Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works” • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#411

Post by rcxdude » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

mxschumacher wrote: post #73

rcxdude wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, exactly. I did a fairly deep dive into what path the car industry is going to take with respect to electric cars (especially what a mass market electric car is going to look like), and it all had a huge asterisk associated with it of "but mass car ownership might stop being a thing before any of this happens", at which point thing change drasticly, because then you have a much smaller market of probably more sp…

I should probably dig a little more into the microeconomics, but for me as a consumer the only difference between an autonomous car and an (human) Uber is price. If we assume that the price of the car stays the same, insurance and fuel still have to be paid and the cab app gets their cut - how much of my ride is really attributable to the cost of the human driver? So how much human labor can be automated away to the…

The driver is a huge part of the cost of a taxi ride (even with Uber subsidising them unsustainably with investor's money). An autonomous car company can price a journey at about the same as a bus ticket for a point-to-point on-demand journey and still make money hand over fist with their first generation hardware. Even for commuters this could be substantially cheaper than a car.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#412

Post by necovek » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #370

meekrohprocess wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one question for Tesla customers who trust the company to deliver full FSD. How do you reconcile that belief with the fact that Tesla's embedded developers did not understand the extremely simple concept of write endurance? The NHTSA opened an investigation into premature HUD failures because they prevented the backup cameras from working. But the fact of the matter is, the company used a small partition of in…

There is no challenge reconciling imperfect FSD with high trust of that FSD. When I decided to play the game of risk minimisation, I sold my car. Minimising risk isn't the most important goal of drivers, almost by definition. Cars are not safe in any objective sense. They are tools of convenience. A fun hypothetical, you and a good friend get tested for spatial intelligence and it turns out there was a big difference…

While spatial awareness is important during driving,I believe being focused on driving is even more so.

When driving the tight streets of old European cities with pedestrians jumping out everywhere, I usually watch for hints like too tall cars parked on the sidewalk and potentially hiding pedestrians planning to cross the street, and move my foot from the gas to hovering above the brake pedal. And a million other things like that, mostly by paying close attention to driving.

Sure, I believe my spatial awareness is also great, but that helps me to parallel park in fewer back-and-forths or to remember a way to a place I've been to once six months ago through a maze of one way streets. But it does not help me reduce the chances of an impactful collision (sure, I might ding a car on the parking lot or not because of it, but nobody is going to get hurt because of that).

You are right that cars are not safe, but for some part, you've got control of the risk yourself. I also watch for hints a car will swerve in front of me, and I am sure I've helped avoid 100s of traffic accidents by being focused on the whole driving task. And other drivers have helped avoid traffic accidents that I would have caused in probably a dozen cases too. I think I am an above average driver simply because of that ratio.

You run similar risks when you board a public bus without knowing how the driver feels that day, and how focused they generally are.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#413

Post by hef19898 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:29 AM UTC

gkoberger wrote: post #211

threeseed wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla's embedded developers did not understand the extremely simple concept of write endurance Equally likely is that they do understand but just don't care. From all accounts, Tesla seems to have a culture of move fast and break things.

Hmm I don't want to defend Tesla, but I do want to push back on this a bit! Facebook made "move fast and break things" famous, which was Zuckerberg's way of presenting a tradeoff. Everyone company says they want to move fast, but Zuckerberg made it clear that the company should care more about velocity than stability. I don't believe that's Tesla's attitude. Rather, I think their attitude is more "move fast and ignor…

Safety critical regulations, it seems. That gets close enough to "brake things" if you aks me.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#414

Post by jiofih » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:34 AM UTC

paul7986 wrote: post #239

jiofih wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet quite confidently that your friend would not have been able to avoid a crash, and the “AI” is just a convenient third party to blame. You need to be at a speed way above recommended for an exit, to trigger the anti-collision system, and actually sustain injuries. Humans tend to overestimate their abilities quite strongly, especially in hindsight.

Sure, I hear what your saying, but her insurance company said oh no worries we will pay for it all. It's not your fault... do you not think they have data about these things and why would they pay for it carte blanche?

Unless you only have third-party coverage, I don’t think there’s any insurance company that would deny payment unless you were drunk or willingly taking risk somehow.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#415

Post by pedrocr » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:35 AM UTC

mongol wrote: post #305

crazygringo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on lane assist, but I'm confused, how does cruise control fail? I just set it to a speed on the highway... and the speed stays there until I brake. Are you talking about adaptive cruise control (ACC) to follow the speed of the car in front?

I also don't use cruise control. Not because I don't trust it, but I don't trust myself to react as quickly with it on. If my "gas foot" rests, it will take longer for it to hit the brake if needed, than if I engage continuously while driving. No scientific proof for this, except my own perception of my own attention.

I have the same worry when using cruise control. What I've trained myself to do is to cover the accelerator pedal when overtaking other cars or in any situation where I might have to brake. That way the car is still maintaining speed for me but I'm ready to intervene, to get back the safety margin. With adaptive cruise it may even increase the safety as both me and the cruise control can both brake.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#416

Post by mewpmewp2 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:39 AM UTC

ganafagol wrote: post #397

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I wonder is would countries like China be able to reach FSD faster since they would possibly be less ethically bound? And similarly with other tech which otherwise would be limited ethically?

