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I'd buy a self driving car that just doesn't work in bad conditions. The bigger question is "has the self driving issue been solved in clear conditions." Is th

I'd buy a self driving car that just doesn't work in bad conditions. The bigger question is "has the self driving issue been solved in clear conditions." Is there any real evidence someone has a self driving car that is better than human drivers? I see a lot of promises.

tome 9y ago
I'm trying to get to roughly the same answer here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15824953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15824953
- ghaff 9y ago
  A lot of it is software. The hardware is mostly solved except for cost and there's no reason to think it won't go through the same cost reduction curves that are common throughout the industry. So, IF you can get to viable technology for specific use cases, there's not much reason to think you can't get to workable economics.
  - tome 9y ago
    > So, IF you can get to viable technology for specific use cases, there's not much reason to think you can't get to workable economics. This seems like a good analysis, but are there particularly good reasons to believe we will be able to produce a car that drives through an urban environment, at any cost?
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Some day. At this point, IMO it would be foolish to say never or not for a century. We could find ourselves in a place where the current path that's mostly deep learning gets close but not close enough. But we seem to be moving forward pretty well even if the last 5 to 10% takes a couple decades longer than many people think. But I'm still inclined to think that generalized door-to-door autonomy without a competent human present is still a long way out.
    - kjksf 9y ago
      Waymo cars already drive in Phoenix, Arizona (i.e. urban environment) without human drivers. https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-google-arizona-phoenix-driverless-self-driving-cars/ https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-google-arizona-phoenix-dri...
Fricken 9y ago
Oh, no. GM doesn't expect you'll be able to buy your own for 10-15 years. They're focused on robotaxis. Robotaxis are geo-fenced. They're worth ~$200K apiece (that's a very loose figure). Autonomous vehicles will require a fair bit of maintenance and oversight before they're idiot proof enough put in the hands of private owners. Initial commercial deployments will certainly be in fair weather cities.
- criddell 9y ago
  If GM can make more money operating a robotaxi fleet, why would they ever even offer them for sale? There are a lot of medium sized cities in the US with crappy public transportation systems. Maybe these cities could subsidize on-demand rides in robotaxi fleets operated by GM and Uber and other companies rather than owning and operating a fleet of buses running on a limited schedule.
  - cdancette 9y ago
    Because other will sell autonomous cars. And the first on the market will certainly have a big advantage. Also, would you rather take an autonomous cab in a car you own and trust (or that your friends own), or in a car you've never tried ?
    - leereeves 9y ago
      I wonder if we'll ever own autonomous cars, or if we'll buy a license to use them like we do with software.
  - Fricken 9y ago
    It's a good question. GM is projecting they'll be able to get rideshare costs down below $1 per mile around 2025. They believe that when they can do that they'll be able to collect 20-30% margins through a scaled robotaxi service. It would be a waste to sell a vehicle at a 5% margin when it's worth so much more as an autonomous fleet vehicle.
    - 9y ago
Eridrus 9y ago
There is a wide range of ability when it comes to driving cars, these don't have to be better than everyone to be useful, just better than the worst drivers, which I think it's clear they already are.
- the8472 9y ago
  Plus they learn as a fleet. So when they start out as barely better than the worst legal drivers and start improving then a large set of vehicles will improve every time they roll out improvements to handle some edge cases.
- rhino369 9y ago
  1) Why do you think that? Has any car ever been successfully test in traffic for long periods of time without human intervention. 2) Better than the worst isn't good enough because good drivers would buy them too.
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    Cruise Automation reported 6 disengagements over 2200 miles of downtown SF driving last November: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/deade5b7-5b10-4b25-a926-78484dbc2b31/GMCruise_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/deade5b7-5b10-4b25... Waymo was reporting 0.2 disengagements per 1000 miles last year, but people like to nit pick those because they're not all downtown miles. For context humans have 0.006 accidents per 1000 miles driven, and that's counting all the simple miles we drive on highways. So last year Waymo was within a factor of 30 of average human performance, assuming each disengagement was an accident. If you allow for the fact that with so few disengagements, some of this is noise, and that most of these disengagements would probably not result in accidents, but are rather drivers being cautious and the cars are probably better a year later, I'd say they're probably knocking on the door of human safety at least. Obviously hard to really say without more data, but the data makes me bullish rather than bearish.
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  If all the car reviewers get their hands on it and say it's like a timid person lost in downtown Baltimore driving a uhaul truck it's gonna crash and burn You have to do something well to redeem that or sales will be a flop. It doesn't look like self driving cars will be much cheaper, better handling, cheaper to own or more luxurious than normal car so the only thing left is for them to drive as better than most people. The kind of review you want is "this thing costs $10k more than a Prius but being able to sleep off a hangover on your way to work is worth every bit of that $10k"
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
wmeredith 9y ago
> I'd buy a self driving car that just doesn't work in bad conditions. Same here. I live in the midwest and our two-car family always owns at least one 4x4/AWD vehicle for the winter. The other is usually optimized for MPG/reliability (things that go down when you start adding heavy parts - like the kind needed for AWD).
- rhino369 9y ago
  And I can just drive it myself presumably. I drove a '89 Ford Tarus with bald tires in Chicago winters.
mikestew 9y ago
The bigger question is "has the self driving issue been solved in clear conditions." It's hilarious how far ahead of ourselves we've gotten on this topic. "Can it drive in the snow yet?" Umm, how about we get them to drive from Redmond->Seattle in clear conditions and minimal traffic before we start talking about whether it'll get me to the ski resort.

