[HN Gopher] Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may n...
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Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'
Author : stopads
Score : 159 points
Date : 2020-01-18 17:44 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| colordrops wrote:
| I agree in part in that I am skeptical that full self-driving
| cars will happen in the next few years, but he is completely
| wrong when it comes to the long term. Not only will the tech get
| as good as humans, but most forget to account for the fact that
| the environment will meet the cars part way. We will eventually
| update markings and beacons on the roads to make it easier for
| the cars, implement networks in which the cars can talk to each
| other, and make special lanes for self-driving cars only, among
| other improvements that will make it easier for the cars.
| Eventually non-self-driving cars will not be allowed on the road,
| and will be a niche hobby on race tracks.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Heck. With Toyota building a city of the future. They might
| make self driving cars entirely common once you are free to
| design roads for them.
| chrischen wrote:
| Yea they could put down visual markers on the road to make it
| easier for CV or ML models to be trained against, or maybe
| even physical tracks to mechanically guide these cars so that
| minimal software is needed. Multiple cars can be linked
| together for efficiency.
| moooo99 wrote:
| If you'd build a genuinely smart city completely from
| scratch, the most elegant way would be to completely remove
| the need for own cars. But that's obviously not going to
| happen when its a project designed and financed by an
| automaker.
| usrusr wrote:
| A car that can drive itself in a specifically prepared
| environment would hardly qualify as "fully self driving". You
| could achieve that with all the AI prowess of a mechanical
| connection between the steering linkage and some guide rails.
| And you'd still fail to get even the tiniest development
| budget for a car that won't sell anywhere else.
| barrkel wrote:
| It would be interesting to see those cars on these Parisian
| streets, with this level of dynamic hazard:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jojf3Ci2H3A
|
| I reckon motorways could be handled easily enough, and basic
| dual carriageways and normal intersections, but once you start
| mixing up multiple modes in inner cities, some tough decisions
| need to be made.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| No way. The tech and liability will be too expensive for many
| years, at least till parents run out.
|
| My guess is that interstate type highways will be instrumented
| for trucks and cars will benefit.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road
| visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of
| years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and
| maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?
| einrealist wrote:
| I am more fearful of trolls, tricking the technology. I
| doubt, that the software / hardware will have a common sense,
| like we humans have. Its this common sense that keeps us
| alive in unexpected scenarios, like when the paint on the
| road is missing.
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > I doubt, that the software / hardware will have a common
| sense, like we humans have
|
| Aren't sanity checks basically common sense? I would
| suspect they already play a major role in making autonomous
| driving a reality.
| bpfrh wrote:
| I would argue that signing beacon messages with a PKI
| infrastructure would migate that issue.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| Also, a stake in the ground on the edge of the road that
| says, I'm 15 feet to the right of the center lane will
| probably pay for itself in a couple years of stripping.
| You put two in the ground that say, I'm 15 feet to the
| right of the centerline and 35 feet from the next beacon
| and you never have to paint a centerline there again.
| mavhc wrote:
| Still better than humans, humans kill 3000 people using
| vehicles every day, and most of those aren't even trying
| heavyset_go wrote:
| There is no evidence that automated driving systems are
| any safer than human drivers, or that they ever will be.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah but if the system is designed in the wrong way,
| hackers could kill millions in a single moment.
| Admittedly, this danger already exists as in all modern
| cars between driver and car there is a layer of (hackable
| and wireless network connected) software.
| shoulderfake wrote:
| Perhaps take 10% of the military budget and you might just
| have some $ for that
| eddieplan9 wrote:
| I expect private companies will be the ones providing the
| infrastructure for self driving cars, and your car will have
| to subscribe to a "awareness service provider", much the same
| way that your phone needs to subscribe to a carrier.
| SECProto wrote:
| Paint is a wear item, the example of beacons would not be a
| wear item. If original commenter is correct that
| infrastructure meets halfway, I wouldn't expect self driving
| cars transition to happen fast at all - maybe on highways
| first, and busy city streets, later secondary roads. But that
| kind of thing would result in a decades long transition, and
| I would estimate it as never being fully autonomous (if
| beacons die, car would need manual intervention)
| ethbro wrote:
| The primary deployment potential for self-driving cars is
| long haul freight, which could be done exclusively via the
| interstate system.
|
| If we're going to beacon up a road, they easily make the
| most sense.
| kazen44 wrote:
| this might be true for the US, but in many parts of
| europe, roads are far more crowded. not to mention this
| doesn't solve the last mile problem.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| If there is one thing we can be sure of, looking at the
| past couple decades of wireless tech, it's that there will
| be a profusion of mutually incompatible standards, each
| spanning multiple HW generations. It may not experience the
| same physical wear, but it will be an expensive maintenance
| issue nonetheless.
| SECProto wrote:
| Definitely. If it was clear that external beacons were
| necessary, you would have the Tesla beacons, you'd have
| the European manufacturer associated beacons, you'd have
| the Japanese manufacturers associated beacons...
| installed at manufacturer's cost (or as a partnership),
| leading to duplication some places, total absence in
| others, and exclusivity in the rest. And the EU would do
| better than the rest of the world, having cars with
| different receivers (manufactured only for the EU market,
| of course)
| Fomite wrote:
| "Paint is a wear item, the example of beacons would not be
| a wear item"
|
| I am extremely skeptical that beacons, sitting out in the
| heat, and the sun, and the cold, and the rain, and exposed
| to whatever we use to maintain roads at that juncture, will
| not be "a wear item".
| zamfi wrote:
| The counter-example to this is train tracks. (There are
| minimum standards for roads, too.)
| rkagerer wrote:
| Self driving trains would probably be easier. Aren't there
| already some airport shuttle trains and metro transit
| that's fully automated?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train_sys
| t...
| bpye wrote:
| SkyTrain in Vancouver, BC for example is fully automated.
| It works well unless there are issues with track or
| sensors, at which point it has to be driven manually.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Is self-driving the same as fully-automated? I think not.
|
| Self-driving implies intelligence, and fully-automated
| trains simply follow rote rules, and apply the emergency
| brakes if something unexpected happens. Not intelligent.
|
| Put another way, self-driving has unbounded complexity,
| while a fixed number of vehicles on a protected, grade-
| separated railway is not very complex at all.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Now that you mention it, I wonder if tracks would actually
| be a better solution for most use cases. I could see a
| situation where highways have tracks and you only have to
| actually drive at the beginning and end of the journey.
| sverhagen wrote:
| To give access to a very lucrative business endeavor? Someone
| would come up with the investment. We put a nice canape of
| cell towers too, or wired up every home for internet, after
| doing it for cable TV, after doing it for electricity. No one
| really frowns much at those economics anymore (in big parts
| of the world at least).
| Reason077 wrote:
| Those who think FSD can be solved by building special road
| infrastructure for self driving cars misunderstand the
| problem.
|
| Cars are already equipped with suites of sensors giving
| them far more complete information than any human can
| process. Cars can already react faster and hold lanes with
| more precision than humans can.
|
| What's lacking is general intelligence. The ability to
| creatively respond to unexpected situations, even when it's
| something you've never seen before.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| And those unexpected situations are not edge cases
| either. Virtually every time you drive you'll encounter a
| novel case that has never been seen before. Your human
| brain is good at improvising. Computers? Not so much...
| ethbro wrote:
| All of these provided access to _new_ technologies.
|
| Autonomous driving is a marginal improvement on an already
| deployed technology.
| Reason077 wrote:
| It's hardly a marginal improvement. If FSD were to become
| a reality, it would offer incredible benefits to economic
| productivity, safety, and quality of life.
| crdoconnor wrote:
| It's also a business endeavour that's done a lot of
| bragging about the number of people it will render jobless.
| It's not going to be an easy political sell to erect lots
| of additional road furniture unless it's cheap and
| unobtrusive.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Privatized roads?
| tapland wrote:
| Does it have to be visible? Couldn't it be tokens
| transmitting their location with great accuracy?
|
| 0 visibility in snow happens often.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I don't see why not. We have centimeter-level GPS. It's
| true you maybe can't always rely on GPS signal being there,
| but you could also install devices on traffic lights that
| would allow cars to precisely locate themselves at
| intersections, so they stop at the correct position, etc.
|
| What I think is that self-driving cars may also force us to
| confront ways in which real-world driving environments are
| inadequate, so that we can make them more adequate. For
| example, there are intersections where stop signs (or other
| signs) are present but not visible. Humans know they have
| to stop there, so they stop anyway. Self-driving cars could
| systematically find and report these locations, and might
| get the city to do something about them.
| AngryData wrote:
| If it is on asphalt roads you can easily embed wires and
| electronics underneath the surface by heating it up. And an
| embedded wire would be both easy for a computer to track and
| easy to fix or replace.
| close04 wrote:
| We may actually discover it's cheaper or smarter to limit
| the scope of what self driving cars have to do by limiting
| their infrastructure. If cities become more pedestrian
| (cyclist, public transport) centric then some of the issues
| disappear. It would be a hell of a lot easier if you
| eliminate the complexities of navigating city traffic if
| most of it is gone or car traffic is completely separated
| from the rest. Either via a reduced number of tunnels,
| suspended roadway, or simply by reducing the number of
| places where cars and pedestrians cross paths.
|
| Between vastly reducing car traffic and separating it from
| pedestrians the problem of fully self driving is greatly
| simplified (probably not eliminated).
| amelius wrote:
| We'd have self-driving road marker printers to keep the paint
| from becoming invisible ;)
| notatoad wrote:
| Do self-driving cars even need road markings? IIRC Google's
| self-driving car project started out ignoring road markings
| entirely, and relied on a centimetre-precision map of the
| test city instead.
|
| That obviously has downsides too, but unreliable road
| markings would be a pretty silly blocker to ever having a
| self-driving car. that's a solveable short-term problem.
| Rhinobird wrote:
| all fun and games until some jack-ass spoofs the GPS and
| moves a road 20 feet to the left.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2012/07/drone-hijacking/
| notatoad wrote:
| People in this thread are way too hung up on the "what if
| cars get attacked" problem. Just because you can't solve
| _every_ problem, doesn 't mean you can't have a usable
| product.
|
| Cars today don't have any defense against people dropping
| bricks or pouring paint off an overpass, but somehow the
| system still works.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| They do actually, the humans driving the car can respond
| to a threat that an autonomous car would have to be
| programmed to avoid
| mavhc wrote:
| That's the point though, the Waymo car doesn't rely on
| gps, it's has HD maps on board. Plus is has dead
| reckoning because it's touching the ground, so it knows
| where it's moving.
| tripa wrote:
| Not sure I get your point.
|
| Having atom-resolution maps doesn't help a bit it you
| don't know where on it you are.
| martyvis wrote:
| If you have high res images available of the vicinity (
| and constantly update them ) you can work out where you
| are.
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| That isn't true. There were car navigation devices that
| predated non-military GPS. They used inertial sensors to
| understand the car's acceleration and turning, and used
| on-board maps to correct for the inevitable drift. The
| car made a 90 degree turn onto a side street but the map
| indicated that road was 30 feet ahead, it would reset its
| position to be 30 feet from where it thought it was.
| bpye wrote:
| I think the idea is that with a good idea of where you're
| starting, either by GPS or some other waypoints, you can
| avoid the need for GPS through dead reckoning and
| updating based on other known features. At least, that's
| my guess.
| mavhc wrote:
| Can't spoof gps all the time everywhere. Once you have a
| general idea where you are (usually because that's where
| you were when you stopped yesterday), you can compare
| what you can see with hd maps, and fix your position
| exactly. You know you're not in a building, but on a
| drivable surface for a start.
|
| My 2006 car was fine driving underground for 10 mins with
| no gps signal, but got confused when I drove it onto a
| train and it moved 30 miles without the wheels turning.
| Then after a few minutes got a gps signal again and fixed
| itself. Had an option to manually set the position and
| heading too.
| nexuist wrote:
| Same as usual for the past few decades: private capital that
| funds existing and upcoming startups, who will deploy
| proprietary smart infrastructure and allow users to connect
| to it probably through some monthly subscription service.
| 93po wrote:
| It seems to me 99.99% of all road markings are perfectly
| visible
| gugagore wrote:
| Assuming you're right in that estimate, the hard work is
| getting more 9s. As a total kind of spitball number, you
| want 4 more of them.
| [deleted]
| jlevers wrote:
| This doesn't answer your question about money, but with
| (mostly) human drivers on the road there isn't much incentive
| to keep the lines visible, because humans are excellent at
| inferring where the lines should be, even if they're not
| there.
| _greim_ wrote:
| To put this in perspective, imagine this hypothetical
| conversation happening a century ago:
|
| "I have this new auto-mobile concept which doesn't require a
| horse and which can go fast; I envision up to fifty miles per
| hour. It will require a smooth, hardened road surface, but that
| will be achievable someday."
