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Sounds like a steal for perfect Level 5 autonomy. That’s about the price of hiring someone to drive you for close to minimum wage. But for advanced cruise cont

Sounds like a steal for perfect Level 5 autonomy. That’s about the price of hiring someone to drive you for close to minimum wage. But for advanced cruise control? Pass.

jillesvangurp 5y ago
I heard a great characterization of autonomy levels that it is much less about technical capability and much more about legal liability. People obsess about the technology. The real challenge is going to be liability and insurance. That will flip around in a hurry when it becomes clear that human driving is a root cause for most remaining incidents and insurance cost. You'll be allowed to drive but you'll pay for the privilege through your insurance. The difference between a level 2-3 and a level 5 car is the presence of a steering wheel and the legal requirement to have your hands on it. As incidents with Tesla show that need is both real but actually not that urgent given the fact that people get away with and are really creative in finding ways to not have their hands on the wheel. The occasional incidents because of that mean this is a problem but the lack of lots of incidents indicate that actually it's not completely horrible at what it does. Tesla is taking an incremental approach here and every incident makes the whole system a little safer. Their predictions as to when they will do level 5 and eventually 6 are of course wildly optimistic but the general approach is not without merit. They get lots of data and the improvements are basically data driven. The middle ground here is level 4 where it becomes safe and legal to remove your hands from the wheel under some circumstances (like a road with special lanes, a well mapped and understood area, cars staying below certain speed limits, etc). Level 4 is basically what Waymo does in a very limited set of regions. Unlike Tesla, they actually have driver less cars though. Level 5 would be when they can do it anywhere. From 3 to 6 is basically a path of aggressively cutting down on the possibility for any kind of incident.
csunbird 5y ago
You also have to buy the car as well.

Sounds like a steal for perfect Level 5 autonomy. That’s about the price of hiring someone to drive you for close to minimum wage. But for advanced cruise control? Pass.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

I heard a great characterization of autonomy levels that it is much less about technical capability and much more about legal liability. People obsess about the technology. The real challenge is going to be liability and insurance. That will flip around in a hurry when it becomes clear that human driving is a root cause for most remaining incidents and insurance cost. You'll be allowed to drive but you'll pay for the privilege through your insurance. The difference between a level 2-3 and a level 5 car is the presence of a steering wheel and the legal requirement to have your hands on it. As incidents with Tesla show that need is both real but actually not that urgent given the fact that people get away with and are really creative in finding ways to not have their hands on the wheel. The occasional incidents because of that mean this is a problem but the lack of lots of incidents indicate that actually it's not completely horrible at what it does. Tesla is taking an incremental approach here and every incident makes the whole system a little safer. Their predictions as to when they will do level 5 and eventually 6 are of course wildly optimistic but the general approach is not without merit. They get lots of data and the improvements are basically data driven. The middle ground here is level 4 where it becomes safe and legal to remove your hands from the wheel under some circumstances (like a road with special lanes, a well mapped and understood area, cars staying below certain speed limits, etc). Level 4 is basically what Waymo does in a very limited set of regions. Unlike Tesla, they actually have driver less cars though. Level 5 would be when they can do it anywhere. From 3 to 6 is basically a path of aggressively cutting down on the possibility for any kind of incident.

csunbird 5y ago

You also have to buy the car as well.