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California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

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Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#401

Post by rootusrootus »

throwaway1851 wrote: post #374
belorn wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the killer feature I expect to see in the future when we have FSD is that cities will take direct control of traffic in a central way. If cars can be distributed evenly over all roads with each driver getting an average distance/time-to-arrival the overall speed would significant increase, with car owners loosing the control to pick the shortest route in order to be allowed to use the roads in the city. Centra…

> with car owners loosing the control to pick the shortest route in order to be allowed to use the roads in the city Positively dystopian to me.

> Positively dystopian to me.

Indeed. Sure is interesting to hear some folks talk about all the things they'll do to other people when given the authority. Of course, in their head it's all justified for the greater good. What is it they say about the path to hell...

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#402

Post by chillingeffect »

Symmetry wrote: post #211
jupp0r wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you shrink down 8 person busses to 5 people you have a normal passenger car.

I don't think you can realistically get 3 strangers to squeeze into the back of a normal passenger car.

lol I did this once with Lyft's cheaper service. One cranky old boomer killed the whole vibe bitching about hte driving "listening to his machine (GPS...)" instead of listening to his own, supposedly superior directions. Wish I'd sampled it.

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#403

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

shawnz wrote: post #375
tnel77 wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it goes both ways and we won’t know for sure until it comes to fruition. Personally, I hate owning vehicles and desperately want a self-driving taxi service that I can order via an app to get me and my family around.

If you're just a passenger then why does it matter to you whether the taxi service is self-driving or not? Surely the benefits of self-driving would be significantly more relevant for those who do want to own the vehicle?

Average earnings (after expenses) of a ride share driver is very roughly $10/hour. If you assume a self-driving car can get 2000 hours of use a year (which seems reasonably conservative), then the self-driving car saves $20k in labor costs per year. Although self-driving tech will be expensive in the beginning, the price will likely at some point decline to be far below $20k/year.

Labor is about half of the cost of a hired ride. We know this is true for Uber because there is a lot of public discussion about the budget of a rideshare driver. Not sure about taxis.

Given those premises and assumptions, a person who doesn’t want to drive would care about self-driving tech because it could eventually lower the cost of hiring a ride, potentially by 50%.

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#404

Post by calgarymicro »

coffeeblack wrote: post #289
stuart78 wrote: post #155

I don’t understand why this requires a California law to address? Why hasn’t the FTC intervened? A quick search reveals that it is ‘on their radar’ as of this past June, but as other commenters have pointed out, the claim has been used for more than 5 years. Perhaps they need a more sensitive radar. https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...

[flagged]

Being "pretty clear" in the fine print doesn't help when your product is called "Full Self Driving".

> But Musk bought Twitter.

The bill was introduced in mid-February and was presumably drafted over the preceding months. Musk made his very first Tweet about buying Twitter in mid-April. Not sure what connection you're trying to make here.

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#405

Post by yazaddaruvala »

rntp wrote: post #207
jupp0r wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not paying a human to do the driving would make Uber/Lyft much cheaper, it's the dominant cost component of a ride if you do the math.

hold up hold up hold up. So there was a recent article (in Slate, I believe?) by someone who had driven for Lyft ten years ago and who did it a little bit this year just to see how it changed. They said that the chief thing was that Lyft's take was significantly larger than it used to be, about 40% of the total fares collected. Which, like, you're looking at that and it seems reasonable, right? Let's step into our ti…

The biggest difference between Lyft/Uber and dispatch taxis isn’t the automation it’s the customer service!

Previously customer service was non-existent. If a taxi didn’t show up, we just got screwed. There wasn’t even anyone to call for the issue. On the apps I instantly get a credit to help ease the burden and the driver has their rating reduced.

For many reasons customer service is very expensive and it’s not yet automated. That’s one big additional variable to keep in mind.