|
| "Forget about it. We already have millions of miles of roads,
| which are bumpy, made of dirt, and hard to build and maintain.
| Who will do the extra work to smooth them? Harden them?
| Maintain them? What if some jerk digs a hole in one as a prank?
| Maybe this could happen in a limited way in cities, but this is
| overall a pipe dream."
|
| My point is, it isn't a question of whether this is feasible,
| it's a question of incentives. If the incentives lead society
| in this direction, it _will_ happen.
| megablast wrote:
| Yes, imagine that world. We wouldn't have a million direct
| deaths every year, a million more caused by pollution. We
| wouldn't waste trillions a year on roads, hospitals, signs,
| sprawl, and so much more. Just so someone can get a donut at
| 3am.
| umvi wrote:
| Cobblestone/bumpy/muddy/dirt streets still exist today.
|
| I could see autonomous vehicles working in a city, but not
| out in the country where a driveway might be an unmarked dirt
| path.
| oblio wrote:
| > implement networks in which the cars can talk to each other
|
| And sing kumbaya, holding hands together....
|
| What about adversarial car AIs? Malicious actors, etc.?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| All of this discussion on smart infrastructure is moot, imho,
| because it won't be guaranteed to be there on all roads and
| cars will have to be designed to work even when the smart
| infrastructure breaks down.
|
| So this means that self-driving cars will have to safely handle
| these cases and that also means that it is likely that cars
| will have to still be able to be driven manually.
|
| Bottom line: self-driving cars will have to handle absence of
| smart infrastructure (in which case do we really need that
| infrastructure? I think we'll still need it, though, to guide
| and improve traffic)) and/or cars will continue to be driven
| manually at least some of the time.
| kazen44 wrote:
| > All of this discussion on smart infrastructure is moot,
| imho, because it won't be guaranteed to be there on all roads
| and cars will have to be designed to work even when the smart
| infrastructure breaks down.
|
| Also, a vast majority of the world doesn't even have proper
| roads like many western countries do.
|
| In many parts of the world a road is not even paved or
| asphalted, and let's not forget what is actually making use
| of that road.
|
| Seeing animals on roads might be a rare sight in a western
| country, but in much of the world, the road is shared by more
| then just passenger cars and trucks.
| lsc wrote:
| I dunno. Americans seem to want these giant 4x4s even when
| they leave the city twice a year; they'd be better off
| (certainly safer... most trucks are more dangerous for other
| people _and_ for the occupants) if they had a little car for
| city driving and rented the off road cargo hauler when they
| needed it.
|
| A city-only car would be totally useful for people who live
| in cities; you just rent something when you want to go to the
| boonies.
|
| Heck, most BEVs are that way now; I've got like 120 miles of
| range on mine, which is fine almost all the time. the two or
| three times a year I need something with more range or with
| more cargo capacity or what have you, I borrow or rent.
|
| I think that the economics of the first level5 cars might be
| similar to current BEVs, in that you can only go where there
| is infrastructure. which is where most of us go most of the
| time.
| tempsy wrote:
| What happens during major power outages though, which isn't an
| infrequent event? Like the one that happened in NYC last year
| when you had citizens directly traffic in the dark? I'm
| struggling to understand how self driving cars would react to
| that.
| anotheruser2020 wrote:
| I like driving, I also like the assistance that modern vehicles
| provide on Motorways, however, would I ever fully hand over
| control? Probably not. A Boeing 747 has autopilot.. however 3
| pilots sit behind hit to keep an eye on what it's doing.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Sometimes I like driving, but I also like sleeping or hacking
| or drinking, and it'd be great to have the choice.
| anotheruser2020 wrote:
| I don't think our generation will ever let a computer take
| full control.
| wnevets wrote:
| > but most forget to account for the fact that the environment
| will meet the cars part way
|
| Multiple important stake holders seem to have significant
| incentives to make this happen. Local/state govs want less
| traffic jams and crashes, auto insurance companies would love
| to collect premiums and not pay out, Uber, Lyft would love to
| get rid of their drivers
| macinjosh wrote:
| I want an oceanside villa on the dark side of the moon but
| that's doesn't mean it will happen. Just because there is
| motivation to do something doesn't mean it is possible.
| wnevets wrote:
| but if you had the funds to, why wouldn't you?
| shrimpx wrote:
| The cost of that infra is so huge, it might be easier to
| imagine low-altitude self-flying pods.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| What about dirt forest service roads? What about the dirt
| parking lot at that wedding you just went to? How will it find
| a parking spot? How will it get into a ferry where people
| direct you to the correct spot?
|
| How will it deal with an accident up ahead where some drunk
| bystander is trying to direct traffic? How will it know to
| ignore the drunk guy? What if it isn't a drunk guy but a sober
| person directing traffic? Does the car obey in that case?
|
| None of those are edge cases because every time it drives it
| will encounter some novel edge case that has never happened
| before and it will have to perform better than a human.
|
| Don't even get started with liability. Once you take away the
| steering wheel the manufacturer is on the hook for every single
| mistake and every single accident. You'd be insane to be a
| manufacturer and sign up for that.
|
| Sorry, but self driving cars are a complete fantasy.
| ericd wrote:
| _How will it deal with an accident up ahead where some drunk
| bystander is trying to direct traffic? How will it know to
| ignore the drunk guy? What if it isn't a drunk guy but a
| sober person directing traffic? Does the car obey in that
| case?_
|
| Most people wouldn't instantly know how to handle those cases
| either. Many people would obey the drunk guy. Maybe that's
| the right thing to do.
|
| _None of those are edge cases because every time it drives
| it will encounter some novel edge case that has never
| happened before and it will have to perform better than a
| human._
|
| That's why these things could never be rule based, there are
| too many small exceptions. When they're not overfitting/able
| to memorize all your training examples, neural nets learn
| heuristics, just as people do. Different people learn
| different heuristics. Granted, they don't have much of the
| same context about the world that people do, it will take a
| long time to build enough examples for them to infer all of
| that. But Tesla's fleet is getting more driving experience
| every day than you will get in your entire life, and every
| time they train on one of those exceptions, the entire fleet
| will benefit.
|
| _Don't even get started with liability. Once you take away
| the steering wheel the manufacturer is on the hook for every
| single mistake and every single accident. You'd be insane to
| be a manufacturer and sign up for that._
|
| If drivers no longer carry their own insurance, this is
| probably going to be handled by insurance at the manufacturer
| level, and baked into the price. The insurance will demand
| certain processes to prevent large-scale bugs being rolled
| out.
|
| I don't see any fantasy here, just a lot of work.
| siscia wrote:
| Wouldn't be simpler to just develop smaller trains?
| m463 wrote:
| I agree.
|
| new technologies are over-estimated in the short term, and
| under-estimated in the long term.
|
| Decades ago our computers were "soon" to be voice controlled,
| listening to our speech and doing our bidding. That was a big
| load of hype. However, over time and below the radar it became
| true as computers first answered phones, then took limited
| commands in cars and smartphones and now it is basically true
| (without all the hype).
|
| Also, I wonder if these kinds of comments risk becoming
|
| "I think there is a world market for about five computers."
|
| or
|
| "640K of memory should be enough for anybody."
| macinjosh wrote:
| There are millions of miles of roads just in the US that will
| never have that sort of infrastructure because the cost of
| keeping beacons running and marking in place would be
| astronomical. Sure maybe California will have some of that
| around big population areas but that's probably about it.
|
| What happens to all these markings when it snows a couple
| centimeters?'
|
| Fully self driving cars won't happen in our lifetime, probably
| not this century.
| _red wrote:
| its not only lines on the road though:
|
| Imagine you are following a pickup-truck and out of the back
| an obviously empty box floats out of the bed and lands
| directly in front of your car.
|
| For a human its trivial to know the box is empty and its ok
| to hit it....does "AI" know that?
|
| Multiply that case x1000 and you have the conditions self-
| driving cars will need to handle on a daily basis.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > For a human its trivial...
|
| I anecdotally question this based on both personal
| experience and stories I've heard. It seems like it would
| be a hard problem for both humans and AIs, however AIs have
| the edge in the long run due to sheer processing speed.
| smileysteve wrote:
| > For a human its trivial to know the box is empty and its
| ok to hit it....does "AI" know that?
|
| This is a great anecdote that definitely needs a source to
| back it up.
|
| Primarily, there are a significant number of single vehicle
| accidents caused by drivers jerking the wheel instead of
| acting in a calm manner.
|
| Secondly, there are many cases where a box is not safe to
| ignore; that could mean it damaging a fog light, a large
| staple in it hitting a tire, or it getting stuck somewhere,
| temporary loss of traction or visibility.
|
| In conclusion; anything on the road should be treated as
| something to avoid, but definitely something to avoid a
| high speed collision with.
|
| Other Anecdotes to consider: The first model S firs was
| caused by a trailer hitch in the road. Hammer hit a model
| 3. Asphalt coming loose in slabs and hitting a driver.
| Mattresses and ice from the roof in front of you. Tldr;
| There are many accidents that do happen with human drivers.
| F-0X wrote:
| I think I am going to side with VW on this. I have always been
| skeptical of fully autonomous vehicles, and I do not believe
| they will _ever_ exist on the roads that currently stand.
| Driving safely in all conditions without aid from a human is
| simply too complex a task for code that can be audited and
| verified. If some AI model that's been trained on a billion
| years of driving experience shows promise, but it is some
| incomprehensible black box of weights, I won't be getting in
| that car.
|
| Autonomous vehicles will only ever truly exist upon
| infrastructure literally designed to aid them, greatly
| simplifying how they need to interact with the environment,
| thus making the problem tractable with code we can prove works.
| I really think it will take more than putting markings on
| existing roads. It is going to take new roads full stop,
| probably with various wireless checkpoints built into them.
| jsolson wrote:
| You may not be getting in that car, but I certainly will.
|
| After all, every driver on the road today is an
| incomprehensible black box where not only do we not know the
| parameters, we don't even know the function they're
| parameterizing. Every instance functions differently, and our
| testing procedures have woefully low coverage.
| darkerside wrote:
| When one of those black boxes malfunctions it gets taken
| off the road. When the AI malfunctions, are we going to
| shut down entire classes of vehicles until the problem is
| confirmed fixed?
|
| Not to mention that most software fixes cause other bugs...
| _red wrote:
| how do you see insurance working? why would drivers be
| responsible to have insurance when the car is completely
| controlled by bigcorp programmers?
| jedberg wrote:
| I have to have insurance now, even though a lot of the
| functions of my car are controlled by their software.
|
| Remember when the Toyota had that problem of the
| accelerator "getting stuck" because the software didn't
| disengage? Initially the owners' insurances were paying
| out, until it happened enough that they were able to
| prove it was Toyota's fault, and then Toyota had to pay
| them back.
|
| I imagine in a self driving world it would work the same
| way. You get insurance, the car has a crash, your
| insurance and the manufacturer fight out whose fault it
| is.
| lsc wrote:
| Seems like it would mostly be the manufacturers that
| would have to insure the cars, at least for the expensive
| part (liability)
|
| For me? I'm a self-driving skeptic, but... if the
| manufacturer was willing to properly insure it, (I mean,
| a _reasonable_ amount of insurance, at least a
| statistical life worth) I 'd ride in the thing. I think
| that's an honest signal.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Insurance would be a nightmare for a manufacturer. Every
| accident will initially be pegged to the auto maker (as
| it should be.. it's their code!). The auto maker will
| always try to weasel out and blame the passenger-owners
| of the car (they didn't maintain it, the paint was dirty
| and messed with the sensors, the tire pressure was 2 PSI
| lower than average).
|
| And if you go with the "nobody will own cars, you'll just
| summon one" model... well the fleet owner will just sue
| the manufacturer instead.
| derefr wrote:
| > We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads
| to make it easier for the cars, implement networks in which the
| cars can talk to each other, and make special lanes for self-
| driving cars only, among other improvements that will make it
| easier for the cars.
|
| I feel like the correct way to describe this future isn't
| "self-driving _cars_ ", but rather "personal autonomous
| _trains_. " In est, the road system described here would just
| be a rather clumsy railroad network.
|
| I interpret the goal of having "self-driving _cars_ " as
| referring to the ability to have a passenger vehicles that can
| autonomously navigate (wayfind?) off-road, i.e. what the aim of
| the DARPA Grand Challenge would eventually evolve into.
| Gene_Parmesan wrote:
| It's my belief that self driving cars will, for a very
| significant time in the future, still need to make human
| control possible. Think about the vast amounts of rural roads
| -- dirt, gravel. Anyone who's ever taken a 4x4 out to a
| trailhead in the desert knows that sometimes those roads don't
| even exist except on a map. Washouts can be a weekly problem in
| certain seasons. But you don't start in the desert, right? You
| have to take highways at a minimum, and quite likely national
| interstates as well, to get to the desert roads.
