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Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase: "Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement
by zetazzed 1y ago
Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase:
"Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development..."
reads a bit like a parody of corporate speak about a project nowhere close to happening. Did they agree to deploy? Or reach an agreement to collaborate? No, that's too strong. They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development.
- WorldWideWebb 1y agoThis headline brought to you by the marketing department.
- AustinDev 1y agoSay everything and nothing in less than nine words.
- pelagic_sky 1y agoFeels more like the typical battle amongst PR, Marketing and Legal.
- timewizard 1y ago"We've agreed to let the engineering staff from both companies directly exchange information in a place and form that we would not normally allow to occur. Hopefully they work out a way to glue our two stacks together."
- xmprt 1y agoDon't forget that this is also a PRELIMINARY agreement. So it's not clear what the terms even are.
- cryptoegorophy 1y agoWhat kind of development? LiDAR on every Toyota? Would be very interesting. If every car on the road was self driving we would not need a giant chunk of code to work around human behavior
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lxgr 1y ago> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development. Compared to "FSD this year", every year for the past five years, I honestly find the approach pretty refreshing.
- bagels 1y agoThis is at the other extreme end though. They could do nothing and call the agreement to explore satisfied. Would rather they wait till they've removed at least three of the hedging words.
- slt2021 1y agothis is just the opposite extreme of "FSD this year"
- aantix 1y agoExcept there’s FSD videos everywhere on X with every minor release, demonstrating the progress.
- acdha 1y agoYes, that’s called marketing. Believe it when they do what Mercedes does and accept liability rather than trying to shirk it.
- aantix 1y agoIf marketing is a 20 min video demonstrating both progress and regressions for each minor rev, then I’ll take more of that.
- brenns10 1y agoI'll believe it when they accept liability for the actions of their autonomous vehicles. Videos mean nothing.
- iknowstuff 1y agoYou fell for Mercedes’ marketing so that’s hilariously ironic
- jannyfer 1y agoIt reads like a Memorandum of Understanding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding
- benatkin 1y agoAnd if they don't develop a formal contract after 5 months, it's a deadMoU5
- skybrian 1y agoIt’s too early to be of much interest to outsiders, but impressing people likely isn’t the intention. By announcing that they’re talking, they don’t need to keep its existence secret anymore or worry about it getting into the news at some random time as a “secret project.”
- lurk2 1y ago> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development. Concepts of a plan
- beAbU 1y agoHere in Ireland we often see news announcements in the construction sector that goes something like "We received the go ahead to submit an application for planning permission to commission an impact study to determine whether it's viable to survey the land for construction suitability."
- owyn 1y agoYeah, that's pretty amazing corporate speak. And the development time lines are long. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains, there is a Taxi/Van in Japan called the Alphard and it's pretty nice! Toyota also has the e-pallete, which is a self driving bus for their new Woven City project. It would be great to see a new vehicle platform co-developed for those purposes because the Toyota "electrical" architecture is about 10 years behind (all CanBus). If I was them I would sort that out before building new EVs. If you look at a bz4x and pop the hood, it looks like an IC vehicle! There is no frunk, just legacy junk. It was never designed as an EV, they just put an electric motor and a battery in a Rav4 type platform and called it a day.
- hnburnsy 1y ago>Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains Does the Waymo brain need all the Waymo hardware? >With 13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs), our new sensor suite is optimized for greater performance... https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo-driver/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...
- owyn 1y agoThe new Lexus TSS which is lane keeping and cruise control and auto park and safety oriented stuff has 11 cameras I think? Plus some lasers and sonar and whatnot. 4 of them are for the cool 360 top down view. I'd love to count up all the sensors on a current production car. I googled but failed. Maybe in the manual? There's a lot. But they probably could use less if they had better software and networking in the car. I think automotive systems tend to be built like: add 1 ecu and 1 sensor for 1 function. So they can do all the functional safety analysis for that one system in isolation. I expect they can't just keep adding all these single purpose functions and features without a central computer indefinitely but they don't have one right now. A brain like waymo (probably has?) could possibly fix that.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoVeridian Dynamics' "Project Jabberwocky" is gonna be great.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lifeformed 1y agoAnd it's only a preliminary agreement.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- reustle 1y agoJapan is the champion of announcing the consideration of making an announcement. They did this all through covid, too.
- MarceliusK 1y agoI think this kind of vague language is pretty common when two giant companies want to signal interest without actually committing to anything risky