Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#31

Post by Karishma1234 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:45 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #30

plaidfuji wrote: post #2

... says Google. But this does ring true, and the come-to-Jesus moment on Tesla’s valuation will be when people realize this is the case. If they had a legitimate shot at being the first true players in self-driving, their valuation (which currently prices them on par with something like the sum of the top three automakers...) isn’t insane. But if it really is just lane-keep assist with intelligent cruise control, I’…

It doesn't 'ring true' to me. Tesla might be far a way, but closer then the others. Specially when we are talking about 'as an actual business'. Waymo and co are simply having a gigantic money burning party and will continue. Tesla can work on this and support all their efforts as a value at to the current products.

Yup. Tesla has built a real profitable company with a decent car and has brought a real shift in thinking about the cars of the future. If there is ever a real self driving car then I wont own it but rather rent it like Uber.

Waymo on other hand sounds like a cool engineering project that is not going anywhere and Google will shut it down in next 10 years.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#32

Post by nickik » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

ilaksh wrote: post #16

I am a huge fan of what Waymo has accomplished. And I think in the beginning Tesla's FSD Beta was so bad that it was reckless to release to the testers. BUT. Look at the very latest version of the Tesla FSD Beta ("beta 10") as of now. It is literally doing the full self-driving task with very few disengagements now. And the improvements over the course of the last few months have been dramatic. At this point it is no…

Lets be honest here. If Tesla had invested the waste majority of their efforts on 1 city, not having to deal with all the problems of broken line markings, crazy signs, signs in different language, driving threw fog at night, driving mountains roads, driving country side in China and so on.

Could the Tesla software do what Waymo does? Specially if you map out the whole city? I would argue it could.

I agree that Tesla is quite far away, but in terms of a general solution for waste majority of the world, Tesla is the closest.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#33

Post by nickik » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

tveita wrote: post #10

kneel wrote: post #5

At this point it’s best not to bet against Elon. I’d bet his timelines are off, that’s always been the case. But his army of engineers know what they’re doing.

> At this point it’s best not to bet against Elon. Maybe in a "should you short Tesla stock" or "will a Californian jury rule against him" sense. But on the other hand, if you bet a friend on how many Tesla Robotaxis would be on the road by the end of 2020 you could be sitting on a nice bottle of whisky by now.

Betting one friend on a small timing detail is fun and all, but that not really what people mean when people talk about 'not betting against Elon'. We are talking about big things.

Elon said they will capture Apollo size booster directly from the air on ocean space ports. And the majority of people were like 'mh, sound reasonable will probably work in a few years'.

Think about laterally any other person or government saying that people would be like 'yeah, sure maybe in a decade plus and 20 billion or more'.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#34

Post by Infinitesimus » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #9

bko wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is the only participant that has a true path to self driving technology. Legacy car makers are Goliaths set in the past. They're stuck to the annual release cycle and can't even over the air updates and a touch screen on par with an iPad from 8 years ago. Legacy automakers have failed to deliver on electric cars for decades. Musk talked about this. There was nothing special about the time he entered the market…

> Tesla is the only participant that has a true path to self driving technology. You can’t make a statement without qualifying this. You attack legacy automakers but then go on to discuss Waymo. I would bet money you’re long TSLA. You talk about OTA updates as if that’s some huge technological moat? Hell, cars have been receiving very frequent software updates for over a decade.

> You talk about OTA updates as if that’s some huge technological moat? Hell, cars have been receiving very frequent software updates for over a decade.

I think OTAs are a moat but highlight an important incentive difference. Traditional automakers want to sell you next year's model of the car. Tesla seems like they want your car to get better over time.

Perhaps it is organizational cruft or the dealer network but consider even the simple case of adaptive cruise control systems in cars today that have radar + cameras. Most of those systems bounce between lanes and can't even stay centered well. This is something that could be a software fix but you'll have to wait for the next N models when they redesign the car to see it.

Infotainment systems are another example - they are almost universally crappy and it is rare to get updates OTA. Shipping a car with capable hardware and slowly improving software capability imo is a smarter long-term approach.

Time will tell though.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#35

Post by LatteLazy » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

The most interesting thing about driving is that it requires a general intelligence to do it. Sure 99.99% of the time, you stay in lane, obey lights and don't ram things. But for a few seconds every hour you actually need to think.

