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

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

#381

Post by nradov »

thereisnospork wrote: post #380
nradov wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of naive suggestion totally ignores the way that most middle-class American families actually use their cars not just as transportation but for storage and as a mobile base of operations. Please explain how I'm supposed to let others use my car as a short-term rental during the day while it's full of child seats, snacks, extra clothes, sports equipment, etc. Plus I don't want random people coughing / eating…

If you'd think instead of being naively condescending: a.) Snacks and supplies in trunk - lockable containers inside. All could be accessible via app/key fob only. b.) Who says the suburbanite your renting to won't want to use a car seat? c.) Camera, ID, cleaning deposits, car self-drives to detailer on your lunch break. $1,000 a month is a heck of a carrot to keep a car clean - even if that's not for you is your wor…

No those suggestions are even more ridiculous and impractical. There's no way you're getting $1000 per month; you obviously just made that number up. SUVs/CUVs (which most people prefer now) don't have separate lockable trunks. I don't want other random kids in my child seats either: think puke and head lice. There are at least three totally different types / sizes of child seats anyway (rear facing, front facing, booster with or without back) and the straps have to be adjusted to fit the child so even if the renter also has kids the type and number of seats are unlikely to match what they legally need.

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

#382

Post by castratikron »

iandanforth wrote: post #320
Noos wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem though is that humans can adapt, and the AI in general can't. A go AI can play Go perfectly, but if a player overturns a board, it can do nothing to right this situation and resume playing. It's just following a list made for it, albeit a fairly substantial list. The worry is this, the cars will not fail like a human will. It may even be dangerous The car may not even be able to move in certain situations…

This. When these systems fail they will fail in surprising and inhuman ways. The accidents will appear to average people as easily avoidable which will give the impression of low quality engineering. e.g. Who doesn't slow down when a semi crosses their path on the highway?

Here's a good example. Self driving car side swipes a bus at ~25 mph. You can see the driver of the bus throw his hands up in the air in disbelief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9T6LkNm-5w

From a human's perspective it's a stupid mistake. It seems stupid because computers think differently than people do. On the other hand a computer would probably think a human were stupid if it saw a human make a mistake when calculating the logarithms of every number between one and a million.

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

#383

Post by nickparker »

nmeofthestate wrote: post #191
nickparker wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Speculation - not inside info. Again, I haven't been told anything about this aspect of the system yet.

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

#384

Post by alasdair_ »

monkmartinez wrote: post #183
gfodor wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why is cost such a common argument made here against emerging tech? This argument seems to come up every time some new expensive technology is transitioning closer to consumers' hands, and the current price, which is obviously expected to go down at scale as it does for nearly all widely useful technology, is used as evidence nobody will be able to afford it. I've seen this argument made for technol…

Serious counter question; Why is nobody talking about cost? Cars are very expensive... is self-driving tech going to increase or decrease the cost of a vehicle? Do people generally want more freedom or less freedom choice? Why does everyone assume the cost will decrease with scale? How many people can afford a Tesla right now? Let alone a fully autonomous car? If flying were more affordable and less strict more peopl…

> Do people generally want more freedom or less freedom choice?

I'd quite like the freedom to be able to commute to work, go out for drinks with people after work and come home again at the time of my choosing without relying upon someone else to cart me around, paid driver or otherwise.

THAT seems freedom-enhancing.

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

#385

Post by euyyn »

aquadrop wrote: post #225
euyyn wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd guess the downvotes are more for this part: > I don't think there was a single death directly because of autopilot (not 100% sure though). There was a death, and it was very prominent.

Yes, I know about that white truck death. By 'directly' I meant situation when autopilot 'went crazy' because of some bug and sent your car in a spin on a highway etc. Probably should have used different wording.

I imagined as much. Even so, "autopilot sent your car in a spin" vs "autopilot ran into a truck" is a distinction without a difference for the people inside the car.

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

#386

Post by euyyn »

tyingq wrote: post #101
foolfoolz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

googles cars have gotten in a few fender benders and side swipes people have died using teslas autopilot

Don't google cars drive on a limited number of preplanned routes with a very low speed ceiling? That is more cautious, but that doesn't, on its own, suggest better tech. That is that the Google cars are actually safer, more advanced, etc.

> with a very low speed ceiling

Those are the Koala cars. Before those, there were the Lexus which went in highways too.

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

#387

Post by Qwertious »

vkou wrote: post #204
Ajedi32 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It's also more convenient to always eat out, but the world won't become a better place if home-cooking dies. Under the no-private ownership model, you are going to get screwed by surge pricing.

Presumably slightly less screwed if you reserve beforehand, though, and I suspect what would actually happen is massive carpooling during peak times (also, small one-person cars that are cheaper)

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

#388

Post by Qwertious »

Noos wrote: post #333
Qwertious wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars?" Presumably. It's pooling for cost-saving reasons, much like cloud computing. If people want to be frugal, they won't buy a car.

You are losing a lot of time and freedom in the desire to save money though.

That's true for more than just cars.

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

#389

Post by Qwertious »

Neliquat wrote: post #221
space_fountain wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an advantage to electric cars here though. If you don't need to wait while the vehicle charges electric vehicles are a lot more attractive even with relatively small batteries.

Electric cars just pollute upstream, and even with solar, that does not seem like a solved problem just yet.

"Electric cars just pollute upstream"

Not quite true - generating upstream is much more efficient, since the power plant doesn't have the weight restrictions that a car (which needs to haul itself around on four wheels efficiently) has. So even if power plants didn't ditch fossil fuels, electric cars are largely a step up.

That said, we are moving heavily towards renewables, and charging isn't time-critical so peaking power sources like Wind will be more than good enough.

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

#390

Post by Qwertious »

ghaff wrote: post #112
scarmig wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If driverless cars work at all, they'll be substantially safer than human-driven ones. There's a strong moral case for banning human-driven cars on public roads if it'll save tens of thousands of lives. There's also a strong possibility of media-driven moral panics. Think of poor little Billy, hit by one of those irresponsible human drivers! Insurance companies will charge steep premiums to the risk takers who want t…

>Insurance companies will charge steep premiums to the risk takers who want to drive their own car. People make this claim. Why would there be a premium over what is paid today? Maybe there's a big premium relative to much lower premiums associated with new types of vehicles although there will still be insurance needed. But that's relative to a future state, not relative to today.

Insurers will be able to 1. pay out less, and 2. sue auto companies if the car crashes, since they wrote the car's driving program.
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