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Cruise is opening driverless cars to the public in San Francisco

• alexmingoia 5y ago
  How much does it cost?
• fortran77 5y ago
  What a difficult city to drive in, too. There are many "unexpected" pedestrians, bicyclists, skateboarders, and people staggering about in every direction. I avoid driving in SF as much as possible.
• silentsea90 5y ago
  Can we just call out how incredibly awesome this is? We might stumble along the way but this is as big as moving from horse carts to cars. Respect to all of you working on self driving cars!
  • quadrifoliate 5y ago
    > Can we just call out how incredibly awesome this is? We might stumble along the way but this is as big as moving from horse carts to cars. I find it a bit hard to believe that people aren't more concerned about calling out what exact legal framework this operation is being allowed under. Having a car without a driver in it driving around seems like a massive risk for the drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists sharing the streets of San Francisco; they should be entitled to know why they are test cases for these car-driving programs. The most I could find was that it seems to be this permit [1], and the link in it states: > Cruise’s permit is available at www.cpuc.ca.gov/avcissued. ...which is a 404. It also states: > More information on the CPUC’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service Pilot Programs is available at www.cpuc.ca.gov/avcpilotinfo. ...which is also a 404. This does not...inspire confidence, to say the least. Given that official information about this seems to be a bit thin on the ground, I guess I'll ask the obvious question – if the cars hit and injure someone, is Cruise's CEO going to be held personally liable? The engineers who worked on the tech? The passengers in the car (who are the nearest thing to drivers)? It's not like this is an unexpected scenario, we have preexisting example of this happening [2]. Or is the plan to sweep real-life consequences under the carpet with euphemisms like "stumble along the way"? ---------------------------------------- [1] https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M387/K064/387064893.PDF https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Published/G000/M387/K... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Elaine_Herzberg
    • newaccount74 5y ago
      Cynical take: Since human drivers are almost never held accountable for killing pedestrians or cyclists due to inattentive driving or poorly maintained vehicles, it's going to be the same for autonomous vehicles: it's always going to be an unfortunate, unavoidable accident.
    • genewitch 5y ago
      Yeah I'm not keen on that euphemism either. I know from experience and messing around with ml/ai that the tech is not there yet, so I wager they're going to cheat by having a remote driver. In a dense city that has a lot of weather. I'll stay out of SF until this ends in a huge lawsuit.
      • lovehashbrowns 5y ago
        Cruise has been in SF for many years. It's actually hard to miss their cars if you're around the Sunset area a lot. Or it was when I lived there. I'm not sure if their area of operation has shifted out of there. So I hope you've been out of SF for a while. That was probably what made me feel like I was in SF more than anything else in SF. Seeing their cars drive by with the LIDR, cameras, and the person in the passenger seat staring at a MacBook Pro.
        • pm90 5y ago
          They’ve always had a person in their cars though. So this is a big difference since they’re saying the vehicles will be fully autonomous (no human supervisor in the vehicle).
    • silentsea90 5y ago
      I don't know the answers. They're definitely worth figuring out, but the legal questions do not take away from the sheer gall to dream and achieve. Figuring out liability is in the domain of law, which is easy compared to building such engineering marvels. I am sure we can figure it out. Self driving car companies take safety VERY VERY seriously not just for potential legal consequences but because a single incident would make consumers lose trust, which is a death knell for such companies. For folks who think about Cruise's achievement cynically (not directed at the commenter), please consider what your stance would have been back in the day in the following situations: 1) Cars being introduced to challenge horse carts in the late 1800s and early 1900s 2) Countries like India spending on a Space program while having a considerable population below poverty line, rise of SpaceX 3) The rise of the internet in the 90s with its trivial applications like radio, silly websites etc If your answer is - oh of course I would cheer each of these, but view self driving cars cynically, good for you.
  • Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    I... don't think it's as big a step as that, because back when horse carts and cars were around you could hire a driver. Net effect (not having to drive yourself) is the same. It's an evolutionary step, not a revolution. I don't see it having as dramatic an effect on society or how cities are built as cars did.
    • tim333 5y ago
      It's like the change from horse and cart to a crappy early car that wasn't much better. But it's the start of the AI revolution which will have quite an effect.