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#406

Post by rootusrootus »

ideamotor wrote: post #33
endisneigh wrote: post #16

Mainstream full self driving would just create massive traffic and gridlock - pointless in the end. The induced demand would outweigh the benefits. States are better off acknowledging that sprawling car dependent cities are not sustainable. High frequency busses in the interim with rail transit is the real solution. Current self driving technology plus some key infrastructure changes with dedicated bus lanes and prio…

The metric to judge assisted driving technologies is primarily safety. Driving is not safe and I suspect will appear insane to a future generation. Which generation and how soon is another question. However, what the US needs to massive investments in rail, which address both safety and traffic.

> Driving is not safe

This only appears true because we've made our entire world so safe that we can call one fatality every 100 million miles dangerous. Given everything we use cars for and the immense utility of them, being driven almost exclusively by amateurs ... cars are remarkably safe.

And if you could find a way to reliably remove the 1% that cause most of the problems, it would be even safer.

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#407

Post by SpelingBeeChamp »

belorn wrote: post #361
endisneigh wrote: post #16

Mainstream full self driving would just create massive traffic and gridlock - pointless in the end. The induced demand would outweigh the benefits. States are better off acknowledging that sprawling car dependent cities are not sustainable. High frequency busses in the interim with rail transit is the real solution. Current self driving technology plus some key infrastructure changes with dedicated bus lanes and prio…

One of the killer feature I expect to see in the future when we have FSD is that cities will take direct control of traffic in a central way. If cars can be distributed evenly over all roads with each driver getting an average distance/time-to-arrival the overall speed would significant increase, with car owners loosing the control to pick the shortest route in order to be allowed to use the roads in the city. Centra…

>cities will take direct control of traffic in a central way...with car owners losing control to pick the shortest route in order to be allowed to use the roads in the city

I can't see that happening in the United States.

I don't know a single person who would be happy with the government controlling when and where they can drive, in the manner you describe.

Even if it was net-positive for society.

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#408

Post by quonn »

endisneigh wrote: post #16

Mainstream full self driving would just create massive traffic and gridlock - pointless in the end. The induced demand would outweigh the benefits. States are better off acknowledging that sprawling car dependent cities are not sustainable. High frequency busses in the interim with rail transit is the real solution. Current self driving technology plus some key infrastructure changes with dedicated bus lanes and prio…

I just want to be able to have a beer and still drive home. And that‘s the use case and it‘s a good one.

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#409

Post by alasdair_ »

jimkleiber wrote: post #79
endisneigh wrote: post #16

Mainstream full self driving would just create massive traffic and gridlock - pointless in the end. The induced demand would outweigh the benefits. States are better off acknowledging that sprawling car dependent cities are not sustainable. High frequency busses in the interim with rail transit is the real solution. Current self driving technology plus some key infrastructure changes with dedicated bus lanes and prio…

I assume if there were more self-driving cars, fewer people would own cars. I think more people would take Ubers, Lyfts, and other ride sharing services. So I think that could reduce the need for parking and the amount of traffic just by increasing the utilization rate of cars.

Making it easier and cheaper to access a car will likely mean more cars on the roads, not less.

Re: California passes law banning Tesla from calling software FSD

#410

Post by wpietri »

lokedhs wrote: post #354
jimkleiber wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume if there were more self-driving cars, fewer people would own cars. I think more people would take Ubers, Lyfts, and other ride sharing services. So I think that could reduce the need for parking and the amount of traffic just by increasing the utilization rate of cars.

Less parking, sure. But self driving cars will do nothing to reduce traffic. The problem isn't the number of cars in existence, but rather how many cars are actually driving around at any given point. This number will surely go up with self driving, or at best stay the same.

> But self driving cars will do nothing to reduce traffic.

I think self-driving cars could (and probably will) net worsen the traffic problem, but the above is not necessarily correct. If we ever get them working properly, self-driving cars can collaborate in ways that humans can't. E.g., imagine a busy freeway. In theory, cars going similar ways could form a sort of peoloton, communicating with one another about intention and circumstance. So you could have a group of cars going from one city to another traveling at high speed very close together, saving fuel and space.

But yes, generally anytime we make something easier, people do it more, so I expect any road efficiency gains to be swamped by increased demand.

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