The first gas car only had one gas station to use. Progress is made in small steps. We don't have to have the whole framework ready before anyone can use it.

I wasn't commenting on feasibility or logistics, more on the state of their progress and if they can fully replace current services in cities or if it will augment them. If, for example, they don't work during heavy rain, then they cannot replace Uber/Lyft in most East Coast or Northern US cities.

Actually, interestingly, perhaps that is "right-sizing" the cost of Taxi service?

Humans only at the beck and call of self-driving cars who cannot see well in the rain. Instead of "surge pricing" for high demand, it would be "human pricing" to pay for the "skilled" driver in the rain and snow.

ie: $1/mi during sunny days, $10/mi during snow days, instead of $7/mi every day of the year. Very interesting to consider, and honestly a bit scary thinking of so many people I've met who are using Uber to make a living. :-S

Labor is probably not fluid enough. I expect people to value steady income very highly. That might change if basic income was a thing though.

Very fair point and counterpoint! $100/day guaranteed is worth more than (rand()*200)/day. Consistency is worth more than variability.

A world where Google owns transportation services on the West coast and Sunbelt, and Uber/Lyft owns the East Coast and Northern cities, is a world where in 5 years Google owns transportation services everywhere. Knocking out many of Uber's most profitable markets makes its runway even shorter.

> If, for example, they don't work during heavy rain, then they cannot replace Uber/Lyft in most East Coast or Northern US cities.

Google Maps has a ridesharing comparison function built-in; you don't have to replace incumbents to undercut them when you have the advantage, and the tech will keep improving.

Nah forget rain. Rain is easy peasy. You compute the limits of how much force to apply and stay below them. The only real challenge is dealing with other drivers, but in a rainy climate, that's not bad either since they are used to it.

Ice and snow is the real terror, which affects driving discontinuously and in many different ways. You can go from almost total control to almost total loss of tire grip almost instantly with black ice.

If they launch in one city or a few select cities, I don't think that signal tells you that much.

It is true that if their tech can't handle rain well, they would avoid rainy cities. But even if their tech can handle it pretty well, why pick a city that has less than maximum odds for success? Going for the low-hanging fruit first could very easily just mean that they know how to prioritize, not that they can't reach the higher fruit.

Also, there are lots of other factors (like regulation and other driving conditions) that dilute the signal.

It tells you a lot, 20k cars in one city is a huge problem if you can't run while it rains, then you need to move them all to a storage location. If they do multiple cities then there are only so many without rain being likely, and expanding to more cities means your mapping needs to be done in those locations.

If they launch in a lot of cities and we see a clear pattern of avoiding cities with lots of rain, that would tell you something.

But that's very different from launching in 2 or 3 cities that don't have a lot of rain and also have a bunch of other things in common.

Similarly, I am very interested about how they'll handle real, relatively less rule-oriented more entropic traffic, like NYC and other old eastern cities....

Depending on how they are coded I feel this will be not a big deal at all, or a huge, huge showstopper that will require rearchitecting, but not much in between.