• BA4gDY-cqjsEPWn 5y ago
  Fun fact: If you try to submit the form with ad-blockers enabled, it errors out saying "Blocked request. Please disable any add blockers" (typo included) :-)
  • d-jones 5y ago
    Good eye
  • fastball 5y ago
    Probably because some ad-blockers block reCAPTCHA.
• 37ef_ced3 5y ago
  What is the benefit of a taxi being driverless, for the passenger? Is it cheaper?
  • AuthError 5y ago
    yea, you take the biggest cost of taxi out of equation.
    • boredumb 5y ago
      The $250,000 SF taxi medallions?
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Assuming it is $250k one time purchase, it seems cheaper than annual pay for a person to drive around SF, and the overhead to manage the person.
        • asdff 5y ago
          You still have overhead to manage your fleet of self driving cars. They aren't self repairing, self fueling, and self cleaning yet.
          • colinmhayes 5y ago
            Cheaper than having individuals manage their own cars.
            • astrange 5y ago
              The Uber trick is that people don't understand how much it costs to own a car, so riders get to extract money from overinvested drivers.
      • adrr 5y ago
        Let’s assume you get a loan for 30 years on it for 6%. That is $18k a year. What is labor? $50k a year?
• walrus01 5y ago
  Based on this image: https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/6h1C7lPC79OLOlddEEexqj/1415e6b28c8e4252856f9f341fedc327/GetCruise-Hero-Services.jpg?w=1000&q=80&fm=webp https://images.ctfassets.net/95kuvdv8zn1v/6h1C7lPC79OLOlddEE... They and their VC backers are clearly betting on the concept that radars + lidar + imaging will be the ultimate successful solution in full self driving cars, as a completely opposite design and engineering philosophy from Tesla attempting to do "full self driving" with camera sensors and categorical rejection of lidar. It is interesting to me that right now this is sitting on the HN homepage directly adjacent to: "Tesla to recall vehicles that may disobey stop signs (reuters.com)"
  • gitfan86 5y ago
    What is success? Does 50 miles of geofenced and daily mapped streets mean Cruise won self driving? What if Waymo gets to 20k miles of geofenced roads and monthly mapped? What if Tesla gets to the point of one intervention/crash every 100k miles? 10M Miles?
    • gonehome 5y ago
      Yeah, they’re not trying to solve the same thing? I think Tesla is right that to solve it for real you need to solve the general case which can’t rely on high resolution maps. The city cab case is smaller and can, so the cruise approach makes sense for that use case. It’s just narrower.
      • ghaff 5y ago
        Or you solve for a subset of highways in a subset of weather conditions. That would be more useful to a lot of people than city cabs which exist today (with human drivers).
      • jowday 5y ago
        The truth of it is that it’s just not possible (with currently existing technology/ML architectures) to create a truly autonomous taxi without HD maps. Everyone in the robotaxi industry knows this - even Tesla builds HD maps, they just don’t call them that.
• kaycebasques 5y ago
  This is a bit surprising to me. I haven't seen many Cruise cars on SF roads in the last few months. I've seen a hell of a lot of Waymo, on the other hand. Separate thought: > I’m still surprised I can even write those words — this moment really snuck up on me. This seems to be poorly worded PR considering how much general worry there is over the safety of self-driving cars. If I were writing it, I would have phrased it along the lines of "I've been waiting months and months for this. We've been ready for months but we understandably had to triple-check all our compliance etc."
  • psanford 5y ago
    I still see a lot of Cruise cars training in the mission.
    • AlotOfReading 5y ago
      They have a nearby garage next to the Costco in SoMa. Zoox also has a small garage across the street next to the SPCA building.
  • opportune 5y ago
    I see Cruise a ton around downtown, but Waymo and Zoox seem to be test driving through a larger part of the city. Some times I will see a fleet of Waymo cars in quick succession, going through seemingly the same route
• zerotosixty 5y ago
  So is this just SF? How many people can actually sign up and use it? Wow thats a nice amount of funding? Is this going to be their last funding round before they IPO? Is there a VC who give more funding? Are employees gonna be rich or is this gonna be a wework scenario?
