11 ms·

The Cancelled Comma One Would Have Embarrassed the Car Industry

126 points by devy 10y ago

noonespecial 10y ago
There's 2 possible reasons. 1) It really is near vaporware just being shown off in perfect conditions to seem exceptional. 2) It actually does work that much better with only $1000 worth of hardware and responding would give away the secret sauce. I don't give much credit to the theory that they didn't see this coming and were caught flat-footed by the sudden requirements. Oh and:Final speculation: there’s a reason it was called the Comma One. Where there's a Comma One, there's likely to be a Comma Two I was really hoping it was actually a C64 reference, namely: "where the 'drive' goes"... ,8,1
- teddyh 10y ago
  > I was really hoping it was actually a C64 reference, namely: "where the 'drive' goes"... ,8,1 Actually, the drive number is the “8”; the “1” is a flag which means to load the program to the same address in memory it was saved from, instead of to the default BASIC program start address.
  - swayvil 10y ago
    In all fairness...
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    That's what I was saying. When you use the drive(8), it automatically goes where its supposed to(1).
- ethanbond 10y ago
  Or, you know, the gigantic field of possibilities between those two things: it works a little bit under some conditions. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for Hotz's ego, regulators look down upon things that work a little bit under some conditions when they also happen to control two ton metal cages capable of traveling at 120mph. > it's [the] NHTSA that remains behind the curve in evaluating the myriad different technologies Uhhh... that was exactly what they were requesting to do with their letter.
  - Fricken 10y ago
    The one fatality with Autopilot happened because the system worked too well, the driver came to trust it when he shouldn't have. The shittier the Comma one is, the more in-the-loop the human has to be, and risk compensation becomes less of a factor.
    - emp_zealoth 10y ago
      What in the fucking hell are you talking about? A system that is seemingly half blind (repeatedly crashes into vehicles that only partially obstruct the lane), decapitates a guy, crashes another one into a fucking post It didn't work too well. It pretended to work too well and gotten people killed. There is a reason MobileEye walked away from Tesla They are being rather cavalier with their attitude to safety, apparently. (Apparently the falcon wing doors can go nom nom on you if you are not careful too - sure the guys are laughing their asses off, but it's not a good design) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdPPp3hoGQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdPPp3hoGQ8 EDIT: OR, EVEN BETTER: http://jalopnik.com/did-tesla-quietly-remove-a-safety-feature-from-the-mode-1786000681 http://jalopnik.com/did-tesla-quietly-remove-a-safety-featur...
      - Fricken 10y ago
        One fatality in 200 million miles of driving reflects a cavalier attitude to safety? It's not like the guy who died in that accident wasn't familiar with autopilot's reccommended usage, he read the manual, Tesla made it pretty clear you still gotta watch the road while it's engaged. I mean, if you're into misusing cars, any of them will allow you to accelerate into a brick wall if that's your inclination. I'm not sure what Falcon wing doors has to do with any of this.
        jayjay71 10y ago
        There is at least 1 other death in China where autopilot is cited as the cause, and there are many other accidents in China which are not widely reported in the United States (it's easy to find several on Google though, many of which are even posted on YouTube with video proof). Statistically speaking, Tesla's autopilot is more dangerous than regular driving. They spun bad statistics to claim otherwise. They ignored the difference between highway driving (which is safer) and all driving, and ignored demographics (most Tesla drivers are older and affluent). It is too early to really draw many conclusions about autopilot, because there is actually very little data. Comparing the number of miles driven by Tesla to the number of miles driven by all other cars in one year is a difference of several orders of magnitude. But they are under investigation, and as more time passes the more damning it seems for Tesla.
- jimjimjim 10y ago
  bonus points for mention of c64 LOAD "",8,1 or even more old-school LOAD "",1,1
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    1,1 !? - Oh hell no. I'm not waiting around for your stupid tape. Get a floppy drive like the cool kids.
- csixty4 10y ago
  This thread makes me happy.
  - csixty4 10y ago
    Wow. When I posted this, the only replies were about the Commodore line. Now there's an actual conversation going on!
- bertil 10y ago
