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GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

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Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#261

Post by bryanlarsen »

bobthepanda wrote: post #33
throwaway48476 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A taxi is a car. The taxi industry is by itself profitable. GM should be in thr business of making money, with or without cars.

there's a significantly lower volume of taxis sold than personal cars sold, and if taxis got bigger in the way the self driving utopians foresaw, it would significantly cut into their personal car sales.

As long as passenger miles stay equivalent, switching from personal cars to taxis would not significantly reduce car sales.

Every car sold does about 100,000 to 250,000 passenger miles. Every taxi does about 200,000 to 500,000 miles. Due to deadheading, a taxi does almost 2 miles for every passenger mile.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#262

Post by paxys »

jcgrillo wrote: post #241
paxys wrote: post #236

Pretty bad news for the space as a whole. A decade and a half ago there were a dozen+ companies and tens of billions of VC dollars in the space. People were proudly proclaiming the end of driving. Now all but one of them have folded. My thoughts today are the same as they were back then. Self driving will only be solved city by city and street by street. Local governments will need to create dedicated closed-off auto…

If you're going to block off lanes and install sensors why not just lay track and use streetcars? Rail is way more efficient. This has been a solved problem for the better part of two centuries.

That's like asking why do cars and roads exist at all when everyone can just use public transit.

The answer is that people want cars. They want to drive. They want to be taken directly from point A to point B without needing to walk to transit stops and switch buses/trains and face unpredictable schedules and delays.

Autonomous road infrastructure is a sensible, incremental improvement. And in fact city buses will tend to benefit from it the most.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#263

Post by jcgrillo »

paxys wrote: post #262
jcgrillo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to block off lanes and install sensors why not just lay track and use streetcars? Rail is way more efficient. This has been a solved problem for the better part of two centuries.

That's like asking why do cars and roads exist at all when everyone can just use public transit. The answer is that people want cars. They want to drive. They want to be taken directly from point A to point B without needing to walk to transit stops and switch buses/trains and face unpredictable schedules and delays. Autonomous road infrastructure is a sensible, incremental improvement. And in fact city buses will te…

How are you going to keep me in my non-autonomous car out of your special "autonomous only and also maybe busses" lane?

EDIT: and yes, it's a completely reasonable question to ask why invest in special new kinds of roads when more people would be better served by public transit.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#264

Post by porphyra »

jefftk wrote: post #186
ivewonyoung wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mercedes is driving itself and you have 10 seconds to takeover. Huge difference between level 3 and level 2. One is self driving and one is just a drivers aid. None of that is true, it just follows the car in front in slow moving traffic during daytime in good weather on premapped roads and cannot even change lanes. No car in front anymore? It completely fails to "self"-drive. These limitations are taboo to talk ab…

I'm very much aware of how Drive Pilot doesn't handle most cases: in my comment I described it as "super limited" and linked to where Mercedes describes the details. But within the range of cases where the Mercedes system is applicable (which recently went up to 59mph in Germany [1]) it's solidly better than the Tesla system because Mercedes did the engineering to make it reliable enough that you don't have to superv…

If Tesla were to artificially set up limitations like highway only, daytime, clearly visible lanes, good weather, car in front, no construction zones, no lane changes, etc, then they would easily have been able to offer full L3 and take full liability for it. Tesla FSD is practically perfected, with no accidents whatsoever, under such conditions already. But Elon wouldn't want to release this kind of gimped system as he is aiming for full self driving everywhere.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#265

Post by havaloc »

paxys wrote: post #222
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #164

Frankly, I think Tesla is going to win this. The new self-driving is remarkably good. Based on this alone, I estimate (actual) level 5 self driving in 2-3 years. I'm convinced that the lidar sensors are essentially unnecessary and the vision-only strategy is basically going to work and be much cheaper in the process.

How about we wait till they have given a single public ride before crowning them winners? At the moment Tesla's effort is nothing more than a marketing campaign.

