Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco • Hacker News Board

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#251

Post by alphabetting » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

minhazm wrote: post #218

sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

Google took a completely different approach and relies heavily on pre-mapped environments. Tesla has several orders of magnitude more vehicles, more data, and a more diverse set of data given their cars are in many different countries. It's not implausible to think that Tesla could arrive at FSD faster than Google.

I'd contend Waymo has more data but data isn't really the hurdle. It's AI/ML and simulation needed to get the final 1% right.

Good thread on ground Tesla would need to make up to catch AV leaders here. https://twitter.com/Christiano92/status/1428671634131628033

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#252

Post by criloz2 » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

Self-driving is not the solution and will show its crack in the future, the solution is probably a cloud service administrate by the city that feed direction to the cars and rules (that reduce or increment the degree of freedom of choices), do optimization and sort many other things, cars probably will still need cameras to take small decisions, but this can be made optional.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#253

Post by burnished » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #137

sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

As I understand it, they just started selling the "fsd capable" stuff a few years ago. Are any of those cars nearing end of life? That would be an even greater cause for concern IMO.

I'd be surprised, I've heard (and can not immediately substantiate) that they are generally very reliable vehicles. I guess part of it is that they just don't have as many mechanical points of failure.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#254

Post by dexter89_kp3 » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

Kudos to the Waymo team.

I was a self driving skeptic 2-3 years back. Now given the advances in both hardware and NNs, I do see possible solutions in the next decade.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#255

Post by willyt » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:46 PM UTC

VelkaMorava wrote: post #197

hammock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way Did you expect something different? I can't really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard to actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard with no in-between steps.

I wonder where "a country road with no lanes which barely fits 1.5 car in winter in the Czech republic" is on your scale... Something like this, just imagine the snowdrifts around it https://www.google.com/maps/@49.080269,16.4569252,3a,75y,307...

Lots of roads like that in Britian as well and the speed limit is 60mph/100kph. Not uncommon for two cars on a single track road to adjust speed to pass each other at a passing place without slowing down much, so at a closing speed of over 100mph. Perfectly safe for human drivers who know the roads.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#256

Post by sandworm101 » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

nullc wrote: post #245

sandworm101 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Fools and their money. Like most every expensive car, Teslas are luxury vehicles and fashion statements. People buy them because they are cool. That product was delivered. As for future features, nobody should believe Telsa's advertising any more than we do Microsoft's advertising about how the next version of Windows will solve all our computing problems. The hamburger nev…

I believe the person you're responding to was referring to specifically to the add-on pre-order for full self driving, not the entire car.

As was I. Consumers had an opportunity to test drive the wanted feature and find it lacking, or read reviews of the same. Tesla hid nothing. If customers want to spend money on hope for the future then that is their right. They paid for hope and that is what they got.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#257

Post by whimsicalism » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

sidibe wrote: post #145

jefftk wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't in Phoenix; the article links https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdrV9wqXyH0 as an example. (Disclosure: I work for Google, speaking only for myself.)

It's interesting the number of comments I've seen since it launched many months ago that completely ignore that this has been deployed somewhere without safety drivers. However unimpressive you find the geofence/HD maps/lidar etc., you'd think more people would know about it

Yep, there are multiple even on this thread.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#258

Post by leesec » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

Wow, 12 years in and they've spent about 6 billion and achieved a limited ridership Uber competitor in 2 fair weather cities. I'm sure the full solution they're pursuing is right around the corner though.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#259

Post by ThomasBHickey » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:47 PM UTC

pvarangot wrote: post #129

pbreit wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the commercial value is achieved at Level 4. I'm curious what all the folks who claimed this was decades away are thinking?

AFAIK no one recently claimed level 4 with a safety driver was decades away, and I was working on self driving until a few months ago so I was kinda "plugged" into the news. A handful of serious companies have plans and funding to deploy L4 taxi fleets or L4 features to consumer cars in 4/5 years. There's no commercial value at L4 whatsoever if you still pay a safety driver. It's usually even more expensive per hour…

When someone says 'in about 5 years' it means they have no idea when.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#260

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o » Tue, Aug 24, 2021, 5:48 PM UTC

I just signed up and actually skimmed the privacy policy (because hey, it's Alphabet). They record video of you during the ride and didn't mention anything that I caught about ever deleting it. I get that they need video in case I do bad stuff in the back, but it's really disappointing that they didn't bother reassuring you like "we delete it after a month" or something.

I'm hoping I just missed that line. But I signed up anyway, so I guess that says more.