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Obama administration ready to put $4B toward self-driving cars

138 points by lemiant 11y ago

uvesten 11y ago
They seem a little late coming to the game. 4B is not much compared to how much money and effort are already going into autonomous cars. Seems pointless. But it seems there's also willngness to discuss future rules and ethics for self-driving cars, which is good.
droithomme 11y ago
No doubt this will primarily benefit Tesla Corp. which seems to be based around subsidies.
ppod 11y ago
Is there any talk of installing some kind of guideline along existing roads that would help navigation or vision? Something like a bright line or a buried magnetic (or radio?) 'rail' for the cars to follow? I've read that vision is still a big challenge in poor conditions.
- agentx3r 11y ago
  At the point when the system is unable to analyze the static environment (e.g. lane markers) due to poor visibility, it's probably unable to analyze and deal with dynamic situations safely.
- dclowd9901 11y ago
  It's a big challenge for non-self driving cars too. If road maintenance programs aren't willing to repaint on occasion or provide lane keeping alternatives for more fallible humans, what hope do we have of them doing it for machines.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    Indeed. Try driving in certain parts of Dallas at night or in the rain.
- elchief 11y ago
  Same old complaint every thread. Ford self-driving cars can drive in the snow: http://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-clever-way-fords-self-driving-cars-navigate-in-snow/ http://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-clever-way-fords-self-drivi...
  - garrettgrimsley 11y ago
    It isn't fair to dismissively refer to their concern as the "same old complaint" and then link to a new story that is four days old for backing. Further, your link doesn't even sufficiently address their concern. In fact, it specifically mentions that poor weather is a challenge. >This doesn’t mean all the problems with autonomous driving in bad weather are solved. Falling rain and snow can interfere with LIDAR and cameras, and safely driving requires more than knowing where you are on a map—you also need to be able to see those temporary obstacles.
- csours 11y ago
  There is an industry standard suite of Vehicle communications protocols called V2X [1]. These can be used for SDC automation but no one is planning on relying on them, because there will always be places that do not have them. They can add value in some situations thought. 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=v2x https://www.google.com/search?q=v2x
- Animats 11y ago
  The modern version is that Volvo has proposed putting magnets, in the form of nails, into pavements. This is to provide a hint of where the lanes are under snow. It also provides guidance for snowplows. These would probably be driven in by the same machines that stripe lanes. This is an old idea from the early days of automatic driving, but today they'd just be viewed as a hint, not something to be followed blindly. There are areas where high visibility snow stakes are placed alongside highways for driver and snowplow guidance. Hokkaido puts large downward pointing arrows over snowy highways to mark the shoulder.[1] Wire guidance systems have been around for years, for industrial robot vehicles. GM put them on their test track for Firebird III in the 1960s. But it's no longer necessary to have even that much infrastructure. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9303297,143.8076743,3a,75y,340.31h,89.77t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUXNmu36LICOLfwA2xlsBdg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9303297,143.8076743,3a,75y,3...
- WalterBright 11y ago
  It may be a lot cheaper and more reliable to improve the accuracy of GPS (it's a few meters at the moment.)
astazangasta 11y ago
Just give the money to the NSF instead. Why spend $4 billion on this (pointless, worthless) technology that Silicon Valley is already running headlong to create?
- bosdev 11y ago
  Saying this is pointless and worthless is insane to me. More than thirty thousand people die in motor vehicle deaths in the US every year. The amount of pain and suffering this technology will eliminate is incalculable.
  - astazangasta 11y ago
    Those problems can be solved without the ridiculous effort of creating self driving cars. People die mostly because of drunk driving accidents. More bus passes and free taxis can save people much cheaper. Plus, how many more die of cancer and heart disease? Are you really arguing that driving deaths are a major problem that requires intensive effort to solve?
    - function_seven 11y ago
      You think it will be cheaper to pay for more taxis than it will be to have cars drive themselves? Let alone many drunk drivers would still drive themselves even if a free taxi were available. > Are you really arguing that driving deaths are a major problem that requires intensive effort to solve? It's obvious to any observer that driving deaths are a major problem, and that an intensive effort to solve this problem is appropriate. We've made tremendous progress over that last 50 years. Let's continue that path.
      - astazangasta 11y ago
        Yes, of course it will be cheaper to pay for taxis (not more taxis) for drunk people than it will be to have cars drive themselves. You're talking about converting the entire US car fleet, developing a non-existent technology, and refining it to the extreme (less than 2 deaths per 100 million miles traveled on average, which is the human driving record right now). It is MUCH, MUCH cheaper to implement a program where you make sure that drunk people leaving bars get into taxis. >It's obvious to any observer that driving deaths are a major problem, and that an intensive effort to solve this problem is appropriate. We've made tremendous progress over that last 50 years. Let's continue that path. This is disingenuous. Driverless cars are not part of an effort to reduce driving deaths, that's just how they're being sold. It's just as likely that driverless cars will increase driving deaths, until their safety record is refined over a period of many years and lots of testing (the same way it happened with humans). Driverless cars are being pursued because tech companies see an opportunity to use their machine learning expertise to turn driving into a commodity service that they control and can make billions off. It has nothing to do with driving safety, and if that were the goal (which, again, it is not, the goal is to make money by turning driving into a service and eliminate the cost of labor for drivers), there are a hundred cheaper ways to do it. If increasing driving safety were a goal that society actually cared about, Tracy Morgan would not have been hit by a truck.
