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Cruise's 3rd generation self-driving car
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rwmj 9y agoThere are a lot of big claims in this article. As someone who hasn't been paying much attention, is it credible that they have a near-ready-to-go self-driving car right now?
- Fricken 9y agoYep, they're pretty close. Late this year or 2018 they'll have cars driving around empty. GM has consistently been underestimated by the public, but they've played their cards very well. It's in no small part due to the drive and leadership of Kyle Vogt, who is on his way to the big leagues to join the ranks of Musk, Bezos, and Jobs and those guys.
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- felippee 9y agoOnce they actually have cars driving empty we will actually learn how close or how far are they. I've seen a lot of PR muscle flexing from big companies before and no longer believe any such stuff. They do that to impress investors and the public, but this has nothing to do with reality.
- Fricken 9y agoThis PR announcement isn't the only data point, GM has the goods to back it up.
- patejam 9y agoYour comments sound like a PR statement, what goods? How do you know how close they are? Looks to me that they designed a mass-producible car outfitted with self-driving systems (which is very cool!). But they are only just starting to do employee testing. Waymo has been doing that for years.
- Fricken 9y agoWaymo is ahead on the technology. They were ready to begin public trials with their Koala cars in 2015, but the California DMV shut them down, and many of their key people jumped ship. Waymo has since been proceeding a bit more cautiously, and their efforts at this point are oriented more towards smoothing out ride feel, testing under adverse weather conditions, and their early rider program in Phoenix. Whether it's Waymo or GM to officially be the first to have an empty car driving on public roads, the other won't be far behind, though the victory will be largely symbolic. GM's cars still need a lot of polish, and Waymo needs better manufacturing partnerships.
- ryanmarsh 9y agoYep, they're pretty close. Late this year or 2018 they'll have cars driving around empty. I'd like to know more, do you have a source for these claims?
- Fricken 9y agoIt's a prediction, I can't provide a source for events that haven't occurred. But Reuters reported they intend to put 'thousands' of autonomous Bolts on the road in 2018: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-autonomous-exclusive/exclusive-gm-plans-to-build-test-thousands-of-self-driving-bolts-in-2018-sources-idUSKBN15W283 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-autonomous-exclusive/e... Cruise has released some impressive demos on their YouTube page, of vehicle driving around downtown SF: https://youtu.be/KSRPmng1cmA https://youtu.be/KSRPmng1cmA Cruise reported to the California DMV that they averaged on unplanned disengagement every 180 miles through 2016: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disengagement_report_2016 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen... What's also interesting is that Cruise is hiring 'autonomous vehicle support advisors', which is for remote assistance. Not something you need to do if you plan to have a test driver in the front seat for year(s) to come: https://getcruise.com/careers/listing/791711 https://getcruise.com/careers/listing/791711 Also, because Kyle Vogt said so, and he's never bullshitted me before, he's got credibility.
- xur17 9y ago> Cruise reported to the California DMV that they averaged on unplanned disengagement every 180 miles through 2016 Isn't this disengagement rate several orders of magnitude too high to support fully autonomous vehicles?
- nrb 9y agoFor comparison, it's about 28x higher[1] than Waymo reported for the same period. I'm not sure how similar the driving conditions were but I would guess pretty close. 1. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b-b119-91319c27788f/GoogleAutoWaymo_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b... (Page 3 of PDF)
- eco 9y agoIs there anywhere that allows autonomous cars to be tested on real roads without a fallback human driver?
- Fricken 9y agoArizona. Their weather and regulatory climate has Waymo, Cruise, and Uber all testing there. I believe Michigan and Florida are also willing to permit fully autonomous cars on their roads, but most of the action is in and around Phoenix.
- tim333 9y agoVolvos were supposed to be rolling in London and Gothenburg this year but it hasn't happened yet. They were supposed to have a member of the public who could snooze or read a book.
