesla create" given their difficulties in scaling Model 3 production.

Tesla could have the best self-driving tech, but if it is exclusive to their cars and they can't manufacture them fast enough, someone else will build their own fleet and win all the market share.

Unfortunately I see Tesla's hurdle being manufacturing volume, and that's a lot harder to solve quickly than fitting sensors to existing cars.

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Re:Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest by loceng on Monday November 13, 2017 @08:54AM (#15686508)
They're a new automotive manufacturing company - being a few months off estimated production for Model 3 isn't a big deal. It's surprisingly good in hindsight.

Their current capacity capability at the factory is 500,000 vehicles annually. I suspect once they launch the Semi and get 500k+ pre-orders of it, they'll be able to get a loan to build or acquire another factory.

As Elon has mentioned many times, designing the automation is magnitudes harder than designing the vehicle itself. They're on an exponential growth path and it's going to be amazing once they're pumping out millions of vehicles annually.

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Re:Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest by beager on Monday November 13, 2017 @10:42AM (#15687216)
> IPO is good for Uber - not for society though, who will be the ones to capture the losses.

I agree with the sentiment, and it baffles me that public markets would consent to shouldering these losses, presumably by overpaying for Uber at and after IPO and riding it back down to sane levels.

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Re:Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest by loceng on Monday November 13, 2017 @12:31PM (#15688157)
It's the controllers of large pools of money who simply make money off of transactions and who are separated from accountability, responsibility, or even caring about incomes who are making the bad decisions.
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Re:Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest by elmar on Monday November 13, 2017 @09:47AM (#15686823)
> Tesla is positioned to dominate here. I wouldn't doubt that they're working on the apps internally to create the shared vehicle system that Elon speaks of.

Is Tesla Preparing to Roll Out its Ride Sharing Program With the Model 3?

http://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/13075/is-tesla-preparing-...

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Re:Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest by loceng on Monday November 13, 2017 @10:33AM (#15687147)
Of course they are preparing. Facial recognition, perhaps with voice confirmation - a good idea to have a built-in safety word or phrase so if stated then it silently triggers the authorities to intercept the vehicle - for beginning the vehicle/route to destination; the buttons in trunks should perhaps even notify authorities (?) if they are pressed while the vehicle is moving; it'd go badly for pranks amongst friends ... though hopefully the first occurrences of that will go into the news - would be good marketing anyway - might not be a good idea with further thought.

Edit re: safety word or phrase - It should also trigger recording of audio and video, perhaps they will record video and/or audio to make sure there's no shenanigans; as fun as it might be to have "fun" in a vehicle while getting driven somewhere autonomously, if it's shared then I think we as a society would opt to dissuade that behaviour...

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