Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

riviantrackr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 670 posts

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#251

Post by ekianjo »

malnourish wrote: post #232
hcurtiss wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit is a dream turned nightmare consistently for seventy-five years. Autonomy will be less efficient -- but not that much less efficient given closer car spacing, speed, and remote parking -- but it will be spectacularly more convenient and comfortable. I'm all for it. You'll survive the tire pollution.

That's one opinion. My opinion is public transport is phenomenal. It's relatively reliable (very in some places), generally clean and safe, low cost, encourages urban/high efficiency development, protects greenspace, and employees people.

What are you talking about? In most cities public transport sucks, hardly goes anywhere, gets more expensive year after year, makes housing prices go up, and is slow and inflexible enough that people still end up needing cars to go around

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#252

Post by rootusrootus »

m463 wrote: post #186
uberman wrote: post #153

Why do people what self driving cars at all? I certainly hate the thought of having to pay for any of this. Even if the end product is subscription based, all these feature cost money up front making new cars super expensive.

I think it helps you drive. It takes away the tedium of driving and reduces your workload. Big wins are: 1) stop-and-go traffic 2) long boring highway trips infrequent but just as important - emergency braking That said I absolutely hate that this seems to give tesla the "courage" to remove physical driver controls (like turn signal stalks, drive select stalks, full controls for wipers, lights and defrost)

As an aside, IIRC they put the turn signal stalk back in a recent update. It saves them a few bucks per car to use buttons instead, but there are people who will not buy a Tesla without a turn-signal stalk -- and the loss on that is probably 500x what is saved by not putting in a stalk.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#253

Post by rootusrootus »

wat10000 wrote: post #192
uberman wrote: post #153

Why do people what self driving cars at all? I certainly hate the thought of having to pay for any of this. Even if the end product is subscription based, all these feature cost money up front making new cars super expensive.

Driving can be annoying. I like it in some cases, but it's no fun when there's a ton of traffic, lots of stop lights, etc. I'd love to be able to push a button and let it handle the grunt work in those cases. Sometimes I want to do something else. Maybe adjust my music, or send a text. If the car can keep me going while I do that, it would be nice. I live with two people who can't drive. Often I have to take them to…

Anecdotally, whenever I have to tote someone around who cannot drive, it is nearly universally true that they also cannot get in and out of the car without help, too. So that has to be arranged, a self-driving car won't be able to solve it.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#254

Post by ribosometronome »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #228
TulliusCicero wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much fun is it actually to drive around doing daily errands or commuting? Personally, I look at the 40,000 people killed each year in traffic crashes in the US, and I think, the sooner we all stop driving (on public roads) the better.

Yeah, let's not train people properly, better give techbros more money

What evidence is there that we can train people to be better drivers? We've got a century of effort and it seems the bulk of road death prevention has come from improved, and more expensive, design.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#255

Post by seanmcdirmid »

cyberax wrote: post #134
bryanlarsen wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average car insurance premium in the US is over $2000/year, and over $2500/year for full coverage. I imagine that has an outlier effect and the median is lower, but I'd be surprised if the median was under $100/month. I'm paying just under $1000/year (and yes, in Ontario).

The liability-only insurance is around $70 a month.

It depends where you live and how much coverage you get. The real kicker these day is uninsured motorist coverage, because so many people are driving without insurance and they are much more likely to get into accidents.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#256

Post by seanmcdirmid »

general1465 wrote: post #143
TulliusCicero wrote: post #18

Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway). Of course, people won't like this…

Let's be real. A staggering amount of drivers are incapable to switch on Automatic Cruise Control or trigger automatic parking. They know how to start the car, how to switch lights and wipers on/off and that's about it. Paying subscription for something what they are never going to use is going to be a hard sell.

I have auto parking and never use it, it came with the advanced parking sensors that I do use heavily. I forget how to use auto cruise because I drive outside of the city so rarely, it takes me awhile to “trust it” again when I do some highway driving.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#257

Post by typewithrhythm »

pstuart wrote: post #190
typewithrhythm wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NVIDIA orin series is the big one for tensor horsepower. Horizon robotics and Qualcomm also have competitive automotive packages. They are all expensive, but less than the risk adjusted cost of developing a chip.

Isn't that risk balanced by a healthy reward of controlling their verticals and possible secret sauce? And their chips give "1600 sparse INT8 TOPS" vs the Orin's "more than 1,000 INT8 TOPS" -- so comparable enough? And going forward they can tailor it to exactly what they want?

Mostly it costs hundreds of millions to develop a chip; it relies on volume to recover the cost.

NVIDIA also tailor their chips to customers. It's a more scalable platform than their marketing hints at... Not to mention that they also iterate fairly quickly.

So far anyway, being on a specialised architecture is a disadvantage; it's much easier to use the advances that come from research and competitors. Unless you really think that you are ahead of the completion, and can sell some fairly inflexible solution for a while.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#258

Post by estearum »

nightski wrote: post #209
pastel8739 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This might turn big suburbs from food/culture deserts into the default places people want to live as they have more space for cheaper This will certainly not happen. The reason these places are culture and food deserts is precisely because people drive everywhere and the driving infrastructure requires so much space that it is impossible to have density at the levels needed to support culture.

I'm really doubting this is the case. It seems much more likely to be due to zoning laws.

It's not really.

If you have cheap, abundant land it makes no sense to build densely.

Look at Houston with ~zero zoning laws and ~infinite sprawl.

"A neighborhood" in a high-sprawl suburb wouldn't be able to support local mixed use amenities because even singular "neighborhoods" are gigantic enough to warrant driving across them. Once you're in the car, why would you go to the place 2min down the road instead of the far superior place 8min down the road.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#259

Post by testing22321 »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #213
paxys wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And why do you think Waymo will fix all of this?

This is better solved by leveraging more traditional forms of transportation. Making biking, walking, and various forms of transit easier, safer, and more effective. Cars, whether self-driving or not, are in direct opposition to this. I'm sure they could be useful to folks that have the specific use-case for it, but the vast vast majority of trips in a person's day-to-day are better solved by robust multi-modal optio…

I agree with you broadly in principle, but sadly cities in North America have been built for cars, and so they are by far the best way to get around

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#260

Post by ActorNightly »

reanimus wrote: post #170
ActorNightly wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>afforadbility This 1000%. Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker. Instead, we are getting these boutique, expensive vehicles packed full of tech, but in the…

> Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker. I think this is more or less the pitch behind Slate ( https://www.slate.auto/en ), though it's more of a truck/SUV…

Slate is nowhere near cheap. Base 27k with hand crank windows? No thanks.
Post reply on HN