- mabbo 9y agoThey've got some damn impressive videos on YouTube. I think they're either neck and neck with, or possibly ahead of, Tesla.
- felippee 9y agoEvaluating technical capabilities in autonomy based on youtube demo videos is like evaluating the military potential by watching army parades on holiday. The truth is, none of these companies is any close to full autonomy. Full autonomy _testing_ will begin once they deploy cars without backup drivers, to actually see how bad can things go without watchful human supervision.
- bitL 9y agoWaymo had <100 situations where they required human involvement in tens of million miles they drove so far. They are probably already safer than human drivers and would likely cause fewer accidents. The issue there is a legal one - who is going to be responsible for a crash? The company that produced the driving software/hardware, or the owner of the car? Or even the passengers in case there will be city-wide car pools one could call when needed?
- felippee 9y agoNo. They had plenty more. Approximately 100 cases over 600k miles last year (their own data from California) which would have lead to a dangerous situation, and 9 cases which by their own admission would have resulted with a collision. Now it is hard to compare crashes of different magnitude, people often are engaged in fender benders, but only on average after 100 million miles driven there is a fatal accident, who knows how many of these 9 cases would have ended up in a fatality. But nevertheless, this is only 600k miles not 100m. Stop spreading misinformation.
- bitL 9y agoAlright, I might have misremembered as last time I've read about it I was surprised how low those numbers were. Maybe I need to look at it again.
- antirez 9y agoI don't know what to believe. A few days ago I spent some time checking publicly available data and the result is that the current state of art is extremely far from an autonomous car that, could like used to drive a taxi in a busy city like Rome. Not far as "still some effort needed" but potentially "not clear when this could be available" far. Now there are those claims made by multiple companies... Go figure.
- gervase 9y agoBased on my own observations, there's probably a big difference between operating as a taxi in Berlin and Rome, and another between operating in Rome and Mumbai. This only factors in other human drivers and infrastructure design/signage, not weather conditions (a different can of worms). I suspect that we'll see a progression like: 1) Well-regulated urban and highway environments 2) Well-regulated rural environments 3) Moderately regulated urban and rural environments 4) Poorly regulated rural environments 5) Poorly regulated urban environments And I think we'll probably be stuck on #1 for a while. I would also venture that most companies claiming to "be there" or "almost there" are referring to #1 as well. I also think that it's possible that politicians may try to legislate a transition up that list as that first case starts taking off (greater traffic enforcement, better signage/infrastructure, more rigorous driver training, etc).
- antirez 9y agoMy feeling is that under special situations 1 degradates to 5, so to have good security anyway you have to solve problem 5.
- mulmen 9y agoWhat are the special situations where 1 gives way to 5? The well-regulated part would imply to me that the possibility of slipping to another situation are eliminated or not allowed.
- cmrdporcupine 9y ago
- ardillamorris 9y agoI lot of comments about building a self driving car and zero showing the "real" self-driving car. Show and then tell!
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- peterwwillis 9y agotl;dr we have built a car that does not self-drive, but like, some day, it will, we're pretty sure Funniest thing is they still use wiring harnesses. If you're manufacturing the car from scratch just build a digital bus into the frame.
- swsieber 9y ago"For now, there will still be a human behind the wheel." Yup. Total click bait.
- infecto 9y agoWhat is not clear is if this is due to the legal limitations or limitation of automation?
- mikeyouse 9y agoIt's harder to assess the state of the technology from the outside, but this is due at very least to legal limitations -- It's currently illegal to have a car on the road without a human.
- swsieber 9y ago"The launch of the world’s first mass-producible driverless car is a major accomplishment, but we’re not across the finish line yet. Building a few of these self-driving vehicles, or even a few hundred, won’t accomplish what we set out to do. And a self-driving business that depends on humans sitting behind the wheel is fundamentally unsustainable, so that won’t cut it either. We will achieve success by integrating the best software and hardware to deploy truly driverless vehicles at scale." That's the last paragraph. It makes me think the writer views it as a technical problem - they need a human as a backup. But, there's not enough context, so I could be misreading it.
