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What is comma.ai's business model here? I mean whose auto insurance(both collision and more importantly liability) has a clause that lets anyone hook up a rand

What is comma.ai's business model here? I mean whose auto insurance(both collision and more importantly liability) has a clause that lets anyone hook up a random after market self driving toolkit to their car. Who has liability once you start using their solution? I'm sure comma.ai will have a clause that their solution is only for fun and you can't blame them if their self driving solution drives your car into a bus full of orphans. So what's the point of what they are selling if you can't actually use it? Or put another way, a self driving, or even driving assist add on only has value if the vendor absorbs all liability when using their system.

stevenhubertron 6y ago
Bingo. Liability is a huge risk here and they are using their "customers" as alpha testers that are playing Russian roulette with their lives and those around them. I want Comma to succeed but not by shipping alpha-products to the general public that doesn't understand the risks.
- sodality2 6y ago
  Wait, they're shipping it already? Wtf, all I did was look at their codebase and I assumed they were just making some news about it. Distributing code and shipping a product are very different, and I'll be surprised if nothing bad comes out of it soon.
  - gjsman-1000 6y ago
    Comma thinks they are ready because it's essentially an Adaptive Cruise Control, and as they state on their website, they scored #1 for best at that by Consumer Reports compared to the stock offerings from Ford, Nissan, and other carmakers. Frankly, I don't know if _anyone_ should be including this kind of tech if it's this early, but Comma is currently far from the only one for what it does. Frankly, because it scored #1 and the code is open-source, I'd be much more likely to trust Comma than the stock offering from my manufacturer.
    - sodality2 6y ago
      >It enables your car to steer, accelerate, and brake automatically within its lane. Drive to a highway, press the cruise control SET button, and openpilot will engage Ah, it isn't marketed as a full autopilot. I'm not 100% confident that it should be used in the current state but I'm also not an auto regulator, so we shall see.
      - sjcoles 6y ago
        I have one. Works pretty well but requires a fair bit of tweaking. It's called a dev kit for a reason. Many car models limit the amount (and at what rate) that the computer system can turn the wheel. The system is piggybacking off of this engineering for most of its 'safety'. There was people spoofing park assist on some models to get very strong control of the wheel but such discussion got banned on the official discord. Which leads me to my big problem with Comma.ai: it's open source but not very open. Look at the code, go back several releases and watch the number of comments regress. There's zero documentation, the wiki is a fucking joke and for some reason does not come up in a google search and is just missing critical information. No, I don't want to watch a 5 fucking minute video to find a 10 second clip with the information I need. Write that shit down. Instead you ask a question and some asshole that is gunning for a job at comma posts a passive agressive screenshot of them using the discord search. It's almost like if you put effort into having information recorded instead of being a dick you wouldn't have to be a dick. That wouldn't be very fun or inflate egos much so it doesn't happen.
        acct776 6y ago
        Hope you're listening, George (commaai). Long time listener, first time caller - rooting for you. See you soon.
    - 23iofj 6y ago
      > best at that by Consumer Reports compared to the stock offerings from Ford, Nissan, and other carmakers. Read through the Consumer Reports PDF [1]. It's abundantly clear that they have no idea how to properly evaluate adaptive cruise systems. What this report tells you is exactly what you would expect from a Consumer Reports publication: the generic impression that a typical consumer will have after a few hours of use. This sort of superficial analysis is completely unrelated to anything approaching a real safety analysis. [1] https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/consumer-reports-active-driving-assistance-systems-november-16-2020.pdf https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...
optional_value 6y ago
I think their strategy is selling the technology to car manufacturers and investors not average people.
- bbaumgar 6y ago
  They have a "Shop" button on their homepage that lets anyone buy their product for installation on their own car. I had a coworker purchase Comma.ai + a specific make/model solely for its Comma.ai compatibility last year. Average people are getting in on this, for the better or (likely) worse.
  - optional_value 6y ago
    But isn't the real value the data they gather to train their models? This is where to money is.
agentdrtran 6y ago
> Who has liability once you start using their solution? Their FAQ just says "ask your insurance company" lol
nzmsv 6y ago
