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Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

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Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#61

Post by darkwizard42 »

toolz wrote: post #13
darkwizard42 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will likely be cheaper (maybe not initially), but more restrictive in pickup/drop-off and availability (ETA).

Don't you mean less restrictive? A human might have preferences against areas that a computer might not. Further if it's cheaper and less complex to operate (not dealing with employees is a significant decrease in complexity) I would expect more car owners to enter the market and provide services.

More restrictive because without a human driver it has to have absolute certainty it will stop in a safe place (unlike a human driver who may make the right or wrong call to just double park and let you hop out).

Think of self-driving cars as likely to use their own version of "bus stops" but the route and flexibility would be greater than that of a standard bus

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#62

Post by jowday »

sremani wrote: post #51
walrus01 wrote: post #8

Based on this image: https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/6h1C7lPC79OLOlddEE... They and their VC backers are clearly betting on the concept that radars + lidar + imaging will be the ultimate successful solution in full self driving cars, as a completely opposite design and engineering philosophy from Tesla attempting to do "full self driving" with camera sensors and categorical rejection of lidar. It is interes…

The question is do the economics of self-driving cars work when you have to add and integrate all these additional equipment. Correct me, if I am wrong but aren't LIDAR cars supposed to cost you $200K+ ? Tesla is imitating humans in a way that removing LIDAR and relying on the compute to make up for them and build more accurate picture. Also, isn't Cruise owned by GM - who are the VCs here?

What makes you say Tesla is imitating humans? Their motion planning is all traditional robotics logic, not anything learned.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#63

Post by AlotOfReading »

psanford wrote: post #31
kaycebasques wrote: post #19

This is a bit surprising to me. I haven't seen many Cruise cars on SF roads in the last few months. I've seen a hell of a lot of Waymo, on the other hand. Separate thought: > I’m still surprised I can even write those words — this moment really snuck up on me. This seems to be poorly worded PR considering how much general worry there is over the safety of self-driving cars. If I were writing it, I would have phrased…

I still see a lot of Cruise cars training in the mission.

They have a nearby garage next to the Costco in SoMa. Zoox also has a small garage across the street next to the SPCA building.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#64

Post by ra7 »

sremani wrote: post #51
walrus01 wrote: post #8

Based on this image: https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/6h1C7lPC79OLOlddEE... They and their VC backers are clearly betting on the concept that radars + lidar + imaging will be the ultimate successful solution in full self driving cars, as a completely opposite design and engineering philosophy from Tesla attempting to do "full self driving" with camera sensors and categorical rejection of lidar. It is interes…

The question is do the economics of self-driving cars work when you have to add and integrate all these additional equipment. Correct me, if I am wrong but aren't LIDAR cars supposed to cost you $200K+ ? Tesla is imitating humans in a way that removing LIDAR and relying on the compute to make up for them and build more accurate picture. Also, isn't Cruise owned by GM - who are the VCs here?

Lidar costs have dropped massively and continues to drop. Waymo, for example, claimed 4 years ago they were able to reduce cost of their Lidar by 90% from $75,000 to around $7500 [1]. In the meantime, range and resolution of these sensors have increased. Anyone not making use of Lidar in this day is just hamstringing themselves.

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/googles-waymo-reduces-lidar-...

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#65

Post by jowday »

pmorici wrote: post #49
walrus01 wrote: post #8

Based on this image: https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/6h1C7lPC79OLOlddEE... They and their VC backers are clearly betting on the concept that radars + lidar + imaging will be the ultimate successful solution in full self driving cars, as a completely opposite design and engineering philosophy from Tesla attempting to do "full self driving" with camera sensors and categorical rejection of lidar. It is interes…

They are wholly owned by GM are they not? Starting this way doesn’t preclude them taking Tesla’s vision only approach in the future. Even Tesla initially had a radar vision combination approach before moving to pure vision. The real question with whatever technique being used is can they drive the hardware cost low enough that it can be widely deployed.

They moved to pure vision because they were constrained by radar suppliers because of supply chain issues and the chip shortage, not because of any ML progress - they were actually investigating using a higher resolution imaging radar before the pandemic.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#66

Post by woah »

999900000999 wrote: post #55
polkadotmatrix wrote: post #30

Amazing considering that he said he wasn’t comfortable putting his own kid in them just a few months ago.

18+ is reasonable since it's still a dangerous experiment. I actually would love an automated version of this that goes at 200 or 300 miles an hour, the ultimate thrill ride. Have it run on something like the Autobahn. While it's impossible for a human being to drive at that speed, computers definitely could . It would be like sky diving but on land

Why not go on a train?

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#67

Post by waffle_maniac »

comex wrote: post #60
gitfan86 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is success? Does 50 miles of geofenced and daily mapped streets mean Cruise won self driving? What if Waymo gets to 20k miles of geofenced roads and monthly mapped? What if Tesla gets to the point of one intervention/crash every 100k miles? 10M Miles?

The human accident rate is about one per 500K miles, so if they were able to get in that range, then yes, they would have succeeded; drivers would be able to stop paying attention to the road without putting themselves and others in danger. But the current FSD beta's intervention rate is more like one per 10 miles, judging from some quick googling. I see no particular reason to assume that incremental improvement can…

> current FSD beta's intervention rate is more like one per 10 miles

Maybe in rural areas? The videos on YouTube are far more than one per 10 miles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTybjJj0ptw

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#68

Post by maxerickson »

sremani wrote: post #51
walrus01 wrote: post #8

Based on this image: https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/6h1C7lPC79OLOlddEE... They and their VC backers are clearly betting on the concept that radars + lidar + imaging will be the ultimate successful solution in full self driving cars, as a completely opposite design and engineering philosophy from Tesla attempting to do "full self driving" with camera sensors and categorical rejection of lidar. It is interes…

The question is do the economics of self-driving cars work when you have to add and integrate all these additional equipment. Correct me, if I am wrong but aren't LIDAR cars supposed to cost you $200K+ ? Tesla is imitating humans in a way that removing LIDAR and relying on the compute to make up for them and build more accurate picture. Also, isn't Cruise owned by GM - who are the VCs here?

If you search for "bosch lidar" there's a bunch of 2 year old news about them selling one designed for autonomous vehicles for $10,000, with statements that they could likely drive the price towards $200 with mass production.

So $200,000 is probably not correct.

Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

#69

Post by mandarax8 »

kelnos wrote: post #57
dag11 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? I've ridden plenty of ubers in the past year and haven't noticed any such disinfecting.

Why would you? Presumably they don't do it while you're there.

And you still think they do it?
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