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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

#261

Post by julienb_sea »

mlindner wrote: post #163

I'm not interested in cars I can't own. This idea that we'll turn cars into some kind of service and convert roads into places filled with company-owned vehicles is completely foreign. At that point it'd be cheaper to have self-driving buses and subways. I can only think this viewpoint comes from people who have only ever lived in cities where car ownership is inconvenient given the lack of personal garages. At the m…

Buses and subways cannot operate door to door. That is a fundamental service restriction which will always create a need for personal transit. People with accessibility needs, safety concerns or timing restrictions create a legitimate and important market for door-to-door personal transportation.

Buses are also inherently less efficient outside of peak operating hours. Why should we operate a fleet of million-dollar, high energy consumption buses looping practically empty late at night? A fleet of cars would far better suit the transportation demands for off-peak small scale transport. Cars as a service are also easy for a local government to subsidize so that lower income riders can access the benefits.

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

#262

Post by martythemaniak »

kvogt wrote: post #93
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…

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…

"Today it's unclear what strategy will win"

Thank you for saying the honest, obvious answer. I am tired of people claiming to know what the implementation details of a technology that does not exist. As a nobody retail investor, I have long positions on autonomy (Tesla, Nvidia, GM/cruise, Google), not specific takes on it.

I'm fact, I think the radar/vision debate is not going to matter long term, as there can be multiple winners and the tech will likely converge.

https://www.greennewdealio.com/transportation/teslavswaymo/

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

#263

Post by catillac »

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…

Can someone explain whether there is a principled reason to not use all the sensors available and choose just cameras?

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

#264

Post by gooseus »

bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #154
kvogt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's good to hear a CEO say "we don't know the answer, but we're making a bet" rather than the typical Elizabeth Holmes style "We are absolutely correct and first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you get convicted of three counts of wire fraud and go to prison".

"This is a solved problem.", "We're light-years ahead of the competition", or "We expect everyone with existing hardware to be able to monetize their cars as robo-taxis by the end of next year" are other great examples.

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

#265

Post by ytdytvhxgydvhh »

julienb_sea wrote: post #253
JaimeThompson wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one take into account lack of maintenance by the end user in a strict 100% liability situation?

This problem should be solvable in software. The car can simply refuse to operate in a situation where maintenance is required.

I wonder about that. The top maintenance issue that comes to my mind is sufficient tread on tires. Bald tires will still work great on dry streets but as soon as it starts raining, you start skidding. I honestly don’t know if software could intervene quickly and reliably enough there.

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

#266

Post by heavyset_go »

xeromal wrote: post #214
desertraven wrote: post #139

The 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.

Tech companies, especially software-heavy tech companies, know the value of good marketing on HN.

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

#267

Post by babyshake »

femto wrote: post #210
kvogt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What’s your view on whether self-driving cars should automatically be 100% liable for any accidents? I ask this in the context of machines being governed by classical deterministic physics, so there is an argument that there is no such thing as an accident involving a self-driving car: only a design flaw. This is a genuine question, as I can see that companies with self-driving systems that work, and who do serious f…

Of course, knowing that self-driving cars are 100% liable would incentivize some people to attempt to be hit by one of these vehicles for a payout. A more realistic level of liability would be for 100% liability for accidents resulting from an "unforced error".

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

#268

Post by ancientworldnow »

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…

In many areas it's more about how many interventions per mile are necessary. Anything outside of sunny highway driving is on the edge of that.

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

#269

Post by gerash »

silverlake wrote: post #260
kvogt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Tesla limited themselves to cameras because Musk said “humans can do it with two eyes”. He also didn’t like the look of LiDAR on cars. Such an idiotic decision. Good to see Cruise is not lead by a mega-maniacal CEO.

I believe those arguments are simply justifications for the fact that most people won't be able to afford Teslas with Lidars

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

#270

Post by desertraven »

dang wrote: post #182
desertraven wrote: post #139

The 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.

HN's criterion is whether a post is intellectually interesting, or more precisely whether it can support an intellectually interesting discussion. What's nice about that is you can decide it by looking at the article itself, and the thread—you don't need to know nebulous things like the intentions behind the post. I'd say the current post clears the bar fairly easily. Here are a couple of past explanations about this…

Thanks for the response dang. Someone below has brought to my attention that my comment doesn’t sit within within the guidelines - might it be best for me to edit it with something relevant to the article?

Out of curiosity, and regardless of this case, how do you deal with artificial manipulation of sentiment on HN?

Nudging the views of one of the most active developer communities in the world has value if you were an adversary. Do you see signs of this?

And if the campaign is sustained over a long period, with all comments/threads being within the guidelines, but heavily biased, how does one defend against it?

It would be naive to assume Reddit is the only platform that manipulates user sentiment. And despite the average user here being more capable of critical thinking, we are all still fallible. Can you speak to any of this?

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