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Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

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Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#461

Post by BoorishBears »

asynchronous wrote: post #437
cgh wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what the track record for FSD is so far but Autopilot's isn't great and inspires little confidence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-a... 17 fatalities, 736 crashes.

And yet it’s been used on several orders of magnitude more miles than any other offering. Check the numbers for general driver crashes and fatalities.

> And yet it’s been used on several orders of magnitude more miles than any other offering.

Based on what? ACC/LKAS has been a feature since before Tesla even existed as a corporation. You might be confusing their claims about FSD with AP (which they very much would like you to)

Similarly, they love for people to compare AP to all driver crashes and fatalities when AP only works in the situations that are otherwise least dangerous to drivers, in cars that are newer than the average car, driven by a demographic with higher than average safety records, etc... which means AP would need to kill a lot of people to not have better numbers than average

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#462

Post by saalweachter »

comte7092 wrote: post #411
AussieWog93 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't get the economies of scale needed to justify high-quality, regular rail service along the more quiet routes. Look at China's high speed rail network. Only a small minority of routes manage to break even, and the rest of them are a huge financial burden that the CCP just accepts because achieving a huge engineering feat creates a sense of national pride.

Cheap trains everywhere doesn’t have to mean high speed rail everywhere. You can have slower cheaper rail infrastructure that serves less traveled routes.

So I think there is an opportunity here.

Like many people, I cross a train track on my commute. There even used to be a commuter rail line that stopped there. Now it is all freight.

Like many freight lines, it carries a lot of "bomb trains" running oil between the fields and the refineries.

Eventually -- not tomorrow, probably more in the 30-50 year range -- those bomb trains are going to stop running.

That is going to leave a lot of track underutilized, and adding passenger rail back to these lines is one way to keep it cost effective to keep them open for freight. You have some overhead to re-add minimal stations -- concrete pads for disembarking, roofs optional -- but the tracks already existing covers a lot of the cost and complications.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#463

Post by throwaway4good »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #409
comte7092 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not?

You don't get the economies of scale needed to justify high-quality, regular rail service along the more quiet routes. Look at China's high speed rail network. Only a small minority of routes manage to break even, and the rest of them are a huge financial burden that the CCP just accepts because achieving a huge engineering feat creates a sense of national pride.

Most cell phone towers don’t break even … they are just expanding the network because of pride …

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#464

Post by rcxdude »

0xr0kk3r wrote: post #431
worik wrote: post #367

What do we want from self driving cars? Naturally I wand a car I can summon from the pub that will drive me the 20km, over country roads, to my house while I mix cocktails or have a nap. That may never happen, current technology does not seem up to it. Then what? Modern cruise control, that keeps my car a constant distance form the car in front (unless it roars off at a speed higher that what I am comfortable with) i…

> What do we want from self driving cars? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I want public transportation infrastructure and far, far, FAR fewer cars. I think the US should strive to reduce car ownership by 75% over the next 20 years, at least in cities over a certain population size. I don't want any more money invested in self-driving cars. But I'm also a grown-up of a certain age and realize the bright-eyed 20-something…

Self driving cars are much more likely to be public transport than individually owned. It's also extremely likely that it requires ride-sharing to be viable, which will substantially reduce traffic as well as car ownership (I suspect there may be enough cost pressure that most self-driving vehicles are more like minibuses than cars, which would also help a lot with pollution and congestion, but this may require regulatory pressure). Every conversation about the transition to EVs should be caveated with 'assuming car ownership stays the same because self-driving doesn't work (and that most of the world still does not manage to provide traditional public transport options good enough to replace cars)'.

(And yes, all of this means that Tesla and most other traditional automotive company's stated commercial strategy for self driving makes little sense)

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#465

Post by capableweb »

XajniN wrote: post #459
capableweb wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recently I was reading that in Europe, most cars sold don't even have automatic transmission I don't have any numbers regarding sales, but after renting 10s of cars in Europe during the last decade, it seems like they almost never have any manual cars anymore. In some countries, the entire fleet doesn't even include any manual ones anymore, I was told the last time I wanted to rent a car.

That’s true for rentals, they don’t want idiots screwing up their gearboxes. But, most cars on the streets are manuals, and you can’t get a driver’s license if you don’t know how to drive one.

