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The Electric Car

blog.geoffralston.com

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Re: The Electric Car

#331

Post by CountSessine »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #131
CountSessine wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think in terms of exponential progress, and we're about 5 years from the majority of trips being done by self-driving car, IMHO 5 years is a fantasy. Continued exponential increases in device computing power is by no means guaranteed now that chips are at the 14nm feature size. And the recent progress in AI can only be partially attributed to improved computing power - much of it was from improved approaches to train…

> I guarantee you that self-driving cars will not be the mainstream even in 15 years. Probably more. Want to make a Long Bet on that? I'm willing to bet up to $1000 USD, loser pays winner's choice of 501(c)(3) US charity org, that self-driving cars will be mainstream in under 10 years.

How gauche! No, I don't want to make a Long Bet on that.

I don't live in the United States where every CS graduate gets a Ferrari as a signing bonus (maybe a self-driving Ferrari one day). $USD1000 is clearly a lot more money to me than it is to you.

But if you'd like to take your own side of the bet and choose your own charity, please feel free.

Moreover, I'd like to know what the terms of that bet that you'd be making with yourself. Is it for a generally available car that can drive reasonably anywhere? In San Fransisco but also in small towns without super-accurate cm-scale mapping data (which will never be both everywhere and up-to-date)? Do we consider it a success if self-driving cars blindly drive into construction sites that haven't been mapped? Or crash into newly erected barricades? Because I don't, and that's exactly where we'll be in 15 years.

Autonomous vehicles are quickly approaching what I will acknowledge is probably an 80% solution. In nice weather, when their mapping is perfect in a perfectly-mapped area, and they have a good GPS signal, autonomous cars will work well (and currently are working well in testing).

That's not the standard that's expected. No one lives in a city without road work or construction going on. No one lives in a city where temporary or make-shift signs aren't being erected, or where there are never detours, or where there isn't ad-hoc communication going on between pedestrians and drivers, or where weather doesn't block LIDAR, or, ...whatever.

We will be nowhere near level 4 autonomous vehicles in 10 years time. And not in 15 years, either.

No one in this field is confident of that anymore. Not even Google is making the same bold claims that they were 3 years ago. Their own researchers are publicly hedging now (http://gizmodo.com/how-to-teach-an-autonomous-car-to-drive-1...) and backing away from their most ambitious claims.

The only other group that I'm aware of that's still claiming that we're anywhere near having generally-useful self-driving cars are the established car makers, none of whom have traditionally been serious AI and computer vision research contributors.

Re: The Electric Car

#332

Post by tomtang0514 »

krschultz wrote: post #182
tomtang0514 wrote: post #170

I can't believe he said electric cars are more fun to drive. There're fun to drive electric cars such as tesla and fiat 500e, but they're never more fun to drive than most (if not all) other cars in it's price range. The only advantage of an electric car in terms of performance is torque. And it doesn't necessary has more torque. Yes electric cars has maximum torque at 0 rpm, but do anyone actually bother looking at…

Do you own one? Everyone I know that owns a Tesla says it's insanely fun to drive. That includes a couple guys I know that own gasoline powered race cars in the same price range as well as Teslas.

I've test driven one and that's why I didn't bought it. Look at all those car medias who put good words on Tesla, is there any one of them said it's more fun to drive than things like the new Mercedes S class? I don't even compare it to sports cars in that price range like corvette or 911. What kind of "race car" are your friends talking about? A charger?

Re: The Electric Car

#333

Post by CountSessine »

peterfirefly wrote: post #261
CountSessine wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans don't need cm-scale precise maps in cities to avoid jumping curbs and running into streetlamps. But that's still a requirement for all autonomous cars that have been demonstrated.

Not all autonomous cars require that, either. Nor is there any reason whatsoever to believe it will be a requirement in the future.

No, but researchers agree that self-mapping or map-unassisted autonomous cars are much further off into the future than are perfect-map cars, like the ones Google is demonstrating. And the equipment (e.g. LIDAR) on the car is super-expensive. And has lots of moving parts. And is easily foiled. Etc.

Re: The Electric Car

#334

Post by CountSessine »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #252
CountSessine wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans don't need cm-scale precise maps in cities to avoid jumping curbs and running into streetlamps. But that's still a requirement for all autonomous cars that have been demonstrated.

I don't see why this matters, though. cm-scale maps aren't hard to produce.

Aren't hard to produce everywhere?