They want to avoid thinking about non-engineering things like liability for as long as possible and focus on the engineering problem. It's a valid approach. As for the "who has liability" question it's simple: the driver does. Or at least it's intended to be simple in the absence of lawyers twisting the wording around. Regular, non self driving cars have basic driving assists. For example, cruise control will happily ram your car into the back of another one. Adaptive cruise still has a chance of doing that, plus it has the additional risk of causing an accident by randomly slamming on the brakes for no reason at all. For all these failure modes the liability is understood to lie with the driver: it is up to them to be alert enough to override the automation when it malfunctions. However, if you do a long distance drive with and without cruise control you'll quickly admit that it has value, even with all the imperfections. Same for Comma.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- 23iofj 6y ago
  > They want to avoid thinking about non-engineering things like liability for as long as possible and focus on the engineering problem. It's a valid approach. When you write software that can kill people, you don't get to roll your eyes at questions like "who is responsible when someone dies?". These sorts of questions ARE engineering questions, and answering these questions with thought and care is important! Why? Because if the answer is "this is alpha quality and we might be liable" then you wait to deploy the feature. Which is why comma.ai is "ahead" of its competitors -- because they aren't doing real engineering. Thinking about the real-world context into which your system is being deployed is the thing that separates real engineering from R&D/hacking. What you're describing is not engineering; it's R&D. Even comma.ai admits this. And, look, R&D is perfectly okay! Everyone else is also doing R&D on real roads! E.g., all of the major auto manufacturers are putting cars on real roads with full L5 (and safety driver backups where appropriate). In fact, the major auto manufacturers are all WAY ahead of comma.ai when it comes to R&D-quality systems! Compare Cruise or Argo or Uber ATG or Waymo to comma.ai. But it's a terrible idea to ship R&D to paying customers when lives are on the line. If comma.ai wants to drive their system with their own safety drivers, that's fine. This isn't even (just) a normative or ethical statement. It's simply a statement of fact, at least in the USA. For some reason Software never became a "real" engineering discipline. But automotive
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
They first famously tried to sell the technology to Tesla. When that didn’t work, I think they set out to develop a proof of concept that they could use to generate hype, then wait until an automaker wanted to buy their technology to catch up. I get the impression they cursed future acquisition opportunities by refusing to even engage with safety regulators. They’re now selling their product in clever ways designed to shift all liability to the user.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  They’re now selling their product in clever ways designed to shift all liability to the user. In "clever ways" that completely fail to succeed in this goal, legally speaking. Product liability (law) is very expansive and generally covers every person in the chain from user to manufacturer.
- bratcomplex 6y ago
  Not exactly. Elon made an offer to geo to make a better mobile eye. some work was done, geo wasn’t okay with the deal. But he was still interested in the problem so he forumd comma
elicash 6y ago
> I mean whose auto insurance(both collision and more importantly liability) has a clause that lets anyone hook up a random after market self driving toolkit to their car. On the one hand, if I get wasted and crash my car into a tree, insurers will generally cover that even though I was negligent. On the other hand, if I get cheaper home insurance by lying about having smoke detectors, and my house burns down, I might be in violation of the contract and not be covered. So it seems like where this SHOULD end up is that insurers could charge more (or less as it gets better) for driving with these features. That said, I wouldn't fault an insurance company for not wanting to cover a system that says in all caps, as the linked article points out, "THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY." I'd possibly equate that warning to somebody who got into an accident after doing research on how well they could drive steering with their teeth, and it'd make me consider broadening the definition of "intentional" damage.
bko 6y ago
As a slight tangent Hotz has joked (?) that his real business will be to provide auto insurance to his drivers since he's confident that they'll be safer drivers. He'd basically pick off the best drivers and he has more data than anyone about what constitutes a safe driver. He makes this interesting observation that essentially all good drivers are alike; each bad driver is bad in his own way. It's an interesting insight and great for self driving since the "good" drivers would be clustered while the "bad" drivers would essentially be noise.
- rtx 6y ago
  Vision guided missiles are hot right now.

