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Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

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Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#151

Post by maxerickson »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #115
maxerickson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean the green bits there are the part where the car can be relied on to drive by itself (with the blue bits requiring constant attention). Arguing about what to call it is boring. Is Tesla close to having a system that can drive without attention, decide it isn't sure what to do and safely request driver attention? Or does it just have the bit that can successfully navigate a lot of situations?

Having driven across the US almost 30k miles on Navigate On Autopilot in our Teslas, I’d argue the former (“Is Tesla close to having a system that can drive without attention, decide it isn't sure what to do and safely request driver attention?”). Attention is given, but intervention is rare, even in construction zones (only done when zones are inactive, not with workers present for obvious reasons). Interstate to in…

Level 2 means the driver always has responsibility.

It's good that the Tesla system stops making inputs when it doesn't know what to do. That's different than the Tesla system having full control and safely notifying the occupant that they need to start driving.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#152

Post by [deleted] »

necubi wrote: post #12

The Information sometimes unlocks articles for HN readers, but for those that don't have access the biggest takeaway to me is that Uber has made relatively little progress towards fully autonomous cars despite a huge amount of investment. The most shocking detail: > Uber’s vehicles had also been having what the company refers to as a bad experience—such as a sudden jerk or a potentially dangerous movement—every one-t…

[deleted]

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#153

Post by bluedevil2k »

wheelie_boy wrote: post #110
FreakyT wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Autonomous cars solve that in the same way an personal automobile currently does, albeit removing the inconvenience of actually driving. The problem with autonomous cars as compared to rail is that autonomy doesn't solve the other fundamental problem of cars: congestion. If I waved my magic wand and replaced every car in the bay area with a self-driving one overnight, roads would still clog at rush hour.

If anything, self-driving cars would make congestion a lot worse. If I had a self-driving mini-RV, I would live further from the city, and do my morning routine during my commute. Maybe take a small nap or get some work done.

Disagree - if traffic flowed more evenly, same speed for everyone, less lane changes, didn’t require the “safe distance padding” re-establishment at every light, the congestion would lesson. Probably not eliminated though.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#154

Post by Hypx »

tehjoker wrote: post #144
Hypx wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All attempts at self-driving cars are a failure so far. There are no exceptions. If Uber is struggling, they're all struggling. I expect similar if not worse stories coming out for the rest of them.

It's kind of grim, but so far Uber and Tesla are the only ones to have killed people, and the Tesla case is more ambiguous. There's clearly big problems at Uber compared with the others, though I too think that the tech is further in the future than people were saying a couple years ago.

Waymo and Cruise are being much more careful. Consequently, they’re finding out that self-driving cars cannot be deployed yet without being dangerous to people. It’s not a surprise that Uber and Tesla have killed people.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#155

Post by yholio »

FreakyT wrote: post #100
ethbr0 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd offer Kurzweil's (I believe?) observation that the futurist predictions that come true are those that substantially improve peoples' needs. Even substantially expanded rail will never solve the problem of "I want to get from point A to point B, as quickly as possible, whenever I'm ready to leave" in a fundamentally different way. The transit to the starting station might be shorter, and the transit from the endin…

> Autonomous cars solve that in the same way an personal automobile currently does, albeit removing the inconvenience of actually driving. The problem with autonomous cars as compared to rail is that autonomy doesn't solve the other fundamental problem of cars: congestion. If I waved my magic wand and replaced every car in the bay area with a self-driving one overnight, roads would still clog at rush hour.

As long as human drivers are still in the mix, no, self-driving cars will not solve congestions. But fully self-driving cars could improve road efficiency by an order of magnitude. There is no need for trafic lights, they can drive in very close formation, they don't need parking space nor search for parking.

Additionally, an inherently safe trafic system doesn't require 2 tons of steel around you for protection. The car can be stripped down massively reducing road footprint and ecological impact. You will also hail the smallest (cheapest) vehicle that serves your purporse, a single commuter can comfortably travel in a bumpercar.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#156

Post by wmf »

ericmay wrote: post #126
rainyMammoth wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is not even considered in the top half of the contenders. They are the best at hyping it up though.

It blows my mind to see people write things like this. We have two companies, Cruise and Waymo, who have built nothing but toy cars, but they are in the lead while Tesla has years of real-world driving data in cars that are in a manufacturing production operation, receive over the air updates, recognize real world objects, can change lanes automatically, but Waymo is ahead? I’m open to being convinced that I’m not co…

Tesla didn't support stop signs or traffic lights until a few months ago but Waymo did that years ago. And AFAIK Tesla still can't recognize stopped vehicles on the highway and has no public plan to fix that.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#157

Post by revscat »

ummonk wrote: post #60
not_a_moth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my general sense is that Waymo and Cruise (widely considered first and second) Thought Tesla was considered first, in part because Tesla's fleet collects an orders of magnitude of data greater than others.

No, Tesla is nowhere near self-driving capability. Collecting a bunch of unsupervised data on its own is not that useful.

I just drove from Dallas to southwestern Colorado and back. Of that, I estimate I drove ~15% of the entire miles driven. The rest was the car driving itself.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#158

Post by jowday »

not_a_moth wrote: post #35
necubi wrote: post #12

The Information sometimes unlocks articles for HN readers, but for those that don't have access the biggest takeaway to me is that Uber has made relatively little progress towards fully autonomous cars despite a huge amount of investment. The most shocking detail: > Uber’s vehicles had also been having what the company refers to as a bad experience—such as a sudden jerk or a potentially dangerous movement—every one-t…

> my general sense is that Waymo and Cruise (widely considered first and second) Thought Tesla was considered first, in part because Tesla's fleet collects an orders of magnitude of data greater than others.

There's a community of reverse engineers on Twitter that have demonstrated most of Musk's claims about their data pipelines aren't true. Check out greentheonly's Twitter.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#159

Post by SuoDuanDao »

not_a_moth wrote: post #35
necubi wrote: post #12

The Information sometimes unlocks articles for HN readers, but for those that don't have access the biggest takeaway to me is that Uber has made relatively little progress towards fully autonomous cars despite a huge amount of investment. The most shocking detail: > Uber’s vehicles had also been having what the company refers to as a bad experience—such as a sudden jerk or a potentially dangerous movement—every one-t…

> my general sense is that Waymo and Cruise (widely considered first and second) Thought Tesla was considered first, in part because Tesla's fleet collects an orders of magnitude of data greater than others.

They're not, at least not officially - they do have the largest data sets, but they're not releasing as many features as their competitors.

Whether you think they're sandbagging or behind the curve is largely a question of whether you're a fan of Tesla.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#160

Post by revscat »

justapassenger wrote: post #36
DevKoala wrote: post #17

I am not surprised. This is a competition between Tesla and Google, technology companies. I never saw Uber, a services company, as being part of this race.

It maybe competition between Tesla and Google, one day in far away future. But so far, Tesla is dead last in self-driving cars. They some cool driver-aid systems, but their self-driving tech is still being written and rewritten, and didn't even begin any tests on the roads.

And yet there are tens (hundreds?) of thousands of drivers who use Tesla’s Autopilot every day, myself included, without incident and to great benefit.
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