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Cruise’s Robot Car Outages Are Jamming Up San Francisco

82 points by fortran77 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
37ef_ced3 4y ago
From a customer's perspective, it isn't clear that a hardware/software taxi driver is in any way better than a human taxi driver, particularly with (human) driver assist preventing collisions and all the other warnings provided by a modern car. In both cases someone else is driving for the customer. With a human driver (plus driver assist braking and collision warnings) you have the most flexible, sophisticated intelligence on Earth driving. With a robotaxi you have something inferior. But maybe it's a lot cheaper, right? The robotaxi can only compete on price because that's its only advantage. If you own a car that drives itself, that's a different story. Everybody can see the value proposition. But is the robotaxi actually cheaper at all? We would have to look at the cost of the hardware (how often do lidars fail and how much do they cost to replace?) and the cost of the software development and the cost of the fallback human remote operators (fleet monitoring and teleoperation) and the years of huge R&D investment (billions of dollars) to evaluate whether a robotaxi fleet is indeed cheaper. So how much cheaper is it, exactly? 5%? 10%? 15%? As a customer, would you pay a little more to have the most flexible, sophisticated intelligence on Earth (human brain + driver assist) or would you want to save a few dollars and risk having some dumb piece of software strand you in the middle of the road somewhere? We all use Google Maps or Apple Maps when driving and most of us have seen these systems do boneheaded things. Just imagine the dumb things a robotaxi could do. It's hard for a normal person to be excited about this. I don't know a single person who is excited by robotaxis.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Yes, the robotaxy will be much cheaper. Maybe not the first generation, but once it matures any little bit, it will be cheaper. They will also be available at 3AM at a medium sized city. And yeah, that's basically their benefit. That's enough to displace all the human competition, anyway.
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  There's a couple misunderstandings here. > The robotaxi can only compete on price because that's its only advantage. That's one advantage. Another is that that it's a third option to the traditional dichotomy of driving yourself or be driven by a stranger. It's worth taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. Robotaxis aren't the end-all-be-all for anyone. It's just a bounded problem domain with some promise of commercial profitability on the road to "full autonomy". A baby step, in other words. Yeah, the autonomous vehicles on the road today aren't clearly and obviously better than the best human drivers, but how are they going to get to that point without going through all the intermediate steps to get there?
  - ars 4y ago
    People seem to completely forget how valuable having a secure place to store your things is. If you travel to the White House using public transportation with a baby carriage - well, you can't. There is no place to leave it, and they won't let it in. (Same for your purse, or a backpack, or even a water bottle.) If you take a car you can leave all that in your car. Of course it's not easy finding a place to put your car near the White House. What I did is drive almost all the way, to a parking lot, then take a train for the last couple miles.
    - bdonlan 4y ago
      Japan has a good solution for this - most of the larger train stations (and many of the medium-sized ones as well) have "coin lockers" (which, despite the name, these days often take transit IC cards instead of coins) you can rent to store your stuff until you're ready to head home. In larger tourist hubs like Akihabara there'll also be a ton of lockers in the vicinity of the station run by third parties as well.
- hansword 4y ago
  I think your 'only advantage' is a bit premature. 3 seconds thought: Robotaxis can't get covid (or warthog-flu or whatever new pandemic the next years will bring), which might be an advantage to some customers. Having said that, I don't drive nor use taxis, so I don't care much.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Don't forget hygiene. Robot taxis are going to be much grosser because you won't have a human watching to make sure the person in the back seat isn't spilling coffee/having sex (with self or others)/throwing up/hawking luggies (sorry I'm from the 80s, what's the right term?). Though I am sure we will all also at some point grab one whose previous occupant didn't quite make it to the hospital in time for the childbirth :)
  - forgotloginonp4 4y ago
    Do they not have passenger monitoring aicctv?
- SheinhardtWigCo 4y ago
