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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

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are betting that hardware combination is the fastest to market, given the constraints of today software. When the ml stack is capable of leveraging purely camera sensors, Cruise and others like them, own the fleet and can swap out the hardware. Tesla does not "own" the fleet per se. So perhaps its different bets on which cars will still be on the road when the ML threshold is crossed.

Tesla has really fallen behind. I think Karpathy will be fired this year if his team can't achieve at least L4.

I think you have to be ahead first before you can fall behind. Tesla never had that problem.

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

#542
post #460

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I grew up in a part of Ontario where total whiteouts can happen fairly frequently on both major highways leading in and out of my small town. It is in fact possible to drive dozens of km in near or total whiteout conditions simply by the hazard lights of the car ahead of you. You very frequently will see lines of cars km long, all going I don't think vision-based FSV will ever reliably handle winter conditions like t…

The worst is when one goes into a ditch and the car following them follows into the ditch because their main indicator of where to go was the running lights and tire tracks of the car in front.

Where I grew up people would go together off the side of the mountain this way in very heavy fog.

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

#543

Can we just call out how incredibly awesome this is? We might stumble along the way but this is as big as moving from horse carts to cars. Respect to all of you working on self driving cars!

I... don't think it's as big a step as that, because back when horse carts and cars were around you could hire a driver. Net effect (not having to drive yourself) is the same. It's an evolutionary step, not a revolution. I don't see it having as dramatic an effect on society or how cities are built as cars did.

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

#544
post #174

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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…

Timid is a good word to describe how I would prefer self-driving vehicles to drive. Consistency and comfort will be more important than minimizing travel times. It's impatient human drivers that are behind a lot of accidents.

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

#545

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I'm sure there are lots of other people out there who could run today's SpaceX as a space cargo trucking company. But Elon deserves the credit for creating two wildly successful companies that revolutionized their respective industries, both in the face of hugely entrenched competitors in highly regulated markets that hadn't seen successful new players in decades, and both as a side effect of his actual goal of getti…

>the credit for creating two wildly successful companies From reading comments in other similar threads I seen the argument that Elon did not created Tesla, so maybe would be more honest to rephrase your "created" wording, I am wondering how many people know that Elon did not created Tesla so he is assigned the role just because of his big social media presence.

he didn't create it but can definitely be credited for its success... Tesla that he bought was a failing company.

Do you really, really think that Musk is just a "big social media presence"? Why doesn't Trump or any of the Kardashians achieve similar feats?

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

#546

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> If there's no Elon, there's no SpaceX. Why not? What mystical gift does this one person have that 7 billion other people don't, that permits him and only him to run the company? This is a really unpopular opinion on a web site that exalts founders, but I don't think it really takes much special skill to run a company. Most (but admittedly not all) CEOs are in their position not because of their know-how, but becaus…

> Why not? Check out how Bezos's space company is doing.

Heck, check Armadillo Aerospace if you think that Bezos is "all money no skill" and doesn't count.

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

#547
post #308

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> In the US public transit is impossible No sarcasm. Why it's impossible to have public transit like every other country in the world but it's possible to pour tons of money on driverless cars development?

The suburban land use pattern doesn't admit good transit because not enough people live close to the stations. Also, we have bad combinations of when to make things public/private - the US actually has much more public services than many other countries (other places do have privatized mail, transit, etc) but then doesn't fund them. If this was Japan all the good stores would be in the train station and would fund th…

Thank you, I really appreciate your answer.

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

#548
post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still think the cars should anticipate risks and behave accordingly. Out and out fraud aside, they should basically never injure anyone.

I agree For one thing electric cars are too quiet. There should be a law that someone with a bell has to walk in front of the car to let people know it is coming

Well, a noise making device has already been mandated because the startup car company refused to voluntarily install one. It hadn't been formalized because every other brands basically had it forever.

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

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure there are lots of other people out there who could run today's SpaceX as a space cargo trucking company. But Elon deserves the credit for creating two wildly successful companies that revolutionized their respective industries, both in the face of hugely entrenched competitors in highly regulated markets that hadn't seen successful new players in decades, and both as a side effect of his actual goal of getti…

The only people who were even competing were eccentric billionaires so let's be clear that he only beat a handful of other people who even had access to attempt the business. It's not that huge of an accomplishment because private space was theorized for a long time but NASA sucked up all the air in the room for the longest time but Elon's timing was just right. He out of the handful of billionaires working on this w…

Honestly it’s hard to read your comment without an envious tone. You even admitted his timing was right, that alone takes skill. The point others are making is that there are lots of examples of failed companies, yet his have been successful. If anyone could have done what he’s done, why haven’t they?

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

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really matter? If there's no Elon, there's no SpaceX. And I say this as someone that doesn't buy into the founder cult.

I'll be more impressed when he solves climate change.

You might not give him credit even if he did. We're in a thread where people are wondering whether he's not just a figurehead for SpaceX, so... what exactly are we taking about?

AFAIK Musk's involvement in Tesla was specifically to address climate change/ help move the industry towards electric cars. To the extent that this, plus improved battery tech, ends up reducing our oil dependency and eventually contributes to "solving climate change" - would you credit any of that back to him? Or just say that he didn't single-handedly solve climate change, so it doesn't count?

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