|
| Think about attending a festival or fair with grass parking.
| You follow a line of cars, pull up to a guy who's standing out
| in the field. He looks around and says, "Why don't you go park
| next to that red Toyota two rows over?" Sure, that part is not
| "on the road," but certainly I had to take highways to get
| there.
|
| Maybe I, as an urban-dwelling American, only need functionality
| like this a few times per year. But there are significant
| chunks of this country and the world in general where this is
| part of daily life. Adopting fully self-driving cars without
| manual driving modes is going to take extreme amounts of change
| and adaptation, not only technologically but also culturally. I
| would recommend spending a few weeks in the deep country if you
| want to fully understand some of the difficulties in reaching
| level 5.
|
| If the time scale you're talking about is on the order of 50
| years, I could maybe see it. But I do think there will always
| be a need for personal vehicles with _some_ level of manual
| control.
|
| Beyond all that, however, this article to me seems like 90%
| clickbait. The statement merely was "Maybe it will never
| happen," and it was stated in the context of a discussion of
| the difficulty in reaching level 5 autonomy. But now we have
| articles throwing headlines up saying "VW Exec admits fully
| self driving cars may NEVER happen." Feels a little
| disingenuous.
| lsc wrote:
| eh, something that only works in cities would be pretty nice
| for more than half of us. If you need an off road vehicle
| twice a year, you rent one; we have that technology already.
|
| (I mean, we're still a long ways away from level 5 in the
| city.. I'm just saying, something that was level 5 only on
| pavement and only in the city would be damn useful; and good
| enough for more than half of us.)
| lawlessquestion wrote:
| The government's endgame for restricting individual liberties
| and privacy as much as possible would be only allowing self
| driving cars. As a result, I regretfully agree that this is
| inevitable and wholly depressing.
| beefield wrote:
| > We will eventually update markings and beacons on the roads
| to make it easier for the cars.
|
| Or even easier, platooning. I don't understand why autonomous
| cars is a bigger thing than platooning. I mean, platooning
| solves 95% of use cases of self driving cars [1] and is orders
| of magnitude easier problem to solve.
|
| [1] At least for me. I do not mind driving in the cities
| myself, but if I just could nap or watch a movie on the highway
| part, that would have some utility
| HereBeBeasties wrote:
| If cars could assemble into close convoy trains on multi-lane
| highways / motorways / autoroutes / whatever, then it would
| probably also solve electric car range for many people - you
| only care about range on relatively long distance journeys,
| and you're likely to be doing those on major multi-lane
| carriageways. If you could split the air resistance between a
| bunch of other vehicles then you'd add considerably to the
| range. I similarly don't understand why we're not trying to
| solve that instead. As you say, it seems easy compared to
| full autonomous driving.
| lsc wrote:
| https://peloton-tech.com - I mean, that's just one company, I
| think there are a handful working on just the problem you're
| talking about.
| beefield wrote:
| Yes. Can you estimate how much these companies have
| received funding compared to self-driving tech
| companies/projects? My wild guess (based only on the
| general visibility) is that it amounts pretty much to a
| rounding error.
| rmason wrote:
| Almost all the self-driving programs use rules based solutions
| literally a big if this do that. Only one, comma.ai, uses
| artificial intelligence.
|
| There's video on YouTube from three years ago with George Hotz
| predicting that Level 4 or 5 would never be reached without
| artificial intelligence. It made sense to me then and it still
| does today.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I don't understand why they want to make them fully autonomous.
| Even human drivers must stay inside the lanes. Why can't they
| make a semi-autonomous car that operates automatically with some
| sort of electronic lane marker, and have drive by wire with a
| human driver for off-road?
| holoduke wrote:
| I believe the first fully automated transport system will go via
| the air. Air is so much easier to control. The complexity of
| automating vehicles in a very chaotic setting (land) exceeds that
| of building drones capable of flying from a to b. It will start
| with freight transport and slowly as reliability increases you
| get human transport via drones as well. Fully automated land
| transport is only possible when the system is clean and
| predictable. That means closed roads are open to only the
| entities which are part of the automation. Very difficult to
| establish.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Yes, that is why trying to ship a level 5 car for the general
| public's use is folly. There are .001 situations that will take
| 1000x the effort to automate, so automating almost all is a
| better approach.
| dboreham wrote:
| Not any exec but "The CEO of Volkswagen's autonomous driving
| division".
| martythemaniak wrote:
| There seems to be an implicit assumption here that Level 5 =
| human = 100% of drivers. I honestly don't think that's the case
| at all. If I am being charitable, I'd say half of drivers would
| meet the implicit level 5 criteria discussed in these threads.
|
| For example, there's a snowstorm out here today. Unless they
| really need to, people aren't going out displayed their
| incredible skill at navigating through snowsquals with
| centimeters of snow on the ground. They just stay home.
|
| What will determine the success of self driving cars is not
| philosophical musings but their usefulness in day to day life.
| And if you can spend 10k on a system that'll work most of the
| time, but refuse to go out in snow squeals, it'll sell very well.
| I'd buy it.
| Geee wrote:
| Volkswagen doesn't develop self-driving tech. They use Mobileye's
| solution like everyone expect Tesla, Waymo and GM/Cruise. They
| aren't really in the position to make that argument.
|
| Level 5 means that the car can drive autonomously > 95% of the
| time, and it will absolutely be possible. Level 4/5 distinction
| doesn't really make any sense once the autonomy gets beyond
| certain percentage. It doesn't mean that it's level 4 until it
| hits 100% (which is impossible).
|
| Level 5 car is designed to drive in all conditions, but there are
| always statistically unlikely corner cases or situations that
| require high-level decision making, which the car can't handle by
| itself. A single driver may never hit such case, and for them the
| experience is full self-driving.
| simfoo wrote:
| This is not true. VW fully owns AID which is developing its
| level 4 stack. VW is also invested in Argo
| Geee wrote:
| I stand corrected. Still, VW is using MobilEye's tech in
| their ride-sharing service [0], which probably means that
| their own tech is not very close to the competitors.
|
| [0] https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/volkswagen-
| mobileye...
| simfoo wrote:
| I don't know about Israel but VWs ride-sharing service in
| Germany is MOIA
| 0xff00ffee wrote:
| VW is also working with Magna on ADAS, which is a huge Tier-1
| vendor. I think VW is covering all their bases by having
| multiple design efforts.
| savrajsingh wrote:
| simfoo is right, Argo.ai is essentially a joint venture of
| ford and VW at this point, to the tune of billions of dollars
| invested. https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/12/vw-
| invests-2-6-billion-in-...
| RedComet wrote:
| Good.
| hownottowrite wrote:
| Clickbait.
|
| This is definitely not consistent with statements Alex has made
| in the past. Seems like more of an off the cuff remark a German
| engineer would make while confident that the fully realized
| result is right around the corner.
| [deleted]
| wwweston wrote:
| Opinion: level 5 autonomy would be cool, but it's not where most
| of the value of self-driving cars is.
|
| Most of the value in being able to travel by auto without
| attention is in trips longer than 15 minutes. Commutes, tourism,
| vacations. Shipping. Most of which is certainly highway driving.
|
| If it's possible to automate highway driving under most
| conditions (and safely transition either to a stop or human-
| piloting when those conditions aren't met), then at least 80% of
| the value is there.
|
| Wrestling with the harder edges of the problem is still the right
| thing to do for tolerance reasons, but I hope we don't have to
| see last-mile problems solved before we start reaping the
| benefits.
| ghaff wrote:
| Both from a comfort and safety perspective, automating long
| highway drives is a big win. It's still disappointing to
| urbanites in particular who thought they'd never need to own a
| car, drive anywhere, or maybe even learn to drive in the first
| place.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That is a bit American centric. The value of self driving cars
| for society will be the ability to optimize existing road
| infrastructure. Cars can travel more closely together, can
| cooperate to work out bottlenecks, and so on. Think about the
| traffic problems Beijing is having, and that's the huge
| opportunity for self driving tech.
| deltron3030 wrote:
| Onboarding cars onto trains in a driver friendly way should
| also be considered. This way you don't exclude non self driving
| cars, and still have good coverage (taking into account that
| railway systems aren't far behind highway coverage in many
| countries).
| imhoguy wrote:
| This is the way of traveling thru Channel Tunnel.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurotunnel_Shuttle
|
| But one needs to plan and book a travel in advance. There are
| also capacity limits.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I don't mind driving 200 times one hour commuting a year. I
| want to a) not own a car but be picked up by one I can share
| with others b) be driven home after having a drink. Both of
| those use cases are only working if there is a 100% (or close
| to) self driving solution. Driving 95% of the way or 95% of the
| trips is nice, but I wouldn't pay Tesla autopilot money for it.
|
| The value in the 95/95 autopilot is because it will make
| commercial drivers be able to never need breaks (they sleep or
| rest until the autopilot is in trouble, and they can even
| remote control cars). And of course because a lot of people
| seem to hate driving and would pay to avoid it.
|
| I don't - I hate owning a car.
| IanCal wrote:
| The 95% thing can also be very different depending on how
| it's split up. 5% of miles have a random "you need to take
| over" vs. the most rural 5% of roads need manual control make
| a world of difference.
|
| A car that can only drive within major cities in the UK and
| on motorways would be entirely fine for the vast majority of
| people. Exceptional journies I can always rent a car that
| suits my needs for the one week in several years I'm in the
| Highlands.
| Shivetya wrote:
| My opinion along these lines lends itself to depiction of self
| driving cars in the series Tek War. Upon entering the limit
| access highway or interstate the car drives on its own for the
| duration until your exit.
|
| that to me is something automakers can easily cooperate with
| governments to get done and done well. they already mark HOV
| and Express lanes and with federal legislated lane markings it
| would make automating those drives pretty simple. Then as the
| number of cars increase the number of free drive lanes is
| decreased until the vanish.
|
| using metro Atlanta as an example express lanes have their own
| entrance and exit points so they are already separated. One set
| for I75 is wholly elevated two lane bridge work nearly the full
| length of its run.
|
| Tesla Model 3 owner, I think even Musk is walking back what he
| "implies" as self driving. As into self driving with human
| oversight
| furyofantares wrote:
| People who can't, or shouldn't, drive themselves at all are
| totally unaccounted for in this logic. Full autonomy would be
| hugely freeing to the elderly, for example. Presumably it would
| enable travel for people too young to get a driver's license as
| well. And I have to assume driving patterns for capable drivers
| would change too, in ways that are likely hard to predict or
| appreciate right now.
| antaviana wrote:
| I think that Level 5 would be transformative.
|
| It would be the end of owned cars, huge reduction of car
| production, millions of jobs in the transportation business
| amortized, to name just a few.
| DasIch wrote:
| This 80% solution already exists in the form of trains and
| airplanes.
|
| Self-driving cars that only go 80% of the way would compete
| against those forms of transportation which have established
| business models, networks and in the case of trains are
| subsidized in a way that self-driving cars likely won't ever
| be.
|
| Additionally the key advantage of cars is flexibility, not
| having to figure out how to get to or from the train station or
| airport. In your scenario self-driving cars would lack this
| advantage.
|
| Now granted this may still sound like an appealing proposition
| in countries with poor public transportation infrastructure but
| that substantially reduces the size of the overall market. Sure
| this might be attractive for the US but what about Europe?
| Asia?
|
| Now of course there is an obvious answer to this problem: Keep
| the steering wheel and drive the rest of the way yourself. That
| just means you'll have a lot of drivers who won't gain
| experience at the current rate though. Not sure I would like to
| share the road with those people.
| dpflan wrote:
| Yes, the tremendous capital influx into AV could probably
| support advances in trains and rail infrastructure. Yet, we
| will chase after this idea -- it receives copious media
| attention because it is technically challenging and is "sci-
| fi" idealism that is hard to mitigate and feels like a good
| idea for society. Also, the investments seem like chasing
| after what everyone else is chasing after (FOMO); an
| automaker would find it difficult to "pivot" from vehicle
| production to advancing rail (competition) so capital will be
| stuck in that industry.
| DasIch wrote:
| It seems to me that the problems that trains and rail
| infrastructure is facing are: bureaucracy, politics and an
| increasing inability to execute on infrastructure projects
| on time/budget by governments.
|
| To the extent cost is a a factor, it's unnecessarily high
| due to these aforementioned issues[1]. So I don't think
| money invested into self-driving cars hurts trains and rail
| infrastructure.
|
| [1]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2017/1/1/14112776/ne...