dev360 11y ago
How long until truck drivers disappear?
- mey 11y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
- csours 11y ago
  From long-haul, in 15 years maybe about half will be gone. Short-haul, maybe never.
  - moistgorilla 11y ago
    Could you elaborate on why you think so? I could imagine significant cost savings from the energy that would be saved by removing all of the QoL things that go into a car for humans to be able to use them.
    - csours 11y ago
      Sure, I expect to see news about Auto-Semi testing sometime this year. Energy use from Human QoL stuff would be very very low in a semi compare to the energy use for pulling. For instance, the tractor and trailer, unladen weighs 25,000 to 40,000 lbs, with a total road weight of 50-100k lbs. [1] A whole passenger car with amenities can weigh less than 3000 pounds. Call 1/5th of that QoL stuff, for 600lbs. Changes in automobile weight matter much more because automobiles stop and go much more often. So the human QoL stuff probably doesn't weigh more 1% of the road weight. But the kicker is, it doesn't even matter too much if the QoL stuff weighs 10%, because energy use scales mostly by air resistance, not weight. [2] Most of the QoL energy waste is found in idling semis at truck stops or in traffic, so this could definitely be reduced by Auto-Semis [3] The eventual savings from Auto-Semis will be in reduced wages, and possibly in reduced fuel usage - but the reduced fuel consumption would come from driving slower, as you don't have to pay a driver for their time, and an Auto Semi can drive all night. I'm sure logistic companies would love to save this much money, but the capital expenditure required will be huge. Some research from passenger self driving cars would be pertinent, and probably most sensor devices, but they would be put to slightly different uses - you want a longer range view in a truck for braking distance and crash avoidance. The reason I put the estimate so far out is liability and regulation and the cap ex mentioned above. Some classes of load will probably never be pulled by auto-semi: dangerous, time Sensitive, some luxury goods. Auto Semis could also do some interesting things like draft (tailgate) safely and form a "train" of trucks. You could have drone drivers set up who monitor 3 or 4 trucks and take over if needed. 1. http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/how-much-does-the-tractor-weigh.13716/ http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threa... 2. http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/AERO_RR_Technologies_Whitepaper_FINAL_Oct2012.pdf http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/AERO... - Page 5, PDF 3. http://fleetowner.com/fuel_economy/fuel-economy-0701 http://fleetowner.com/fuel_economy/fuel-economy-0701
beambot 11y ago
Want to help? Forget subsidies and test programs. Just pass sweeping national legislation (eg. tie state programs to federal incentives) that makes roads autonomous car friendly and that don't pander to "jobs, jobs, jobs." Otherwise, states (like California) are going to make unfriendly laws, like the recent DMV draft proposal: > At issue is the requirement that DMV-certified “autonomous vehicle operators” are “required to be present inside the vehicle and be capable of taking control in the event of a technology failure or other emergency.” In other words, driverless cars will not be allowed on California roads for the foreseeable future. http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2015/12/18/california-slams-the-brakes-on-googles-driverless-car/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2015/12/18/california-...
- sbierwagen 11y ago
  The executive branch can move money around, but it can't pass laws without the legislative branch, and 2016 is going to be a really bad year to try and pass a law.
- kwelstr 11y ago
  The Executive can't pass laws, that's the job of Congress. Good luck with today's type of legislative bodies, too much political posturing and not enough common sense laws. Getting Congress to agree on anything is like herding cats. Actually herding cats is more doable with practice :/
  - beambot 11y ago
    Executive Orders. If they're going to abuse them for evil (my view; YMMV), then they might as well use them for some good too. Executive may not be able to pass laws, but they do control the flow of $$ in the DOT.
- magicmu 11y ago
  But how do you reconcile that with the public fear of losing jobs due to the increase in automation? I think driverless cars represent in a big way due to the prevalence of truck driving as a profession in the US; not saying they can't be reconciled, just flagging it as an issue.
ChrisNorstrom 11y ago
This is unnecessarily dangerous. Investing in "pilot programs" might artificially push self-driving technology through quicker than it's ready for and might result, not only in death and accidents, but damaging the image of self driving cars and pushing the technology back even further. Just because you want something doesn't mean you should artificially push it faster than it can be produced. That's like injecting your children with steroids because you "want them to grow fast so they can be happy quicker and get a head start". Government is great at creating incentives and opportunities through laws and letting the business, creators, investors compete for the top stop. But choosing winners, artificially jump-starting pilot projects that would under normal market conditions not be created, is not what governments are meant for. We've talked about this on HN before during the Solyndra bankruptcy. If they really want to help, give a tax cut for companies doing research, and sit down with all the parties interested in self-driving cars and ask them what laws or regulations are holding them back. Plus we don't want this to turn into another Solyndra. http://www.dailytech.com/500+Million+Wasted+on+Bankrupt+Solar+Panel+Company+White+House+was+Warned/article22735.htm http://www.dailytech.com/500+Million+Wasted+on+Bankrupt+Sola...
- circlecrimson 11y ago
  >This is unnecessarily dangerous. Bullshit. If one car running with "CarOs 1.0" has a collision you can be sure that engineers will ensure that this specific case will never happen again in the future. Autonomous cars have already clocked up over 100k miles from multiple vendors. The government is needed to step in now because this tech is going to hit the roads in the next five years anyway, whether they get out of the way or not.