Tesla FSD version 13 (new version) videos are starting to trickle out on YouTube and while they could be edited, it does seem to handle some crazy stuff fairly well.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#266

Post by herval »

steveoscaro wrote: post #252
rgovostes wrote: post #3

> GM said in a statement that “... an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” were the reasons for the change. Isn't there basically Google/Waymo and then, seemingly much further behind, Tesla Cybertaxi, Amazon/Zoox, and Uber/Yandex? Cruise allegedly has one of the most sophisticated autonomous driving platforms, and GM's Super Cruise (if they share any tech) is comparable to Tesla FSD. Strange that they would bow…

It's weird to me to see so many people thinking Tesla is "far behind", when in reality, they're far, far ahead of the competition for a general purpose and scalable self driving solution. Seems like political biases just cloud judgement so much. Youtube now has videos comparing Tesla FSD V13 with Waymo rides on the same routes.

I tried both extensively (have the full FSD package on my Model 3). FSD still feels suicidal in a good day, plain incapable on average.

I can’t imagine how someone would compare it to a multi-sensor setup - a single camera can’t match the level of prescience a Waymo or Cruise have. But also as the overall experience is just absurdly different. Waymo was the first tech thing I felt was truly magical in _decades_.

Meanwhile the best I can get out of Tesla FSD is straight highways. And even there, there’s random glitches (the forever annoying ghost braking being the one that makes me feel particularly unsafe with it)

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#267

Post by bdangubic »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #155
xnx wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't there basically Google/Waymo and then, seemingly much further behind Yes. I think GM leadership has finally learned enough to realize how far behind they are.

Maybe in some small parts of the country. Tesla is dominating most everywhere else in the US. I definitely have no access to a Waymo but have been driven by FSD in heavy construction. (Do not own a Tesla myself).

get drunk, pass out in a Tesla and have it take you home. come back here when this happens (ballparking 2089…).

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#268

Post by delfinom »

tristan957 wrote: post #212
KennyBlanken wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And for good reason. The whole point of the regulation is to assure that there is someone nearby for the owner to get a vehicle repaired and be able to buy parts. ahem Guess what Tesla has a ton of problems with? Edit: there are a whole lot of people replying who seem unaware that I was referring to new car customers who have a vehicle which is broken under government-mandated warranties, but also that: - The majorit…

I buy my parts online generally. Doesn't matter if there is a Chevrolet dealer in my area

Yea generally it's a slew of other laws that mandate the opening up of vehicles to aftermarket components that makes it viable, not necessarily dealers who just installed overpriced OEM parts.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#269

Post by TheDong »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #157
mensetmanusman wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business model enforced by the government.

And for good reason. The whole point of the regulation is to assure that there is someone nearby for the owner to get a vehicle repaired and be able to buy parts. ahem Guess what Tesla has a ton of problems with? Edit: there are a whole lot of people replying who seem unaware that I was referring to new car customers who have a vehicle which is broken under government-mandated warranties, but also that: - The majorit…

> The whole point of the regulation is to assure that there is someone nearby for the owner to get a vehicle repaired and be able to buy parts.

> ahem Guess what Tesla has a ton of problems with?

If the goal is to allow people to have vehicles repaired, then mandate right-to-repair laws, mandate that all auto manufacturers must fully document how to service the vehicle.

The problem with Tesla isn't the lack of dealerships, it's that even if you go to a normal auto repair store, Tesla won't sell repair parts nor provide detailed enough repair manuals. Tesla will void your warranty for having someone else fix it.

If the regulation is meant to allow consumers to repair their vehicles, then it should say that.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#270

Post by porphyra »

brcmthrowaway wrote: post #169
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #164

Frankly, I think Tesla is going to win this. The new self-driving is remarkably good. Based on this alone, I estimate (actual) level 5 self driving in 2-3 years. I'm convinced that the lidar sensors are essentially unnecessary and the vision-only strategy is basically going to work and be much cheaper in the process.

How does vision work at night?! RGB Cameras dont see anything...

The Tesla cameras have surprisingly good dynamic range and can see stuff incredibly well even when human eyes struggle.
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