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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

#381

Waymo needs competition. Who else is even close to being able to provide it? I'd hate to think Tesla is next in line because they haven't even started a commercial pilot program yet.

I think it will be Tesla. Regulatory pressures for them just lifted, and they move faster than all the other driverless companies, courtesy of Elon's fairly hardcore mode of operation. It may not be a perfect driving solution (probably 1:1 teleoperator to car in the beginning), but their go to market speed is undeniably better than Waymo et al. Waymo, Cruise, etc have to map out an entire region and have long rollout…

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

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM is is making 12 billion a year of profit though. It seems like madness to cut Cruise unless there is no hope of it ever working or making a profit… The only U.S. competitor besides Waymo that’s seemingly remotely in the ballpark is Zoox.

Oh believe me i agree. As a former Cruise employee (i left in 2019) it’s incredible to me how they went almost all the way only to get it gutted like that

"Almost all the way" is fairly far fetched when taking a candid look at the landscape for Cruise.

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

#383
Which cities in which countries and climates have robotaxis (or have had robotaxis) now?

It felt like there was a lot of buzz around it a while back but then it only happened in a couple of cities which were just US cities with favorable climate. Did it ever move beyond that? You'd think that if the market is really competitive, then operators would bring it to cities where it doesn't exist, rather than just all competing in the same small handful of cities?

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

#384
post #13

GM believed Kyle Vogt when he was hyping up their tech by having small, meaningless deployments in a dozen cities and promising $1B revenue by 2025. Then they had that incident and GM found out exactly how far behind Waymo they are. Waymo is now giving 175k rides every week and expanding to new markets every year. No other robotaxi company in the entire country giving rides to the public. Now they've gone back to wha…

Some it could also be cold math of expected gains vs expected losses. The expected gains are growing slowly, but the major blunder of last year has made the expected losses skyrocket.

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

#385

> 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…

I’m one of the people that did not renew BlueCruise and the reason is kind of weird BlueCruise vehicles were updated with the most sophisticated driver attention system ive ever seen. It will complain in less time than it takes me to change a radio station. Before that update, I was enjoying the automated driving a little bit too much, and using it to take liberties with my attention in the car. That was awesome as a…

Ford brags that BlueCruise gets top marks from Consumer Reports but I think it's mostly because of because of this driver monitoring, rather than actual driving performance.

> Starting with 2024 model-year vehicles, we will deduct points if an [active driving assistance] system doesn’t have adequate [direct driver monitoring systems]. Right now, only Ford and GM’s systems meet our criteria for earning additional points, but others could be available soon. ...

> Ford’s BlueCruise sets a high standard among [active driving assistance] systems, aided by an infrared camera that monitors the driver’s eyes to determine whether they are looking at the road. If the driver glances away from the road for more than about 5 second... the system will give the driver a visual warning and an audible chime.

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there are actual "legal" notions of driver assistance "levels," but out of those 3 companies Tesla seems to be taking it the most seriously. Elon has a high conviction in the product and has continued to pour billions of dollars in GPUs, talent, supply chains, etc to make it happen. Other manufacturers don't take it nearly as seriously, unfortunately. Sure you might not be able to legally claim that a Tesla is to…

> Yes there are actual "legal" notions of driver assistance "levels," but out of those 3 companies Tesla seems to be taking it the most seriously. ..and yet Tesla is quick to blame the drivers when accidents happen - and has disclaimers for supervision in its TOS. Mercedes on the other hand, takes all responsibility for eventualities that happen while self-driving is engaged (DrivePilot - not ADAS)

You fell for Mercedes’ marketing. Its useless.

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

#388
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's some chance that Tesla's approach will work out for them, but I'm not optimistic. Getting self-driving software to "impressively good" happened pretty quickly, and even systems from 2016 would usually pass your "go there without touching the wheel or pedals" test. But from there to "as safe as a human" let alone "as safe as we require human-replacing machines to be" turns out to be quite a hard gap to…

> systems from 2016 would usually pass your "go there without touching the wheel or pedals" test Can you give an example? I'm not aware of anything in 2016 that would consistently pass this test.

Well, there's consistently and there's consistently.

In 2016 Waymo reported their safety drivers intervening once for every 5,100 miles driven [1] - which implies to me that 99% of journeys nobody touched the wheel or pedals.

The problem is 99% isn't enough, as there are tremendous numbers of cars out there, and a busy bit of freeway would get a disengagement per minute.

[1] https://driverless.wonderhowto.com/news/2016-disengagement-r...

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow that must have been a wild experience 10 years ago! Today, I think they should do this. It is rare I need to touch the wheel or pedal these days and people should experience it.

Come experience it between my house and walmart before you go telling people they need to experience it. Good luck having good weather during your drive, here in louisiana. Self driving probably works great on Interstates with numbers like 5, 10, and the feeders. Based on my experiences with subaru self driving and watching videos and watching tesla drivers around here, a self driving car would give up after maybe 3…

Don’t compare FSD to some subaru garbage.

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

#390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes there are actual "legal" notions of driver assistance "levels," but out of those 3 companies Tesla seems to be taking it the most seriously. Elon has a high conviction in the product and has continued to pour billions of dollars in GPUs, talent, supply chains, etc to make it happen. Other manufacturers don't take it nearly as seriously, unfortunately. Sure you might not be able to legally claim that a Tesla is to…

From what I've seen, Tesla FSD would fail a driving test here in the EU within the 1st minute. Even the latest and greatest version behaves like a drunk teenager.

I'm not in EU so I can't comment if they have a special circumstance that makes there driving test different than elsewhere in the world, but "behaving like a drunk teenager" is not a descriptor I would use. I make use of Tesla FSD every day, 2 -3 times a day. Over the last few months I've had to engage (of my own choosing) twice, otherwise it is completely hands and foot off experience.

I travel hundred miles a day on average on a mix of local and highway, but all major roads in city and suburb.

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