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Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

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Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#311

Post by phs318u »

slg wrote: post #290
kadushka wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail Tesla will not - it will blame the human driver for not paying attention. That's the difference.

This is misinterpreting what I'm saying. I'm not arguing for the safety of Tesla's system. I'm saying that judging the safety based off of corporate marketing decisions is a mistake and putting a guarantee on a product is a marketing decision.

Even if this originated as a marketing thought bubble, there's no way that such a decision could've been made without direct approval from the executive (including the CEO), and only after taking advice from their general counsel and consulting with the board. The potential reputational damage is too immense for such a decision to be made by "marketing" alone. What you're describing has happened before and the courts awarded massive punitive damages against the motor company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#312

Post by phs318u »

slg wrote: post #298
acdha wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they are different. The degree depends on the company and if they have a history of trying to weasel out, but a legal agreement makes it harder to dodge liability in court. Tesla would love to offer the reassurance to buyers but there’s a reason they haven’t done so: they’d lose money on it.

You are failing to understand what I'm saying. They don't have to weasel out of legal liability in court. They just bake the legal settlements they know they will have to pay into their marketing budget. Has no one watched Fight Club and heard the anecdote about how a company will only recall a car if the cost of the recall is lower than the cost of settling all the lawsuits? All this guarantee tells us is that Merce…

That scene is a reference to Grimshaw vs Ford Motor Co.

The precedents set in that case mean that the liabilities arising out of legal action based on 'strict liability' are likely to be extremely punitive (these days, well upwards of the $147M awarded against Ford in 1980, and into the billions). Any company that did not factor such a payment in their calculation in addition to the indirect costs of reputational damage, deserves everything they get. I doubt this is the case with Mercedes.

One question I do have that perhaps someone here will know - is the Mercedes guarantee limited to certain locales? e.g. Germany only as the roads there are in good condition and well marked? (I'm assuming here).

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#313

Post by mike_d »

kemotep wrote: post #257
prhn wrote: post #226

The future of (public) transportation absolutely is driverless cars. Every time I'm stuck in traffic on an LA highway with 5+ lanes and I see the horrendously inefficient use of space this future becomes clearer. Waymos are also really confidence inspiring. They drive more safely and cautiously than any Uber/Lyft driver I've ridden with. If every car on the road was synced then they could drive more closely to each o…

If you want to get rid of the space taken up by 5 lane highways you need to convert roads into walkways for pedestrians, bike lanes, and bus lanes. There can still exist space for cars but they need to be last in priority rather than the first, second, and third consideration cars have today when it comes to infrastructure.

I challenge anyone who seriously proposes this to first spend a month in a wheelchair. You quickly discover that your sense of scale and freedom of movement is largely a function of your physical capability and financial comfort.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#314

Post by 3vidence »

hightrix wrote: post #139
xyst wrote: post #119

Anything Toyota latches themselves to eventually dies. Toyota and hybrid vehicles - very weak entry into the market Toyota and hydrogen powered vehicles - dead on arrival Toyota’s failure to electrify fleet Now they want autonomous vehicles? Wonder who backs out first? Waymo or Toyota once they realize what a joke Toyota is. Well at least they are not collaborating with Nissan.

> Toyota and hybrid vehicles - very weak entry into the market This statement doesn't seem to track with reality. The Prius was one of the first major hyrbids and it sold like hotcakes. You see them everywhere. Their current offerings include more hybrids than ever, in fact it seems a majority of their vehicles have a hyrbid option today, including the Tacoma and Tundra.

Isn't the rav4 hybrid the best selling non truck in the US? The comments on this story amaze me with how inaccurate people are about Toyota hybrids.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#315

Post by slg »

floxy wrote: post #303
ketzo wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Maybe my knowledge of EV ranges is way out of wack. I was assuming avg ranges look much more like ~200mi on a full battery in real-world conditions, and that a 30-min charge usually only gets you 80%. Sounds like I’m at least somewhat misinformed.

Assuming OP has a Ford Mustang Mach-E, RWD, Long Range model, you might expect: 286 miles at 70 MPH 249 miles at 75 MPH 232 miles at 75 MPH with 2kW of heating https://evkx.net/models/ford/mustang_mach-e/mustang_mach-e_l... ...that model seems to take about 45 minutes to charge from 10-80%: https://evkx.net/models/ford/mustang_mach-e/mustang_mach-e_l...

I tend to get better range than that, I'd like to claim it is my driving style, but more realistically it is because I live in Southern California so the battery is generally at ideal temperature, I often don't need heat/AC, and probably most importantly I'm not sure if I have ever driven 70+ mph for 300 consecutive miles without hitting traffic.

Also when I do road trips, I'll tend to do multiple shorter stops which according to that link means I'm closer to the "optimum charging area" than going 10%-80% in one sitting, so that might have caused me to overshoot that estimate a little.

So beyond that slight amendment of switching that one ~30 minute charging stop to two ~15 minute stops, the answer to ketzo's question is "yes, really", but as the saying goes, your mileage may vary.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#317

Post by pier25 »

slg wrote: post #183
pier25 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anywhere in the world under any conditions? (rain, snow, etc) We're at least a decade away from that.

Those goalposts moved pretty fast from "sleep while it drives me to work" which I can do today to the extreme of being able to drive "Anywhere in the world under any conditions". And I see no reason to believe "all of the nearby vehicles on the road communicating" is the solution to bridging that gap.

> "sleep while it drives me to work"

People work all over the planet during all seasons, don't they?

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#318

Post by princevegeta89 »

floxy wrote: post #285
princevegeta89 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, we should also realize that they've been super wildly successful at getting people to move towards clean energy vehicles. Prius is the world's highest selling Hybrid car, and it's been that for more than a decade now. This means Toyota has helped cut down emissions from consumer automobiles by a significant degree. It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicle…

>It's not the 1000 EVs out of the 100k vehicles that matter, but rather the 10k hybrid vehicles out of that same 100k pool, which literally produce double the MPG compared to ICE cars. It seems like hybrid sales are pretty comparable to EV sales in the U.S., at least according to this source anyway. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=63904

These metrics are most likely skewed - California has a significant number of EVs in a sample of every 100 cars, but in other states EVs are almost nowhere to be found.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#319

Post by Auracle »

phs318u wrote: post #307
iknowstuff wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You fell for Mercedes’ marketing so that’s hilariously ironic

I'm not familiar with the facts of the matter but if it is indeed the case that Mercedes is indemnifying drivers for accidents caused by FSD, then that's far more than marketing, and your comment (without presenting any facts to the contrary) is unwarranted.

The bigger difference is that Mercedes’ system only works on highways, under 40 mph, and you need a car in front of you that it essentially follows.

It’s for traffic jams, and only usable in them. There’s not a big legal liability when the biggest risk is probably a fender bender.

Re: Waymo and Toyota outline partnership to advance autonomous driving deployment

#320

Post by vachina »

lttlrck wrote: post #244
chrisguilbeau wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine drove me from my house to the airport without my ever touching the steering wheel so what exactly do you mean?

Adaptive cruise control could do that too. How impressive it is depends on where you live.

Do you even drive? Or have you tried using any of the features discussed above. I think I’m going insane seeing people comparing cruise control (lol) to FSD. One is a line follower, the other is a teenage driver with a fresh license. They’re not the same.
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