The first iterations will not be consumer cars. I would have put my money on trucking before taxis, but it looks like i'm wrong.
The first iterations will be expensive, triple the cost of a normal car perhaps? that's ok if they get 10x the use. When you put in that kind of investment, it's ok to have dedicated staff for maintenance. You also get to learn a lot about failure modes, when and how to do upgrades, there's lots of good stuff that can happen there.
Google is in a pretty unique place. They have the data to make them work. They can afford a large staff to maintain the cars. They can afford flight data recorders for the cars. They can afford to create an insurance subsidiary. Insurance is cheap if you can prove robot cars never cause accidents. They can afford these things in dollars, technical talent, legal talent, and international reach.
Uber is lucky because it's not google's core business. They've got a lot of cash, but they don't (afaict) have the depth of resources to throw at the zillion problems that will inevitably come up. The only piece google lacks is the focus. It's google's game to lose.
The first iterations will be expensive, triple the cost of a normal car perhaps? that's ok if they get 10x the use. When you put in that kind of investment, it's ok to have dedicated staff for maintenance. You also get to learn a lot about failure modes, when and how to do upgrades, there's lots of good stuff that can happen there.
Google is in a pretty unique place. They have the data to make them work. They can afford a large staff to maintain the cars. They can afford flight data recorders for the cars. They can afford to create an insurance subsidiary. Insurance is cheap if you can prove robot cars never cause accidents. They can afford these things in dollars, technical talent, legal talent, and international reach.
Uber is lucky because it's not google's core business. They've got a lot of cash, but they don't (afaict) have the depth of resources to throw at the zillion problems that will inevitably come up. The only piece google lacks is the focus. It's google's game to lose.