- ReadEvalPost 9y agoAll cars use wiring harnesses, self-driving or no. You want to be able to remove and replace parts (wires included), so harnesses are necessary.
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- taytus 9y agoI am the only one who was expecting at least one video?
- sp332 9y agoVideos are linked in the second paragraph.
- andys627 9y ago>Electric self-driving cars will save millions of lives and significantly accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, but only when they’re deployed in large numbers. Just like cars that we drive, self driving cars enable sprawl. Sprawl will never be environmentally sustainable. We need cities that you move through by foot, bike, and public transit.
- jim-greer 9y agoI agree with you on this. We need dense cities that don't depend on cars. I will say that self-driving cars help a bit in getting people to bike, though. The biggest barrier to biking in San Francisco is people's fear of getting killed by cars (the SF Bike Coalition has done surveys on this). Self-driving cars should pose less of a risk to cyclists - they don't run red lights or speed, etc. Another potential benefit would be reducing the need for parking. The biggest obstacle to physically separated bike lanes is the space they take up - typically that requires removing parking. If self-driving taxis are super cheap, that should lead to less car ownership, and possibly less demand for parking. That's all very speculative though.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago> Sprawl will never be environmentally sustainable. Assuming clean, renewable energy powers all electric mobility, why not? I do not want to live in a city/urban area, and I will pay more not to. EDIT: @InitialLastName Sorry, HN throttling kicked in, can't reply to your reply so I'm putting this here. If I have a well for water, septic for sewage, solar on my roof, and a gravel road to town, what's the problem? I understand its super expensive for cities to deliver utilities and services across sprawl, but if I'm not asking for those services and utilities to be provided, it should be a non-issue. If anything, sprawl will make service and utility delivery more efficient, as we'll have no other choice for those who choose that lifestyle.
- InitialLastName 9y agohttps://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason... Have a look at the graph of the cost of delivering utilities. This isn't about environmental sustainability as much as long-term economic sustainability. When towns sprawl, utilities with costs that scale with distance cost more per person.
- soared 9y agoWow. FYI - This is how you mess up content marketing. If the author genuinely wanted me to read the article and get to know the brand, he shouldn't have used such a scummy title. Yes, the article is /technically/ true. But they are only talking about the hardware, and acknowledge in the second paragraph that they don't have the software. So while the title implies self-driving cars are a solved problem, they are really only making claims about hardware. Cool I guess? But tesla probably already beat you to it? Titles like these are what happen when marketers optimize everything towards clicks, and don't care about actual impact on the brand itself.
- felippee 9y agoSaying that self driving car hardware problem is solved and all we need is software is like saying that one solved the problem of building interstellar space ship. All they need now is the warp drive. Otherwise it is all solved...
- cracell 9y agox is already solved, we just need to solve the parts we haven't solved.
- azernik 9y agoWaymo and Uber are more likely to have beat them to it (lidar) than Tesla, but point very much taken.
- mikeyouse 9y agoNeither of those companies make cars.. The article is about actually putting a "self-driving" (however they define it) car through a proper manufacturing engineering environment to develop something that can scale to hundreds of thousands of cars per year. Redesigning the software of a production car and actually integrating the tech at the factory-level gets you much closer to a mass-volume car than making some fancy software with a sensor package that you bolt to the top of a minivan.
- olivermarks 9y ago'self driving' really means the vehicle is being controlled by outside entities who have created technology that enables navigation. This article is very opaque on how mature this is. The vehicles are the 'last mile' and from everything I've read we are a long way from Level 5 mass market maturity. everything else seems to require you to be able to reflexively grab the wheel and use the pedals at any moment if something goes wrong... Useful article about Toyota's Gill Pratt on realities https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/.WIa5-73Jp-g.hackernews https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel...