  I would include an (unlikely) 3: Hotz really, really does not want to be in the same room as the Feds (he is a confessed hacker) or spend time dealing with them. Maybe more likely: he can sell a ton _now_ in China, had a partner car company, and expect that having those work there would make his success in US either negligible in comparison, or faster thanks the example.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  I have yet to see the simplest proof that comma ai work is just a cute trained NN over a camera, piped to basic controls, with some potential creative ideas (in a conf, hotz mentioned working on time based depth inference instead of the traditional stereo camera setup). I'm biased for conservative companies, I have no idea what they're doing and how much resources. Maybe they're doing something at the same level. I believe they have more refined physics model to compute surroundings and car physics in a way to ensure sane and safe behaviour. Exception made of Tesla AP, which I always found borderline lying. The medias and the crowd seeems to believe wild hacking and current year tech is giving you better products, but physics are physics. I'm still waiting for a proof of solid math, system and safety engineering there. psedit; I forgot, I peaked at commaai github repo, the NN code is way above my head and what I could imagine, so I have to give hotz' team that. Some people really have magic auras.
  - Pica_soO 10y ago
    Actually all my money was on google, i expected them to drive into the scrapfield, after the car companys and Tesla pushed each other into a early market situation and upped Legislation, kicking themselves out of the market, with a carnaggedon. But they backed out, because their managers want the chicken to exist before the egg. So, why not bet on the outsider?
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      I liked Google's approach a lot. It seemed justly dimensioned, came out of Thrun DARPA success, had years and millions of miles of testing. What's not to love. Also G has the lever to accelerate and change tech if their old approach is obsolete. Sad they went silent since a year or so. I said it in other place, including HN, I don't consider Hotz an outsider, but mostly glorified hacker (his attitude with institutions and media don't help me clear this impression); and I don't think hacker mentality bodes well with this task.
      - Pica_soO 10y ago
        Actually, that is a very humanistic point of view. There are third-world countrys where a margin of life-loss is considered "acceptable". And sorry, but Teslas approach, seems to be a similar hacky "Wing-it with PR-Guns blazing".
- nkrisc 10y ago
  I believe Arthur C. Clarke said something that's relevant here, "technology that's indistinguishable from magic is probably bullshit." No, that's not right...
kesselvon 10y ago
This is a bit of weak spin on the obvious news that they probably couldn't comply with the government requirements.
- tptacek 10y ago
  They weren't given any government requirements, with the the possible exception of the FHMVSS rule that you can't remove the rear-view mirror of the car. The NHTSA Special Order asked only for documentation of extremely basic test plan stuff (road, speed, weather, and traffic limits for the device, along with user documentation).
  - TillE 10y ago
    That was their request for information, yes. But I have trouble believing that the NHTSA would allow you to market some half-baked crap that takes over control of your vehicle. Maybe that's legal, though. Not great if it is. Anything short of full, reliable automation seems incredibly dangerous.
  - shadowshadow 10y ago
    The Special Order might be of the "we're looking for a justification to fine you and issue a recall" type, which it looks like they often are.
    - ubernostrum 10y ago
      Typically when you get to the point of getting one of those it's because you've been blatantly ignoring regulations or regulators up until now and they feel like they need to get your attention.
    - EpicEng 10y ago
      Well if they were planning on going to market without being able to pass an audit then they deserve every bit of it. I've worked in am FDA regulated field for a little over a decade and getting in touch with regulatory bodies up front is par for the course. Sounds to me like they don't know what they're doing and are in over their heads.
empraptor 10y ago
I'm wary of self-driving systems based only on cameras. He should really wait until cheap LiDARs are available in a few years.
- cameldrv 10y ago
  The comma only works on a few (maybe just one) Honda car that has a built-in front facing radar that they're able to tap into. With that, comma is using roughly the same sensor package as the V1 Tesla autopilot.
  - empraptor 10y ago
    Thanks. I didn't know Comma One also uses front facing radar. Do you happen to know what state of the art millimeter wave radars are capable of? I found some references from 2013 about Panasonic product with resolution of 20cm, but maybe there are better options now?
- striking 10y ago
  LIDAR is still not that good for driving. It's better than cameras but it's still pretty bad, because its vision can be obscured by weather conditions. Radar is the gold standard for vision like this. That being said, I thought they were using radar.
  - empraptor 10y ago
    EDIT: cameldrv pointed out in a reply to my original comment that Comma One uses its cameras and also taps into the vehicle's existing front facing radar. I was thinking of something like Quanergy's solid state LiDAR. I know the planned $100 version is probably a few years out, but it seems promising. And there are other companies/institutions working on cheap LiDARs that work in bad weather. Following link is of a talk Quanergy CEO gave at Stanford. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPqzo29Q9Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPqzo29Q9Wc
jmcmahon443 10y ago