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • pbharrin 5y ago
    Cruise was aquired by GM in 2016, unless they are spun off there won't be an IPO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_(autonomous_vehicle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_(autonomous_vehicle)
    • a_t48 5y ago
      They were spun off when Softbank invested. There's SEC filings on it.
• almost_usual 5y ago
  Any information on boundaries within city limits?
• polkadotmatrix 5y ago
  Amazing considering that he said he wasn’t comfortable putting his own kid in them just a few months ago.
  • kelnos 5y ago
    Got a source for that? I searched around and couldn't find anything with him saying that.
    • polkadotmatrix 5y ago
      https://youtu.be/dmvZBiWYkFQ?t=242 https://youtu.be/dmvZBiWYkFQ?t=242 “I want to bring my little son along on this ride, but obviously that’s not where we’re at today.” edit: Fixed link
      • mygoodaccount 5y ago
        Either you posted the wrong link, or your link was taken down within the last 20 minutes... Lots of Cruise employees in this thread.
        • e4e78a06 5y ago
          Yep, it was definitely taken down. I watched it only half an hour ago.
          • redytedy 5y ago
            It wasn't though
        • polkadotmatrix 5y ago
          https://youtu.be/dmvZBiWYkFQ?t=242 https://youtu.be/dmvZBiWYkFQ?t=242 I had an extra slash in the link, I corrected it in the original and above.
        • xeromal 5y ago
• justicz 5y ago
  Amazing job to everyone working at Cruise who is making this happen... absolutely incredible!
• georgeburdell 5y ago
  I’m concerned about the timing of this. Former CEO Dan Ammann, fired in December, was a big champion of the robotaxi business model. It is speculated he was fired because GM CEO Mary Barra disagrees with this strategy and wants them to focus more on integration with existing GM vehicles. I am afraid that the robotaxi timeline was pulled in so that the rest of the believers inside Cruise can get supporting data to prove it’s a viable model and to make it harder for Mary to change its course. This may come at the expense of safety.
  • nichochar 5y ago
    [Disclaimer] I work for cruise. Safety is the most critical value that our company has, and we live it every day in all of our processes / culture. I won't comment on the executive changes, but I can guarantee that this company (unlike some rivals...) would never compromise safety in any decision.
    • more_corn 5y ago
      I once threw myself in front of a cruise vehicle to test it for safety. (That’s a bit of an exaggeration, I saw it coming, sped up and jumped into an open parking spot on a trajectory that would take me in front of I didn’t stop) It performed admirably. The safety driver didn’t see me coming but the computer did. The car decelerated to the point it would be able to stop if I kept coming. The safety driver couldn’t figure out what was happening at first. He was PISSED when he figured it out. Having done that and having never seen one commit an error or safety infraction, I now have a high degree of trust in the safety of cruise vehicles.
      • more_corn 5y ago
        Contrast this to the catastrophic self driving test Uber did on the streets of San Francisco before their cars got thrown out of California.
      • kfarr 5y ago
        Can confirm from personal experience in crosswalks with self driving cars: cruise is the most timid (read safest!) of the self driving cars being tested in SF IMHO. Cruise will proactively alter trajectory (such as deceleration) for pedestrians and cyclists at a noticeably earlier threshold than Waymo. This is much more pleasant for everyone surrounding the vehicle as it clearly expresses that you have been recognized as a being needing space.
• serverlessmom 5y ago
  When I was in Vegas last I called for a "driverless car" via Lyft but instead of an empty car a male driver with a second man riding shotgun showed up to pick me up. The entire scenario made me feel sketched out so I refused to take the ride because I've seen so many news reports of people getting assaulted by drivers. I and many of my friends would feel more comfortable with the option of a driverless ride so I definitely understand the appeal. I'm excited to hear how this goes.
  • gjs278 5y ago
• atarian 5y ago
  I'll believe it when it actually happens. I signed up for Waymo in SF last year and still haven't gotten any updates for that.
• more_corn 5y ago
  Signed up. Hopefully they get back to me faster than Waymo’s response time (not hard to get better than never)
• truthwhisperer 5y ago
• RIMR 5y ago
  "Today we are opening up our driverless cars in San Francisco to the public - I’m still surprised I can even write those words" I, uh, don't know if I like a CEO who is surprised that he's being allowed to do the thing he is doing.
