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Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

theregister.com

611–620 of 778 posts

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do we want from self driving cars? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I want public transportation infrastructure and far, far, FAR fewer cars. I think the US should strive to reduce car ownership by 75% over the next 20 years, at least in cities over a certain population size. I don't want any more money invested in self-driving cars. But I'm also a grown-up of a certain age and realize the bright-eyed 20-something…

> I want public transportation infrastructure and far, far, FAR fewer cars. I think the US should strive to reduce car ownership by 75% over the next 20 years, at least in cities over a certain population size. Do you want to limit the cars people own or do you want to limit how much cars are used? I could reduce the number of my cars to 1 and wouldn't be driving any less. Or I could buy more cars and still would not…

Both, hopefully? Manufacturing cars comes with a lot of environmental impact, too.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#612
post #515
post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true for rentals, they don’t want idiots screwing up their gearboxes. But, most cars on the streets are manuals, and you can’t get a driver’s license if you don’t know how to drive one.

That is only true in poorer European countries with older, cheaper vehicle fleets. Most new car sales in more affluent countries no longer have manual transmissions. Modern automatics with 8+ forward gears or CVTs are more fuel efficient than manuals and easier to integrate as part of hybrid systems. And of course EV sales are growing rapidly: they don't use conventional transmissions at all.

I seriously doubt there’s a majority of automatic in Germans and French’s individual buyers. In fact most people that don’t rent cars don’t are very hesitant when required to drive one (if that ever happen)

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What those utilizing the transportation network are willing and able to pay to use the network will be directly proportional to how critical the usage of that transportation network is to economic function. So there is never any economic need to transfer the cost of using the transportation network from those using it, to taxpayers at large. In fact, socializing costs of transportation is what can cause economically…

Not everything needs to be done for purely economic purposes - that includes the creation and maintenance of transportation networks. Societies are free to have broader sets of objectives.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#614
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…

> What do we want from self driving cars? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I want public transportation infrastructure and far, far, FAR fewer cars. I think the US should strive to reduce car ownership by 75% over the next 20 years, at least in cities over a certain population size. I don't want any more money invested in self-driving cars. But I'm also a grown-up of a certain age and realize the bright-eyed 20-something…

I'm not sure you really do.

I live in the UK and public transport is actually very unreliable. Cancellations and delays are frequent, strikes happen a dozen times a year, many services have an hour between trains... public transport will take you much linger to get anywhere and you'll be able to transport much less. The car has been a blessing when shopping.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do we want from self driving cars? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I want public transportation infrastructure and far, far, FAR fewer cars. I think the US should strive to reduce car ownership by 75% over the next 20 years, at least in cities over a certain population size. I don't want any more money invested in self-driving cars. But I'm also a grown-up of a certain age and realize the bright-eyed 20-something…

I'm not sure you really do. I live in the UK and public transport is actually very unreliable. Cancellations and delays are frequent, strikes happen a dozen times a year, many services have an hour between trains... public transport will take you much linger to get anywhere and you'll be able to transport much less. The car has been a blessing when shopping.

This seems more a problem in how this specific public transport is run, than with public transport in general.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#616
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

It’s painful to see your matter-of-fact tone regarding things you have absolutely no clue about. You seem to know next to nothing about the auto space in general. Every carmaker raises and lowers their prices according to supply and demand. And no, there is no driver assistance system among any of the big manufacturers that come anywhere near Tesla’s system. And yes, exploring a problem space that hasn’t been explore…

[deleted]

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving cars are much more likely to be public transport than individually owned. It's also extremely likely that it requires ride-sharing to be viable, which will substantially reduce traffic as well as car ownership (I suspect there may be enough cost pressure that most self-driving vehicles are more like minibuses than cars, which would also help a lot with pollution and congestion, but this may require regul…

"Self driving cars are much more likely to be public transport than individually owened" I've only seen this as a 'just so' greenwash pr story from the automotive industry to offset the projected 300% increase in total road miles driven anually. Please explain why peole would be compelled to ditch their multidude of private cars just because they now come with a 24/7 free driver included?

Indeed, that's the elephant in the room. Self driving cars by virtue of being self driving can be sent on trips by themselves without requiring the driver to be present. The presence of a driver is a limiting factor, once that one drops away there will be many more trips. Suddenly kids can use the car and all kinds of pick up and delivery jobs become cost effective in a way that they are not today.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#618
post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pro…

It’s painful to see your matter-of-fact tone regarding things you have absolutely no clue about. You seem to know next to nothing about the auto space in general. Every carmaker raises and lowers their prices according to supply and demand. And no, there is no driver assistance system among any of the big manufacturers that come anywhere near Tesla’s system. And yes, exploring a problem space that hasn’t been explore…

I work on autonomous vehicles, what on earth do I know about LKAS or exploring new problem spaces?

It's not like a basic Corolla has had features like drowsiness detection for close to a decade.

And you seem to have forgotten that in 2016 Elon claimed _all_ Teslas had FSD capable hardware, never contingent on if you had paid for FSD. That means the upgrades to 3 and 4 were paid upgrades for people who thought they were paying for a car that could already do FSD.

Overall you're upset and barking up the wrong tree (hardly even in the right forest)

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#619
post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm not sure what the track record for FSD is so far but Autopilot's isn't great and inspires little confidence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-a... 17 fatalities, 736 crashes.

Those are crashes WITH, not crashes BECAUSE.

Without knowing the usual amount of no fault crashes given the number of driving miles the number is meaningless

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#620
post #576

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the inside? I live in NYC and its metro and bus system is amazing, and even then it's still worse than what I experienced in Asia, we're for example in Seoul, I did not have to walk more than five minutes to be able to get on a train or bus and when I got off, I similarly did not have to walk more than five minutes to get to my end destination.

What about someone who doesn’t want to travel with other people in public transport, and also doesn’t want to walk the 10 minutes of the journey?

They could pay more to cover the externalities, and enjoy relatively empty roads.

Town centers will soon be inaccessible by car, so they'll still need public transport occasionally for that.

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