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Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

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Re: Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

#41

Post by cbHXBY1D »

lucb1e wrote: post #32
justathrowout2 wrote: post #20

Hotz is a proven, remarkable engineer. But if there was ever a case for a "business guy" to be involved with a pitch this was it. His messaging works at some level - "I'm shipping something REAL and SMALL and ACHIEVABLE" But his pitch has two huge problems: (a) The delivery is rough. He comes across as patronizing and manic. I want to put my life in his hands? (b) He fumbles (like Musk has) with the difference betwee…

> Hotz is a proven, remarkable engineer. Wait, Hotz, that name... is this Geohot? ... Turns out, it is! [1] That makes this statement a lot more believable to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz

Yes, it's geohot's company but I don't think it lends it anymore credibility. Hacking is very different from building a viable product.

Moreover, some of his comments make me distrust his judgement. Just from a CNN article this year:

> "For awhile, I thought it was going to be incredibly difficult to contribute," he said. In January 2015, he started working as a researcher at Vicarious, a company that's building artificial intelligence algorithms. "I started reading all the papers. I thought, 'This stuff isn't that hard. This isn't ultra sophisticated. This is basic,'" he said. Moreover, "the mistakes people are making are basic."

> "I started to look around at the other players. These people are noobs," he said.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma...

Re: Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

#42

Post by joering2 »

Wow, its incredible how many people bash this startup here, incredible to see it from this community here.

I mean what they have done to you? It's not like they gonna sell tickets to Hell or scam someone, so what's the big deal with more entrepreneurship in the town?? Be nice to your fellow entrepreneurship -- you might end up working for them one day.

Re: Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

#43

Post by cbanek »

Pretty exciting for sure.

Interesting that they're talking about California driving. In an episode of Bloomberg's Hello World I saw recently, Hotz actually demonstrated his self driving car in Nevada. They mentioned that the state of California asked him to stop driving on the public roads.

Regulations ahoy!

Re: Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

#44

Post by MBCook »

trevyn wrote: post #23
slg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "auto steering and braking"? Does this simply turn on settings that already exist in the car or does this actually control the car through fly by wire commands? If it is the latter, is this something that car manufacturers actively support third parties doing? To the layman like me, that seems like a huge potential liability.

The latter. I remember listening to an interview with George where he chose Honda/Acura because they're "generally hands off about these kind of things" meaning aftermarket mods.

So basically it should work if it's a drive by wire car.

Re: Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

#45

Post by Fricken »

mortenjorck wrote: post #8

Mountain View to San Francisco Is this product actually just limited to driving 280 / 101? If so, that's a really interesting way to launch a minimum viable product in the self-driving space: Obviously you can't launch with anything incomplete in terms of safety, but you can launch with a highly restricted supported geography.

He's saying that he's done that drive without touching the wheel. It will work in other places, but he emphasizes that you still have to pay attention, as with autopilot.

He gives the full talk here:

https://techcrunch.com/video/george-geohot-hotz-presents-the...

Yes, he's a punk and seemingly on drugs, but surprisingly, Hotz is not a bullshitter as far as I can tell.

Re: Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

#47

Post by spectrum1234 »

cbHXBY1D wrote: post #41
lucb1e wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hotz is a proven, remarkable engineer. Wait, Hotz, that name... is this Geohot? ... Turns out, it is! [1] That makes this statement a lot more believable to me. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz

Yes, it's geohot's company but I don't think it lends it anymore credibility. Hacking is very different from building a viable product. Moreover, some of his comments make me distrust his judgement. Just from a CNN article this year: > "For awhile, I thought it was going to be incredibly difficult to contribute," he said. In January 2015, he started working as a researcher at Vicarious, a company that's building arti…

Because he's a genius?

Re: Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

#48

Post by spectrum1234 »

Surprised with all the skepticism here. It's not perfect but this guy is a hardware, software, and AI genius and this could very well speed up the self driving race by several years or even more. When it comes to price, it could speed things up by more than a decade. With some funding and a solid team this could move incredibly quickly.

Re: Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year

#49

Post by astrange »

goeric wrote: post #16

Huge props to Geohot for getting this to market (barring it ships). Curious - if it replaces the rear-view mirror, then what do you use as a rear-view mirror?

They make dashcams that replace the rearview mirror; they just have another mirror on the back.
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