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Does anyone here think that a group other than Waymo is in the lead when it comes to short, medium, and long term deliverables on delivering actual SDC as a pro

Does anyone here think that a group other than Waymo is in the lead when it comes to short, medium, and long term deliverables on delivering actual SDC as a product? Whether we think of taxi services or privately owned vehicles, I don't see Tesla, Cruise/GM, Intel/Mobileye, or indeed any other venture which is running actual rides with no one in the driver's seat. Not to mention the disengagement data from California, which Waymo was doing very well on. Granted, overall, all of these teams are being secretive, so it's tough to know where they truly stand. Still, based on what we've seen, I say Waymo is out in front by at least 6-12 months. When it comes to delivering SDC to the entire globe, obviously there will be a geo-spatial distribution of roll-outs, with sunny/dry/well planned out places (i.e. Arizona, California) getting SDC first, and snowy/wet/poorly organized (i.e. Boston's cowpaths) cities getting them much later. Not to mention, there need to be lax regulations that remove obstacles to local adoption, and super long term we'll see SDC-specific infrastructure improvements to utilize their inherent advantages/disadvantages. But, for now, it seems to me that Waymo is in the lead and that the SW USA and California will get all of these Waymo tech in Chrysler/other vehicles first.

arijun 9y ago
One thing that gets mentioned is the many thousands of miles that have been driven by Tesla vehicles, giving them sensor data in so many situations that may not have been seen yet by other companies. We may have to wait and see how much of an advantage that actually gives them (if any).
- what_ever 9y ago
  Has there been any report on how much data is actually uploaded back to Tesla? I would be pretty pissed as a owner for uploading all of my rides back for privacy as well as bandwidth reasons.
- burkemw3 9y ago
  I have read about the sensor suite on Teslas on the road being different from the suite on the Waymo cars, for example. So, the sensor data from Tesla may be more or less valuable, regardless of the amount of it. Wait and see is certainly the game.
- aidenn0 9y ago
  All the people I've talked to who have worked on self-driving cars seem to think that Tesla is working blindfolded by not having LIDAR. Time will prove if they are right, but certainly the biggest jump in self-driving car ability was due to adding LIDAR rather than any software or data trick.
  - cecilpl2 9y ago
    Musk's opinion is that passive image recognition (ie just cameras) is a requirement for full L5 autonomy. If you have to build that, then LIDAR isn't necessary. You may get a significant boost in ability with LIDAR, but it's possible that over-reliance on it will hamper those companies' ability to develop passive image recognition and they will end up stuck. That opinion certainly seems possible, and Musk does seem to have a track record of being very intelligent and perceptive, and is known to develop his opinions from first principles. So... I'm generally inclined to believe he's correct.
    - kyzyl 9y ago
      The problem with Musk's argument is that there isn't any indication so far that the machine learning has tricks up its sleeve that are sufficient resolve all of the ambiguous situations drivers come across. Having direct, accurate measurements of the environment serves as a ground truth that you don't have with just cameras. Humans don't have LIDAR, but we do have a different ground truth: we have a mental model of the world, and can reason about it. It's not just that we know things like 'fast cars take time to stop' or 'he looked at me so is probably aware of me', but rather being able to synthesize based on really complex behaviors we've never seen before, and in many cases, direct communication. All that is to say, there is a lot more to human drivers than their eyes, and for the moment there is nothing showing that we're on the cusp of developing real AI that can address those concerns. I don't think it's just a matter of labeling more data and GPUing bigger models. So while Musk might be right if we get such AI, it's not clear that it's about to arrive, and even if it does, we can still use LIDAR. In fact chances are that if you have such great AI, additional sensor inputs will turn it from 'Level 5 Autonomous Pilot' to 'Ultra-super human pilot who can preemtively react to situations you didn't even realize were possible in the moment.'. Of course there are questions at hand: 1. Is Elon right and I'm wrong? Maybe strong(er) AI is right around the corner. 2. Is current LIDAR tech good enough to reliably provide the ground-truth I spoke about?
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  The thing is if you have LIDAR and video you can create video only models using the LIDAR data to use to teach the video models.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zzzzzzzza 9y ago
I think Cruise/GM is winning. Waymo has distance, cruise/gm has velocity and acceleration. Retrofitting pacificas is not scalable. You basically have to be or buy a car company to actually deploy a profitable self driving taas at scale (and it still won't be profitable overnight) imo, and that will be true until you can buy self driving cars directly from manufacturers, which will probably happen like ~2 years minimum after the first car manufacturer starts deploying their self driving taas. Why is this? Because self driving cars require shit tons of wiring (and quality wiring at that) and redundancy, and you want to do that in a plant, not by hand; moreover you can save a lot of capital costs by making your taas car more like a model 3, that is, stripping everything out of it, but you can't get those savings by just retrofitting pacificas. Google isn't playing to win at this point - maybe they don't yet believe it's ready for deployment any time soon. Personally I think there will be (perhaps somewhat small) geofenced publicly available commercial deployments within 2 years though. Also I would rank tesla dead last, less sensor capability than everyone who's trying it seriously (this impacts data collection ability)... model 3 is a botched attempt a self driving taxi, serious financial issues, there's been a lot of turnover in their self driving team with people leaving for places like argo ai (self driving startup ford bought), and, ideologically, they can only deploy electric self driving cars without hurting their brand (though all self driving cars will be at least hybrids).
- Zyst 9y ago
  I think its more likely that once Waymo has a complete plan they will switch to partnering with existing brands, many of which might not have gotten their own self driving efforts to a point where they can compete. At least I have not seen any signs of Waymo aiming for car mass production.
- iknowstuff 9y ago
  > and, ideologically, they can only deploy electric self driving cars without hurting their brand (though all self driving cars will be at least hybrids). You think this is a con?
- jacksmith21006 9y ago
  Disagree. The data available has Waymo well ahead and continues to increase the gap.
jacksmith21006 9y ago
Think Waymo still s pretty far out in front and theirs to lose.

