10 ms·

Tesla Motors hiring talent for developing self-driving cars

102 points by bhauer 13y ago

_mulder_ 13y ago
The incumbent car manufacturers are struggling to keep up with Tesla's first offerings, they're going be beside themselves if Tesla can pull this off.
- Shivetya 13y ago
  The incumbent car manufactures, by which I assume you mean GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, and the like, are operating a far different market segment. They face a much more difficult market, where profit margins are tighter, because they by default aim to the mass market. Tesla is operating in the upper luxury end of the market, where margins are fatter, where vehicles sold can be lower but the margins maintained. They are making very large cars, even their follow up model to the S is the same wheel base. Why is that? Most likely because Musk knows they cannot deliver the range needed at cost and more importantly, a size, that a smaller car will be. There are many self driving efforts going on in the market, both Mercedes and Infiniti have vehicles on the market that offer some limited form of self driving. Mostly lane departure and the like but they are pushing distances. Tesla should be the one who worries most, because they have a unique product only for a short time and they won't get into the smaller sized car market because the technology path they have followed is not progressing fast enough. If they made a car the size of standard midsized car, lets pick Fusion or Accord, the wheelbase shrinks by ten inches on average, width comes down too. All that shrinkage will take away from battery capacity, hence range. That is one reason many of the offerings by the incumbents have less range. Many use a battery solution not all that different, just restrained by size and technology. There was a reason Musk went for the price point he did, it allowed larger vehicles which current technology requires. Never bet on the incumbents sitting still, Musk certainly is not. It just comes down to, can Tesla execute well in the mid size market, should they ever get there. Who knows, he made cede that space by licensing tech to let other people work the small margin sales
  - nextstep 13y ago
    Do you have sources for any of that?
  - _mulder_ 13y ago
    It depends what market segment you're looking at. If it's the 'Electric Car' market, Telsa are pretty much the leaders in this segment apart from a handful of super-micro city cars. If you mean the 'Performance Car' market, apart from one or two niche offerings and prototypes, the usual manufacturers should be spooked by Tesla's potential to realise and implement new technology. Musk makes no secret of his positioning in the market and going for the price point that they have. But there are hundreds of different cars at the same price point of the Model S, none of which are even in the same ball park. The necessity for the incumbents to appeal to the mass-market is exactly why they should be worried, they're business relies on so many manufacturing synergies to reduce price, adapting all of those chassis and systems to cope with electric drive and self driving is going to be a challenge if they're to sell to their exist mass-market customers, at a price they expect. Tesla doesn't have that problem.
    - codex 13y ago
      Tesla leads the electric car market in technology, but not in volume; there are many more LEAFs on the road today than there are Teslas. Total sales for the LEAF are about 65,000.
      - erikpukinskis 13y ago
        For those interested in the numbers: Tesla is delivering 550 cars per week[1], which is about 2357 per month. In August Nissan sold 2420 Leafs[2]. So seems like sales are just about equivalent. Except that Tesla is supply constrained and sells direct to consumers, so that 2357 underestimates actual sales. And many of those Leafs are sitting in dealerships, while none of the Teslas are. Now Telsa only sold 5k cars in 2012, so it's doubtful they have on the road more than half of the 75,000 Leafs that have been sold[3]. But the Leaf started shipping in December 2010[4] whereas the Model S started shipping in June 2012[5] so it's not exactly a fair comparison. The Chevy Volt actually did better than either in August, with 3351 sales[2]. Although their year-to-date sales were the same as the Leaf (14k) which suggests they had some late resurgence. [1] http://insideevs.com/elon-musk-talks-all-things-europe-and-us-and-mars-in-quirky-dutch-interview-video/ http://insideevs.com/elon-musk-talks-all-things-europe-and-u... [2] http://green.autoblog.com/2013/09/04/chevy-volt-nissan-leaf-both-set-new-montly-sales-records/ http://green.autoblog.com/2013/09/04/chevy-volt-nissan-leaf-... [3] http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/21/nissan-leaf-production-increase-slowed-by-electrodes-ev-china/ http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/21/nissan-leaf-production-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S
- nonchalance 13y ago
  Tesla is trying to catch up to other manufacturers here: Mercedes has sold cars with lane assist (preventing drifting out of lane) since 2009 and Ford has a self-parallel-parking system for a while.
  - w_t_payne 13y ago
    A lot of companies with a "hardware" background have trouble writing software - they simply do not grok the management mentality and organizational culture that is required to do it efficiently. More to the point, they have difficulty distinguishing between ill-disciplined cowboy development and the agile, fast-moving (albeit highly disciplined) approach that you really need to have to develop complex systems without exponentially sky-rocketing costs. This culture may be changing (slowly) - but my gut instinct is that Tesla stands a chance to throw them some surprises before they do.
    - cremnob 13y ago
      Which company's management are you referring to?
