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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

#321

Post by justapassenger »

amacneil wrote: post #300
justapassenger wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Tesla's approach is a textbook case of premature optimization.

Tesla's approach is a textbook case of differing constraints. Despite Elon's commentary, the reason Tesla does not use lidar is sensor cost (waymo/cruise cars probably have 250k+ worth of sensors on them), and reason Tesla does not use radar is supply chain.

Sensor cost is a lame excuse, especially coming from a company that's one of the leaders of EV world. Battery prices are decreasing, but sensors wouldn't?

Tesla put constrain on themselves, because they wanted to sell product years before they existed, and they were super cheap on HW, to optimize their costs.

They optimized their solution, before they even had a slightest idea what's needed to make it work.

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

#322

Post by zild3d »

snotrockets wrote: post #224
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…

Even cheaper: don't have computer driven transit, but human driven transit. The current money sunk on the automated driving tech startups could pay drivers for years to come. What I would like to see is companies and people working towrds eliminating as many vehciles from the road. It is untainable, if we want an habitable planet, to have have a dependency on cars. This means we have to move back to a denser environm…

> Even cheaper: don't have computer driven transit, but human driven transit

Cheaper on what time frame? Obviously the upfront R&D costs start out as more expensive, but the marginal cost goes toward 0 while human cost is flat/increases.

Also cheaper isn't the only axis, safety is a big reason to invest in not having humans drive.

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

#323

Post by mandeepj »

ironrabbit wrote: post #275
silverlake wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> lidar added at least $7500 to the cost of a car

That was Adam years ago in the Self-driving world. Now, it costs only few hundred dollars only, starting with $99.

https://velodynelidar.com/products/puck-lite/

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

#324

Post by ironman1478 »

walrus01 wrote: post #318
ironman1478 wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know maintenance is required in a completely automated fashion?

My fear is that car manufacturers will turn cars into a totally dealer serviceable only thing (even more than they are now), like the car version of the glued shut Microsoft surface that gets a 1/10 on the ifixit repairability score.

In the case of Cruise this wouldn't be a problem because you wouldn't own the vehicle. Its a robotaxi service. Your point is still valid, though I'd ask, how do you even solve certain classes of issues? Like lets say you had to replace a camera. You can't just plop one in and have it work. There is a ton of complex calibration work that needs to happen, both intrinsic & extrinsic.

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

#325

Post by xp84 »

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…

I actually agree with everything here, but on the other hand the decision of whether and how to actually build the massive amounts of non-car infrastructure we need to have transport be efficient and accessible without private cars of any kind, is in a whole different place. At least in the US, it's pretty clear that in most areas there is very limited political will, even in the grass roots, for things like "build good high-speed trains" and "dig new billion dollar subways" etc. So I think pragmatically speaking things like robotaxis are going to be the "solutions" that we'll actually get.

(And yes, I agree that that's dumb since the same politicians and voters have no problem indefinitely subsidizing and expanding the massively money-losing infrastructure called Roads at taxpayer expense!)

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

#326

Post by mwattsun »

minwcnt5 wrote: post #316
mwattsun wrote: post #203

> Today we are opening up our driverless cars in San Francisco to the public I doubt that means what they hope we think it means. So your employees have been taking your carefully designed ride and now you've let a couple of non-employees ride the course. If it means more than that, especially allowing random rides with random passengers, I'd be very surprised.

It is not a "course", the employees request to be picked up and dropped off anywhere in the city, just like requesting an Uber/Lyft ride.

Well, that's surprising. I've driven San Francisco as an Uber/Lyft driver and it's a nightmare. I'm really curious how it checks for side traffic when it's nose is pointed at the sky at a stop sign on a steep hill.

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

#327

Post by polkadotmatrix »

jedberg wrote: post #250
polkadotmatrix wrote: post #30

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

He didn't say that. He said they weren't ready to yet. I think he meant legally because his son is under 18 so their insurance wouldn't cover it and also it was employees only at the time so again their insurance wouldn't cover it. I didn't get any sense he meant that he didn't trust the technology (otherwise he wouldn't be in it either).

People routinely take risks themselves they wouldn't impose on their kids.

It's much harder to believe that he didn't bring his son because of some weird insurance exclusion (presumably 1. they were insured for riders under 18 outside the vehicle and 2. he would have explicitly called out that it was a legal formality) than that this was extremely new technology which still had a reasonable chance of getting into a serious accident.

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

#328

Post by drzaiusapelord »

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".

Game theory and personality dynamics strategy applies to C-levels too! For some industries, companies, etc you want to be a Holmes type of total confidence. It depends who your market is, and by that I mean the VC's you want to attract. If they go for the "arrogant boy/girl genius" schtick then that's what you do. If they want a humble intellectual, then that's what you do instead. Conversely, you may alternate between the two depending on your audience. Maybe you're humble in HN comments, but maybe a monster in VC meetings. Look at Elon's larger than life "boy genius" PR persona. It works really well. He may not be a total fraud like Holmes, but his shoddy car AI has killed at least a couple people in cases where if the car had a lidar-like system, that truck or whatever would have been identified instead of seen as part of the sky.

Also Cruise wants to license to automakers, not make their own car, so they have to act like trustworthy partners in their PR. Elon has his own car company and instead is antagonistic and belittling to automakers because he thinks there's a competitive advantage to it. Any positive sentiment towards his competitors is potentially lost sales for Tesla. Capitalism encourages zero-sum thinking and rewards zero-sum strategies.

CEOs are marketers and salespeople primarily and as such know how to play different roles for different situations. They code switch just like everyone else. The role isn't for everyone in tech because a lot of tech people don't have the people, political, and acting skills for it.

tldr; capitalism doesn't work well with honesty, in fact it works best with dishonesty. You don't have a personal relationship with a CEO or company, you're just absorbing marketing delivered via executive personalities. Personalities are perfectly valid marketing tools in capitalism. Take that as you will.

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

#329

Post by astrange »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #328
bloodyplonker22 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Game theory and personality dynamics strategy applies to C-levels too! For some industries, companies, etc you want to be a Holmes type of total confidence. It depends who your market is, and by that I mean the VC's you want to attract. If they go for the "arrogant boy/girl genius" schtick then that's what you do. If they want a humble intellectual, then that's what you do instead. Conversely, you may alternate betwe…

Theranos didn't use the normal set of VCs because they all thought it was a scam; they raised from some random rich people who weren't professional tech VCs instead. It's unfortunate the only thing she was convicted for was defrauding them, since being accredited investors they should be able to live with that.

As for Elon, he's currently doing a bad boy anti-government bit in an attempt to make Tesla "electric cars you can buy even if you're a Republican". Since we want those people buying EVs instead of coal rolling, that's a good thing.

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

#330

Post by angrysword »

About one month ago, the CEO of Cruise --self driving car industry leader--been fired by the CEO of GM--EV industry leader---. One month later, the car start drive itself at most challenge city. What a great achievement is. Then I take a look a video, I think the cruise still use 10 years old google self driving car technology. When I saw 3 lidars there, I know maybe millions of line code added as always. more hardware, more code, it means far away from production. NIO, XPEV, TUSIMPLE, HUAWEI use lidar, but not something like this.
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