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Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

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441–450 of 670 posts

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#441

These companies are only surviving because of US protectionism. This tech is more expensive than then Chinese equivalent from 2-3 years ago (look at what Xiaomi or BYD released as their 2024 models). These cars will not sell well outside of the US.

While the software is indeed behind - e.g. Nio already had all of this in 2022/2023, and a much better UI, I'm sure the upcoming Rivian R2 and R3 would sell very well in Europe.

Europe will probably be the largest market where US EVs will try to compete with Chinese cars. BYD is already selling better spec’d models for less than this Rivian, and Xiaomi will enter the market late 2026.

I don’t see how Rivian can compete, either on price or features.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#442
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments. It doesn't prevent chaos, but it does provide ubiquitous cameras. That will be used against people. I'm ambivalent about that and mostly in a negative direction. On the one hand, I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof. On the other hand, the insurance compan…

> I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof. Life is hard and people make mistakes. Let the actuaries do their job, but causing an accident is not a moral failure, except in cases like drunk driving, where we have actual criminal liability already. > the insurance companies will force self-driving on everybody through massive insurance rate increases for manual driv…

>Why would manual driving be more expensive to insure in the future? The same risks exist today, at today's rates, but with the benefit that over time the other cars will get harder to hit, reducing the rate of accidents even for humans (kinda like herd immunity).

I think it will get cheaper because people who want to do risky things that detract from driving will self select to drive autonomous vehicles.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sensing depth is pretty important though. Especially in scenarios where vision fails, radar for example works perfectly fine in the thickest of fog.

In "scenarios where vision fails" the car should not be driving. Period. End of story. It doesn't matter how good radar is in fog, because radar alone is not enough.

Too bad conditions can change instantly. You can't stop the car at an alpine tunnel exit just because there's heavy fog on the other side of the mountain.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 31 and I'm very excited by the '86 Chevy truck I just got. You know why? It's _not_ "smart". The smartest thing on it is the old-school AM/FM radio. There's no software updates, there's nothing (built-in) tracking my every move. It's just a simple, repairable truck, for, you know, _driving_. People have this strange obsession with over-complicating everything they possibly can.

Car and house are usually most expensive persons purchases. It is absurd to not make them smart.

I'm not sure what the threshold is for a house to be smart. But I just had to get some fairly extensive work done and all my light switches and so forth are just traditional toggles. I'm not sure what's absurd about that.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public transit is a dream turned nightmare consistently for seventy-five years *In the United States. For reasons we have avoided in much of the rest of the world...

The United States is freaking huge. By the time modern transportation arrived, people were already living all over the country in pockets every which where. We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these - and in vast quantities. We do have dense pockets. NYC, in particular, has a nice metro (it just needs to be cleaner and more mo…

> Roads are truly America's circulatory and nervous system.

Thanks to massive lobbying by car manufacturers that did their best to destroy all traces of public transit infrastructure that existed in the US before the country moved to car dependency.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let's not train people properly, better give techbros more money

What evidence is there that we can train people to be better drivers? We've got a century of effort and it seems the bulk of road death prevention has come from improved, and more expensive, design.

Other countries.

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#447

Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway). Of course, people won't like this…

If that’s the way things go, subscription, there aught to be insurance coverage built into that. It’s required anyway and the extent to which a driver relies on SD, and has to pay a sub, then it’s the SD responsible for accidents, not in full but part, and insurance can reflect that as well. But if the two are inextricable as a requirement anyway, there should be baked in standardized procedures for “things have gone wrong, which was a known inevitability, and this is the framework for handling it.”

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#448
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end (regardless of the horsepower). That's what autonomous driving is for imo. There is a lot of fun in driving a high-hp car on track or offroad or in some not-much-populated area or in plenty of other scenarios. That's where using autonom…

> There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end And I wish this would be more broadly recognized. Every time there's a story about someone important freaking out about something related to autonomous driving, I'm at least somewhat afraid they'll use it as justification to deny me a…

Miserable commutes were already solved with remote work for all who can and want. Fewer drivers makes for a better commute for those remaining

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#449
post #362
post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of an easy way to have the controls accessible no matter what's going on on the touchscreen, but then again that's probably what disqualifies me from being the CEO of a big car company.

Take that idea of buttons and knobs and just replace it with another ipad. Make it revolutionary, put the ipad in the middle of the steering wheel, boom.

What about several mini ipads, each dedicated to a single function? We could use OLED displays and pre-burn-in their function at the factory as a label, and leave the display off, except for maybe a single LED, to save power. We could also add some sort of haptic feedback on user interaction with each mini ipad...

Re: Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

#450
post #6

Where I live I am often surrounded by Waymo vehicles... is Lidar 100% safe for people to be around? I ask because I read an article about how Lidar on one of the new Volvos could destroy your phone camera if you pointed it at it? If Lidar can do that to a phone camera, can it hurt your eyes?

When it becomes a widespread issue they'll just release Meta Glasses 5/Apple Vision 3 with the appropriate eye protection, and vision will be very affordable.
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