10 ms·

I spent a few years in self driving, I have immense respect for Waymo, and very little for Tesla. I think ultimately they will win the space.

by voz_ 4y ago

threeseed 4y ago
I wouldn't rule out Cruise. They already have robotaxis in SF and are expanding into Arizona and Texas by the end of this year.
- zndr 4y ago
  Saying they have taxi's in SF is a bit hyperbolic. I have an invite to that program and it's - only after 10pm - used such an odd slice of the city I not only can't get picked up, it doesn't GO any where I go. I would love to use either of these programs both for the novelty and because I think Autonomous driving is great, but I literally can't use the program I do have access to.
  - darkwizard42 4y ago
    I think the parent wasn't referring to it being perfect, but that open road real-life testing is something very few companies have, and was implying we shouldn't count out Cruise because they are at least at that stage.
  - hemloc_io 4y ago
    as a fellow beta tester, they are expanding their service area to include a majority of the city incl Mission. Totally agree w/ you rn thou right now it's basically a neat party trick I have to go out of my way to show off instead of a super useful service.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    > used such an odd slice of the city I not only can't get picked up, it doesn't GO any where I go. It's been a month and a half since they've covered almost the entire city except FiDi/Union Square (and Twin Peaks)[1]. That's not a trivial omission, but do you really never take rides that start or end in any other area? In particular, that entire area is a fairly close walk from the only dense transit line in the city. [1] https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1587589014525448192 https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1587589014525448192
paxys 4y ago
I like the level 5 or bust approach taken by Waymo and Cruise. Anything in the middle (like what Tesla is doing) is IMO more dangerous than useful. The whole "the car is self-driving but you must also pay attention and have your hands on the wheel at all times" thing is idiotic.
- Justsignedup 4y ago
  Humans are notoriously bad at just paying attention and not being in charge. Those few seconds their actual attention is needed are critical. I do appreciate that my car can do full distance control and assist if I am drifting, but it doesn't control itself, so I can never disengage. Personally I feel that this is wonderful and should be the limit. Anything past that should just be fully autonomous. Otherwise you're asking for trouble.
  - mikepurvis 4y ago
    100%. If I'm driving and my attention wanders, I need the immediate feedback of drifting out of the lane and having to abruptly course correct, and being like "dang yeah, let's not do that again", possibly reinforced by passengers scowling at me from elsewhere in the vehicle. I can't imagine trying to focus on supervising an AI pilot without that kind of feedback.
    - xplanephil 4y ago
      interestingly, I don't have much trouble with that, as it works exactly like most airplanes that I fly as a pilot. An airplane autopilot is a dumb device, in that it does execute _exactly_ the plan you tell it to, and it is up to the pilot to at all times decide whether the current plan still makes sense or needs to be altered. So the pilot makes the strategic decisions, and leaves most of the physical tasks of flying to the autopilot. I find myself using my M3 w/FSD in exactly the same way, as that I put on autosteer pretty much immediately when I'm out of the driveway, but I constantly nudge it into the lane that I want it to be in (by using the turn signal) or push the accelerator when I think it is taking too long pondering a turn. So i leave the physical driving (keep lane and distance) to the car but manage the car to always go exactly where I want it. I have no trouble staying alert this way when doing medium long drives. Long highway drives where autopilot is so good that it requires no manual interaction is where the trouble starts and I find it hard to keep paying attention. This is where in an airplane you have a copilot and can discuss strategic things like overnight stops, fuel stops, etc... Maybe Tesla needs a built-in chatbot to make me do that :)
babelfish 4y ago
What does 'win' mean here? It seems like being able to pass on the costs of fleet management, insurance, gas, parking/storage, etc to drivers (the way taxis/ride sharing apps currently do) will always be cheaper than maintaining it yourself, even if you save on the driver fees.
- kibwen 4y ago
  At the rate things are going right now, Waymo will win when Tesla throws in the towel on developing in-house and licenses Waymo's tech in order to finally deliver on full self-driving.
  - moonchrome 4y ago
    Tesla already sold self driving for years - waymo uses way more sensors than a camera from what I can tell - not only would that bump unit cost they would probably have to upgrade previous customers due to their marketing.
    - misiti3780 4y ago
      and fuck with the aerodynamics - causing drag on the cars, decreasing range. LIDR isnt an option.
      - cycomanic 4y ago
        That highly depends on the lidar system. All players are working a lot on minaturizing LIDAR systems and they fundamentally don't have to be as big as the waymo systems.
    - someotherperson 4y ago
      > not only would that bump unit cost they would probably have to upgrade previous customers due to their marketing. Only if they don't change they name. They can call it an upgraded RealDrive™ QuantumSense™ feature that no longer requires having your hands on the wheel.
  - 4y ago
guilamu 4y ago
I did not spent a few years in self driving, but correct if I'm wrong, but how would Waymo win when they can work only with HD maps (aka, nearly nowhere) while Tesla FSD work nearly perfectly now even on dirt roads (aka anywhere) with no map at all?
- codenesium 4y ago
  99% of the time it doesn't kill you isn't what we're shooting for.
  - daveguy 4y ago