      - w_t_payne 13y ago
        A generalised synthesis of all of the "hardware" companies I have ever come into contact with ... :-)
    - foobarqux 13y ago
      And a lot of software companies with a "software" background have trouble writing software to control safety-critical hardware.
      - w_t_payne 13y ago
        Too true. A lot of the difference between the (for want of a better word) "software" mentality and the "hardware" mentality comes from how we approach risk. One approach emphasises mitigating the impact of adverse events by emphasising flexibility and agility; the other approach emphasises minimising the chances that adverse events occur at all, by emphasising predictability and control. In other words, do you design so you can fix it quickly when it breaks (at the expense of having it break often), or do you design it so it very rarely breaks (but when it does, it is more expensive to fix)? The answer to this question not only depends on how safety-critical the system is, but how complex it is too. The prediction-and-control approach rapidly becomes untenable when you have systems that reach a certain level of complexity -- the cost of accurately predicting when failures are going to occur rapidly becomes larger than the cost of the failure itself. As the complexity of the system under development increases, the activity looks less like development and more like research. The predictability of disciplined engineering falls apart in the face of sufficient complexity. Worse; complexity increases in a combinatorial manner, so we can very easily move from a predictable system to an unpredictable one with the addition of only a small number of innocuous looking components. Most forms of mechanical engineering emphasise the second (predictive) approach, particularly for safety critical equipment, since the systems are simple (compared to a lot of software) and the costs of failure are high. On the other hand, a lot of software development emphasises the first (agile/reactive) approach, because the costs associated with failures are (normally) a lot less than the costs associated with development. Of course, a lot of pejorative terms get mixed up in this, like: "sloppy engineering", and "cowboy developers", vs "expensive failures" and "moribund bureaucracy" but really, these approaches are just the result of the same cost/benefit analysis producing different answers given different input conditions. Problems mainly arise when you use the wrong risk-management approach for the wrong application; or for the wrong part of the application. Things can get quite subtle quite quickly. One of the challenges in developing automotive ADAS systems is that a lot of the software is safety critical, and therefore very expensive to write, because of all of the (necessary) bureaucratic support that the OEMs require for traceability and accountability. Equally, a lot of the advanced functionality for machine vision / Radar / Lidar signal processing is very advanced, and (unfortunately) has a lot of necessary complexity. As a result it is very very costly to develop when using the former approach; yet may be involved in safety-critical functions. This is not by any means a solved problem, and very much requires detailed management on a case-by-case basis. Certainly testing infrastructure becomes much more important as the sensor systems that we develop become more complex. (Disclaimer: my area of interest). Indeed, my experience indicates that for sophisticated sensor systems well over 80% of the effort (measured by both in hours of development & size of the code-base) is associated with test infrastructure, and less than 20% with the software that ends up in the vehicle. Perhaps the word "test" is a misnomer here; since the role of this infrastructure is not so much to do V&V on the completed system, but to help to develop the system's requirements -- to do the "Data Science" and analytics that are needed to understand the operating environment well enough that you can correctly specify the behaviour of the application.
FD3SA 13y ago
Tesla should find this team: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/cmu-autonomous-car-doesnt-looks-like-a-robot http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel... Videos here: http://rtml.ece.cmu.edu/Shuster/video.html http://rtml.ece.cmu.edu/Shuster/video.html
jareds 13y ago
As a blind person I get excited about this until I think of just how much the first models will cost. I guess I should save what would now be a car payment if I could drive in hopes that it will be enough of a down payment that I can afford one of these when they come out and pass all the regulatory hurdles.
- wavefunction 13y ago
  I find it far more likely that these cars will mostly operate in fleets, since most people just need auto-travel for short periods each day. So you will probably be able to subscribe to a car service that picks you up when you need it on demand, and moves on to the next subscriber when you're done. He's also working on automated maintenance facilities that would allow a self-driving car to report for maintenance/cleaning. The car drives up, receives service and drives off afterwards to the next pick-up.
  - jareds 13y ago