haxel 11y ago
If the point of this money was to develop a unified approach to self-driving cars, then it could be a very good thing. Assuming the choice of unified approach makes sense. Variably-autonomous cars operating in swarms (and thus requiring standard communication and sensor packages) seem to be superior than having dozens of car and tech companies each striving for full autonomy. In swarms, the degree of autonomy would be directly proportional to the size of the swarm a vehicle belongs to. Those on the edge of the swarm would contribute sensor input while the interior vehicles would contribute processing power. Thus achieving greater ability than a solitary vehicle, whether autonomous or not. The advantage of variable-autonomy is that there's much less need to specially-modify roads, change the way we view liability, or have to get all the way to full autonomy. I wrote more on the topic here: https://medium.com/@SteveHazel/let-s-do-semi-autonomous-cars-instead-10e1f93c20f4 https://medium.com/@SteveHazel/let-s-do-semi-autonomous-cars... If the $4 billion was spent on developing the standard communication and sensor packages, and promoting them amongst manufacturers, and promoting the development of compact-form-factor vehicles, it might have significant impact.
- CamperBob2 11y ago
  Likewise, with batteries for EVs. Government-enforced standards for swappable batteries would be a massive win, if the standard were flexible enough.
smsm42 11y ago
Why federal government needs to invest in this? I mean, when people say "government support is necessary for fundamental research which can not be financed by private means", ok, there's an argument there. But companies like Google - not exactly short of money - already investing into this. Why feds need to intervene? Of course, every company would gladly take gifts from feds to advance their private research - but why do it? There are a lot of fields that could use $4B and are not a focus of attention of a half-trillion-dollar corporations. Also, they claim simultaneously that self-riving cars are safer and that they would be exempt from safety rules. How that works? If they are already safer, they should be able to satisfy more safety rules, not less?
- bliti 11y ago
  Autonomous operation might require updating infrastructure. That falls under the scope of government.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- circlecrimson 11y ago
  Did you read the article? Such a monumental change in behavours is going to bring in massive changes to the legal framework, safety standards, insurance practices and road markings and upgrades to name a few aspects.
  - humanrebar 11y ago
    $4B seems like a pittance if that's the goal.
  - smsm42 11y ago
    Legal framework is what the Congress and the state lawmakers are supposed to do anyway, and they don't need $4B from federal budget to do this. As for insurance practices, etc. - that's the business of insurance companies, and I'm sure once Google contacts them offering the opportunity to insure world's first self-driving car, insurance industry would be more than happy to jump on that, and they are not the poorest industry either.
jhulla 11y ago
Among the many things the federal could fund, one would be an organization that would develop a uniform legal code governing self-driving cars for adoption across federal/state/local levels. This would harmonize definitions, requirements, liability, insurance, penalties, etc. across all legal jurisdictions.
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  Which, I would think, would be mandatory to make them a worthwhile investment–particularly for startups. I've heard enough horror stories about multi-state compliance on HN to realize that different regulations in every state only serves to protect incumbents.
- avar 11y ago
  Be careful what you wish for. Look at what's happening with drones and the FCC. The smaller the level of government that's responsible the more likely that there's room for local experimentation that others can copy.
  - repsilat 11y ago
    Yeah -- as I understand it, the legal framework in most places is "The road code says you can't be drunk and so on, but it doesn't say you have to be in control." http://www.wired.com/2015/05/self-driving-cars-legal-real-rules-nice/ http://www.wired.com/2015/05/self-driving-cars-legal-real-ru... > SELF-DRIVING CARS ARE legal in the United States. They’ve always been legal, because they’ve never been outlawed ... > New York has a law requiring a driver to keep one hand on the wheel at all times, but that doesn’t mean the car can’t drive itself. I agree that room for experimentation is needed, though I absolutely believe there should be some testing and registration involved eventually. (Though mandatory third party insurance might solve most of the problem -- insurers would charge an arm and a leg for unknown, unproven or untested software.)
- atallcostsky 11y ago
  This would be the NHTSA probably.
maloney 11y ago
Too much federal money goes to subsidizing the automobile/roads as a means of transportation. Drivers should bare more of the cost of driving, then a real market could emerge in mass transit. This would also eliminate an immense amount of energy usage
- serge2k 11y ago
  uh huh, and we are just gonna ignore the continuing need to actually move stuff around?
  - scarmig 11y ago
    I take their meaning to be this: right now, the government subsidizes a form of transportation because there's no effective way for the costs of allowing it to be internalized. (Having a toll plaza on every intersection is obviously impossible.) With driving cars, it will become much cheaper to engage in trade centered around automobile transit. Sensors, tracking, mutuality agreements between road owners and car makers. It's plausible that all existing transit subsidies could accumulate to the road owners through market pricing, not government handouts that we have difficulty establishing the true value of.
  - maloney 11y ago
    Spending vast amounts of money on interstates is a waste. Railroads are a much better solution than a fleet of 18 wheelers. If you had to pay the actual cost of driving accross the country, high speed rail becomes a viable option.
    - specialist 11y ago
      Auto multimodal would be cool.
- chronic50 11y ago
  Most drivers spend time driving in rural areas where mass transit is useless.
owly 11y ago
Probably because of the Google to Govt employment loop.
- huac 11y ago