    With 1.5 fatalities per 100,000,000 miles[0], the benchmark to meet is 99.9999985% of the time it doesn't kill you. Injuries are going to be a lot higher, obviously. Still, I think most self-driving enthusiasts underestimate the bar that needs to be crossed wrt safety. And general vehicle safety isn't going to remain stagnant. I think it's going to be a cost vs injuries tradeoff for quite a while until we get human-level or better self-driving safety in all circumstances. [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/193018/number-of-us-crashes-by-month/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/193018/number-of-us-cras...
- voz_ 4y ago
  Collecting HD Maps is an 80/20 problem (I have a patent in a subfield of this, for better or worse lol) - you can get a ton of value from a small set of focused areas. If you can solve greater metro areas (no dirt roads?), you've got a real solution. I also think that the mapping and routing component matters a lot less than how good your collision and realtime avoidance systems are. And in that arena, Tesla is an unmitigated disaster.
  - guilamu 4y ago
    Thanks for your anwser. I see a lot of bad things on Tesla FSD and I totally get the critics. Yet, I follow DirtyTesla's YouTube channel and I think FSD is quite impressive compared to any other self driving software I've seen. Would you mind to direct me to similar videos from Waymo for example in similar situations? I can't find anything even remotely as good as what Tesla is doing now. I'm not a fanboy nor do I possess any TSLA actions (or even a car for that matter), I'm just interested in the field and until now I thought Tesla was the most promising tech (it seems I'm wrong, but I really like to see it!).
mv4 4y ago
can you elaborate? something wrong with Tesla's approach?
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  They have a habit of running into things.
  - aantix 4y ago
    How do the number of accidents compare to Waymo when fleet size is taken into account?
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      The stats don't matter much when it's clear they can't handle collision avoidance with anything outside their limited training set like airplanes. You have to ask what else can't they detect in front of the car if they're 100% dependent on ML to decide there's an obstruction. That is an irresponsible threat to public safety no matter how lucky they are scraping by on their current architecture.
      - jcims 4y ago
        Except the stats *do* matter. It’s how we measure things that operate in the real world. The blind baby stroller benchmark might be academically interesting, but if distracted drivers are smashing kids on public roads for another decade while Waymo perfects it’s craft the net result is just more flat people.
    - redox99 4y ago
      Talking of FSD beta here, I don't think there has been any death or even major accident to date. But that's mostly because (especially until a few months ago) it was bad enough that nobody would trust it, so people were always alert to intervene. If you were to let FSD beta just drive by itself enough time, and intentionally never intervene, it would eventually crash, no doubt about it. Before v10.69 it was hard to get a 20 minute drive with no interventions (unless it was mostly straight roads).
aeternum 4y ago
Great appeal to authority. Why not explain the technical reasons you believe Waymo will win?
lynndotpy 4y ago
This is my view as well. (I did self-driving related research, like platooning and taxi scheduling/allocation.) Waymo, Baidu, Didi, and others are the names that come to mind for places that produce research, produce data, and apply their technology in real-world practice. My impression of Tesla is mostly shaped from (1) nonparticipation in the research community, (2) a very early "mission accomplished" declaration by calling their cars fully self driving, and (3) a longterm refusal to use LIDAR. I don't consider Tesla a player in self-driving (edit: self-driving research), but I don't think Tesla does either. There's no reason for them to try to "win" the space. From Tesla's side, it makes more sense to continue on their current tack: Applying results from existing research. I think Tesla's strategy is to be the highest bidder when it comes time for Waymo (or Didi, etc) to sell their tech.
- azinman2 4y ago
  They literally sell a package to purchasers of cars called full self driving and autopilot. They claim their competitive advantage is all the cameras of miles driven. They put special boards in cars for it. They absolutely consider themselves a player.
  - minsc_and_boo 4y ago
    I don't think anyone is doubting that Tesla considers themselves to be a player, especially since it sells more add-ons to their cars. Repeatedly publicly knocking the benefits of LIDAR in self driving demonstrates otherwise.
    - mehwoot 4y ago
      > I don't think anyone is doubting that Tesla considers themselves to be a player > I don't consider Tesla a player in self-driving, but I don't think Tesla does either
      - pdabbadabba 4y ago
        They clearly are a player in the self-driving cars market. They may not be a player in self-driving research. These things can both be true at the same time. I think that's the distinction driving the confusion here.
cco 4y ago
Any visibility or opinion into AutoX? I hadn't really heard much news about them until that Electrek[1] article the other day that presents AutoX as being far ahead on disengagements relative to Waymo (who I thought was the leader in the space). [1]https://electrek.co/2022/12/14/tesla-full-self-driving-data-awful-challenge-elon-musk-prove-otherwise/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/14/tesla-full-self-driving-data-...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
specialist 4y ago
Noob questions, thanks in advance for humoring: Do self-driving cars model, learn from, or both, from other cars? Say there's a new obstruction (traffic cones around maintenance crew). When deciding what to do, eg left or right, does the self-driver observe what the proceeding cars did? Do self-drivers remember prior decisions? On the daily commute, there's a speed bump, pot hole, or whatever. Does the car anticipate the remembered road feature? Like maybe "Oh, last time I saw this pot hole, I had to swerve right. So this time I'm going tack right a little earlier." Sorry for noob questions. Imagining a ubiquitous self-driving future, I keep thinking of boids and uncoordinated collective action, like flocking and murmurings. Wouldn't it be cool if cars did similar stuff?