| dpflan wrote:
| Yes, the policy issues are real and sticky and act to
| thwart advance.
| Digory wrote:
| I suppose the car crowd would say environmental factors tilt
| toward cars over airplanes.
|
| In the US, trains are for freight. It would cost too much to
| create a new passenger rail network compared to automating
| existing intercity roads.
|
| Now, increasing the throughput of rail using self-driving
| trains could make a bundle in the US.
| dpflan wrote:
| Self driving trains seems like an excellent problem space.
| Are you aware of any companies working on this?
| DasIch wrote:
| Self driving trains already exist:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation
| niftich wrote:
| Lots [1][2]. These have seen most deployment in closed
| networks (e.g. subways, or remote mining railways [3]),
| but experiments on "normal" interconnected networks are
| ongoing.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_train_operation
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train
| _system... [3]
| https://www.railwaygazette.com/australasia/rio-tinto-
| complet...
| genezeta wrote:
| Subway is already driver-less in a number of cities
| around the world. In others the drivers are still there
| but don't actually drive the train.
| lukifer wrote:
| I think self-parking (as in "go find a space, possibly auto-
| paying", not auto-parallel-parking) could also be a game-
| changer, not only for convenience and cost, but even zoning and
| city planning.
| javiramos wrote:
| Lots of innovation and investment happening in this space.
| Expect parking lots in ~5-10 years to look very different --
| a lot of automation is coming.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Sure it is, bro.
| iav wrote:
| Cars with no person inside them at all (vehicle drones?) would
| unlock the biggest productivity gain in a century.
| Revolutionize anything that can be delivered to your house
| (food, goods, groceries) and make sharing items feasible (need
| a power tool? Just have a drone drop it off for an hour then
| pick it up after you are done). I think the biggest advance of
| self driving is having cars with no people in them at all
| usrusr wrote:
| I'm sure it would be the biggest disadvantage as there is not
| an infinite amount of roads.
| kart23 wrote:
| You cant have other people on the road then. If I was a
| protestor or bored teen, I would find it pretty fun to block
| self driving cars' cameras and sensors, stranding them and
| creating chaos. Imagine a line of self driving cars just
| blocking a busy street. It wouldn't be hard to do, but it
| would take a lot of work to recover them to the point it
| wouldnt be profitable for the companies running them.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I have to disagree. Most of the value is in taxi services,
| where you get dropped off / picked up exactly where you want,
| there is no need to dedicate so much land and structures to
| parking, there is no need to have cars sit idle for 95% of
| their existence, and no need to search for parking spots and
| walk long distances.
|
| Of course, I live in a city, where parking is a major pain. But
| the other things still hold. It it far more efficient of
| resources to have cars be used most fo the day, rather than
| sitting idle.
| threeseed wrote:
| I actually think autonomous taxi services will be niche.
|
| Think about Uber cars today. Their entire value proposition
| centres around them breaking parking laws in order to pick
| you up. Now the liability for that behaviour is with the
| driver. In an autonomous car the liability would be Uber
| which is why they won't do it.
|
| An Uber that needs to look for parking in order to pick you
| up is never going to work in most busy cities. So I suspect
| you will see people opt for the driver based taxi service
| instead. Or maybe autonomous taxis will be reserved for
| emerging markets e.g. Indonesia which are more relaxed about
| parking.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| You forgot one thing.
|
| Autonomous cars won't have the same algorithm as selfish
| humans to position themselves.
|
| A human will go to one of the busy places and will probably
| drive back to the original point of pickup.
|
| While a computer will be notified ( 1 car only parked on
| the busy place) and immediately replaced by a new
| available/nearby car. Making the process more efficient,
| more remote places will be handled faster. Busy places more
| efficient.
|
| Not all cabs will need to earn money, since the biggest
| expense will be the car driving and not the human driver (
| waiting for work)
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I don't doubt that things take time to adjust. But when it
| makes a lot more economic sense to take a cab compared to
| owning a car and driving it (after all, the main reasons
| cabs aren't all that economical today is the requirement of
| paying a driver while you just sit there), there will be
| less cars parked on the road and therefore it will be
| easier to have places where the cars can pull over and pick
| up / drop off.
|
| Anyway, "people are willing to break the law but companies
| aren't" seems a really weird reason to stick with the
| status quo over something far more efficient.
| p1mrx wrote:
| If passengers can jump into the car while it's moving
| slowly (sliding or gull wing doors), then you technically
| don't need somewhere to park.
| rapind wrote:
| I wonder though if autonomous taxi's would simply highlight
| the parking issues and increase demand for better parking
| solutions (like no parking, just autonomous taxi lanes).
| njarboe wrote:
| Are parking laws different for Taxis than for Ubers? Say in
| New York City? Lots of Taxis there so if Ubers are working
| under the same law, seems like an already solved problem.
| UPS have millions? of parking violations per year, yet it
| is still in operation.
| threeseed wrote:
| You're missing the point.
|
| Drivers own the liability for illegal parking. Autonomous
| cars would make the developer liable.
|
| No government is going to tolerate systemic and wide
| spread violation of the law.
| hawaiianbrah wrote:
| I think "making the developer liable" is jumping to a
| conclusion that isn't certain quite yet.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I think Uber sells the cars to John Doe who registers it in
| their name then let's their car take Uber rides. Uber is
| off the hook for both the illegal parking and the capex.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| _Think about Uber cars today. Their entire value
| proposition centres around them breaking parking laws in
| order to pick you up._
|
| I take Uber and Lyft in NYC multiple times per week. No one
| ever "parks", they just pull up, you jump in, and off you
| go. Takes less than a minute in most cases, doesn't block
| traffic, and I suspect it virtually never results in a
| ticket. Maybe if they sit there for 10 minutes or more, but
| that's exceedingly rare. And even then, they're not going
| to get a ticket outside a few ultra-congested areas of
| manhattan that make up a tiny fraction of this city. Even
| in most places in manhattan, you could sit in a running car
| in a no parking zone for hours without getting a ticket. I
| had a moving truck up on the curb on the Upper West Side in
| a no parking zone for hours and the NYPD rolled past
| several times without a glance.
|
| Also, this is _exactly_ how taxis all work too, btw, which
| seems to undermine your entire point.
| HereBeBeasties wrote:
| Umm, that _is_ is point though - with autonomy the cars
| presumably won 't break the law and stop where it's
| technically illegal for 30s to pick you up. They will
| presumably need to find somewhere legal to park to do so.
| dkdklk wrote:
| You might want to look up the legal difference between
| parking, stopping, and standing.
|
| The vast majority of pickups in nyc at least are not
| illegal under any current law.
| philwelch wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've often had Ubers pick me up in
| specifically marked and designated passenger loading
| zones when and where that's been appropriate and
| necessary. And in principle it's really no different from
| picking up a friend if you're giving them a ride
| somewhere.
| ThrustVectoring wrote:
| A car also functions as a usually-secure place to store a
| good chunk of stuff, rather than taking it with you. This is
| more relevant if you have children (carseats) or take
| multiple-destination trips.
| mlazos wrote:
| The margins on taxi services are so incredibly thin I find it
| difficult to believe there is any value in autonomous taxis.
| Especially when you take into account all the edge cases that
| will have to be accounted for, and the traffic that will be
| generated. Shipping and trucking are a massive industry, and
| I think automating highway driving has a much much better
| cost/benefit. Not to mention being safer.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Most of the value is in taxi services
|
| I'm imagining how gross a taxi would be that doesn't have a
| driver to provide passengers a low level of behaviour
| moderation.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I'm imagining how gross a taxi would be that doesn't have
| a driver to provide passengers a low level of behaviour
| moderation.
|
| I've talked to a number of uber drivers. The cameras
| recording the passengers are a much greater inhibitor of
| bad behavior than the driver.
| sumnulu wrote:
| Except if you are living in Japan.
| maxerickson wrote:
| It'll probably just be smooth, hard plastic.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| BART went with vinyl because the riders were really
| uncomfortable with the old wool ones:
| https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/04/how-bart-
| fina...
| connicpu wrote:
| Hard plastic covered in the last rider's vomit :/
| judge2020 wrote:
| This isn't much a problem in terms of self-driving, but
| solutions to this aren't hard; eg. someone could use the
| app before they enter a self-driving taxi to report that
| the car has stains, trash, food, etc. left in it. The
| company behind it could then queue it to be cleaned.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| Well, considering that these won't allow anonymous usage
| this can be mitigated by kicking out "bad" users and big
| fines. Also cars can visit the cleaning zone frequently.
|
| For "free floating car sharing" (DriveNow/ShareNow,
| Yandex.Drive, ...) this seems to work quite well.
| dmortin wrote:
| If the taxi is soiled then the next passenger indicates
| this via the app. The taxi is sent for cleaning and the
| previous passenger is charged for the cleaning. Also, there
| will be cameras inside in case it has to be proven who made
| the car dirty.
|
| If people have to pay the cleaning bill they will be
| careful not to make a mess.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| That's the theory. If doing the right thing is not the
| default, it's bound to get bad pretty fast.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| Great. Let's give companies even more ways to violate
| privacy.
| gambiting wrote:
| That sounds horrendous, honestly.
| dmortin wrote:
| You won't have to use the service, but if you do then
| companies will have to have a way to protect the service
| from abusers.
| femto113 wrote:
| > It it far more efficient of resources to have cars be used
| most fo the day, rather than sitting idle.
|
| This is better and more easily addressed by car sharing
| services like car2go than autonomous cars. The more I use
| them the more I wish for a world where every car was
| shareable: you need to go somewhere? you simply get into the
| nearest parked car and drive it to where you want to go. And,
| unlike autonomy, there are no technical barriers to this,
| only the will to do it and the economic model to sustain it.
| Sadly these services seem to be in full retreat now but I
| will miss them and still hope they'll rise again soon.
| acdha wrote:
| > This is better and more easily addressed by car sharing
| services like car2go than autonomous cars.
|
| This is not the conclusion I would draw from car2go failing
| out of North America. They still had the problem that you
| are required to find a legal parking spot and there's no
| guarantee that there will be a car available anywhere near
| you. Taxis and private vehicles solve the latter and former
| respectively but they all suffer from the inefficiencies
| inherent to the system design.
| mattlutze wrote:
| There's a fantastic amount of value in cities and urban areas.
| Self-driving cars can work as a massive network to reduce or
| eliminate congestion and give people back hundreds of millions
| of hours spent stuck in traffic.
|
| https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/22/us/traffic-commute-gridlo...
|
| They can also, if Level 5 becomes a thing, reduce traffic
| collisions. And if they all end up electric, through route
| optimization they can significantly reduce energy consumption
| requirements for vehicle usage.
| baybal2 wrote:
| This is where the Chinese companies are digging. Instead of a
| self-driving car, they are trying to make a car driven by an
| external server.
|
| Half of the work on "self"-driving is actually traffic
| dispatch.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| How would they "reduce or eliminate congestion"? Congestion
| is inherently caused by too many people trying to go to or
| through the same place at the same time. That's not possible
| without reducing the amount of people trying to travel during
| a given time period in a given place.
| vl wrote:
| Self-driving cars will of course increase congestion
| because it will be possible just to chill out and do
| something else while car is driving itself. In Silicon
| Valley normal story will be "I worked in the car for 3
| hours while commuting to the office".
| hackbinary wrote:
| Congestion is not just caused by reaching capacity. It is
| also caused by human behaviour:
|
| - selfishness eg stopping or parking in no parking zones,
| driving aggressively
|
| - error eg causing accidents
|
| - ignorance eg not knowing the traffic flow in an
| intersection, driving slowly to find your bearings.
|
| Also, if we have fewer cars, but higher utilisation of
| vehicles then we will require less parking.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| When I drive to work there is an empty transit lane for
| cars with 2+ people which seems to imply that most rush
| hour cars have just the driver in. If everyone is ubering
| in robot cars then they'll probably share. It's not that
| weird as people share public transport and choosing between
| $10 to get to work and $3 is a no brainer.
|
| They might even Uber to the train station then Uber from
| the destination train station to work. Lots of ways of
| cutting traffic!
| bobthepanda wrote:
| > "they'll probably share"
|
| The people who are driving, or at least a significant
| portion of them, pick driving over public transport
| because of perceived privacy and control.
|
| I don't think uptake of shared mobility is going to be so
| popular where that becomes the norm.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Values change. No one would take a taxi where the driver
| is just some unlicensed taxi driver. Back in the 90's
| that would be consider akin to hitchhiking in danger! Now
| we have Uber.
|
| Also I drive because it's faster, and because once you go
| from A->B getting to B->C is probably easier. Not for
| privacy. Most people just need to get to work or school
| or their kids to school for the bulk of their car use.
| Kids to school might work by sharing with other parents
| you know.
