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Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

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Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#621

Post by rootusrootus »

standyro wrote: post #438
FireBeyond wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"some time in the future"... ... while Musk promises "you'll be able to self-drive, coast to coast, this year" (haha, no).

For a bunch of "tech visionaries" that Hacker News is supposed to embody, this thread is full of such shortsightedness. I self-drove from Southern California to Phoenix, Arizona, so I guess that's like 1/10th of the way. I couldn't have imagined that ten years ago. Part of the job of being a CEO is to sell the dream, even if it's years or decades away.

I use autopilot between Seattle and Portland regularly. It requires intervention a half dozen times or so, each way. Sometimes my wife makes me switch back to TACC-only, because she finds the interventions unnerving.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#622

Post by WalterBright »

Animats wrote: post #620
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

Volvo has proposed some rather simple infrastructure - driving magnetized nails into the pavement as a lane hint. This is mostly because they have to deal with heavy snow. It's not the sole, or even the primary guidance system, but it helps. They also suggest that snowplows could use the magnets for guidance. In snowy areas, it's common to use posts or flags or even overhead signs (in Hokkaido) to show where the road…

It's a cool idea, but nails rust, meaning a maintenance issue and outages. Is there a magnetic material that doesn't corrode?

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#623

Post by Consultant32452 »

colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

I don't think self driving cars will be a thing until self driving friendly roads are a thing. Just one example is roads could have RFID embedded everywhere. Maybe that specific idea is bad but that's the kind of way I think we'll have to approach this. If we start embedding RFID as we're repaving roads today, in 5 years the roads where most miles are driven will be equipped. In 20 years basically every road is done.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#624

Post by samstave »

colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

Lets assume the environment does meet half way.

How resilient would such a system be.

How easily can it be attacked to fiddle with the ability of the car to navigate safely?

Also, and much longer term, isnt it kind of weird to think that human infrastructure can only be seen to massively scale i. The planet so long as we turn the planet into a cyborg?

Isnt it weird and wasteful to build a planet wide cage of tech infrastructure for the evonomies of the world to survive and for human civilization to operate along the trajectory we are currently pointing?

Seems dismal to me.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#625

Post by rootusrootus »

axguscbklp wrote: post #524
odnes wrote: post #433

I can't see L5 happening without, amongst other things, the human ability to reason about things/concepts we've never encountered before (à la consciousness). Highway driving is the most constrained normal driving problem, and this is solvable in 99% of cases. But there are so many things that can happen in most other driving situations that make me think that model-based approaches (Tesla) are doomed to fail... Go a…

Musk, for all his genuine achievements, is also a bullshitter. If/when his FSD prediction fails to come to pass, I expect that he will just say "Well, when I said FSD, what I really meant is..."

That is already happening. Go visit the Tesla forums, and you will hear a lot of fans trying to tone down expectations for FSD, redefining what that term means. I would have thought "full self-driving" was pretty explanatory, but from things I've recently read, the goalposts have already shifted significantly.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#626

Post by bordercases »

smabie wrote: post #417
bordercases wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you need to be where the car ends up stopping!

You could pay someone else to drive the car remotely. Though, I suppose they could extract money out of you by threatening to kill you.

Buddy that's called transit and taxiing.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#627

Post by colordrops »

axguscbklp wrote: post #515
colordrops wrote: post #165

I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the…

If you have to modify the environment to make it easier for the cars, then you haven't achieved fully self-driving technology.

So unless cars can navigate without roads then they are not self driving?

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#628

Post by euske »

I always thought that self-driving technology is one of the schemes devised by researchers for getting a long-term funding. It has an immense appeal to the public and sounds plausible enough to laypeople. We've seen a bunch of promises like this: nuclear fusion energy and earthquake forecasting. In Japan, trillions of yens were (and still are) spent to these two technologies but their practicalities are pretty much questionable. I think self-driving tech joined this.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#629

Post by samstave »

WalterBright wrote: post #622
Animats wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Volvo has proposed some rather simple infrastructure - driving magnetized nails into the pavement as a lane hint. This is mostly because they have to deal with heavy snow. It's not the sole, or even the primary guidance system, but it helps. They also suggest that snowplows could use the magnets for guidance. In snowy areas, it's common to use posts or flags or even overhead signs (in Hokkaido) to show where the road…

It's a cool idea, but nails rust, meaning a maintenance issue and outages. Is there a magnetic material that doesn't corrode?

How about magnetic hematite mixed into the road building materials; especially as its a biproduct of iron mining...

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#630

Post by samstave »

amelius wrote: post #210
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

We'd have self-driving road marker printers to keep the paint from becoming invisible ;)

The Road Roomba 9000!
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