[HN Gopher] 2026 Predictions Scorecard
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2026 Predictions Scorecard
Author : calvinfo
Score : 15 points
Date : 2026-01-07 21:40 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rodneybrooks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (rodneybrooks.com)
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651275 - Jan 2025 (185
| comments)
|
| _Rodney Brooks Predictions Scorecard_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34477124 - Jan 2023 (41
| comments)
|
| _Predictions Scorecard, 2021 January 01_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706436 - Jan 2021 (12
| comments)
|
| _Predictions Scorecard_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18889719 - Jan 2019 (4
| comments)
|
| _My Dated Predictions_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16078431 - Jan 2018 (50
| comments)
| stanislavb wrote:
| "2. Self Driving Cars. In the US the players that will determine
| whether self driving cars are successful or abandoned are #1
| Waymo (Google) and #2 Zoox (Amazon). No one else matters. The key
| metric will be human intervention rate as that will determine
| profitability." - I love that he's not mentioning the speculation
| company of the century. We don't have to mention it either.
| christianqchung wrote:
| Tesla? I don't love the company or the owner, but it seems
| silly to completely dismiss them so early on, relatively
| speaking. Self driving has been a decades long effort; even
| though I am heavily in favor of Waymo, some speculation towards
| Tesla's path seems fair. At the same time, I agree with the
| article here:
|
| > Tesla (owned by Tesla) has put on a facade of being
| operational, but it is not operational in the sense of the
| other two services, and faces regulatory headwinds that both
| Waymo and Zoox have long been able to satisfy. They are not on
| a path to becoming a real service.
| lbourdages wrote:
| Given Tesla's abysmal track record on keeping their promises
| I feel like it is justified to dismiss them, at the risk of
| being surprised if they do make it.
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| Seems overly reductive, both supply and demand will determine
| what happens. So far demand for Waymos seem fine, they can
| stimulate it way further by lowering the prices. The problem is
| on the supply side, specifically unit price economics.
| Intervention per mile is just one part that goes into
| profitability and I doubt it's biggest one. I would estimate
| the costs to be in this order - vehicle cost, maintenance (and
| vehicle longevity), human intervention, charging, fleet
| management (cleaning, etc), and regulatory environment.
|
| In particular, Jaguar Waymos are over 150k a pop. It seems far
| fetched that any of them will make ever break even. New
| generation is reportedly $75k per vehicle which is
| significantly better. I could not find any data for Zoox
| vehicle cost, but given how few of them there are it's a non-
| player.
|
| Finally the elephant in the room. Outside of camera vs lidar
| holy war, Tesla seems well positioned to dominate supply side
| of the equation if the demand shows up. Robotaxis are
| reportedly under $35k, they own the factories and know how to
| build more, they also own the maintenance side.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Flying cars are nearly ready. That prediction of it not happening
| until 2036 is going to be set false the soonest. Alef Aero cars
| just started manufacturing.
|
| https://www.flyingmag.com/california-firm-first-flying-car-p...
| dvh wrote:
| So the shor's on real qc is still only 35.
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