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As someone who worked in the industry, there are a couple of different approaches, incredible amounts of hype, and disappointing amounts of progress to fully au
by chairmanwow1 6y ago
As someone who worked in the industry, there are a couple of different approaches, incredible amounts of hype, and disappointing amounts of progress to fully autonomous vehicles.
* Tesla driver assistance features that they market as self-driving features. You need a driver that is alert and monitoring the vehicle because it can return control to the driver without warning.
* Waymo has launched limited L4 pilot in the "easy" Tempe, AZ area. They have remote teleoperation / monitoring but no driving in the car.
* ATG has prototypes that run with safety drivers
* Cruise has prototypes that run with safety drivers + they are working on tele-monitoring / teleoperation.
* Comma.AI has a consumer-available L2 driver-assistance device that you can add to your car to do ACC and lane keeping.
* Aurora has prototypes that run with safety drivers
* Zoox (bought by AMZN) has prototypes that run with safety drivers
* Smattering of other companies that are working on the tech, but are no where close to a product launch (Lyft, Toyota, Argo etc)
In general, there was a bunch of hype and bunch of money poured into the industry in 2016-2018. Others saw people pouring money into it and assumed a breakthrough was close and so they poured more money in. The cycle continued to spiral into huge multi-billion dollar investments into technology that is still IMO quite far away from a public launch. Turns out that several years later, it's really hard and no one is actually that close to useful AVs.
Waymo has a publicly available product launched, but I'm confident they are running that program at a significant loss.
Cruise has struggled to hit the milestones set in their funding deals to unlock the next levels of funding.
In my opinion, Comma is going to crush it in the next 2 years, Tesla will keep refining their AP tech, but still won't be FSD. I think autonomous robotaxis will be the norm eventually but not until after 2025.
- mumblemumble 6y ago> it's really hard and no one is actually that close to useful AVs My suspicion is that the thing everyone's going to founder on is that a large part of safely operating a motor vehicle on the public roadways consists of observing and then predicting the behavior of all the drivers, cyclists and pedestrians. So you need to either have true AI, or somehow get all the humans on those roadways to stop behaving so erratically. The problem is, one of those is currently impossible and the other is currently infeasible. (I'm not sure which is which, and I'm not sure it matters.)
- shadowofneptune 6y agoAre you concerned that lack of progress could lead to a sort of "self-driving winter," like the AI winters experienced in the past?
- kajecounterhack 6y ago> In my opinion, Comma is going to crush it in the next 2 years, Tesla will keep refining their AP tech, but still won't be FSD. I think autonomous robotaxis will be the norm eventually but not until after 2025. Curious why you think Comma is going to crush it vs all the other companies working in this space?
- chairmanwow1 6y agoI think Tesla and Comma are by far the best positioned for the consumer tech. Trucking is not something I feel qualified to comment on, because I don’t have a sense for the economics. But I know a bunch of R&D is going on here. Most players in the space made investments in driver replacement tech which is multiple years from profitability. I think the places that this kind of tech makes sense is in licensing it to TNCs or operating a fleet of vehicles that you list on a TNC’s network. On the other hand, driver assistance features are the only systems that can generate meaningful revenue today. One of Tesla’s finest selling points is their AP software. In this vein, Comma is the Android to Tesla’s tightly integrated iOS. They are profitable today and ultimately have a larger TAM (new cars vs Tesla owners).