  You sound snarky about this, but it's actually probably good - the government desperately needs tech talent and knowledge. With how these networks are formed, it seems pretty logical that Google/Microsoft/Apple employees would end up in gov't more than those from other companies. Investment banking <-> public service is the classical revolving door. What's wrong with tech getting in the same game?
jakeogh 11y ago
Roving mini-prisons that record and report on their surroundings and occupants? Why wouldn't power invest? They want their killswitches. krapp has it right: "Self-driving cars are potentially the greatest threat to human freedom since the advent of the internet." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6982537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6982537
Grishnakh 11y ago
They should spend that money on developing and building SkyTran instead.
c3534l 11y ago
And if the next big thing in technology never occurs like countless other next-big-things before it? This is part of why command economies fail so miserably.
boneheadmed 11y ago
We need to consider that the potential for abuse on the part of the government is also great. When the car communicates with roadside electronics, you can easily be tracked, your car can be told where you can and cannot go, and (if you do not comply with state) your vehicle may not be driveable at all.
codyb 11y ago
This is great news. Over 30,000 people die annually due to motor vehicles in the United States alone [0] and the number would be far greater without the steady improvements to vehicular safety over the years. To reduce that number to as close to 0 as is possible absolutely should be a top priority for our nation as a whole. The technology is there, much of the infrastructure is there, and the rest is on the way. Autonomous cars promise to revolutionize the way humans use cities in a positive way. Here in NYC where automobile traffic is quite a bit more abundant than anyone could particularly desire I yearn for the day when we can reclaim all that parking space for green and pedestrian use. I anticipate the lack of diesel fumes, the reduction in engine and siren noise, and the ready availability of autonomous vehicles to take me to my destination, probably with a quick action to my smart watch, phone, etc. Autonomous electric vehicles can stay in use for extremely long durations of time thus reducing the overall numbers of cars on the roads at any given time. To reduce emissions will reduce incidences of asthmatic and respiratory illnesses in urban centers. To park themselves outside of major urban areas during non peak hours allows for repairs, and the reclamation of space I mentioned. To run with electric engines means far fewer maintenance costs in general due to much fewer moving parts than traditional combustion engines. To coordinate flows of traffic ensures traffic moves more efficiently, and the loud sirens and flashing lights of emergency vehicles can be a thing of the past. And of course there are the wonderful cartoons from thw New Yorker in which a police man is at the window of a civilians car "Does your car know why my car pulled it over?" If this is done right it will be one of the greatest achievements of our modern era and will truly usher us into a new world of clean air, reclaimed public spaces, silenter cities, and tremendous mobility. What an exciting time to be alive!
- refurb 11y ago
  To reduce that number to as close to 0 as is possible absolutely should be a top priority for our nation as a whole. Of course it should be a goal, but you a cost vs. benefit analysis is required. If you can save 30K lives per year for $4B, could you save even more lives if you spent it another way? 20x more people die of heart disease in the US every year as compared to vehicular accidents. In fact, car crashes isn't even in the top 10.
nefitty 11y ago
"Roughly 3,000 Americans have lost their lives to terrorist attacks in the last decade. This averages out to a loss of 300 people a year...[compared to average annual deaths by] vehicular accidents at 40,000." http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/anti-terrorism-spending-disproportionate-to-threat/ http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/anti-terrorism... "Gordon Adams, a national security budget expert...estimates that the U.S. spends at least $100 billion a year on counter-terrorism efforts." http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/16/news/economy/cost-of-fighting-terrorism/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/16/news/economy/cost-of-fightin...
- refurb 11y ago
  Vehicular accidents don't cause fear among the population, nor can they lead to political instability.
  - kartan 11y ago
    I don't agree. It all depends on the press and other opinion makers/influencers. If you had every day reports of people that died in car accidents. If you had their stories told, if you heard about their orphaned children, each and every day. You can create as much panic as with anything else. I can even bet on that if the day that big car companies wants driverless cars comes, you will see that panic created by the press. People will vote for the banning of the old cars and they will not even understand how people of our time are not completely paralyzed by terror each time we go to the road. There is people that panics about vaccination and vaccination is something positive. The sensationalist reporting of terrorist attacks is what makes them so successful.
  - nashadelic 11y ago
    and I think that is key to understand: Terrorism by definition causes an disproportionate amount of irrational fear but smart people and government officials should have a measured response rather than knee-jerk over-the-top spending
bsbechtel 11y ago
So at the start of the Obama administration, tax payers paid for a multi-billion dollar bailout of the American auto industry, which paid off for taxpayers but was not without significant risk. Now at the end of the Obama administration, tax payers are putting $4B towards self-driving cars that, depending on who the winners are, could potentially destroy the same industry that was bailed out just a few years ago?
- euyyn 11y ago
  The cars are self-driving but not self-manufacturing :)
barneygumble742 11y ago
I really hope companies like Lockheed Martin do not get into the autonomous infrastructure or self-driving vehicle business. LM already has their tentacles into federal/state governments with traffic monitoring programs, 911 operations, etc. Since silicon valley got into the SDV game much early on, I hope they, rather than defense companies, also provide solutions for the infrastructure.