tome 9y ago

I'm trying to get to roughly the same answer here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15824953 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15824953

ghaff 9y ago
A lot of it is software. The hardware is mostly solved except for cost and there's no reason to think it won't go through the same cost reduction curves that are common throughout the industry. So, IF you can get to viable technology for specific use cases, there's not much reason to think you can't get to workable economics.
- tome 9y ago
  > So, IF you can get to viable technology for specific use cases, there's not much reason to think you can't get to workable economics. This seems like a good analysis, but are there particularly good reasons to believe we will be able to produce a car that drives through an urban environment, at any cost?
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Some day. At this point, IMO it would be foolish to say never or not for a century. We could find ourselves in a place where the current path that's mostly deep learning gets close but not close enough. But we seem to be moving forward pretty well even if the last 5 to 10% takes a couple decades longer than many people think. But I'm still inclined to think that generalized door-to-door autonomy without a competent human present is still a long way out.
  - kjksf 9y ago
    Waymo cars already drive in Phoenix, Arizona (i.e. urban environment) without human drivers. https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-google-arizona-phoenix-driverless-self-driving-cars/ https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-google-arizona-phoenix-dri...

Fricken 9y ago

Oh, no. GM doesn't expect you'll be able to buy your own for 10-15 years. They're focused on robotaxis. Robotaxis are geo-fenced. They're worth ~$200K apiece (that's a very loose figure). Autonomous vehicles will require a fair bit of maintenance and oversight before they're idiot proof enough put in the hands of private owners. Initial commercial deployments will certainly be in fair weather cities.

criddell 9y ago
If GM can make more money operating a robotaxi fleet, why would they ever even offer them for sale? There are a lot of medium sized cities in the US with crappy public transportation systems. Maybe these cities could subsidize on-demand rides in robotaxi fleets operated by GM and Uber and other companies rather than owning and operating a fleet of buses running on a limited schedule.
- cdancette 9y ago
  Because other will sell autonomous cars. And the first on the market will certainly have a big advantage. Also, would you rather take an autonomous cab in a car you own and trust (or that your friends own), or in a car you've never tried ?
  - leereeves 9y ago
    I wonder if we'll ever own autonomous cars, or if we'll buy a license to use them like we do with software.
- Fricken 9y ago
  It's a good question. GM is projecting they'll be able to get rideshare costs down below $1 per mile around 2025. They believe that when they can do that they'll be able to collect 20-30% margins through a scaled robotaxi service. It would be a waste to sell a vehicle at a 5% margin when it's worth so much more as an autonomous fleet vehicle.
  - 9y ago

Eridrus 9y ago

There is a wide range of ability when it comes to driving cars, these don't have to be better than everyone to be useful, just better than the worst drivers, which I think it's clear they already are.

the8472 9y ago
Plus they learn as a fleet. So when they start out as barely better than the worst legal drivers and start improving then a large set of vehicles will improve every time they roll out improvements to handle some edge cases.
rhino369 9y ago
1) Why do you think that? Has any car ever been successfully test in traffic for long periods of time without human intervention. 2) Better than the worst isn't good enough because good drivers would buy them too.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Cruise Automation reported 6 disengagements over 2200 miles of downtown SF driving last November: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/deade5b7-5b10-4b25-a926-78484dbc2b31/GMCruise_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/deade5b7-5b10-4b25... Waymo was reporting 0.2 disengagements per 1000 miles last year, but people like to nit pick those because they're not all downtown miles. For context humans have 0.006 accidents per 1000 miles driven, and that's counting all the simple miles we drive on highways. So last year Waymo was within a factor of 30 of average human performance, assuming each disengagement was an accident. If you allow for the fact that with so few disengagements, some of this is noise, and that most of these disengagements would probably not result in accidents, but are rather drivers being cautious and the cars are probably better a year later, I'd say they're probably knocking on the door of human safety at least. Obviously hard to really say without more data, but the data makes me bullish rather than bearish.
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
If all the car reviewers get their hands on it and say it's like a timid person lost in downtown Baltimore driving a uhaul truck it's gonna crash and burn You have to do something well to redeem that or sales will be a flop. It doesn't look like self driving cars will be much cheaper, better handling, cheaper to own or more luxurious than normal car so the only thing left is for them to drive as better than most people. The kind of review you want is "this thing costs $10k more than a Prius but being able to sleep off a hangover on your way to work is worth every bit of that $10k"

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

wmeredith 9y ago

> I'd buy a self driving car that just doesn't work in bad conditions. Same here. I live in the midwest and our two-car family always owns at least one 4x4/AWD vehicle for the winter. The other is usually optimized for MPG/reliability (things that go down when you start adding heavy parts - like the kind needed for AWD).

rhino369 9y ago
And I can just drive it myself presumably. I drove a '89 Ford Tarus with bald tires in Chicago winters.

mikestew 9y ago

The bigger question is "has the self driving issue been solved in clear conditions." It's hilarious how far ahead of ourselves we've gotten on this topic. "Can it drive in the snow yet?" Umm, how about we get them to drive from Redmond->Seattle in clear conditions and minimal traffic before we start talking about whether it'll get me to the ski resort.