s l o w RIDE

About

Slow Ride (slow.ride) is an autonomous vehicle software company that exists in the Parodyne universe. The company specializes in making autonomous driving software that drives as slowly as legally possible. The initial goal was to create software that drove the car as fast as possible, deliberately breaking speed limits (and in one experiment, even removing the ability for the car to apply brakes at all). The company pivoted to making slow self-driving cars that make liberal use of the brakes so as to keep their software artificially immature in order to extend their development timeline and milk investors for more money. The logic of course being that the company can stay afloat with only VC funding rather than trying to figure out how to turn a profit like other self-driving companies.

The company embraced brake jabs as a feature instead of a bug. The idea for this sprouted out of the fact that the software was riddled with bugs that caused frequent, harsh brake jabs that irritated other drivers. This was pitched to investors as a safety feature to keep occupants and other road users on their toes for potential road hazards. The brake jabs, of course, were not considered to be a road hazard.

Controversies

It turns out however that defrauding investors is illegal, and only several months after being named one of Forbes’ 30-under-30, Oliver was convicted of wire fraud. He is currently serving a 7-year sentence in a minimum security prison.