| mattlutze wrote:
| There's lots of reasons for congestion existing.
|
| https://www.geotab.com/blog/traffic-congestion/
|
| Given the same number of cars on the road, a self-driving
| fleet would eliminate many mechanical failures and many
| human failures, and be able to adapt to sub-optimal
| infrastructure at a network-wide level.
|
| Infrastructure would also be easier or more efficient to
| improve, because you'd have removed much of the human
| variability that makes identifying choke points difficult.
| gedy wrote:
| Freeways can handle much more traffic, but people get jumpy
| beyond a certain density and cause traffic jams "for no
| reason"
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The problem is that in many cases, many people want to
| get off at the same freeway exits, and the local network
| doesn't have the road capacity to match.
|
| AI doesn't really have the power to change that, and
| might actually be worse depending on how it reacts to
| pedestrians and cyclists.
| brians wrote:
| By offering laminar rather than turbulent flow. Take a two
| lane highway where traffic moves at 100 kph. It contracts
| to one lane at 100kph. Humans will pull up close, stall in
| one lane, do a flaky and awful zipper merge. Latency will
| be higher than necessary and throughout lower.
|
| Self driving cars can plan the whole exchange, negotiate
| (or be directed by an intersection controller) to
| decelerate, align, merge, and maintain high throughout at
| low latency. ATC does this for planes already; we have the
| coordination technology. It's just about getting drivers to
| listen to precise instructions without deviation. For
| everywhere I know of, that's going to take automation.
|
| Reading up on standing waves taught me a lot; you might
| like adding that wrinkle to your model.
| idreyn wrote:
| Self-driving cars cannot plan an entire exchange in a
| dense urban areas because there will always be actors
| like pedestrians, cyclists, and stray plastic bags that
| do not participate in planning and act adversarially to
| their shared model. Optimizations will be highly local,
| spatially and temporally, and I suspect they will end up
| looking a lot like humans trying to coordinate on the
| same problem. And even if AVs can technically plan and
| execute faster, their actions will need to be
| artificially slowed to be legible to humans. Likewise
| with their raw speed -- cars, self-driving or not, are
| already moving too fast in urban areas. Reaction times
| might improve but braking distances will not.
|
| So if AVs can't increase the throughput of city streets,
| I'm skeptical that they can increase the throughput of
| off-ramps which are bounded by city streets, or urban
| freeway segments which are bounded by the off-ramps. And
| even imagining that significant (2x?) throughput is
| achieved, it's not going to meet the induced demand
| ceiling; there would be the same amount of congestion,
| only with more cars.
|
| L5 is dead on arrival as congestion-mitigation technology
| and I hope at least some of the billions earmarked to be
| spent on researching and deploying it are redirected
| towards better walking, cycling, and transit amenities
| instead.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > By offering laminar rather than turbulent flow.
|
| That's only going to work on roads that are AI-only.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| There are already cities where buying a car is difficult
| and/or expensive because of traffic concerns. Singapore,
| Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, ...
|
| I don't see an AI requirement to be a huge hurdle for
| those cities.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There are other actors on the road, namely pedestrians
| and cyclists. Unless we're going to remove the right of
| citizens to the street at all, they will be present and
| will need to be accommodated for.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Computers can or will deal with the other actors as well
| as humans do now, which is quite a low bar anyways.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| It's hard for me to guess how much something like this
| would reduce delays caused by traffic compared to the
| increased number of cars driving due to the fact that
| some driverless cars would be out with no passengers
| heading to pick people up.
| coolspot wrote:
| When roads belong exclusively to self-driving cars, they
| can increase speed, reduce gaps between cars and eliminate
| traffic wave effect.
|
| Imagine highway where everyone drives 80mph with 5ft of
| distance between cars. No one suddenly changes lanes, no
| one suddenly slows down for no reason.
|
| Here is illustration from Waymo testing facility:
| https://youtu.be/hKfEivMfDPU
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| Even if there is no reaction time, 5' of space at 50mph
| is silly. You still need room to maneuver if whatever
| caused the vehicle ahead to throw on its breaks comes
| back or halts the vehicle ahead faster than your breaks
| can stop you.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| It's basically a virtual tandem semi. The presumption is
| that you are delegating command and control to the lead
| vehicle, and there is bidirectional communication between
| the lead and follow vehicles.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| Well, why don't we go a step further then and physically
| connect the vehicles? Maybe we can also make them longer
| and fit more passengers? And we could optimize the
| rolling friction, replace rubber on tarmac with something
| better like steel on steel, and use some sort of tracks
| to provide the sideways forces?
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| Are the other passengers quiet and housebroken? Does the
| steel track go to my office?
| ericd wrote:
| You jest, but I'd love it if we could automatically group
| cars into physically connected trains for long distance
| travel, and have them automatically split off when they
| approach their destination. Maybe there's some way to do
| that with rails, carrying peoples' cars, but not sure if
| the efficiency gain is worth the increased complexity of
| including another set of wheels/motors/etc, and making
| the automated separation/joining work with all of that.
| philwelch wrote:
| I believe you'd have better throughput by dedicating
| roads exclusively to buses and bicycles, which are
| technologies that already exist.
| peteradio wrote:
| Lol that is going to lead to the mother of all pile-ups
| not if but when something just so slightly goes wrong.
| Imagine somebody dropping shit from an overpass or really
| anything. Better build a giant cage over all the
| highways!
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Those kind of pile ups already happen now when people
| drop crap from overpasses, how would it be any different?
| fourthark wrote:
| Bigger. Faster.
| macinjosh wrote:
| because unless the driver is a raging asshole usually the
| person behind while you are going 80 has more stopping
| distance than 5 fucking feet.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Also https://youtu.be/iHzzSao6ypE
| C14L wrote:
| Really looking forward to one day being able to sit im a
| self-driving car that goes at 150+ km/h towards a crowded
| intersection with other cars crossing left and right at
| equal speeds, and then just pass the intersection through
| a tiny gap in the wall of crossing cars. Because all
| those cars talk to each other and can precisely co-
| ordinate to create the nessesary gaps at just the right
| moment.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Local streets will always have pedestrians and cyclists.
| The main limit on road capacity is generally where
| highways interface with the local network, and the local
| network itself.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| > If it's possible to automate highway driving under most
| conditions (and safely transition either to a stop or human-
| piloting when those conditions aren't met), then at least 80%
| of the value is there.
|
| Given that planes, which rely on a class of specifically
| trained professionals with minimum hour requirements, still
| have issues with this from time to time, I don't think this is
| a realistic thing for cars.
|
| Driving standards, at least in the US, are very low, and
| raising them is a hard problem.
| rapind wrote:
| And yet air travel is far safer than road travel and they
| embraced autopilot long ago.
|
| The problem with complete automation is how accidents are
| perceived. Probably a good thing considering how low the bar
| is right now for road safety. Being killed by a robot's
| mistake is perceived far worse than by human error.
|
| I think a middle ground like autopilot on the highway could
| significantly improve safety while still accommodating
| perception issues.
| temporaryvector wrote:
| >The problem with complete automation is how accidents are
| perceived
|
| I don't think so. Airplane autopilot automates away the
| safe, boring parts of air travel, much like highway
| driving, so in that sense I agree with you. Truly
| autonomous landing is still a big deal, and planes that the
| benefit of ATC, and I don't think there are any planes that
| taxi or takeoff autonomously. Furthermore, accidents
| involving autopilot are always at the edge, when control
| changes from computer to human unexpectedly or when the
| human has to take over the autopilot in less than ideal
| conditions. I don't think there's much perception in the
| public eye of "robot pilots killing people"
|
| I think once autonomous driving accidents go through the
| courts a few times, the same will happen to cars. After
| another decade of development and legislation, people will
| die not because the robot made a mistake per-se, but
| because it encountered a situation it can't cope with and
| the human wasn't ready to take over in an emergency, or
| because the robot tried to cope with the emergency
| situation the wrong way and the human didn't notice in time
| and took over too late (if at all). This may still sound
| like the computer making a mistake, but the subtle
| difference is that the mistake is made in an extraordinary
| situation, as opposed to the current accidents that
| happened in regular driving conditions. I think this subtle
| distinction will be enough for the PR people to spin the
| blame away from the manufacturer.
|
| Call my cynical, but I can also see successful lobbying
| efforts in the future by corporations to reduce liability
| in class-4 and lower autonomous car accidents involving
| unusual situations, citing the fact that the driver should
| have been paying attention and taken over.
|
| That aside, road safety is better than ever these days,
| with a lot of what would have been fatal accidents being
| merely property damage due to modern safety systems, and
| highway driving is probably the safest kind of driving out
| there, thus it is not clear to me (and I have no data
| either way, I don't think a study has ever been done) that
| current offerings (Tesla et al.) are any safer compared to
| similarly priced modern luxury cars per mile driven, and
| I'm not sure that will change in the future. The only
| reason I see for adopting highway autopilot is not safety
| but comfort. You might argue that comfort contributes to
| safety and enables longer driving times, but driving for 8
| to 12 hours is pretty safe regardless, and I don't think I
| could do more than that even if I was a passenger.
|
| This is a bit of a controversial opinion, but I don't think
| we will see a meaningful reduction in fatal accidents or
| serious injuries due to self-driving cars for a long time,
| but I do think we will see a reduction in accidents
| involving only property damage or minor injuries from low
| to medium speed accidents, and I see a sharp decrease in
| parking-lot scrapes and dings in the near future. Low to
| medium speed streets and tight maneuvers is where I see
| most "bad" human drivers have the most trouble and already
| things like parallel parking assist are a godsend to these
| people.
| monodeldiablo wrote:
| Travel by plane is orders of magnitude safer than by car.
| Your odds of dying in a traffic accident are close to 1:100.
| Your odds of dying in an air accident are closer to 1:10,000.
|
| If anything, I think your example underlines just how
| valuable and realistic this is for cars.
|
| Full autonomy was always, IMHO, a silly pipe dream. But that
| doesn't mean that there isn't tremendous value -- in terms of
| safety, time, money and environment -- to partial autonomy.
| agumonkey wrote:
| > If anything, I think your example underlines just how
| valuable and realistic this is for cars.
|
| I interpret the stats the other way. Cars are not planes
| and driving involves constant encounters with potential
| collisions and which would make level 5 too difficult
| technically and socially rendering them too costly to be
| valuable.
| kds3 wrote:
| > Given that planes, which rely on a class of specifically
| trained professionals with minimum hour requirements, still
| have issues with this from time to time
|
| Most of this issues come from the fact that planes can't just
| stop in the middle of the road and wait for help, they have
| to land somewhere and do it fast enough not to be out of
| fuel.
|
| Cars don't have to drive themselves to nearest service center
| when they encounter any hardware malfunction, they can just
| stop and unload passengers. Self-driving company would use
| another car to drive you to your destination (not even
| necessary self-driving car).
| rdiddly wrote:
| _What if I told you I could offer you a 99% automated intercity
| solution? That 's right, a solution where 99% of the people
| involved have no obligation whatsoever to engage with piloting
| the vehicle... EVER! Where the vehicle just sort of seems to...
| drive itself? Is this some futuristic sci-fi fantasy? Well hold
| onto your hat, because the future is NOW!_
|
| Behold!
| https://c1.staticflickr.com/8/7177/6894934663_0619c8bea3.jpg
|
| _Bonus: the vehicle can be resized at will, depending on the
| number of passengers._
| Sharlin wrote:
| Yep. Intercity traffic is a problem we solved in the 1800s.
| dmix wrote:
| Riding trains is great, getting to the train station(s) in
| a busy city, worrying about the schedule and being in the
| right spot for the right train, etc, is not at all fun.
|
| But otherwise agreed a ton of this stuff could be solved
| with modern trains.
|
| But appeasing all of the special interest groups in between
| has made infrastructure development impossibly expensive or
| takes a decade. So we keep driving cars even long distances
| between cities.
| fataliss wrote:
| Cities like Tokyo have solved most of that for now
| decades. Def depends on whether the government is willing
| to make the investment (heavy) into the right amount and
| level of infrastructure. When you know that Los Angeles
| used to have over a 1000 miles of rails before the 60's
| and after pressure from car and tire makers ripped it all
| away, you understand where all our traffic problems come
| from :)
| zahrc wrote:
| I know it's practically impossible and sheer utopic but I
| dream of an never-ending Train going in a circle, kind of
| like a moving tunnel.
| bpye wrote:
| This is still a solved problem in many European cities.
| Train stations are often in the city centre, or on the
| edge of it. They almost always connect with either metro
| or bus networks, typically with frequent services.
| bpye wrote:
| It's interesting to consider what would have happened had the
| US invested the money it spent on the interstate system on
| intercity rail instead.
| rmtech wrote:
| Trains kind of suck though. I used them a lot in the UK
| because I didn't have a car. The UK has an OK train network.
|
| The problem with trains is that they are very, very
| inconvenient for most journeys. Sunday evening? forget it.
| After 11pm? Nope. Journey that runs perpendicular to the
| local line to London? Lol, enjoy a 5 hour journey to go 100
| miles. Want to take cargo like a new washing machine? Lol.
| Want to go somewhere that's not near a station by bus? Enjoy
| Journey times that are 4, 5 or 10 times slower than a car.
|
| Trains are good for busy commuter lines and nothing else.
