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

arstechnica.com

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

#431

Post by jiofih »

mhh__ wrote: post #226
jiofih wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only he sold two tech companies where he worked as a software engineer early in his career, but he has been the chief engineer for SpaceX for almost twenty years, and the results of that kind of speak for themselves?

Is his role at SpaceX for his ego or is he actually signing off on engine designs?

They gave up on patents over a decade ago so we might never really know, but it’s widely reported that he designed the original falcon rocket, has a hand in the engine designs, the dragon capsule, the space suits, and now starship and everything surrounding it. For most people just being a part of one of these projects would be a mark of success...

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

#432

Post by twic »

aidenn0 wrote: post #275
freeone3000 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Significantly more than half of your ride fare on Uber goes to the driver - between 70 and 130%. Human costs are vastly the most expensive part of hailing a ride, and will remain so as long as minimum wage exists. The same argument for human drivers also applies to human dishwashers and human launderers, and yet, most of us are fine using machines for this purpose. Whether or not this will cause financial disaster fo…

But what fraction of the money that goes to the driver is spent on depreciation and maintenance?

Here's one breakdown:

https://uberdriverlondon.co.uk/is-it-worth-driving-for-uber-...

I think the interesting number there is 23 000 GBP/year, which is effectively the cost to Uber of having a human driver for one car operating 60 hours per week.

If a computer can drive a car for 60 hours a week, it saves money for Uber if the amortized cost is less than 23 000 GBP/yr.

If a computer can drive a car for more than 60 hours a week, it saves money even if it costs more than 23 000 GBP/yr, although i don't think it's linear - demand is concentrated at a few times of day, so one car on the road 24 hours a day is not equivalent o four cars on the road for six hours each.

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

#433

Post by JonathanFly »

La1n wrote: post #425
JonathanFly wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>However, in the unlikely scenario that 2D videos are sufficient for L5 self-driving, Tesla wins BIG. No one will be even close, especially due to the scale of 2D data that they have gathered. Potentially Tesla's 2D data lead means they will still be the leader even if the compute resources in the current cars isn't up to the task, and maybe even if they have to add additional sensors like lidar. They can probably re…

>costs a fraction of the cost of lidar What makes lidar for use in self-driving that expensive? I have a robot-vacuum with a lidar that wasn't all that expensive.

>What makes lidar for use in self-driving that expensive? I have a robot-vacuum with a lidar that wasn't all that expensive.

Waymo says it cost $75,000 for the lidar in one car a decade ago, and in 2019 they said they got the cost down to $7,500. So at the time Tesla decided to forgo lidar the costs were certainly very high. I'm guessing the range in your vacuum is multiple orders of magnitude less than a car.

Waymo must have been betting costs would drastically fall over time. No idea if it's a lot less than 7500 now.

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

#434

Post by throwawayzRUU6f »

freeone3000 wrote: post #96
mxschumacher wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Significantly more than half of your ride fare on Uber goes to the driver - between 70 and 130%. Human costs are vastly the most expensive part of hailing a ride, and will remain so as long as minimum wage exists. The same argument for human drivers also applies to human dishwashers and human launderers, and yet, most of us are fine using machines for this purpose. Whether or not this will cause financial disaster fo…

The statistics, based on https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-how-much-uber-driv...

> Uber drivers typically collect $24.77 per hour

> From that, Uber takes $8.33 in commissions and fees

> Vehicle expenses like gas and maintenance cost drivers about $4.87 per hour

> That leaves drivers with $11.77 per hour

Now, the maintenance and amortization will be higher for autonomous vehicles. Somebody will need to clean these vehicles, scrape the ice off, refuel, monitor them, deal with anomalies and false alarms, etc - all of which is now taken care of by the driver. Autonomous vehicles will likely end up being cheaper, but it's not as clear cut.

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

#435

Post by icebraining »

jjav wrote: post #424
roenxi wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You don't want to share a road with me when you could share it with a Tesla FSD. I'd rather share a road with you, a human. Even if you're a self-admitted bad driver, humans have a strong instinct of self preservation which helps. Software has no such thing, a bug in the code will let it accelerate full throttle into a wall (or whatever) without flinching because it's not alive.