I think it got cancelled because it is a real startup now. Let me explain! Put yourself in CEO's shoes: you have employees who love working for you but you need to get them a paycheck. From that perspective, it is easy to see that it is kind of crazy to enter into these lengthy government discussions that could possibly ruin your business and delay the entire industry! No thanks!! If they're all really engineers who just love doin' the work, they will be a valuable contracting outfit doin' the exact same work for a steadier paycheck.
- crooked-v 10y ago
  What? Refusing to cooperate with the government in a highly regulated industry will 'ruin your business' anyway.
LeanderK 10y ago
>Hotz's initial tweets suggested his move was in response to an inquiry from NHTSA, stating that he "would much rather spend life building amazing tech than dealing with regulators and lawyers," well, this is not some stupid web-app that can't harm anyone even if it tried (except from maybe overheating your smartphone). This can kill people, i can't seriously buy dangerous stuff from somebody that says something like this. What's next? Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine-industry by testing your headache-pills on your customers (those regulations are only slowing us down!)?
- donmatito 10y ago
  You would have won so much Irony Points if only you had written "Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine industry with revolutionary tests without sufficient scientific validation?"
  - llukas 10y ago
    Let me introduce to you: Theranos
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - ethbro 10y ago
      We all got that. ;)
  - bertil 10y ago
    > Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Sounds like Menu Next Door, who had to deal with regulation meant for restaurants when trying to be the AirBnB of food. Things like you had to have a warning about washing your hands in your own private kitchen.
cameldrv 10y ago
The NHTSA letter pretty clearly calls out the removal of the rear view mirror as being a problem, and a violation of safety regulations.
Animats 10y ago
We don't need another crap Level 2 system. Lane keeping plus auto braking just isn't enough. (Crap auto braking, as with Tesla, is even worse. Four collisions with big, obvious stationary vehicles so far.) The NHTSA, Google, and Volvo have it right. Systems where the driver has to back up the automation will not work in practice.
- _abak_ 10y ago
  The thing is that you evaluate "big" and "obvious" with the sensors that you have. They obviously werent obstacles for the algo that was driving.
ontoillogical 10y ago
And that's how you get to walk away with your dignity intact when you can't ship a working product on your self-inflicted insane timeline.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  With your dignity intact? The guy basically lost all his credibility with this action. Walking away with dignity intact would be replying to NHTSA, "Dear Government, we've found out we are unable to provide the information you asked for because the product is nowhere near mature enough. Therefore we are officially abandoning all public tests and sales effort, and are going back to the drawing board until such time that we are able to get back to you with the answers you requested."
  - dpark 10y ago
    I think he meant "ego" instead of "dignity". This is how you walk away with your over-inflated ego intact. Behaving this way indicates that you have no dignity.
aresant 10y ago
"[comma.ai} was functionally superior and theoretically safer than the ten legacy manufacturer systems" A journalist on record saying "theoretically safer" literally makes my hair stand up on end.
- taneq 10y ago
  Even better, "The system worked, sometimes better than everything on the market." Oh boy, I just gotta have a self-driving system for my car that can sometimes work really well!
  - hash-set 10y ago
    80% of the time it worked every time.
- 95014_refugee 10y ago
  Relax. Alex Roy is not "a journalist".
6stringmerc 10y ago
Hm, well the article certainly is flattering toward Hotz, the project, and the impression (having first-hand experience with several systems does strike me as important). Still pretty staunchly of the opinion over here that he's got something worth still working on and this isn't the last of it. AKA contrary to a good number of comments which basically say he's either a fraud, huckster, or otherwise dumb for not being interested/willing/prepared to engage with the NHTSA at this stage. Eh time will tell, right?
taneq 10y ago
I think it's far more likely that the NHTSA was caught flat-footed by Tesla's autopilot system, and didn't react in time, with fatal results. Now they're seeing a scrappy startup trying to dive into the same space where multi-billion-dollar car companies ought to fear to tread, and they've done their best to nip it in the bud before every tom dick and harry with a webcam and a graphics card starts trying to send their car on solo missions.
bertiewhykovich 10y ago
What this article tries its damnedest to elide is the narrative-wrecking fact that Holtz, confronted with a standard request to demonstrate that his product meets regulatory standards, took his ball and went home. /Exactly/ why he threw a tantrum is anyone's guess -- but there doesn't seem to be any real good possibility. Either his product couldn't meet standards and this is an attempt to obfuscate that inconvenient fact, or he withdrew a working product because he was so affronted by the fact that the NHTSA dared challenge him -- hardly a defensible, or confidence-inspiring, behavior.
- stale2002 10y ago