    I had this discussion with my friend. Would automated fleets of cars make sense? If traffic is three times as heavy during rush-hour as it normally is then you would either have to have a lot of cars sitting idle the rest of the day or raise costs for rush-hour so high that it wouldn’t make economic sense to use a self-driving car service to get to and from work. I’d be interested if there’s any statistics on traffic volumes for areas including cities and there outlying suburbs in the United States to see what the economics of a service would have to look like taking into account daily variations in traffic patterns.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > I had this discussion with my friend. Would automated fleets of cars make sense? The "automated fleet" idea is not how people are planning to see this idea play out. Automated, self-driving cars are one thing, but an automated fleet makes it sound like a train rather than many vehicles operating very efficiently (meaning without human drivers) but each with a separate destination. To an alien watching from orbit, a country of automated cars would appear different from the present only in that the cars would be much closer together than they are now, with no increased danger of collision -- indeed, less danger. Cars would still leave the freeway and go to their intended destination just as they do now, just more efficiently. > it wouldn’t make economic sense to use a self-driving car service to get to and from work. It would if everyone still owned a car as they do now, the only difference being that the car drives itself. If the idea of a "fleet" were taken seriously, why not switch to trains or buses instead of cars? The only reason to have a car is to be able to go directly to your destination.
Zikes 13y ago
I really hope they partner with Google on this, at least I can't think of any reason not to.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  I was thinking the opposite. Competition is good and there isn't any obvious competition to Google in the self-driving car space.
  - Permit 13y ago
    There is actually a reasonable amount of competition within the autonomous car space. A lot of people online only ever hear about Google's initiatives, but Audi, BMW et al. are building driving systems, some of which approach 100+ km/h.[1] I definitely agree that more competition in the area is good. Hopefully as more players build these systems, they'll continue to improve and be commercialized quicker. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#2010s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#2010s
    - MartinCron 13y ago
      That's why I added "obvious", because even though there are a lot of autonomous efforts (large and small) from other companies, Google seems to be getting all of the attention.
      - w_t_payne 13y ago
        Well, Google did hire the people who won the DARPA Grand Challenge(s): http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Team-Behind-Google-s-Autonomous-Cars-Project-and-Details-About-the-Experiments-160321.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Team-Behind-Google-s-Auto...
  - aylons 13y ago
    Actually, several manufacturers have self-driving car projects[1]. some of them are even field-testing them in real-life situations, such as a driven leader truck being followed by other trucks[2]. So, I don't think it lacks competition for Google, who doesn't even build their cars - most probably they'll license the technology for other companies, and Tesla may well be one of them. [1] Links from 8 to 14 in this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#cite_note-idsia-8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#cite_note-idsia-... [2] http://phys.org/news/2013-03-japan-group-fuel-saving-driverless-trucks.html http://phys.org/news/2013-03-japan-group-fuel-saving-driverl...
nonchalance 13y ago
This is an attempt to pump the stock price (interesting to note that it was efinancehub.com and not a tech site that reported this). ADAS isn't just about the self-driving cars that Google is testing. ADAS includes systems like: - Warnings if you drift out of your lane (Mercedes has been advertising this for four years) - Warnings and stops if the car predicts an accident may occur soon (Infiniti has been advertising this for years) - Automatic parking (Ford has been advertising this for years) - Blind spot detection (many car companies have it) - Cruise control that maintains minimum distance to the car in front of you (BMW and Audi mid and high-end cars had it since 2010) It really looks like Tesla is trying to develop those features for the Model S and future cars.
- kyrra 13y ago
  For adaptive cruise control (varies speed based on the car in-front of you), some will only take you so slow. Some auto makers can have the adaptive cruise control bring you to a full stop (for something like stop-and-go traffic). Then a step up on the "drifting out of your lane" is one that will attempt to keep you in your lane (Acura and Mercedes have this, goes by the name "Lane Keep Assist"). [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef0KRWJwA2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef0KRWJwA2Q
- cma 13y ago
  Elon said that their path to self-driving cars is incremental and will be by adding such features over time until eventually it just drives itself. Seems saner than Google's approach, but Google doesn't manufacture cars so the same model would be harder...
  - notatoad 13y ago
    I think both approaches are necessary, and complement each other well. An incremental approach will be the best way to clear out the psychological obstacles to self-driving cars, people need to gradually get used to the idea or else it will just be met with fear. and google's approach is already proving to be an effective tool to clear out regulatory obstacles and get the public excited. And for a company like Tesla, who will sell their own cars, an incremental approach can be self-funding. Google has a ton of money to dump into research and is unlikely to bring a car to market themselves, so building a finished product will make it easier to find customers to license individual components of their tech to.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
omribaumer 13y ago
Driverless cars are the future. anyone thats missing that will stay behind at some point
drzaiusapelord 13y ago