  • spiderice 5y ago
    Oh please. This is so pedantic. Clearly he is emphasizing that this is a dream come true, and a few years ago he might not have believed they could do it. He's not saying "I'm shocked that San Francisco is dumb enough to let us do this".
  • ALittleLight 5y ago
    A charitable interpretation is that he's pleasantly surprised the team reached a challenging milestone and they are able to deliver the product.
• Rygian 5y ago
  Do Cruise driverless cars roll their stops when safe to do so?
• punnerud 5y ago
  The next thing is a driverless car and a driverless bus “docking” at speed, so you can change vehicle without affecting your trip time. Economics will outcompete 50 self-driving cars going in the same direction for 30min when you could have one driverless-bus doing the same. If this transition is smooth and fast, think what this will do to traveling time, car prices and property prices. How far can you travel without stops and no traffic jam?
  • snotrockets 5y ago
    We have public transit right now. All we need to do is to not stigmatize its users.
    • travisd 5y ago
      Yep, and beyond that, there's still a need to remove cars from the world, both to fight climate change and to make cities livable again (see any video from the "Not Just Bikes" YouTube channel for support for this argument). Moving everything to autonomous cars (even, yes, electric autonomous cars) will not solve those issues. Smart urban planning and structural reform are the only things that really stand a chance there.
    • ajmurmann 5y ago
      With the urban sprawl in the US you frequently will need to at least change vehicle once and that will likely involve a substantial wait and might involve a walk at least on one end. This quickly can turn what could take 15-20 minutes into a hour or more. A docking model as the parent suggest might address this. I'm also gonna go out there and say what many are afraid to talk about openly. When I used to commute by public transit in SF the crowd frequently wasn't pleasant as a whole. There were a lot of very nice people going to work, but there also were a lot of folks who caused problems for others. People with mental illnesses, people who seemed to not have access to showers and folks who were just generally quite roudy. There were days were I wished that there was a separate compartment that's exactly identical but costs $0.5 more. I feel guilty that I wanted that, but I think that's just the reality of life in a country with such a unequal society. I think this is one of the reasons why public transit works better in countries with more wealth redistribution and a stronger social system.
• sairahul82 5y ago
  The tech behind it is explained very well here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJWN0K26NxQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJWN0K26NxQ It actually gave me confidence on overall self driving car approach
• desertraven 5y ago
  The Cruise CEO is here, along with many grand stories of how good/safe their vehicles are. I can’t help but think this thread may be a marketing ploy. If this were the case, is it allowed on HN? Edit: In addition, any negative/challenging/sceptical comment is quickly downvoted.
  • jefftk 5y ago
    As someone unaffiliated, I really like that their CEO is here answering questions.
    • desertraven 5y ago
      I do like that too! As long as the CEO isn't being shielded by an army of supporters.
    • rootusrootus 5y ago
      Agreed. It is one of the things I find most attractive about HN, that Important People will actually show up in the discussion and participate.
  • dang 5y ago
    HN's criterion is whether a post is intellectually interesting, or more precisely whether it can support an intellectually interesting discussion. What's nice about that is you can decide it by looking at the article itself, and the thread—you don't need to know nebulous things like the intentions behind the post. I'd say the current post clears the bar fairly easily. Here are a couple of past explanations about this, in case they're of interest: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20186280 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22871601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22871601 As for negative/challenging/sceptical: that depends on the quality of the comment. Thoughtful critique is always welcome. Shallow dismissals and snark are not welcome—not that the target of the criticism always deserves better, but the community deserves better.
    • desertraven 5y ago
• joakleaf 5y ago
  The Cruise tech presentation from last fall seems very relevant: https://youtu.be/uJWN0K26NxQ https://youtu.be/uJWN0K26NxQ (Highly recommended for anyone interested in self-driving cars!)
  • silentsea90 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing!
• thenewwazoo 5y ago
  I got hired for my dream job at Cruise, and then was offered near-as-makes-no-difference 3x the TC to work with a friend a week later. I basically completed the new-hire onboarding and then quit. It fucking hurt to do that. What I saw there made me a believer. Cruise is doing amazing shit.