This is why I'm bearish on fully autonomous cars, at least without major changes to infrastructure.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#36

Post by staticman2 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

plaidfuji wrote: post #2

... says Google. But this does ring true, and the come-to-Jesus moment on Tesla’s valuation will be when people realize this is the case. If they had a legitimate shot at being the first true players in self-driving, their valuation (which currently prices them on par with something like the sum of the top three automakers...) isn’t insane. But if it really is just lane-keep assist with intelligent cruise control, I’…

I watched a finance YouTube podcast where they observed the price of Tesla stock can best be explained by "Tesla is a religion." I think this is true.

Tesla is a religion to people so it's not clear that the stock will have a come to Jesus moment since religions don't need to deal with facts.

People want the stock for religious reasons and will buy the price up.

Even in this thread you have someone saying "Elon always succeeds" which is obviously a religious idea. It is impossible for someone who believes this to have a come to Jesus moment.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#37

Post by lars_thomas » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 10:04 PM UTC

nickik wrote: post #29

sidibe wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with gradually going from drivers assistance to self driving is there will be some period, possibly a very long period, where the cars almost never need intervention but aren't safe enough to actually not need it. There will be a lot of accidents if it's released widely during this period (yes much more than human driver accidents. aside: there seem to be a lot of Tesla fans who think humans are much wors…

> yes much more than human driver accidents. What are you basing this on? You can just say 'despite what Tesla fans believe' as an argument. One datapoint from google 10 years ago is not really convincing. Specially as car also gets better at measuring human attention. CommaAI pilot is already doing quite well on that. Tesla is working on it internally as well. And also, we can do things like assess the situation and…

Do you have personal experience with commaAI's pilot? I don't so basing all on videos alone. In a video to promote the bleeding edge of their development with Lex Fridman Hotz was driving the car to a specific part of a freeway that had a tilt and he was able to let go off the wheel for a brief moment. In another part the car was driving by itself in an urban setting and the highlight was that it was able to stop by itself at an intersection. This is light years removed from anything resembling a self driving system. But again, if you have more insight than the few videos I am basing this on please share. Would be interesting to hear more.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#38

Post by lars_thomas » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 10:09 PM UTC

sagarm wrote: post #24

alicorn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This baffles me as well. The technology to solve so many problems hard to approach with other tools is right there, why not use it.

Cost. Tesla has to sell cars to price-sensitive consumers. Adding a LIDAR would likely increase the price significantly. Given their business model, they basically have to argue that LIDAR is not necessary.

I agree that when Tesla made their first promises of delivering FSD HW (just add SW a little bit later) reasonably priced solid state lidars were not available. So a story had to be made 'humans have eyes and they can drive, lidar is not needed'. Super hard to back now when they sold FSD to so many customers still waiting for the SW update.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#39

Post by birdyrooster » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 10:15 PM UTC

staticman2 wrote: post #36

plaidfuji wrote: post #2

... says Google. But this does ring true, and the come-to-Jesus moment on Tesla’s valuation will be when people realize this is the case. If they had a legitimate shot at being the first true players in self-driving, their valuation (which currently prices them on par with something like the sum of the top three automakers...) isn’t insane. But if it really is just lane-keep assist with intelligent cruise control, I’…

I watched a finance YouTube podcast where they observed the price of Tesla stock can best be explained by "Tesla is a religion." I think this is true. Tesla is a religion to people so it's not clear that the stock will have a come to Jesus moment since religions don't need to deal with facts. People want the stock for religious reasons and will buy the price up. Even in this thread you have someone saying "Elon alway…

It seems like they already came to Jesus and that Jesus was Elon.

Re: Tesla’s autopilot won’t achieve full autonomy, Waymo CEO says

#40

Post by gamblor956 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

godatemydog wrote: post #27

rasz wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tesla is the only participant that has a true path to self driving technology. They dont even ship cars with Stereo front facing cameras. Eight cameras, twelve hypersonic sensors, one forward facing radar, GPS, and still no stereo vision resulting in cars plowing full speed into stationary obstacles ....

U know u can do depth perception from time without stereo cameras?

That's true, but Tesla has yet to figure that out.