Honest question: is there harm in competing self-driving schemes? I really don't want to shop "safety." By that I mean, paying more for stopping in the rain well or having one competitor hold the patent for driving in the snow properly. I imagine it will be properly regulated, but I'd love it to be an industry-wide initiative where everyone shares and maybe even uses the same codebase.
- w_t_payne 13y ago
  Alas, that is a bit of a pipe-dream. It would be nice if there were an open-source codebase for this, with a consortium of companies contributing, as it would mean better systems overall and lower cost to the consumer; but the senior management of the companies that are involved get too big an ego boost from owning the IP on all that cleverness. Plus, the tragedy of the commons applies: everybody wants a piece of what is going to be an astronomically huge market. (Not just passenger cars -- a big chunk of the road transportation & logistics business will be up for grabs too).
- jlgreco 13y ago
  What you are looking for is basically what happened with 3-point safety belts: "The three point belt was developed by Nils Bohlin who had earlier also worked on ejection seats at Saab.[15] Volvo then made the new seat belt design patent open in the interest of safety and made it available to other car manufacturers for free.[16][17]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#Three-point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#Three-point
- dm2 13y ago
  These sort of minor patents should either be invalid or only valid for a couple of years at the most. It's the same as saying one phones corners can't be perfectly round or icons can be on a certain side of the screen.
themodelplumber 13y ago
Will we get to the point where people will be giving the finger to anyone not in a self-driving car, because it messes with e.g. optimum traffic flow?
- farnsworth 13y ago
  Probably. I can understand that some people will want to do their own driving for fun, but driving in traffic isn't very fun. So they'd probably 1. have the car drive itself to the open highways outside of town. 2. switch into manual mode and cruise.
- dm2 13y ago
  No, why would you pay attention to the road? There might not even be windows in the self-driving car of the future.
  - themodelplumber 13y ago
    Well, opening the door to view the awesome forest fire in the distance is probably inconvenient. Plus you know...the billboard lobby ;-)
msoad 13y ago
I live near tesla hq. I saw some Audi cars with radars on top of it around. They are tesla people I guess. Because google cars are Lexus.
- cmansley 13y ago
  Tesla HQ is near Stanford, which has some Audi cars which have sensors on the roof.
- mikeyouse 13y ago
  Stanford has a group called "VAIL" which is an acronym for the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab. [1] As you probably know, Audi is a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Auto Group. AFAIK, this group was borne out of the DARPA Autonomous Car challenge, where the Stanford team partnered with VW to win the challenge. [2] They've produced several different VAG-based models including several Audis that mainly focus on self-driving and similar AI. One of their more high profile recent examples was an Audi TT that climbed Pikes Peak without any human input. [3] Some pretty cool stuff, and likely the cars you saw. [1] http://www.stanford.edu/group/vail/ http://www.stanford.edu/group/vail/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y88zRmOpA7Y#t=40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y88...
danielharan 13y ago
They may be looking to buy Google's technology, and this is just a negotiation tactic: a threat to do it themselves to keep prices down.
mkramlich 13y ago
The article reads like it was translated into English. So many bizarre word choices. Anybody else notice? Self-ruled cars. Features owned by other cars. Sovereign driving. Systems (that) have congregate functional safety. I stopped reading after enough little phrase bombs like those.
prawn 13y ago
Talking about self-driving cars, a friend said: "They will have to be proven as perfectly safe. One accident and people will go crazy." And though that's true, it of course made me think about the countless accidents involving human-driven cars through distraction, drink/drugs, weather, medical issues, confusion and whatever else. We haven't proven our driving abilities as perfectly safe, not by a long shot!
- xal 13y ago
  I highly doubt that. What's way more likely is that even if they are just slightly more safe, you will be able to get cheaper insurance for them. Eventually, over time, this will push all self directed cars off the road. There is even a disruption potential: Put together a new insurance company that only insures self driving cars and make it meaningfully cheaper. The ones that still insure self directed cars and self driving cars both will have a tough time to compete because their blended economics don't allow for the super cheap rates.
  - prawn 13y ago
    I don't think many people will necessarily own their own self-driven cars. Why have something there idle when it could be doing other work? More likely it will operate more like a taxi or by subscription. Or even own your own, but have it used in a pool to recoup costs, a bit like swap-n-go gas bottle refills.
- dkokelley 13y ago
  It won't be about an abstracted concept of "safer". It will be about whether the car is perceived to be a better driver than "me". Most people estimate their own abilities as above-average.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- Lost_BiomedE 13y ago
  Maybe it is just my circle of friends, but people seem to be gaining some immunity from media attempts to create a craze. I would bet the headlines and maybe a politician or two would yell it, but I would also guess that the overall reaction would be much more reasonable.
sidcool 13y ago
Why don't they tie up with Google?

