Indeed, it seems they have some real talent, excellent financing, and political backing here to really accomplish something. Or at least make a strong go at make pioneering efforts to commercialize this.
HN's usual negativity generating machine is in full force in this thread. It's sad because we should be supportive of bold companies making difficult plays. But it seems we're all in a race to reward people who can most effectively dismiss the ideas as not possible.
Yet people constantly criticize Silicon Valley as not investing in bold ideas anymore and instead obsessing over the next photo sharing emoticon apps. You can't wonder why VC/angels are hesitant to capitalize entrepreneurs taking real risks when this is the public reception they get - especially from a site full of technical people and entrepreneurs.
The more money the startup has the more the hyper-critical audience shows up to show the world how much smarter they are then these guys. People who actually went out in the world, built something, and got $640m to implement the idea - and haven't even yet made public releases/test available that can be analyzed and fairly criticized. But that doesn't seem to stop anyone.
It's amusing reading the comments on automatic driving. In Tesla-related discussions, Tesla fanboys dominate and are annoyed at criticism of Tesla. This discussion, on the other hand, is rather negative.
There's been a lot of work on self-driving trucks. Mercedes has demoed self-driving trucks. Volvo has some heavy trucks in operation in mines. Otto and Volvo have some kind of a deal on self-driving. If Volvo's involved, safety is being considered. Their CEO has said that if one of their cars crashes in auto mode, it's Volvo's fault.
Volvo says they will deploy 100 self-driving cars in one city in Sweden in 2017. These will only work on certain mapped roads, but they will be driven by customers, not Volvo employees, and the driver will not be expected or required to pay attention. This will be the first large deployment of self-driving without human backup. (Volvo also leads in self-driving marketing videos.[1])
> It's sad because we should be supportive of bold companies making difficult plays
It's not wrong to ask questions in general, although you can avoid a negative tone.
This is a special case though. They make mistakes here and people will die. Asking questions and pointing out every issue is, at some point, necessary.
The same problem exists for every person who enters a vehicle. That very same risk is why there is an economic incentive to do this in the first place. If they succeed far fewer people will die. And it will drive down the costs of commerce improving the quality of life for everyone.
So I take issue when the default perspective is pessimism and dismissiveness. This site is so hostile to founders who aren't doing totally safe projects or gasp those who get millions of dollars without publicly launched products.
Maybe this is just a self-selecting audience of bored pessimistic people who have time to spend commenting on their vague notions of other peoples projects on HN while the optimistic bunch is too busy building their own interesting stuff.
I find Otto a particularly interesting case because they've been pretty quiet with the contents of their tech, so we have very little idea of what they have accomplished yet other than partnering with Volvo and having lots of $$ in the bank. But I'm sure most people here would be fine commenting dismissively just off the headlines they read without really knowing any specific details of the project or the people behind it.
> "while the optimistic bunch is too busy building their own interesting stuff."
I am also dismayed by the general pessimism in this thread, though I think there is a third (and IMO most likely scenario):
Anyone who has actual direct, inside knowledge of this field will not write publicly about it for a litany of incredibly obvious competition/secrecy reasons. The people most qualified to speak on these matters are staying silent.
HN's usual negativity generating machine is in full force in this thread. It's sad because we should be supportive of bold companies making difficult plays. But it seems we're all in a race to reward people who can most effectively dismiss the ideas as not possible.
Yet people constantly criticize Silicon Valley as not investing in bold ideas anymore and instead obsessing over the next photo sharing emoticon apps. You can't wonder why VC/angels are hesitant to capitalize entrepreneurs taking real risks when this is the public reception they get - especially from a site full of technical people and entrepreneurs.
The more money the startup has the more the hyper-critical audience shows up to show the world how much smarter they are then these guys. People who actually went out in the world, built something, and got $640m to implement the idea - and haven't even yet made public releases/test available that can be analyzed and fairly criticized. But that doesn't seem to stop anyone.