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Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

techcrunch.com

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Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#21

Post by jrowley »

mFixman wrote: post #19
delegate wrote: post #18

Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant. Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out. If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy…

You can still do that with Uber. Why own a car today?

Autonomous cars should be a cheaper than Uber eventually. Additionally I imagine they will be more reliable, which is something you can't necessarily guarantee with a random uber driver.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#23

Post by dastbe »

burke wrote: post #17
abalone wrote: post #15

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…

I'm not sure what those "few occasions" were, but I think there's another category of problem that these could fall into other than would-be accidents: If the car over-cautiously decided it didn't know what to do, came to a safe stop, and threw on the 4-ways while it waited for human input, that's not as terrible.

Except when that isn't a safe thing to do.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#24

Post by jrowley »

maxerickson wrote: post #12
chubot wrote: post #6

It’s available across all of the mapped area of San Francisco where the test fleet operates, and the app works like any ride-sharing experience, mapping ride requesters with available cars. What area is that? Isn't all of San Francisco "mapped" 100 times over by this point? If the "mapped area" isn't all of San Francisco, does this speak to a limitation of their tech or a regulatory/deployment issue?

They may be creating their own highly detailed maps. In that case it would be a limitation of how much effort they have invested in generating the maps.

Yeah, they have their own in house maps team.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#25

Post by sloppycee »

abalone wrote: post #15

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…

I'm not involved in autonomous vehicles at all but as an engineer, I'm pretty confident we are a long way away from level 4/5.

Without significantly reworking current infrastructure the challenges presented by city driving are too fuzzy to guarantee safety. For example, traffic lights can be obscured, out of order, or spoofed; unless they are modified to support av; I don't think this is solvable.

Although autonomous vehicles will require a safety driver for a while, interim benefits still exist and services like this will potentially provide the momentum needed to make those infrastructure changes.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#26

Post by abalone »

burke wrote: post #17
abalone wrote: post #15

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…

I'm not sure what those "few occasions" were, but I think there's another category of problem that these could fall into other than would-be accidents: If the car over-cautiously decided it didn't know what to do, came to a safe stop, and threw on the 4-ways while it waited for human input, that's not as terrible.

That's a fair point, although those would still constitute breakdowns in a level 4. Further reason for the reporting to focus on these incidents.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#27

Post by [deleted] »

mFixman wrote: post #19
delegate wrote: post #18

Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant. Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out. If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy…

You can still do that with Uber. Why own a car today?

[deleted]

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#28

Post by lucidrains »

aluminussoma wrote: post #22

I am skeptical. It sounds way too perfect, like a story manufactured for PR. If it really is that way, then great. What is the reputation of Cruise in the self-driving community?

The only reason I paid any attention was because of an impressive demo they put out a few months back. https://youtu.be/6tA_VvHP0-s Still, who knows at this point.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#29

Post by olegkikin »

abalone wrote: post #15

> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…

> Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver.

You don't know that. Doesn't the car simply slowly stop if it doesn't know what to do?

> A small corporate shuttle service that "only had a few accidents" would not be considered a very safe service.

As soon as it's safer than a human-operated one, it's already good enough - there's literally no safer option.

Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF

#30

Post by a9a »

headmelted wrote: post #3

That they are dogfooding a private beta makes me think that this has leapfrogged what Google had been shooting for previously, and where Uber is now. I don't know what other options there are on the ground as I'm not based there. It does seem though that there's a real opportunity for GM to sneak past Uber and Google into a first-mover advantage with this. I'd no idea they were anywhere near this close to a working A…

Waymo is doing this with real, public customers (albeit hand-selected ones) in Phoenix[0]. Uber has been doing this for months with customers in Pittsburgh[1]. This is certainly a sign that Cruise is making good progress, but I wouldn't say it means they've leapfrogged the competition by any means.

[0] https://waymo.com/apply/ [1] https://www.uber.com/blog/pittsburgh/pittsburgh-self-driving...

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