  Have you been in an AV? In my experience (around 50 rides) overall it's a more relaxed and smooth ride; strikingly so, even at this early stage in the game. There are occasional uncomfortable and/or confusing moments, but they're already becoming much less frequent. Lyft/Uber already feels less comfortable, and even less safe. It's horse vs car; elevator operator vs buttons; Blackberry vs iPhone all over again.
recursivedoubts 4y ago
if you want a vision of the future, imagine an ambulance stuck behind an automated vehicle trying to update its firmware when AWS is down, forever
- sonofhans 4y ago
- babl-yc 4y ago
  If that's the future, then engineers of the future are making poor choices. It'd be best to save OTA for a vehicle that is parked and charging. I'm surprised Cruise cars aren't configured to pull over with the server being down (maybe max X seconds of offline driving). Seems better than parking in the middle of a crosswalk/intersection and something that can be done safely offline.
fudged71 4y ago
If a human driver is lost or in distress, the default behavior would be to find the nearest safe spot to pull over and put on your hazards. Shouldn't this be the default fallback behavior if a remote driver isn't responding?
- jdminhbg 4y ago
  > If a human driver is lost or in distress, the default behavior would be to find the nearest safe spot to pull over and put on your hazards. Well, it should be…
- nerdbaggy 4y ago
  Yup they do that. Just happened to pull off to the side in a crosswalk > Cruise spokesperson Tiffany Testo provided a written statement that said the company’s vehicles are programmed to pull over and turn on their hazard lights when they encounter a technical problem or meet road conditions they can’t handle.
salmonfamine 4y ago
Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.
- DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
  Explain how trains solve the last mile problem? The thing that roads already solve?
  - salmonfamine 4y ago
    Walk. EDIT: or just drive, as you do now.
    - rnk 4y ago
      so we build giant parking lots at our metro train stations? We need different transportation. The us is terrible at building needed train infra. But just like in Europe, you need different solutions at diff levels.
      - SECProto 4y ago
        > so we build giant parking lots at our metro train stations No. The comment you're replying to specifically said "walk", while the comment at top of thread specifically mentioned that building trains "requires a move towards high-density housing". High density housing, trains, and walking is a solved transportation solution for cities with much higher/denser populations than we have in North America. Getting there from here is not such a solved solution, but the general process many places are working on goes: build train (with park and ride at outskirts for current ridership) --> build high density mixed use near stations (which now doesn't need parking for each unit) --> rinse and repeat until city is more sustainable without blowing $$$,$$$,$$$ on road capital projects every year to deal with ever-increasing traffic
jjulius 4y ago
I can't wait for that point many moons in the future, where FSD is fully/widely-adopted, and where every Honda (or pick any mfg'er, really) on the planet stops right where it is because some key piece of their critical infrastructure went down.
renewiltord 4y ago
Ha, how unlucky for them. Hope they're still able to operate.
alistairSH 4y ago
Why are these robo-taxis dependent on some sort of OTA communication to operate? I understand periodic OTA updates, but shouldn’t they be able to operate autonomously for long enough to avoid jamming up traffic? Maybe long enough to find a legal parking place instead of the middle of a turn lane/crosswalk?
93po 4y ago
Where are the elon haters that constantly love to say that tesla FSD is "far behind" the competition now?
PraetorianGourd 4y ago
Humans are abstractly selfless but functionally selfish. In the abstract, trains and bikes and walking are wonderful forms of transportation. And creating cities where cars are not needed is a wonderful goal. Except, cars exist. We can go from here to there in absolute comfort, listening to the music we want, stopping exactly where we want. Any solution needs to be faster, cheaper, or easier. Probably all three. It is insanely easy to say that some abstract “they” should just change their lifestyle for the good of humanity. But the trouble is turning the abstract “they” into the specific “me”. Even if we had the pipe-dream of one mile cities, what if my mile has great sushi, but I want pho? Get on a bus to that mile and then walk? Or just drive to it? Lastly, we have self-driving cars. They are called taxis. And for most people, the price of a car payment + gas + maintenance + insurance is less than one would spend on a taxi per month. But we still prefer cars. Because they are faster, more comfortable etc. You either need to force people into your worldview or make the alternative better. The former is a losing strategy, so do the latter.

