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George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

electrek.co

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Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#381

Post by [deleted] »

zeveb wrote: post #376
gavman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The NHTSA memo seems extremely reasonable to me. If you're going to put to market a product where the smallest malfunction could easily kill many people (both those using your product and those around them), answering a couple regulation questions seems like a small hurdle to pass. Nothing here is saying "we want to shut you down", it's saying "we want to make sure you pass the most basic safety standards".…

> That's an obvious part of a government's duty to keep it's citizens safe. Which article of the Constitution is that? I don't seem to recall it.

[deleted]

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#382

Post by strathmeyer »

thfuran wrote: post #362
lutorm wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, humans have absurdly stupid corner cases during actual use, too. It depends on how small the corner is, I think.

Yes and humans require certification before they are permitted to drive vehicles on public roadways.

To get that certification, do they test you first, or do they wait for you to screw up and then take it away from you??

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#383

Post by celticninja »

dexterdog wrote: post #355
makmanalp wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they probably didn't - because large auto companies have time and resources devoted to safety and compliance.

And bribery

If bribery was an option would VW have gone to such lengths to hide true emissions rather than slipping someone a backhander?

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#384

Post by chme »

zeveb wrote: post #376
gavman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The NHTSA memo seems extremely reasonable to me. If you're going to put to market a product where the smallest malfunction could easily kill many people (both those using your product and those around them), answering a couple regulation questions seems like a small hurdle to pass. Nothing here is saying "we want to shut you down", it's saying "we want to make sure you pass the most basic safety standards".…

> That's an obvious part of a government's duty to keep it's citizens safe. Which article of the Constitution is that? I don't seem to recall it.

I am not from the US, but they surely have some legislation that makes building and selling killing machines, without at least some government controlled safety checks, illegal.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#385

Post by avs733 »

pixie_ wrote: post #336
Animats wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holtz's Twitter rant is at [1]. Cruise Automation was very lucky to be acquired by GM before they got a similar letter. Similarly, Otto being acquired by Uber. They were both proposing to sell similar add-on systems. Their valuations would have been much lower after receiving such letters. NHTSA has it right. "It is insufficient to assert, as you do, that 'your product does not remove any of the driver responsibiliti…

Tesla probably has a dozen people whose sole job is to interact with NHTSA.

Tesla does, and there has been some back and forth of personnel employment between NHTSA and Tesla as well as both have seemingly intentionally poached from each other.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#386

Post by smallnamespace »

BurningFrog wrote: post #354
smallnamespace wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> honesty, bias, and personal ambitions of the people As long it's humans that write and execute laws, this is strictly unavoidable. It doesn't depend on the particular details of how we do regulation.

Under Rule of Law, one set of humans write the laws. If you break them another set of humans decide on your guilt and punishment. Set 1 (legislators) can and do write laws to favor and disfavor individual actors, and I agree that that is in part unavoidable. Set 2 (judges and juries) are appointed randomly after it's become a legal matter, so it's impossible for any inappropriate influence in either direction before…

> no "set 3" of regulators that issue orders during the day-to-day running of the business

You mentioned 2 branches of government, the legislative and judicial. But the third branch, the executive, does (in part) exactly what you described above.

Taken to the logical extreme, your view means we should replace every government adminstrator with a court, including for mundane decisions like whether to grant a marriage license. That system would be horribly inefficient and probably not much more consistent or effective since random people off the street won't have the domain knowledge a regulator has.

Also, regulators are representatives of the people and are subject to laws just like everyone else. The escape hatch of the legal system is always available -- if you think the regulator got it wrong, then take it to a court, and a judge and jury decides who is right.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#387

Post by prostoalex »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #330
mikeryan wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google I'm totally cool with. They've been at this a long time and still don't seem very close to actually releasing a product. I like Tesla's and what Elon's accomplished has been impressive but he seems hellbent on "winning the race" to release a self driving car and that worries me.

I wish it were possible to buy a Tesla without any autopilot features except basic cruise control, because I know how damnably difficult the edge cases are for a self-driving car, and I'm perfectly capable of driving a car manually, thank you very much. Tesla's cars are so good I'd almost be willing to pay more for one without autopilot. Almost.

While driving, you have to do a double-pull on the lever to activate the autopilot, a single pull just activates the basic cruise control. So you can still buy one and just never activate it.

Alternatively, earlier editions of Model S shipped without autopilot, which was then sold as an aftermarket upgrade as late as this spring (when autopilot was an optional $2,500 package on a new Model S).

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#388

Post by _b8r0 »

Not everything we do is a success, and there are many reasons for our failures when they happen. The trick is to lick your wounds, learn from your mistakes and get back on the horse as soon as you're able to.

I hope George learns all the lessons he needs from this to make whatever happens next a success.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#389

Post by scblock »

zeveb wrote: post #376
gavman wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. The NHTSA memo seems extremely reasonable to me. If you're going to put to market a product where the smallest malfunction could easily kill many people (both those using your product and those around them), answering a couple regulation questions seems like a small hurdle to pass. Nothing here is saying "we want to shut you down", it's saying "we want to make sure you pass the most basic safety standards".…

> That's an obvious part of a government's duty to keep it's citizens safe. Which article of the Constitution is that? I don't seem to recall it.

I'm surprised you haven't learned yet that the constitution grants authority to congress to pass laws, which include laws related to safety.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#390

Post by Kadin »

uw_rob wrote: post #333
dmritard96 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

beyond the obviousness of what you have overlooked, its also worth pointing out that not all autonomous car usage will be substitutive. What if i just send my autonomous car to go take a picture of something? I might not have done it before, but now I will because it only costs a few cents/mile and none of my time.

Another really cool use case will be sending your car to drive around the block for an hour or go back to your house and park, while you are going out to places. Beats paying the $10 to park for an hour.

Lots of interesting effects there, all the way up to basic urban land-use decisions.

Suddenly the price people will pay for parking is going to be closely related to the price of gas. The maximum value of a parking space in the city is basically the cost to send the car back out to some suburban parking garage during the day and have it come back in later for you. My guess is that the market-clearing price is going to be a lot lower than it is today. Lots of urban parking structures might end up getting repurposed for other uses, if you can't fill them at hundreds of dollars per space per month.

In the short run I could see the average self-driving car's gas usage being higher than a conventional car's, but in the longer run the same self-driving features might make fully electric cars more palatable. Long charging times don't really matter if you can let the car go and charge itself while you're at work, for e.g.

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