Who is asking for autonomous vehicles? Biased sample sure, but I've never heard anyone actually express a desire for it.
If it was actually a real thing that might show up in a decade, sure, why not, sounds nice. It's not, though.
Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
101–110 of 125 posts
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
... he comments under the top comment. Skepticism of self-driving tech and "AI" in general is a very popular position here.
It has been increasing. 5 years ago we were more hopeful. However the needed parts have not delivered and so we are rightly looking harder.
5 years ago self-driving cars looked like technologists were letting their imagination run away.
There's always "something" that technologist think is right around the corner, until they realize that the hard problems are harder than they anticipated.
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We could've vastly expanded a lot of train systems with the amount of money that's been burned trying to make cars drive themselves. I'd like to see the numbers on that. Given the cost for the CHSR is around $100B, I don't think that statement is true. The bigger issue here is the US's inability to build fast trains, affordably, and on a reasonable timeline.
Counting only published investment in companies like Cruise, Zoox, Argo, Nuro, Aurora, etc. gives investment of around 20B . But its likely that the money invested "privately" in Tesla's AV division, Uber ATC, lyft's AV division, Waymo, and Cruise post acquisition is much higher. I think a very conservative guess is that there's been $40B invested in this space. That would, for example, cover the south bay BART expan…
> That would, for example, cover the south bay BART expansion 4-5 times over.
I've become more cynical about CA (and the US in general) lately. By reasonable costs it would, but I think the various corruption interests would find their way to increase the price tag until it is only half done, while they enjoy their $40 billion.
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The way I like to think about it, Elon Musk over over over over promises, and "just" over delivers. Most CEOs could never dream of producing the kinds of real results that Elon Musk has, but also most CEOs aren't as comically obnoxious as he is.
with rockets and electric vehicles however science & engineering had an "angle of attack" based on fundamental discoveries in physics, and centuries of continuous progress , that's not the case with AI. Deep learning is great for a few narrow cases but there is no path to general human-like intelligence required for a complex human-like activity like self-driving which has an infinitely long tail of edge cases you ca…
I don't want human like AI to drive cars. I want a deterministic system that we can prove always does the right thing.
I'm not sure that is possible on roads.
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#105Autonomous cars might be possible for climates without snow but they'll never be capable of driving with humans in winter till they start making the same intuitive mistakes as humans given sparse data (complete snow covering). The problem with any non-vision based location system to compensate for covered roads is that it isn't what humans use. In winter in cold climates sometimes the roads are covered with snow for…
My own guess is that the difficult-to-solve problems tend to be in surprising areas (as are the easy-to-solve). People are so poor at driving on ice/snow that it seems like a much lower bar to clear.
I think people are pretty good at driving on snow, we have lots of snow every winter, but there is rarely any problems in traffic.
For self driving cars its very hard, roads might be a lot narrower and visibility is limited because of snow banks, also you need to know what part of the road you should drive, sometimes there can be deep grooves and you might get stuck. If you stop at traffic lights etc. it might be hard to get going and how does the computer know that this crossing is very slippery and it takes 3x more time to take off?
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would a robotaxi in Detroit, Chicago, or Minneapolis in the winter be viable? I'm thinking about those roads where it's nominally a two lane in each direction, but the snow banks make it a 1.5 lane in each direction (if that). Where one doesn't start into the intersection when the light turns green - to give any cars that have the need to slide through. And likewise the ability for the robotaxi to realize "well, I've…
That's my point. Presumably Detroit doesn't have winter driving conditions in the summer, in which case robotaxis are feasible seasonally, or when there hasn't been rain/freezing conditions for X # of days, etc. Determining a bound on operating conditions is a far easier problem than making a car that drives itself. Before launching in any city, you have to validate that you can handle the idiosyncrasies of its drivi…
I'm not sure a want a human driver who only drives in winter - they will be out of practice when we need them. The snow problems mentioned above are real - but it isn't all winter, it is a couple weeks scattered around the whole season. Then the plows get out (and things warm up enough for salt to work) and you can drive like summer for a few days.
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
We could've vastly expanded a lot of train systems with the amount of money that's been burned trying to make cars drive themselves. Unfortunately, most new transportation methods that are not trains are just attempts to build trains, while claiming they are not trains and will cost less than trains. But inevitably end up costing as much as trains. Trains.
> We could've vastly expanded a lot of train systems with the amount of money that's been burned trying to make cars drive themselves. I'd like to see the numbers on that. Given the cost for the CHSR is around $100B, I don't think that statement is true. The bigger issue here is the US's inability to build fast trains, affordably, and on a reasonable timeline.
There is basically no good place to build high speed rail in the U.S. Cross country routes aren't remotely competitive with air travel. Regional routes only make sense on the coast where they have unfavorable terrain like mountains, and some of the most populated/valuable land in the country. HSR really starts losing in time cost to flights in the 800-1000 mile range, and needs about 200 miles to make it better than driving. That a very narrow band for the U.S.
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#108Someone is criticising Musk? He's obviously a pedo guy and a polluting BMW driver. I shall send my people to reeducate him. No need for this to be front page. /s I joke, but seriously, how long can this Musk worship go on? Musk invested in Tesla AFTER Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning built the Roadster. He later sued them for founder status and ousted the real founders from their own company. It's now almost 20 ye…
Do you have a source on the Roadster issue? Per Wikipedia: > Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design at a detailed level, but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[12] Eberhard acknowledged that Musk was the person who insisted from the beginning on a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer body and that Musk led design of components ranging from the power electron…
"However, it is wrongly assumed that Musk was behind the idea of Tesla Motors and electric vehicles. That credit belongs to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who originally started the company in 2003 and Musk's recent news prompted one user to tweet, "I still find it darkly amusing that the actual creator of a company named after Nikola Tesla is constantly erased from history, with all credit being given to some rich bully instead."
https://meaww.com/elon-musk-tesla-cofounder-lawsuit-settleme...
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We could've vastly expanded a lot of train systems with the amount of money that's been burned trying to make cars drive themselves. I'd like to see the numbers on that. Given the cost for the CHSR is around $100B, I don't think that statement is true. The bigger issue here is the US's inability to build fast trains, affordably, and on a reasonable timeline.
There is basically no good place to build high speed rail in the U.S. Cross country routes aren't remotely competitive with air travel. Regional routes only make sense on the coast where they have unfavorable terrain like mountains, and some of the most populated/valuable land in the country. HSR really starts losing in time cost to flights in the 800-1000 mile range, and needs about 200 miles to make it better than…
Even if all that were true, it still does not explain the high costs. There are countless examples in other countries proving it's possible.
Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a source on the Roadster issue? Per Wikipedia: > Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design at a detailed level, but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[12] Eberhard acknowledged that Musk was the person who insisted from the beginning on a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer body and that Musk led design of components ranging from the power electron…
"However, it is wrongly assumed that Musk was behind the idea of Tesla Motors and electric vehicles. That credit belongs to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who originally started the company in 2003 and Musk's recent news prompted one user to tweet, "I still find it darkly amusing that the actual creator of a company named after Nikola Tesla is constantly erased from history, with all credit being given to some r…
Yes, we all know Tesla was founded shortly before Musk invested. That doesn’t tell us anything about the design of the Roadster (or Musk’s other companies).
I’m sure millions of people had the idea of building an electric car before Eberhardt and Tarpenning, but as the quote goes “ideas without execution don't matter; execution matters.”