- rndmwlk 9y agoReads like a GM PR press piece.
- S_A_P 9y agoI feel like what they mean, is the first "factory" built car that has some self driving capability.
- mabbo 9y agoCall me when it's for sale, when I can put down money and drive away (or rather, be driven away by) a self diving car. Seriously though. Please call me when that happens. I really, really want to not have to drive anymore. I don't care what the price tag is.
- aianus 9y agoWhat's stopping you from taking an Uber everywhere?
- mabbo 9y agoSometimes I drive outside of the city. I go visit my parents a few hours away. Sometimes I want to pick up a huge load of groceries, or go to Ikea.
- ghaff 9y agoIf you literally don't care what the price tag is, hire a personal driver. People do. But you actually do care about the price tag.
- conception 9y agoThe people that drive Uber. Jokes aside, it's still semi-public transportation.
- alkonaut 9y agoWow. I asked in another post what people were ready to pay because of all seems like such expensive tech. To me it's worth maybe $2-5k in a new car (so 5-10%) because I usually don't mind driving. I could picture myself choosing between the sunroof/stereo and L5 autonomy...
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- arosier 9y agoFrom my discussions with a friend with intimate knowledge of the software side of Cruise, there is wild skepticism within the co that they even have the hardware needed to go L4 or L5. Big promises being made to GM by Kyle which is leading to smoke and mirrors to distract/buy time from more critical problems "under the hood."
- adewinter 9y agoWhat does "go L4 or L5" mean?
- serg_chernata 9y agoLevels 4 and 5 of driving automation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Levels_of_driving_automation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#Levels_of_drivi...
- jhkim 9y agohttp://standards.sae.org/j3016_201609/ http://standards.sae.org/j3016_201609/ no driving automation (level 0) to full driving automation (level 5)
- nrb 9y agoIt's a classification[1] for the level of automated driving capabilities in a vehicle. 1) https://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/automated_driving.pdf https://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/automated_driving.pdf
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- sjg007 9y agoL5 is fate of the furious level
- robotresearcher 9y ago
- madengr 9y agoThe last photo: "Cruise 3rd generation self-driving car assembled in Lake Orion, Michigan. It shows a steering wheel, though the info graphic shows no steering wheel. Maybe the caption should read "2nd generation".
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cruiseemployee 9y agodeleted
- yeldarb 9y agoWhy do you still work there?
- KGIII 9y agoGiven that someone archived their post, that may no longer be an issue.
- olivermarks 9y agoThanks for providing real world insight into this marketing puffery. Would love to hear your thoughts on Tesla's maturity...
- QAPereo 9y agodeleted Hm. http://archive.is/VhWor http://archive.is/VhWor
- grzm 9y agoPlease don't use URL shorteners as it obscures the destination URL. Edit to add: Also, if the intent was to reveal what was deleted, I would lean on the side of respecting someone's right to retract what they said. We've all said something that we regret saying. If you think there's something untoward going on, you can contact the HN mods via the Contact link in the footer.
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- mamurphy 9y agoThe comment had to have been deleted in under 5 minutes. I'm impressed by the quick archive.
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- kome 9y agoYeah, no. Autonomous vehicles exist since quite a while now... An Italian university tested an autonomous vehicle from Italy to China in 2010: the car was independent the 90% of the time, and semi-autonomous in case of lack of maps or other special conditions: https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/autonomous-vehicle-driving-from-italy-to-china https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-softwa...
- web007 9y agoThey're talking about mass-production-ready vehicles, not one-off testbed vehicles.