138 points by lemiant 11y ago

They seem a little late coming to the game. 4B is not much compared to how much money and effort are already going into autonomous cars. Seems pointless. But it seems there's also willngness to discuss future rules and ethics for self-driving cars, which is good.

droithomme 11y ago

No doubt this will primarily benefit Tesla Corp. which seems to be based around subsidies.

ppod 11y ago

Is there any talk of installing some kind of guideline along existing roads that would help navigation or vision? Something like a bright line or a buried magnetic (or radio?) 'rail' for the cars to follow? I've read that vision is still a big challenge in poor conditions.

agentx3r 11y ago
At the point when the system is unable to analyze the static environment (e.g. lane markers) due to poor visibility, it's probably unable to analyze and deal with dynamic situations safely.
dclowd9901 11y ago
It's a big challenge for non-self driving cars too. If road maintenance programs aren't willing to repaint on occasion or provide lane keeping alternatives for more fallible humans, what hope do we have of them doing it for machines.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  Indeed. Try driving in certain parts of Dallas at night or in the rain.
elchief 11y ago
Same old complaint every thread. Ford self-driving cars can drive in the snow: http://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-clever-way-fords-self-driving-cars-navigate-in-snow/ http://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-clever-way-fords-self-drivi...
- garrettgrimsley 11y ago
  It isn't fair to dismissively refer to their concern as the "same old complaint" and then link to a new story that is four days old for backing. Further, your link doesn't even sufficiently address their concern. In fact, it specifically mentions that poor weather is a challenge. >This doesn’t mean all the problems with autonomous driving in bad weather are solved. Falling rain and snow can interfere with LIDAR and cameras, and safely driving requires more than knowing where you are on a map—you also need to be able to see those temporary obstacles.
csours 11y ago
There is an industry standard suite of Vehicle communications protocols called V2X [1]. These can be used for SDC automation but no one is planning on relying on them, because there will always be places that do not have them. They can add value in some situations thought. 1. https://www.google.com/search?q=v2x https://www.google.com/search?q=v2x
Animats 11y ago
The modern version is that Volvo has proposed putting magnets, in the form of nails, into pavements. This is to provide a hint of where the lanes are under snow. It also provides guidance for snowplows. These would probably be driven in by the same machines that stripe lanes. This is an old idea from the early days of automatic driving, but today they'd just be viewed as a hint, not something to be followed blindly. There are areas where high visibility snow stakes are placed alongside highways for driver and snowplow guidance. Hokkaido puts large downward pointing arrows over snowy highways to mark the shoulder.[1] Wire guidance systems have been around for years, for industrial robot vehicles. GM put them on their test track for Firebird III in the 1960s. But it's no longer necessary to have even that much infrastructure. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9303297,143.8076743,3a,75y,340.31h,89.77t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sUXNmu36LICOLfwA2xlsBdg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.com/maps/@43.9303297,143.8076743,3a,75y,3...
WalterBright 11y ago
It may be a lot cheaper and more reliable to improve the accuracy of GPS (it's a few meters at the moment.)

astazangasta 11y ago

Just give the money to the NSF instead. Why spend $4 billion on this (pointless, worthless) technology that Silicon Valley is already running headlong to create?

bosdev 11y ago
Saying this is pointless and worthless is insane to me. More than thirty thousand people die in motor vehicle deaths in the US every year. The amount of pain and suffering this technology will eliminate is incalculable.
- astazangasta 11y ago
  Those problems can be solved without the ridiculous effort of creating self driving cars. People die mostly because of drunk driving accidents. More bus passes and free taxis can save people much cheaper. Plus, how many more die of cancer and heart disease? Are you really arguing that driving deaths are a major problem that requires intensive effort to solve?
  - function_seven 11y ago
    You think it will be cheaper to pay for more taxis than it will be to have cars drive themselves? Let alone many drunk drivers would still drive themselves even if a free taxi were available. > Are you really arguing that driving deaths are a major problem that requires intensive effort to solve? It's obvious to any observer that driving deaths are a major problem, and that an intensive effort to solve this problem is appropriate. We've made tremendous progress over that last 50 years. Let's continue that path.
    - astazangasta 11y ago
      Yes, of course it will be cheaper to pay for taxis (not more taxis) for drunk people than it will be to have cars drive themselves. You're talking about converting the entire US car fleet, developing a non-existent technology, and refining it to the extreme (less than 2 deaths per 100 million miles traveled on average, which is the human driving record right now). It is MUCH, MUCH cheaper to implement a program where you make sure that drunk people leaving bars get into taxis. >It's obvious to any observer that driving deaths are a major problem, and that an intensive effort to solve this problem is appropriate. We've made tremendous progress over that last 50 years. Let's continue that path. This is disingenuous. Driverless cars are not part of an effort to reduce driving deaths, that's just how they're being sold. It's just as likely that driverless cars will increase driving deaths, until their safety record is refined over a period of many years and lots of testing (the same way it happened with humans). Driverless cars are being pursued because tech companies see an opportunity to use their machine learning expertise to turn driving into a commodity service that they control and can make billions off. It has nothing to do with driving safety, and if that were the goal (which, again, it is not, the goal is to make money by turning driving into a service and eliminate the cost of labor for drivers), there are a hundred cheaper ways to do it. If increasing driving safety were a goal that society actually cared about, Tracy Morgan would not have been hit by a truck.