I spent a few years in self driving, I have immense respect for Waymo, and very little for Tesla. I think ultimately they will win the space.

by voz_ 4y ago

I spent a few years in self driving, I have immense respect for Waymo, and very little for Tesla. I think ultimately they will win the space.

threeseed 4y ago

I wouldn't rule out Cruise. They already have robotaxis in SF and are expanding into Arizona and Texas by the end of this year.

zndr 4y ago
Saying they have taxi's in SF is a bit hyperbolic. I have an invite to that program and it's - only after 10pm - used such an odd slice of the city I not only can't get picked up, it doesn't GO any where I go. I would love to use either of these programs both for the novelty and because I think Autonomous driving is great, but I literally can't use the program I do have access to.
- darkwizard42 4y ago
  I think the parent wasn't referring to it being perfect, but that open road real-life testing is something very few companies have, and was implying we shouldn't count out Cruise because they are at least at that stage.
- hemloc_io 4y ago
  as a fellow beta tester, they are expanding their service area to include a majority of the city incl Mission. Totally agree w/ you rn thou right now it's basically a neat party trick I have to go out of my way to show off instead of a super useful service.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wutbrodo 4y ago
  > used such an odd slice of the city I not only can't get picked up, it doesn't GO any where I go. It's been a month and a half since they've covered almost the entire city except FiDi/Union Square (and Twin Peaks)[1]. That's not a trivial omission, but do you really never take rides that start or end in any other area? In particular, that entire area is a fairly close walk from the only dense transit line in the city. [1] https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1587589014525448192 https://twitter.com/kvogt/status/1587589014525448192

paxys 4y ago

I like the level 5 or bust approach taken by Waymo and Cruise. Anything in the middle (like what Tesla is doing) is IMO more dangerous than useful. The whole "the car is self-driving but you must also pay attention and have your hands on the wheel at all times" thing is idiotic.

