5 ms·

I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 mil

• kllrnohj 10y ago
  200M km of adaptive cruise control & lane assist on a highway is very different from 2.7M km of fully autonomous driving on city streets & highway.
  • jfoster 10y ago
    Think of the data collection aspect of it, though. Tesla's driving AI will know what happens in the real world better than Google's driving AI does.
    • in_cahoots 10y ago
      Does Tesla collect data when Autopilot is turned off? Otherwise I would be very curious to know how many miles of non-highway driving it has logged.
      • jfoster 10y ago
        I don't know, but they do have a history of logging a lot of data. They've used some of the logged data to rebut high-profile critics in blog posts in the past, in cases of accidents or low-mileage claims.
    • duaneb 10y ago
      I think the general case—navigating unusual terrain, intersections, traffic patterns, changes in aggressiveness tolerance, construction, adapting to "normal" problems like needing to turn left illegally at a stoplight when the oncoming lane is continual—is almost entirely unrelated to where Tesla has an advantage. This entirely autonomous general case seems to be where Google is attempting to dominate.
    • heroprotagonist 10y ago
      How much data are each of Tesla's cars really collecting vs each of Google's cars? If the data is not useful, it won't matter how many miles they've driven. Do they have the same sensor capability and collection? Imagine the difference between, say, trying to determine a user's video preferences based upon their hit statistics on IMDB vs direct viewing data from Netflix that includes everything they've watched, how long (1 minute vs the entire show), when, the order they've watched (eg, mood predictors), frequency, etc. I'm not saying that this is the difference between Tesla and Google, just that quantity and quality don't necessarily equate.
    • WDCDev 10y ago
      Data is a commodity.
    • kllrnohj 10y ago
      Not really, because by comparison Tesla cars are relatively blind. Google's cars are loaded up with all kinds of sensors collecting as much data as they can. And they have the advantage of driving back to the plant to hoover off the data with as fat a pipe as they want. Tesla is far more limited in both what it's collecting and how it's collecting it as it needs to go over a cell signal. For example they are using a camera for a hefty part of the autopilot system. They obviously can't stream every frame of that camera up to their servers for deeper analysis. Besides being infeasible bandwidth requirements it would be an insane privacy violation of the owner.
• haberman 10y ago
  > I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now. I think that is an understatement. This video shows why staying in your lane on a highway (what Tesla autopilot does) and dealing with city streets are two just completely different things: https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=8m49s https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?t=8m49s I think Tesla has a ton of catching up to do to compete with where Google is right now.
• ocdtrekkie 10y ago
  It's not just going to be about straight miles driven, it's about the technology being focused on and what's possible with it. Both Tesla and comma.ai are focusing primarily on what the car can see and do with it's own sensors... Google's cars are only functional on roads excessively mapped far above the normal Google Maps level. Google's existing strategy for self-driving cars isn't practical at a national level because of that extensive mapping requirement, and it possibly never will be. (Google's cars may have driven x number of million miles, but it's all the same very small number of roads.) And while prices drop as technology develops, bear in mind that in addition to all of that, Google's sensor platform is the most expensive out there. Additionally, I've read some really interesting articles about research other car manufacturers have done. For instance, Google has never tested in bad weather, but Ford has been working on self-driving cars that work in snow. And while Google just assumes the humans are meant to be 'along for the ride', Volkswagon did some really good UI work, in terms of figuring out how to make the car's actions predictable, and hence, less scary. (Essentially, the car indicated to the driver what it was about to do before it executed a maneuver.) Google is really good at capitalizing on their self-driving car project for marketing purposes, but it's extremely unlikely it'll ever be a market leader.
  • jfoster 10y ago
    Tesla is either already mapping roads through the sensors on their cars, or is only one software update away from doing so. Their mapping data will be a lot fresher than Google's.
    • obmelvin 10y ago
      Tesla cars don't have enough sensors to capture great data. It will require a lot more than a software update for then to record data on par with googles quality
      • jfoster 10y ago
        They claim autopilot uses "cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors and data." I think even just the cameras alone would be valuable. It seems a Tesla has a better idea of what's going on around it than a human would, so these sensors should be at least close to sufficient for training an autonomous driving agent.
• samwillis 10y ago
  Tesla's auto pilot isn't at all comparable to what Google are doing. It essentially the same as the adaptive cruse control (cruse control that adjusts to traffic in front) and lane assist (auto stearing to stay in lane) you can get from most other car manufactures as an option. That's not to say that tesla isn't developing full automation it's just that what they sell now is just clever branding on something you can get elsewhere.
  • Analemma_ 10y ago
    But in terms of collecting training data to develop the algos that will eventually be fully autonomous, Tesla is way out in front. That's what the OP meant: every Tesla is collecting information that gets sent back to HQ to train the neural nets (or whatever) that will eventually drive the cars themselves.
  • jn1234 10y ago
    I believe that at some point in the future they will launch a joint-venture for a fully automated Uber competitor with Tesla handling designing and building the vehicles and Google providing cash, self-driving software and building the actual app. Musk is literally too good friends with Sergey Brin and Larry Page for this not too happen. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-and-larry-page-have-the-worlds-weirdest-friendship http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-and-larry-page-ha... http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-secret-apartment-elon-musk-2015-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-secret-apartment-elon...
  • snowwrestler 10y ago
    Data is the ammo that will win the war of self-driving car companies. Tesla, with a large, update-able fleet in the field, has a much larger data-collection platform than Google. Even if they're not using it for full automation now, the collection itself is very valuable. This is almost certainly why Uber is putting self-driving cars into the field now as well, even though they are clearly not ready for prime-time. They need those sensor packages to be driving around on real roads and in real traffic.
• bryanlarsen 10y ago
  Tesla may have an order of magnitude more kilometers, but the quality of data that Google is collecting is (IMO) more than an order of magnitude superior per kilometer. Tesla (currently) has one radar, one camera and 4 short distance ultrasonic sensors. Google has LIDAR plus a lot more. Tesla's suite may or may not be sufficient for operation. But for training, good data is critical.
  • ocdtrekkie 10y ago
    The requirement of what you need to compare with that data though, is important. Tesla's cars are training off less detailed data, yes. But that also means they're designed to work with less data available. Google's cars require $150,000 worth of sensor hardware. Will that price go down, sure? But Tesla's will be even cheaper.
    • RealityVoid 10y ago
      I think that in 10 years time, time of flight lidars will become ubiquitous, just as common as digital cameras are now. And this will usher a new revolution of interaction between reality and the digital world.
      • baccheion 10y ago
        Teleportation, obviously. . . . Oh how sweet it would be for it to be me that's the one to reveal in days before the IPO of many of these (and the main other 3) that what the world has been waiting for is sitting with me-- with open arms-- desperately ready to be-- with you-- always. . . . Some say with wonder other with haste all that's to be said but even in this case where is it again what makes it all seem sudden a change leaving the world a part tense at the seams knowing even then aside from the waves crashing toward the bitter end it was dealt squarely only pausing to be as there it is again.
    • bryanlarsen 10y ago
      Google could easily build their software model so that it only uses a subset of the available sensors. They can then use the full set of sensors to judge the effectiveness of that model. Tesla can't do the inverse.