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The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

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Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#91

Post by tptacek »

stale2002 wrote: post #66
bertiewhykovich wrote: post #59

What this article tries its damnedest to elide is the narrative-wrecking fact that Holtz, confronted with a standard request to demonstrate that his product meets regulatory standards, took his ball and went home. /Exactly/ why he threw a tantrum is anyone's guess -- but there doesn't seem to be any real good possibility. Either his product couldn't meet standards and this is an attempt to obfuscate that inconvenient…

Well, maybe the reason is that these regulator requests costs tons of money to fulfill because no, you cannot you give simple laymans answers to the questions, you need a team of lawyers to do this work, because everything you say in these "simple" requests can and will be used against you. And perhaps there are better uses of their time, and better regulatory environments where they can release their product. Maybe…

Daniel Berlin, an attorney with regs experience, on another thread on HN, said: no, you can pretty much just respond to NHTSA with straightforward answers and whatever documentation you have, then arrange a conference with them to figure out what additional documentation you'd need to generate to move forward with your plans.

I don't believe it's the case that Hotz needed to incur six figure legal bills to respond to NHTSA's initial order. He probably could have responded to NHTSA personally, without counsel, and game-theoretically not damaged his potential outcomes at all. He had the option to find out, and threw it away.

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#92

Post by notfromhere »

Zigurd wrote: post #31
kesselvon wrote: post #5

This is a bit of weak spin on the obvious news that they probably couldn't comply with the government requirements.

On the surface it looks like a small speed bump compared to what some startups face in, say, medical devices. But it depends on where Hotz got his capital. We know it's not a big number. The compliance requirements might have cost more in consultants who are experienced in replying to such information requests, than his paid in capital to date, IF Hotz could find good consumtants in time. It seems like he had alterna…

If this was actually game changing, investors would pony up the cash.

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#93

Post by Kadin »

hash-set wrote: post #71
prawn wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even ignoring the safety aspect, people buying any remotely major product will have the expectation that it will ideally be supported for some time to come. e.g., buy a car and have the manufacturer around for long enough to help out with servicing, parts, etc.

Saturn, Saab...

http://parts-catalog.acdelco.com/

(ACDelco is a house brand of GM, similar to Chrysler's Mopar or Ford's Motorcraft.)

The auto companies are an interesting example, because all of the major manufacturers have subsidiary organizations which exist just for parts manufacture, and all of them handle parts manufacturing and distribution for far longer than the original manufacturing run. While GM might only make a particular model car for a few years, ACDelco might continue to make consumable parts for it for decades, based on demand.

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#94

Post by Kadin »

dilemma wrote: post #57
stale2002 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe they'd rather just start selling their product immediately in China?

China has the same level of regulation as other industrialized countries. If it doesn't pass in the US it won't pass in China either.

If they can't get it to drive in the US, I doubt it'll be able to navigate most big cities in Asia. (Maybe a few of those ghost ones.)

I think what's attractive about China may not be its lax regulatory environment with regard to transportation, but rather in regard to investment.

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#95

Post by dpark »

stale2002 wrote: post #66
bertiewhykovich wrote: post #59

What this article tries its damnedest to elide is the narrative-wrecking fact that Holtz, confronted with a standard request to demonstrate that his product meets regulatory standards, took his ball and went home. /Exactly/ why he threw a tantrum is anyone's guess -- but there doesn't seem to be any real good possibility. Either his product couldn't meet standards and this is an attempt to obfuscate that inconvenient…

Well, maybe the reason is that these regulator requests costs tons of money to fulfill because no, you cannot you give simple laymans answers to the questions, you need a team of lawyers to do this work, because everything you say in these "simple" requests can and will be used against you. And perhaps there are better uses of their time, and better regulatory environments where they can release their product. Maybe…

> Maybe in a couple months we are going to hear about the imminent release of the Comma Two in Not-America. I seriously doubt they've gone home. There are tons of places where they could starting selling right NOW.

Then I'm very thankful for the NHTSA we have in America. I don't want a bunch of half-ass, poorly-engineered self-driving cars on our roads. I use those roads, and so do my family members.

While I'm looking forward to self-driving cars taking over, I don't want the Comma One in the field if they can't handle the most basic safety inquiries.

