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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

#241

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

detaro wrote: post #134
omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? He definitely uses ambiguity to his benefit (eg "soon", "by fall/winter/spring/summer" (in which year?)), but I haven't heard anything about Tesla being L5 by the end of 2021.

2020 Q4 Earnings call, 27th Jan 2021 (according to https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/01/27/te... ) Musk: So -- and this is -- basically I'm highly confident the car will drive itself for the reliability in excess of a human this year. [...] Director of Investor Relations: [...] The next question is, why are you confident Tesla will achieve Level 5 autonomy in 2021? [...] Musk: I guess, I'm confident…

Saying he's confident about each beta iteration, and the FSD beta is currently level two, is not the same as saying Tesla will hit level five by the end of the year.

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

#242

Post by hawaiianbrah »

danielheath wrote: post #218
azinman2 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human drivers still do meaningfully cost money to employ, and they do annoying things like needing to sleep or take rest room breaks. Autonomous trucking would completely revolutionize the industry.

Autonomous trucks for urban trucking are a pipe dream, but maybe for long-haul routes. That said, it's not at all clear to me that developing autonomous trucks for long interstate routes would be meaningfully cheaper than laying rail on literally every high-traffic route on the planet, which uses perfectly-understood technology and has entirely predictable returns.

Presumably you would be able to leverage a lot of that effort and expand into autonomous driving for other scenarios, right?

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

#243

Post by Ericson2314 »

jtolmar wrote: post #206
twodave wrote: post #191

I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. They know it's a long way off, they're just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. Perhaps with the exception of Tesla, who I have no explanation for. Self-driving cars are so far down the totem-pole in my opinion--if we're going to have to rework our roadways in order to accommodate self-driving…

> Just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. A few years back, during the peak of the self-driving hype cycle, I considered doing exactly this. I think with a small team of sensor and Bayes filter experts, a car outfitted with expensive but off-the-shelf sensors, and about a year of dev time, you could get a car that self pilots 95% of the time on a wide suburban road in clear conditio…

> At best, I think, we decrease emissions associated with them.

Amen to that. It just shows how crappy our economy is that we don't have trains, pneumatic tubes, and other old school technology that hasn't been beat everywhere.

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

#244

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

itsoktocry wrote: post #143
omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean this comment? I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year. Basic functionality for level five isn't level five.

I mean, off the top of my head he claimed 1 million robotaxis on the road in 2020, and that the car would be able to drive LA to New York by itself, charging and all, in 2018. Who are you trying to fool?

That's not what I asked about in my initial post.

Who are you trying to fool?

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

#245

Post by detaro »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #241
detaro wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2020 Q4 Earnings call, 27th Jan 2021 (according to https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/01/27/te... ) Musk: So -- and this is -- basically I'm highly confident the car will drive itself for the reliability in excess of a human this year. [...] Director of Investor Relations: [...] The next question is, why are you confident Tesla will achieve Level 5 autonomy in 2021? [...] Musk: I guess, I'm confident…

Saying he's confident about each beta iteration, and the FSD beta is currently level two, is not the same as saying Tesla will hit level five by the end of the year.

He is explicitly asked by the person feeding him question why he is confident that they will reach level five this year. He is confirming that he is confident they will reach level five this year. Not confident that they will improve, confident they will reach level five.

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

#246

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #125
omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been released to a small number of people, but... beta-FSD isn't level five. The only specific statement I've read from him is that the basic functionality for level five will be available this year. What's interesting to me is that people seem to attribute what news articles synthesize about his statements as statements made by him. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53349313

>news articles synthesize about his statements as statements made by him Musk promised the coast to coast drive in 2017: https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self-driv... Then admitted he couldn't do it in 2017: https://www.autonews.com/article/20180208/MOBILITY/180209770... This isn't the media delivering a dishonest commentary. These are his words.

I'm referring to my initial post in this thread.

But yeah, we can have both.

Those were his words in that situation, and he was called out for it. In this situation, the media is delivering dishonest commentary, and trying to call him out for their commentary.

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

#247

Post by hellbannedguy »

nradov wrote: post #229
plank_time wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw Levandowski do a presentation of self-driving at an Uber all-hands and it was then and there that I knew that self-driving is 20+ years away. The example video showed so many small things that we take for granted as a human driver that would need to be built in or hand coded that AI or neural nets would never be able to get. There just isn’t a way that you can train every single little thing that could cause an…

Beyond experience and fear, I think an autonomous vehicle will need a reasonably accurate mental model of how other human drivers on the road are likely to react.

I feel this way too.

I've noticed over the years that the morning commute is a symphony of madness. Drivers going over the speed limit. Drivers doing illegial things in order to get to work, and keep the traffic moving.

Cops seem to let a lot of infractions go during the morning commute. (The rest of the time they let nothing go, but in the morning commute they just seem to know it's a symphony of driving?)

I picture a self driving car going 25 mph with 20 vechicles behind it.

I don't think you could legally program a car to break any law, even in emergencies. Well you could, but lawyers would have a fun day in court?

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

#248

Post by jy1 »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #212
twodave wrote: post #191

I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. They know it's a long way off, they're just trying to hit enough milestones to get scooped up by somebody bigger. Perhaps with the exception of Tesla, who I have no explanation for. Self-driving cars are so far down the totem-pole in my opinion--if we're going to have to rework our roadways in order to accommodate self-driving…

> I feel like all these self-driving companies aren't actually in it to achieve the success. To that extent, was this acquisition actually a liquidity event for the employees or just an effective "change of ownership"?

Lyft was already public for them.

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

#249

Post by ehnto »

mannykannot wrote: post #224
dmix wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think at a minimum all the cars need to be taking to each other over a protocol.

I don't disagree (and nor am I certain you are right), but if that is so, then there are some follow-on issues: 1) The system still has to react safely to pedestrians, cyclists and other entities outside of the network. 1.1) During the transition period, that is going to include vehicles driven by people (I do not think it will be feasible to ban the latter before self-driving vehicles are commonplace, except possibl…

I wonder if the software industry has it in itself to produce a safe intra-vehicle network that wouldn't be taken advantage of, either by malicious actors or the manufacturers.

I am sure there is a technically sound protocol someone can come up with, but it would have to survive the corporate food chain, proprietary advances, and the three letter agencies.

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

#250

Post by tuatoru »

I think the appeal of self-driving to car manufacturers is that if it can be made to work, the households who actually buy new vehicles, affluent suburbanites, will buy more of them.

Instead of just one car per adult in the household (and maybe recreational vehicles as well), these households will buy one per adult and up to one per child over six years old (plus recreational vehicles as before).

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