stevenhubertron 6y ago

Bingo. Liability is a huge risk here and they are using their "customers" as alpha testers that are playing Russian roulette with their lives and those around them. I want Comma to succeed but not by shipping alpha-products to the general public that doesn't understand the risks.

sodality2 6y ago
Wait, they're shipping it already? Wtf, all I did was look at their codebase and I assumed they were just making some news about it. Distributing code and shipping a product are very different, and I'll be surprised if nothing bad comes out of it soon.
- gjsman-1000 6y ago
  Comma thinks they are ready because it's essentially an Adaptive Cruise Control, and as they state on their website, they scored #1 for best at that by Consumer Reports compared to the stock offerings from Ford, Nissan, and other carmakers. Frankly, I don't know if _anyone_ should be including this kind of tech if it's this early, but Comma is currently far from the only one for what it does. Frankly, because it scored #1 and the code is open-source, I'd be much more likely to trust Comma than the stock offering from my manufacturer.
  - sodality2 6y ago
    >It enables your car to steer, accelerate, and brake automatically within its lane. Drive to a highway, press the cruise control SET button, and openpilot will engage Ah, it isn't marketed as a full autopilot. I'm not 100% confident that it should be used in the current state but I'm also not an auto regulator, so we shall see.
    - sjcoles 6y ago
      I have one. Works pretty well but requires a fair bit of tweaking. It's called a dev kit for a reason. Many car models limit the amount (and at what rate) that the computer system can turn the wheel. The system is piggybacking off of this engineering for most of its 'safety'. There was people spoofing park assist on some models to get very strong control of the wheel but such discussion got banned on the official discord. Which leads me to my big problem with Comma.ai: it's open source but not very open. Look at the code, go back several releases and watch the number of comments regress. There's zero documentation, the wiki is a fucking joke and for some reason does not come up in a google search and is just missing critical information. No, I don't want to watch a 5 fucking minute video to find a 10 second clip with the information I need. Write that shit down. Instead you ask a question and some asshole that is gunning for a job at comma posts a passive agressive screenshot of them using the discord search. It's almost like if you put effort into having information recorded instead of being a dick you wouldn't have to be a dick. That wouldn't be very fun or inflate egos much so it doesn't happen.
      - acct776 6y ago
        Hope you're listening, George (commaai). Long time listener, first time caller - rooting for you. See you soon.
  - 23iofj 6y ago
    > best at that by Consumer Reports compared to the stock offerings from Ford, Nissan, and other carmakers. Read through the Consumer Reports PDF [1]. It's abundantly clear that they have no idea how to properly evaluate adaptive cruise systems. What this report tells you is exactly what you would expect from a Consumer Reports publication: the generic impression that a typical consumer will have after a few hours of use. This sort of superficial analysis is completely unrelated to anything approaching a real safety analysis. [1] https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/consumer-reports-active-driving-assistance-systems-november-16-2020.pdf https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...

optional_value 6y ago

I think their strategy is selling the technology to car manufacturers and investors not average people.

bbaumgar 6y ago
They have a "Shop" button on their homepage that lets anyone buy their product for installation on their own car. I had a coworker purchase Comma.ai + a specific make/model solely for its Comma.ai compatibility last year. Average people are getting in on this, for the better or (likely) worse.
- optional_value 6y ago
  But isn't the real value the data they gather to train their models? This is where to money is.