82 points by fortran77 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

From a customer's perspective, it isn't clear that a hardware/software taxi driver is in any way better than a human taxi driver, particularly with (human) driver assist preventing collisions and all the other warnings provided by a modern car. In both cases someone else is driving for the customer. With a human driver (plus driver assist braking and collision warnings) you have the most flexible, sophisticated intelligence on Earth driving. With a robotaxi you have something inferior. But maybe it's a lot cheaper, right? The robotaxi can only compete on price because that's its only advantage. If you own a car that drives itself, that's a different story. Everybody can see the value proposition. But is the robotaxi actually cheaper at all? We would have to look at the cost of the hardware (how often do lidars fail and how much do they cost to replace?) and the cost of the software development and the cost of the fallback human remote operators (fleet monitoring and teleoperation) and the years of huge R&D investment (billions of dollars) to evaluate whether a robotaxi fleet is indeed cheaper. So how much cheaper is it, exactly? 5%? 10%? 15%? As a customer, would you pay a little more to have the most flexible, sophisticated intelligence on Earth (human brain + driver assist) or would you want to save a few dollars and risk having some dumb piece of software strand you in the middle of the road somewhere? We all use Google Maps or Apple Maps when driving and most of us have seen these systems do boneheaded things. Just imagine the dumb things a robotaxi could do. It's hard for a normal person to be excited about this. I don't know a single person who is excited by robotaxis.

marcosdumay 4y ago
Yes, the robotaxy will be much cheaper. Maybe not the first generation, but once it matures any little bit, it will be cheaper. They will also be available at 3AM at a medium sized city. And yeah, that's basically their benefit. That's enough to displace all the human competition, anyway.
AlotOfReading 4y ago
There's a couple misunderstandings here. > The robotaxi can only compete on price because that's its only advantage. That's one advantage. Another is that that it's a third option to the traditional dichotomy of driving yourself or be driven by a stranger. It's worth taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. Robotaxis aren't the end-all-be-all for anyone. It's just a bounded problem domain with some promise of commercial profitability on the road to "full autonomy". A baby step, in other words. Yeah, the autonomous vehicles on the road today aren't clearly and obviously better than the best human drivers, but how are they going to get to that point without going through all the intermediate steps to get there?
- ars 4y ago
  People seem to completely forget how valuable having a secure place to store your things is. If you travel to the White House using public transportation with a baby carriage - well, you can't. There is no place to leave it, and they won't let it in. (Same for your purse, or a backpack, or even a water bottle.) If you take a car you can leave all that in your car. Of course it's not easy finding a place to put your car near the White House. What I did is drive almost all the way, to a parking lot, then take a train for the last couple miles.
  - bdonlan 4y ago
    Japan has a good solution for this - most of the larger train stations (and many of the medium-sized ones as well) have "coin lockers" (which, despite the name, these days often take transit IC cards instead of coins) you can rent to store your stuff until you're ready to head home. In larger tourist hubs like Akihabara there'll also be a ton of lockers in the vicinity of the station run by third parties as well.
hansword 4y ago
I think your 'only advantage' is a bit premature. 3 seconds thought: Robotaxis can't get covid (or warthog-flu or whatever new pandemic the next years will bring), which might be an advantage to some customers. Having said that, I don't drive nor use taxis, so I don't care much.
ROTMetro 4y ago
Don't forget hygiene. Robot taxis are going to be much grosser because you won't have a human watching to make sure the person in the back seat isn't spilling coffee/having sex (with self or others)/throwing up/hawking luggies (sorry I'm from the 80s, what's the right term?). Though I am sure we will all also at some point grab one whose previous occupant didn't quite make it to the hospital in time for the childbirth :)
- forgotloginonp4 4y ago
  Do they not have passenger monitoring aicctv?
SheinhardtWigCo 4y ago
Have you been in an AV? In my experience (around 50 rides) overall it's a more relaxed and smooth ride; strikingly so, even at this early stage in the game. There are occasional uncomfortable and/or confusing moments, but they're already becoming much less frequent. Lyft/Uber already feels less comfortable, and even less safe. It's horse vs car; elevator operator vs buttons; Blackberry vs iPhone all over again.