  Well, maybe the reason is that these regulator requests costs tons of money to fulfill because no, you cannot you give simple laymans answers to the questions, you need a team of lawyers to do this work, because everything you say in these "simple" requests can and will be used against you. And perhaps there are better uses of their time, and better regulatory environments where they can release their product. Maybe in a couple months we are going to hear about the imminent release of the Comma Two in Not-America. I seriously doubt they've gone home. There are tons of places where they could starting selling right NOW. America's loss, other countries' gain.
  - EpicEng 10y ago
    >Well, maybe the reason is that these regulator requests costs tons of money to fulfill because no, you cannot you give simple laymans answers to the questions, you need a team of lawyers to do this work, because everything you say in these "simple" requests can and will be used against you No, what you need is to have followed a sufficient quality process to begin with. Lawyers aren't involved heavily in this sort of thing; your quality group is (well, it may take more lawyering for them at this point.) This guy obviously didn't have a clue when he set out to build this thing and now his ignorance is biting him in the ass. I've worked on FDA regulated devices my entire career. You don't get to just throw things that represent a substantial safety risk onto the market without oversight, and that's a good thing.
  - Kadin 10y ago
snickerbockers 10y ago
I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can't apply Silicon Valley disruption to every industry because most software has a failure-rate that would be considered appalling in any real engineering discipline. And building a control system that can follow a perfectly black asphalt road with bright yellow and white lines between the lanes isn't even 1% as difficult as building a system that can actually be relied upon to safely convey its passengers under less ideal circumstances.
- jimmydddd 10y ago
  Reminds me of that old joke from the '80s(?) about what if MS built cars? You would get the blue screen of death while driving on the highway, and have to stop your car and restart it, you would get cryptic error messages when you were running out of gas, etc....
maverick_iceman 10y ago
The letter sent by NHTSA to Comma.ai[1]. I'm a layman but to me the penal provisions ($21k/day up to $105M for not responding by 11/10, prison sentence of 15 years for falsifying/withholding information) sound kinda harsh. Can someone confirm that these conditions are standard in requests of this type? [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special-Order-Directed-to-Comma-ai?content=10079&ad_group=Online+Tracking+Link&campaign=Skimbit%2C+Ltd.&keyword=ft500noi&source=impactradius&medium=affiliate&irgwc=1 https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special...
_abak_ 10y ago
I guess that being a brilliant hacker doesn't necessarily make you an engineer.
iiiggglll 10y ago
Remember a few weeks ago when it was a headline that the "going rate" for talented engineers working on self-driving cars was $10 million per head?[1] Meanwhile, comma.ai the company only got $3.1 million from a big-name investor?[2] Yeah, don't quit your day job... [1] http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-self-driving-talent-pool http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-sel... [2] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma-ai-andreessen-horowitz/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma...
ablation 10y ago
Worth noting that Alex Roy and Hotz probably have/had a business/working/personal relationship: "From August 24th-27th of 2016, Roy and teammates Warren Ahner & Streetwars founder Franz Aliquo broke the Electric & semi-Autonomous Cannonball Run records again, driving a Tesla Model S 90D 2,877 miles from the Portofino Inn to the Red Ball garage in 55 hours, breaking the prior record by 2 hours & 48 minutes. Tesla Autopilot was engaged 97.7% of the journey. GPS data and video evidence was captured using both a US Fleet Tracking device, and Comma.ai's Chffr video logging software."[0] It would not be a leap to assume that Roy might have a vested interest in puffing up his acquaintance. Also, Alex Roy is a "journalist" insofar as he probably got paid to write that piece. But other than that... [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Roy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Roy
jacquesm 10y ago
The only embarrassed entity here is George Hotz. I find it extremely hard to come up with a charitable narrative in all this but at least the system appears to be working: hacked together crap is not going to be sold to consumers. It's one thing to break other systems, it is an entirely different thing to produce safety critical software systems interacting in real time with hardware under real world conditions and it is not a given that someone who is good at the one will also be good at the other.
anentropic 10y ago
> Asked if he was genuinely intimidated by NHTSA's letter, he said, "I've got two words for you: stealth mode." I've got two words for you: knob end
Pica_soO 10y ago
Honest to Odd, could have a normal, shed-hacker fullfill these requirements? Even if he had the money? Is there a way to shrink the requirement- like building cars that can drive not faster then 20 mph in full automated mode?
g8oz 10y ago
A certain type of click bait journalist has an interest in creating EEStor-type narratives. True believers in the Magic Product keep clicking links for months or years at a time.