  • rootusrootus 5y ago
    I need friends like yours. Damn.
    • thenewwazoo 5y ago
      Well, to be fair, Cruise offered me a really low salary ($50k paycut from my prior position) and no liquid equity, so it was a TC-to-TC comparison. I was willing to do it because dream job, but low pay and a 5-day-a-week commute into the city and I just couldn't refuse.
  • silentsea90 5y ago
    You've got to do what you've got to do. As cool as the company is, they failed to compensate you well enough and lost you.
• mlindner 5y ago
  I'm not interested in cars I can't own. This idea that we'll turn cars into some kind of service and convert roads into places filled with company-owned vehicles is completely foreign. At that point it'd be cheaper to have self-driving buses and subways. I can only think this viewpoint comes from people who have only ever lived in cities where car ownership is inconvenient given the lack of personal garages. At the moment the only company working towards this idea is Tesla, which is unfortunate. I'd like to see more companies working towards selling self-driving vehicles to customers.
  • alexchamberlain 5y ago
    City dweller, raised in a village in the east of England. I got my license 3 months after my 17th and already had a car - I've had a car ever since. I'd give it up in a heartbeat if hiring a car was easier and more economical, but the reality is that for visiting family over weekends, renting would cost about the same as owning the car full time. The convenience of then having the car ready to go whenever you want it wins out. I sincerely hope that self driving cars bring in the possibility of renting it for a couple of hours as it drives us to Kent to visit the in laws then drives itself back to London, or simply re-clusters itself into the local network ready to take us back on Sunday evening.
    • bluGill 5y ago
      I think that depends on your taste in cars. If you trade in your car for a new one every 3 years then shared cars will save you money. However if you drive a 23 year old car (ie the car I drive) then it is fully depreciated and so paying for a nice new car to drive you around has to cost more. Of course it also depends on how much you drive. If you only drive a few times per month that is very different from driving hundreds of miles per day. I've concluded that the majority of suburban dwellers will own their own car even where shared cars are possible to get. Because of the amount of driving they do a shared car won't save them much if anything, and by owning a car they can leave "stuff" in the trunk.
  • snotrockets 5y ago
    Even cheaper: don't have computer driven transit, but human driven transit. The current money sunk on the automated driving tech startups could pay drivers for years to come. What I would like to see is companies and people working towrds eliminating as many vehciles from the road. It is untainable, if we want an habitable planet, to have have a dependency on cars. This means we have to move back to a denser environment (for the US, think pre WW2 suburbs, vs the current car-dependent sprawl). Either that, or boil the planet. We don't have any other way right now – and as such, Tesla is working towards the idea of heating the planet. Musk is very amandmanet on that, with his constant efforts to destroy public transit with his other companies.
• buttsecks 5y ago
• Nelkins 5y ago
  I would love to see these in more rural areas without great transit options. I would love to be able to take a driverless car to and from a bar when there isn't population density to support many taxis.
  • tmpz22 5y ago
    Is there any solution yet that doesn’t require the driver to be sober in order to intervene at any given moment?
    • jedberg 5y ago
      The vehicle in this very article! :)
• buttsecks 5y ago
• mwattsun 5y ago
  > Today we are opening up our driverless cars in San Francisco to the public I doubt that means what they hope we think it means. So your employees have been taking your carefully designed ride and now you've let a couple of non-employees ride the course. If it means more than that, especially allowing random rides with random passengers, I'd be very surprised.
  • minwcnt5 5y ago
    It is not a "course", the employees request to be picked up and dropped off anywhere in the city, just like requesting an Uber/Lyft ride.
    • mwattsun 5y ago
      Well, that's surprising. I've driven San Francisco as an Uber/Lyft driver and it's a nightmare. I'm really curious how it checks for side traffic when it's nose is pointed at the sky at a stop sign on a steep hill.
      • gxs 5y ago
        It might actually do a lot better than you and I. Remember, it's equipped with radar so it can probably see cars the next block over.
        • mwattsun 5y ago
          radar doesn't see around corners. At any rate, would have to see some evidence that it can handle the worst of The City before I took a ride, like the incessant construction, steel plates on the road covering new holes, taped off lane changes, resulting traffic jams where merging is happening and so on. It's a really difficult environment for a human and I've never heard the claim yet that self-driving was better than humans.
