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

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

#701

Post by ojbyrne »

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…

I am generally of the philosophy that all "disruptive" technologies end up looking basically like slightly modified versions of what they replace, mostly achieved by pushing at the regulatory environment a little bit. Uber/Lyft replaces taxis. Self driving cars begin to resemble trains.

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

#702

Post by Thorrez »

nostrademons wrote: post #668
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 impetus will be wartime, just as the impetus for the interstate highway system and most of the railway system was wartime. In peacetime, self-driving cars are a nice-to-have that can save many billions of driver hours and a few traffic fatalities. In wartime, they're literally a matter of life or death. The side that can handle all of their logistics without exposing their precious humans to enemy fire has a huge…

If a road is too dangerous for humans to drive on due to enemy fire, I would expect the conditions of the road to be much worse than American roads today.

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

#703

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #472
0xB31B1B wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) trains go basically everywhere frequently in Japan, it’s very much a functioning rail network, they exist and kick ass. 2) a train doesn’t need to replace 100% of personal car trips to be useful. I’m sure you’re not transporting dishwashers or taking trips after 11 pm every day. Covering 90% of use cases is sufficient, and the other 10% can be handled by either renting a car or taking an Uber. 3) we can and should…

Most people don’t live in Japan. There are no commuter trains Tasmania.

Compared to Japan, there are no people in Tasmania.

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

#704

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

toasterlovin wrote: post #379
femto113 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

How do carseats for children work with these services?

BYO. Which is borderline OK for boosters (the Mifold [1] weighs under 2 pounds and folds to fit in a handbag), but totally impractical for a baby/child seat.

[1] https://mifold.com/products/mifold-the-grab-and-go-booster

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

#705

Post by Dylan16807 »

ratel wrote: post #588
nrp wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Those figures are not as good as you seem to suggest. First of all. Tesla counts the number of miles for every Tesla being involved in an accident. The other figure you quote is for all miles driven by motor vehicles before getting involved in an accident. Given that accidents tend to involve two or more vehicles the number of miles traveled before an accident involving a Tesla without autopilot or safety measures wo…

> First of all. Tesla counts the number of miles for every Tesla being involved in an accident. The other figure you quote is for all miles driven by motor vehicles before getting involved in an accident. Given that accidents tend to involve two or more vehicles the number of miles traveled before an accident involving a Tesla without autopilot or safety measures would be closer to 820.000 miles.

You're doing that the wrong way, aren't you?

If 479k is total miles across an average of two cars, then the single-car equivalent, the number you'd compare to the Tesla numbers, is 240k.

It doesn't really make sense to adjust the Tesla numbers to do the comparison, but if you did you'd be doubling them, not halving them.

> We cannot translate this to miles per accident comparable to Tesla, because commercial traffic tends to drive more miles than passenger vehicles do, but there are far less of them, etc.

Neither of those reasons makes them incomparable.

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

#706

Post by fsloth »

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?

Actually, if all we factor in is paint then if we would have autonomous vehicles for which 'paint' was critical there would be a higher frequency in the maintenance cycle using automated robot painters. I'm fairly sure if the highways facilitated 100% autonomous operation their maintenance could be automated thus driving down the costs.

But you are right, road maintenance is never cheap.

It would probably be easier to have a swarm like national airtraffic AI, all cars flying, all cargo in blimps than to maintain a complex ground network of "smart roads"

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

#707

Post by brownbat »

colordrops wrote: post #699
brownbat wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "edge case" I worry about is driving on ice or snow. Driving safely on frozen surfaces is not a solved problem for human drivers, but most of us insist it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. If the vehicle drives as slowly as it should in those conditions, it would probably frustrate a lot of people who really depend on their false sense of invincibility.

> Driving safely on frozen surfaces is not a solved problem for human drivers, but most of us insist it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. What does that mean? That it actually is solved by humans? Or that it's not, and we just take the increased risk? If the former, then we can automated it. If the latter, then the self driving cars can also drive at increased risk, opt-in of course.

I meant the latter, but "equally safe as the status quo" might not be sufficient here.

If we built planes that were only as safe as highway driving, people would be outraged.

We aren't exactly rational about this stuff, and we expect a lot more from machines we don't directly control.

But I like your opt in solution. Maybe the UI loudly complains about the risk of current conditions and sticks to <5 MPH, unless the user enables "never tell me the odds" mode.

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

#708

Post by Razengan »

ehsankia wrote: post #179
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…

Isn't it a little silly to call someone "only sane C-level person" after one comment? Also, while claiming these innovations are only a few years way may be insane, saying they will never happen feels probably just as non-sense. History hasn't been on the side of such absolute claims. It will take time, but Waymo already has working 100% self-driving cars out in the wild. Yes it's in a small area, with perfect weathe…

> saying they will never happen feels probably just as non-sense. History hasn't been on the side of such absolute claims.

I wish there was a collection of stubborn dismissals of things that did come to pass and became bigger and better than originally imagined, so we could point and laugh at those cynical sticks in the muds.

Steve Ballmer's dismissal of the iPhone being a popular relatively recent case.

I still remember that quote I discovered through Civilization, apparently made by some popular leader (Napoleon?) about steam engines: "You would make a ship of iron and without sails move by lighting a bonfire under its deck?? Absurd!"

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

#709

Post by wisty »

skywhopper wrote: post #443
_greim_ wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put this in perspective, imagine this hypothetical conversation happening a century ago: "I have this new auto-mobile concept which doesn't require a horse and which can go fast; I envision up to fifty miles per hour. It will require a smooth, hardened road surface, but that will be achievable someday." "Forget about it. We already have millions of miles of roads, which are bumpy, made of dirt, and hard to build a…

What are the incentives, though? There’s not actually that much money to be made here, despite dreams of self driving taxis (something that could never be possible). Maybe in the trucking industry, but the tech doesn’t exist and is nowhere close to being reliable enough consistently enough.

People could more safely play on their phones while 'driving'.
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