agentdrtran 6y ago

> Who has liability once you start using their solution? Their FAQ just says "ask your insurance company" lol

nzmsv 6y ago

They want to avoid thinking about non-engineering things like liability for as long as possible and focus on the engineering problem. It's a valid approach. As for the "who has liability" question it's simple: the driver does. Or at least it's intended to be simple in the absence of lawyers twisting the wording around. Regular, non self driving cars have basic driving assists. For example, cruise control will happily ram your car into the back of another one. Adaptive cruise still has a chance of doing that, plus it has the additional risk of causing an accident by randomly slamming on the brakes for no reason at all. For all these failure modes the liability is understood to lie with the driver: it is up to them to be alert enough to override the automation when it malfunctions. However, if you do a long distance drive with and without cruise control you'll quickly admit that it has value, even with all the imperfections. Same for Comma.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
23iofj 6y ago
> They want to avoid thinking about non-engineering things like liability for as long as possible and focus on the engineering problem. It's a valid approach. When you write software that can kill people, you don't get to roll your eyes at questions like "who is responsible when someone dies?". These sorts of questions ARE engineering questions, and answering these questions with thought and care is important! Why? Because if the answer is "this is alpha quality and we might be liable" then you wait to deploy the feature. Which is why comma.ai is "ahead" of its competitors -- because they aren't doing real engineering. Thinking about the real-world context into which your system is being deployed is the thing that separates real engineering from R&D/hacking. What you're describing is not engineering; it's R&D. Even comma.ai admits this. And, look, R&D is perfectly okay! Everyone else is also doing R&D on real roads! E.g., all of the major auto manufacturers are putting cars on real roads with full L5 (and safety driver backups where appropriate). In fact, the major auto manufacturers are all WAY ahead of comma.ai when it comes to R&D-quality systems! Compare Cruise or Argo or Uber ATG or Waymo to comma.ai. But it's a terrible idea to ship R&D to paying customers when lives are on the line. If comma.ai wants to drive their system with their own safety drivers, that's fine. This isn't even (just) a normative or ethical statement. It's simply a statement of fact, at least in the USA. For some reason Software never became a "real" engineering discipline. But automotive

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

They first famously tried to sell the technology to Tesla. When that didn’t work, I think they set out to develop a proof of concept that they could use to generate hype, then wait until an automaker wanted to buy their technology to catch up. I get the impression they cursed future acquisition opportunities by refusing to even engage with safety regulators. They’re now selling their product in clever ways designed to shift all liability to the user.

gamblor956 6y ago
They’re now selling their product in clever ways designed to shift all liability to the user. In "clever ways" that completely fail to succeed in this goal, legally speaking. Product liability (law) is very expansive and generally covers every person in the chain from user to manufacturer.
bratcomplex 6y ago
Not exactly. Elon made an offer to geo to make a better mobile eye. some work was done, geo wasn’t okay with the deal. But he was still interested in the problem so he forumd comma

elicash 6y ago

> I mean whose auto insurance(both collision and more importantly liability) has a clause that lets anyone hook up a random after market self driving toolkit to their car. On the one hand, if I get wasted and crash my car into a tree, insurers will generally cover that even though I was negligent. On the other hand, if I get cheaper home insurance by lying about having smoke detectors, and my house burns down, I might be in violation of the contract and not be covered. So it seems like where this SHOULD end up is that insurers could charge more (or less as it gets better) for driving with these features. That said, I wouldn't fault an insurance company for not wanting to cover a system that says in all caps, as the linked article points out, "THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY." I'd possibly equate that warning to somebody who got into an accident after doing research on how well they could drive steering with their teeth, and it'd make me consider broadening the definition of "intentional" damage.

bko 6y ago

As a slight tangent Hotz has joked (?) that his real business will be to provide auto insurance to his drivers since he's confident that they'll be safer drivers. He'd basically pick off the best drivers and he has more data than anyone about what constitutes a safe driver. He makes this interesting observation that essentially all good drivers are alike; each bad driver is bad in his own way. It's an interesting insight and great for self driving since the "good" drivers would be clustered while the "bad" drivers would essentially be noise.

rtx 6y ago
Vision guided missiles are hot right now.