5 ms·

Is it really worth it to invest that much money into self driving. Like the sheer numbers is out of this world. Surely there's better investments.

baq 2y ago
If you figure it out the reward is easily 100x that.
- Animats 2y ago
  Not clear. Waymo has made it work, but cost per car and per ride is still very high. That should come down over time. It's not clear that this is a hugely profitable business. It's basically auto rental and taxi service, after all.
  - emanuele232 2y ago
    because waymo relies on a continuous mapping of the cities you can take it. that's why it is available in few US cities, but this does not scale at all. The point of those startups (and tesla's) is to produce something that can drive everywhere whitout prior information (fantasy world right now)
    - michaelmior 2y ago
      As far as the scaling, I think some would have said the same about Google Street View, but now the majority of streets in the country are mapped out. Google already has the infrastructure to be able to do the necessary mapping. And as Waymo cars become more common, I suspect they'll be able to fill in a lot of the gaps.
      - emanuele232 2y ago
        street view has images from years ago depending on where the google cars are mapping in that moment, waymo needs constant mapping of the cities it has cars in, therefore needing more man-hours. furthermore the driving laws differs from country to country, and in most of the world the road paint/signs are borderline indescifrable for a human, let alone a machine. i'm not saying that it can't be done, but it is already expensive in big US cities, it just do not scale well.
    - mrshadowgoose 2y ago
      It's not at all clear why that wouldn't scale, could you elaborate? Legitimately not being snarky. The existence of Google Street View seems to be a fairly strong counterpoint. > The point of those startups (and tesla's) is to produce something that can drive everywhere whitout prior information Nope. The point is to make asstons of money. One does not need to achieve this silly ideal in order to do so.
    - Animats 2y ago
      This argument keeps coming up, mostly from Tesla fans. Google does collect a lot of data, but it uses it mostly for two things: 1) location with loss of or errors in GPS info, and 2) street maps of where to go. The driving environment is too dynamic for static info to be useful for more than that. Driving in static environments with GPS, maps and LIDAR worked two decades ago, after all. The hard problems involve the other players. Yes, Musk is saying that Tesla will have robot taxis by August 2024.[1] He said that back in 2021, too.[2] And in 2016.[3] Tesla vs bollard: [4] Tesla still has only a not-very-good level 2 system. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/business/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-august-8/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/business/elon-musk-tesla-robo... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vZ8eWBiWFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vZ8eWBiWFE [3] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4682448-tesla-sudden-third-robotaxi-announcement-after-2019-and-2016 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4682448-tesla-sudden-third-... [4] https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1585626430154502145 https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1585626430154502145
  - radoomi 2y ago
    The way I see it is what Waymo + others (and even Tesla until last year pre v12) was the same as someone doing ChatGPT but not with generative transformers but with if statements. If user asks what is that, say this, etc. And now Tesla changed the game completely and moved to a 100% NN based system which indeed requires huge amounts of data which they're the only who actually have. All the other companies have no chance of getting that unless they fit their cars with thousands of dollars of gear for free (because I think no one would pay extra to get it and they really need it in ALL cars). So it's probably not a good idea in terms of monopoly, but I think it will be Tesla FSD that gets integrated in all the other brands.