dev360 11y ago

How long until truck drivers disappear?

mey 11y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
csours 11y ago
From long-haul, in 15 years maybe about half will be gone. Short-haul, maybe never.
- moistgorilla 11y ago
  Could you elaborate on why you think so? I could imagine significant cost savings from the energy that would be saved by removing all of the QoL things that go into a car for humans to be able to use them.
  - csours 11y ago
    Sure, I expect to see news about Auto-Semi testing sometime this year. Energy use from Human QoL stuff would be very very low in a semi compare to the energy use for pulling. For instance, the tractor and trailer, unladen weighs 25,000 to 40,000 lbs, with a total road weight of 50-100k lbs. [1] A whole passenger car with amenities can weigh less than 3000 pounds. Call 1/5th of that QoL stuff, for 600lbs. Changes in automobile weight matter much more because automobiles stop and go much more often. So the human QoL stuff probably doesn't weigh more 1% of the road weight. But the kicker is, it doesn't even matter too much if the QoL stuff weighs 10%, because energy use scales mostly by air resistance, not weight. [2] Most of the QoL energy waste is found in idling semis at truck stops or in traffic, so this could definitely be reduced by Auto-Semis [3] The eventual savings from Auto-Semis will be in reduced wages, and possibly in reduced fuel usage - but the reduced fuel consumption would come from driving slower, as you don't have to pay a driver for their time, and an Auto Semi can drive all night. I'm sure logistic companies would love to save this much money, but the capital expenditure required will be huge. Some research from passenger self driving cars would be pertinent, and probably most sensor devices, but they would be put to slightly different uses - you want a longer range view in a truck for braking distance and crash avoidance. The reason I put the estimate so far out is liability and regulation and the cap ex mentioned above. Some classes of load will probably never be pulled by auto-semi: dangerous, time Sensitive, some luxury goods. Auto Semis could also do some interesting things like draft (tailgate) safely and form a "train" of trucks. You could have drone drivers set up who monitor 3 or 4 trucks and take over if needed. 1. http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threads/how-much-does-the-tractor-weigh.13716/ http://www.thetruckersreport.com/truckingindustryforum/threa... 2. http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/AERO_RR_Technologies_Whitepaper_FINAL_Oct2012.pdf http://www.theicct.org/sites/default/files/publications/AERO... - Page 5, PDF 3. http://fleetowner.com/fuel_economy/fuel-economy-0701 http://fleetowner.com/fuel_economy/fuel-economy-0701

beambot 11y ago

Want to help? Forget subsidies and test programs. Just pass sweeping national legislation (eg. tie state programs to federal incentives) that makes roads autonomous car friendly and that don't pander to "jobs, jobs, jobs." Otherwise, states (like California) are going to make unfriendly laws, like the recent DMV draft proposal: > At issue is the requirement that DMV-certified “autonomous vehicle operators” are “required to be present inside the vehicle and be capable of taking control in the event of a technology failure or other emergency.” In other words, driverless cars will not be allowed on California roads for the foreseeable future. http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2015/12/18/california-slams-the-brakes-on-googles-driverless-car/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/chunkamui/2015/12/18/california-...

sbierwagen 11y ago
The executive branch can move money around, but it can't pass laws without the legislative branch, and 2016 is going to be a really bad year to try and pass a law.
kwelstr 11y ago
The Executive can't pass laws, that's the job of Congress. Good luck with today's type of legislative bodies, too much political posturing and not enough common sense laws. Getting Congress to agree on anything is like herding cats. Actually herding cats is more doable with practice :/
- beambot 11y ago
  Executive Orders. If they're going to abuse them for evil (my view; YMMV), then they might as well use them for some good too. Executive may not be able to pass laws, but they do control the flow of $$ in the DOT.
magicmu 11y ago
But how do you reconcile that with the public fear of losing jobs due to the increase in automation? I think driverless cars represent in a big way due to the prevalence of truck driving as a profession in the US; not saying they can't be reconciled, just flagging it as an issue.

ChrisNorstrom 11y ago

This is unnecessarily dangerous. Investing in "pilot programs" might artificially push self-driving technology through quicker than it's ready for and might result, not only in death and accidents, but damaging the image of self driving cars and pushing the technology back even further. Just because you want something doesn't mean you should artificially push it faster than it can be produced. That's like injecting your children with steroids because you "want them to grow fast so they can be happy quicker and get a head start". Government is great at creating incentives and opportunities through laws and letting the business, creators, investors compete for the top stop. But choosing winners, artificially jump-starting pilot projects that would under normal market conditions not be created, is not what governments are meant for. We've talked about this on HN before during the Solyndra bankruptcy. If they really want to help, give a tax cut for companies doing research, and sit down with all the parties interested in self-driving cars and ask them what laws or regulations are holding them back. Plus we don't want this to turn into another Solyndra. http://www.dailytech.com/500+Million+Wasted+on+Bankrupt+Solar+Panel+Company+White+House+was+Warned/article22735.htm http://www.dailytech.com/500+Million+Wasted+on+Bankrupt+Sola...

circlecrimson 11y ago
>This is unnecessarily dangerous. Bullshit. If one car running with "CarOs 1.0" has a collision you can be sure that engineers will ensure that this specific case will never happen again in the future. Autonomous cars have already clocked up over 100k miles from multiple vendors. The government is needed to step in now because this tech is going to hit the roads in the next five years anyway, whether they get out of the way or not.