102 points by bhauer 13y ago

The incumbent car manufacturers are struggling to keep up with Tesla's first offerings, they're going be beside themselves if Tesla can pull this off.

Shivetya 13y ago
The incumbent car manufactures, by which I assume you mean GM, Ford, Chrysler, Honda, Toyota, and the like, are operating a far different market segment. They face a much more difficult market, where profit margins are tighter, because they by default aim to the mass market. Tesla is operating in the upper luxury end of the market, where margins are fatter, where vehicles sold can be lower but the margins maintained. They are making very large cars, even their follow up model to the S is the same wheel base. Why is that? Most likely because Musk knows they cannot deliver the range needed at cost and more importantly, a size, that a smaller car will be. There are many self driving efforts going on in the market, both Mercedes and Infiniti have vehicles on the market that offer some limited form of self driving. Mostly lane departure and the like but they are pushing distances. Tesla should be the one who worries most, because they have a unique product only for a short time and they won't get into the smaller sized car market because the technology path they have followed is not progressing fast enough. If they made a car the size of standard midsized car, lets pick Fusion or Accord, the wheelbase shrinks by ten inches on average, width comes down too. All that shrinkage will take away from battery capacity, hence range. That is one reason many of the offerings by the incumbents have less range. Many use a battery solution not all that different, just restrained by size and technology. There was a reason Musk went for the price point he did, it allowed larger vehicles which current technology requires. Never bet on the incumbents sitting still, Musk certainly is not. It just comes down to, can Tesla execute well in the mid size market, should they ever get there. Who knows, he made cede that space by licensing tech to let other people work the small margin sales
- nextstep 13y ago
  Do you have sources for any of that?
- _mulder_ 13y ago
  It depends what market segment you're looking at. If it's the 'Electric Car' market, Telsa are pretty much the leaders in this segment apart from a handful of super-micro city cars. If you mean the 'Performance Car' market, apart from one or two niche offerings and prototypes, the usual manufacturers should be spooked by Tesla's potential to realise and implement new technology. Musk makes no secret of his positioning in the market and going for the price point that they have. But there are hundreds of different cars at the same price point of the Model S, none of which are even in the same ball park. The necessity for the incumbents to appeal to the mass-market is exactly why they should be worried, they're business relies on so many manufacturing synergies to reduce price, adapting all of those chassis and systems to cope with electric drive and self driving is going to be a challenge if they're to sell to their exist mass-market customers, at a price they expect. Tesla doesn't have that problem.
  - codex 13y ago
    Tesla leads the electric car market in technology, but not in volume; there are many more LEAFs on the road today than there are Teslas. Total sales for the LEAF are about 65,000.
    - erikpukinskis 13y ago
      For those interested in the numbers: Tesla is delivering 550 cars per week[1], which is about 2357 per month. In August Nissan sold 2420 Leafs[2]. So seems like sales are just about equivalent. Except that Tesla is supply constrained and sells direct to consumers, so that 2357 underestimates actual sales. And many of those Leafs are sitting in dealerships, while none of the Teslas are. Now Telsa only sold 5k cars in 2012, so it's doubtful they have on the road more than half of the 75,000 Leafs that have been sold[3]. But the Leaf started shipping in December 2010[4] whereas the Model S started shipping in June 2012[5] so it's not exactly a fair comparison. The Chevy Volt actually did better than either in August, with 3351 sales[2]. Although their year-to-date sales were the same as the Leaf (14k) which suggests they had some late resurgence. [1] http://insideevs.com/elon-musk-talks-all-things-europe-and-us-and-mars-in-quirky-dutch-interview-video/ http://insideevs.com/elon-musk-talks-all-things-europe-and-u... [2] http://green.autoblog.com/2013/09/04/chevy-volt-nissan-leaf-both-set-new-montly-sales-records/ http://green.autoblog.com/2013/09/04/chevy-volt-nissan-leaf-... [3] http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/21/nissan-leaf-production-increase-slowed-by-electrodes-ev-china/ http://green.autoblog.com/2013/08/21/nissan-leaf-production-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Model_S
nonchalance 13y ago