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| 1) trains go basically everywhere frequently in Japan, it's
| very much a functioning rail network, they exist and kick
| ass.
|
| 2) a train doesn't need to replace 100% of personal car
| trips to be useful. I'm sure you're not transporting
| dishwashers or taking trips after 11 pm every day. Covering
| 90% of use cases is sufficient, and the other 10% can be
| handled by either renting a car or taking an Uber.
|
| 3) we can and should make busses faster than cars during
| times of congestion by giving them their own lanes.
| bamboozled wrote:
| "Trains kind of suck though. I used them a lot in the UK
| because I didn't have a car."
|
| You're blaming trains because you want to have a boozy
| night out? Get a hotel or start and leave earlier like
| everyone else.
|
| This is just a silly comment.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| This strikes me as weird:
|
| > "This is one of the hardest problems we have. This is like we
| are going to Mars," Hitzinger said in a comment. "Maybe it will
| never happen."
|
| First of all, it seems obvious that we are going to go to Mars,
| eventually. Maybe not any time soon, but never? Seriously?
|
| But the bigger thing is that there is about 1000 times more
| economic benefit to self driving cars than of going to Mars, at
| least in the near term. To think we'd just give up on it seems
| absurd.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Not reaching Level 5 is not synonymous with "giving up." We
| could get to 4+, with 90+% of driving being automated, but
| never actually reach 100% (the definition of Level 5)
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >First of all, it seems obvious that we are going to go to
| Mars, eventually. Maybe not any time soon, but never?
| Seriously?
|
| Given the questionable economics underlying humans having a
| presence on Mars and the extreme toll on the human body this
| will have, foremost by radiation I think it's actually a fair
| comparison in particular because full autonomy like mars
| colonisation is constantly being overhyped mostly by a very
| small group of very affluent individuals who seem to be more
| inspired by sci-fi than engineering.
| maxbond wrote:
| I don't mean to be rude, but I have strong feelings about this
| attitude.
|
| Let's take going to Mars. We can't reliably go to the moon. We
| can't even go everywhere on the Earth, where we have every
| possible advantage. Spend a year on the ISS and you'll develop
| all sorts of health issues. Spending time on Mars isn't likely
| to be less hazardous. We may send humans to Mars but it is by
| no means guaranteed. (And I would also ask, what reason do we
| have to go to Mars? Probes do a better job of exploring, and I
| doubt we could colonize it.)
|
| Until someone builds a real self-driving car it is just an
| idea. On today's roads, it is probably not possible to safely
| implement a fully self driving car. Driving is not only a
| technical exercise but a social activity that involves
| communicating your intentions to other humans, and interpreting
| the intentions of others. That is something that humans do far
| better than machines. (Edit: To clarify, humans are better at
| communicating with other humans. Machines do a great job of
| communicating with each other, but have mixed results
| communicating with humans.)
|
| If every car was self-driving and the roads were remade from
| first principles, then sure, that seems feasible. The
| degenerate case here would be a self-driving train, which seems
| perfectly reasonable. But the technical challenges are the easy
| part of that endeavor. Funding such a project, developing the
| political will to see it through, and organizing the logistics
| are far more difficult. Consider for instance; what will happen
| to the legacy vehicles? Will it be illegal to drive them? Will
| there be a massive government buyback? Who will fund that?
| Where will the cars go? How will we organize the logistics of
| moving hundreds of millions of vehicles? How long will that
| take? What other matters will we need to turn our attention
| away from to accomplish that task?
|
| A much more likely scenario is that companies continue to come
| up with partial, ad-hoc solutions, driving gets more automated,
| ride sharing becomes more popular and car ownership less so,
| but that humans remain in the loop for the foreseeable future.
| What happens outside the foreseeable future is something we
| can't and shouldn't pretend to know with any degree of
| certainty.
|
| There are a million ways in which we could never go to Mars or
| build a self-driving car. We could get a better idea for how
| transit should work, making self driving cars superfluous. We
| could discover life on Mars, and make the decision that it
| would be too dangerous for us to visit. The superpowers of the
| world could go to war with each other, and our infrastructure
| could be devastated to the point where space travel is
| impossible. Climate change could drive us to extinction.
| Something could happen that we cannot predict or imagine, that
| we have no precedent for, that completely changes our situation
| and outlook.
|
| Some of these are more likely than others, but the point is
| that it would be folly to take the future as read. And frankly,
| a couple of them are more likely than us ever going to Mars.
| vardump wrote:
| Yeah, some guy named Elon might not agree.
| JaRail wrote:
| Exactly. Using Mars as a second example is basically just
| doubling down on the "Elon isn't trustworthy" argument. That
| should be a giant red flag to readers.
| wojciii wrote:
| I would like to read the article, but an add covers 1/2 of the
| screen and can't be closed or moved.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I think he is the one and only sane C-level person in the
| industry, after hearing this.
|
| People claiming most of AI hype barely know what the "AI" people
| mention is.
|
| And people who go as far as drawing rosy pictures of human like
| general AI being your personal chauffeur are past ridiculous.
|
| The entire idea of human-like general AI for practical
| applications is like trying to make people using horses for
| transport in 21st century, by trying to make a horse than if
| better than a car.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Isn't it a little silly to call someone "only sane C-level
| person" after one comment?
|
| Also, while claiming these innovations are only a few years way
| may be insane, saying they will never happen feels probably
| just as non-sense. History hasn't been on the side of such
| absolute claims.
|
| It will take time, but Waymo already has working 100% self-
| driving cars out in the wild. Yes it's in a small area, with
| perfect weather, and with technicians ready to jump in, but
| it's still a good start and easily paves the way for it to
| extend over the next decade or so.
| unkulunkulu wrote:
| He talks about difference between level 4 and level 5 (4 -
| attainable, 5 - may never happen). This is a strange
| proposition in my book: level 4 is already good enough to bring
| a lot of value (taxis in a big city are level 4 afaiu), level 5
| - ideal but who cares?
| jasonjei wrote:
| I don't think it's impossible if certain roads/highways or
| lanes become marked as autonomous only. Just as pedestrians and
| bicycles are banned from using high-speed roads, manually-
| operated cars could be banned from using certain roads/lanes,
| removing a lot of variables that manually-operated cars bring.
| maxerickson wrote:
| That's level 4, by definition.
|
| (full autonomy on some/many roads)
| intended wrote:
| Defeating the promise of automated driving, and underscoring
| the obviousness of its impossibility, since this is roughly
| as useful as a Tram.
| ubertoop wrote:
| How is the ability to leave at your own time, have your own
| dedicated cabin, and ability to stop nearly anywhere, even
| in the same ballpark as a Tram...?
| petermcneeley wrote:
| If you have to restrict to marked highways then you could
| have had this "self driving" technology in the 80s.
| ubertoop wrote:
| I wish governments would consider the death and injury toll
| of manually driving, and fastlane (pun intended)
| infrastructure for self driving cars, such as specific roads
| and lanes.
| jacamera wrote:
| You don't understand. We just need more data. Once we have
| enough data the AI will be able to model all possible scenarios
| and make a better decision than a human driver ever could! /s
| celeritascelery wrote:
| Agreed. I have running bet with fellow at work who owns a Tesla
| about when we will have self driving cars. He keeps telling me
| the AI revolution is just around the corner. Still waiting.
| Booktrope wrote:
| Or perhaps, VW exec hopes full self-driving cars may never
| happen, because it would imply a fleet approach where
| transportation would be a service instead of cars being a prized
| possession. That, of course, would mean far less cars. So don't
| expect a traditional car manufacturer to lead the way.
|
| This is incidentally one reason for Tesla's huge market value.
| The company actually has a plan to transition from individual
| ownership to fleet, so when this happens it will be prepared to
| deal with a new manufacturing reality.
|
| Just try to imagine VW without all those ads to sell a positive
| self image because you drive a sexy cool car they make.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Or perhaps, VW exec hopes full self-driving cars may never
| happen, because it would imply a fleet approach where
| transportation would be a service instead of cars being a
| prized possession.
|
| Cuts both ways. Tesla execs have the same reason to overhype
| autonomous driving, because their market value depends on being
| perceived as a hypermodern tech company.
|
| So far reality has proven VW right. Elon himself had to walk
| back on grandiose claims about full autonomy and robotaxi
| fleets, or advertising cars with slogans like "the driver is
| only there for legal reasons, the car drives itself" a bunch of
| years ago.
|
| Full autonomy on a human level requires human levels of
| intelligence and 'common sense', it's a ridiculously hard
| problem that requires several leaps in AI and plenty of other
| fields.
| krawakoliz wrote:
| > O r perhaps, VW exec hopes full self-driving cars may never
| happen, because it would imply a fleet approach where
| transportation would be a service instead of cars being a
| prized possession.
|
| Why on earth would anyone use this over public transit? That
| would be a hugely expensive way to travel.
| ggreer wrote:
| Public transportation where I live is disgusting and often
| dangerous. Buses and trains don't pick me up and drop me off
| in front of my home. And they run on fixed schedules.
|
| Due to these advantages, I usually take Uber/Lyft instead of
| BART or Muni. Autonomous vehicles would reduce the cost of
| such services even more.
| ecpottinger wrote:
| I think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws has
| something to say here.
| pts_ wrote:
| Sure. Replace never by 3 billion years +/- 0.5 bill to account
| for human help (the time it took single celled life to evolve
| to human brain).
|
| What I mean is it's a fascinating but daunting task.
| aplummer wrote:
| To go down in a long list of things executives said wouldn't
| happen, that ended up happening.
| mikestew wrote:
| What list? The one where Thomas Watson said there'd never be a
| world-wide market for more than five computers? Other than
| that, what else does that list have to stack up against:
|
| Nuclear power, let alone _fusion_. What happened to "too cheap
| to meter"?
|
| Supersonic travel: _raynier_ already pointed out what a bust
| the Concorde was. Nothing else on the horizon now.
|
| Automation giving me a 20 hour work week. Nope, capital holders
| just skim that efficiency right into their pockets.
|
| I'd go on, but suffice it to say that about the only thing much
| different than my childhood in the 70s are computers in our
| pockets. Revolutionary, no doubt, but we are still burning oil
| for our energy needs, our cars don't fly, and I still show up
| and do my 40 hours. And healthcare has gotten _worse_ in the U.
| S., not better, if you can believe that.
|
| So, yeah, when the head of the autonomous driving division of
| VW says Level 5 ain't gonna happen, I don't immediately jump to
| doubting him/her and attacking their resume.
| poordaniel wrote:
| okay boomer
| jellicle wrote:
| _ALL_ of the autonomous driving experts say that level 5 is,
| at best, 50 years off. Unanimous. They don 't know how to do
| it, see no path to doing it. It's hard! Maybe we'll make real
| AI and we can enslave our human-level intelligent computers
| to drive cars for us, at least until they figure out how to
| rebel. Maybe. But we don't know how today, and not tomorrow
| or the next day either.
|
| And yet HN threads are all about "here are all these cool
| things that will happen tomorrow if Elon Jesus delivers".
|
| He ain't going to deliver, people.
| njarboe wrote:
| Check out Boom for a new company working on supersonic
| airplanes [1].
|
| [1]https://boomsupersonic.com/
|
| Health care is worse? More expensive, yes, but anybody
| getting cancer and wanting to live is much better off now
| than in the 1970's.
| jariel wrote:
| The list of 'visionaries' who said something was going to
| happen, but never did is 10x longer.
| rayiner wrote:
| Read an book on space/aerospace engineering from the 1980s and
| look at how many things happened. Supersonic was a huge bust.
| (The Concorde is closer in time to wooden biplanes than to
| today. Routine supersonic travel still nowhere on the horizon.)
| Energy technology has been a huge disappointment. When I grew
| up, we were going to have nuclear fusion, expanding the scope
| of what society can do. Today we're back to windmills and we're
| told to put on a sweater. AI was of course a huge bust once.
| pritovido wrote:
| Windmills' technology has improved dramatically, like also
| nuclear fusion's.
|
| We are not "back" to windmills that give 3 MegaWatts of power
| because they never existed in the first place, like
| affordable solar panels with 20-40% efficiency.
