Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders • Hacker News Board

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#191

Post by nmeofthestate » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

nickparker wrote: post #166

nmeofthestate wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems a bit gimmicky (it's the hyperloop after all). If the self-driving car is the vehicular equivalent of a hot desk, why not just exit it and walk into the hyperloop pod, instead of transporting tonnes of weight of interchangeable self-driving car? Then just hop into a different one that's waiting at the other end.

Disclaimer: I'm starting a job at Hyperloop soon, but haven't actually been told anything about the hardware yet (I'm joining as a software dev), so this is all not-NDA-violating speculation: I believe the cars are also pressure vessels and life support systems. My student team looked into this side of the problem last year, and making the entire ~40 ft long Hyperloop pod a pressure vessel is really tricky. The two c…

Thanks for the inside info - interesting.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#192

Post by vkou » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

jonmc12 wrote: post #146

Am I the only one feeling the press + big tech narrative of "driverless vehicles = safety" is way ahead of itself? OK, "driver error is blamed for 94% of crashes", but what is the validation strategy to show where driverless cars can quantifiably improve? In 2016, Philip Koopman of CMU discusses that there are non-trivial engineering challenges of achieving safety in NHTSA Level 4 vehicle automation: https://users.ec…

It is. We've seen some spectacular self-driving vehicle failures in the past while. Teslas running into half-opened garage doors, vehicles pulled over on the shoulder, the side of a semi, navigating roundablouts by driving into the ditch, driving on the wrong side of the road, yelling at the driver for staying in their lane...

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#193

Post by bluthru » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #21

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #10

Is there really a race to build self-driving cars? It seems that Waymo is eons ahead of everyone else.

I have a lot of respect for Waymo's approach to this. While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims, Google/Waymo has really taken a slow and measured approach and given great care to making sure their cars are actually safe.

>While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims

Do we know how many lives have been saved from Tesla's autopilot? I've only seen anecdotes but I get the impression that it's already a big net win for safety.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#194

Post by Animats » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

MarkMc wrote: post #144

pythonaut_16 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of respect for Waymo's approach to this. While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims, Google/Waymo has really taken a slow and measured approach and given great care to making sure their cars are actually safe.

Actually I think Waymo is too cautious. Tesla has thousands of customers effectively acting as test drivers for their autonomous software, which allows them to collect data at a much faster rate and discover more 'edge cases' than with a more cautious test environment. 33,000 people die each year on US roads and self driving cars offer the chance to dramatically reduce that figure over time. The more aggressively we…

Tesla no longer sells cars with automatic driving capability. The hardware is there on newly shipping cars (although the sensor suite is weak) but it's not active. There's a lawsuit.[1]

It's unlikely that Tesla gets much useful data from vehicles. To debug a vision system, they'd need the camera data from all the cameras, and that's too big to upload over the cell phone data link.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2017/04/23/tesla...

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#195

Post by eslaught » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

lodi wrote: post #50

ohstopitu wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have you thought the consequences of that? No I'm very serious: we are unable to protect smart TVs. Networked smart cars (because let's be real - Google and co. would want to monetize this with Uber-like services, Ads in cars etc.) are a magnitude more likely to be hacked by both the state actors and rogue individuals (altho I don't see why we make this distinction...both are criminal acts). The worst that can happen…

We are not "unable" to protect smart TVs. If anyone gave a shit those things would be locked down tighter than a bank vault, but we don't, so they aren't. But, as evidenced by terrorism paranoia, people do care about their personal safety--perhaps excessively and irrationally so. Security in a networked self-driving car won't be treated as an afterthought, if nothing else because of the massive legal liability.

> We are not "unable" to protect smart TVs. If anyone gave a shit those things would be locked down tighter than a bank vault, but we don't, so they aren't.

Every year, every major browser and major OS gets cracked in Pwn2Own. The cost of these zero-days is going up thanks to good security practices like sandboxing in Chrome et al., but they still happen. Every. Single. Year. Think about that for a second.