    - rafaelmn 2y ago
      Because I would want to put a NN as unreliable as GPT4 in control of my car ... They are struggling to put in guardrails and make it politically correct with text. I guess AI truly is the new crypto because I'm seeing all the same hype patterns. And Tesla is always riding the wave.
      - michaelmior 2y ago
        I've heard from several folks working on self driving outside of Tesla that they're very concerned about how cavalier Tesla is being about safety. I recall hearing one story about an engineer who outright refused to ride in a Tesla with FSD enabled. All anecdotal, sure, but I've become very skeptical of Tesla's approach.
      - speedgoose 2y ago
        > They are struggling to put in guardrails and make it politically correct with text. Are they? It’s quite hard to get politically incorrect outputs from ChatGPT nowadays.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
        acdha 2y ago
        How many things does it not talk about? One of the challenges of self-driving is that it has to fail safely so they have to handle all of these uncommon situations a chatbot can just give up on.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
There are two drivers here: 1) Non linear payoff if it does work. A billion seems like a lot of money but at the volume of cars that Hyundai produces (millions), it's not a lot per vehicle and as a percentage of their revenue it's also pretty modest (about 1%). This stuff could add a lot of value to their cars. 2) Fear of missing out if somebody else manages. The nightmare scenario for Hyundai would be Tesla or some other competitor managing to launch something that actually works and then having to license their solution just to keep up; probably at great cost. There are a lot of nay-sayers out there proclaiming at length how all this is a mission impossible. But the reason these investments are happening is that there are by now quite a wide range of autonomous taxis driving in a growing number of cities in the world. And they mostly seem to get their passengers from A to B without a driver. So, it's clearly not that impossible for this to work. Going from hundreds of bespoke cars operating for the likes of Waymo to millions of autonomously driving cars is the game here. Somebody is going to get there eventually. But not without a lot of investments. Hyundai is opting to hedge their bets here. They are investing a lot more conservatively than e.g. Tesla. But they are not completely ignoring it either.
- disgruntledphd2 2y ago
  > Somebody is going to get there eventually. But not without a lot of investments. There's still a bunch of major technological problems to be solved. Taking Waymo as the best right now: 1. Their solution requires detailed mapping for all areas before it works 2. It doesn't appear to work with rain 3. Or snow Like, none of these challenges are insurmountable, but as they say the first 90% takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes the next 90% of the time. And more generally, even if the technological problems were solved, there's the regulatory concerns, in that who takes liability when (not if) there are accidents. Given all that, I wouldn't expect to see full autonomy for about 10-15 years.
  - jillesvangurp 2y ago
    I think 10-15 years is extremely pessimistic given we have cars on the road now delivering passengers. Scaling that is the game.
dunekid 2y ago
This is the Hyundai Motor Group that is making investments. They are the parent organisation of Hyundai, Kia and Genesis. They also make Commercial vehicles. FSD, at this point have a lot if challenges, technology and regulation wise. But it is clear that these companies see value in their offerings being able to be driven without full attention from drivers. For that, I think this is not that bad of an investment.
infecto 2y ago
A billion is really just a drop in the bucket.