Justsignedup 4y ago
Humans are notoriously bad at just paying attention and not being in charge. Those few seconds their actual attention is needed are critical. I do appreciate that my car can do full distance control and assist if I am drifting, but it doesn't control itself, so I can never disengage. Personally I feel that this is wonderful and should be the limit. Anything past that should just be fully autonomous. Otherwise you're asking for trouble.
- mikepurvis 4y ago
  100%. If I'm driving and my attention wanders, I need the immediate feedback of drifting out of the lane and having to abruptly course correct, and being like "dang yeah, let's not do that again", possibly reinforced by passengers scowling at me from elsewhere in the vehicle. I can't imagine trying to focus on supervising an AI pilot without that kind of feedback.
  - xplanephil 4y ago
    interestingly, I don't have much trouble with that, as it works exactly like most airplanes that I fly as a pilot. An airplane autopilot is a dumb device, in that it does execute _exactly_ the plan you tell it to, and it is up to the pilot to at all times decide whether the current plan still makes sense or needs to be altered. So the pilot makes the strategic decisions, and leaves most of the physical tasks of flying to the autopilot. I find myself using my M3 w/FSD in exactly the same way, as that I put on autosteer pretty much immediately when I'm out of the driveway, but I constantly nudge it into the lane that I want it to be in (by using the turn signal) or push the accelerator when I think it is taking too long pondering a turn. So i leave the physical driving (keep lane and distance) to the car but manage the car to always go exactly where I want it. I have no trouble staying alert this way when doing medium long drives. Long highway drives where autopilot is so good that it requires no manual interaction is where the trouble starts and I find it hard to keep paying attention. This is where in an airplane you have a copilot and can discuss strategic things like overnight stops, fuel stops, etc... Maybe Tesla needs a built-in chatbot to make me do that :)

babelfish 4y ago

What does 'win' mean here? It seems like being able to pass on the costs of fleet management, insurance, gas, parking/storage, etc to drivers (the way taxis/ride sharing apps currently do) will always be cheaper than maintaining it yourself, even if you save on the driver fees.

kibwen 4y ago
At the rate things are going right now, Waymo will win when Tesla throws in the towel on developing in-house and licenses Waymo's tech in order to finally deliver on full self-driving.
- moonchrome 4y ago
  Tesla already sold self driving for years - waymo uses way more sensors than a camera from what I can tell - not only would that bump unit cost they would probably have to upgrade previous customers due to their marketing.
  - misiti3780 4y ago
    and fuck with the aerodynamics - causing drag on the cars, decreasing range. LIDR isnt an option.
    - cycomanic 4y ago
      That highly depends on the lidar system. All players are working a lot on minaturizing LIDAR systems and they fundamentally don't have to be as big as the waymo systems.
  - someotherperson 4y ago
    > not only would that bump unit cost they would probably have to upgrade previous customers due to their marketing. Only if they don't change they name. They can call it an upgraded RealDrive™ QuantumSense™ feature that no longer requires having your hands on the wheel.
- 4y ago

guilamu 4y ago

I did not spent a few years in self driving, but correct if I'm wrong, but how would Waymo win when they can work only with HD maps (aka, nearly nowhere) while Tesla FSD work nearly perfectly now even on dirt roads (aka anywhere) with no map at all?

codenesium 4y ago
99% of the time it doesn't kill you isn't what we're shooting for.
- daveguy 4y ago
  With 1.5 fatalities per 100,000,000 miles[0], the benchmark to meet is 99.9999985% of the time it doesn't kill you. Injuries are going to be a lot higher, obviously. Still, I think most self-driving enthusiasts underestimate the bar that needs to be crossed wrt safety. And general vehicle safety isn't going to remain stagnant. I think it's going to be a cost vs injuries tradeoff for quite a while until we get human-level or better self-driving safety in all circumstances. [0]https://www.statista.com/statistics/193018/number-of-us-crashes-by-month/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/193018/number-of-us-cras...
voz_ 4y ago
Collecting HD Maps is an 80/20 problem (I have a patent in a subfield of this, for better or worse lol) - you can get a ton of value from a small set of focused areas. If you can solve greater metro areas (no dirt roads?), you've got a real solution. I also think that the mapping and routing component matters a lot less than how good your collision and realtime avoidance systems are. And in that arena, Tesla is an unmitigated disaster.
- guilamu 4y ago
  Thanks for your anwser. I see a lot of bad things on Tesla FSD and I totally get the critics. Yet, I follow DirtyTesla's YouTube channel and I think FSD is quite impressive compared to any other self driving software I've seen. Would you mind to direct me to similar videos from Waymo for example in similar situations? I can't find anything even remotely as good as what Tesla is doing now. I'm not a fanboy nor do I possess any TSLA actions (or even a car for that matter), I'm just interested in the field and until now I thought Tesla was the most promising tech (it seems I'm wrong, but I really like to see it!).

mv4 4y ago

can you elaborate? something wrong with Tesla's approach?