|
| Progress is not automatic. It is millions of times harder to
| create or improve a technology than imagine it. And also
| takes lots of money.
|
| We have nuclear tech because Manhattan project, because
| WWII(and because they were scientists coming from Europe that
| were scare of Hitler). It took a tremendous amount of money
| and sacrifice to get there.
| n8henry wrote:
| "Everything that can be invented has been invented."
| threeseed wrote:
| He never said it wouldn't happen, "Maybe it will never happen."
| temporaryvector wrote:
| To a certain extent I agree. I had already written at length in
| another post about this topic, but my opinion is that what we
| think of as a "car" right now will never be fully autonomous.
|
| I see the future diverging into two paths, fully autonomous
| commercial vehicles, like taxis, delivery vehicles, semi-trucks,
| etc. that work within urban areas or other designated, mapped and
| specially prepared areas. This will possibly involve a
| centralized system of control and communication, something like
| an ATC but for cars. These will be owned by corporations and only
| used by people. It makes no sense for a person to buy one of
| these fully autonomous vehicles, although I imagine some people
| would pay extra to have priority access so they always have one
| available.
|
| The other side of the coin will be privately owned cars that have
| autonomous capability, or autonomous cars with override. These
| will be able to go anywhere the driver wants, including unmapped
| villages, small towns, off road tracks, etc. I suspect these will
| be the domain of enthusiasts, people who really need them for
| work (ranchers and farmers, for example) and people who choose to
| live away from urban centers. They will be more expensive than
| cars now, but the need for these vehicles will never go away.
| Even if we get true AI capable of driving anywhere with only the
| sensors aboard the vehicle, there will still be the need for a
| human to override it, even if that involves just authorizing a
| risky maneuver or putting the AI into "unsafe driving" mode.
|
| I think the movie I, Robot (with Will Smith) got the future of
| autonomous cars surprisingly right, autonomous inside cities and
| on highways, and using the manual override comes with penalties
| (higher insurance, being at fault in an accident, etc.).
|
| On a personal note, and this may sound bad, but I would never buy
| a car which I cannot use to break the law. Even if I never plan
| to do it, being able to speed, jump the curb, intentionally crash
| into a wall (or another car) or even run over a person (for
| example, in self defense) may be at some point required or the
| least bad of many bad options. In this case any consequences
| should fall on me, but I don't think a thing I own should be
| designed to prevent me from breaking the law or doing something
| stupid if I really want or need to, although providing warnings
| or an optional safe-mode is fine. I suspect many people feel the
| same way, even if they don't put it in such an extreme way. This
| can be seen by the fact that a lot of cars, particularly those
| focused on performance or off-roading, come with switches to turn
| traction control off, and if they don't, it will get mentioned as
| a negative in any review done by publications focused on those
| audiences.
| gok wrote:
| Well it certainly falls far outside of VW's tech wheelhouse. It
| would be really hard to cheat on autonomous driving tests.
| 0xff00ffee wrote:
| AWS mechanical turk that shit. :) Yeah, probably not 30fps...
| waynecochran wrote:
| The technology is not the only problem. The lawyers that are
| defending every dead body, and there will be dead bodies, that
| will sink self-driving cars. Even if everyone is 95% safer with
| self-driving cars, those that are killed by a self-driving car
| (in combo with a public that is easily swayed with non-objective
| arguments) will be hard to dismiss.
| pritovido wrote:
| The world is not the USA. The legal system that exist in the US
| is different in other places of the world.
|
| With a self driving car you know exactly what happened in an
| accident as video and telemetry is recorded. This is a
| tremendous advantage over having to reconstruct it without this
| data.
|
| On the contrary I expect legislation forcing every car to
| include telemetry like the Chinese are forcing every car to be
| connected.
|
| This accident's data is evidence, not opinion, not a belief,
| not a prejudice.
|
| The usefulness of this has already been proven with airplanes.
| nevertoolate wrote:
| How happy will it be when camera data in the age of hyper
| realistic cgi films and "foolproof" telemetry will protect us
| from killing robot car makers at court. :)
| rb808 wrote:
| Agreed, if a self driving car hits me and breaks my neck, who
| do I sue to pay my bills and care? The driver? The car
| manufacturer? Or the self driving software company? Right now
| with a driver its clear.
| braythwayt wrote:
| We could say that now about automobiles. If I were to get into
| an accident and then have lawyers for the other vehicle, plus
| everybody stuck in traffic behind me also sending their lawyers
| after me, I'd never drive.
|
| Insurance solved that problem, both by eliminating the
| possibility of a catastrophic financial loss, and by creating a
| buffer between me and all those lawyers.
|
| I predict that insurance will solve the lawyer problem for
| self-driving cars as well. At some point, it will cost me
| $5,000 a year to drive my own car, and $500 to let it do all
| the driving.
|
| And on top of all that, if my car drives itself into an
| accident, the lawyers will talk to my insurance company, not to
| me. I see the insurance companies as the enabler for this tech.
| And they will want to enable it, it will put them in control of
| the market.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >We could say that now about automobiles.
|
| Indeed we can which is why some cities on the planet have
| gone carless and more and more opposition is mounting in the
| face of traffic deaths, pollution and so so on. Even in the
| US, maybe the most car dominated country in the world, there
| is a political revival of talks about high speed rail and
| alternative forms of transportation.
|
| The other important difference being that the step from
| having no cars at all to having cars was one of the largest
| leaps in mobility in human history. Self-driving cars are
| nice, but not that much of a leap, and they have much more
| ambiguous implications when it comes to the job-market. They
| will face significantly larger hurdles with significantly
| less payoff in sight.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I don't understand this. If there are 1/20th the amount of
| deaths, how is that going to sink self driving cars?
| Noos wrote:
| Because the deaths will be network level effects that a
| person would be helpless to mitigate through behavior.
| There's no sense of being a careful or responsible driver
| with a self-driving car; its all whether or not the algorithm
| or software is correct.
|
| It's a different type of potential error and a much more
| scary one. I can mitigate human drivers as a pedestrian by
| taking care walking, but I cannot mitigate an AI that thinks
| my shirt makes me look invisible due to its learning being
| deceived by a pattern.
| njarboe wrote:
| Because a jury will hand out a huge multi-million dollar
| award against a self-driving car company when its car
| crashes causing a death, while when a human causes a death
| it is usually just an "accident" or a much smaller
| settlement based on the person's insurance coverage.
| Noos wrote:
| Because the autonomous car is a systematic issue that
| could affect every single car on the road using that
| manufacturer's software, and the "driver" of the car has
| no way to stop or mitigate the risk, or cause risk. He
| puts his life in the company's hands each time he drives
| the vehicle.
|
| I'm not sure why people even embrace self-driving cars.
| By now we know that centralization, lack of maintenance,
| and fragmentation in software are serious risks, as well
| as how software can increase the attack vector on people
| as well as provide benefit. I'm not sure if the risks are
| worth the modest efficiency increase, and this isn't even
| getting into existential risks like external parties
| being able to control when you drive, or attacks on the
| networks or technology.
| mattlutze wrote:
| Reactionary legislation is a risk to the industry.
| creato wrote:
| Most drivers on the road are effectively being subsidized by
| bankruptcy protection, because most cannot possibly cover the
| liability they are exposing themselves to by driving. This
| "subsidy" is far less valuable to a self driving car
| manufacturer than individual drivers.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Well not if they have insurance.
|
| I mean, sure, you can come up with some scenario where the
| liability exceeded the insurance coverage, but I haven't
| heard of many of those. Anyway, it comes from somewhere. If
| bankruptcy protects drivers, it also exposes them to the
| risk that they will suffer damage that isn't compensated.
|
| Regardless, expecting a legal loophole to preserve the
| status quo indefinitely seems quite unrealistic and
| inherently unstable. If that actually holds up something
| that could massively benefit society (both economically and
| in saving lives), we simply legislate liability limits.
| creato wrote:
| > we simply legislate liability limits.
|
| Liability you can incur while driving is almost
| arbitrarily high. Individual drivers rely on the
| existence of bankruptcy protection to cover these rare
| scenarios, or simply don't think about or plan for this
| at all.
|
| > but I haven't heard of many of those.
|
| How many do you think it takes to put a self driving car
| manufacturer out of business?
|
| I'm not saying the status quo is a great situation, or
| that this is a good or bad argument for or against self
| driving cars. Only that it's a description of the current
| situation, and why legal issues might be a much bigger
| problem for self driving car manufacturers than
| individual drivers.
| mobilefriendly wrote:
| That works both ways, though. Once self-driving is proven, the
| higher accident rates from human-driving will become a greater
| liability. "Why were you driving yourself at night instead of
| engaging autopilot?!?"
| lukifer wrote:
| You are correct; the public won't accept the technology until
| it's at least as safe statistically as air travel (and even
| then, there'll be pushback in response to specific inevitable
| tragedies).
|
| However, I think the profit incentives of the trucking industry
| will manage to carve out some regulatory exceptions; something
| like "freight trucks can self-drive between 11a and 5a on these
| specific Nebraska highways, with warning signs on both roads
| and vehicles". This sort of lobbying will be the thin end of
| the wedge for both iterating the tech, and normalizing its
| acceptance.
| Causality1 wrote:
| After Elon Musk so helpfully pointed out that once cars are self-
| driving there is absolutely no reason for companies to sell them
| to us, I have to say I hope it never happens. Why would a company
| sell me a car for $30,000 when it can add it to a self-driving
| taxi fleet and generate $300,000 in revenue over the lifetime of
| the car?
| maksimum wrote:
| Many reasons. Time value of money, competition, maybe even
| regulation.
| hinkley wrote:
| In the dot com era there was a self driving car startup that
| started with a simplifying assumption: don't run the cars at
| grade.
|
| If you go up or down, the number and kind of obstacles reduces.
| The location of interactions between the vehicles is reduced, and
| the interactions with other classes of vehicle are zero, so you
| can negotiate.
|
| Solve a simpler problem, if you can.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I've read the paragraph several times and maybe it's my ESL,
| but I don't quite follow.
|
| Is the term "Grade" here used in the "Slope" sense, as in don't
| run the cars up and down the hill?
|
| And if that's the interpretation, I don't necessarily agree
| with the next point that obstacles are reduced on
| slopes/hills... so I probably am not following correctly :-/
|
| Thanks!
| alasarmas wrote:
| The "grade" that GP is referring to is this grade:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grade_separation
| sschueller wrote:
| I find it extremely unethical for Tesla to sell its customers a
| $6000 option to "Enable full self driving mode" some time in the
| future. Does anyone really think that this will happen before
| their car is totaled/broken/old/end of life (10-15 years)?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| "some time in the future"...
|
| ... while Musk promises "you'll be able to self-drive, coast to
| coast, this year" (haha, no).
| rainyMammoth wrote:
| People seem to drink enough marketing PR to buy it. That whole
| company is built as a cult and as a PR playbook. Any other
| company would not be able to pull that type of dirty tricks.
| shrubble wrote:
| If we put a wire in the road or maybe rfid tags every 40 feet, we
| could easily have self driving cars.
|
| However that would mean that everyone would have access to it.
|
| The idea of self driving cars now is, a winner take all situation
| where whichever funded effort that succeeds, generates outsized
| profits from licensing or going public at a high valuation.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| Sounds like you described a really complicated train system.
| rayiner wrote:
| What would that help?
| listenallyall wrote:
| There are thousands of miles of roads without lane markers,
| shoulders, signage. Some aren't even paved. Who's going to come
| along and bury RFID tags or wires?
| Someone wrote:
| I don't think it will be winner takes all. I expect competitors
| to be relatively close, and may not even be clear who is the
| winner. One brand may do better in cities, another on highways,
| etc.
|
| That will affect how outsized the profits will be.
|
| Also, because of politics, I expect there to be separate
| geographical winners, at least in China and not-China.
| bstar77 wrote:
| I've been beating this drum for years. Well said.
| thanhhaimai wrote:
| Traffic inductive loop counter costs a couple thousands to
| install. I don't have a source for the detailed cost breakdown,
| but I can imagine the majority of the cost is labor and digging
| up/filling the road since the sensor itself should be less than
| a thousand.
|
| Now imagine we're doing that 1000 times per mile, like what
| you're suggesting. Even if the device is free (both initial
| cost and maintenance) it's just too cost inhibited.
|
| I think we shouldn't assume that the reason is some malicious
| intention behind "However that would mean that everyone would
| have access to it." It could simply be that the idea is not
| economical.
| hwillis wrote:
| > I don't have a source for the detailed cost breakdown, but
| I can imagine the majority of the cost is labor and digging
| up/filling the road since the sensor itself should be less
| than a thousand.