recursivedoubts 4y ago

if you want a vision of the future, imagine an ambulance stuck behind an automated vehicle trying to update its firmware when AWS is down, forever

sonofhans 4y ago
babl-yc 4y ago
If that's the future, then engineers of the future are making poor choices. It'd be best to save OTA for a vehicle that is parked and charging. I'm surprised Cruise cars aren't configured to pull over with the server being down (maybe max X seconds of offline driving). Seems better than parking in the middle of a crosswalk/intersection and something that can be done safely offline.

fudged71 4y ago

If a human driver is lost or in distress, the default behavior would be to find the nearest safe spot to pull over and put on your hazards. Shouldn't this be the default fallback behavior if a remote driver isn't responding?

jdminhbg 4y ago
> If a human driver is lost or in distress, the default behavior would be to find the nearest safe spot to pull over and put on your hazards. Well, it should be…
nerdbaggy 4y ago
Yup they do that. Just happened to pull off to the side in a crosswalk > Cruise spokesperson Tiffany Testo provided a written statement that said the company’s vehicles are programmed to pull over and turn on their hazard lights when they encounter a technical problem or meet road conditions they can’t handle.

salmonfamine 4y ago

Self-driving cars are a solution for a problem that has already been solved. Build trains. But of course, this doesn't benefit automakers, requires a move towards high-density housing that NIMBY's and certain classes of investors oppose, so instead we'll create an entirely new class of problems by allowing these companies to unleash their insufficient technology on public roads.

DoneWithAllThat 4y ago
Explain how trains solve the last mile problem? The thing that roads already solve?
- salmonfamine 4y ago
  Walk. EDIT: or just drive, as you do now.
  - rnk 4y ago
    so we build giant parking lots at our metro train stations? We need different transportation. The us is terrible at building needed train infra. But just like in Europe, you need different solutions at diff levels.
    - SECProto 4y ago
      > so we build giant parking lots at our metro train stations No. The comment you're replying to specifically said "walk", while the comment at top of thread specifically mentioned that building trains "requires a move towards high-density housing". High density housing, trains, and walking is a solved transportation solution for cities with much higher/denser populations than we have in North America. Getting there from here is not such a solved solution, but the general process many places are working on goes: build train (with park and ride at outskirts for current ridership) --> build high density mixed use near stations (which now doesn't need parking for each unit) --> rinse and repeat until city is more sustainable without blowing $$$,$$$,$$$ on road capital projects every year to deal with ever-increasing traffic

jjulius 4y ago

I can't wait for that point many moons in the future, where FSD is fully/widely-adopted, and where every Honda (or pick any mfg'er, really) on the planet stops right where it is because some key piece of their critical infrastructure went down.

renewiltord 4y ago

Ha, how unlucky for them. Hope they're still able to operate.

alistairSH 4y ago

Why are these robo-taxis dependent on some sort of OTA communication to operate? I understand periodic OTA updates, but shouldn’t they be able to operate autonomously for long enough to avoid jamming up traffic? Maybe long enough to find a legal parking place instead of the middle of a turn lane/crosswalk?

93po 4y ago

Where are the elon haters that constantly love to say that tesla FSD is "far behind" the competition now?

PraetorianGourd 4y ago

Humans are abstractly selfless but functionally selfish. In the abstract, trains and bikes and walking are wonderful forms of transportation. And creating cities where cars are not needed is a wonderful goal. Except, cars exist. We can go from here to there in absolute comfort, listening to the music we want, stopping exactly where we want. Any solution needs to be faster, cheaper, or easier. Probably all three. It is insanely easy to say that some abstract “they” should just change their lifestyle for the good of humanity. But the trouble is turning the abstract “they” into the specific “me”. Even if we had the pipe-dream of one mile cities, what if my mile has great sushi, but I want pho? Get on a bus to that mile and then walk? Or just drive to it? Lastly, we have self-driving cars. They are called taxis. And for most people, the price of a car payment + gas + maintenance + insurance is less than one would spend on a taxi per month. But we still prefer cars. Because they are faster, more comfortable etc. You either need to force people into your worldview or make the alternative better. The former is a losing strategy, so do the latter.