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"Just 100 cars will be made available with the technology in Japan, and they will cost the equivalent of $101,900. None of these Legends will make their way to

• teruakohatu 6y ago
  > Is 100 units really a "production car"? I don't agree. Sounds more like a beta test.
  • dexterdog 6y ago
    Tesla has been doing a much larger beta test and charges 9k for the sign up.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • anonymousiam 6y ago
      I felt like Tesla did a cash grab when they recently offered an upgrade from "auto pilot" (which I pre-ordered on the forthcoming Cyber Truck) to "full auto". This upgrade raised my estimated delivery price by $10k. I went ahead and did it, but WTF? My initial estimate already included the $9k for "auto pilot" so now I'm paying $19k for self driving?
      • totalZero 6y ago
        I loled at this, not at all because I find joy in your situation, but because it's so difficult to picture (A) someone who buys a cybertruck being price sensitive, or (B) someone who is like "well, ok I guess" in the face of a $9k price hike on a truck.
      • jiofih 6y ago
        Autopilot is included in the base price, it has never cost 9k. The FSD price went up from 7k to 10k last year.
      • dexterdog 6y ago
        It should only be $10K, but remember it's not for the life of the car nor is it for the life of you. It is for the time you own that particular car and then you lose it even if they still haven't released FSD by then (which they probably won't)
• greenyoda 6y ago
  > I'm assuming if it won't come to the US it won't come to the UK, Canada or Australia either. Since Japan drives on the left side of the road[1], a car manufactured for the Japanese market would have its steering wheel on the opposite side of a US or Canadian vehicle. It would be OK for the UK or Australia, which also drive on the left, but the cars can only be leased for now[2], and the provisions of the lease would probably disallow taking the car to another country. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic#Worldwide_distribution_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-_and_right-hand_traffic#W... [2] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Honda-launches-world-s-first-level-3-self-driving-car https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Automobiles/Honda-launches-...
  • 1e100 6y ago
    It's rare, but I have occasionally seen left hand drive cars in Australia https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/registration/register/left https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/registration/register/left
    • FuckMeNow69 6y ago
      https://sites.google.com/view/meet-for-sex69/home https://sites.google.com/view/meet-for-sex69/home
  • Waterluvian 6y ago
    I'm not sure but I bet it's perfectly legal to drive a right hand drive in North America.
    • rsj_hn 6y ago
      Yes, it is, but you can't sell a right hand car here. Individuals have to import it, but sometimes this happens.
      • adolph 6y ago
        Seems to be a lively market: http://www.texasjdm.com/ http://www.texasjdm.com/ Jeep has a RHD Wrangler for 2021 and I’m not certain if they ever paused making them.
• sudosysgen 6y ago
  It seems to make sense. You can be distracted, but should be able to take back control when the car asks you to.
  • throwawayboise 6y ago
    That doesn't really work. It will take seconds for you to orient yourself to what is going on if you're not paying attention. At 70 MPH that's about 200-300 ft of travel.
    • adrr 6y ago
      Level 3(eyes off)can perform emergency actions and doesn’t require drivers to pay attention. It will handle all immediate response situations. Tesla is level 2(hands off) because it will run into things like stationary fire trucks.
      • ecpottinger 6y ago
        I think you have answered the question of why they only are releasing a 100 cars. Tesla has million cars on the road, yet everyone talks about the car that runs into a truck or fire-engine. Considering the odds, it is likely you would see no accidents if you only look at just 100 Tesla cars. This would be more impressive they put 100,000 cars on the road and then we saw the stats.
        • kaba0 6y ago
          I would prefer roads that are not the test lab of some dystopian experiment for some rich people.
          • jiofih 6y ago
            You might be disappointed to learn that human drivers run into firetrucks way more often than Teslas. The current rate as of October is: Tesla Autopilot Accidents: 1 out of 4,530,000 Miles; US Average: 1 out of 479,000 Miles
• atty 6y ago
  This mixed messaging of “you don’t need to be looking at the road!”, “but you should be looking at the road.” Is going to lead to more deaths. As someone who works for one of the major global car companies, I’m very concerned for how breathlessly we (as an industry) talk about things like “autopilot” instead of “driver assist”, and a million other flashy marketing terms that make it difficult to just understand what the system is and is not capable of handling.