- aerovistae 9y agoWhile I'm almost always bullish on new tech, self-driving cars are one where I frankly have a pretty hard time buying into the hype. I think when they really start to hit the streets, some issues are going to show up. Here's what I mean. Imagine this situation: You're pulling into your driveway in your self-driving car, and one of your kids left a lawn gnome there, blocking it. The car won't go forward because there's an obstacle. Simultaneously, a driver looking at their phone and not paying attention comes careening down the road. They're clearly going to rear-end you, hard. You COULD just pull forward and out of the way.....but the car won't, because of the lawn gnome. It can't know the lawn gnome doesn't matter in comparison to the damage your car is about to suffer. Imagine this flip scenario: You're pulling into your driveway in your self-driving car, and one of your kids, a toddler, is in your way. The car won't go forward because there's an obstacle. Otherwise, same situation as above. Now, you ABSOLUTELY do NOT want to pull forward, because you'd rather get rear-ended than run over your child. Even if you want to nitpick this exact scenario, surely you can think of a hundred similar contexts yourself, where driving involves understanding the value of different pieces of the car's immediate environment. A car cannot know the value of a child versus a lawn gnome, nor can it reliably detect the difference. Even if such a situation only arises once in a thousand days of driving, with hundreds of millions of people on the road everyday, that's thousands of times per day. That's really bad. Is it statistically better than the amount of harm done by human drivers? Possibly. But we all still get in cars believing we'll be better than other drivers. Who's going to get in a car when any given car has an equivalent chance of making a bad decision all on its own? It's just like getting in a car with a drunk driver. Who's going to sign up for that? Not me, that's for sure.
- bjtitus 9y agoI always question whether humans are really any better at this calculation. In the gnome example, many people will probably stop to avoid damaging their property, not see the car behind them careening forward, and end up getting rear ended anyway. In an ideal world, ethical issues like the one you presented would be major hurdles but humans aren't going to be perfectly rational in the moment of many accidents, especially the most dangerous high-speed ones when there is physically not enough time to do ethical math. > we all still get in cars believing we'll be better than other drivers. Who's going to get in a car when any given car has an equivalent chance of making a bad decision all on its own? Given the fact that plenty of people take taxis, rely on Uber and Lyft drivers they've never met, and take public transportation like aircraft and trains with little knowledge of the operator, this seems like a non-issue to me.
- Severian 9y agoThat sensor assembly on the roof is ridiculous. What if I want to strap down anything to the roof, like a kayak, bike, luggage, or maybe a mattress? Good grief.
- adewinter 9y agoThe number of times I've strapped anything to the roof of my vehicle (in 13 years of driving) is exactly zero. This particular vehicle might just not be suitable for your needs. Maybe eventually auto cars without roof sensors will come out, or strapping stuff to your roof will become as ridiculous as strapping something to the side of your vehicle.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- icc97 9y agoWhether or not this car drives itself it's still damn ugly. Tesla is going about making electric cars sexy. So you won't find me interested even if it sings too. Never-the-less, for all the folks the that don't mind ugly cars it's good to have competition to gather all the data to prove that driverless cars are safer.
- bryananderson 9y agoThis is more important than one might think. At the end of the day, the mass market does not really care whether a car is gas or electric. The average Joe/Jane just has X dollars budgeted for a car and a mental model of what kind of amenities they ought to be able to get for X dollars. Most of the "mass-market" electric cars I've seen in the $35,000 range (i3, Leaf, Bolt) look like $18,000 subcompacts. They just have electric motors inside. You fundamentally cannot take an $18,000 car, slap an electric motor inside, and call it a $35,000 car. If the car is going to cost $35,000, make it a $35,000 car.
- grmarcil 9y agoNot that anyone believes that this car is really going to production anytime soon, but as an additional datapoint: the car in the first image is sporting $40,000 worth of lidar on the roof (5 x Velodyne VLP-16). I'm sure GM is getting a healthy discount off retail from Velodyne, but production-ready lidar is still eye-wateringly expensive by OEM standards. Some solid-state lidar units (Quanergy) out there in the hundreds of dollars (and one from Velodyne in the works for 2018 release), but the fact that Cruise is still using spinning Velodyne units suggests to me that solid-state lidar needs a few more generations to come up to par.
