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Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

bloomberg.com

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Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#391

Post by bergenty »

pas wrote: post #383
bergenty wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as a hyper individualistic American fuck public transport. I don’t want to travel with other people, I don’t want to live in dense cities and I don’t want to go to like the 10 places with public transport. I love national parks, camping, hiking, road-tripping etc.

I also like the benefits of invidualistic cultures, but there's a cost to it too. The US got this way because it was super-charged between pre-WWII and the dotcom boom. Both economically and culturally. The post-WWII high wages allowed the rise of suburbia, the Cold War induced WW3 scare led to the highway system, and so on. The low-efficiency of it is taking its toll. (Sitting in traffic for hours each day, pollutio…

Traffic is usually only a problem in major cities and that’s about the only good usecase for public transport. I don’t want to lose the amazing infrastructure we have for cars everywhere that isn’t a major urban center.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#392

Post by jakeogh »

neximo64 wrote: post #63

They wont go anywhere until theres a legal way for the company making the tech to shift liability to drivers for the odd chance it'll crash. That's the issue, that needs to be solved more.

Driver liability should never be lost. Trusting a marketing campaign to not kill someone is a (bad) choice, that that user must be liable for. They are still driving the car; recklessly. It's their job to be in control of these megajoules.

Conventionally, drivers are liable on the physics level... because they have skin in the game. When I pass another car on a 2 lane road at 100mph+ relative velocity, we both (conventionally) have a strong incentive to not mess up.

That's a feature. Same goes (unfortunately) for people who make life or death decisions based on marketing campaigns.

All that said while skipping over the elephant, which is that they do not work; for fundamental reasons: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33221575

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#393

Post by rasz »

bj-rn wrote: post #317
rasz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there even any racing/sim games with solved driving AI? All the ones I can think of cheat, replay hardcoded paths, and/or are terrible. And thats with perfect information about the world and other cars.

GT Sophy maybe? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-outraces-human...

Afaik the goal was perfect laps to beat humans. I could never find information of what happens when it has to account for other drivers.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#394

Post by katbyte »

phpthrowaway99 wrote: post #381
kortex wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lidar can't see through fog (or snow/rain to enough of a degree), which is one reason tesla has avoided it. Do you mean radar? In the case of radar, I would hope that it becomes a base features of all cars eventually to avoid/mitigate rear endings by preemptive braking.

If there's a car in front of you, and you're following at normal following distances, it might not be enough. That person will keep going decently fast, and your radar car will follow. The lead car comes to an almost instant stop when it hits, and while radar might pick up the hit, it won't be able to stop as fast as a car hitting a stationary car.

so? With a radar you can follow at a safe distance to brake safely because you can “see” it through the fog. With vision you either slow down to near zero, or follow close enough to see, which doesn’t give you enough time to stop.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#395

Post by nicbou »

bergenty wrote: post #389
nicbou wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have both. You can have fewer cars and excellent public transportation.

I rather have a full fledged car infrastructure and excellent public transport.

You can't have both like that. Cars will need to lose priority to make public transit usable.

Car infrastructure spreads everything out, puts parking lots everywhere, makes walking or cycling impossible or really unpleasant. You can't have working public transit if visiting two businesses requires walking 10 minutes along a loud boulevard.

America has tried cars-first infrastructure. It has failed. The spread is unsustainable, and it's bankrupting suburban areas.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#396

Post by Kiro »

dang wrote: post #261
leksak wrote: post #3

Did not expect Doctorow to be posting on Medium. I wonder what my biases are.

We've changed the URL from https://medium.com/@doctorow/100-billion-later-autonomous-ve... to the original source.

Why? The Medium article was much better and contained a lot of other interesting angles that had nothing to do with the Bloomberg article, which was just one source of many.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#397

Post by IceDane »

batmanturkey wrote: post #32

WHY is a fully autonomous vehicle even interesting to pursue, given that wheeled vehicles and their infrastructural requirements are such a large expense and social and environmental problem relative to the benefits provided? I mean, out of all the moonshots, why die on this particular hill? I consider an actual hyperloop to be a much more compelling vision for the future: those pneumatic tubes the banks use in subur…

Hyperloop has long since been proven to be infeasible to the point of being practically impossible. Please stop drinking the Musk koolaid. It was never going to happen and it never will.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#398

Post by raydiatian »

IceDane wrote: post #397
batmanturkey wrote: post #32

WHY is a fully autonomous vehicle even interesting to pursue, given that wheeled vehicles and their infrastructural requirements are such a large expense and social and environmental problem relative to the benefits provided? I mean, out of all the moonshots, why die on this particular hill? I consider an actual hyperloop to be a much more compelling vision for the future: those pneumatic tubes the banks use in subur…

Hyperloop has long since been proven to be infeasible to the point of being practically impossible. Please stop drinking the Musk koolaid. It was never going to happen and it never will.

Didn’t musk literally out himself (boastfully) as having pursued hyperloop as a way to stifle funding for some other related but competing ventures? I can’t recall, but he literally never believed in it.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#399

Post by Ekaros »

IceDane wrote: post #397
batmanturkey wrote: post #32

WHY is a fully autonomous vehicle even interesting to pursue, given that wheeled vehicles and their infrastructural requirements are such a large expense and social and environmental problem relative to the benefits provided? I mean, out of all the moonshots, why die on this particular hill? I consider an actual hyperloop to be a much more compelling vision for the future: those pneumatic tubes the banks use in subur…

Hyperloop has long since been proven to be infeasible to the point of being practically impossible. Please stop drinking the Musk koolaid. It was never going to happen and it never will.

I never understood how people have so little understanding of basic physics and practicalities of engineering that it even got cursory pass. Like pointing it out to be stupid only takes handful of questions.

Could is the question, but should is never asked or answered, same goes to other projects like solar roofs with the shingles.

Re: Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere

#400

Post by Ekaros »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #229
wil421 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk coined Hyperloop as a distraction to high speed rail. He wanted people to buy Teslas instead of thinking about high speed rail in California. A lot of people fell for his con.

It is a shame that other partial vacuum systems are not being developed. They seem like a useful concept, fast, less air resistance means less energy use. Surely a technology you'd want to have in a future city.

On concept level they kinda make sense. But the trade-offs are just too stupid. Basically it is equivalent of building tunnel around all of the roads. The energy investment in that sort of infrastructure is unfeasible. And then partial vacuum, that needs more infra and energy to be spend.

And then the safety, on ground level open air is great, you can exit at any point to any direction. But tunnels especially small ones... That would be nightmare in best case and death trap in the worst.

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