  • judge2020 6y ago
    > talk about things like “autopilot” instead of “driver assist” As stated countless times before, autopilot in planes isn't even geared towards handing most flight scenarios or challenging conditions. Tesla is technically correct to call it this, even though this naming is confusing to consumers who think "plane flies itself" and think it means their car can drive itself in all conditions and avoid at-fault incidents - which most likely will indeed lead to more deaths.
    • FuckMeNow69 6y ago
      Hi
    • nitinreddy88 6y ago
      The consumers are not techsavy like Tesla or HN world. Every word used for marketing should be wisely thought or we will end up with consequences
    • maxerickson 6y ago
      What are the rules to this "technically correct"? It's not even flying the car!
      • ineedasername 6y ago
        You need the latest Tesla firmware upgrade to activate flight. Or an unfinished bridge combined with lane tracking and an inattentive driver.
• rsj_hn 6y ago
  I really think this is an example where the litigious nature of the US is going to drag on self-driving efforts. There is simply no way to deploy this tech without learning from crashes, and there will be crashes, people will get killed, and the US market is the last place where you'd want to be a manufacturer if that happens.
  • JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    This isn’t an issue. Congress can create safe harbours if it becomes a problem.
    • rsj_hn 6y ago
      That's like saying Congress can reform our liability laws and turn it into more of a Japanese system. Well, OK, sure, it's a possibility, but the reason why that wont happen is because we as a nation are much more litigious and expect to have a right to sue. We love to blame big business and make them pay. People have been clamoring for reform of medical liability for decades - still no progress on that front, either. Safe harbours are not politically popular here, and you tend to get them only in very niche areas that are below the radar of most people. Auto accidents and traffic injury law, not so much.
      • ALittleLight 6y ago
        Haven't there are already been self-driving car accidents that killed people? And also - is the US behind in the self-driving race?
        • spullara 6y ago
          Fewer than cars by people and no.
          • kaba0 6y ago
            Rocket launchers kill much less people than guns, but I doubt it is a reasonable assumption that the former is less dangerous/deadly..
• loeg 6y ago
  It's super weird to only sell 100 of these in a single market. If it does what they say it does, they should be able to make a killing as the first mover. Just more reason to be skeptical.
  • fomine3 6y ago
    Is very careful initial launch for such product weird? I don't think so.
  • FPGAhacker 6y ago
    It’s possible they are selling these at a loss to seed or whet the market. If it takes off then maybe it will reappear at a profitable price.
  • NotSammyHagar 6y ago
    I'm guessing it's more of the idea that Japan will tolerate 100 possibly dangerous vehicles to further their engineering goals.
    • Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
      That's still incredibly sketchy. What any sane engineer would do is to keep testing these cars with a safety driver and gather anough information/miles to claim higher statistical safety than a human driver, while keeping track that those miles were really in fact driven without intervention/(or with predictable and managed intervention). Once they would have those numbers, then they would know for sure that the car is safe and they could release/manufacture hundreds of thousands/unlimited number of units to the market. If they didn't - it means either the car really isn't tested or it doesn't do what they claim it does. Releasing a 100 vechicles just doesn't make sense, unless the claims are somehow shady or misrepresentative.
  • rodgerd 6y ago
    No different to the Toyota Century, or the Nissan President, or (to a lesser degree) Alphard etc. The major Japanese car makers have quite a few vehicles (or options) that don't get exported, but whose features show up later in a Lexus or similar.
• divbzero 6y ago
  Perhaps it’s no coincidence both examples involve the navigation system? Makes it easier to flash an alert and return the driver’s attention to the road.
  • stubish 6y ago
    I would have thought some sort of display on or in the windscreen, but maybe that is too distracting and causes panic?
