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Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

wsj.com

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Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#41

Post by wmeredith »

mikeash wrote: post #31

The article really wants to compare with electric vehicles, for some reason. The subheading says "they are being snapped up faster than electrified vehicles." This is repeated in the article, which says the relevant options packages "are being snapped up at a far higher rate than electrified vehicles." Discussing the Q50's technology package and how many buyers opt for it, it says "That’s three times as many people w…

In the public mind EV = futuristic car. Self driving vehicle = futuristic car. The article author is either making the conflation to appeal to the audience or is similarly myopic.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#42

Post by ph0rque »

jtouri wrote: post #32

There was a startup that for $10,000 it was a third party option package that was self driving. I wonder how it is doing with all these car companies that create their own options for self-driving.

You mean the one just recently bought by one of the big car companies for north of $1B? http://fortune.com/2016/03/11/gm-buying-self-driving-tech-st...

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#43

Post by mhurron »

nugget wrote: post #5
stcredzero wrote: post #2

In the early 2000's, I was hanging out sometimes in western North Carolina, and there was this young woman who has in the habit of getting together with some friends and driving around the clock to get to Colorado and back on short trips, instead of flying. I'm wondering if this technology isn't going to be used for such purposes.

Would you be more willing to live 2 hours outside of SF if you could hop in a self-driving car 3x/week and watch a movie/surf the net during a trip into the office? That's the most exciting part of it for me.

The only way that's a good idea is if you could work in your car and have it part of your work day.

If it's just commute, no, that's still a disgustingly long commute that is taking 4 hours of your day away from you.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#46

Post by akama »

ben1040 wrote: post #27

This looks like the "Sensing" feature that Honda has implemented on some of their other vehicles. I just bought a 2016 Accord that does the same thing -- there's a camera mounted on the windshield, another camera in the front grille, and a radar sensor on the front bumper. Calling it "self-driving" is kind of a misnomer and I think the article kind of blows it out of proportion. It will track the car in front of you…

I would guess you are correct about how they make sure your hands are on the wheel. I've done some car hacking and one of the things that surprised me was how sensitive some cars steering wheels are to pressure. It was impossible to keep it in the same position according to the car's internal electronic systems with my hands on it. This is car is 4 years old, so it's probably only gotten more sensitive.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#47

Post by wmeredith »

TrevorJ wrote: post #4

The real problem with self-driving cars is the car to human handoff. Over the long term it's incredible unlikely that humans will be any good at all at remaining aware and 'up to speed' on the current situation in the event that the car needs to give control back to the driver due to road conditions, hardware failure, or sudden situation that it cannot contend with.

Exactly. I mean, I can't speak for anyone else, but I'll be asleep in the back.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#48

Post by yalogin »

This looks like the same functionality the Tesla Model S has. One of the big draws for the new Model S cars. So much so that people are getting rid of their older Teslas because they did not have the autopilot.

I thought it's only a matter of time before autopilot becomes common place but it looks like its happening sooner than I thought. The good thing is this has nothing to do with the car being electric or not. But the main thing is, if Tesla thought its going to be a differentiator in terms of calling their cars "luxury" its going to be a problem for them. Given that the internals of the Model S itself are not particularly luxorious they need to think about it.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#49

Post by tdicola »

nostromo wrote: post #6
stcredzero wrote: post #2

In the early 2000's, I was hanging out sometimes in western North Carolina, and there was this young woman who has in the habit of getting together with some friends and driving around the clock to get to Colorado and back on short trips, instead of flying. I'm wondering if this technology isn't going to be used for such purposes.

If I could get in my car, read a bit and fall asleep, and wake up in Las Vegas from San Francisco, I'd prefer it over flying every time. But this has more to do with how air travel has become miserable than anything else.

You can do this with buses today.

Re: Honda's $20k Civic LX now offers self-driving capability for highway use

#50

Post by Alupis »

mchahn wrote: post #20
adekok wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal desktop failure modes don't work well here. "Hi, this is your car. I've discovered that the road is icy, and am currently in the middle of a 360. Would you like to (a) take over, (b) call an ambulance, or (c) retry?" Too late! You've crashed.

> and am currently in the middle of a 360. You have no faith in AI. The car will always be better at driving than the human. It would be much better at handling a 360 than a human ever could. Actually humans are very bad at handling 360s unless you are a pro.

Humans are very, very good at handling unknown complex situations.

In order for any AI to handle any situation, it must first be programmed to do so. If that situation was an unknown, you get undefined behavior. Undefined behavior in a car traveling down the road is not a good thing to place a bet on... especially your life.

This is why majority of sane driverless vehicle talk has concluded a human driver must always be in the driver seat, ready to take control. There's an impossible volume of failure modes a driverless car must contend with, everything from someone pointing an infrared laser at the distance sensors, to complete power failure, to a sudden rockslide, a bird darting in front of the car, lines missing from a windy and hilly road, etc.

In normal, daily mundane driving - driverless cars are expected to excel. Sitting in traffic is mind numbing, and mistakes happen when driver's minds wonder. In "active" driving situations, a human brain will almost always excel.

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