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Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

theregister.com

411–420 of 778 posts

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

You don't get the economies of scale needed to justify high-quality, regular rail service along the more quiet routes. Look at China's high speed rail network. Only a small minority of routes manage to break even, and the rest of them are a huge financial burden that the CCP just accepts because achieving a huge engineering feat creates a sense of national pride.

Cheap trains everywhere doesn’t have to mean high speed rail everywhere.

You can have slower cheaper rail infrastructure that serves less traveled routes.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#412
post #367

What do we want from self driving cars? Naturally I wand a car I can summon from the pub that will drive me the 20km, over country roads, to my house while I mix cocktails or have a nap. That may never happen, current technology does not seem up to it. Then what? Modern cruise control, that keeps my car a constant distance form the car in front (unless it roars off at a speed higher that what I am comfortable with) i…

Recently I was reading that in Europe, most cars sold don't even have automatic transmission, yet the drivers there are much safer than than people in the US or Australia.

There was some speculation that because they shift gears manually, they have to pay more attention to the road and can't do things like drink coffees while driving. They also enjoy driving a lot more than we do.

I wonder if other technology would have a similar effect of ultimately making driving less safe and enjoyable. I've never driven a super-modern car, but I do know that I zone out a bit when cruise control is on...

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get the economies of scale needed to justify high-quality, regular rail service along the more quiet routes. Look at China's high speed rail network. Only a small minority of routes manage to break even, and the rest of them are a huge financial burden that the CCP just accepts because achieving a huge engineering feat creates a sense of national pride.

Cheap trains everywhere doesn’t have to mean high speed rail everywhere. You can have slower cheaper rail infrastructure that serves less traveled routes.

Fair enough, but then nobody wants to use it because it's slow.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in the AV space, it's really frustrating how confidently people who have no idea about what's hard and what isn't go off about Tesla right now. Mercedes has soundly beaten the last decade of Tesla efforts by reaching L3. I've personally watched FSD go off the rails and into a crash situation within 60 seconds of being turned on three times this month (I have a friend who loves to try it in San Francisco) Had…

This FUD is insane. You make it sounds like Tesla's with FSD on are crashing all the time. This makes no sense at all, because... they aren't?

Teslas with FSD are disengaging all the time. And even worse, it's not always FSD initiating: often times it's FSD not realizing it's about to do something wrong, the humans take over, and then them brushing it off as "well it's a beta" or "I bet it would have gotten it but I wasn't so sure".

Getting to a point where Mercedes can guarantee their system will correctly initiate disengagements and do so with a 10 seconds of response time while putting the liability on themselves is a massive leap of anything Tesla has ever put out.

Again, this is what happens when you have literally no clue how the space works (and then turn around and accuse people of FUD.)

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in the AV space, it's really frustrating how confidently people who have no idea about what's hard and what isn't go off about Tesla right now. Mercedes has soundly beaten the last decade of Tesla efforts by reaching L3. I've personally watched FSD go off the rails and into a crash situation within 60 seconds of being turned on three times this month (I have a friend who loves to try it in San Francisco) Had…

> People also don't seem to understand Mercedes has a separate L2 system that works above 45 mph that already scores better than AP by consumer reports Isn't Mercedes' L2 system non-upgradable, though? i.e. people with Merc's L2 system today won't be able to upgrade to L3+ later on, they'll need to buy a whole new car - right? I bring this up only because I bought my X in 2018 with FSD prepaid - it's 5 years old now,…

According to Elon HW V2/2.5 was going to be FSD solved in 2016. Now HW V4 will be FSD solved. There've been multiple paid upgrades along that path that depending on exactly how Elon convinced a given buyer to pay for FSD previously.

The fact that you're going to claim that Tesla, the company that famously discounts vehicles wholesale before unannounced upgrades, silently downgraded their CPO program to a used car program, removed ultrasonic sensors and didn't tell buyers if they'd be missing basic features like Summon temporarily (read: 4+ months) until their vehicles were delivered... is showing a commitment to their car buyers... really says something.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#416
post #367

What do we want from self driving cars? Naturally I wand a car I can summon from the pub that will drive me the 20km, over country roads, to my house while I mix cocktails or have a nap. That may never happen, current technology does not seem up to it. Then what? Modern cruise control, that keeps my car a constant distance form the car in front (unless it roars off at a speed higher that what I am comfortable with) i…

If you live in a high traffic area having your car drive you through the stop and go is currently possible and a huge quality of life increase. Stop and go traffic is 100% the worst experience when driving, having that automated is awesome.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#417
post #367

What do we want from self driving cars? Naturally I wand a car I can summon from the pub that will drive me the 20km, over country roads, to my house while I mix cocktails or have a nap. That may never happen, current technology does not seem up to it. Then what? Modern cruise control, that keeps my car a constant distance form the car in front (unless it roars off at a speed higher that what I am comfortable with) i…

Recently I was reading that in Europe, most cars sold don't even have automatic transmission, yet the drivers there are much safer than than people in the US or Australia. There was some speculation that because they shift gears manually, they have to pay more attention to the road and can't do things like drink coffees while driving. They also enjoy driving a lot more than we do. I wonder if other technology would h…

Lead footing is a phenomenon exclusive to automatics. Basically, you are on a 35mph road maybe, you lead foot some, the car shifts from third to the overdrive gear, now you are going like 45 or 50mph with the engine barely making any noise, you thinking this is just fine. On a manual, you'd know if you were in third and went to 50mph—the engine would be howling at another couple thousand rpm depending on the car. Going into your overdrive gear would require a conscious effort to shift into it.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#418
post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's shows the system does not have a semantic understanding of what is happening. That is why he stops so far away from the gate, it does not know it is a gate. This is another one, definitely one of my favorite examples ( at correct time) - https://youtu.be/2u6AgLuwVqI?t=86

But the Mercedes system has a semantic idea of what is happening?

They don't need. They are not trying to achieve Level 5 and are not relying only on cameras.

Notice also on this example:

https://youtu.be/gzcR8RaC3-g?t=397

They have a driver attention detection system, that works even with dark glasses, as the driver in this case. Also even if you do not take over in the 10 seconds, like in the case for example of the driver fainting, or having a heart attack, the car will stop safely on the side of the road, alert emergency services, and unlock the doors for first responders.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working in the AV space, it's really frustrating how confidently people who have no idea about what's hard and what isn't go off about Tesla right now. Mercedes has soundly beaten the last decade of Tesla efforts by reaching L3. I've personally watched FSD go off the rails and into a crash situation within 60 seconds of being turned on three times this month (I have a friend who loves to try it in San Francisco) Had…

> go off about Tesla right now. People don't go off on Tesla because of its lack of technical prowess. People go off on Tesla because their marketing department is a bunch of pathological liars.

That is so unkind to the Tesla marketing department...:-) Where do they get their orders from?

https://youtu.be/zhr6fHmCJ6k

https://youtu.be/5cFTlx68itk

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get the economies of scale needed to justify high-quality, regular rail service along the more quiet routes. Look at China's high speed rail network. Only a small minority of routes manage to break even, and the rest of them are a huge financial burden that the CCP just accepts because achieving a huge engineering feat creates a sense of national pride.

Cheap trains everywhere doesn’t have to mean high speed rail everywhere. You can have slower cheaper rail infrastructure that serves less traveled routes.

It also doesn't have to be profitable. Transportation is a service that's critical to economic function. There's no reason not to shift the cost of taxpayer funded vehicle infrastructure to transit infrastructure.
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