          • exhaze 5y ago
            Cruise publishes a lot of their AVs driving around SF for over an hour. In a video from their YouTube channel [1], at around 22:29, you can see exactly how they handle a steep 4-way intersection. You can also see on the above visualization what objects their system sees as it is performing the maneuver. The evidence is easily accessible - next time I suggest you just research a little bit first instead of going straight to speculating. [1] https://youtu.be/HiG__iqgYHM?t=1349 https://youtu.be/HiG__iqgYHM?t=1349
• miguelazo 5y ago
  What problem is this solving exactly? Talk about a waste of human potential. Great job putting more drivers out of work—- if this thing is even safe.
• sam1234apter 5y ago
  Why is this considered a big stride when Waymo is doing it for 6 months already?https://blog.waymo.com/2021/08/welcoming-our-first-riders-in-san.html https://blog.waymo.com/2021/08/welcoming-our-first-riders-in...
  • stjohnswarts 5y ago
    Because #2 is still close to #1? I personally am glad to read about this stuff and not just the next "point version of {$SOFTWARE_STACK} released today". I mean that's why we get to choose which article to click on. amiright?
  • alfalfasprout 5y ago
    ...because no one other than waymo is doing it? This is still a big achievement.
  • gwern 5y ago
    Because it's not Waymo. It suggests that Waymo has a real competitor and Waymo-level tech has been replicated outside Waymo and their long lead over everyone else is evaporating because they have (to outside appearances) dithered so long. (One wonders if Waymo would even have 'been doing it for 6 months already' in SF if Cruise hadn't been ramping up in SF the past few years...)
  • amacneil 5y ago
    From your Waymo link: > All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now Cruise is the first to do driverless (zero humans in the front seat) testing in SF. Waymo have been doing this for a couple years in Phoenix, but have not yet tested driverless in SF as far as I'm aware.
    • TulliusCicero 5y ago
      Yes, though there's the big caveat of only doing it at night (10pm - 6am). Oh and also limited to 25 mph.
      • 5y ago
• wearhere 5y ago
  This headline may technically be correct, but it sure does suggest a bit more than what's being offered. "We're opening a sign-up page on our site"?? And (below [1]) Kyle mentions geofences? How much of the public plans rides in advance, for a limited service area, via the web? I want to hear when these services finally have the capability and capacity to match the experience of Uber and Lyft: get a ride when and wherever you need one. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30169708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30169708
  • IMcD23 5y ago
    The form asks which mobile device OS you use. Where did you hear that this is only something you must book via the web?
• mchusma 5y ago
  I have 3 thoughts: (1) Amazing to see progress, lets make self driving cars a reality! (2) Oh, its another limited private beta like Waymo has been doing. I'd like to actually use these, and this doesn't seem that much closer. (3) What the heck does Cruise's cap table look like anymore? Acquired by GM, then almost immediately spun back out?
  • pvsnp 5y ago
    Parent organization is still General Motors, they just operate independently
    • tpudlik 5y ago
      There must be a little more to this, since clearly they are not a wholly owned subsidiary.
      • _delirium 5y ago
        According to the most recent SEC filing I can find with an explicit ownership percentage, "As of June 30, 2019, external investors held 17.1% of the fully diluted equity in GM Cruise Holdings." [1] Presumably that means GM as the parent company owned 82.9%. [1] https://investor.gm.com/node/19751/html https://investor.gm.com/node/19751/html
• wubbert 5y ago
  I notice that they are refereed to as "driverless" rather than "self-driving". Are these actually self-driving or are they remote controlled by a person?
  • dontreact 5y ago
    I saw a presentation at a conference that pretty strongly suggested they will have a remote driver take over at certain points (the car will assess it can’t continue and remote driver takes over)
    • TulliusCicero 5y ago
      A remote driver, or remote navigator/coach? The former is incredibly dangerous, the latter is what Waymo is doing.
      • kgin 5y ago
        Second one. Someone remote can help label and plan until the car has enough confidence to proceed.
