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Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

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Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#131

Post by rurp »

walshemj wrote: post #21
alpha_squared wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like reliability SLAs, I suspect every extra nine requires an exponential increase in investment. My armchair-know-nothing assessment is we're maybe at 90% coverage* right now, with maybe 10x all investment up until this point needed to reach 99%; then 10x that to reach 99.9%. Even at 99.9%, though, a failure scenario still threatens injuring or killing 0.1% of drivers (350,000 motorists for US alone). * Coverag…

Would not they detect the gates where down ? or are there still that many crossings without gates in the USA

Where I live in the Southwest US there are many crossings without gates. I'd say very few of the ones outside of well populated areas have them.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#132

Post by ghaff »

gtirloni wrote: post #3

Well... "In December 2020, Lyft announced that it will launch a multi-city U.S. robotaxi service in 2023 with Motional." https://www.reuters.com/article/autos-selfdriving-lyft-idUSK...

Urbanites have self-driving. They just need to pay a sub-minimum wage driver to do it. Oh, real self-driving you say. That's going to be on a subset of highways in a subset of weather conditions.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#133

Post by dmix »

plank_time wrote: post #130
minimaxir wrote: post #2

Funny in hindsight from 2016: "Lyft's president says 'majority' of rides will be in self-driving cars by 2021" https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/18/12944506/lyft-self-drivin... https://medium.com/@johnzimmer/the-third-transportation-revo...

I saw Levandowski do a presentation of self-driving at an Uber all-hands and it was then and there that I knew that self-driving is 20+ years away. The example video showed so many small things that we take for granted as a human driver that would need to be built in or hand coded that AI or neural nets would never be able to get. There just isn’t a way that you can train every single little thing that could cause an…

I think at a minimum all the cars need to be taking to each other over a protocol.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#134

Post by detaro »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #15
quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? He definitely uses ambiguity to his benefit (eg "soon", "by fall/winter/spring/summer" (in which year?)), but I haven't heard anything about Tesla being L5 by the end of 2021.

2020 Q4 Earnings call, 27th Jan 2021 (according to https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2021/01/27/te... )

Musk: So -- and this is -- basically I'm highly confident the car will drive itself for the reliability in excess of a human this year. [...]

Director of Investor Relations: [...] The next question is, why are you confident Tesla will achieve Level 5 autonomy in 2021? [...]

Musk: I guess, I'm confident based on my understanding of the technical roadmap and the progress that we're making between each beta iteration.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#135

Post by detaro »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #66
mandeepj wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have a link to Elon's FSD claim? Google is universally accessible to everyone. Please don't be that guy who corners himself into a blind spot. Musk claimed coast to coast self-driving trip by end of 2017. https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self-driv...

I've searched, but I haven't found any comment from Musk about level five being ready by 2021. edit - The closest is about the basic functionality for it being ready by the end of the year (see above).

end of last year.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#136

Post by ra7 »

sanguy wrote: post #116
quickthrowman wrote: post #7

Anyone hawking FSD is a stock promoter (liar). Uber/Tesla/Lyft. Elon Musk claims Tesla FSD will be L5 by end of 2021, but they recently filed a document with the CA DMV stating Tesla FSD is L2 automated. Which one do you think is more realistic, staying L2 by EOY 2021, or magically leaping forward to L5 FSD in 8 months? The only company working on self-driving that I believe when they issue press releases is Waymo, b…

Waymo has given up on ever getting L5 capabilities. They have so much invested they can't just shutter it, and keep it going in hopes it attracts an interesting partnership or purchaser. They did the same thing with Skybox imaging/Terra Bella.

> Waymo has given up on ever getting L5 capabilities.

Except Waymo has never tried to claim L5 capabilities. They are and have always been a strictly L4 technology and they have said multiple times that L5 is not possible to achieve.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#137

Post by ca01an »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #106
rkalla wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's those edge cases that make me think real FSD (vehicles with no steering wheels) is a decade-timescale problem. Figure out 99.9% of driving, but otherwise take a family off a bridge when the sun is blinding the camera? Still need a steering wheel.

That shouldn't be the standard. It probably will be, but it shouldn't be. Humans are terrible drivers. If a self-driving car got into half as many accidents as the average human, it would save millions of lives. And kill people, to be sure, but fewer on net. I also think you could make a reasonable argument that all cars should be banned, right now, based on how many people they kill, but since I don't think that's g…

To be fair, humans are literally the best species on earth at driving cars

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#138

Post by ghaff »

cameronh90 wrote: post #124
okareaman wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many people on Hacker News think self-driving cars will be a better driver than themselves in the near future?

Probably me. Waymo may already be in most situations. I drive about once or twice a year, always in a rental, and consequently never really know how well my car handles or its dimensions. That, plus generally being rusty, tends to make me fairly nervous. Yet, nevertheless, I am in charge of a 2000kg block of metal hurtling around pedestrians and cyclists at 70mph. Scares the shit out of me, to be honest.

What are your circumstances where you simply couldn't get a driver? If I could at all afford it, I would in that case same as I do in very remote 4WD territory.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#139

Post by cameronh90 »

joe_the_user wrote: post #80
ecpottinger wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In in Whitby, Ontario, Canada, a dad and his son were killed driving a car across a railway crossing with no gates. The dad (driver) was on his phone at the time and it is believed the phone blocked his view of the train and he was talking to much to hear the train. The person he was talking to said they were talking like normal and suddenly the phone cut off. Computers probably can not be worse that the people alrea…

A human being can drive a million miles without a serious accident. 2018 saw 1.1 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles driven[1]. Human beings are extremely good at driving safely overall. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

Yet driving deaths are the leading cause of death in older children and young adults.

It's not that we're bad at driving, I suppose, it's that we do an awful lot of it and it's quite a risky activity - especially if you're not 100% engaged.

That being said, if the US cared about road safety, there's quite a lot they could do to improve it already. Many techniques have been used successfully in other countries to significantly reduce road deaths, for example, a nationwide vehicle safety inspection standard and lowering speeds on urban roads.

The fact that these aren't being done leads me to think the concerns about road safety are actually rather irrelevant for the country as a whole. When self driving cars exist and are convenient, people probably will switch to them, as long as the accident rate is vaguely comparable.

Re: Subsidiary of Toyota to acquire Lyft’s self-driving car division

#140

Post by cameronh90 »

ghaff wrote: post #138
cameronh90 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably me. Waymo may already be in most situations. I drive about once or twice a year, always in a rental, and consequently never really know how well my car handles or its dimensions. That, plus generally being rusty, tends to make me fairly nervous. Yet, nevertheless, I am in charge of a 2000kg block of metal hurtling around pedestrians and cyclists at 70mph. Scares the shit out of me, to be honest.

What are your circumstances where you simply couldn't get a driver? If I could at all afford it, I would in that case same as I do in very remote 4WD territory.

I don't own a car, so I only ever really drive on holiday... or in extreme situations.

The last time I drove was taking my rabbit to the vet at 2AM on X-mas day, where the vet said due to Covid I would have to wait outside. Not really practical when the temperature is below zero, so I used Zipcar!

Besides that, mainly if I'm going somewhere for a week with poor public transport and high distances to cover (impractical to cycle/walk).

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