Having an ethical framework that differs from yours is not the same as the absence of ethics.

I mean with a single authority you could get away with more. Not saying they have absence of ethics, just saying they could possibly be less bound to develop their tech faster without having to worry about short term trade-offs as much.

They could in this way become stronger than other nations who are more bound. With FSD they could start testing earlier even if it's not guaranteed to be completely safe, and they could adopt it immediately full scale at the point when it's definitely safer or almost as safe as humans, while in western world it would have to be much more safer than humans driving. Maybe this could mean years of advantage and they can start immediately adopting and optimising their economy.

Maybe ethics is not even the correct word. I'm talking about a trolley problem where they would be allowed to switch tracks while western world maybe not. In this case it might mean more deaths up-front, but fewer later with optimised economy.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#417

Post by roenxi » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:40 AM UTC

necovek wrote: post #412

roenxi wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no challenge reconciling imperfect FSD with high trust of that FSD. When I decided to play the game of risk minimisation, I sold my car. Minimising risk isn't the most important goal of drivers, almost by definition. Cars are not safe in any objective sense. They are tools of convenience. A fun hypothetical, you and a good friend get tested for spatial intelligence and it turns out there was a big difference…

While spatial awareness is important during driving,I believe being focused on driving is even more so. When driving the tight streets of old European cities with pedestrians jumping out everywhere, I usually watch for hints like too tall cars parked on the sidewalk and potentially hiding pedestrians planning to cross the street, and move my foot from the gas to hovering above the brake pedal. And a million other thi…

> You are right that cars are not safe, but for some part, you've got control of the risk yourself.

I don't want to be in control of the risk, I'm a bad driver. Haven't owned a car for some years. Still drive on occasion when I need to with a hire car.

I want a computer that is better at driving than I am to do it. It is easy for me to see why perfect is the enemy of good on this issue.

You don't want to share a road with me when you could share it with a Tesla FSD.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#418

Post by jacquesm » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

crocodiletears wrote: post #393

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla is organized functionally. The Infotainment Group did the Console electronics. The SW people there did GUIs and such. So yes between the electronics folks and the app folks 'somebody' didn't consider write cycles. In other Tesla groups, such as Body Controls, and Propulsion -- I can assure you those geeks know such things and plan to deal with funky hardware. The Autopilot group is again separate. There really…

This is interesting to know, and your comment flipped a switch in my head - I'd like to know the organizational structure of a lot of companies out there. Is this information you acquired personally? Or is there a resource out there where you can refer to the structure of different companies?

Typically the annual report will give you an org chart with the division heads for public companies. If it isn't there it will be on the website or some other publication and if you can't find it and are an investor you can always simply ask.

Here is Tesla's:

https://theorg.com/org/tesla

and a bit more detail here:

https://theorg.com/org/tesla/org-chart

From there on down it takes a bit of work to get more detail, we typically spend a day on this during the run-up to a DD to verify what we receive and use a lot of googling, linked-in, and other sources to figure out who works in the company and in what role.

The GDPR has made this a bit harder. Team pages are a good source of info for lots of companies in the 10-100 people range, they sometimes list all of their employee names + titles.

I'm not aware of a single source of truth for detailed org charts, if it exists we'd be happy to buy it, it would save us a lot of time and effort.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#419

Post by samoa42 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

cyrux004 wrote: post #207

screye wrote: post #35

I worked with a self-driving product team a couple of years ago. Tesla's approach was looked upon with suspicion and often openly mocked. Tesla's entire self-driving strategy is led by Karpathy, who while brilliant, is an under-experienced researcher with a narrow expertise in large scale 2D CNNs. Tesla (and Comma.ai ?) seem to be the only groups that find Lidar unnecessary for L5 self-driving. I completely agree wit…

So you don't use adaptive cruise control or lane centering features which are available in almost all new cars today. Clearly you are in the tiny minority, because almost every car manufacturer is adding basic AP like functionality even in base versions of cars. A lot of users feel this helps with long drives to which I agree

> Clearly you are in the tiny minority, because almost every car manufacturer is adding basic AP like functionality even in base versions of cars

the average car in germany is 12 years old. from this perspective new-ish cars are a minority .

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#420

Post by La1n » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

hobofan wrote: post #389

hjnilsson wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe, most of the Tesla features are disabled because they were deemed hazardous. Only lane assist and adaptive cruise control is enabled. The others are severely limited or disabled (Summon etc.)

While I'm not a big Tesla fan, I don't think legislation is any indication of the actual safety that can be provided. Europe legislation tightly follows what German carmakers can deliver. Once they can offer the same features, it will be legal in no time.

>Europe legislation tightly follows what German carmakers can deliver.

Do you have a source for this? Cause it seems to me that they could easily deliver something like summon, seeing as parking-assist/automatic-parking already exists.