4 ms·

This will be a blow to Tesla if old dinosaurs are able to execute and deliver smoothly without all this hype and bs

maxerickson 9y ago
This announcement is hype also, it's more than a year out.
ajross 9y ago
To be fair, though: this is literally the definition of hype and BS. GM is just saying what they're going to do. I mean, yeah, if it works then Tesla and Waymo are probably toast. But if Tesla and Waymo haven't made it work yet, what are the serious odds you're putting on General Motors catching up and passing them within two years?
- make3 9y ago
  they have the money to hire the ai researchers & executives, and the industrial know how & infrastructure to actually follow through. Google and Tesla probably have easier access to top top talent because of the more attractive research & dev culture & hype/branding, but GM can probably just pay more and still get high grade talent, because they know it's worth it in the long term & they have capital. .. some researchers must have been the target of pretty intense bidding wars. Like Karpathy at Tesla... I'd be really curious to know if his salary reached low 8 digits. Mid to high 7 for sure, right.
  - LeifCarrotson 9y ago
    > they have the money to hire the ai researchers & executives, and the industrial know how & infrastructure to actually follow through. If they're able to isolate these researchers and executives from the cruft and bureaucracy that has built up in their ICE-based manufacturing, sure. I've made a number of deliveries to their Warren, MI tech center. While I'm generally supportive of unionization efforts in most industries, the unions at GM cause a lot of work to take place at a tenth the pace and urgency of other companies. I'd expect that if they hire a top-talent AI researcher, they'd then ask them to spend the first 3 weeks of their employment waiting around for IT to finally procure a laptop for them. And you'd better hope that it comes with a full battery charge, because plugging the charger for said laptop into the wall requires summoning the maintenance electrician. It's unfathomable the way weeks of delay can be added to tasks that would take an hour at most in a startup.
    - fma 9y ago
      I believe in their acquisition of Cruise Automation, they've mostly left it independent and still headquartered in Silicone Valley.
- Fricken 9y ago
  GM is already ahead of Tesla in vehicle autonomy. It's even debatable as to whether GM is ahead of Waymo. Waymo is poised to deploy first in Phoenix, but they haven't even begun serious testing in dense urban areas, which are far more challenging and where Cruise is focused and making headway. GM may or may not achieve it's targets on time, but without question they are putting their money where there mouth is. GM is the most vertically integrated and they're showing very good progress relative to the competition, they're in the best position to deploy at scale. Their acquisition of Cruise was money well spent. GM has a legit opportunity to achieve dominance. And really, if anybody is spreading hype and BS about autonomous vehicles it's Tesla. Developing an autonomous OS to minimum viable product is a ~5 year job, depending on how well or poorly things go. Musk was tweeting in the spring that they'd be able to demonstrate L5 capabilities on underpowered hardware by the end of this year. Which is total bullshit. Many car companies are making nebulous claims about when they expect to achieve autonomous capabilities, but Tesla lied outright to get people to reserve their Model 3 orders.
  - tonyhb 9y ago
    > Waymo is poised to deploy first in Phoenix, but they haven't even begun serious testing in dense urban areas I've seen Waymo cars in SF around Market st, near Dolores Park and near Noe Valley. I assume that they're also testing heavily in their main cities, so (anecdotally) I don't think this is accurate.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      We'll find out in a few months when the 2017 California disengagement reports come out. In 2016, Waymo had ~630,000 autonomous miles and GM Cruise had a few thousand, so there isn't a comparison to be made on that data. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous+/testing https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous+/test...
    - Fricken 9y ago
      Waymo has been in and out of San Francisco since the beginning, but as far as I know it's not full-scale testing in preparation for a deployment. Waymo either is, or has been in 14 different cities, but their primary focus is in Phoenix.

This announcement is hype also, it's more than a year out.

To be fair, though: this is literally the definition of hype and BS. GM is just saying what they're going to do. I mean, yeah, if it works then Tesla and Waymo are probably toast. But if Tesla and Waymo haven't made it work yet, what are the serious odds you're putting on General Motors catching up and passing them within two years?

make3 9y ago
they have the money to hire the ai researchers & executives, and the industrial know how & infrastructure to actually follow through. Google and Tesla probably have easier access to top top talent because of the more attractive research & dev culture & hype/branding, but GM can probably just pay more and still get high grade talent, because they know it's worth it in the long term & they have capital. .. some researchers must have been the target of pretty intense bidding wars. Like Karpathy at Tesla... I'd be really curious to know if his salary reached low 8 digits. Mid to high 7 for sure, right.
- LeifCarrotson 9y ago
  > they have the money to hire the ai researchers & executives, and the industrial know how & infrastructure to actually follow through. If they're able to isolate these researchers and executives from the cruft and bureaucracy that has built up in their ICE-based manufacturing, sure. I've made a number of deliveries to their Warren, MI tech center. While I'm generally supportive of unionization efforts in most industries, the unions at GM cause a lot of work to take place at a tenth the pace and urgency of other companies. I'd expect that if they hire a top-talent AI researcher, they'd then ask them to spend the first 3 weeks of their employment waiting around for IT to finally procure a laptop for them. And you'd better hope that it comes with a full battery charge, because plugging the charger for said laptop into the wall requires summoning the maintenance electrician. It's unfathomable the way weeks of delay can be added to tasks that would take an hour at most in a startup.
  - fma 9y ago
    I believe in their acquisition of Cruise Automation, they've mostly left it independent and still headquartered in Silicone Valley.
Fricken 9y ago
GM is already ahead of Tesla in vehicle autonomy. It's even debatable as to whether GM is ahead of Waymo. Waymo is poised to deploy first in Phoenix, but they haven't even begun serious testing in dense urban areas, which are far more challenging and where Cruise is focused and making headway. GM may or may not achieve it's targets on time, but without question they are putting their money where there mouth is. GM is the most vertically integrated and they're showing very good progress relative to the competition, they're in the best position to deploy at scale. Their acquisition of Cruise was money well spent. GM has a legit opportunity to achieve dominance. And really, if anybody is spreading hype and BS about autonomous vehicles it's Tesla. Developing an autonomous OS to minimum viable product is a ~5 year job, depending on how well or poorly things go. Musk was tweeting in the spring that they'd be able to demonstrate L5 capabilities on underpowered hardware by the end of this year. Which is total bullshit. Many car companies are making nebulous claims about when they expect to achieve autonomous capabilities, but Tesla lied outright to get people to reserve their Model 3 orders.
- tonyhb 9y ago
  > Waymo is poised to deploy first in Phoenix, but they haven't even begun serious testing in dense urban areas I've seen Waymo cars in SF around Market st, near Dolores Park and near Noe Valley. I assume that they're also testing heavily in their main cities, so (anecdotally) I don't think this is accurate.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    We'll find out in a few months when the 2017 California disengagement reports come out. In 2016, Waymo had ~630,000 autonomous miles and GM Cruise had a few thousand, so there isn't a comparison to be made on that data. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous+/testing https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous+/test...
  - Fricken 9y ago
    Waymo has been in and out of San Francisco since the beginning, but as far as I know it's not full-scale testing in preparation for a deployment. Waymo either is, or has been in 14 different cities, but their primary focus is in Phoenix.