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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

#271

Post by danenania »

vkou wrote: post #212
jurassic wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

On the other hand, once a sufficient percentage of cars on the road are autonomous, couldn’t they use cooperative navigation algorithms to improve throughput a whole lot?

There are so many inefficiencies with human drivers—chaotic merging, unnecessary lane changes, blocking of passing lanes, and so on. I could imagine that optimizing all those away would make a huge difference overall.

You could also probably increase speed limits. And fewer accidents should cause a significant reduction in traffic jams.

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

#272

Post by babyshake »

bendbro wrote: post #215
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…

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 r…

All-electric fleets of safe, non-honking AVs that are fine with whatever routes are required of them and go to designated areas to park and charge are going to make our downtown areas so much better.

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

#273

Post by xiaolingxiao »

catillac wrote: post #263
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?

From public information it's a matter of price and "appearance." No one who's half serious about understanding how the system work would use cameras alone, but remember of all the companies who's serious about putting self driving cars on the road, Tesla is the only one who designs, manufactures and sells cars. Incidentally, Tesla is also the only car company pushing camera only as a "solution" which again, it is not. All other outfits are tech pure plays, so their incentive is more geared towards a working system, because that's the only thing they can sell aside from the dream. If Tesla fails with a camera-only self driving car system, they can still sell cars. Source: used to work in robotics, all my classmates from grad school work or have worked at a self driving car company.

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

#274

Post by nradov »

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.

In the general case it's impractical for electronic sensors to accurately measure the mechanical state of the vehicle. How do they tell us the suspension is rusted out and about to break? (In theory you can play some clever tricks with eddy currents or something but that's not going to be feasible for real world sensing.)

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

#275

Post by ironrabbit »

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.

As of a few years ago, lidar added at least $7500 to the cost of a car. That's a huge price difference for a consumer.

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

#276

Post by alfalfasprout »

sam1234apter wrote: post #218

Why 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...

...because no one other than waymo is doing it? This is still a big achievement.

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

#277

Post by travisd »

snotrockets wrote: post #225
punnerud wrote: post #128

The next thing is a driverless car and a driverless bus “docking” at speed, so you can change vehicle without affecting your trip time. Economics will outcompete 50 self-driving cars going in the same direction for 30min when you could have one driverless-bus doing the same. If this transition is smooth and fast, think what this will do to traveling time, car prices and property prices. How far can you travel without…

We have public transit right now. All we need to do is to not stigmatize its users.

Yep, and beyond that, there's still a need to remove cars from the world, both to fight climate change and to make cities livable again (see any video from the "Not Just Bikes" YouTube channel for support for this argument). Moving everything to autonomous cars (even, yes, electric autonomous cars) will not solve those issues. Smart urban planning and structural reform are the only things that really stand a chance there.

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

#278

Post by gwern »

sam1234apter wrote: post #218

Why 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...

Because it's not Waymo. It suggests that Waymo has a real competitor and Waymo-level tech has been replicated outside Waymo and their long lead over everyone else is evaporating because they have (to outside appearances) dithered so long. (One wonders if Waymo would even have 'been doing it for 6 months already' in SF if Cruise hadn't been ramping up in SF the past few years...)

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

#279

Post by mchusma »

I have 3 thoughts: (1) Amazing to see progress, lets make self driving cars a reality! (2) Oh, its another limited private beta like Waymo has been doing. I'd like to actually use these, and this doesn't seem that much closer. (3) What the heck does Cruise's cap table look like anymore? Acquired by GM, then almost immediately spun back out?

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

#280

Post by 14 »

ytdytvhxgydvhh wrote: post #265
julienb_sea wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The software could require a trip to the dealer for a visual inspection of the tires at set intervals. Hopefully free of charge for something so simple. A quick hookup to the computer and the interval is reset.
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