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#96

Post by Fricken »

emp_zealoth wrote: post #74
Fricken wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one fatality with Autopilot happened because the system worked too well, the driver came to trust it when he shouldn't have. The shittier the Comma one is, the more in-the-loop the human has to be, and risk compensation becomes less of a factor.

What in the fucking hell are you talking about? A system that is seemingly half blind (repeatedly crashes into vehicles that only partially obstruct the lane), decapitates a guy, crashes another one into a fucking post It didn't work too well. It pretended to work too well and gotten people killed. There is a reason MobileEye walked away from Tesla They are being rather cavalier with their attitude to safety, apparen…

One fatality in 200 million miles of driving reflects a cavalier attitude to safety? It's not like the guy who died in that accident wasn't familiar with autopilot's reccommended usage, he read the manual, Tesla made it pretty clear you still gotta watch the road while it's engaged. I mean, if you're into misusing cars, any of them will allow you to accelerate into a brick wall if that's your inclination.

I'm not sure what Falcon wing doors has to do with any of this.

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#97

Post by dpark »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #76
ontoillogical wrote: post #39

And that's how you get to walk away with your dignity intact when you can't ship a working product on your self-inflicted insane timeline.

With your dignity intact? The guy basically lost all his credibility with this action. Walking away with dignity intact would be replying to NHTSA, "Dear Government, we've found out we are unable to provide the information you asked for because the product is nowhere near mature enough. Therefore we are officially abandoning all public tests and sales effort, and are going back to the drawing board until such time th…

I think he meant "ego" instead of "dignity". This is how you walk away with your over-inflated ego intact. Behaving this way indicates that you have no dignity.

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#98

Post by nkrisc »

noonespecial wrote: post #2

There's 2 possible reasons. 1) It really is near vaporware just being shown off in perfect conditions to seem exceptional. 2) It actually does work that much better with only $1000 worth of hardware and responding would give away the secret sauce. I don't give much credit to the theory that they didn't see this coming and were caught flat-footed by the sudden requirements. Oh and: Final speculation: there’s a reason…

I believe Arthur C. Clarke said something that's relevant here, "technology that's indistinguishable from magic is probably bullshit."

No, that's not right...

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#99

Post by Fricken »

ethanbond wrote: post #79
Fricken wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one fatality with Autopilot happened because the system worked too well, the driver came to trust it when he shouldn't have. The shittier the Comma one is, the more in-the-loop the human has to be, and risk compensation becomes less of a factor.

You think maybe part of why there haven't been more numerous malfunctions might be because of rigorous NHSTA testing of various parts of the automobile? Also just because a person on birth control gets pregnant doesn't mean we start pushing pills with unknown success rates in order to get people to use condoms.

If you're imagining that autopilot is anything more than driver assist technology, then there already is numerous malfunctions, autopilot fucks up regularly. With or without NHTSAs involvement, Autopilot (or Comma one) wasn't designed to be safety critical autonomous driving technology. NHTSA has about as much business regulating it as it does regulating whether or not you can hang dice on your rear view mirror.

If it were a form of birth control, level 2 would be the pull-out method: no guarantees, so be vigilant.

Re: The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

#100

Post by gst »

agildehaus wrote: post #68
bertiewhykovich wrote: post #59

What this article tries its damnedest to elide is the narrative-wrecking fact that Holtz, confronted with a standard request to demonstrate that his product meets regulatory standards, took his ball and went home. /Exactly/ why he threw a tantrum is anyone's guess -- but there doesn't seem to be any real good possibility. Either his product couldn't meet standards and this is an attempt to obfuscate that inconvenient…

There were major problems with every demo I saw of the product. In one video, the camera lost tracking of the road due to lighting conditions not being favorable for contrast. In another, Hotz seemed far too amazed that the car properly took a gentle bend in the highway. Confidence is not something I would assign to his product. Or any product that is a camera-only lane-follower. That Holtz caves at the slightest tho…

> There were major problems with every demo I saw of the product.

Doesn't surprise me, after reading http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driv...: "Instead of the hundreds of thousands of lines of code found in other self-driving vehicles, Hotz’s software is based on about 2,000 lines."

In general I like the approach of using deep-learning instead of complex hardcoded rules (see the article above for more details), but even with deep-learning you're going to need a complex ruleset in order to deal with the edge-cases.

Getting a prototype of a self-driving car working is probably much less than 5% of the overall amount of work that's required. Getting the car respond correctly to the long tail of edge cases is the other 95% of the work.

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