baq 2y ago

If you figure it out the reward is easily 100x that.

Animats 2y ago
Not clear. Waymo has made it work, but cost per car and per ride is still very high. That should come down over time. It's not clear that this is a hugely profitable business. It's basically auto rental and taxi service, after all.
- emanuele232 2y ago
  because waymo relies on a continuous mapping of the cities you can take it. that's why it is available in few US cities, but this does not scale at all. The point of those startups (and tesla's) is to produce something that can drive everywhere whitout prior information (fantasy world right now)
  - michaelmior 2y ago
    As far as the scaling, I think some would have said the same about Google Street View, but now the majority of streets in the country are mapped out. Google already has the infrastructure to be able to do the necessary mapping. And as Waymo cars become more common, I suspect they'll be able to fill in a lot of the gaps.
    - emanuele232 2y ago
      street view has images from years ago depending on where the google cars are mapping in that moment, waymo needs constant mapping of the cities it has cars in, therefore needing more man-hours. furthermore the driving laws differs from country to country, and in most of the world the road paint/signs are borderline indescifrable for a human, let alone a machine. i'm not saying that it can't be done, but it is already expensive in big US cities, it just do not scale well.
  - mrshadowgoose 2y ago
    It's not at all clear why that wouldn't scale, could you elaborate? Legitimately not being snarky. The existence of Google Street View seems to be a fairly strong counterpoint. > The point of those startups (and tesla's) is to produce something that can drive everywhere whitout prior information Nope. The point is to make asstons of money. One does not need to achieve this silly ideal in order to do so.
  - Animats 2y ago
    This argument keeps coming up, mostly from Tesla fans. Google does collect a lot of data, but it uses it mostly for two things: 1) location with loss of or errors in GPS info, and 2) street maps of where to go. The driving environment is too dynamic for static info to be useful for more than that. Driving in static environments with GPS, maps and LIDAR worked two decades ago, after all. The hard problems involve the other players. Yes, Musk is saying that Tesla will have robot taxis by August 2024.[1] He said that back in 2021, too.[2] And in 2016.[3] Tesla vs bollard: [4] Tesla still has only a not-very-good level 2 system. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/business/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-august-8/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/05/business/elon-musk-tesla-robo... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vZ8eWBiWFE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vZ8eWBiWFE [3] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4682448-tesla-sudden-third-robotaxi-announcement-after-2019-and-2016 https://seekingalpha.com/article/4682448-tesla-sudden-third-... [4] https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1585626430154502145 https://twitter.com/WorldBollard/status/1585626430154502145
- radoomi 2y ago
  The way I see it is what Waymo + others (and even Tesla until last year pre v12) was the same as someone doing ChatGPT but not with generative transformers but with if statements. If user asks what is that, say this, etc. And now Tesla changed the game completely and moved to a 100% NN based system which indeed requires huge amounts of data which they're the only who actually have. All the other companies have no chance of getting that unless they fit their cars with thousands of dollars of gear for free (because I think no one would pay extra to get it and they really need it in ALL cars). So it's probably not a good idea in terms of monopoly, but I think it will be Tesla FSD that gets integrated in all the other brands.
  - rafaelmn 2y ago
    Because I would want to put a NN as unreliable as GPT4 in control of my car ... They are struggling to put in guardrails and make it politically correct with text. I guess AI truly is the new crypto because I'm seeing all the same hype patterns. And Tesla is always riding the wave.
    - michaelmior 2y ago
      I've heard from several folks working on self driving outside of Tesla that they're very concerned about how cavalier Tesla is being about safety. I recall hearing one story about an engineer who outright refused to ride in a Tesla with FSD enabled. All anecdotal, sure, but I've become very skeptical of Tesla's approach.
    - speedgoose 2y ago
      > They are struggling to put in guardrails and make it politically correct with text. Are they? It’s quite hard to get politically incorrect outputs from ChatGPT nowadays.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - acdha 2y ago
        How many things does it not talk about? One of the challenges of self-driving is that it has to fail safely so they have to handle all of these uncommon situations a chatbot can just give up on.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

There are two drivers here: 1) Non linear payoff if it does work. A billion seems like a lot of money but at the volume of cars that Hyundai produces (millions), it's not a lot per vehicle and as a percentage of their revenue it's also pretty modest (about 1%). This stuff could add a lot of value to their cars. 2) Fear of missing out if somebody else manages. The nightmare scenario for Hyundai would be Tesla or some other competitor managing to launch something that actually works and then having to license their solution just to keep up; probably at great cost. There are a lot of nay-sayers out there proclaiming at length how all this is a mission impossible. But the reason these investments are happening is that there are by now quite a wide range of autonomous taxis driving in a growing number of cities in the world. And they mostly seem to get their passengers from A to B without a driver. So, it's clearly not that impossible for this to work. Going from hundreds of bespoke cars operating for the likes of Waymo to millions of autonomously driving cars is the game here. Somebody is going to get there eventually. But not without a lot of investments. Hyundai is opting to hedge their bets here. They are investing a lot more conservatively than e.g. Tesla. But they are not completely ignoring it either.

disgruntledphd2 2y ago
> Somebody is going to get there eventually. But not without a lot of investments. There's still a bunch of major technological problems to be solved. Taking Waymo as the best right now: 1. Their solution requires detailed mapping for all areas before it works 2. It doesn't appear to work with rain 3. Or snow Like, none of these challenges are insurmountable, but as they say the first 90% takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes the next 90% of the time. And more generally, even if the technological problems were solved, there's the regulatory concerns, in that who takes liability when (not if) there are accidents. Given all that, I wouldn't expect to see full autonomy for about 10-15 years.
- jillesvangurp 2y ago
  I think 10-15 years is extremely pessimistic given we have cars on the road now delivering passengers. Scaling that is the game.

dunekid 2y ago

This is the Hyundai Motor Group that is making investments. They are the parent organisation of Hyundai, Kia and Genesis. They also make Commercial vehicles. FSD, at this point have a lot if challenges, technology and regulation wise. But it is clear that these companies see value in their offerings being able to be driven without full attention from drivers. For that, I think this is not that bad of an investment.

infecto 2y ago

A billion is really just a drop in the bucket.