Tesla is trying to catch up to other manufacturers here: Mercedes has sold cars with lane assist (preventing drifting out of lane) since 2009 and Ford has a self-parallel-parking system for a while.
- w_t_payne 13y ago
  A lot of companies with a "hardware" background have trouble writing software - they simply do not grok the management mentality and organizational culture that is required to do it efficiently. More to the point, they have difficulty distinguishing between ill-disciplined cowboy development and the agile, fast-moving (albeit highly disciplined) approach that you really need to have to develop complex systems without exponentially sky-rocketing costs. This culture may be changing (slowly) - but my gut instinct is that Tesla stands a chance to throw them some surprises before they do.
  - cremnob 13y ago
    Which company's management are you referring to?
    - w_t_payne 13y ago
      A generalised synthesis of all of the "hardware" companies I have ever come into contact with ... :-)
  - foobarqux 13y ago
    And a lot of software companies with a "software" background have trouble writing software to control safety-critical hardware.
    - w_t_payne 13y ago
      Too true. A lot of the difference between the (for want of a better word) "software" mentality and the "hardware" mentality comes from how we approach risk. One approach emphasises mitigating the impact of adverse events by emphasising flexibility and agility; the other approach emphasises minimising the chances that adverse events occur at all, by emphasising predictability and control. In other words, do you design so you can fix it quickly when it breaks (at the expense of having it break often), or do you design it so it very rarely breaks (but when it does, it is more expensive to fix)? The answer to this question not only depends on how safety-critical the system is, but how complex it is too. The prediction-and-control approach rapidly becomes untenable when you have systems that reach a certain level of complexity -- the cost of accurately predicting when failures are going to occur rapidly becomes larger than the cost of the failure itself. As the complexity of the system under development increases, the activity looks less like development and more like research. The predictability of disciplined engineering falls apart in the face of sufficient complexity. Worse; complexity increases in a combinatorial manner, so we can very easily move from a predictable system to an unpredictable one with the addition of only a small number of innocuous looking components. Most forms of mechanical engineering emphasise the second (predictive) approach, particularly for safety critical equipment, since the systems are simple (compared to a lot of software) and the costs of failure are high. On the other hand, a lot of software development emphasises the first (agile/reactive) approach, because the costs associated with failures are (normally) a lot less than the costs associated with development. Of course, a lot of pejorative terms get mixed up in this, like: "sloppy engineering", and "cowboy developers", vs "expensive failures" and "moribund bureaucracy" but really, these approaches are just the result of the same cost/benefit analysis producing different answers given different input conditions. Problems mainly arise when you use the wrong risk-management approach for the wrong application; or for the wrong part of the application. Things can get quite subtle quite quickly. One of the challenges in developing automotive ADAS systems is that a lot of the software is safety critical, and therefore very expensive to write, because of all of the (necessary) bureaucratic support that the OEMs require for traceability and accountability. Equally, a lot of the advanced functionality for machine vision / Radar / Lidar signal processing is very advanced, and (unfortunately) has a lot of necessary complexity. As a result it is very very costly to develop when using the former approach; yet may be involved in safety-critical functions. This is not by any means a solved problem, and very much requires detailed management on a case-by-case basis. Certainly testing infrastructure becomes much more important as the sensor systems that we develop become more complex. (Disclaimer: my area of interest). Indeed, my experience indicates that for sophisticated sensor systems well over 80% of the effort (measured by both in hours of development & size of the code-base) is associated with test infrastructure, and less than 20% with the software that ends up in the vehicle. Perhaps the word "test" is a misnomer here; since the role of this infrastructure is not so much to do V&V on the completed system, but to help to develop the system's requirements -- to do the "Data Science" and analytics that are needed to understand the operating environment well enough that you can correctly specify the behaviour of the application.