        • TulliusCicero 5y ago
          Right, which isn't a remote driver.
• postmeta 5y ago
  do Cruise and Waymo do rolling stops?
• jessriedel 5y ago
  What is the level of oversight by remote humans? Is it one teleoperator to one car?
• crsv 5y ago
  Since they’re launching in SF will the autonomous Cruise vehicles be available to queue as get away cars for coordinated shoplifting sprees and/or parked car looting runs?
• quickthrower2 5y ago
  Echos of the first Uber ride ever. Exciting.
• angrysword 5y ago
  About one month ago, the CEO of Cruise --self driving car industry leader--been fired by the CEO of GM--EV industry leader---. One month later, the car start drive itself at most challenge city. What a great achievement is. Then I take a look a video, I think the cruise still use 10 years old google self driving car technology. When I saw 3 lidars there, I know maybe millions of line code added as always. more hardware, more code, it means far away from production. NIO, XPEV, TUSIMPLE, HUAWEI use lidar, but not something like this.
• neurobot123 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• elwell 5y ago
  An outside observer reading Hacker News comment threads might suspect HN to be a luddite community, pouncing on new tech with an assailment of negativity.
• everyone 5y ago
  Asking people who know. Is this BS? Are people on public roads gonna be dying from this soon? Also how is this legal?
• steve_huffman 5y ago
  Wait is steve huffman is one of the "test" riders in the promo video at the bottom?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• graderjs 5y ago
  The idea that human drivers can create cars that are somehow better drivers than them...has got to be some kind of bunk.
  • TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Robots are better at plenty of things than humans.
    • graderjs 5y ago
      Specialized things, sure. Agree. But driving has to be almost AGI: an almost entirely open and unrestrained field of endeavor.
      • TulliusCicero 5y ago
        Not really. It needs to be more flexible than other current robots, but definitely not AGI.
        • graderjs 5y ago
          Really? You think full autonomous that's better than human drivers is not AGI? Perhaps time will tell if your opinion is right.
          • TulliusCicero 5y ago
            Yes, it seems pretty obvious to me. I mean, we already have cars that can handle driving themselves in some contexts (e.g. Waymo in suburban Phoenix) but we're obviously nowhere close to AGI.
            • graderjs 5y ago
              That's the thing tho. Specialization (in some contexts), versus a general field of endeavor. Plus you got, "handle themselves", versus, better than humans drivers. You may be underestimating how hard that is.
• jmustill 5y ago
  At last! Uber and Lyft prices have been sky-rocketing in the city. Great to see a new option on the horizon
• aqaq2 5y ago
• ck2 5y ago
  I still want to know who goes to prison when a pedestrian or cyclist is killed. Because no-one is arguing someone will be killed, only that "human drivers kill people too" or "machines will kill fewer, eventually". Will it be the passenger? The coder for bad code? The person who assembled the hardware for improperly tested malfunctioning sensors? The person who made the malfunctioning sensors? Who? Because someone is responsible. You can't just spread the blame around and the corporation just pays a fine and shrugs after someone's life is ended.
  • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Unless the driver is drunk, has malice, or willfully breaking a bunch of other rules, I don’t think they go to prison now.
    • defaultprimate 5y ago
      Virtually all auto accidents in which a third-party fatality occurs result in criminal liability. It's extremely rare for a third-party fatality in an auto accident to be caused by something other than criminal negligence or intent.
      • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Most auto accidents that cause death don’t involve third parties. And there are shockingly a lot of people killed in auto accidents, only a very small percentage of those result in prison time.
        • defaultprimate 5y ago
          Exactly why I specified. Multi-party fatal accidents are rare, but they usually involve drunk driving or gross negligence/recklessness
          • seanmcdirmid 5y ago
            Right, but the original comment didn't specify that, so sounded a bit weird to me.
• defaultprimate 5y ago
  Anyone want to take bets on how long this lasts?
• dookahku 5y ago
  I remember when Cruise started as a post here on HN asking for people to submit their resumes. Congrats to them!