126 points by devy 10y ago

There's 2 possible reasons. 1) It really is near vaporware just being shown off in perfect conditions to seem exceptional. 2) It actually does work that much better with only $1000 worth of hardware and responding would give away the secret sauce. I don't give much credit to the theory that they didn't see this coming and were caught flat-footed by the sudden requirements. Oh and:Final speculation: there’s a reason it was called the Comma One. Where there's a Comma One, there's likely to be a Comma Two I was really hoping it was actually a C64 reference, namely: "where the 'drive' goes"... ,8,1

teddyh 10y ago
> I was really hoping it was actually a C64 reference, namely: "where the 'drive' goes"... ,8,1 Actually, the drive number is the “8”; the “1” is a flag which means to load the program to the same address in memory it was saved from, instead of to the default BASIC program start address.
- swayvil 10y ago
  In all fairness...
- noonespecial 10y ago
  That's what I was saying. When you use the drive(8), it automatically goes where its supposed to(1).
ethanbond 10y ago
Or, you know, the gigantic field of possibilities between those two things: it works a little bit under some conditions. Fortunately for us and unfortunately for Hotz's ego, regulators look down upon things that work a little bit under some conditions when they also happen to control two ton metal cages capable of traveling at 120mph. > it's [the] NHTSA that remains behind the curve in evaluating the myriad different technologies Uhhh... that was exactly what they were requesting to do with their letter.
- Fricken 10y ago
  The one fatality with Autopilot happened because the system worked too well, the driver came to trust it when he shouldn't have. The shittier the Comma one is, the more in-the-loop the human has to be, and risk compensation becomes less of a factor.
  - emp_zealoth 10y ago
    What in the fucking hell are you talking about? A system that is seemingly half blind (repeatedly crashes into vehicles that only partially obstruct the lane), decapitates a guy, crashes another one into a fucking post It didn't work too well. It pretended to work too well and gotten people killed. There is a reason MobileEye walked away from Tesla They are being rather cavalier with their attitude to safety, apparently. (Apparently the falcon wing doors can go nom nom on you if you are not careful too - sure the guys are laughing their asses off, but it's not a good design) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdPPp3hoGQ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdPPp3hoGQ8 EDIT: OR, EVEN BETTER: http://jalopnik.com/did-tesla-quietly-remove-a-safety-feature-from-the-mode-1786000681 http://jalopnik.com/did-tesla-quietly-remove-a-safety-featur...
    - Fricken 10y ago
      One fatality in 200 million miles of driving reflects a cavalier attitude to safety? It's not like the guy who died in that accident wasn't familiar with autopilot's reccommended usage, he read the manual, Tesla made it pretty clear you still gotta watch the road while it's engaged. I mean, if you're into misusing cars, any of them will allow you to accelerate into a brick wall if that's your inclination. I'm not sure what Falcon wing doors has to do with any of this.
      - jayjay71 10y ago
        There is at least 1 other death in China where autopilot is cited as the cause, and there are many other accidents in China which are not widely reported in the United States (it's easy to find several on Google though, many of which are even posted on YouTube with video proof). Statistically speaking, Tesla's autopilot is more dangerous than regular driving. They spun bad statistics to claim otherwise. They ignored the difference between highway driving (which is safer) and all driving, and ignored demographics (most Tesla drivers are older and affluent). It is too early to really draw many conclusions about autopilot, because there is actually very little data. Comparing the number of miles driven by Tesla to the number of miles driven by all other cars in one year is a difference of several orders of magnitude. But they are under investigation, and as more time passes the more damning it seems for Tesla.
jimjimjim 10y ago
bonus points for mention of c64 LOAD "",8,1 or even more old-school LOAD "",1,1
- noonespecial 10y ago
  1,1 !? - Oh hell no. I'm not waiting around for your stupid tape. Get a floppy drive like the cool kids.
csixty4 10y ago
This thread makes me happy.
- csixty4 10y ago
  Wow. When I posted this, the only replies were about the Commodore line. Now there's an actual conversation going on!
bertil 10y ago
I would include an (unlikely) 3: Hotz really, really does not want to be in the same room as the Feds (he is a confessed hacker) or spend time dealing with them. Maybe more likely: he can sell a ton _now_ in China, had a partner car company, and expect that having those work there would make his success in US either negligible in comparison, or faster thanks the example.
agumonkey 10y ago
I have yet to see the simplest proof that comma ai work is just a cute trained NN over a camera, piped to basic controls, with some potential creative ideas (in a conf, hotz mentioned working on time based depth inference instead of the traditional stereo camera setup). I'm biased for conservative companies, I have no idea what they're doing and how much resources. Maybe they're doing something at the same level. I believe they have more refined physics model to compute surroundings and car physics in a way to ensure sane and safe behaviour. Exception made of Tesla AP, which I always found borderline lying. The medias and the crowd seeems to believe wild hacking and current year tech is giving you better products, but physics are physics. I'm still waiting for a proof of solid math, system and safety engineering there. psedit; I forgot, I peaked at commaai github repo, the NN code is way above my head and what I could imagine, so I have to give hotz' team that. Some people really have magic auras.
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  Actually all my money was on google, i expected them to drive into the scrapfield, after the car companys and Tesla pushed each other into a early market situation and upped Legislation, kicking themselves out of the market, with a carnaggedon. But they backed out, because their managers want the chicken to exist before the egg. So, why not bet on the outsider?
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    I liked Google's approach a lot. It seemed justly dimensioned, came out of Thrun DARPA success, had years and millions of miles of testing. What's not to love. Also G has the lever to accelerate and change tech if their old approach is obsolete. Sad they went silent since a year or so. I said it in other place, including HN, I don't consider Hotz an outsider, but mostly glorified hacker (his attitude with institutions and media don't help me clear this impression); and I don't think hacker mentality bodes well with this task.
    - Pica_soO 10y ago
      Actually, that is a very humanistic point of view. There are third-world countrys where a margin of life-loss is considered "acceptable". And sorry, but Teslas approach, seems to be a similar hacky "Wing-it with PR-Guns blazing".
nkrisc 10y ago
I believe Arthur C. Clarke said something that's relevant here, "technology that's indistinguishable from magic is probably bullshit." No, that's not right...

