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Elon Musk stated that their technology is 2 years away from full autonomous driving. Tesla is planning LA -> NY fully autonomic drive by end of this year. Waym

by kjksf 9y ago

Elon Musk stated that their technology is 2 years away from full autonomous driving. Tesla is planning LA -> NY fully autonomic drive by end of this year. Waymo has already started a real pilot of fully autonomic driving for regular people in Phoenix area. I predict that means they are less than 1 year away from ditching training wheels and launching it fully. Some think that changing laws to make legal will be the hard part but I see the opposite: states will be competing for who's first to make it possible. Many states, including CA, already made testing possible. You just sign up and ask "can I test my self-driving cars, on real roads, possibly destroying other cars on those roads and killing people. Pretty please?". Laws are hard when they're controversial and self-driving cars are political goldmine: * dramatically less deaths and other kinds of destruction due to less accidents * cheaper transportation * the sheer coolness of self-driving It'll take only few states in US to allow it and other states will have to follow or the politicians will look very stupid if a taxi drive in SF costs $1 and the same is $10 in Chicago. No-one will have to flaunt the law, it'll get changed very quickly.

ghaff 9y ago
I actually agree that if the tech works extremely reliably, the legal/regulatory hurdles may take some time but aren't going to be a major roadblock. We are quite far apart however on how close we are to "just works."
aetherson 9y ago
Waymo's Phoenix test will include an employee in the driver's seat ready to take over. (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/technology/waymo-to-offer-phoenix-area-access-to-self-driving-cars.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/technology/waymo-to-offer..., and note the sentence "All the Waymo cars will have a technician who can take control in an emergency.") Elon Musk said that Tesla's driverless technology was "probably better than a person" more than a year ago. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/01/11/elon-musk-says-teslas-autopilot-is-already-probably-better-than-human-drivers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/01/11...). What I'm saying is, Musk is a big promoter of Tesla and taking his ideas of when the technology will be ready at 100% face value is foolish.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  >All the Waymo cars will have a technician who can take control in an emergency. This is likely more due to regulatory reasons than anything else. Waymo's cars have an exceedingly low rate of required intervention.
  - keeptrying 9y ago
    In Palo Alto.
    - joshuamorton 9y ago
      And Tahoe (light snow) and Seattle (rain/fog) and a couple of other places. Sure, most testing has been in the Bay Area (although at this point I'm not actually sure if that's the case anymore).
paulcole 9y ago
>Tesla is planning LA -> NY fully autonomic drive by end of this year. But that's not really a very impressive feat compared to 3-5 days of non-stop driving in NYC. I mean who cares if it can go cross-country? I want it to take me from my apartment to the office to the grocery store to Target out to dinner and then back home again. Hundreds and hundreds (probably >1,000 even) of those cross-country miles are going to be desolate and essentially carless.
- ericleung 9y ago
  I think that's completely the right idea, but I don't think the difficulty in "self-driving" is the carless-ness of those highway roads. Highway roads tend to be easy because you don't have a lot of edge cases. Cars are always driving at roughy the same speed, and there aren't very many lights or intersections or bicyclists or pedestrians, etc.
- placeybordeaux 9y ago
  If I could get something close to an RV that could do the highway section to a national park or another major US city while letting 2+ people sleep in the back I'd be very interested in getting that and doing a very cheap vacation across the country. As it is driving on a boring highway all day and finding a hotel at night sucks. I'd much rather leave the driving to the night while we sleep.
luca_ing 9y ago
> Elon Musk stated that their technology is 2 years away from full autonomous driving. Tesla is planning LA -> NY fully autonomic drive by end of this year. While that's nice, it's kinda the low-hanging fruit. I'll be impressed if somebody manages autonomous driving in, say, New York (or Kolkata if you're feeling ambitious), at night, during snowfall, navigating a construction site and/or traffic regulated by policemen. This is taxing but completely possible (and entirely expected) for a human driver. Whereas the lane-following autopilot in my car is routinely confused by shadows on a pleasant day.

by kjksf 9y ago

ghaff 9y ago

I actually agree that if the tech works extremely reliably, the legal/regulatory hurdles may take some time but aren't going to be a major roadblock. We are quite far apart however on how close we are to "just works."

aetherson 9y ago

Waymo's Phoenix test will include an employee in the driver's seat ready to take over. (See: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/technology/waymo-to-offer-phoenix-area-access-to-self-driving-cars.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/technology/waymo-to-offer..., and note the sentence "All the Waymo cars will have a technician who can take control in an emergency.") Elon Musk said that Tesla's driverless technology was "probably better than a person" more than a year ago. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/01/11/elon-musk-says-teslas-autopilot-is-already-probably-better-than-human-drivers/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/01/11...). What I'm saying is, Musk is a big promoter of Tesla and taking his ideas of when the technology will be ready at 100% face value is foolish.

joshuamorton 9y ago
>All the Waymo cars will have a technician who can take control in an emergency. This is likely more due to regulatory reasons than anything else. Waymo's cars have an exceedingly low rate of required intervention.
- keeptrying 9y ago
  In Palo Alto.
  - joshuamorton 9y ago
    And Tahoe (light snow) and Seattle (rain/fog) and a couple of other places. Sure, most testing has been in the Bay Area (although at this point I'm not actually sure if that's the case anymore).

paulcole 9y ago

>Tesla is planning LA -> NY fully autonomic drive by end of this year. But that's not really a very impressive feat compared to 3-5 days of non-stop driving in NYC. I mean who cares if it can go cross-country? I want it to take me from my apartment to the office to the grocery store to Target out to dinner and then back home again. Hundreds and hundreds (probably >1,000 even) of those cross-country miles are going to be desolate and essentially carless.

ericleung 9y ago
I think that's completely the right idea, but I don't think the difficulty in "self-driving" is the carless-ness of those highway roads. Highway roads tend to be easy because you don't have a lot of edge cases. Cars are always driving at roughy the same speed, and there aren't very many lights or intersections or bicyclists or pedestrians, etc.
placeybordeaux 9y ago
If I could get something close to an RV that could do the highway section to a national park or another major US city while letting 2+ people sleep in the back I'd be very interested in getting that and doing a very cheap vacation across the country. As it is driving on a boring highway all day and finding a hotel at night sucks. I'd much rather leave the driving to the night while we sleep.

luca_ing 9y ago

> Elon Musk stated that their technology is 2 years away from full autonomous driving. Tesla is planning LA -> NY fully autonomic drive by end of this year. While that's nice, it's kinda the low-hanging fruit. I'll be impressed if somebody manages autonomous driving in, say, New York (or Kolkata if you're feeling ambitious), at night, during snowfall, navigating a construction site and/or traffic regulated by policemen. This is taxing but completely possible (and entirely expected) for a human driver. Whereas the lane-following autopilot in my car is routinely confused by shadows on a pleasant day.