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G.M. Unveils Its Driverless Cars, Aiming to Lead the Pack
- josephpmay 9y agoThis comment is unfortunately not about the article, because I can’t view it on my iPhone. The link automatically opens up the app, but then the app doesn’t go to the article. Does anyone know how to get around this issue?
- callalex 9y agoUninstall the app since it’s just doing the job of a webpage anyway?
- mrfusion 9y agoSeems to be an artical about an upcoming event? Not really unveiling anything.
- danblick 9y agoNah - this happened yesterday (the day before your post). It's unusual for media to be allowed inside autonomous cars, and the conditions are usually controlled. The conditions in this demo were fairly loose (difficult public streets in San Francisco) and also involved relatively little intervention by safety drivers. (Uber did a demo in SF once but it involved very frequent human takeovers. Alternatively, Waymo had a recent demo on a closed course (I think the one at Castle airforce base) and others in Arizona suburbs where conditions are less challenging.) Fwiw as a human driver I find driving in San Francisco to be pretty challenging/stressful.
- CruiseAway 9y agoWIRED talks a lot more about the drive itself, and isn't as positive about it. https://www.wired.com/story/ride-general-motors-self-driving-car/ https://www.wired.com/story/ride-general-motors-self-driving...
- dmoy 9y agoThanks I was reading the nyt article looking for evidence of pack leading, but discovered that they haven't even started real world urban tests...
- Fricken 9y agoThey've been doing real world urban tests for about 18 months now. What do mean?
- dmoy 9y agoOk I should have said "dense urban" or something, since downtown or Manhattan is a whole different ballgame from suburban & highway. The article appeared to imply that they have not done actual urban driving yet: """ The company plans to begin tests in Manhattan early next year. Mr. Vogt is keen to prove that self-driving models can navigate complex urban environments such as downtown San Francisco, rather than just highways and suburban streets. """ Curious if anyone got a different reading from the article... (or perhaps if the journalism was just sloppy? idk)
- apendleton 9y agoThey're heavily deployed in downtown San Francisco. That's where these test drives occurred, and they've posted tons of video over the last few months of downtown SF drives. Manhattan will be a new market, but downtown SF is indisputably dense and urban.
- ISL 9y ago“move below the speed limit and ensure you don’t kill anyone.” Sounds good to me!
- Shivetya 9y agowhich brings up the question, if an AV can identify the speed limit do they always obey it or will operators of the vehicle be allowed to go faster?
- kolbe 9y agoGM invests in puff piece PR. Waymo invests in self-driving tech. We'll see which one wins out.
- neom 9y agoCurious to know how long folks here think it will be till we see AVs rolling around cities in America? I'm (literally) banking on less than 5 years, but curious what others think.
- anthonybsd 9y agoI think there's no chance we'll see them everywhere in less than 20 years. Right now they don't even do great in sandbox-controlled places with constant climate like Phoenix, AZ.
- soared 9y agoSource?
- anthonybsd 9y agohttps://www.wired.com/2017/02/self-driving-cars-cant-even-construction-zones/ https://www.wired.com/2017/02/self-driving-cars-cant-even-co... Every major city has construction zones. Right now this is a no-go for self-driving cars.
- neom 9y agow00t! Thankfully that's the point of my startup, city can tell car about stuff in advance of stuff happening (construction, 911, etc)
- jacquesm 9y agoWhy would they? Traffic signs and sensors should be all you need to navigate in traffic. If it takes some service to keep you safe then suddenly traffic is as safe as that service is reliable. And lots of this stuff is reactive or generated on the spot and the city will have no knowledge of it.
- neom 9y ago
- siculars 9y agoSo, G.M. has a decades long history of often doing the wrong thing when it comes to safety in the name of profits. Ask yourself, would you trust these folks to auto-drive you anywhere? http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/10/news/companies/gm-recall-ignition-switch-death-toll/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/10/news/companies/gm-recall-ign... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch...
- apendleton 9y agoHonestly, probably, because the bar is so very low. Humans are terrible at driving safely. We just accept it because until now we've had no alternative. I don't think a newcomer would have to execute perfectly, or even particularly well, to do better than the status quo.
- Strilanc 9y agoThe bar is actually pretty high. Making a system that fails less than once per hundred thousand kilometers is not trivial.
- Frondo 9y agoParaphrasing someone else's excellent take: Grandparent, to child, riding in an automated vehicle, "Can you believe, once upon a time people steered these?" "What? How did that work? Was that safe?" "Oh, no, 30,000 people died every year!"
