4 ms·

Replying to self to be more direct. Cars sit idle 80-90% of their useful life. As an auto manufacturer I don't need to achieve L{n} autonomous to make money, I

Replying to self to be more direct. Cars sit idle 80-90% of their useful life. As an auto manufacturer I don't need to achieve L{n} autonomous to make money, I just need wheels moving not parked. Wheels moving at 20mph on local roads, in-between paid trips with human drivers, is a huge market and with a lower risk profile than L4 or L5 autonomous. The fat margins here are in making idle capital more productive.

tsimionescu 5y ago
Not sure why you think this, empty cars really do require L4 if not L5, and if you've got actual L4 driving, taxis and freight are much bigger markets than renting cars in cities.
- stadium 5y ago
  At what speed? Is there a distinction between these L4 and L5 levels and speed? Is a L3 at idle speed equivalent to an L5 at highway speed?
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    If all it took to take an L2 AI and make it L5 were reducing top speed, you'd see a lot more L5 AIs around. The biggest problem with most self-driving cars is that they are easily fooled by various images, since they have extremely simplistic image classifiers to work with, rather than hugely specialized mamallian visual cortexes. Speed of processing is one aspect, but not nearly the only one. The Tesla that ran over that cyclist crossing that street at night wasn't missing reaction time, it simply didn't recognize the cyclist as an obstacle for whatever reason. Now as far as I understand, lidar mostly fixes these false negatives (in good weather conditions), but at the cost of more false positives - and here speed could be a bigger help. Even so, L4 and L5 would require planning skills and understanding of other traffic participants and road conditions that are still beyond us, at any speed. Note that the CEO of Waymo has plainly stated that L5 is not achievable with current sensor technologies. Perhaps at some extreme low speeds (probably closer to human walking speed than 20mph) L2 could work as L3, but I think that's about it.
fhd2 5y ago
Is that actually so? In my understanding, cars that drive more break faster, mileage being the dominant factor, not age. So whether you have 10 cars serving 10 people, breaking after 30 years, or one car serving 10 people where you have to buy a new one every 3 years - seems about the same. In the former model, car makers even have the opportunity to get people to buy new cars before they'd technically have to, which sounds like more money to me. For society at large, the latter model seems better.
faeyanpiraat 5y ago
It’s actually higher than 90%

tsimionescu 5y ago

Not sure why you think this, empty cars really do require L4 if not L5, and if you've got actual L4 driving, taxis and freight are much bigger markets than renting cars in cities.

stadium 5y ago
At what speed? Is there a distinction between these L4 and L5 levels and speed? Is a L3 at idle speed equivalent to an L5 at highway speed?
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  If all it took to take an L2 AI and make it L5 were reducing top speed, you'd see a lot more L5 AIs around. The biggest problem with most self-driving cars is that they are easily fooled by various images, since they have extremely simplistic image classifiers to work with, rather than hugely specialized mamallian visual cortexes. Speed of processing is one aspect, but not nearly the only one. The Tesla that ran over that cyclist crossing that street at night wasn't missing reaction time, it simply didn't recognize the cyclist as an obstacle for whatever reason. Now as far as I understand, lidar mostly fixes these false negatives (in good weather conditions), but at the cost of more false positives - and here speed could be a bigger help. Even so, L4 and L5 would require planning skills and understanding of other traffic participants and road conditions that are still beyond us, at any speed. Note that the CEO of Waymo has plainly stated that L5 is not achievable with current sensor technologies. Perhaps at some extreme low speeds (probably closer to human walking speed than 20mph) L2 could work as L3, but I think that's about it.

fhd2 5y ago

Is that actually so? In my understanding, cars that drive more break faster, mileage being the dominant factor, not age. So whether you have 10 cars serving 10 people, breaking after 30 years, or one car serving 10 people where you have to buy a new one every 3 years - seems about the same. In the former model, car makers even have the opportunity to get people to buy new cars before they'd technically have to, which sounds like more money to me. For society at large, the latter model seems better.

faeyanpiraat 5y ago

It’s actually higher than 90%