That thing is well-known to break all the time. You can even find people on Yelp talking about how the robot is broken. It's mostly old technology anyway; it's still a fundamentally mechatronic system similar to what AMF made several decades ago.
That one didn't make money either, and it also broke a lot, and had all sorts of other problems. Believe it or not, the core technology has improved a lot less than you might think. They may have put a prettier skin on it but it's still the wrong approach.
I do think their engineers have likely slipped in quality over the years, but that's not the problem. The problem is their culture of product managers being rewarded for launching projects and nobody being rewarded for maintaining projects. They financially incentivize people to launch and kill projects.
It sounds like a leadership problem, because only leadership can change the culture like that.
> Do you think you are at more risk betting your enterprise on Microsoft or Google?
Microsoft? No.
Google? Absolutely.
I don't trust Google for anything that isn't related to selling ads. And I trust they will maintain their relationship for God-fucking-awful customer support. And I assume they will continue their tradition of sunsetting projects haphazardly.
I drive through mountains all the time, and have to fill up my car all the time. GP didn't say anything about multiple stops; what I inferred (because it's literally what he said) was that you can have unequal ascending and descending on a round trip - which is geometrically impossible! And even if we are talking about having to stop and get gas, you still get the same benefit of regenerative braking when you are descending, whether it be the first half or the second half of the trip.
Barring something like a city decimating earthquake - for every foot you ascend, you must also descend. There is just as much uphill as downhill. This is true for any trip with any two destinations on the planet (a round trip between a beginning and a destination). This is equivalent to conservation of potential energy in physics.
https://youtu.be/FmXLqImT1wE
That one didn't make money either, and it also broke a lot, and had all sorts of other problems. Believe it or not, the core technology has improved a lot less than you might think. They may have put a prettier skin on it but it's still the wrong approach.