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

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

#521

Post by z3t4 » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #56

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…

> If it's possible to automate highway driving under most conditions (and safely transition either to a stop or human-piloting when those conditions aren't met), then at least 80% of the value is there. Given that planes, which rely on a class of specifically trained professionals with minimum hour requirements, still have issues with this from time to time, I don't think this is a realistic thing for cars. Driving s…

Maybe if cars could fly, they could sort themselves at different heights so that they would never hit each other. And also communicate with others to make sure there are no collision courses. Tall buildings could be a problem. But it should be way easier problem to solve then city street driving. Because it would be a new tech we could require all flying cars to be autonomous and only allow manual control in case of emergency.

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

#522

Post by mdtusz » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

93po wrote: post #341

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?

It seems to me 99.99% of all road markings are perfectly visible

If you ever visit a city that gets substantial snowfall, road markings are essentially nonexistent, even when the snow and ice melts in the spring.

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

#523

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

NullPrefix wrote: post #487

yellow_lead wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bite. Aside from Tesla owners, I do not know anyone in my life today whose vehicle connects to the Internet. Of course, I mean to say I don't see how your comparison to present day is accurate.

>Aside from Tesla owners, I do not know anyone in my life today whose vehicle connects to the Internet When did the whole OnStar botnet start? I think it's earlier than 2010.

[deleted]

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

#524

Post by axguscbklp » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:38 AM UTC

odnes wrote: post #433

I can't see L5 happening without, amongst other things, the human ability to reason about things/concepts we've never encountered before (à la consciousness). Highway driving is the most constrained normal driving problem, and this is solvable in 99% of cases. But there are so many things that can happen in most other driving situations that make me think that model-based approaches (Tesla) are doomed to fail... Go a…

Musk, for all his genuine achievements, is also a bullshitter. If/when his FSD prediction fails to come to pass, I expect that he will just say "Well, when I said FSD, what I really meant is..."

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

#525

Post by qroshan » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

nrp wrote: post #394

heavyset_go wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that automated driving systems are any safer than human drivers, or that they ever will be.

From Tesla's latest Vehicle Safety Report: > In the 4th quarter, we registered one accident for every 3.07 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.10 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.…

This is garbage analysis.

When you are comparing numbers. You compare like-to-like. Tesla specifically prohibits engaging Autopilot in difficult situations and encourages during long boring straight drives.

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

#526

Post by kens » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:41 AM UTC

pjkundert wrote: post #489

tensor wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autopilot is evidence that automated systems are already better than humans today. The edge cases scare people but on aggregate the stats show is superior to people. This sort of tech is only going to keep getting better.

Look up "Ergodicity". Autopilot doesn't need to be 2x or 10x better than a human driver -- it needs to be 100x or 1,000x better, or nobody (sane) should touch it. The problem is not that autopilot is superior than your own driving in the vast majority of the cases! The problem is the 1 in a million times when it makes a trivial mistake that virtually no human would, and kills you instantly. Like driving under an obvi…

People die all the time from driving under a semi-trailer. Look up "Underride". Over 200 people die every year from underride crashes in the US, so this isn't a mistake made only by autopilots. In other words, if we switched to self-driving cars and three people died every week when the autopilot drove into a semi-trailer, that would be a big improvement.

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

#527

Post by qroshan » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:41 AM UTC

cpitman wrote: post #511

rkagerer wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

FWIW, self driving trains are a very different problem. With self driving cars, the approach has been to use sensors on the vehicle and make autonomous decisions based on that input. This will never work for trains, because their stopping distances are so long that they cannot use a sensor to detect most oncoming issues. Self driving trains will require more coordination, with central dispatch to tell them when/where…

Except you can always install sensors that can look as far as you want

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

#528

Post by llukas » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #494

tim333 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autopilot tends to be engaged on freeways / motorways where accidents are much lower than driving through town. If you do the stats properly Tesla's autopilot is probably more crash prone than just having a human drive. There were some stats that if you compare model S deaths to other luxury cars in the same price range they are about 3x higher for the S. Death rates in luxury cars are much lower than the average veh…

The vast majority of the data I'm able to find on road types covers only fatalities , not accidents ... but New York has accident rates per road type (and junctions!) for several years[1], and their rates are very roughly 1 accident per 300k-500k for rural roads, and 1 per 500k-1m for "[fully] controlled access" (which I read as highways, with divided being by far the lowest rate). So even if it's just on highways, A…

It is not. Or maybe it is. We don't know:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/2019/06/09/tesla-aut...

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

#529

Post by anonytrary » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:47 AM UTC

They "admit"? It's not like the recent "full self-driving car by 2025" craze fooled anyone who knew even a modicum about the current state-of-the-art in ML applied to self-driving cars. I remember doing a back-of-the-napkin on this a couple years ago. It would take something like 7 nines of accuracy across all types of driving tasks for us to remove the need for a fallback human behind the wheel. AFAIK we don't even have 7 nines of accuracy for highway driving yet, so this is clearly a pipe dream for the foreseeable future. Maybe ask again in 2070.

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

#530

Post by kalleboo » Sun, Jan 19, 2020, 1:49 AM 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?

The money is going to come from ads and VCs