Driverless Startup Zoox Suddenly Removes CEO 58
Last month, Bloomberg shed some light on a secretive Australian startup called Zoox that is working on an autonomous vehicle unlike any other. It can reportedly make noises to communicate with pedestrians and drive bidirectionally, meaning it can cruise into a parking spot one way and cruise out the other. Today, it is being reported that their CEO Tim Kentley-Klay is being dismissed from the company after closing a massive financing round in July to the tune of $500 million. From the report: Kentley-Klay tweeted on Wednesday that the firing came "without a warning, cause or right of reply." "Today was Silicon Valley up to its worst tricks," he wrote. Jesse Levinson, the company's other co-founder and current chief technology officer, will be promoted to president, said a person familiar with the decision who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The person declined to offer an explanation for the move. Carl Bass, the former CEO of Autodesk and a Zoox board member, was named executive chairman for the company.
In an emotional missive on Twitter, Kentley-Klay criticized the board for their decision. "Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win, the board chose the path of fear," he wrote, charging that the directors were "optimizing for a little money in hand at the expense of profound progress." Before starting Zoox, Kentley-Klay was offered a job with Google's self-driving project, now called Waymo. He turned it down, and has touted Zoox's strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and others are taking. The Zoox board, which includes Levinson, voted to oust Kentley-Klay, said the person familiar with the situation.
In an emotional missive on Twitter, Kentley-Klay criticized the board for their decision. "Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win, the board chose the path of fear," he wrote, charging that the directors were "optimizing for a little money in hand at the expense of profound progress." Before starting Zoox, Kentley-Klay was offered a job with Google's self-driving project, now called Waymo. He turned it down, and has touted Zoox's strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and others are taking. The Zoox board, which includes Levinson, voted to oust Kentley-Klay, said the person familiar with the situation.
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Something like that, I think. "Bidirectional driving"? Wait until they hear about this upcoming innovation called "reverse gear"!
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That depends on the length of the journey.
P.S.
It almost sounds like you stopped believin'
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""Random startup loses its CEO"... who cares?"
You missed the joke. Driverless company removes the driver from its board.
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Weird strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
[Kentley-Klay] has touted Zoox's strategy of building its own vehicles for full autonomy as wiser than the standard approach of retrofitting existing cars that Alphabet Inc.'s Waymo and others are taking
Why is that wiser? The problem with today's autonomous cars isn't getting the (retrofitted) car to do what it needs to do, it is figuring out what it needs to do based on available data from its sensors. That problem doesn't really change if you build a vehicle with autonomy in mind; it'll have to navigate the same roads as retrofitted cars and deal with the same conditions.
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It's wiser because it raises more VC money. You need to say "oh, we're doing something in way X which is different from Google and that's how we plan on competing successfully against them".
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Why is that wiser?
Because the car-part is easy; just... 3D-print that bitch or something. You really only need a few moving parts: two doors, five wheel-shaped bits (one for the dash) and some buttons for the interior.
How hard is that??
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You forgot the seats.
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It's a startup. OF COURSE the founders are too full of themselves.
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That problem doesn't really change if you build a vehicle with autonomy in mind; it'll have to navigate the same roads as retrofitted cars and deal with the same conditions.
The problem does change. It becomes simpler on one hand and it becomes more complicated on the other.
By simpler, I mean it no longer needs to be unidirectional. The electric driverless car essentially becomes an electric driverless robot. It can go forward and backward. It can move sideways into parking spaces (all of this, assuming it makes its intentions clear to other drivers/pedestrians). It doesn't need a full windshield with maximum visibility for the human driver. And in China (and at least one of th
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A simple electric charge on the door handle until the vehicle stops will quickly solve this passenger behavior . . . :)
hawk
Agree in general (Score:2)
I'm sure there's some parts of their design that could help... but it's going to be a small-constant-factor improvement that won't make up for a gap on the AI side.
What it really adds is a bunch of complications around designing a car and making the wheels turn and what not.
Please change the title to: (Score:5, Funny)
Driverless startup becomes driverless
Eat your own dog food! (Score:4, Funny)
Driverless startup eliminates driver.
Finally a company that puts its money where its mouth is!
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When the headline is; "Expired Copy of TurboTax Replaces CEO" then I'll know they are serious about automation.
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No, that's the replacement for the CFO.
CEOs are still analogue, you replace them with magic 8-balls
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The primary purpose of a startup CEO is to say "dude, can you lend me some money?"
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Mechanical Turk (Score:2)
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With skill honed playing GTA, the service is sure to be a smash hit.
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I know why I'd remove the guy. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win"
Anyone who uses a phrase like this unironically probably isn't someone I'd want as CEO.
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Ha! I said the exact same thing just below...
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"Uhhh listen, just because my hella-lame board of directors didn't want to go with my astoundingly le-epic for the win bacon start up plan didn't mean they had to have security wheel me out to the parking lot in my Aeron chair" - totally normal CEO
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"Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win"
Anyone who uses a phrase like this unironically probably isn't someone I'd want as CEO.
They just finished a financing round. He's probably been forced to be upbeat in front of a new group of clueless older white men every single day for the past six months. It takes awhile to detox from something like that.
No wonder... (Score:3)
Rather than working through the issues in an epic startup for the win
No wonder they fired this asshole; he can't even speak properly.
"without a warning, cause or right of reply." (Score:4, Insightful)
So is this an internal coup, or did the board just find out about something this guy has done which will cause problems for the company? Either way, there's no meat with these potatoes. Show me this meal again when it's complete.
As far as bidirectional vehicles go, they only make sense for delivery vehicles. They make zero sense for passenger vehicles, because passengers want to face forward. For deliveries, though, there are a handful of compelling reasons to use them, which I've posted about before. The primary reason is to deal with tight driveways. They don't make sense unless your sensors are very cheap, though, since you need twice as many of them. If Velodyne comes through on their promise of $50 LIDAR [ieee.org] then maybe it's feasible.
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Some LIDAR units operate through 360 degrees. So no additional units would be needed.
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The board owns the company. The CEO may have potentially started it by begging for money, but the board were his bosses.
Makes Sense (Score:1)
Now both the company and the product are about removing the person at the helm.