arijun 9y ago

One thing that gets mentioned is the many thousands of miles that have been driven by Tesla vehicles, giving them sensor data in so many situations that may not have been seen yet by other companies. We may have to wait and see how much of an advantage that actually gives them (if any).

what_ever 9y ago
Has there been any report on how much data is actually uploaded back to Tesla? I would be pretty pissed as a owner for uploading all of my rides back for privacy as well as bandwidth reasons.
burkemw3 9y ago
I have read about the sensor suite on Teslas on the road being different from the suite on the Waymo cars, for example. So, the sensor data from Tesla may be more or less valuable, regardless of the amount of it. Wait and see is certainly the game.
aidenn0 9y ago
All the people I've talked to who have worked on self-driving cars seem to think that Tesla is working blindfolded by not having LIDAR. Time will prove if they are right, but certainly the biggest jump in self-driving car ability was due to adding LIDAR rather than any software or data trick.
- cecilpl2 9y ago
  Musk's opinion is that passive image recognition (ie just cameras) is a requirement for full L5 autonomy. If you have to build that, then LIDAR isn't necessary. You may get a significant boost in ability with LIDAR, but it's possible that over-reliance on it will hamper those companies' ability to develop passive image recognition and they will end up stuck. That opinion certainly seems possible, and Musk does seem to have a track record of being very intelligent and perceptive, and is known to develop his opinions from first principles. So... I'm generally inclined to believe he's correct.
  - kyzyl 9y ago
    The problem with Musk's argument is that there isn't any indication so far that the machine learning has tricks up its sleeve that are sufficient resolve all of the ambiguous situations drivers come across. Having direct, accurate measurements of the environment serves as a ground truth that you don't have with just cameras. Humans don't have LIDAR, but we do have a different ground truth: we have a mental model of the world, and can reason about it. It's not just that we know things like 'fast cars take time to stop' or 'he looked at me so is probably aware of me', but rather being able to synthesize based on really complex behaviors we've never seen before, and in many cases, direct communication. All that is to say, there is a lot more to human drivers than their eyes, and for the moment there is nothing showing that we're on the cusp of developing real AI that can address those concerns. I don't think it's just a matter of labeling more data and GPUing bigger models. So while Musk might be right if we get such AI, it's not clear that it's about to arrive, and even if it does, we can still use LIDAR. In fact chances are that if you have such great AI, additional sensor inputs will turn it from 'Level 5 Autonomous Pilot' to 'Ultra-super human pilot who can preemtively react to situations you didn't even realize were possible in the moment.'. Of course there are questions at hand: 1. Is Elon right and I'm wrong? Maybe strong(er) AI is right around the corner. 2. Is current LIDAR tech good enough to reliably provide the ground-truth I spoke about?
jacksmith21006 9y ago
The thing is if you have LIDAR and video you can create video only models using the LIDAR data to use to teach the video models.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

zzzzzzzza 9y ago

I think Cruise/GM is winning. Waymo has distance, cruise/gm has velocity and acceleration. Retrofitting pacificas is not scalable. You basically have to be or buy a car company to actually deploy a profitable self driving taas at scale (and it still won't be profitable overnight) imo, and that will be true until you can buy self driving cars directly from manufacturers, which will probably happen like ~2 years minimum after the first car manufacturer starts deploying their self driving taas. Why is this? Because self driving cars require shit tons of wiring (and quality wiring at that) and redundancy, and you want to do that in a plant, not by hand; moreover you can save a lot of capital costs by making your taas car more like a model 3, that is, stripping everything out of it, but you can't get those savings by just retrofitting pacificas. Google isn't playing to win at this point - maybe they don't yet believe it's ready for deployment any time soon. Personally I think there will be (perhaps somewhat small) geofenced publicly available commercial deployments within 2 years though. Also I would rank tesla dead last, less sensor capability than everyone who's trying it seriously (this impacts data collection ability)... model 3 is a botched attempt a self driving taxi, serious financial issues, there's been a lot of turnover in their self driving team with people leaving for places like argo ai (self driving startup ford bought), and, ideologically, they can only deploy electric self driving cars without hurting their brand (though all self driving cars will be at least hybrids).

Zyst 9y ago
I think its more likely that once Waymo has a complete plan they will switch to partnering with existing brands, many of which might not have gotten their own self driving efforts to a point where they can compete. At least I have not seen any signs of Waymo aiming for car mass production.
iknowstuff 9y ago
> and, ideologically, they can only deploy electric self driving cars without hurting their brand (though all self driving cars will be at least hybrids). You think this is a con?
jacksmith21006 9y ago
Disagree. The data available has Waymo well ahead and continues to increase the gap.

jacksmith21006 9y ago

Think Waymo still s pretty far out in front and theirs to lose.