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That's pretty cool, it's great to see GM not sucking at bleeding edge software. They're getting their money's worth out of that billion dollar acquisition last
by Fricken 10y ago
That's pretty cool, it's great to see GM not sucking at bleeding edge software. They're getting their money's worth out of that billion dollar acquisition last March. I think Kyle Vogt is GM's MVP.
Looking at the 2016 California DMV disengagement reports, Cruise is at 181 disengages in 9,776 miles of testing in California for 2016. This can be compared crudely to Waymo's 124 disengages in 635,868 miles for 2016.
Waymo's operation is 2 orders of magnitude more advanced than Cruise, but in terms of video demos, we haven't seen much of the environments Waymo's cars are capable of navigating. Waymo has only revealed their cars driving on suburban roads, it seems only Cruise is tackling hectic downtown driving head-on.
GM, with their Lyft partnership and Orion assembly plant is, I think, in a great position to deploy early fast with 1st gen robotaxis.
- pb 10y agoI suspect the Waymo miles are not really comparable to the Cruise miles since Waymo seems to mainly test around Mountain View vs Cruise in SF.
- bastawhiz 10y agoI suspect Waymo doesn't plan to launch in a very large city.
- colordrops 10y agoIt seems that it would still need to work in places like SF and Manhattan though unless they get drivers to sign a contract that they will only drive in certain areas.
- Fuzzwah 10y agoIf you've cracked automated driving, I'm confident that you can geo lock where the cars will do it.
- notahacker 10y agoThe other reason is that the stats focus on disengagements as a result of technology failures or immediate safety concerns, and don't show the "routine" disengagements where the driver switches out of automatic mode for a period to avoid running the autopilot in situations it isn't test-ready for. Different manufacturers will likely have different standards for ruotine engagements/disengagements, and may also have different standards for what they consider a safety concern.
- beamatronic 10y agoWaymo cars frequently drive the same routes several times a week. In fact if you go to certain intersections such as El Camino Real and San Antonio Rd, during the work week you only have to wait a few minutes to see one or more go by.
- Fricken 10y agoDo you (or anyone) ever see Waymo cars downtown?
- atto 10y agoIn Mountain View (off Castro St), yep, all the time. In SF, no.
- mcpherrinm 10y agoI think this is true of most of the self-driving cars. Certainly I've seen Uber self-driving cars doing the same routes over and over. And I think I see GM Cruise cars in the same part of town, but they may just be based nearby.
- unprepare 10y agoDo you think the routes are designed so that the car encounters specific obstacles the teams are working on, or do you think its more like they are doing extensive mapping of an area to make the autonomy a bit easier?
- snovv_crash 10y agoI suspect it is so that it is easier to measure the effects tweaks/development to the algorithms make.
- PetorianBlue 10y ago> Cruise is at 181 disengages in 9,776 miles > Waymo is 2 orders of magnitude more advanced than Cruise Not to say that Waymo isn't ahead, but if you look at a graph of Cruise's disengagements vs miles over time, they experienced a rapid improvement. By November of 2016 they were at about 2.6/1000 miles. Better than the total would show, but still an order worse than Waymo though.
- sf_rob 10y agoThis article aggregates the miles/disengagement in a nice table at the bottom. Definitely worth a glance. Waymo is 8x better than the nearest competitor (which, as mentioned, is probably an unfair comparison since we don't know enough about comparibility of those miles driven) https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-disengagement/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/california-dmv-autonomous-car-...
- monk_e_boy 10y agoA lot of the roads near me are two lane, but have cars parked on both sides. This requires a lot of hand gestures out of the window to other drivers as we negotiate the roads. We also have a lot of single track roads with passing places. This also requires a lot of non-verbal communication between drivers. Are there any videos of self driving cars attempting this sort of road?
- a_t48 10y agoCouldn't this be solved with an LED sign or something? Even if not, true self driving cars aren't coming for a while - they will still disengage and force the driver to take control in some situations. I'd be interested in seeing what happens in those situations, too - if you live near CCSF in San Francisco there are a bunch of these roads.
- imaginenore 10y agoWhy do you have to negotiate anything? If you're driving, you're higher priority than the car trying to leave its parking spot. It's their problem to squeeze into the traffic.
- ghshephard 10y agoWhat do you do when two cars approach each other on a single lane road, with no room for passing?
- shubhamjain 10y ago> They're getting their money's worth out of that billion dollar acquisition last March. I think Kyle Vogt is GM's MVP. Many people, including me, were critical of the acquisition; acquiring an year-old company barely having any technological breakthrough for a billion dollars sounded like a folly. Slowly, it has become clear that the impetus behind the deal wasn't necessarily acquiring the technology but bring an ardent person on board who can accelerate GM's self-driving efforts. I have a feeling this deal would cast itself as one of the pivotal moments in the company's history.