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Google's marketing claims are extraordinary by running careful, incremental, roll out trials? What company is shipping 'Autopilot' software to drivers today tha
by cromwellian 10y ago
Google's marketing claims are extraordinary by running careful, incremental, roll out trials? What company is shipping 'Autopilot' software to drivers today that has actually killed someone, doesn't function in less than perfect highway conditions, whose own fine print says basically not to use it as its name implies, and has numerous calls for it to be disabled?
What does it mean "cars are capable of functioning <in an area>"? What does "Functioning" mean?
Tesla Autopilot don't function off highways, and barely function on highways. So you think someone should get credit for functioning at scale everywhere, if they ship a consumer product with no restrictions, but it fails badly when people actually try it? You're comparing a broken product to one that purportedly works, but you think it's smoke and mirrors?
I love Tesla cars and I plan to buy a P90D, but in my opinion, their whole self driving program is incredibly reckless. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQxIhMBKblY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQxIhMBKblY) Waymo's approach is careful, over engineered, defense-in-depth. Slow by Silicon Valley standards, but you're dealing with public safety. Yes, they use maps as one of their sources of truth, they'd be reckless not to, but they also use LIDAR and vision systems with machine learning, because of course, no map can be real time.
Tesla is trying to sell an upgraded lane-keeping system as a self driving system. Maybe you should be more concerned about that.
I can only say what is public already, but you can look at the disengagements data to see Waymo cars are three orders of magnitude better than their competitors.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoI don't disagree Tesla's marketing is dishonest as well. But if Google's system only works on predefined destinations, essentially within a controlled environment, it isn't even really in the game. If the lane lines are hard to read in a part of Phoenix, Google can ask for them to be repainted before approving the cars for that area but everyone else just has to assume bad lane lines are something they'll contend with. Is there an NDA these early riders will have to sign? Do they have to provide a list of destinations ahead of time? I feel this announcement makes it seem like these cars are ready for public use. But I don't see the evidence to suggest they really are. And as you indicate, Googlers aren't talking.