GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house • Hacker News Board

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#571

Post by ugh123 » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:22 PM UTC

rgovostes wrote: post #3

> GM said in a statement that “... an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” were the reasons for the change. Isn't there basically Google/Waymo and then, seemingly much further behind, Tesla Cybertaxi, Amazon/Zoox, and Uber/Yandex? Cruise allegedly has one of the most sophisticated autonomous driving platforms, and GM's Super Cruise (if they share any tech) is comparable to Tesla FSD. Strange that they would bow…

> Interest in autonomous driving appears to be cooling across the board

I think you mean interest in level 3 autonomous driving appears to be cooling across the board

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#572

Post by manwe150 » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #500

calciphus wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, also the CO2 footprint of manufacturing and transporting the fuel for an equivalent ICE vehicle, which is always conveniently left out of such calculations.

And also the footprint of building more generation stations (big) or building “renewable energy” generation (even bigger), which also conveniently gets left out. The greenest choice most of us can make is an old, used car with reasonable emissions and that’s fuel efficient. Like a 15 year old Civic or Corolla. Or do what a colleague of mine did - he revived a first generation Prius, flashed newer software onto it, an…

As pointed out by other nearby comments, that is not the greenest choice (which is to not drive), nor even the second greenest choice (which is to replace your ICE with a refurbished Prius like your colleague), or even the third greenest choice (which is to buy a new EV), but only barely beats out the worst non-green choices (buying a new ICE) and then only if you pay to make sure the car emissions controls and engine aren't becoming rusty and inefficient. Here's an article explaining: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/electric/mythbusting-world-...

There are also the caveats you mentioned that the analysis does assume that an EV is actually the greener choice, which is itself a function of a lot of other choices being made green also, such as whether it was constructed and powered with the most environmentally favorable choices of mining and manufacturing, most of which isn't really in the consumers direct control.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#573

Post by _ea1k » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:24 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #567

bayindirh wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> nobody has anything close to what FSD offers. From what I read about it, you're absolutely right. Down to the point of unwanted veering towards road dividers and other vehicles.

> Down to the point of unwanted veering towards road dividers and other vehicles. Our 2024 Kia does this every 10-20 miles on average. You don't even have to enable lane assist. It also randomly decides to weaken the regenerative braking, or switch out of single pedal mode. If you disable enough of the safety features it stops doing these things, but, for instance, that means you can't have blind spot detection that…

Yeah, people act like some Tesla problems are bad, but I've certainly used systems that are worse. Just in a few miles, I've had a Nissan accelerate towards stopped traffic aggressively enough to trigger its own collision warning. It'll also fly try to drive off the road in relatively shallow curves, triggering its own lane departure warnings.

The Tesla system isn't perfect, but it is far from unique in being imperfect.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#574

Post by notdonspaulding » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:26 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #449

Mashimo wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs have a way higher initial CO2 footprint. The crossover depends on car and where you get the energy from. I think it's often around the 100 000 km mark where an EV gets the smaller footprint. But like I said, many variables factor in.

In particular, grid decarbonisation means that distance to break even moves after the car is manufactured. If you live somewhere that mostly burns coal to make electricity, your break even is determined based on the higher efficiency of electric motors and of the (energy efficient but filthy) big stack coal generators compared to the relatively clean but inefficient gasoline ICE. But if they start building wind turbi…

> If you live somewhere that mostly burns coal to make electricity,

Which is almost everywhere in the world. Fossil fuels make up around 80% of energy production.

> But if they start building wind turbines and solar farms, because those are just cheaper and easier -

If they were "just cheaper and easier" they wouldn't need huge clean energy investments and subsidies.

I love solar, but don't let anyone sell you on the fiction that your EV is avoiding fossil fuels at any time in the near future unless you have installed enough solar on your personal residence to charge your car every day.

And if you ask the people who have done that "hey, was it cheap and easy to move your car's energy consumption to renewables?" and they reply "Yes!", please bring their story back here and share with the class.

https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2023/execut...

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#575

Post by bayindirh » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

_ea1k wrote: post #573

hedora wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Down to the point of unwanted veering towards road dividers and other vehicles. Our 2024 Kia does this every 10-20 miles on average. You don't even have to enable lane assist. It also randomly decides to weaken the regenerative braking, or switch out of single pedal mode. If you disable enough of the safety features it stops doing these things, but, for instance, that means you can't have blind spot detection that…

Yeah, people act like some Tesla problems are bad, but I've certainly used systems that are worse. Just in a few miles, I've had a Nissan accelerate towards stopped traffic aggressively enough to trigger its own collision warning. It'll also fly try to drive off the road in relatively shallow curves, triggering its own lane departure warnings. The Tesla system isn't perfect, but it is far from unique in being imperfe…

That's true. I took a jab specifically at Tesla, because it's generally framed as the "leader of the pack and problem free to the point that you can sleep in it".