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
They have a habit of running into things.
- aantix 4y ago
  How do the number of accidents compare to Waymo when fleet size is taken into account?
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    The stats don't matter much when it's clear they can't handle collision avoidance with anything outside their limited training set like airplanes. You have to ask what else can't they detect in front of the car if they're 100% dependent on ML to decide there's an obstruction. That is an irresponsible threat to public safety no matter how lucky they are scraping by on their current architecture.
    - jcims 4y ago
      Except the stats *do* matter. It’s how we measure things that operate in the real world. The blind baby stroller benchmark might be academically interesting, but if distracted drivers are smashing kids on public roads for another decade while Waymo perfects it’s craft the net result is just more flat people.
  - redox99 4y ago
    Talking of FSD beta here, I don't think there has been any death or even major accident to date. But that's mostly because (especially until a few months ago) it was bad enough that nobody would trust it, so people were always alert to intervene. If you were to let FSD beta just drive by itself enough time, and intentionally never intervene, it would eventually crash, no doubt about it. Before v10.69 it was hard to get a 20 minute drive with no interventions (unless it was mostly straight roads).

aeternum 4y ago

Great appeal to authority. Why not explain the technical reasons you believe Waymo will win?

lynndotpy 4y ago

This is my view as well. (I did self-driving related research, like platooning and taxi scheduling/allocation.) Waymo, Baidu, Didi, and others are the names that come to mind for places that produce research, produce data, and apply their technology in real-world practice. My impression of Tesla is mostly shaped from (1) nonparticipation in the research community, (2) a very early "mission accomplished" declaration by calling their cars fully self driving, and (3) a longterm refusal to use LIDAR. I don't consider Tesla a player in self-driving (edit: self-driving research), but I don't think Tesla does either. There's no reason for them to try to "win" the space. From Tesla's side, it makes more sense to continue on their current tack: Applying results from existing research. I think Tesla's strategy is to be the highest bidder when it comes time for Waymo (or Didi, etc) to sell their tech.

azinman2 4y ago
They literally sell a package to purchasers of cars called full self driving and autopilot. They claim their competitive advantage is all the cameras of miles driven. They put special boards in cars for it. They absolutely consider themselves a player.
- minsc_and_boo 4y ago
  I don't think anyone is doubting that Tesla considers themselves to be a player, especially since it sells more add-ons to their cars. Repeatedly publicly knocking the benefits of LIDAR in self driving demonstrates otherwise.
  - mehwoot 4y ago
    > I don't think anyone is doubting that Tesla considers themselves to be a player > I don't consider Tesla a player in self-driving, but I don't think Tesla does either
    - pdabbadabba 4y ago
      They clearly are a player in the self-driving cars market. They may not be a player in self-driving research. These things can both be true at the same time. I think that's the distinction driving the confusion here.

cco 4y ago

Any visibility or opinion into AutoX? I hadn't really heard much news about them until that Electrek[1] article the other day that presents AutoX as being far ahead on disengagements relative to Waymo (who I thought was the leader in the space). [1]https://electrek.co/2022/12/14/tesla-full-self-driving-data-awful-challenge-elon-musk-prove-otherwise/ https://electrek.co/2022/12/14/tesla-full-self-driving-data-...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

specialist 4y ago

Noob questions, thanks in advance for humoring: Do self-driving cars model, learn from, or both, from other cars? Say there's a new obstruction (traffic cones around maintenance crew). When deciding what to do, eg left or right, does the self-driver observe what the proceeding cars did? Do self-drivers remember prior decisions? On the daily commute, there's a speed bump, pot hole, or whatever. Does the car anticipate the remembered road feature? Like maybe "Oh, last time I saw this pot hole, I had to swerve right. So this time I'm going tack right a little earlier." Sorry for noob questions. Imagining a ubiquitous self-driving future, I keep thinking of boids and uncoordinated collective action, like flocking and murmurings. Wouldn't it be cool if cars did similar stuff?