Re: The Electric Car

#335

Post by CountSessine »

bsder wrote: post #260
CountSessine wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say this like people are good at driving in rain or snow. They are not. I've driven in 42 winters on icy roads with thick snow and limited visibility, without the aid of GPS which has a funny way of disappearing in inclement weather. Google's cars have been demonstrated driving in exactly 0 winters under those conditions. Because they know it would be a disaster. There is a reason for all of those pileup pictures…

> But they didn't drive that fast thinking that the snow was actually falling leaves or that the windshield was dirty or that the car was suddenly moving backwards, or any of the other ridiculous things that an AI will begin thinking when it falls out of a switch statement, encounters a case it wasn't trained on, or loses its GPS signal. Except that autonomous cars will have lidar and radar which sees through rain an…

But they will be way better than humans really quickly

I'm naturally suspicious of faith-based engineering.

Re: The Electric Car

#336

Post by ghaff »

hackuser wrote: post #243
ghaff wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to FiveThirtyEight, the urbanization trend is largely exaggerated. The more accurate statement is that college-educated millennials are somewhat more likely to live in a handful of particularly dense urban locations (think Brooklyn).[1] In fact, among all adults 25-34 the percentage in urban locations overall has actually declined. The data is a bit hard to interpret for a variety of reasons but the bottom…

Thanks; that's useful to know. I should point out that I wasn't only talking about millennials.

The urbanization trend outside millennials is even less however.

Re: The Electric Car

#337

Post by bsder »

CountSessine wrote: post #335
bsder wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they didn't drive that fast thinking that the snow was actually falling leaves or that the windshield was dirty or that the car was suddenly moving backwards, or any of the other ridiculous things that an AI will begin thinking when it falls out of a switch statement, encounters a case it wasn't trained on, or loses its GPS signal. Except that autonomous cars will have lidar and radar which sees through rain an…

But they will be way better than humans really quickly I'm naturally suspicious of faith-based engineering.

> I'm naturally suspicious of faith-based engineering.

LOL. I like that comment. However, engineering is part science and part art. The art part often has a significant component of faith.

Moore's Law is a good example of faith-based engineering--because we had faith it would happen we committed resources to make it happen. And that operated well for almost 40 years.

I view self-driving cars in the same light--there is now faith that it will happen, so people are now committing resources to make it happen. And there don't seem to be any insurmountable problems (the biggest problems are "vision" being power and CPU intensive, but a car is a very high-density power source).

I do understand your point, though, initially many people regarded self-driving cars as "AI" and that, of course, remains elusive.

However, what the engineers quickly figured out was that you don't need to approach the problem as AI. There are much simpler heuristics--which is not surprising since driving is a background task for most humans.

Re: The Electric Car

#338

Post by roflchoppa »

jakejake wrote: post #226
roflchoppa wrote: post #222

Eh. i would like to see independent garages retrofitting batteries into classic cars. but man, theres nothing like hearing carburetors on v8's.

There does seem to be a small group of hot-rodder hackers who are doing that, like this guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369h-SEBXd8 - the related videos on the side have a few more who are racing electric cars in old bodies. I haven't seen one with a really classic hot rod body, but that would be really cool.

Yeah i've seen that car, theres also this classic mustang that this texas company was working on. I think the biggest issue (like always) is battery location and storage.

Re: The Electric Car

#339

Post by reedlaw »

vamur wrote: post #298
reedlaw wrote: post #156

I can't believe he's comparing a $70,000 electric car to a huge bucket labeled "old-fashioned gasoline cars". Of course the $70,000 car is better in almost every way. I've driven a lot of electric cars in the $5,000 to $10,000 range and I assure you they are not better than "old-fashioned gasoline cars". Our last gas-powered car was a used Lexus that cost us $8,000. It's an extremely comfortable luxury car that seats…

According to that page, it costs 10,880 Yuan (before subsidies). This comes to about $2000, which seems too low to be possible. Or is that without the battery?

I believe that's missing a zero. It costs 40,000 to 50,000 RMB after subsidies.

Re: The Electric Car

#340

Post by nradov »

MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #101
derefr wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To say gas stations will go out of business is ludicrous at best, Tesla will go out of business sooner as established car brands move in and hurt bottom line for Tesla. I don't get that dichotomy. If established car brands move into electric, wouldn't that kill both Tesla and gas stations? Why would gas stations survive?

Gas stations have one shot at survival over the next 30 years: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles (FCVs). Part of the reason traditional manufacturers have been reluctant to pursue BEVs (battery-electric vehicles) is that many were betting on liquefied hydrogen as an energy delivery mechanism for FCVs. I presume this was from pressure from current energy companies. Hydrogen benefits current energy interests because customer…

Gas stations have a lot more shots at survival than just FCVs. In 30 years gas stations will likely deliver a wide range of different vehicle energy sources: fossil gasoline, Fischer–Tropsch process gasoline, fossil diesel, biodiesel, CNG, and hydrogen. The only business they will lose are people who can charge or refuel electric or CNG powered vehicles at home. Those will still be a minority in 30 years due to slow turnover of the vehicle fleet and limited availability of home charging stations.
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