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Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

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Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#51

Post by Tiktaalik »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #3
brianpgordon wrote: post #2

> a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi service as soon as next year. So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by next year ? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

It's either a lie or psychotic delusion, I refuse to believe he is that uninformed and ignorant about the current state of autonomous driving.

With regard to the Boring Company and his transit 'solutions' he's obviously uninformed and ignorant, and his bs has been called out so many times by transit planners, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's just as uninformed and ignorant with his other endeavors.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#52

Post by Judgmentality »

dragontamer wrote: post #39
DennisP wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's more to it than feature size. Other companies have more general-purpose chips. Tesla basically built an ASIC for self-driving.

NVidia is the only chip that seems a bit heavy on GPU features. But the Volta architecture has tensor processors with full FP16 and INT8 support, so it seems useful for self-driving as far as I can tell. MobilEye EyeQ4 and EyeQ5 has no other purpose than self-driving. EyeQ5 is going to be 7nm and is launching 2020. A full ASIC for self-driving as well. And no one knows what the heck Google / Waymo is doing. All we kn…

> And no one knows what the heck Google / Waymo is doing. All we know is that its working, today, in Phoenix Arizona, where anyone can use Google / Waymo's taxi service TODAY.

This is false.

There are, to the best of anyone's knowledge, a handful of people in the Waymo One program (I'm fairly confident it's less than 10). Everyone in the Early Rider program is still under NDA. In order to be accepted to either, you have to apply. The application process being open to the public does not mean the service is public, anymore than the application process to Google being public means anyone can work at Google.

As to regards to how well it's working...they are definitely in the lead, and they do really have cars driving around, but all of them are still with safety drivers. Until they pull the safety drivers you can't really call them driverless and it shows a lack of faith in their product because it's not ready yet to actually be driverless.

Waymo lost their goodwill when they said they'd have the service you mentioned in 2018, basically pulled a bullshit PR event in order to "fulfill" their promise. It's pretty obvious though it was just so whoever was in charge could get some bonus attached to the timeline, very similar to how Google seems to launch products already - they do it so people can get promoted and then all the important people leave before the product is useful to anyone. It's no secret that almost the entire original team has already left and most of them have started competing against Waymo, so it seems they are confident they can take on Waymo and win - and they'd know better than anyone because they built Waymo.

And Waymo has since gone silent on when they'll expand their program, or pull the driver from the car, or pretty much anything. I agree it's a good idea for them to play their cards close to their chest, but compared to their past posturing that's a sign that it's not around the corner.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#53

Post by toomuchtodo »

Judgmentality wrote: post #46
DennisP wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been skeptical of skipping LIDAR, but a recent study at Cornell found that with binocular vision they could be almost as accurate as LIDAR, but with much cheaper hardware. https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-back-teslas-non-l...

That study has been highly disputed by people in the field; the methodology is questionable at best for the claims they're making.

Anthony Levandowski of Waymo LIDAR fame has said he now agrees with Elon Musk ("a wiser person than me") that LIDAR is a crutch.

https://youtu.be/fNgEG5rCav4?t=105

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#54

Post by jjeaff »

gamblor956 wrote: post #47
DennisP wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been skeptical of skipping LIDAR, but a recent study at Cornell found that with binocular vision they could be almost as accurate as LIDAR, but with much cheaper hardware. https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-back-teslas-non-l...

The researchers found that analyzing the captured images from a bird’s-eye view, rather than the more traditional frontal view, more than tripled their accuracy, making stereo camera a viable and low-cost alternative to LiDAR. I look forward to the day when cars have giraffe-necks protruding from their roofs, mounted with stereo cameras... But until then, the researchers actually just confirmed that front-mount camer…

I'm imagining a Mario Kart style drone that floats above the vehicles with a camera.

And as a bonus, if the car flies off the road into the river, it can use a fishing pole style winch to pull your vehicle out of the water and place it back on the road.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#55

Post by WhatIsDukkha »

gamblor956 wrote: post #47
DennisP wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been skeptical of skipping LIDAR, but a recent study at Cornell found that with binocular vision they could be almost as accurate as LIDAR, but with much cheaper hardware. https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-back-teslas-non-l...

The researchers found that analyzing the captured images from a bird’s-eye view, rather than the more traditional frontal view, more than tripled their accuracy, making stereo camera a viable and low-cost alternative to LiDAR. I look forward to the day when cars have giraffe-necks protruding from their roofs, mounted with stereo cameras... But until then, the researchers actually just confirmed that front-mount camer…

I'm REALLY unclear how you decided to post this giraffe comment...

The picture and the words in the article show cameras next to the rear view mirror.

""" Using two inexpensive cameras on either side of a vehicle’s windshield, Cornell researchers have discovered they can detect objects with nearly LiDAR’s accuracy and at a fraction of the cost."""

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#56

Post by agumonkey »

brianpgordon wrote: post #2

> a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi service as soon as next year. So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by next year ? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

You don't buy his claims that lidar is non necessary and even inefficient at sdv ?

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#57

Post by Reedx »

Judgmentality wrote: post #46
DennisP wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always been skeptical of skipping LIDAR, but a recent study at Cornell found that with binocular vision they could be almost as accurate as LIDAR, but with much cheaper hardware. https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-back-teslas-non-l...

That study has been highly disputed by people in the field; the methodology is questionable at best for the claims they're making.

Perhaps, but you can't dispute that humans don't have LIDAR.

It's just a matter of time before AI can drive better than humans even if using similar vision. Especially in aggregate (e.g., factoring in distracted drivers).

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#58

Post by izzydata »

Nokinside wrote: post #23
brianpgordon wrote: post #2

> a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi service as soon as next year. So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by next year ? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

It seems to be completely pie in the sky type of thinking. The only rational -non delusional- reason I see for the talk is if Musk does it to get better financing terms before the self driving hype dries down. I think taxi services without driver are coming but the the secret sauce is remote human operator working together with high level of automation. Driver is the main cost of taxi service. If you get one operator…

I would never trust such a ridiculous system. I don't know that many other people would either. Although I would also not trust a fully autonomous vehicle either until more evidence is provided that we were even within 20 years of it.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#59

Post by freeone3000 »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #44
Nokinside wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you a retail investor looking for high risk/high reward stocks, Tesla today is not what Tesla was during IPO. The need for more money and future stock dilution means that risk is significantly higher but reward is going to be lower.

> risk is significantly higher but reward is going to be lower. Is that not true for all companies as they grow?

No; Microsoft (for instance) today is much less riskier than Microsoft in 1988. It likely won't experience meteoric growth, but neither is it likely to crash tomorrow. Ideally, risk/reward are inversely correlated.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#60

Post by xmprt »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #53
Judgmentality wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That study has been highly disputed by people in the field; the methodology is questionable at best for the claims they're making.

Anthony Levandowski of Waymo LIDAR fame has said he now agrees with Elon Musk ("a wiser person than me") that LIDAR is a crutch. https://youtu.be/fNgEG5rCav4?t=105

I wonder why the person who was taken to court over (allegedly) stealing Waymo's IP related to LIDAR would be wary of using LIDAR in his new projects...
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