FSD is a very hard problem, and the systems deployed are at best alpha level. These things should be "hyped responsibly".

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#576

Post by manwe150 » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:29 PM UTC

maerF0x0 wrote: post #561

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the lifecycle analysis of ICE cars, burning the fuel is the major contributor. So if you drive an average amount with those cars you're not saving the planet by continuing to drive them. In a well functioning system you'd be selling them on to people who drive very little and are old and set in their ways and replacing them with an EV.

In the book Heat Monboit argues the stats show that when someone "greens" their consumption they also increase it. For example switching to "green" energy meant people stopped thinking about conserving. In the specific case of electric vehicles (and many plug in hybrids) luckily they're such an immense improvement that my guess is that they still have a net benefit. But far from the simple efficiency math, and more l…

I think you mean Jevon's Paradox? Wikipedia claims it has been studied and that the effect is small: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#Cause

I wonder though if the more significant limitation for most people is the value placed on their time currently, so they seek to minimize travel and commute times (rather than minimizing for fuel costs). And if so, does will the rise of self-driving + EV paradoxically increase the number of miles someone is willing to sit behind the wheel in the coming decade?

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#577

Post by delabay » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:38 PM UTC

datadrivenangel wrote: post #324

delabay wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Tesla has a software problem, Waymo has a hardware problem" - Andrej Karpathi Is it easier to ramp to 1M vehicles a year and cut BOM costs by 80%, OR, install more GPUs and collect more data?

If you have to install the GPUs in each car, then you also have a hardware problem.

Tesla has been mass producing bespoke AI hardware for four generation.

It's not a hardware problem for Tesla. They are a trillion dollar vertically integrated manufacturing powerhouse.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#578

Post by jessriedel » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #362

thr3000 wrote: post #66

Sad news IMO. "We're not cut out for the future. We're all in on the dying business." Dunder Mifflin level stuff. Cruise cars were way more numerous around SF, although the service was worse than Waymo's. That stupid October 2023 accident really snowballed, and it wasn't even their (primary) fault.

my understanding is they lied to regulators. telling the truth is easy. lying is their fault.

Right but this is even more reason to not trash the technology.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#579

Post by ethagknight » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:43 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #526

ethagknight wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had a Yukon with supercruise for 18 months. It is fantastic for highway driving, particularly, we’ve driven it west from Tennessee to Colorado and Florida. Other comments claiming it’s the same as other standard driver-assist packages are incorrect. Totally hands free, no “ping pong” with the lanes. That said, when trying to BUY a supercruise vehicle, the sales guys were clueless, I had to review the stat sheets…

From my understanding, super cruise only works on pre-approved roads/road sections, whereas FSD works just about anywhere. When I last checked my commute to work, the main highway I take becomes unsupported half way to work, despite it being the same bland typical highway layout. I really don't want to buy a Tesla, but from what I can tell, nobody has anything close to what FSD offers.

SuperCruise and FSD are not comparable.

SuperCruise does what it claims to do, keep it up the middle on listed corridors. Most highways and interstates are eligible. I love both systems.

FSD is truly almost there for unsupervised, point to point driving. People want to virtue signal and complain about Tesla but it is an amazing piece of hardware being mass produced today. My car is 3 years old.

Re: GM exits robotaxi market, will bring Cruise operations in house

#580

Post by danans » Wed, Dec 11, 2024, 5:45 PM UTC

ls612 wrote: post #326

danans wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most states and communities aren't ok with unproven AVs on their streets causing accidents and injuries, even if they are superficially politically aligned with the AV manufacturer's CEO. That's a good thing, we shouldn't be lowering the bar for AVs.

There’s a chicken and egg issue with this in that to become proven the AV needs to drive somewhere for a while.

> to become proven the AV needs to drive somewhere for a while.

There's a straightforward solution to this that doesn't compromise public safety:

Employ paid training drivers who monitor the AV while it is collecting training data in environments where it does not yet meet the safety bar. These drivers are paid to be observant and intervene to avoid accidents. Furthermore, in their interventions, these training drivers provide critical training data used to improve the system.