- bobsil1 9y ago>the mass market does not really care whether a car is gas or electric Which is why gov'ts need to ban ICE sooner rather than later, to save summers and stave off species suicide.
- cr0sh 9y agoI don't know if this is allowed - if not, mods delete this. To the poster who had a throwaway and identified themselves as an employee of Cruise, if the environment you work in is as toxic as you claim, your best bet, right now, is to leave. Don't stay a minute longer, as this kind of thing has a way of biting those who stay in the rear sooner rather than later.
- cycrutchfield 9y agoThe person likely has golden handcuffs that make it financially inadvisable to depart early.
- bobsil1 9y agoLUWTV, lube up and wait to vest
- pkulak 9y agoNope, I don't believe it for a second. There's no way these can run in the rain, or maybe even after dusk, and absolutely not off of extremely well researched and hand-picked routes. I'm so sick of companies trying to pretend like they've figured out level-5 self driving.
- Animats 9y agoSo GM engineering got the hardware integrated with the vehicle and engineered it for assembly line production. That's what GM engineering does. Whether the Cruise software is good enough for self-driving without driver attention remains to be seen. Volvo is doing well with their self-driving car, but admits the hardware cost is over $100K per car at present.
- tigershark 9y agoI don't really believe it is possible. Lidars were the most expensive part and are much, much cheaper now, I can't really imagine how can they spend more than 100k$ of self driving hardware per car.
- Animats 9y agoThere still are not cheap, good, 3D, automotive-grade LIDAR units. 2-3 years out, though, there should be lots of them.
- tigershark 9y agoWaymo lidar is around 7.5k$, I would say that it qualifies as a good automotive-grade lidar.
- Animats 9y agoIf you need four to six of them, as the little Google/Waymo car did, that's still too expensive.
- otakucode 9y agoHop into our self-driving car! It was designed by a team of inexperienced developers working under a manager who foreshortened deadlines and delivered ahead of schedule and under budget! The software guys asked for crazy things like 'bug trackers' and 'static analysis tools', but we kept their nose to the grindstone. Some of them said the software required more testing, but you know software guys, always such nervous ninnies. Luckily we maintained the standard business practice of keeping every employee replacable so that there were no worries when we booted those guys. Don't forget to read the fine print about the driver actually needing to keep their hands on the wheel and ready to correct the car should it do anything improper. You bear full responsibility for anything the car does. And have fun!
- HeroOfAges 9y agoHaha! Love it! This is precisely how enterprise software is developed and if you look at the way our industry has trained its managers, I can't think of any reason why the people that make decisions about these things can be convinced to do anything differently. I mean, if you can build buggy software for a Point of Service system this way, surely you can do the same thing with self driving cars! It's just software! How hard can it be?
- otakucode 9y agoOne would like to think it would be handled by auto manufacturers. But one would be DEAD (literally) wrong. We found this out a few years ago when Toyota killed a couple people with their cars and their "unintended acceleration". The degree to which they were egregiously negligent was astonishing. They were doing development around 2010... and didn't have a bug tracker. Just, nope, no way for developers to keep track of and tell one another about bugs. Who would need such a luxury? Just don't make bugs! The auto industry has a big list of 90+ required standard practices in coding firmware, and 30+ 'recommended' practices. Toyota claimed to adopt 9 of the required ones, but repeatedly violated 3 in the code, nailing 6. The CPU didn't even have error-checking RAM despite Toyotas claims that it did. It was patently absurd how bad - and how utterly standard - their practices were. And the court looked at it and said "yep, no negligence here. Software has no standards. There are no licensed engineers to hire. Go ahead and do whatever the hell you want, even if it kills people you're fine." No company is going to take the millions of dollars worth of precautions necessary to prevent things like that.
- mholt 9y agoAt this point, I'm not really going to be impressed until just ONE self-driving car company even talks about being able to handle snow and fog, preferably their cars knowing when they can't drive safely in the conditions. (It's not just about seeing through moisture: it's also about traction, something you can't really use sensors to enhance.)