> But, most cars on the streets are manuals

I don't know, anecdotally, all my friends (besides me, if I count as a friend of mine) drive automatic.

> and you can’t get a driver’s license if you don’t know how to drive one.

This is definitely not true in a bunch of countries, where you get to chose if to take a license for manual or automatic, where if you chose manual you can drive both and if you chose automatic, you obviously only get to drive automatic ones.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#466

Post by sampo »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #412
worik wrote: post #367

What do we want from self driving cars? Naturally I wand a car I can summon from the pub that will drive me the 20km, over country roads, to my house while I mix cocktails or have a nap. That may never happen, current technology does not seem up to it. Then what? Modern cruise control, that keeps my car a constant distance form the car in front (unless it roars off at a speed higher that what I am comfortable with) i…

Recently I was reading that in Europe, most cars sold don't even have automatic transmission, yet the drivers there are much safer than than people in the US or Australia. There was some speculation that because they shift gears manually, they have to pay more attention to the road and can't do things like drink coffees while driving. They also enjoy driving a lot more than we do. I wonder if other technology would h…

> in Europe, most cars sold don't even have automatic transmission

Something like 60% to 80% of new cars in European countries are now sold with automatic transmission. And this figure is growing year to year. It will take a decade or two for the old manual cars to get replaced, though.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#467

Post by vkou »

xigency wrote: post #450
0xr0kk3r wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do we want from self driving cars? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I want public transportation infrastructure and far, far, FAR fewer cars. I think the US should strive to reduce car ownership by 75% over the next 20 years, at least in cities over a certain population size. I don't want any more money invested in self-driving cars. But I'm also a grown-up of a certain age and realize the bright-eyed 20-something…

Yeah, self driving cars would be a step backward as currently imagined. We need high speed rail to connect our cities.

They wouldn't be a step backwards, they'd be a step sideways.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#468

Post by lost_tourist »

worik wrote: post #367

What do we want from self driving cars? Naturally I wand a car I can summon from the pub that will drive me the 20km, over country roads, to my house while I mix cocktails or have a nap. That may never happen, current technology does not seem up to it. Then what? Modern cruise control, that keeps my car a constant distance form the car in front (unless it roars off at a speed higher that what I am comfortable with) i…

I just need a car that will let me catch up on emails or reading the morning paper while it commutes me to work through rush hour traffic

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#469

Post by lost_tourist »

0xr0kk3r wrote: post #431
worik wrote: post #367

What do we want from self driving cars? Naturally I wand a car I can summon from the pub that will drive me the 20km, over country roads, to my house while I mix cocktails or have a nap. That may never happen, current technology does not seem up to it. Then what? Modern cruise control, that keeps my car a constant distance form the car in front (unless it roars off at a speed higher that what I am comfortable with) i…

> What do we want from self driving cars? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I want public transportation infrastructure and far, far, FAR fewer cars. I think the US should strive to reduce car ownership by 75% over the next 20 years, at least in cities over a certain population size. I don't want any more money invested in self-driving cars. But I'm also a grown-up of a certain age and realize the bright-eyed 20-something…

This isn't what we need. I don't want to depend on the government for my primary means of travel or be limited by it.

Re: Mercedes beats Tesla to autonomous driving in California

#470

Post by kiratp »

BoorishBears wrote: post #415
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People also don't seem to understand Mercedes has a separate L2 system that works above 45 mph that already scores better than AP by consumer reports Isn't Mercedes' L2 system non-upgradable, though? i.e. people with Merc's L2 system today won't be able to upgrade to L3+ later on, they'll need to buy a whole new car - right? I bring this up only because I bought my X in 2018 with FSD prepaid - it's 5 years old now,…

According to Elon HW V2/2.5 was going to be FSD solved in 2016. Now HW V4 will be FSD solved. There've been multiple paid upgrades along that path that depending on exactly how Elon convinced a given buyer to pay for FSD previously. The fact that you're going to claim that Tesla, the company that famously discounts vehicles wholesale before unannounced upgrades, silently downgraded their CPO program to a used car pro…

People who paid for the FSD package have been given the upgrades for free.
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