4 ms·

No release date or price or anything? I honestly don't even know what this is. Is it for the city or for the individual? What are its capabilities? I sure would

No release date or price or anything? I honestly don't even know what this is. Is it for the city or for the individual? What are its capabilities? I sure would love ANY concrete details. This is all just tech marketing speak, same old bullshit.

sp332 7y ago
There are some indirect references to price in here: https://medium.com/cruise/the-cruise-origin-story-b6e9ad4b47e5 https://medium.com/cruise/the-cruise-origin-story-b6e9ad4b47... I don't know why they give both the manufacturing cost ("half the cost of what a conventional electric SUV costs") and the cost to the customer ("on average, see up to $5,000 back in their pocket every year").
- ec109685 7y ago
  “At this very moment, we’re running fleets of our third-generation vehicles on the roads of San Francisco, operating a rideshare service that any Cruise employee can use, 24/7” This is so disingenuous. Every car has a human safety driver in it that they failed to mention.
throwawayjava 7y ago
And the "apply" link in the top right is for jobs, not for a closed beta.
Animats 7y ago
Yes. Cruise has been "fake it til you make it" since their original demo video. Now "all vehicles shown on road are renders" in fine print. Here are the CA DMV's autonomous vehicle accident reports for 2019.[1] Cruise has a lot of them. Mostly being rear-ended by a human-driven car. A surprisingly large number are with the vehicle being driven manually, or right after the human driver took over. True driverless still seems a long way off given those results. I've seen Cruise cars in SF, most recently making a left turn off Union St in manual mode. GM's first try at self-driving, Firebird III in 1958, was far cooler than this mini-bus thing. The mini-bus area seems a good place to start with self-driving. I was once thinking airport parking lot shuttles. Controlled environment, low speed - that could work. But the financial numbers don't work out. You get rid of the driver cost, but you add sizable engineering cost and vehicle cost, and you don't sell many vehicles that way. Local Motors and some other startups have been struggling quietly in that space for years now. Local Motors' Olli has three live installations, with about six vehicles total, all very recent. A college campus, a casino area, and a dedicated track at an industrial park are the public installations. Demos, basically. The thing is so slow that walking might be faster, and any bicycle or electric scooter would be much faster. Not fast enough to get people from Economy Parking to the terminal. Navya, from France, seems to be further along. They provided the self-driving shuttles for the Las Vegas strip. They have a number of live mini-bus installations in Europe. They've announced an autonomous cab, but it is not deployed yet. This is still something that can only be done if someone is willing to finance a money-loser. However, this is perhaps the best time in history for that. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... [2] https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=649 https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=649
- ovi256 7y ago
  Re "CA DMV's autonomous vehicle accident reports for 2019.[1] Cruise has a lot of them." Cruise has just put up a post dismissing the disengagement metric. It seems to me they're on a PR campaign to keep funding coming. https://medium.com/cruise/the-disengagement-myth-1b5cbdf8e239 https://medium.com/cruise/the-disengagement-myth-1b5cbdf8e23...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  > Now "all vehicles shown on road are renders" in fine print. The images of the "Origin" are renders. Not all vehicles. They have plenty of data and footage from their actual self-driving cars.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- akadruid1 7y ago
  "Finance a money loser" is exactly how local government has been deploying buses all over my country for decades. I assume many countries are like this. Outside of major cities, the main users of the 100,000s of buses are those who cannot drive, primarily school children, disabled and elderly. The bus users pay more per mile than car owners, and the majority of the population pays a lot of taxation and air pollution. Removing vehicle emissions is a no-brainer, but removing the driver makes it possible to replace 50+ seat buses every hour with 4-6 seat buses every 5 mins and vary the routes or add additional vehicles dynamically in response to demand. Sadly this will take a long time - local government won't do anything until forced or until they see an obvious vote winner
  - zip1234 7y ago
    Cars aren't a money loser? Think of all those parking spots that cities pay for as well as the massive road infrastructure (as well as extra utilities that have to be run to account for urban sprawl). Cars are massively subsidized.
avocado4 7y ago
Makes me think they published an update to keep investors happy.