The fact is, we can't write secure software, especially secure networked software. I can't imagine writing secure software for cars using current best practices---let alone imagine car manufacturers doing that. To solve this, we'll need (in addition to everything we're doing now) something along the lines of Rust to prevent these sorts of bugs. And even then, it's likely that the net effect will be similar to sandboxing: the cost of an attack will go up, but not enough to prevent random individuals (let alone larger organizations) from finding zero-day security vulnerabilities on a regular basis.

It's extremely important not to be cavalier about this security risk. The combination of zero-days and self-driving cars is a scary one.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#196

Post by TremendousJudge » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

treehau5_ wrote: post #185

zeven7 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Options that Americans would choose to use?

if you take out alcohol and cell phones, you've reduced 70-80% of driving related fatalities with those two alone.

>take out alcohol

that one worked out beautifully last time around

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#197

Post by notahacker » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

petters wrote: post #177

monkmartinez wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No you are not! HN seems to think the same way, and it is one of the worst cases of rose colored glasses I have ever witnessed. What about the cost? Who is going to be able to afford this? Also, what about people that rely on a vehicle for work? Retrofit $75K work trucks with another $75K in self driving gizmos? Find me a practical plumber, carpenter, A/C, lock smith, self-employed guy/gal that will sign up for that!…

In my opinion, the primary use case of self-diving cars aren't personal ownership. Society as a whole wastes a lot of resources when every household has a car that stands still 95% of the time. With self-driving cars, we can plausibly improve that.

We could significantly improve it now with more Zipcar type apps (at least in cities where people live close together) but the most people want guaranteed access to a vehicle at 8am and 5:30pm weekday situation isn't easily solved just by making them mobile when not in operation. Nor - at least in the short term - is people's tendency to use cars, and especially cars with no previous owners, as a status symbol (many people could save more of their income not buying new models and premium marques than allowing it to be used by someone else at weekends and some evenings, but they choose the car that takes up more of their disposable income all the same)

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#198

Post by vkou » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #60

maxfurman wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arguably. Tesla has not done a good job educating their customers on the limits of their "Autopilot" system, which has led to at least one preventable death. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/28/tesla_autopilot_dea...

Where's the proof that it was a driver education problem? This argument gets rehashed every month or so here on HN.

Well, every time this discussion comes up, HN spends >100 posts splitting hairs as to what calling their system 'autopilot' implies.

Given that the technology is useless if you use it as 'intended' (Be aware, and in control of your vehicle 100% of the time[1]) I don't think this debate will be settled anytime soon.

[1] My 97 Avalon drives just fine when operated under those conditions.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#199

Post by Ajedi32 » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

Asooka wrote: post #65

kyrra wrote: post #2

TLDR: * People can apply to use/borrow a Waymo vehicle (RX450 or Pacifica) for some period of time. * "as part of this early trial, there will be a test driver in each vehicle monitoring the rides at all times." * Limited to Phoenix metro area for the time being. * You apply here: https://waymo.com/apply/ * Waymo will be adding 500 more of the Pacifica minivans for this program.

Interesting that they only let you borrow for now. Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Will Waymo let you actually buy and own a car that isn't network connected and fully yours? Seeing how value extraction works in today's enterprise, i.e. via rent-seeking, I'm guessing we're headed to not owning cars any more.

> Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars?

Probably. It seems way more convenient and efficient to be able to summon a car to any location on demand than to have just one car that you use for everything.

No more parking, no more refueling, no more vehicle maintenance; just push a button and a car shows up within minutes (or in some cases, seconds) to pick you up, and step out of the vehicle when you reach your destination. Want a specific model or paint color? It's just a couple taps on your phone away. Car breaks down and needs a tow? Replacement gets summoned automatically, and the car company credits a couple bucks to your account for the inconvenience.

If that kind of service becomes available at a reasonable price point, I suspect it won't be long before car ownership becomes much less common.

Re: Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders

#200

Post by djsumdog » Tue, Apr 25, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

zeven7 wrote: post #178

wcummings wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of simpler ways to reduce traffic deaths that we could be funding.

Options that Americans would choose to use?

Trains? Trams? Good rail networks in cities would greatly reduce the amount of drunk driving. It's simple tech. It's been around for decades. It works, and Americans block it at every chance because ... I still don't understand why.