FD3SA 13y ago

Tesla should find this team: http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intelligence/cmu-autonomous-car-doesnt-looks-like-a-robot http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/artificial-intel... Videos here: http://rtml.ece.cmu.edu/Shuster/video.html http://rtml.ece.cmu.edu/Shuster/video.html

jareds 13y ago

As a blind person I get excited about this until I think of just how much the first models will cost. I guess I should save what would now be a car payment if I could drive in hopes that it will be enough of a down payment that I can afford one of these when they come out and pass all the regulatory hurdles.

wavefunction 13y ago
I find it far more likely that these cars will mostly operate in fleets, since most people just need auto-travel for short periods each day. So you will probably be able to subscribe to a car service that picks you up when you need it on demand, and moves on to the next subscriber when you're done. He's also working on automated maintenance facilities that would allow a self-driving car to report for maintenance/cleaning. The car drives up, receives service and drives off afterwards to the next pick-up.
- jareds 13y ago
  I had this discussion with my friend. Would automated fleets of cars make sense? If traffic is three times as heavy during rush-hour as it normally is then you would either have to have a lot of cars sitting idle the rest of the day or raise costs for rush-hour so high that it wouldn’t make economic sense to use a self-driving car service to get to and from work. I’d be interested if there’s any statistics on traffic volumes for areas including cities and there outlying suburbs in the United States to see what the economics of a service would have to look like taking into account daily variations in traffic patterns.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > I had this discussion with my friend. Would automated fleets of cars make sense? The "automated fleet" idea is not how people are planning to see this idea play out. Automated, self-driving cars are one thing, but an automated fleet makes it sound like a train rather than many vehicles operating very efficiently (meaning without human drivers) but each with a separate destination. To an alien watching from orbit, a country of automated cars would appear different from the present only in that the cars would be much closer together than they are now, with no increased danger of collision -- indeed, less danger. Cars would still leave the freeway and go to their intended destination just as they do now, just more efficiently. > it wouldn’t make economic sense to use a self-driving car service to get to and from work. It would if everyone still owned a car as they do now, the only difference being that the car drives itself. If the idea of a "fleet" were taken seriously, why not switch to trains or buses instead of cars? The only reason to have a car is to be able to go directly to your destination.

Zikes 13y ago

I really hope they partner with Google on this, at least I can't think of any reason not to.

MartinCron 13y ago
I was thinking the opposite. Competition is good and there isn't any obvious competition to Google in the self-driving car space.
- Permit 13y ago
  There is actually a reasonable amount of competition within the autonomous car space. A lot of people online only ever hear about Google's initiatives, but Audi, BMW et al. are building driving systems, some of which approach 100+ km/h.[1] I definitely agree that more competition in the area is good. Hopefully as more players build these systems, they'll continue to improve and be commercialized quicker. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#2010s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#2010s
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    That's why I added "obvious", because even though there are a lot of autonomous efforts (large and small) from other companies, Google seems to be getting all of the attention.
    - w_t_payne 13y ago
      Well, Google did hire the people who won the DARPA Grand Challenge(s): http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Team-Behind-Google-s-Autonomous-Cars-Project-and-Details-About-the-Experiments-160321.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/The-Team-Behind-Google-s-Auto...
- aylons 13y ago
  Actually, several manufacturers have self-driving car projects[1]. some of them are even field-testing them in real-life situations, such as a driven leader truck being followed by other trucks[2]. So, I don't think it lacks competition for Google, who doesn't even build their cars - most probably they'll license the technology for other companies, and Tesla may well be one of them. [1] Links from 8 to 14 in this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#cite_note-idsia-8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car#cite_note-idsia-... [2] http://phys.org/news/2013-03-japan-group-fuel-saving-driverless-trucks.html http://phys.org/news/2013-03-japan-group-fuel-saving-driverl...

nonchalance 13y ago

This is an attempt to pump the stock price (interesting to note that it was efinancehub.com and not a tech site that reported this). ADAS isn't just about the self-driving cars that Google is testing. ADAS includes systems like: - Warnings if you drift out of your lane (Mercedes has been advertising this for four years) - Warnings and stops if the car predicts an accident may occur soon (Infiniti has been advertising this for years) - Automatic parking (Ford has been advertising this for years) - Blind spot detection (many car companies have it) - Cruise control that maintains minimum distance to the car in front of you (BMW and Audi mid and high-end cars had it since 2010) It really looks like Tesla is trying to develop those features for the Model S and future cars.

kyrra 13y ago
For adaptive cruise control (varies speed based on the car in-front of you), some will only take you so slow. Some auto makers can have the adaptive cruise control bring you to a full stop (for something like stop-and-go traffic). Then a step up on the "drifting out of your lane" is one that will attempt to keep you in your lane (Acura and Mercedes have this, goes by the name "Lane Keep Assist"). [0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef0KRWJwA2Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef0KRWJwA2Q
cma 13y ago
Elon said that their path to self-driving cars is incremental and will be by adding such features over time until eventually it just drives itself. Seems saner than Google's approach, but Google doesn't manufacture cars so the same model would be harder...
- notatoad 13y ago
  I think both approaches are necessary, and complement each other well. An incremental approach will be the best way to clear out the psychological obstacles to self-driving cars, people need to gradually get used to the idea or else it will just be met with fear. and google's approach is already proving to be an effective tool to clear out regulatory obstacles and get the public excited. And for a company like Tesla, who will sell their own cars, an incremental approach can be self-funding. Google has a ton of money to dump into research and is unlikely to bring a car to market themselves, so building a finished product will make it easier to find customers to license individual components of their tech to.

deleted 13y ago

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omribaumer 13y ago

Driverless cars are the future. anyone thats missing that will stay behind at some point

drzaiusapelord 13y ago

Honest question: is there harm in competing self-driving schemes? I really don't want to shop "safety." By that I mean, paying more for stopping in the rain well or having one competitor hold the patent for driving in the snow properly. I imagine it will be properly regulated, but I'd love it to be an industry-wide initiative where everyone shares and maybe even uses the same codebase.