kesselvon 10y ago

This is a bit of weak spin on the obvious news that they probably couldn't comply with the government requirements.

tptacek 10y ago
They weren't given any government requirements, with the the possible exception of the FHMVSS rule that you can't remove the rear-view mirror of the car. The NHTSA Special Order asked only for documentation of extremely basic test plan stuff (road, speed, weather, and traffic limits for the device, along with user documentation).
- TillE 10y ago
  That was their request for information, yes. But I have trouble believing that the NHTSA would allow you to market some half-baked crap that takes over control of your vehicle. Maybe that's legal, though. Not great if it is. Anything short of full, reliable automation seems incredibly dangerous.
- shadowshadow 10y ago
  The Special Order might be of the "we're looking for a justification to fine you and issue a recall" type, which it looks like they often are.
  - ubernostrum 10y ago
    Typically when you get to the point of getting one of those it's because you've been blatantly ignoring regulations or regulators up until now and they feel like they need to get your attention.
  - EpicEng 10y ago
    Well if they were planning on going to market without being able to pass an audit then they deserve every bit of it. I've worked in am FDA regulated field for a little over a decade and getting in touch with regulatory bodies up front is par for the course. Sounds to me like they don't know what they're doing and are in over their heads.

empraptor 10y ago

I'm wary of self-driving systems based only on cameras. He should really wait until cheap LiDARs are available in a few years.

cameldrv 10y ago
The comma only works on a few (maybe just one) Honda car that has a built-in front facing radar that they're able to tap into. With that, comma is using roughly the same sensor package as the V1 Tesla autopilot.
- empraptor 10y ago
  Thanks. I didn't know Comma One also uses front facing radar. Do you happen to know what state of the art millimeter wave radars are capable of? I found some references from 2013 about Panasonic product with resolution of 20cm, but maybe there are better options now?
striking 10y ago
LIDAR is still not that good for driving. It's better than cameras but it's still pretty bad, because its vision can be obscured by weather conditions. Radar is the gold standard for vision like this. That being said, I thought they were using radar.
- empraptor 10y ago
  EDIT: cameldrv pointed out in a reply to my original comment that Comma One uses its cameras and also taps into the vehicle's existing front facing radar. I was thinking of something like Quanergy's solid state LiDAR. I know the planned $100 version is probably a few years out, but it seems promising. And there are other companies/institutions working on cheap LiDARs that work in bad weather. Following link is of a talk Quanergy CEO gave at Stanford. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPqzo29Q9Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPqzo29Q9Wc

jmcmahon443 10y ago

I think it got cancelled because it is a real startup now. Let me explain! Put yourself in CEO's shoes: you have employees who love working for you but you need to get them a paycheck. From that perspective, it is easy to see that it is kind of crazy to enter into these lengthy government discussions that could possibly ruin your business and delay the entire industry! No thanks!! If they're all really engineers who just love doin' the work, they will be a valuable contracting outfit doin' the exact same work for a steadier paycheck.

crooked-v 10y ago
What? Refusing to cooperate with the government in a highly regulated industry will 'ruin your business' anyway.