    • spullara 6y ago
      Sound is way better, especially if you aren't already looking out the windscreen.
• stubish 6y ago
  The bit about watching DVDs is for the traffic jam mode, where it is crawling forward locked to the car in front of you. Pretty much the same as automatic parking features. Thankfully they won't recommend having a snooze though, since you will need to take control at the end of the jam or at an intersection. The warning about overestimating capabilities is on the rest of the features, where failing to respond to a request to take control will assume you are asleep and do an emergency stop. It seems to be a bunch of apps that you have to select and turn on/off manually, rather than 'autonomous driving'. ie. it assists you driving, rather than you assisting the car to drive itself.
  • dmingod666 6y ago
    First question is, where do you buy a DVD? Second question, where do you put it in?
    • wil421 6y ago
      You put it in your Honda Legend of course!
• Melting_Harps 6y ago
  > Is 100 units really a "production car"? I don't agree. Considering you couldn't even get into Group B rally homoligation with those numbers (200) in the 80s, or Dakar race spec production (2500) in 90-2000s I don't think it is, either. > It’s possible they are selling these at a loss to seed or whet the market. If it takes off then maybe it will reappear at a profitable price. Exactly. It seems more like a mass produced prototype, or a proper limited edition model and if I'm honest this looks exactly like an Accord/Insight with all the JDM goodies we don't get in the West. But this is about marketing. I wish them well, Honda (auto) has a ton of muck in their face due to their failure to, once again, make any inroads in Formula 1 after their epic success with Mclaren in the 80s--this last time around was so hard to watch, and the mere utterance of 'GP2 engine' will live in infamy forever. Which it's raison d'être to trickle down it's production car, but with V6 turbos and KERS systems pretty much maxed they need something like this to justify their R/D budgets. I'm not sure how to feel about it, to be honest: had this been on an limited edition EV insight it would definitely be a step in the right direction. Whereas this will fall into obscurity as more manufacturers move to EV.
  • ohgodplsno 6y ago
    > you couldn't even get into Group B rally homoligation with those numbers (200) Unless your name is Lancia and you move 100 cars from one parking spot to the other while you're treating the officials to a lunch with loooots of wine.
    • Melting_Harps 6y ago
      > Unless your name is Lancia and you move 100 cars from one parking spot to the other while you're treating the officials to a lunch with loooots of wine. I really wish Clarkson would do more of these kind of stories, the trio would be the ideal team to make a docu-series for the Motorex and GTR fiasco! It's such an insane story that I cannot believe they're on the 100th version of Fast and Furious but we have not seen this story be told. Having lived through it myself, I was in the early drifting community in SoCal back in 2002 and a regular on Fresh Alloy/NICO since 2000. I even saw a few of those cars that got sold at the old meetups at Life Plaza before the canyon runs, the Bee*R rev limit kits on those R chassis [0] were so absurd back then when they first came out, they sounded like the meanest rally cars. My memory is fuzzy after all these years, and I can't remember if it was big bird, or black bird but we saw it being tuned on the freeway in LA doing high speed wangan runs and the helicopters may or may not have showed up, good times. I'm going to miss the ICE days because of this, but... they're dinosaurs and we can always tell the story from the glory days. I'm just glad I was born when I was, because I think that is a culture that has since peaked and is now on a very sad descent, other than Tesla and Rimac I don't see anyone even trying to make EV cars be anything more than a soulless utilitarian computer enclosure with wheels to get you to point A to B. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_pUReXK3zM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_pUReXK3zM
• helsinkiandrew 6y ago
  > It does all this with zero input from the driver Isn't this different from things like Tesla's autopilot in that in certain conditions the Honda will take full responsibility for driving and the driver can concentrate on other things. But needs to be ready when the car tells the driver to take control/responsibility. I'm guessing these conditions could be quite specific and limited - like traffic jams and freeway driving when the car is effectively in a 'convoy'
• jackson1442 6y ago
  The second quote seems to insinuate that you should remain in a state where you can drive and can use the context of your surroundings. For example, if you see flashing lights, you will likely get a handoff request because there are emergency vehicles which suggests an unpredictable situation. To me, it appears to mean "don't sleep or 'drive' intoxicated." The car can presumably predict when it needs to handoff with enough notice to allow you to regain the full focus needed to drive.