haxel 11y ago

If the point of this money was to develop a unified approach to self-driving cars, then it could be a very good thing. Assuming the choice of unified approach makes sense. Variably-autonomous cars operating in swarms (and thus requiring standard communication and sensor packages) seem to be superior than having dozens of car and tech companies each striving for full autonomy. In swarms, the degree of autonomy would be directly proportional to the size of the swarm a vehicle belongs to. Those on the edge of the swarm would contribute sensor input while the interior vehicles would contribute processing power. Thus achieving greater ability than a solitary vehicle, whether autonomous or not. The advantage of variable-autonomy is that there's much less need to specially-modify roads, change the way we view liability, or have to get all the way to full autonomy. I wrote more on the topic here: https://medium.com/@SteveHazel/let-s-do-semi-autonomous-cars-instead-10e1f93c20f4 https://medium.com/@SteveHazel/let-s-do-semi-autonomous-cars... If the $4 billion was spent on developing the standard communication and sensor packages, and promoting them amongst manufacturers, and promoting the development of compact-form-factor vehicles, it might have significant impact.

CamperBob2 11y ago
Likewise, with batteries for EVs. Government-enforced standards for swappable batteries would be a massive win, if the standard were flexible enough.

smsm42 11y ago

Why federal government needs to invest in this? I mean, when people say "government support is necessary for fundamental research which can not be financed by private means", ok, there's an argument there. But companies like Google - not exactly short of money - already investing into this. Why feds need to intervene? Of course, every company would gladly take gifts from feds to advance their private research - but why do it? There are a lot of fields that could use $4B and are not a focus of attention of a half-trillion-dollar corporations. Also, they claim simultaneously that self-riving cars are safer and that they would be exempt from safety rules. How that works? If they are already safer, they should be able to satisfy more safety rules, not less?

bliti 11y ago
Autonomous operation might require updating infrastructure. That falls under the scope of government.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
circlecrimson 11y ago
Did you read the article? Such a monumental change in behavours is going to bring in massive changes to the legal framework, safety standards, insurance practices and road markings and upgrades to name a few aspects.
- humanrebar 11y ago
  $4B seems like a pittance if that's the goal.
- smsm42 11y ago
  Legal framework is what the Congress and the state lawmakers are supposed to do anyway, and they don't need $4B from federal budget to do this. As for insurance practices, etc. - that's the business of insurance companies, and I'm sure once Google contacts them offering the opportunity to insure world's first self-driving car, insurance industry would be more than happy to jump on that, and they are not the poorest industry either.

jhulla 11y ago

Among the many things the federal could fund, one would be an organization that would develop a uniform legal code governing self-driving cars for adoption across federal/state/local levels. This would harmonize definitions, requirements, liability, insurance, penalties, etc. across all legal jurisdictions.

brazzledazzle 11y ago
Which, I would think, would be mandatory to make them a worthwhile investment–particularly for startups. I've heard enough horror stories about multi-state compliance on HN to realize that different regulations in every state only serves to protect incumbents.
avar 11y ago
Be careful what you wish for. Look at what's happening with drones and the FCC. The smaller the level of government that's responsible the more likely that there's room for local experimentation that others can copy.
- repsilat 11y ago
  Yeah -- as I understand it, the legal framework in most places is "The road code says you can't be drunk and so on, but it doesn't say you have to be in control." http://www.wired.com/2015/05/self-driving-cars-legal-real-rules-nice/ http://www.wired.com/2015/05/self-driving-cars-legal-real-ru... > SELF-DRIVING CARS ARE legal in the United States. They’ve always been legal, because they’ve never been outlawed ... > New York has a law requiring a driver to keep one hand on the wheel at all times, but that doesn’t mean the car can’t drive itself. I agree that room for experimentation is needed, though I absolutely believe there should be some testing and registration involved eventually. (Though mandatory third party insurance might solve most of the problem -- insurers would charge an arm and a leg for unknown, unproven or untested software.)
atallcostsky 11y ago
This would be the NHTSA probably.

maloney 11y ago

Too much federal money goes to subsidizing the automobile/roads as a means of transportation. Drivers should bare more of the cost of driving, then a real market could emerge in mass transit. This would also eliminate an immense amount of energy usage

serge2k 11y ago
uh huh, and we are just gonna ignore the continuing need to actually move stuff around?
- scarmig 11y ago
  I take their meaning to be this: right now, the government subsidizes a form of transportation because there's no effective way for the costs of allowing it to be internalized. (Having a toll plaza on every intersection is obviously impossible.) With driving cars, it will become much cheaper to engage in trade centered around automobile transit. Sensors, tracking, mutuality agreements between road owners and car makers. It's plausible that all existing transit subsidies could accumulate to the road owners through market pricing, not government handouts that we have difficulty establishing the true value of.
- maloney 11y ago
  Spending vast amounts of money on interstates is a waste. Railroads are a much better solution than a fleet of 18 wheelers. If you had to pay the actual cost of driving accross the country, high speed rail becomes a viable option.
  - specialist 11y ago
    Auto multimodal would be cool.
chronic50 11y ago
Most drivers spend time driving in rural areas where mass transit is useless.

