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Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

theinformation.com

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Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#141

Post by justapassenger »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #115
maxerickson wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean the green bits there are the part where the car can be relied on to drive by itself (with the blue bits requiring constant attention). Arguing about what to call it is boring. Is Tesla close to having a system that can drive without attention, decide it isn't sure what to do and safely request driver attention? Or does it just have the bit that can successfully navigate a lot of situations?

Having driven across the US almost 30k miles on Navigate On Autopilot in our Teslas, I’d argue the former (“Is Tesla close to having a system that can drive without attention, decide it isn't sure what to do and safely request driver attention?”). Attention is given, but intervention is rare, even in construction zones (only done when zones are inactive, not with workers present for obvious reasons). Interstate to in…

> Tesla vehicles safely hand over responsibility to the driver when path planning confidence has been lost

You've been lucky then, not to experience phantom breaking, cutting off other cars when changing lanes or fire trucks stopped partially in your lane.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#142

Post by ghaff »

necubi wrote: post #12

The Information sometimes unlocks articles for HN readers, but for those that don't have access the biggest takeaway to me is that Uber has made relatively little progress towards fully autonomous cars despite a huge amount of investment. The most shocking detail: > Uber’s vehicles had also been having what the company refers to as a bad experience—such as a sudden jerk or a potentially dangerous movement—every one-t…

Everyone has made disappointingly little progress on full self-driving in the sense of driving little Johnny from the house to soccer practice by himself.

There are possibly opportunities on freeways but anyone who expects to be able to get robo-Ubers door-to-door for decades is likely to be disappointed.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#143

Post by yholio »

lightgreen wrote: post #122
yholio wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can route people from fixed point A to point B, and some locations along a predetermined rute from A to B. Personal rapid transit allows a Many to Many mapping, just like cars.

OK, that many-to-many thing may still use rails, which is 100 times easier to implement (autopilot part) than self-driving cars on dedicated lanes.

Yes, the auto-pilot is easy on rails (Morgantown built one in 1975), but rails are expensive, many to many rail networks are even more expensive, and grade separated rail networks are insanely expensive. The Morgantown system final price was 12 million 1975 dollars per mile.

So by using advanced self-driving concepts (but not yet full self-driving alongside human drivers), you can repurpose much of the existing road space for personal public transit, without creating completely new infrastructure.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#144

Post by tehjoker »

Hypx wrote: post #69
DevKoala wrote: post #17

I am not surprised. This is a competition between Tesla and Google, technology companies. I never saw Uber, a services company, as being part of this race.

All attempts at self-driving cars are a failure so far. There are no exceptions. If Uber is struggling, they're all struggling. I expect similar if not worse stories coming out for the rest of them.

It's kind of grim, but so far Uber and Tesla are the only ones to have killed people, and the Tesla case is more ambiguous. There's clearly big problems at Uber compared with the others, though I too think that the tech is further in the future than people were saying a couple years ago.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#145

Post by jayd16 »

bradlys wrote: post #80
jayd16 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love rail but we'll probably see some kind of self driving before we get high speed rail between any of SD, SF, LA, or Vegas.

I agree but only because of bureaucracy and nimby-ism.

Indeed. Such is life.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#146

Post by FandangoRanger »

howlgarnish wrote: post #49
FandangoRanger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, as of today self-driving cars aren't nearly as good as a human even after 2-3 beers.

It's not that black and white. The unnerving thing is that self-driving cars have completely different failure modes than drunk humans: instead of falling asleep and drifting into the next lane, they do (to humans) absurd things like mistake the side of a tractor-trailer for empty space and merge into it.

I firmly believe that the literature produced which shows self-driving cars are safe or even safer, and there is scads of it now, is mainly down to the program's ability to make sure a safe following distance is observed leading to greater reaction time for braking. I know a lot of driving tests have been done in simulators which show the AI can be safer but I agree with your statement.

I also have very little confidence in the AI's ability to stop at road construction, make its way over temporary embankments and diversions placed for construction, navigating in inclement weather or adverse traction situations like a muddy drive, etc. I suppose the real goal here is for Wal-Mart and Amazon to move freight on the Interstates to begin with but I don't even see that happening any time soon. Your average Wal-Mart loading bay and parking areas are likely much more than any current AI can handle anyhow. How does the AI know the person in the mart cart isn't going to just jut out in front at the last second? Can't exactly make eye contact.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#147

Post by TheMblabla »

xvilka wrote: post #97
jimrandomh wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Rail in the US is spectacularly expensive; look up a few recent rail projects with dollar figures attached, they're billions of dollars each. That's the same order of magnitude as the cost of an entire self-driving research program (Waymo has taken $3B of investment, according to its Wikipedia page), which, if successful, would scale quickly and easily to the entire world.

If the US companies can't do it just hire Chinese or Japanese ones who have enormous experience to build the infrastructure way cheaper.

Their costs are lower because their land aquisition costs are lower. The problem isn't the tech it's the regulations/property rights.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#148

Post by Hypx »

ericmay wrote: post #126
rainyMammoth wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is not even considered in the top half of the contenders. They are the best at hyping it up though.

It blows my mind to see people write things like this. We have two companies, Cruise and Waymo, who have built nothing but toy cars, but they are in the lead while Tesla has years of real-world driving data in cars that are in a manufacturing production operation, receive over the air updates, recognize real world objects, can change lanes automatically, but Waymo is ahead? I’m open to being convinced that I’m not co…

I’m more willing to believe that Tesla is just committing fraud here before believing they have any kind of lead.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#149

Post by bluedevil2k »

djsumdog wrote: post #28

I wrote this back in 2016 and I think it still holds today: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/self-driving-cars-will-not-so... Self driving cars are dumping an insane amount of time and effort into computer vision and AI for the wrong problem. For the amount of tax subsidies, our money, given to these companies, we could have put down insane amounts of rail. Hell, we could even do small personal autonomous rail car test…

Not sure where you’re located, but when are we gonna stop saying “the US needs more rail”? It’s not a solution in this country and never will be (Not outside major cities). People are too spread out, we’re not like Europe or even Japan, where the habitation area is actually quite small. People want to leave when they want and go exactly where they want. Gasoline is cheap here making cars cheap to own and maintain. It’s tough to move things while carrying them on a train, a reason so many people have trucks and SUVs. This doesn’t even consider all the cost related reasons outlined in other comments.

Electric self driving cars are the future of the US.

Re: Uber Wasted $2.5B on Self-Driving Cars

#150

Post by p1necone »

Did actual business goals ever align with the aspirational marketing though? I find it hard to believe that the actual people building it didn't know that real widespread autonomous driving was more than a pipe dream in the foreseeable future. They still managed to suck up piles of investor cash, maybe that was the real goal?
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