  • Griffinsauce 6y ago
    > The car can presumably predict when it needs to handoff with enough notice to allow you to regain the full focus needed to drive. This is the critical assumption. And: > suggests an unpredictable situation. All driving situations are unpredictable. From the kid running into the street after their ball to the drunk guy in a truck careening into the same crossroad. We can never reach this dream of "watching a movie while the car drives" without railroading our roads in some form or agreeing on a new distribution of risk.
• mkl95 6y ago
  They really are making it seem like it's level "2.5" self-driving and it was rounded out to 3.
• bayindirh 6y ago
  WRC has (or had) a rule for car homologation which required at least 100 road-going copies to be made for some higher end tiers (This is why we have Lancer Evo & Impreza WRX on the roads). There may be another rule/law in the automative industry where 100 units are considered "serial production".
• carlsborg 6y ago
  Solving self-driving in dense slow moving traffic on narrow city rodes is a simpler problem than on high speed freeway style roads, mainly because the risks are much lower - you wont get injured at 20mph in moderns cars. Dings and dents can be compensated relatively cheaply. Much of urban Europe with pre-industrial-revolution cities and part of urban Asia is slow moving traffic. Slow, compared to California/Atlanta/Houston non-rush-hour freeways.
  • kwhitefoot 6y ago
    Surely not. Motorway driving is very simple compared to urban driving. This consequences of a collision are probably less serious in slow moving traffic but the risk of them happening is much higher. And the density of traffic and of pedestrians makes the job much more complicated.
• dubeye 6y ago
  This where Tesla is underestimated I think. There is a huge difference between a high volume, sellable product, and a highly priced concept designed for PR. You could argue Tesla has both, but at least they are attempting to place this technology into the hands of consumers. The unavoidable penalty for this is a longer period of driver responsibility and perhaps never reaching level 3. It's a trade off tesla buyers seem willing to accept.
• FireBeyond 6y ago
  Sounds a lot like Tesla's marketing. "Summon your car while dealing with a fussy child." ( do not summon your vehicle while distracted, maintain constant visual contact with the vehicle) "Full self driving capability" " vehicle has all equipment capable to self drive, but may be limited by laws or regulations in your area" and so on. Tesla is full of nudge nudge wink wink, and disclaimers that walk back their ledes, so what exactly is problematic about Honda's statement about limitations?
• samstave 6y ago
  I wonder if cars will be able to be put into "overly cautious mode" implying any other following: inclement weather, children inside, inebriated passengers who may not be in any condition to respond to situations, "HOSPITAL NOW" voice function, "POLICE NOW" voice function. As well as other one-word voice commands "Car, Home" "Car, Work" etc..
• lastofthemojito 6y ago
  Honda seems like a very conservative company. It's released a couple of low volume "production" cars as it's dipped its toes into electric cars as well. The Honda Fit EV was a real production car, available to the general public (and I did see a couple of them on the roads in the US). But it was only available to lease, and Honda only leased about 1000 of them IIRC. Seems like a hedge - it gets them some experience with running an electric vehicle program, and data on how their vehicles do in the wild, but in a limited enough number that there won't be any serious harm to their reputation if the vehicles are deficient in some way. So where Tesla might want to put this sort of tech into the hands of as many customers as possible, as soon as possible, Honda is being Honda and entering the water very slowly.
• m463 6y ago
  I can think of a few reasons to be japan only: - probably easier to have a japan-only dataset - probably easier to get engineers to work on this at headquarters - japan highway markings might be more predictable than say 50 states all with subtly different rules and state of repair - us liability law
• Grustaf 6y ago
  Wasn't the TV watching specifically when you're in traffic jam mode?