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Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

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Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#161

Post by sangnoir »

Karellen wrote: post #112
delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was supposed to be a SV darling to do it first, not some legacy German carmaker. I feel quite vindicated by this, because I've always been (perhaps irrationally) rather suspicious of Tesla. Software company suddenly decides to make 'luxury cars'? Cool story bro. My opinion is that the German triad (BMW, VW (and subsidiaries, including Porsche), Merc-Benz) may have lost some ground to Tesla when it comes to EVs a…

When was Tesla ever a software company?

When Tesla's sky-high P/E was predicated on software supremacy. I was informed self-driving robotaxis would be a multi-billion dollar industry that Tesla and Uber would dominate, destroying legacy automakers in the process. This was back when Uber had a self-driving program, it's been downhill since. TO answer your question more concretely: I'd say since 8-10 years ago.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#162

Post by ricardobayes »

sneak wrote: post #157
ricardobayes wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm picking wrong examples, but lately almost every "distruptor" company or tech either turned to be an outright scam or a net negative social outcome.

The world with Uber is much better than the world we had before Uber.

Much like airbnb, if it was true to its original mission, it would work well, aka people looking to earn some side cash. But if you are working a low-paid driver "0-hour" contract job without health insurance and a self-funded minimum cover insurance and no PTO, sick days or benefits, that kind of sucks.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#163

Post by piva00 »

bsder wrote: post #126
winrid wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need smart roads more than smart cars. Ah yes, trains. :)

It would be very nice to be able to "link" my electric car into a convoy of other electric cars at say "San Diego" and allow the system to take said convoy to somewhere in "Los Angeles" and reassert control. This would solve a lot of the "last mile" problems that we currently have with train stations in the US (need to park at one terminus, need to get picked up at the other, can't deal with accidents on rails, etc.)…

It'd be even nicer to have investments in public transport infrastructure to allow large population centers to not depend on cars for the majority of A to B trips.

The problems of last mile train stations in the US are completely self-inflicted, to cater for the current status quo of car-centric development, you don't need massive parking lots in central train stations for the majority of big population centres in Europe.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#164

Post by mrsuprawsm »

michaelteter wrote: post #120
winrid wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need smart roads more than smart cars. Ah yes, trains. :)

There's such an (exciting!) opportunity for us to create automated people mover systems that connect small and large systems to get people from very close to A to very close to B. The design and engineering activities involved in solving this would be very enjoyable work, and the human benefits when (eventually) operational would be huge. Every solution would need to be custom for its city/region, but one of the comm…

So, Europe?

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#165

Post by Hamuko »

funcDropShadow wrote: post #93
Hamuko wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind it makes sense for Mercedes-Benz to be the first one to do this. There's probably a laundry list of automotive firsts that are associated with just the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.

You mean like the car itself?

I don't think the Benz Patent-Motorwagen is considered an S-Class. Technically you could say that the S-Class is derived from the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, but you could also say that about any other car.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#166

Post by lm28469 »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #128
_the_inflator wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has changed. Starting 2023 130km/h. Source: https://www.heise.de/news/Hochautomatisiertes-Fahren-bis-130...

Oh Germany. Cannabis legalization and everything else: "We need to study the potential effects for 20 years to be absolutely sure it's safe." Allowing Mercedes let cars drive 130km/h on their own: "Seems about fine, signed." Not complaining about the lack of bureaucracy in this case but it is crazy how fast they got the initial law change passed and now they've even updated the speed to 130, even though no car is cap…

Now tell me how many people can afford weed vs how many people can afford a brand new self driving Mercedes

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#167

Post by sebzim4500 »

Karellen wrote: post #109
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how does this compare with Tesla? Mercedes appears to be indemnifying drivers when its tech is engaged. That's frankly the bigger first for me than SAE Level 3.

But the level they're selling still requires that the driver be able to resume control when notified. So the "the car notified the driver to take over, disengaged, and shortly following that the driver crashed the car" narrative is still possible, even when the "shortly following that" might actually be "0.1s later". Sorry, our tech wasn't engaged at the time, you're actually the one at fault here. Yes, the standard…

In their safety reports, Tesla considers a crash to be caused by AP if the crash happens within 5 seconds of disengagement.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#168

Post by wasmitnetzen »

sneak wrote: post #157
ricardobayes wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm picking wrong examples, but lately almost every "distruptor" company or tech either turned to be an outright scam or a net negative social outcome.

The world with Uber is much better than the world we had before Uber.

Uber never got big in places with decent worker protection laws, which makes me believe that their entire business model depends on exploiting their totally-not-employees. So, I disagree. It might have made the world better for their customers, but that doesn't tip the scale for me.

Re: Mercedes is the first automaker to offer Level 3 self-driving in the US

#169

Post by oblio »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #123
oblio wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need smart roads more than smart cars. Then this is close to impossible :-) The existing road infrastucture maintenance burden is already crushing financially, imagine if we add smart roads to it.

I'm imagining it going up 2%. What's your imagination?

To give a simple example, the US spends a ton of infrastructure. Yet it doesn't even have really smart traffic lights like the Dutch do.

https://youtu.be/knbVWXzL4-4?t=21

Just think about any large scale governmental software project and amplify that 10-100x. That's what I imagine :-)

> The design of the website was overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and built by a number of federal contractors, most prominently CGI Group of Canada. The original budget for CGI was $93.7 million, but this grew to $292 million prior to launch of the website. While estimates that the overall cost for building the website had reached over $500 million prior to launch and in early 2014 HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said there would be "approximately $834 million on Marketplace-related IT contracts and interagency agreements," the Office of Inspector General released a report in August 2014 finding that the total cost of the HealthCare.gov website had reached $1.7 billion and a month later, including costs beyond "computer systems," Bloomberg News estimated it at $2.1 billion.

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