Seems a little premature to require this as we don't necessarily know that this would help.
I think we do know it would help. If your car can't physically see the car 1/4 mile ahead, but gets info that it has slammed on its brakes, thats very useful. If you've ever driven in bumper to bumper traffic on a highway you know how invaluable this info would be, even to a human driver. Plus info about road conditions (icy spots ahead!), etc..
Agreed. This is exactly why I hate driving behind SUVs. I like to be able to see the car in front of the car in front of me. It gives some additional reaction time.
It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…
These issues could mostly be solved by the car having a "remote control" where an expert in a remote immersive environment could take manual control of the car for a few seconds to resolve whatever the problem is. Now you've reduced all your problems down to simply "identify problem and alert a remote human". If each of those problems only happen once per day, and they are resolved in 30 seconds, it's going to cost o…
the remote driving possibility will open the pandora box of remote hacking.
It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…
A lot of that will be best solved by making a lot of other actors communicate directly with the car.
Traffic lights will send out the same messages they send to humans by red/green lights to the cars using radio.
Emergency vehicles, roadworks, traffic signs etc will do the same.
>These cars are overhyped Not really, they're correctly hyped. The concept is revolutionary. > They've been just around the corner for the last 10 year B-S. Holy revisionism BS!! We were NOT talking about self-driving cars in 2006! There was no company seriously designing fully autonomous cars in 2006! It was fully in the realm of science fiction, no investment, no major players, nothing. And you make it sound like i…
It feels there's a mountain of hype around autonomous vehicles. I think the core challenges to a fully autonomous vehicle (with no human backup), are still far from solved. They need to reliably deal with an almost infinite number of edge and corner cases, each quite different from the last. For example: - communication with other human drivers. In London, this is required all the time, like when parked cars block th…
Do you really think the companies building autonomous cars haven't thought about all these things? They may not have solved them yet (If they had, we've probably see their products on the road) but I'm sure it's in progress.
I agree that it's safe to assume folks at these companies are aware of these issues. But if I'm going to risk my life by using one of these systems, I'd want to have good answers to how they have solved them. Until then, I think it's fair to keep asking to avoid unrealistic hype.
Do you really think the companies building autonomous cars haven't thought about all these things? They may not have solved them yet (If they had, we've probably see their products on the road) but I'm sure it's in progress.
I imagine in an emergency the car would show a set of options on a screen and you click one and the car will do it. For example getting out of the way of emergency vehicles on a blocked road. It will ask you what to do and if you tell it to drive up the pavement or into a bus lane or cross to the wrong side of the road -- the car will just do it. I do wonder about all the non-verbal human-to-human communication. But…
I think it's fine if there's a human in the car, simple, they just take control to manage the incident. But to truly disrupt our lives (24 hour robot trucks, autonomous taxi fleets ), which is what all these companies are aiming for, the car needs to be able to drive without a human.
> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff. I've seen this sentiment so many times now that I have to ask a serious question to anyone who echoes this sentiment: Do you own a personal car right now? If so, why? All of this... excitement over the transformations that self-driving vehicl…
Different usecases drive different needs. If you live in the suburbs, it's easier to own a car than to get an Uber and wait for 20 minutes every time you are going out. If you live in the city, it's cheaper to set aside money for Uber than to pay for a car and a parking spot. Also, getting a driver has never been this easy. Taxis have existed for hundreds of years, but smartphones are a recent invention. There's a hu…
Before Uber, the taxi company I used had an automated system which send a taxi to my place if I pressed 1, and connected me to human that took a new address when I pressed 2. Even with a human in the loop, it rarely took more than 40 seconds. I agree that Uber app is more convenient than that, but it really wasn't an order of magnitude improvement -- what was a deal maker for me was the fact that Uber automatically charged me, and I didn't have to put a card in and input PIN, or scramble for cash.
> Toyota could probably do it more cheaply than Uber. I agree. The fact that autonomous cars will likely reduce ownership will put a squeeze on car companies, and it might make sense for them to branch into service areas, as they can get the cars at cost. I guarantee that for 10,000 Camrys purchased by Uber and 10,000 Camrys built and shuffled to a ride service division by Toyota, Toyota's ride-sharing division will…
I think that is suboptimal vertical integration. Hertz is a fleet buyer for a good reason; it doesn't want to be reliant on its Hertz Automotive subsidiary to meet a production quota. It doesn't want that capital expenditure. It wants to buy cars at volume and sell them as they depreciate.
Hertz lives in an equilibrium where lots of people buy and operator their own cars. Autonomous cars may well move us to an equilibrium where most people do not own cars and instead rely on services. That totally changes the economics of the situation.
I tried renting out my car for a month in Oakland; it routinely smelt like weed and McDonald's fries, which got annoying enough that I stopped renting it out. A fleet would be able to handle these sorts of things better.
Counter anecdata: I've been renting out my car in SF for 6 months and it's been great; pulls in $600-1000/month.