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Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

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Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#91

Post by nostrademons »

rkalla wrote: post #9
quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

It's those edge cases that make me think real FSD (vehicles with no steering wheels) is a decade-timescale problem. Figure out 99.9% of driving, but otherwise take a family off a bridge when the sun is blinding the camera? Still need a steering wheel.

IMHO FSD cars (along with drones, secure programming languages/OSes, and distributed manufacturing) are a post-war technology. The economics don't make sense while we're at peace and locked into the Pax Americana economy. However, once folks start trying to kill each other, these technologies will give a very large survival advantage to those factions that adopt them. Imagine how useful not having to risk human lives on supply lines would be. And risk expectations get reset when things go from "nobody ever dies unnaturally" to "people are actively trying to kill you", which eliminates the biggest barrier to FSD adoption.

I think we'll get such a war within the next decade, so we may see FSD vehicles sooner than expected, just not in the way we want.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#92

Post by steve_adams_86 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #80
ecpottinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he was talking to much to hear the train. The person he was talking to said they were talking like normal and suddenly the phone cut off. Computers probably can not be worse that the people alrea…

A human being can drive a million miles without a serious accident. 2018 saw 1.1 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven[1]. Human beings are extremely good at driving safely overall. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Yeah, I think people conflate seeing people drive erratically or doing dumb things in cars with an inability to operate a car in a way that ultimately prevents deaths. Humans are incredibly good at that in the bigger picture for reasons that are currently impossible to replicate with a computer.

Criticize human driving all you want, but even the worst of us can typically manage to get from point a to point b... Somehow.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#93

Post by moralestapia »

elpakal wrote: post #73

I learned to drive in Mexico at 13, where there are almost literally no rules or traffic signals (see the black arrow on the wall? that means don't stop). I remember thinking about how different things were when trying to get my driver's license in US at age 16 - almost easier - in spite of how many more rules there were. I wonder how self-driving cars perform when trained in a world of rules and order and are then t…

>where there are almost literally no rules or traffic signals ...

That's a lie, though. The meme that México is an uncivilized place is dumb and doesn't hold much substance.

Edit: Downvote me all you want, GP's statement is laughably easy to disprove. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#94

Post by jonas21 »

okareaman wrote: post #19
rkalla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's those edge cases that make me think real FSD (vehicles with no steering wheels) is a decade-timescale problem. Figure out 99.9% of driving, but otherwise take a family off a bridge when the sun is blinding the camera? Still need a steering wheel.

I used to live in Mountain View where Waymo tests their cars so I would observe them quite often. I sat a railroad crossing with one, thinking about what could go wrong. What if the signal didn't work, but you could hear the train coming and see it way off to the right or left if you looked. Are Waymo cars listening for trains? Or are they looking at railroad guards only? I suppose they could program the train schedu…

To be honest, this seems like one of the easier edge cases to handle. Before crossing tracks, check if there's anything coming down the tracks.

Much easier than all of the weird edge cases related to the behavior of other drivers or pedestrians.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#95

Post by waltherg »

estaseuropano wrote: post #78
quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

100% agree but i wonder about the standards applied. Where I live the streets are tight and most drivers mediocre at best, unaware that cyclists might have right of way and about 1/20 doesn't seem to know the difference between different kind of light settings in the car. At least half the cars on my street have visible scratches/dents. For me that is the standard to be beaten, not perfection. And the car could still…

So, essentially, you live in Italy where traffic signs and lights are nothing more than street art and some extra frills on the side of the road.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#96

Post by grecy »

tayo42 wrote: post #68
grecy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of the 100 daily fatalities on the roads in the US do you think are caused by drivers not "seeing clearly"? The goal of an AI driver isn't no crashes. The goal is less crashes than human drivers.

Idk if it's that simple, what if you reduce highway deaths by 100 but rural roads go up by 10. If I'm primarily a rural driver that's not enticing.

OK then, let's not put it into full scale production until all types of driving are an order of magnitude (10x) less.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#97

Post by utexaspunk »

quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

I dunno, I've seen the Domino's [Nuro](https://www.nuro.ai/) car roaming Houston and it seems to be doing okay and I haven't heard of any issues... If it's good enough for my pizza, it's good enough for me -I'm mostly pizza anyway! :P

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#98

Post by [deleted] »

heavyset_go wrote: post #67
ecpottinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he was talking to much to hear the train. The person he was talking to said they were talking like normal and suddenly the phone cut off. Computers probably can not be worse that the people alrea…

> Computers probably can not be worse that the people already on the road. And yet there is no evidence that computers are better drivers than people are. I do have to ask, are we using the same computers? I've been using them for decades, and they're consistently buggy, error prone and straight-up factually wrong a lot of the time.

[deleted]

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#99

Post by darkwizard42 »

petra wrote: post #35
joshuawright11 wrote: post #10

100m a year, 0 roi expense gone. Also no more shared rides due to COVID (which I expect will never come back to Uber or Lyft since they were gigantic money sinks). Assuming ridership is bouncing back from COVID I wouldn't be surprised if their first profitable quarter was this year.

Why we're shared rides such gigantic money sinks ? In theory at least, it can just be some algorithm and some screen space on the app.

I can try to explain:

- Ideally in a shared ride what happens is that instead of 2 drivers, driving 12 miles for passenger A and 14 miles for passenger B, you have 1 driver who drives 15 miles for both passengers trips.

- So 1 driver to pay who is now more efficient, and 2 paying customers. You charge each customer X% less, pay the driver Y% more, and theoretically you could keep your margin the same but now fulfill more rides (another driver is free now that you put two rides in 1 car)

- However, now let's consider how much cheaper it can really be...

- Sharing a ride for a cheaper cost makes sense when you and the person you share with have a generally overlapping route. The discount you get as a customer is a function of how likely you are to get matched with someone.

- Turns out there aren't a lot of rides with good overlap (airport rides might be the best type of ride tbh). Thus the discount is quite small. If the discount is small it means you have less people using it. Less people using it makes the discount even smaller! Eventually you have no discount and no incentive to use the service.

- To keep users incentivized to use the shared mode, Lyft and Uber have to subsidize the pricing to make sure that match rate stays high. Every "shared" mode ride that has only 1 person in it is a big loss, but incentivizing more people to use it can result in a smaller net loss across the marketplace

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#100

Post by Hydraulix989 »

utexaspunk wrote: post #97
quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

I dunno, I've seen the Domino's [Nuro]( https://www.nuro.ai/ ) car roaming Houston and it seems to be doing okay and I haven't heard of any issues... If it's good enough for my pizza, it's good enough for me -I'm mostly pizza anyway! :P

I think it's remote-controlled though?
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