• csomar 5y ago
  Am I still asleep or is everybody here missing the "May Stop Quickly" printed out in the back of the car. 1. Is this even legal? Is this a legal requirement or some alert text they come up with? 2. If the car stops quickly, it'll eventually result in accidents and possibly not for itself (but other drivers). Did they think this is not risky and safe enough to put it out on the street. 3. The video demos are all at night when there is little traffic. How does it respond at day when you have more traffic?
• netcan 5y ago
  I would love to hear the "underpants planning" of self driving cars iterated, critiqued and discussed. Telsa's underpants plan appears to be (still?): [1] Base self driving software on affordable components that already exist in production models. [2] Get lots of high quality data from an existing fleet using this hardware [3] Climb the "levels of automation" ladder step-by-step, straight to consumer [4] Robotaxis, with Tesla owners lending their cars to Tesla's Uber (Tuber)?. If/when version X of Tesla's self driving software "solves self driving" in the sense that it can use roads/infrastructure as-is and achieve superhuman safety... Tesla hit a massive jackpot. They'll already have millions of cars on the road. Producing millions of cars takes time, and a lot of capital. This amounts to few years' head start and is a big advantage. Waymo's underpants plan is more of a traditional prototype/proof-of-concept/R&D lab thing. Google already poured >$20bn into Waymo without a start date for a business model. But... they have every advantage. Expensive sensors & hardware. No limits imposed by industrial engineering, manufacturing, marketing or cost concerns. Limited, hand picked routes areas of operation. Waymo is set up to smash performance milestones as quickly as possible. Waymo, on paper, are better set up to achieve milestones... a working L5 vehicle. But, the road from this milestone to profitable revenue & scale is still pretty long. What if the hardware costs too much? Even if it doesn't cost too much, how long to start and scale production to Tesla levels? George Hotz has his "Android to Tesla's Apple" underpants plan. No vehicle. It seems to me Cruise (kvogt, the ceo has commented) is doing something similar to Waymo, strategically. There's a lot of interesting stuff to discuss. Personally, I'm interested in takes on how self driving "rolls out." Will the infrastructure (roads, signs, etc.) need to be adapted? How can this all play out? BTW... kvogt. It would be great to hear you on Lex Fridman.
• Ericson2314 5y ago
  I think I saw one of these at night with no humans inside. Drivers or passengers. Is that legal?
  • ramesh31 5y ago
    >Is that legal? It is if you pay the right people enough money. Welcome to the future; where the mass dregs of humanity are now a liability to our elite cybernetic enhanced 1% overlords.
  • marmshallow 5y ago
    Yes, Cruise has obtained the relevant permits from the CA DMV. The only permit they're currently missing is the one that let's them charge customers for rides.
    • Ericson2314 5y ago
      That is interesting, because presumably self-driving cars, like all cars, are more dangerous to pedestrians than (that or other) vehicle occupants.
• flerovium 5y ago
  Waymo's public beta included a remote driver. Does this?
  • redytedy 5y ago
    Neither company has a remote driver. I think the role you are referring to is an operator, who Waymo makes clear never directly drives the car.
• Tucanix 5y ago
  Disappointing the amount of ragging people are doing towards Tesla here, Tesla is far ahead and I can't believe people are falling for this promotional video and assuming they are farther ahead. Tesla's vehicles are in the consumers hands and have many many thousands of drivers using their system every day. Also the VERY first comment here mentions a misleading article "Tesla to recall vehicles". This is misleading since Tesla probably didn't recall even a single vehicle, they probably all got an over the air update within a couple days of the problem being spotted. When a problem comes up Tesla is quick to send out an update and the news loves to write misleading articles every damn time because bad news about Tesla sells, there are so many wrong articles out there it's insane. So disappointing that even the people I assumed would be smarter (Hacker News), are falling for this shit. Also this debate of cameras vs lidar is so old and outdated because LIDAR IS NOT GOD DAMN MAGICAL it has it's problems too. Tesla has also dropped radar because they don't see it being beneficial enough. In reality talking about lidar vs cameras is not too important especially in the long ron, how far the tech is underneath is the most important thing currently and over time the amount of compute power you have in each car will be the most important factor.
  • marmshallow 5y ago
    I'm not sure what there is to "fall for". Cruise is offering truly driverless rides (in a limited domain), and Tesla does not have any kind of truly driverless product (although they still call it Full Self Driving).