Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen' • Hacker News Board

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#261

Post by imhoguy » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

deltron3030 wrote: post #95

wwweston wrote: post #32

Opinion: level 5 autonomy would be cool, but it's not where most of the value of self-driving cars is. Most of the value in being able to travel by auto without attention is in trips longer than 15 minutes. Commutes, tourism, vacations. Shipping. Most of which is certainly highway driving. If it's possible to automate highway driving under most conditions (and safely transition either to a stop or human-piloting when…

Onboarding cars onto trains in a driver friendly way should also be considered. This way you don't exclude non self driving cars, and still have good coverage (taking into account that railway systems aren't far behind highway coverage in many countries).

This is the way of traveling thru Channel Tunnel. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurotunnel_Shuttle

But one needs to plan and book a travel in advance. There are also capacity limits.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#262

Post by hawaiianbrah » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

threeseed wrote: post #242

njarboe wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are parking laws different for Taxis than for Ubers? Say in New York City? Lots of Taxis there so if Ubers are working under the same law, seems like an already solved problem. UPS have millions? of parking violations per year, yet it is still in operation.

You're missing the point. Drivers own the liability for illegal parking. Autonomous cars would make the developer liable. No government is going to tolerate systemic and wide spread violation of the law.

I think “making the developer liable” is jumping to a conclusion that isn’t certain quite yet.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#263

Post by rkagerer » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

zamfi wrote: post #201

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

The counter-example to this is train tracks. (There are minimum standards for roads, too.)

Self driving trains would probably be easier. Aren't there already some airport shuttle trains and metro transit that's fully automated?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train_syst...

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#264

Post by SECProto » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #233

SECProto wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paint is a wear item, the example of beacons would not be a wear item. If original commenter is correct that infrastructure meets halfway, I wouldn't expect self driving cars transition to happen fast at all - maybe on highways first, and busy city streets, later secondary roads. But that kind of thing would result in a decades long transition, and I would estimate it as never being fully autonomous (if beacons die,…

If there is one thing we can be sure of, looking at the past couple decades of wireless tech, it's that there will be a profusion of mutually incompatible standards, each spanning multiple HW generations. It may not experience the same physical wear, but it will be an expensive maintenance issue nonetheless.

Definitely. If it was clear that external beacons were necessary, you would have the Tesla beacons, you'd have the European manufacturer associated beacons, you'd have the Japanese manufacturers associated beacons... installed at manufacturer's cost (or as a partnership), leading to duplication some places, total absence in others, and exclusivity in the rest. And the EU would do better than the rest of the world, having cars with different receivers (manufactured only for the EU market, of course)

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#265

Post by HereBeBeasties » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

beefield wrote: post #241

colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

> We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars. Or even easier, platooning. I don't understand why autonomous cars is a bigger thing than platooning. I mean, platooning solves 95% of use cases of self driving cars [1] and is orders of magnitude easier problem to solve. [1] At least for me. I do not mind driving in the cities myself, but if I just could nap or watch a movi…

If cars could assemble into close convoy trains on multi-lane highways / motorways / autoroutes / whatever, then it would probably also solve electric car range for many people - you only care about range on relatively long distance journeys, and you're likely to be doing those on major multi-lane carriageways. If you could split the air resistance between a bunch of other vehicles then you'd add considerably to the range. I similarly don't understand why we're not trying to solve that instead. As you say, it seems easy compared to full autonomous driving.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#266

Post by unkulunkulu » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #109

I think he is the one and only sane C-level person in the industry, after hearing this. People claiming most of AI hype barely know what the "AI" people mention is. And people who go as far as drawing rosy pictures of human like general AI being your personal chauffeur are past ridiculous. The entire idea of human-like general AI for practical applications is like trying to make people using horses for transport in 2…

He talks about difference between level 4 and level 5 (4 - attainable, 5 - may never happen). This is a strange proposition in my book: level 4 is already good enough to bring a lot of value (taxis in a big city are level 4 afaiu), level 5 - ideal but who cares?

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#267

Post by eddieplan9 » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

I expect private companies will be the ones providing the infrastructure for self driving cars, and your car will have to subscribe to a "awareness service provider", much the same way that your phone needs to subscribe to a carrier.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#268

Post by acdha » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

femto113 wrote: post #228

robbrown451 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to disagree. Most of the value is in taxi services, where you get dropped off / picked up exactly where you want, there is no need to dedicate so much land and structures to parking, there is no need to have cars sit idle for 95% of their existence, and no need to search for parking spots and walk long distances. Of course, I live in a city, where parking is a major pain. But the other things still hold. It it…

> It it far more efficient of resources to have cars be used most fo the day, rather than sitting idle. This is better and more easily addressed by car sharing services like car2go than autonomous cars. The more I use them the more I wish for a world where every car was shareable: you need to go somewhere? you simply get into the nearest parked car and drive it to where you want to go. And, unlike autonomy, there are…

> This is better and more easily addressed by car sharing services like car2go than autonomous cars.

This is not the conclusion I would draw from car2go failing out of North America. They still had the problem that you are required to find a legal parking spot and there's no guarantee that there will be a car available anywhere near you. Taxis and private vehicles solve the latter and former respectively but they all suffer from the inefficiencies inherent to the system design.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#269

Post by moooo99 » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

giancarlostoro wrote: post #170

colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

Heck. With Toyota building a city of the future. They might make self driving cars entirely common once you are free to design roads for them.

If you'd build a genuinely smart city completely from scratch, the most elegant way would be to completely remove the need for own cars. But that's obviously not going to happen when its a project designed and financed by an automaker.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#270

Post by mavhc » Sat, Jan 18, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

Rhinobird wrote: post #259

notatoad wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do self-driving cars even need road markings? IIRC Google's self-driving car project started out ignoring road markings entirely, and relied on a centimetre-precision map of the test city instead. That obviously has downsides too, but unreliable road markings would be a pretty silly blocker to ever having a self-driving car. that's a solveable short-term problem.

all fun and games until some jack-ass spoofs the GPS and moves a road 20 feet to the left. https://www.wired.com/2012/07/drone-hijacking/

That's the point though, the Waymo car doesn't rely on gps, it's has HD maps on board. Plus is has dead reckoning because it's touching the ground, so it knows where it's moving.