LeanderK 10y ago

>Hotz's initial tweets suggested his move was in response to an inquiry from NHTSA, stating that he "would much rather spend life building amazing tech than dealing with regulators and lawyers," well, this is not some stupid web-app that can't harm anyone even if it tried (except from maybe overheating your smartphone). This can kill people, i can't seriously buy dangerous stuff from somebody that says something like this. What's next? Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine-industry by testing your headache-pills on your customers (those regulations are only slowing us down!)?

donmatito 10y ago
You would have won so much Irony Points if only you had written "Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Disrupting the medicine industry with revolutionary tests without sufficient scientific validation?"
- llukas 10y ago
  Let me introduce to you: Theranos
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  - ethbro 10y ago
    We all got that. ;)
- bertil 10y ago
  > Producing food without following proper hygiene regulations? Sounds like Menu Next Door, who had to deal with regulation meant for restaurants when trying to be the AirBnB of food. Things like you had to have a warning about washing your hands in your own private kitchen.

cameldrv 10y ago

The NHTSA letter pretty clearly calls out the removal of the rear view mirror as being a problem, and a violation of safety regulations.

Animats 10y ago

We don't need another crap Level 2 system. Lane keeping plus auto braking just isn't enough. (Crap auto braking, as with Tesla, is even worse. Four collisions with big, obvious stationary vehicles so far.) The NHTSA, Google, and Volvo have it right. Systems where the driver has to back up the automation will not work in practice.

_abak_ 10y ago
The thing is that you evaluate "big" and "obvious" with the sensors that you have. They obviously werent obstacles for the algo that was driving.

ontoillogical 10y ago

And that's how you get to walk away with your dignity intact when you can't ship a working product on your self-inflicted insane timeline.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
With your dignity intact? The guy basically lost all his credibility with this action. Walking away with dignity intact would be replying to NHTSA, "Dear Government, we've found out we are unable to provide the information you asked for because the product is nowhere near mature enough. Therefore we are officially abandoning all public tests and sales effort, and are going back to the drawing board until such time that we are able to get back to you with the answers you requested."
- dpark 10y ago
  I think he meant "ego" instead of "dignity". This is how you walk away with your over-inflated ego intact. Behaving this way indicates that you have no dignity.

aresant 10y ago

"[comma.ai} was functionally superior and theoretically safer than the ten legacy manufacturer systems" A journalist on record saying "theoretically safer" literally makes my hair stand up on end.

taneq 10y ago
Even better, "The system worked, sometimes better than everything on the market." Oh boy, I just gotta have a self-driving system for my car that can sometimes work really well!
- hash-set 10y ago
  80% of the time it worked every time.
95014_refugee 10y ago
Relax. Alex Roy is not "a journalist".

6stringmerc 10y ago

Hm, well the article certainly is flattering toward Hotz, the project, and the impression (having first-hand experience with several systems does strike me as important). Still pretty staunchly of the opinion over here that he's got something worth still working on and this isn't the last of it. AKA contrary to a good number of comments which basically say he's either a fraud, huckster, or otherwise dumb for not being interested/willing/prepared to engage with the NHTSA at this stage. Eh time will tell, right?

taneq 10y ago

I think it's far more likely that the NHTSA was caught flat-footed by Tesla's autopilot system, and didn't react in time, with fatal results. Now they're seeing a scrappy startup trying to dive into the same space where multi-billion-dollar car companies ought to fear to tread, and they've done their best to nip it in the bud before every tom dick and harry with a webcam and a graphics card starts trying to send their car on solo missions.

bertiewhykovich 10y ago

What this article tries its damnedest to elide is the narrative-wrecking fact that Holtz, confronted with a standard request to demonstrate that his product meets regulatory standards, took his ball and went home. /Exactly/ why he threw a tantrum is anyone's guess -- but there doesn't seem to be any real good possibility. Either his product couldn't meet standards and this is an attempt to obfuscate that inconvenient fact, or he withdrew a working product because he was so affronted by the fact that the NHTSA dared challenge him -- hardly a defensible, or confidence-inspiring, behavior.

