The Cruise tech presentation from last fall seems very relevant: https://youtu.be/uJWN0K26NxQ (Highly recommended for anyone interested in self-driving cars!)
Thanks for sharing!
Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
561–570 of 652 posts
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#562Based 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…
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?
I just drove through the Alps, at night, during a snow storm. This is hardly everyday driving, but it's the sort of experience Canadians are no strangers to.
Success is when I trust the autopilot to handle the weather conditions where I live, not just sunny days in California.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
A decent chunk of this list can be handled by the car coming to a safe stop and signalling that it is unable to proceed and you need to navigate the situation. I suspect a lot of these could also be handled by that being a remote connection where a human is given the camera input and can indicate how the car should proceed (i.e. broken water main is a road obstruction that won't clear, and the obvious answer is a man…
Let's hope the only passenger has a driver's license and isn't drunk or having a medical emergency.
In both those cases they wouldn't be able to drive anyway, and the result is not more dangerous or worse then the alternative.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#564I would love to hear the "underpants planning" of self driving cars iterated, critiqued and discussed.
Telsa's underpants plan appears to be (still?): [1] Base self driving software on affordable components that already exist in production models. [2] Get lots of high quality data from an existing fleet using this hardware [3] Climb the "levels of automation" ladder step-by-step, straight to consumer [4] Robotaxis, with Tesla owners lending their cars to Tesla's Uber (Tuber)?.
If/when version X of Tesla's self driving software "solves self driving" in the sense that it can use roads/infrastructure as-is and achieve superhuman safety... Tesla hit a massive jackpot. They'll already have millions of cars on the road. Producing millions of cars takes time, and a lot of capital. This amounts to few years' head start and is a big advantage.
Waymo's underpants plan is more of a traditional prototype/proof-of-concept/R&D lab thing. Google already poured >$20bn into Waymo without a start date for a business model. But... they have every advantage. Expensive sensors & hardware. No limits imposed by industrial engineering, manufacturing, marketing or cost concerns. Limited, hand picked routes areas of operation. Waymo is set up to smash performance milestones as quickly as possible.
Waymo, on paper, are better set up to achieve milestones... a working L5 vehicle. But, the road from this milestone to profitable revenue & scale is still pretty long. What if the hardware costs too much? Even if it doesn't cost too much, how long to start and scale production to Tesla levels?
George Hotz has his "Android to Tesla's Apple" underpants plan. No vehicle.
It seems to me Cruise (kvogt, the ceo has commented) is doing something similar to Waymo, strategically. There's a lot of interesting stuff to discuss. Personally, I'm interested in takes on how self driving "rolls out." Will the infrastructure (roads, signs, etc.) need to be adapted? How can this all play out?
BTW... kvogt. It would be great to hear you on Lex Fridman.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
From your Waymo link: > All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now Cruise is the first to do driverless (zero humans in the front seat) testing in SF. Waymo have been doing this for a couple years in Phoenix, but have not yet tested driverless in SF as far as I'm aware.
Yes, though there's the big caveat of only doing it at night (10pm - 6am). Oh and also limited to 25 mph.
Almost exactly 40km/h
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. Unfortunately, I expect that automation will be held to a higher standard than human drivers, rather than the same standard. When an accident happens, people want to know who to…
> Unfortunately, I expect that automation will be held to a higher standard than human drivers, rather than the same standard.
The average driver in a crash is worse than the average driver. Why would we compare FSD with reckless drunks, etc.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#567Can 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.
It's like the change from horse and cart to a crappy early car that wasn't much better. But it's the start of the AI revolution which will have quite an effect.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've given it some thought, and I think the SDC manufacturer must be liable for any accidents the SDC causes. Who else is there? The passengers certainly can't be responsible for any programming or manufacturing errors. There are corner cases and exceptions, but that has to be the rule. Which should mean that as and SDC owner, you don't have to pay car insurance.
>the SDC manufacturer must be liable for any accidents the SDC causes. There's the rub... How do you seperate those from the rest?
The whole event will be recorded by at least the SDC vehicle.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#569I'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,…
If taxicabs can function in the evenings during low demand hours then we can replace those with these robocabs. In Tokyo that's the case as well for when after the busses and trains stop running.
In terms of subsidization, we've had enough problems in the US from the US picking winners with the interstate highway system to the detriment of railway. They shouldn't subsidize anything and let the market handle things. There will be a small demand for robocabs but most will still want to own a car, if they want a car at all.
Re: Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but all of those quotes are by Elon Musk…
True. I actually replied to the entirely wrong comment, should have been one up... I have a great deal more confidence in truly revolutionary things that have been factually delivered by SpaceX (such as 100+ re-uses of a rocket first stage now), and I question how much of that is really due to Musk at all. Maybe Musk as a figurehead. I wonder if all of the Elon fanboys know that much of what's been accomplished at Sp…
I think we'll see major players leaving this industry soon. Self-driving will be a war of attrition and thus cannot be won by US companies with their insane burnrate. Europe has just as competent engineers making a tenth of their US counterparts. If I was a VC I would be head over heels investing in EU self-driving tech. They are the 'cockroaches' of this tech who will survive.
I can't imagine e.g. Waymo bankrolling tens of millions of dollars in payroll for years to come.