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Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#131

Post by naveen99 »

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…

Waymo doesn’t go on highway. Which makes it a glorified golf cart. You need a human to supervise on highway like tesla allows.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#132

Post by digitalPhonix »

margalabargala wrote: post #111
digitalPhonix wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The shenanigans AI companies have been up to recently (including boasting about criminal behaviour hacking other companies) without repercussions is pretty good proof that it isn't "easy".

Why? It is easy. Anthropic has paid out an awful lot of money settling piracy suits. An example where no one attemped to hold anyone liable isn't a counterexample to what happens when we do.

I think you’re deliberately being obtuse.

The rights holders that got a settlement out of Anthropic spent two years and probably a fortune fighting in court. If that’s “easy”, then sure, this is a solved problem and there’s no point discussing it.

> An example where no one attemped to hold anyone liable isn't a counterexample to what happens when we do.

Yes it is (specifically, a counter example to it being easy, not that it’s possible). The whole world saw HuggingFaces get hacked and the collective legal response was crickets. The same world that’s had its legal system throw the DMCA and unauthorised access to computers legal book at researchers, games preservationists and random people trying to access media that they can’t licence in their region.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#133

Post by nujabe »

moffkalast wrote: post #126
GMoromisato wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because once the software gets to an acceptable level, it becomes table-stakes--it's not a differentiator. After that, the only thing that matters is who deploys the most cars, and the unit economics of each car. That depends on manufacturing (e.g., low unit costs, and high throughput).

Zeekr can surely outbuild and undercut any US firm by a wide margin.

But they won’t compete here.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#134

Post by jdross »

sbstp wrote: post #77
jdross wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 2025 model 3 has driven me over 95% of my last thousand miles. I'm frankly surprised it isn't more, but I'm not the only driver of the car. It's very obvious to me that FSD is a reality already, usually from parking spot to parking spot. And it at least feels much safer than I am driving, especially since I can get tired, etc

Out of curiosity, do you live in a place that gets heavy snow? I've always felt that FSD would struggle to handle heavy snow fall, roads with snow banks on the sides and difficult driving/braking conditions in the snow and on ice patches.

I live in Austin TX, so no :)

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#135

Post by tencentshill »

femto wrote: post #81
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?

It should be 100% liability on the self-driving car. Only by doing that will there be enough incentive for the manufacturers to drive the accident rate down to zero (or in practice a low enough number that the cost to manufacturer of the remaining accidents is negligible). Less than 100% liability provides wiggle room, which car manufacturers will exploit to maximise profits over lives. With 100% liability manufactur…

A roundabout way would be to impound the car itself as punishment to the manufacturer and charge a very high fee to their insurance to get it out.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#136

Post by dilap »

toss1 wrote: post #122
dilap wrote: post #44

Isn't Tesla already there? I took a fully-autonomyous Cybercab to a coffee shop yesterday; it doesn't even have a steering wheel. It was just a short drive, but it handled various complications (a garbage truck, double-parked cars, construction, unpainted speed bumps) with aplomb. The driving felt extremely smooth and human-like (better, in my experience, than Waymo, which can still be a bit jerky).

Do you know how much of the drive and handling those complications was actually fully autonomous vs how much (or what key points) were handled from the remote control room by a human? I'm not sure how you would tell, but that is a critical question for scaling and true autonomy.

Yeah that's a good point -- I'm not sure, but it definitely felt like there was no remote control going on, just based on smoothness and speed. But for sure the ability exists, so good pts re true autonmy and scaling.

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#137

Post by dilap »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #82
dilap wrote: post #44

Isn't Tesla already there? I took a fully-autonomyous Cybercab to a coffee shop yesterday; it doesn't even have a steering wheel. It was just a short drive, but it handled various complications (a garbage truck, double-parked cars, construction, unpainted speed bumps) with aplomb. The driving felt extremely smooth and human-like (better, in my experience, than Waymo, which can still be a bit jerky).

> Isn't Tesla already there? Those operate in constrained areas of a few cities though - with a control room, that's a long way from telling your car to drive across state unattended.

Yeah that's fair, though my understanding (perhaps wrong!) is Tesla unlike Waymo doesn't need super-detailed maps; it could in theory go across the state right now (but it doesn't have legal authorization).

(In Austin it covers what looks to me like the whole city but not the surrounding smaller towns.)

Re: Rivian's gambit for full autonomy

#138

Post by toss1 »

dilap wrote: post #136
toss1 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know how much of the drive and handling those complications was actually fully autonomous vs how much (or what key points) were handled from the remote control room by a human? I'm not sure how you would tell, but that is a critical question for scaling and true autonomy.

Yeah that's a good point -- I'm not sure, but it definitely felt like there was no remote control going on, just based on smoothness and speed. But for sure the ability exists, so good pts re true autonmy and scaling.

Yes, your comment on smoothness and speed prompted me to also wonder at what level the remote control could be happening.

The obvious level is the monitor just takes over driving like a remote FPV driver/pilot.

But I wonder if the software can also flag alerts early when it starts to identify ambiguity, and the monitor can see the camera+lidar outputs and make a guidance-level input like [get in the left lane here] or [pause/go], and the direct driver inputs (steering/brake/accelerator) are never interrupted, but they have better "tactical" guidance from the central office?

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