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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

#71

Post by jowday »

gonehome wrote: post #39
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?

Yeah, they’re not trying to solve the same thing? I think Tesla is right that to solve it for real you need to solve the general case which can’t rely on high resolution maps. The city cab case is smaller and can, so the cruise approach makes sense for that use case. It’s just narrower.

The truth of it is that it’s just not possible (with currently existing technology/ML architectures) to create a truly autonomous taxi without HD maps. Everyone in the robotaxi industry knows this - even Tesla builds HD maps, they just don’t call them that.

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

#72

Post by georgeburdell »

I’m concerned about the timing of this. Former CEO Dan Ammann, fired in December, was a big champion of the robotaxi business model. It is speculated he was fired because GM CEO Mary Barra disagrees with this strategy and wants them to focus more on integration with existing GM vehicles.

I am afraid that the robotaxi timeline was pulled in so that the rest of the believers inside Cruise can get supporting data to prove it’s a viable model and to make it harder for Mary to change its course. This may come at the expense of safety.

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

#73

Post by more_corn »

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.

The reason camera only won’t happen is because it won’t work. Elon has been fighting reality for years.

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

#74

Post by whimsicalism »

waffle_maniac wrote: post #67
comex wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A helpful link for your perusal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

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

#75

Post by walrus01 »

jeffbee wrote: post #56
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…

Why do we have to discuss Tesla whenever self-driving comes up? Cruise has this technology. Waymo has it. There are a smattering of niche players out there with various levels of self-driving. Tesla emphatically does not have it. They are not in the race.

I agree, but they sure claim to be. Literally marketed as "full self driving".

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

#76

Post by namrog84 »

itisit wrote: post #36
37ef_ced3 wrote: post #4

What is the benefit of a taxi being driverless, for the passenger? Is it cheaper?

The benefit, one day, is if you're a criminal whose face is detected, the car doors will lock, and you'll be driven directly to law enforcement who will be ready and waiting to apprehend you.

Although possible.

I suspect and hope there will be some push back. Imagine a counterpoint in either a bug or malicious attack where innocent person is locked in and then driven into a lake or something.

I dont think autonomous cars should be able to lock people in. The car can report to police silently, that's fine.

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

#77

Post by threeseed »

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?

> Tesla is imitating humans in a way that removing LIDAR

They are trying to imitate a fraction of what humans can do. And the state of the art ML research still does not account for issues like whether a photo of a person on a truck is real or not.

You really need LiDAR for accurate bounding box detection.

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

#78

Post by nichochar »

georgeburdell wrote: post #72

I’m concerned about the timing of this. Former CEO Dan Ammann, fired in December, was a big champion of the robotaxi business model. It is speculated he was fired because GM CEO Mary Barra disagrees with this strategy and wants them to focus more on integration with existing GM vehicles. I am afraid that the robotaxi timeline was pulled in so that the rest of the believers inside Cruise can get supporting data to pro…

[Disclaimer] I work for cruise.

Safety is the most critical value that our company has, and we live it every day in all of our processes / culture. I won't comment on the executive changes, but I can guarantee that this company (unlike some rivals...) would never compromise safety in any decision.

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

#79

Post by pbharrin »

zerotosixty wrote: post #21

So is this just SF? How many people can actually sign up and use it? Wow thats a nice amount of funding? Is this going to be their last funding round before they IPO? Is there a VC who give more funding? Are employees gonna be rich or is this gonna be a wework scenario?

Cruise was aquired by GM in 2016, unless they are spun off there won't be an IPO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_(autonomous_vehicle)

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

#80

Post by whimsicalism »

danielrhodes wrote: post #52
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?

Cruise is interesting insofar as they are not simply looking to sell their technology, but they also want to monetize it as a service. Not only will they not need a driver, they will also be able to buy the hardware (the car) at cost. If it's successful, their margins will be much higher than Uber and Lyft by a long shot.

Is this not what effectively everyone who is doing this (outside of Tesla) is looking at?
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