sp332 7y ago

There are some indirect references to price in here: https://medium.com/cruise/the-cruise-origin-story-b6e9ad4b47e5 https://medium.com/cruise/the-cruise-origin-story-b6e9ad4b47... I don't know why they give both the manufacturing cost ("half the cost of what a conventional electric SUV costs") and the cost to the customer ("on average, see up to $5,000 back in their pocket every year").

ec109685 7y ago
“At this very moment, we’re running fleets of our third-generation vehicles on the roads of San Francisco, operating a rideshare service that any Cruise employee can use, 24/7” This is so disingenuous. Every car has a human safety driver in it that they failed to mention.

throwawayjava 7y ago

And the "apply" link in the top right is for jobs, not for a closed beta.

Animats 7y ago

Yes. Cruise has been "fake it til you make it" since their original demo video. Now "all vehicles shown on road are renders" in fine print. Here are the CA DMV's autonomous vehicle accident reports for 2019.[1] Cruise has a lot of them. Mostly being rear-ended by a human-driven car. A surprisingly large number are with the vehicle being driven manually, or right after the human driver took over. True driverless still seems a long way off given those results. I've seen Cruise cars in SF, most recently making a left turn off Union St in manual mode. GM's first try at self-driving, Firebird III in 1958, was far cooler than this mini-bus thing. The mini-bus area seems a good place to start with self-driving. I was once thinking airport parking lot shuttles. Controlled environment, low speed - that could work. But the financial numbers don't work out. You get rid of the driver cost, but you add sizable engineering cost and vehicle cost, and you don't sell many vehicles that way. Local Motors and some other startups have been struggling quietly in that space for years now. Local Motors' Olli has three live installations, with about six vehicles total, all very recent. A college campus, a casino area, and a dedicated track at an industrial park are the public installations. Demos, basically. The thing is so slow that walking might be faster, and any bicycle or electric scooter would be much faster. Not fast enough to get people from Economy Parking to the terminal. Navya, from France, seems to be further along. They provided the self-driving shuttles for the Las Vegas strip. They have a number of live mini-bus installations in Europe. They've announced an autonomous cab, but it is not deployed yet. This is still something that can only be done if someone is willing to finance a money-loser. However, this is perhaps the best time in history for that. [1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/autonomousveh_ol316 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton... [2] https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=649 https://youtu.be/xKOdux6Gjno?t=649

ovi256 7y ago
Re "CA DMV's autonomous vehicle accident reports for 2019.[1] Cruise has a lot of them." Cruise has just put up a post dismissing the disengagement metric. It seems to me they're on a PR campaign to keep funding coming. https://medium.com/cruise/the-disengagement-myth-1b5cbdf8e239 https://medium.com/cruise/the-disengagement-myth-1b5cbdf8e23...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Dylan16807 7y ago
> Now "all vehicles shown on road are renders" in fine print. The images of the "Origin" are renders. Not all vehicles. They have plenty of data and footage from their actual self-driving cars.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
akadruid1 7y ago
"Finance a money loser" is exactly how local government has been deploying buses all over my country for decades. I assume many countries are like this. Outside of major cities, the main users of the 100,000s of buses are those who cannot drive, primarily school children, disabled and elderly. The bus users pay more per mile than car owners, and the majority of the population pays a lot of taxation and air pollution. Removing vehicle emissions is a no-brainer, but removing the driver makes it possible to replace 50+ seat buses every hour with 4-6 seat buses every 5 mins and vary the routes or add additional vehicles dynamically in response to demand. Sadly this will take a long time - local government won't do anything until forced or until they see an obvious vote winner
- zip1234 7y ago
  Cars aren't a money loser? Think of all those parking spots that cities pay for as well as the massive road infrastructure (as well as extra utilities that have to be run to account for urban sprawl). Cars are massively subsidized.

avocado4 7y ago

Makes me think they published an update to keep investors happy.