- maxerickson 9y agoComputers are so much better at detecting traction problems that electronic stability control is mandatory in most new vehicles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#Regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#R...
- mholt 9y agoCool. But sometimes the road is just plain impassable. And having grown up in many Iowa winter blizzards, I still don't trust even electronic systems. They help, but sometimes there's nothing you can do when there's basically no friction.
- Nagyman 9y agoThe safest thing might be for the car to pull over, put on hazard lights, and tell you to wait or call for assistance. Humans deciding to go continue driving in such conditions is a mistake, leading to more collisions. Perhaps there will be a manual override, like "Unsafe conditions, voice password and waiver required to continue in manual mode; you might die or kill someone else."
- ghaff 9y agoOnce you get into bad snow conditions pulling over is a really bad option. That said, this is a corner case I care less about than crossing Manhattan in rain at rush hour. Or really lots of tricky busy off-highway situations.
- dmode 9y agoI read the whole blog post, but not sure what's the difference between this car and the Tesla with 2.5 Autopilot hardware. Isn't that a production ready car that will give you autonomous L4/L5 "some day" ? Or is there some fundamental difference that I am missing out on ?
- inverse_pi 9y agoAFAIK, tesla doesn't use lidars. This one has at least 2 lidars, so there's that.
- alkonaut 9y agoHow much will people be willing to pay for self driving cars? I mean it's nice feature but won't this always be very expensive tech also in the future? How expensive will it be to make this reliable in various regions (road signs, traffic laws)? Imagine how much money is spent by car manufacturers now just validating the functionality of "simple" tech like locks and wipers at the testing grounds in northern Sweden and similar. All components of these systems will have to go through the same kinds of tests. My dash display gets funny whenever it's below -20 in the car - I can only imagine what happens to all these sensors. How cheap do you think this could be made? What price do you think people (consumers, not taxi operators) are ready to pay for decent autonomy in a car?
- RivieraKid 9y agoI noticed that that the sentiment about self-driving cars become much more pessimistic (or more realistic) in the last few months compared to the previous hype.
- jakelarkin 9y agothought leaders are inflecting to the Trough of Disillusionment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle
- bobsil1 9y agoMore like the Winter of Artificial General Intelligence
- skywhopper 9y agoThis article is filled with very carefully crafted language to leave the impression that this car 1) is being mass-produced, and is 2) capable of driving itself. But if you read it closely enough, it's clear that neither of these things is true. I'm sure there's political pressure within GM for Cruise to announce these sorts of "wins" to keep management satisfied their money is being well-spent. But the breathless tone of this write-up conveys a sense of accomplishment that doesn't actually exist, and the failure to set reasonable expectations will just make the disillusionment that much stronger when it happens.
- kelvin0 9y agoOnce there is an 'Nordic' edition able to navigate winters, I'll be even more impressed. Snow, Ice and low visibility are not yet tackled as it seems. Or we could all move to SF ... and live inside our cars?
- bfree17 9y agoVogt like Mcgregor knows he'll get beat down but also knows he'll be laughing all the way to the bank. Vogt is a charlatan. Most in the industry in Michigan or SF know that his characterization of accomplishments to date is false. The intended audience of this sideshow is presumably Wall St. Normally the pronouncements of yet another American Silicon Valley type (white male huckster) startup founder are unnoteworthy. However in this case his podium and platform for reproducing silicon valley (ethics, chauvinism, racism) exists due to a taxpayer financed bailout. Interestingly that toothless loan was made possible by America's 1st Black president thereby reminding us that the devil in America takes many forms. So there it is. In America in 2017 under the guise of technological advancement we have people subsidizing their own disenfranchisement. And if you thought GM had enough still they ask for more tax breaks from California. GM turned a deaf ear to a legistlator's request for demographics of their engineering workforce. Devil wears skirts too!