Live data from Hacker News

Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

bloomberg.com

141–150 of 152 posts

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#141

> a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi service as soon as next year. So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by next year ? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

He's used to overpromising and then delivering far later than expected - it's worked so well for SpaceX. Maybe he inherited Jobs' reality distortion field?

> it's worked so well for SpaceX.

The only thing that SpaceX has done so far is prove that the traditional space industry was correct that you couldn't cost-effectively reuse rockets.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

19 months from now is also next year. And "as soon as" means "maybe". And as all parents know, "maybe" means "no".

For what it is worth Musk said: “I think we will be feature complete, full self-driving, this year – meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without intervention, this year. I would say I am of certain of that. That is not a question mark.” That’s 7 months, not 19. (The rest is good :)

He also said "We'll be able to do a demonstration guide of full autonomy all the way from LA to New York. So basically from home in LA to Times Square in New York. And then have the car go and park itself by the end of next year"

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be completely pie in the sky type of thinking. The only rational -non delusional- reason I see for the talk is if Musk does it to get better financing terms before the self driving hype dries down. I think taxi services without driver are coming but the the secret sauce is remote human operator working together with high level of automation. Driver is the main cost of taxi service. If you get one operator…

So humans that can barely drive a single vehicle will now be responsible for monitoring 20 vehicles in highly different environments that change at a moments notice?

Not at a moment's notice. The automation must react during emergencies, but humans can navigate and solve stuff that the automation can't.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So humans that can barely drive a single vehicle will now be responsible for monitoring 20 vehicles in highly different environments that change at a moments notice?

Not at a moment's notice. The automation must react during emergencies, but humans can navigate and solve stuff that the automation can't.

Yes. The car is responsible for the safety in all circumstances and recognizes it's limitations. Think level 4 autonomy.

As soon as the car sees it cannot proceed properly, it parks somewhere or go in a safe situation and requests a remote human operator to intervene. Then the whole point is to have a call center sized so that you do not have to wait too much.

We're not there yet, and giving back the control to the passengers is also a possibility. However, in a world where passengers almost never drive, it might be safer to give the control to trained remote operators.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be completely pie in the sky type of thinking. The only rational -non delusional- reason I see for the talk is if Musk does it to get better financing terms before the self driving hype dries down. I think taxi services without driver are coming but the the secret sauce is remote human operator working together with high level of automation. Driver is the main cost of taxi service. If you get one operator…

> It seems to be completely pie in the sky type of thinking. Agreed. This is just more of the usual Musk hype. Maybe he will get some geofenced taxi service going in a suburb of Phoenix, where the roads are wide and straight and the weather is always sunny. > the secret sauce is remote human operator New startup idea: Instead of paying people to mine WoW gold 14 hours a day, pay them to pilot taxis via a low-latency…

> This doesn't work,

Automation must still react instantly to sudden situations (you need liars for this). Humans are there for difficult-to-navigate scenarios and stuff that robo-cars can't handle. Waymo is already testing this in geofenced areas.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#146
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but lots of animals with much smaller visual cortexes also manage to avoid running into things.

This is a good point, but it ignores the often forgotten other half of the equation - human (or in this case animal) eyes. The human eye has orders of magnitude more dynamic range than the best DSLR cameras. This means in edge cases the camera will not see something important, such as a person, when a human will. And when I say the camera will not see it, I mean even a person looking at the camera will not see it, be…

You can get arbitrarily high dynamic range by tinting some pixels, or using a second camera at a different iso. As a silly example, imagine combining the image from a low light camera with one sitting behind a welding shield.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#148
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think he's counting on 'exponential improvement'. You can sort of see where they are going - they have features like summon in a car park or changing lane in traffic that sort of work and they are gradually going to tick off the various driving test skills you need at which point it will sort of work. Then he's hoping it will get reliable as the network learns. It's that last point that may be over optimistic.

The car also stops at signals and stop signs, and yields for traffic before turning. Did you watch the autonomy day presentations and demonstration drives?

Yeah I did. It seems to be coming along.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small birds chase each other around, fly through thick forests or jungle, dodge predators including larger birds, and fly in large flocks. Based on the squabbles I see from my front porch, they seem to at least match human drivers on reaction time. I'm not convinced absolute speed is that important of a variable, when comparing to something much smaller dealing with closer distances, but some birds actually do reach…

I have also seen birds fly into buildings, cars, planes and windows.

Good point but in fairness to birds, if there were a giant sheet of glass blocking the road then humans would probably crash into it too. They also might find it hard to avoid a 747 flying across the road.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#150
post #105
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but you can't dispute that humans don't have LIDAR. It's just a matter of time before AI can drive better than humans even if using similar vision. Especially in aggregate (e.g., factoring in distracted drivers).

Humans don't only have vision. Humans have an ocular-vestibular system that makes it possible to perform SLAM[1]-like processing; when in motion, your balance and visual input like the parallax effect can help the brain build a mapped 3D volume and determine your position, orientation and velocity and your relation to other objects within that volume. VSLAM, visual SLAM, which is what you have to employ if relying la…

This post seemed to use a lot of acronyms and technical words to say not much, are you just saying that humans have more than one camera and gyros, integrated well?
Post reply on HN