w_t_payne 13y ago
Alas, that is a bit of a pipe-dream. It would be nice if there were an open-source codebase for this, with a consortium of companies contributing, as it would mean better systems overall and lower cost to the consumer; but the senior management of the companies that are involved get too big an ego boost from owning the IP on all that cleverness. Plus, the tragedy of the commons applies: everybody wants a piece of what is going to be an astronomically huge market. (Not just passenger cars -- a big chunk of the road transportation & logistics business will be up for grabs too).
jlgreco 13y ago
What you are looking for is basically what happened with 3-point safety belts: "The three point belt was developed by Nils Bohlin who had earlier also worked on ejection seats at Saab.[15] Volvo then made the new seat belt design patent open in the interest of safety and made it available to other car manufacturers for free.[16][17]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#Three-point http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt#Three-point
dm2 13y ago
These sort of minor patents should either be invalid or only valid for a couple of years at the most. It's the same as saying one phones corners can't be perfectly round or icons can be on a certain side of the screen.

themodelplumber 13y ago

Will we get to the point where people will be giving the finger to anyone not in a self-driving car, because it messes with e.g. optimum traffic flow?

farnsworth 13y ago
Probably. I can understand that some people will want to do their own driving for fun, but driving in traffic isn't very fun. So they'd probably 1. have the car drive itself to the open highways outside of town. 2. switch into manual mode and cruise.
dm2 13y ago
No, why would you pay attention to the road? There might not even be windows in the self-driving car of the future.
- themodelplumber 13y ago
  Well, opening the door to view the awesome forest fire in the distance is probably inconvenient. Plus you know...the billboard lobby ;-)

msoad 13y ago

I live near tesla hq. I saw some Audi cars with radars on top of it around. They are tesla people I guess. Because google cars are Lexus.

cmansley 13y ago
Tesla HQ is near Stanford, which has some Audi cars which have sensors on the roof.
mikeyouse 13y ago
Stanford has a group called "VAIL" which is an acronym for the Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Lab. [1] As you probably know, Audi is a subsidiary of the Volkswagen Auto Group. AFAIK, this group was borne out of the DARPA Autonomous Car challenge, where the Stanford team partnered with VW to win the challenge. [2] They've produced several different VAG-based models including several Audis that mainly focus on self-driving and similar AI. One of their more high profile recent examples was an Audi TT that climbed Pikes Peak without any human input. [3] Some pretty cool stuff, and likely the cars you saw. [1] http://www.stanford.edu/group/vail/ http://www.stanford.edu/group/vail/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y88zRmOpA7Y#t=40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Y88...

danielharan 13y ago

They may be looking to buy Google's technology, and this is just a negotiation tactic: a threat to do it themselves to keep prices down.

mkramlich 13y ago

The article reads like it was translated into English. So many bizarre word choices. Anybody else notice? Self-ruled cars. Features owned by other cars. Sovereign driving. Systems (that) have congregate functional safety. I stopped reading after enough little phrase bombs like those.

prawn 13y ago

Talking about self-driving cars, a friend said: "They will have to be proven as perfectly safe. One accident and people will go crazy." And though that's true, it of course made me think about the countless accidents involving human-driven cars through distraction, drink/drugs, weather, medical issues, confusion and whatever else. We haven't proven our driving abilities as perfectly safe, not by a long shot!

xal 13y ago
I highly doubt that. What's way more likely is that even if they are just slightly more safe, you will be able to get cheaper insurance for them. Eventually, over time, this will push all self directed cars off the road. There is even a disruption potential: Put together a new insurance company that only insures self driving cars and make it meaningfully cheaper. The ones that still insure self directed cars and self driving cars both will have a tough time to compete because their blended economics don't allow for the super cheap rates.
- prawn 13y ago
  I don't think many people will necessarily own their own self-driven cars. Why have something there idle when it could be doing other work? More likely it will operate more like a taxi or by subscription. Or even own your own, but have it used in a pool to recoup costs, a bit like swap-n-go gas bottle refills.
dkokelley 13y ago
It won't be about an abstracted concept of "safer". It will be about whether the car is perceived to be a better driver than "me". Most people estimate their own abilities as above-average.
deleted 13y ago
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Lost_BiomedE 13y ago
Maybe it is just my circle of friends, but people seem to be gaining some immunity from media attempts to create a craze. I would bet the headlines and maybe a politician or two would yell it, but I would also guess that the overall reaction would be much more reasonable.

sidcool 13y ago

Why don't they tie up with Google?