- Shivetya 9y agoWell at least they don't have the gall to call it Autopilot which has connotations sufficient enough to lull a lot of people into believing a product already delivers more than it can and likely ever will. the issue we face now is, who is leading and or taking charge of this space, how are they actually doing it, and which solution is the best. with more players we might get lucky to see Level5 within a decade or two. AV is perceived by many in the same category as any safety equipment, be that as simple as a seat belt, or an airbag, or complex like ABS and traction control. As such it has to meet a much higher standard. GM has recently shown they can move in any direction they want and very quickly. The managed to launch a relatively affordable 200 mile range EV in short order with no availability issues other than an on purpose staggered release. why would any of the existing automakers cede any innovative technologies and why would we not celebrate all of them trying
- sithadmin 9y agoCruise vehicles practically swarm the area where my office in South SF is. I have to say that they're very annoying to drive around, because as the article states, they do not react to surroundings in the same way a human driver probably would. I've nearly rear-ended a couple myself. While I wouldn't say their vehicles make driving more dangerous for human vehicle operators around them, I do believe that they likely increase the risk of minor collisions.
- zebnyc 9y agoWhere in South SF? I regularly pickup/drop off my wife from work in South SF and am yet to see one
- sithadmin 9y agoOyster Point area. See quite a few of them puttering around near all the biotech office parks.
- epoxyhockey 9y agoI see them a lot along the 3rd St corridor. Recently saw one almost come to a complete stop at a green light on 3rd in Dogpatch, before the driver took over and gunned the gas pedal.
- karthikb 9y agoTons along 4th near UCSF and over across 18th in Potrero Hill.
- kcorbitt 9y agoI see one 2-3 times a week as I commute by bike up/down Bayshore Blvd.
- notyourwork 9y agoI see them in Mission Bay all the time near AT&T.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- fahayekwasright 9y agoHope they are built in the US by union labor.
- WJW 9y agoDo robots have unions yet? If not, then probably not. :)
- fahayekwasright 9y agoGM is one of the last American companies that still has a union. Hope they don’t use this as an excuse to throw that proud tradition away.
- 0xfeba 9y agoThe proud tradition that drove them to bankruptcy not too long ago?
- fahayekwasright 9y agoYou might want to check your facts if that’s what you believe. Or else I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
- sctb 9y agoCould you please avoid generic ideological tangents, like the guidelines ask? They don't lead to the kinds of discussions we're here for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- fahayekwasright 9y agoOh, go fuck yourself.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gen3 9y agoNot going to lie, I'm not sure how much I would trust a GM driver-less car.
- notyourwork 9y agoOk so you are telling the truth, care to elaborate on the why part?
- bobcallme 9y agoThe quality of many GM products has been questionable for ~20+ years. Remember how poorly they handled the ignition switch recall[1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch...
- n_plus_one 9y agoI've seen tons of Cruise vehicles on the roads of SF, clearly being driven by a human.
- agency 9y agothey always have a human in the driver's seat with their hands close to the wheel but the one time I one was close enough to see the wheel was turning on its own and their hands were just hovering over it
- incompatible 9y agoFunny statement: “You don’t see any start-ups building iPhones,” he said. Well, Apple don't license their software and would sue into oblivion anybody who tried copying them. It's not hard to find start-ups building Android phones, however.
- Eric_WVGG 9y agoApple is also sometimes called "the world’s biggest startup," and Tesla is borrowing from the same playbook… If I were at GM, I'd worry about that line from Palm CEO Ed Colligan: “We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.”
- cowmix 9y agoWhy is GM (and others) allowed to test driverless cars in SF? Didn't Uber get kicked out of SF for its driverless program and have to relocate to AZ?
- 1024core 9y agoUber didn't get the required permit (which literally cost < $100) from the state DMV. Rules? Who needs rules? -- Uber's motto
- Dylan16807 9y agoIt's less about flaunting rules and more about wanting their cars to be classified a different way.
- dmix 9y agoYou mean it's more complex than not having the foresight to get a permit? You don't say... So much reductionist criticism of these companies whenever these issues come up on HN and elsewhere. The issues are far more complicated. These companies, including AirBnB et al, are not simply pushing the idea that "all regulations are bad" or "we're above regulations". It's about pushing back in an effort for better regulations appropriate for a modern industry. Typically they are designed for a previous era or inefficiently pigeonholed onto entirely new concepts.
- 1024core 9y agoI don't know why I'm being downvoted. Please read this article [1]. Quote: "The move comes after Uber refused to apply for a $150 permit that would designate the cars as test vehicles, and allow them to be used on Californian roads, with the company arguing that the documentation didn't apply to its specific self-driving cars." [1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/21/14049070/uber-san-francisco-self-driving-removed-registration-revoked https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/21/14049070/uber-san-franci...
- SilasX 9y agoIt's legal to test them, but you have to register them as such. Uber refused to register them (as I understand it) because it felt they didn't meet the legal definition of autonomous. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/technology/uber-self-driving-car-san-francisco.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/technology/uber-self-driv...