What problem is this solving exactly? Talk about a waste of human potential. Great job putting more drivers out of work—- if this thing is even safe.
Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
211–220 of 652 posts
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a taxpayer who pays for roads, and suffers from traffic congestion caused by one-occupant and zero-occupant vehicles, I'm eagerly looking forward to reducing the taxes I pay, by taxing those margins, instead. Ideally, the taxes could be high enough that driverless taxis will operate at barely above break-even. The financial comfort of me and my neighbours are more important to me than the profit margins of a firm…
Do you think your experience of congestion would be improved by everyone driving private vehicles instead? Not sure I follow the logic here.
Yes, because in the common case, a taxi (driverless or otherwise) drives empty at least some of the time, to pick someone up, thus creating congestion, compared to a private vehicle, which doesn't drive empty.
The cheaper and more convenient you make zero-person and single-person automobile transportation, the more people will use it, and the more congestion they will create.
The more expensive and less convenient you make it, the more trips will use non-automotive, or public transportation, both of which produce far less congestion.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always wondered why the rejection of lidar by Tesla. My guess is that it is more about profitability/availability than anything else. Just because humans use eyeballs doesn't mean that it is the best bet for a computer. This sort of naturalistic fallacy led people to believe (~130 years ago and beyond) that the ideal flying machines would have flapping wings because, well, birds have wings and that is how they fly.…
Lidar was expensive back then and would've added huge costs to the vehicles. Not to mention, it looked ugly on consumer cars. Elon conveniently used "humans use only vision" as an excuse and promised every Tesla has "sufficient" hardware for full autonomy. It's that premature promise that doesn't let them add sensors even now (and perhaps Elon's ego) without breaking trust and/or eating big costs for retrofitting. In…
Tesla pivoted to video only. They originally tried with radar as well. So any such statements by musk are already a pivot.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#214The Cruise CEO is here, along with many grand stories of how good/safe their vehicles are. I can’t help but think this thread may be a marketing ploy. If this were the case, is it allowed on HN? Edit: In addition, any negative/challenging/sceptical comment is quickly downvoted.
No need for a conspiracy. This is hackernews. Not reddit. I doubt they are spending their marketing dollars here.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#215Based 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…
Cruise CEO here. Our strategy has been to solve the challenges needed to operate driverless robotaxis on a well-equipped vehicle, then aggressively drive the cost down. Many OEMs are doing this in reverse order. They're trying to squeeze orders of magnitude of performance gains out of really low-cost hardware. Today it's unclear what strategy will win. In a few years our next generation of low-cost compute and sensin…
I expect the media led zeitgeist to slime you on a few fronts:
1. AI/automation/tech bros undercutting the working class.
2. The mortal danger of self driving cars to pedestrians and the public- perhaps with an AI bias/racism zest.
3. The price, location-availability, or otherwise explicit exclusion of people that damage the cars or are otherwise unprofitable being harmful.
4. The proliferation of self driving cars reducing public transit use, thus reducing public transit investment, reducing transit access for poor, increasing pollution, and clogging roads.
5. Something something self driving taxis are subsidized by the government via public investment in roads.
All of these arguments are bullshit and I am not excited to hear people recite them to me in 5 years.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://youtu.be/dmvZBiWYkFQ?t=242 “I want to bring my little son along on this ride, but obviously that’s not where we’re at today.” edit: Fixed link
Either you posted the wrong link, or your link was taken down within the last 20 minutes... Lots of Cruise employees in this thread.
lol. The conspiracies! It was a bad URL bro.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I once threw myself in front of a cruise vehicle to test it for safety. (That’s a bit of an exaggeration, I saw it coming, sped up and jumped into an open parking spot on a trajectory that would take me in front of I didn’t stop) It performed admirably. The safety driver didn’t see me coming but the computer did. The car decelerated to the point it would be able to stop if I kept coming. The safety driver couldn’t fi…
Can confirm from personal experience in crosswalks with self driving cars: cruise is the most timid (read safest!) of the self driving cars being tested in SF IMHO. Cruise will proactively alter trajectory (such as deceleration) for pedestrians and cyclists at a noticeably earlier threshold than Waymo. This is much more pleasant for everyone surrounding the vehicle as it clearly expresses that you have been recognize…
This sounds like a shill comment.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#218Why is this considered a big stride when Waymo is doing it for 6 months already?https://blog.waymo.com/2021/08/welcoming-our-first-riders-in...
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#219The Cruise CEO is here, along with many grand stories of how good/safe their vehicles are. I can’t help but think this thread may be a marketing ploy. If this were the case, is it allowed on HN? Edit: In addition, any negative/challenging/sceptical comment is quickly downvoted.
No need for a conspiracy. This is hackernews. Not reddit. I doubt they are spending their marketing dollars here.
You're right. Perhaps they simply announced this post company-wide, so lots of happy employees are here.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#220Based 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…
Cruise CEO here. Our strategy has been to solve the challenges needed to operate driverless robotaxis on a well-equipped vehicle, then aggressively drive the cost down. Many OEMs are doing this in reverse order. They're trying to squeeze orders of magnitude of performance gains out of really low-cost hardware. Today it's unclear what strategy will win. In a few years our next generation of low-cost compute and sensin…
No, the different strategies are that Tesla has a vehicle actually being used by hundreds of thousands of people and is slowly incrementally improving their self driving with massive amounts of feedback and data, while these demo companies are doing if statements around the block.