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Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

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Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#101

Post by IceDane »

venzaspa wrote: post #91

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't really want to be just sitting in my car tapping my knees while the car drives for me. I'd rather these guys just focus on building a Euro spec model of the R3 and getting it over here.

I was just talking about this the other day.

When would I want autonomous driving? For longer trips. Where do those happen? On the motorway where driving is mostly straight and simple.

When on the motorway, my Tesla's lane assist gives me basically all the benefits on the motorway I'd get from full self driving. FSD doesn't let me stop watching traffic or release the wheel, and I'd still have to take over to adjust to traffic conditions.. i.e. the same exact thing I'm doing with lane assist.

I'm not interested until I can literally sit in the back and take a nap.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#102

Post by heaney-555 »

jojobas wrote: post #92
foobazgt wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a Tesla, the estimates are around $2K. For a Waymo, the same estimates are ~$25K (down from $125K!!!). There's not a clear timeline for Waymo-style kit at a price consumers can afford and in a form factor they'd accept. (FWIW, the business story for Waymo has never been about its hardware making its way to consumers. It's always been about whether Waymo continues to run its own taxi service or leases out hardware…

Teslas also require a couple of OoMs more interventions driving the same distance than Waymos.

There is no such data for Cybercab (AI4.5). We only have data on that for AI4.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#103

Post by jdxcode »

venzaspa wrote: post #91

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't really want to be just sitting in my car tapping my knees while the car drives for me. I'd rather these guys just focus on building a Euro spec model of the R3 and getting it over here.

i thought the same thing but i bought a model y a few months ago and turns out that's exactly what I want. 90% self driving and really the 10% is entirely the last part of a drive because it picks stupid parking spots and doesn't know how to enter my driveway, other than that it's driven perfectly

well, perfectly is a bit much, it doesn't know how to dodge potholes yet and it sometimes misses exits/turns, but it's never done anything i would call dangerous

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#104

Post by schmorptron »

margalabargala wrote: post #65
tescreal wrote: post #47

I see a lot of Self-driving cars hitting people vs. reckless drivers hitting people. What I want is simple: accountability. If a human hits a human, we throw the book at them in the case of a modality of negligence. If a robot screws up, how do we remedy and discourage?

Hold the manufacturer equally liable. Easy.

"here at waymo we hire a list of fall guys who will go to jail if one of our cars hits someone. its a great job, just like being oncall"

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#105

Post by schmorptron »

monster_truck wrote: post #89
GMoromisato wrote: post #80

I think this article is underestimating Tesla and very much underestimating how hard Level 4 autonomy is. The long-tail of edge conditions to handle is really long, and Rivian is only at the beginning. What Rivian is going to release at the end of 2026 is what Tesla had 3 years ago. All that time has gone to dealing with edge conditions: bike lanes, emergency vehicles, construction zones, and all the crazy one-off si…

I control+f'd LiDAR and got hits confirming they're using it, which means it's already better than anything Tesla is capable of offering

They seem to be getting pretty far with only vision, to be fair. Same with openpilot. Still, I cant help but agree. If you have access to beyond-human sensors and are able to do sensor fusion, then please do it. What's the point otherwise? saving a few hundred bucks per car?

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#106

Post by crote »

devolving-dev wrote: post #99
venzaspa wrote: post #91

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't really want to be just sitting in my car tapping my knees while the car drives for me. I'd rather these guys just focus on building a Euro spec model of the R3 and getting it over here.

When autonomy is solved, they could put a bed or office or dining table in the car. But I agree, this halfway autonomy where you have to watch everything is kind of useless.

> When autonomy is solved, they could put a bed or office or dining table in the car.

Have you ever tried reading a book while being driven around? You get car sick really fast, because your vestibular system does not like constantly getting jostled around with mismatching visual inputs. Eating dinner while being driven around is a similar story: anyone around you does something unexpected, and your dinner ends up being spilled all over the car.