owly 11y ago

Probably because of the Google to Govt employment loop.

huac 11y ago
You sound snarky about this, but it's actually probably good - the government desperately needs tech talent and knowledge. With how these networks are formed, it seems pretty logical that Google/Microsoft/Apple employees would end up in gov't more than those from other companies. Investment banking <-> public service is the classical revolving door. What's wrong with tech getting in the same game?

jakeogh 11y ago

Roving mini-prisons that record and report on their surroundings and occupants? Why wouldn't power invest? They want their killswitches. krapp has it right: "Self-driving cars are potentially the greatest threat to human freedom since the advent of the internet." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6982537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6982537

Grishnakh 11y ago

They should spend that money on developing and building SkyTran instead.

c3534l 11y ago

And if the next big thing in technology never occurs like countless other next-big-things before it? This is part of why command economies fail so miserably.

boneheadmed 11y ago

We need to consider that the potential for abuse on the part of the government is also great. When the car communicates with roadside electronics, you can easily be tracked, your car can be told where you can and cannot go, and (if you do not comply with state) your vehicle may not be driveable at all.

codyb 11y ago

This is great news. Over 30,000 people die annually due to motor vehicles in the United States alone [0] and the number would be far greater without the steady improvements to vehicular safety over the years. To reduce that number to as close to 0 as is possible absolutely should be a top priority for our nation as a whole. The technology is there, much of the infrastructure is there, and the rest is on the way. Autonomous cars promise to revolutionize the way humans use cities in a positive way. Here in NYC where automobile traffic is quite a bit more abundant than anyone could particularly desire I yearn for the day when we can reclaim all that parking space for green and pedestrian use. I anticipate the lack of diesel fumes, the reduction in engine and siren noise, and the ready availability of autonomous vehicles to take me to my destination, probably with a quick action to my smart watch, phone, etc. Autonomous electric vehicles can stay in use for extremely long durations of time thus reducing the overall numbers of cars on the roads at any given time. To reduce emissions will reduce incidences of asthmatic and respiratory illnesses in urban centers. To park themselves outside of major urban areas during non peak hours allows for repairs, and the reclamation of space I mentioned. To run with electric engines means far fewer maintenance costs in general due to much fewer moving parts than traditional combustion engines. To coordinate flows of traffic ensures traffic moves more efficiently, and the loud sirens and flashing lights of emergency vehicles can be a thing of the past. And of course there are the wonderful cartoons from thw New Yorker in which a police man is at the window of a civilians car "Does your car know why my car pulled it over?" If this is done right it will be one of the greatest achievements of our modern era and will truly usher us into a new world of clean air, reclaimed public spaces, silenter cities, and tremendous mobility. What an exciting time to be alive!

refurb 11y ago
To reduce that number to as close to 0 as is possible absolutely should be a top priority for our nation as a whole. Of course it should be a goal, but you a cost vs. benefit analysis is required. If you can save 30K lives per year for $4B, could you save even more lives if you spent it another way? 20x more people die of heart disease in the US every year as compared to vehicular accidents. In fact, car crashes isn't even in the top 10.

nefitty 11y ago

"Roughly 3,000 Americans have lost their lives to terrorist attacks in the last decade. This averages out to a loss of 300 people a year...[compared to average annual deaths by] vehicular accidents at 40,000." http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/anti-terrorism-spending-disproportionate-to-threat/ http://thinkbynumbers.org/government-spending/anti-terrorism... "Gordon Adams, a national security budget expert...estimates that the U.S. spends at least $100 billion a year on counter-terrorism efforts." http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/16/news/economy/cost-of-fighting-terrorism/ http://money.cnn.com/2015/11/16/news/economy/cost-of-fightin...

refurb 11y ago
Vehicular accidents don't cause fear among the population, nor can they lead to political instability.
- kartan 11y ago
  I don't agree. It all depends on the press and other opinion makers/influencers. If you had every day reports of people that died in car accidents. If you had their stories told, if you heard about their orphaned children, each and every day. You can create as much panic as with anything else. I can even bet on that if the day that big car companies wants driverless cars comes, you will see that panic created by the press. People will vote for the banning of the old cars and they will not even understand how people of our time are not completely paralyzed by terror each time we go to the road. There is people that panics about vaccination and vaccination is something positive. The sensationalist reporting of terrorist attacks is what makes them so successful.
- nashadelic 11y ago
  and I think that is key to understand: Terrorism by definition causes an disproportionate amount of irrational fear but smart people and government officials should have a measured response rather than knee-jerk over-the-top spending

bsbechtel 11y ago

So at the start of the Obama administration, tax payers paid for a multi-billion dollar bailout of the American auto industry, which paid off for taxpayers but was not without significant risk. Now at the end of the Obama administration, tax payers are putting $4B towards self-driving cars that, depending on who the winners are, could potentially destroy the same industry that was bailed out just a few years ago?

euyyn 11y ago
The cars are self-driving but not self-manufacturing :)

barneygumble742 11y ago

I really hope companies like Lockheed Martin do not get into the autonomous infrastructure or self-driving vehicle business. LM already has their tentacles into federal/state governments with traffic monitoring programs, 911 operations, etc. Since silicon valley got into the SDV game much early on, I hope they, rather than defense companies, also provide solutions for the infrastructure.