Bugs in humans let them do that too: "The US NHTSA estimates 16,000 accidents per year in USA, when drivers intend to apply the brake but mistakenly apply the accelerator."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration

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

#436

Post by dalbasal »

ra7 wrote: post #26

I think the FSD beta rollout is completely irresponsible from Tesla. Rolling out a clearly half-baked safety critical technology to its customers (yes, I know it's only a few beta testers) who are untrained is nothing but a tactic to generate hype and get more customers to buy that $10k FSD package. This is on top of Tesla being the least transparent company out there in reporting safety data or their testing methodo…

Safety culture is an important topic too, but this article is about something else: technology paths.

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

#437

Post by jiofih »

dillondoyle wrote: post #306
Animats wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Check out this one.[1] Watch the display for what it sees and isn't seeing. Awareness of oncoming traffic is almost nonexistent. Except when the FedEx truck is reflected in some windows; then it detects the reflection as a vehicle. Although the streets are almost empty, the driver takes over frequently. This is way below what Waymo and Cruise can do. [1] https://youtu.be/6G1Z2J3WUSg?t=231

that is terrifying. the next 60 seconds after that is crazy bad. 'that is not ideal'... We need to legislate this before more people die

Nothing scary happens in the next 60 seconds. The car would obviously not go into the opposite lane if there was traffic, and given a few more seconds it would return to the right shoulder. The driver is jumpy and taking over before it has time to correct anything.

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

#438

Post by icebraining »

andi999 wrote: post #423
pmorici wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hud as you call it is not a safety critical part of the car in Teslas. You can reboot it while driving without effecting the car. The self driving computer is separate and has full redundancy to the point of having two processors running redundant code. There is a reason Tesla’s are consistently rated as the safest cars on the road with low probability of being involved in an accident and lowest probability of in…

2 Processors? What happens with majority vote if they disagree? (or maybe they wanted to avoid a 'minority report' situation :-)). But honestly do you know what they do? Although since it is not flying, probably some red indicator will light up. And maybe a stopping maneuver.

Apparently they just try again:

"Each chip makes its own assessment of what the car should do next. The computer compares the two assessments, and if the chips agree, the car takes the action. If the chips disagree, the car just throws away that frame of video data and tries again, Venkataramanan said."

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

#439

Post by jiofih »

Animats wrote: post #188
snoshy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this really all that important? There are 3 other cars ahead of the Tesla at this red light intersection. If you're able to react within tens or hundreds of milliseconds to a changing environment, it would actually make sense to reduce compute to save power for when the vehicle is in motion and not surrounded by other vehicles at a stop light. Edit: It seemed to handle that intersection just fine, but a couple of…

Here's an hour of a Cruise vehicle driving in San Francisco.[1] Watch it deal with a trash bag that fell out of a dumpster, a left turn across heavy opposing traffic, double-parked cars, cars pulling out of parking spaces, a FedEx truck changing lanes across their path... Makes Tesla look like amateur hour. [1] https://youtu.be/EZ75QoAymug?t=122

Since they rely on pre-mapping, that’s the equivalent of a carnival ride on rails and not really comparable to what Tesla is doing (unsupervised training on billions of unknown road miles).

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

#440

Post by icebraining »

dtech wrote: post #377
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulations are all we have to keep things from breaking...ignoring them about something like a self driving car should be a criminal offense.

The other side of the coin as that they hobble 5-20 years behind tech possibilities. If you want to push boundaries, you sometimes have little choice. Self-driving cars in the next 10 years have been a serious possibility for the last decade or so, yet governments and insurers don't have a policy ready and won't until a couple of years after the first self-driving cars are available.

Tesla, Google et all are not little startups but huge corps with plenty of cash and the ear of any politician or CEO. If they can't get a policy enacted, maybe there's a reason for it.
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