stale2002 10y ago
Well, maybe the reason is that these regulator requests costs tons of money to fulfill because no, you cannot you give simple laymans answers to the questions, you need a team of lawyers to do this work, because everything you say in these "simple" requests can and will be used against you. And perhaps there are better uses of their time, and better regulatory environments where they can release their product. Maybe in a couple months we are going to hear about the imminent release of the Comma Two in Not-America. I seriously doubt they've gone home. There are tons of places where they could starting selling right NOW. America's loss, other countries' gain.
- EpicEng 10y ago
  >Well, maybe the reason is that these regulator requests costs tons of money to fulfill because no, you cannot you give simple laymans answers to the questions, you need a team of lawyers to do this work, because everything you say in these "simple" requests can and will be used against you No, what you need is to have followed a sufficient quality process to begin with. Lawyers aren't involved heavily in this sort of thing; your quality group is (well, it may take more lawyering for them at this point.) This guy obviously didn't have a clue when he set out to build this thing and now his ignorance is biting him in the ass. I've worked on FDA regulated devices my entire career. You don't get to just throw things that represent a substantial safety risk onto the market without oversight, and that's a good thing.
- Kadin 10y ago

snickerbockers 10y ago

I've said it before and I'll say it again: you can't apply Silicon Valley disruption to every industry because most software has a failure-rate that would be considered appalling in any real engineering discipline. And building a control system that can follow a perfectly black asphalt road with bright yellow and white lines between the lanes isn't even 1% as difficult as building a system that can actually be relied upon to safely convey its passengers under less ideal circumstances.

jimmydddd 10y ago
Reminds me of that old joke from the '80s(?) about what if MS built cars? You would get the blue screen of death while driving on the highway, and have to stop your car and restart it, you would get cryptic error messages when you were running out of gas, etc....

maverick_iceman 10y ago

The letter sent by NHTSA to Comma.ai[1]. I'm a layman but to me the penal provisions ($21k/day up to $105M for not responding by 11/10, prison sentence of 15 years for falsifying/withholding information) sound kinda harsh. Can someone confirm that these conditions are standard in requests of this type? [1] https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special-Order-Directed-to-Comma-ai?content=10079&ad_group=Online+Tracking+Link&campaign=Skimbit%2C+Ltd.&keyword=ft500noi&source=impactradius&medium=affiliate&irgwc=1 https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special...

_abak_ 10y ago

I guess that being a brilliant hacker doesn't necessarily make you an engineer.

iiiggglll 10y ago

Remember a few weeks ago when it was a headline that the "going rate" for talented engineers working on self-driving cars was $10 million per head?[1] Meanwhile, comma.ai the company only got $3.1 million from a big-name investor?[2] Yeah, don't quit your day job... [1] http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-self-driving-talent-pool http://www.recode.net/2016/9/17/12943214/sebastian-thrun-sel... [2] http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma-ai-andreessen-horowitz/ http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma...

ablation 10y ago

Worth noting that Alex Roy and Hotz probably have/had a business/working/personal relationship: "From August 24th-27th of 2016, Roy and teammates Warren Ahner & Streetwars founder Franz Aliquo broke the Electric & semi-Autonomous Cannonball Run records again, driving a Tesla Model S 90D 2,877 miles from the Portofino Inn to the Red Ball garage in 55 hours, breaking the prior record by 2 hours & 48 minutes. Tesla Autopilot was engaged 97.7% of the journey. GPS data and video evidence was captured using both a US Fleet Tracking device, and Comma.ai's Chffr video logging software."[0] It would not be a leap to assume that Roy might have a vested interest in puffing up his acquaintance. Also, Alex Roy is a "journalist" insofar as he probably got paid to write that piece. But other than that... [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Roy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Roy

jacquesm 10y ago

The only embarrassed entity here is George Hotz. I find it extremely hard to come up with a charitable narrative in all this but at least the system appears to be working: hacked together crap is not going to be sold to consumers. It's one thing to break other systems, it is an entirely different thing to produce safety critical software systems interacting in real time with hardware under real world conditions and it is not a given that someone who is good at the one will also be good at the other.

anentropic 10y ago

> Asked if he was genuinely intimidated by NHTSA's letter, he said, "I've got two words for you: stealth mode." I've got two words for you: knob end

Pica_soO 10y ago

Honest to Odd, could have a normal, shed-hacker fullfill these requirements? Even if he had the money? Is there a way to shrink the requirement- like building cars that can drive not faster then 20 mph in full automated mode?

g8oz 10y ago

A certain type of click bait journalist has an interest in creating EEStor-type narratives. True believers in the Magic Product keep clicking links for months or years at a time.