Self-driving cars will never have the same smoothness as planes or trains, simply because they have to share the roads with the general public. You might be able to sleep, but your commute isn't going to neatly match up with your sleeping schedule, so that's only really useful for longer road trips.

> this halfway autonomy where you have to watch everything is kind of useless

No, it is actively dangerous. Humans are extremely bad at staying fully-focused and being ready to act in the blink of an eye, while at the same time having literally nothing to do 99.99% of the time. If you don't let your attention wander, it is significantly less exhaustive to drive yourself. Halfway-autonomous cars exist primarily so that car manufacturers can demand extra money without having to accept any of the reliability.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#107

Post by bluecalm »

heaney-555 wrote: post #57
Kirby64 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure I'd agree that the Tesla estimate is accurate for the truly driverless versions they've started releasing in Austin. Maybe for the standard ones you can buy. There's reporting on the additional telematics packs that have been added to Model Y cars in their Robotaxi fleet, so who knows what that costs.

Cybercab has double the RAM and a bit more memory bandwidth, but otherwise it's the same 8 external mono RGB cameras. It's maybe $1.5K of BoM total for the chip, memory, and cameras.

Tesla is also able to save on components that are no longer needed: steering wheel and steering column, rear window mirror, control to change gears etc. I wouldn't be surprised if it's cheaper to make those cars than standard ones.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#108

Post by nmcfarl »

crote wrote: post #106
devolving-dev wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When autonomy is solved, they could put a bed or office or dining table in the car. But I agree, this halfway autonomy where you have to watch everything is kind of useless.

> When autonomy is solved, they could put a bed or office or dining table in the car. Have you ever tried reading a book while being driven around? You get car sick really fast, because your vestibular system does not like constantly getting jostled around with mismatching visual inputs. Eating dinner while being driven around is a similar story: anyone around you does something unexpected, and your dinner ends up be…

I don’t know, it might just come down to how good a driver you are.

I agree with the proposition that people are horrible at halfway autonomy.

But I am horrible at driving, and I kind of think almost everybody is. I have a car that just does lane keeping and distance keeping cruise control. The number of times it is notified me that I’m sliding off the side of the road is large. Similarly it’s let off the gas a vast number of times when I was creeping up on the car in front of me and I didn’t notice.

Maybe it’s having just one long, largely empty commute for five years. But I suspect it’s that you can drive any modern car without 100% concentration at which point people are prone to getting distracted.

So I’m thinking the comparison should be halfway autonomy vs a modern “dumb” car and I think halfway autonomy is safer overall.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#109

Post by tiagod »

crote wrote: post #106
devolving-dev wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When autonomy is solved, they could put a bed or office or dining table in the car. But I agree, this halfway autonomy where you have to watch everything is kind of useless.

> When autonomy is solved, they could put a bed or office or dining table in the car. Have you ever tried reading a book while being driven around? You get car sick really fast, because your vestibular system does not like constantly getting jostled around with mismatching visual inputs. Eating dinner while being driven around is a similar story: anyone around you does something unexpected, and your dinner ends up be…

> Have you ever tried reading a book while being driven around? You get car sick really fast, because your vestibular system does not like constantly getting jostled around with mismatching visual inputs.

I don't suffer from this all, and judging by watching people in public transport I'm not alone.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#110

Post by kotaKat »

IceDane wrote: post #101
venzaspa wrote: post #91

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't really want to be just sitting in my car tapping my knees while the car drives for me. I'd rather these guys just focus on building a Euro spec model of the R3 and getting it over here.

I was just talking about this the other day. When would I want autonomous driving? For longer trips. Where do those happen? On the motorway where driving is mostly straight and simple. When on the motorway, my Tesla's lane assist gives me basically all the benefits on the motorway I'd get from full self driving. FSD doesn't let me stop watching traffic or release the wheel, and I'd still have to take over to adjust t…

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