|
| Those are installed with a massive handtruck saw while
| cutting off a lane of traffic all day. It takes a half dozen
| people working on-and-off, doing different jobs. It takes
| jackhammers, high pressure water from a tanker truck, and
| people to place and wire the sensor to power. It's way more
| complicated than anything you'd do at scale, because it's
| infrequent and the goal is to do it thoroughly with non-
| specialists.
|
| If you were installing millions of tags you'd have a dry
| drill that could go off the back of a truck and place+fill a
| tag in ten minutes. If you had a line you'd have a it hanging
| off the back of a truck and place it continuously, like a
| street cleaner or edge clearer. For tags there's no reason
| they'd need more than one person to place and no reason to
| even put them in the road when they could just go on the
| edges. Triangulate with directional antennas or something.
|
| That said, I think it's pretty obvious that locating the
| roads is by far the easiest problem for self driving. If you
| wanted to make a serious attempt you'd want every car to
| broadcast a short range location, and to share data over a
| mesh network. "Knowing where the road is" to precision RFID
| would give you has been solved for over a decade with GPS and
| digital maps.
|
| Much more pressing issues are non-obvious sensing like
| hearing a car around a blind corner or knowing when to be
| cautious about moving. Knowing when something is coming onto
| the road or when a vehicle is having a problem. Inter-vehicle
| communication is just so obviously important to that... it's
| really frustrating how vaguely it gets talked about. I don't
| give a shit about teslas coordinating braking so they can
| form a tailgate train for efficiency, I want cars of all
| kinds to be warning each other about what they intend to do.
| I worry that legislation or at least a regulatory body will
| be the only way to even get people _talking_ about it
| seriously.
|
| Other than that, cameras watching for intrusion into a road
| would be easier than solving it from vehicles. It seems
| patently ridiculous putting cameras to watch every 50'
| section of road. 1080p+ cameras, simple detection, and mesh
| wifi can be built in a $30 package... but there are >2.5
| million miles of paved roads in the US. 30$ per 50' would
| cost, bare minimum (and ignoring electricity
| requirements+labor+the pole to put the cameras on) 8 billion
| dollars.
| cma wrote:
| A wire in the road can't handle stuff like a pedestrian.
| Pedestrians normally aren't in highways but sometimes are after
| break-downs, accidents, construction, etc. Lane-following is
| close to solved on the highway, it is all that other stuff and
| more that is an issue. A wire could still help, but you'd still
| need a complex system or significantly more infrastructure than
| just a wire (maybe caged barriers over the lane in a way that
| doesn't cause issues if there is a fire, and more).
| kjaftaedi wrote:
| All you need are machine readable signs or beacons that
| dictate where full-auto is allowed.
| cma wrote:
| Assuming you mean dedicated self-driving lane, what about
| when a non-self driving car crashes into the self-driving
| lane? Assuming you mean to have a dedicated lane with
| barrier (which is already much more than a wire). And what
| about when a large mining truck tire rim falls off an
| 18-wheeler and bounces over barrier in a way that any human
| driver would be able to hit the brakes and be ok?
| listenallyall wrote:
| As long as you have places where full-auto isn't allowed,
| you haven't reached Level 5. Exactly what the subject of
| the story claims.
| shrubble wrote:
| Pedestrians are lumpy compared to cars however. Even the self
| driving car that hit a pedestrian, did identify the person.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Staying inside a lane isn't the hard problem.
| arijun wrote:
| I agree completely. Putting a guide wire in the road would be
| spending a lot of money to (incompletely) solve a problem
| that's already been solved.
| bstar77 wrote:
| The point is that (primarily) the road needs to be smart, not
| the car. There should ideally be a synergy between the car
| and road, but the road has to be the primary vector to guide
| the car.
| hwillis wrote:
| Why? There's very little information that would be better
| coming from the road. To drive you want to know where you
| are, what the road surface conditions are like, where the
| road goes, and what else is on the road.
|
| Road conditions can easily come from anywhere. Weather
| radar is at least good enough to know when roads _might_ be
| wet or cold. Making roads smart enough to sense oil spills
| or even wetness would be incredibly hard.
|
| Knowing where the road goes is certainly far better done by
| cellular. Connection to each segment of road would be
| fraught with hard to repair problems. Traffic conditions
| likewise are far better done from somewhere else, and cars
| would be much more able to see things on the road etc.
|
| The only argument I can see as at all reasonable is that
| locating cars is difficult, and doing it with vision is
| incredibly challenging. You may not be aware how much GPS
| has improved. With a good view of the sky you can get
| (somewhat slow) accuracy to about a foot. Realistically
| that's just as good as you could possibly expect from a
| roadside device like RFID, bluetooth, or induction. The
| last inches may be important, but billions of dollars spent
| burying things in the road will not help.
| superkuh wrote:
| This backfires badly in places with cold winter climates
| where the offical road markings and edges become obscured
| due to snow and ice for days and sometimes seasons (road
| edge creep) at a time.
|
| Human drivers don't follow the official lane markings
| because they can't be seen. They follow the paths in the
| snow everyone else has packed down. These paths often
| diverge from the road markings or any sort of absolute
| positioning system.
| toast0 wrote:
| To elaborate on this, camera based lane keeping systems are
| readily available and generally work well if the lane
| markings are in good enough condition and aren't obscured by
| snow.
|
| A signal embedded in the pavement wouldn't be subject to
| wear, but it would make adjusting lanes much more difficult
| (if you've driven in the bay area, you've probably noticed
| lane lines moved back and forth for construction pretty
| regularly) and it would actually be worse in the snow/ice ---
| a consensus lane appears which may not follow the marked
| alignment, and following the marked alignment would involve
| driving over accumulated snow and ice.
| aantix wrote:
| Does Tesla or Waymo actively lobby against such efforts?
| superkuh wrote:
| This doesn't work in climates where the road is obscured for
| days at a time due to snow and ice.
|
| The tags, whatever form they may take, will designate the
| official lanes. But people in snowy climates don't drive in the
| official lines because they can't be seen. They drive an
| emergent set of paths where everyone else drives. It's often,
| if not most of the time, that these paths human drives take
| don't follow the actual road markings.
| temporaryvector wrote:
| If I were to put wires in roads, it would be for wireless
| charging, so that autonomous taxis and delivery vehicles could
| keep driving forever (or at least until they require
| maintenance) without needing to stop to charge.
|
| I can see this happening gradually, beginning with docking
| stations, followed by parking spots with wireless charges and
| then downtown roads and highways. With each step reducing the
| required amount of space destined to parking.
| judge2020 wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Gw6XtzEOlyI
| crusso wrote:
| _Despite that, he 's confident in VW's ability to make a Level 4
| autonomous vehicle, saying that the upcoming I.D. Buzz electric
| van will be the first VW to receive the technology._
|
| He's poo-pooing level 5 autonomous driving and says that they
| just about have a level 4 autonomous vehicle?
|
| This article makes no sense.
|
| Honestly, the CEO of my company has very little idea of the
| details of the technology that we produce. If you picked some
| cutting-edge technology that isn't key to our market-share yet,
| he'd have even less of a clue.
| vidarh wrote:
| Consider the Osborne effect. And consider that this person has
| a strong vested interest in making sure potential VW customers
| does not decide to delay their car purchase decision in the
| hope of getting a more automated solution next year or the year
| after.
|
| Maybe he's right, maybe he's not. But either way it'd be dumb
| of him to claim level 5 autonomous cars were right around the
| corner.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Consider the Osborne effect.
|
| Agree completely. It would be suicidal (in a business sense)
| to say that Level 5 was right around the corner right when
| you're on the verge of rolling out Level 4.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Just sounds like normal meaningless sales talk. Everything we
| don't have is crap you do need. What we do have will solve all
| your problems.
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| How does it make no sense? He's saying we might never get past
| level 4. And they're going to offer level 4. That statement is
| logically coherent.
| drcross wrote:
| It could quite easily be a ploy to prevent lost sales.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Consumers don't give two craps about this terminology. And
| the barrier between level 4 and level 5 is potentially
| decades out, if not forever.
|
| Nobody's who's contemplating a level 4 is holding out their
| purchase for a level 5.
| desc wrote:
| I think the point here is that going from level 4 to level 5 is
| a _much, much harder problem_ than going from, say, level 1 to
| level 4.
| crusso wrote:
| But it's really not. Level 4 will require the vehicle to take
| you from door to door without driver intervention in normal
| driving conditions. Level 4 is mostly what people think of
| when they think of autonomous driving because you can take a
| nap, work on your laptop, whatever. You get in your car, tell
| it where you want to go, and it does everything.
|
| Level 5 basically removes the steering wheel so you never
| drive. But once you're at level 4, almost all of the hard
| problems have been solved.
|
| https://www.sae.org/news/2019/01/sae-
| updates-j3016-automated...
| dx034 wrote:
| He's the CEO of the self driving car division. I'm pretty sure
| he's well aware of their tech.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Here's a summary of his entire background in order: Formula 1
| engineer for many years; Technical director for a Le Mans
| Prototype vehicle; Head of VWs self driving division for the
| past 1 year.
|
| He has no software background... he specializes in making gas
| cars go fast. He has no idea how to make a self driving car..
| and honestly, why would we think he would? He hasn't exactly
| been pioneering vision systems, or anything else related to
| the tech.
| aguyfromnb wrote:
| > _He has no software background..._
|
| Yeah, because making Formula 1 cars "go fast" involves no
| software whatsoever, right?
|
| I _love_ how you dismiss "Formula 1 engineer for many
| years". Maybe if he helped build a payment processor we
| could take him seriously.
|
| > _He has no idea how to make a self driving car.. and
| honestly, why would we think he would?_
|
| Because he's running the autonomous car division of the
| biggest automaker in the world? I have no idea if he's
| right or not, but dismissing him as not knowing what he's
| talking about is hubris. He's trying to build this stuff.
| [deleted]
| threeseed wrote:
| So much ignorance and inaccuracies in one comment.
|
| (a) He was the Head of F1 Development and Advanced
| Technologies which involves significant software exposure.
| F1 has a ridiculous amount of software both on car and in
| the factory to process all of the sensor data and design
| future cars. I've first hand seen their streaming big data
| stacks and they are on par with anything you will see at a
| top tier startup.
|
| (b) He was the Head of Product Design for Apple's Car and
| we know they were going to have autonomous capabilities as
| well as hundreds of ML models powering AR, Maps, facial
| recognition etc. If you think you can get away without
| deeply understanding software whilst leading a major Apple
| project then you really don't understand how that company
| works.
|
| (c) He's the CEO of VW Autonomy. He doesn't even need to be
| an expert in software. He just needs to be able to listen
| to his engineers.
|
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-hitzinger-2163a035
| listenallyall wrote:
| Jeff Bezos never worked at Barnes & Noble or Borders. What
| does he know about selling books?
| rgbrenner wrote:
| If Bezos started a book company, then failed and admitted
| he's not sure if it's possible to sell books... then I
| would question whether or not he has the background to
| sell books... especially if I look around, and other
| experts in the field don't agree.
| mbostleman wrote:
| I think that the amount of demand and market momentum that
| appears in the future is a better predictor if what will get done
| than an executive's opinion based on current costs.
| dyeje wrote:
| It's kinda funny that we're investing so much into a potentially
| impossible technology just to avoid building public transport.
| colordrops wrote:
| If it works it could be so much better in many ways. It's like
| a packet switching network instead of circuit switching. And
| there's no reason larger vehicles couldn't be part of this
| "packet-switched" vehicle network and act as a virtual public
| transport system.
| owens99 wrote:
| It's not a coincidence this guy works at a big corporation like
| Volkswagen and holds the opinion he does.
|
| If you want to know about the future, don't ask the incumbents.
| They will only tell you about the status quo.
| FpUser wrote:
| _" Not only will the tech get as good as humans"_
|
| Let's suppose it will happen. Do you have a proof that such
| "good" tech does not develop a will to one day run over every
| human it can?
| mymythisisthis wrote:
| Why not drone cars, driven remotely?
| flavor8 wrote:
| Latency?
| bordercases wrote:
| Because you need to be where the car ends up stopping!
| 0xff00ffee wrote:
| I was at an ML conference in 2017 and the keynote speaker asked
| the audience how many years they thought it would be until ADAS
| lvl 5 was on the market. The keynote had proudly proclaimed 5
| years, and then audibly scoffed when about 90% of the hands went
| up for "20 or more years". There's such a disconnect between real
| engineers and cheerleaders.
| celeritascelery wrote:
| I have a friend who a mechanical engineering professor doing
| robotic research. He says that one of the reasons that robotics
| has not advanced more is because it has primarily been the
| domain of computer scientists who don't operate in the real
| world. Every robot works great in a simulation. Same could be
| said for cars.
| linuxhansl wrote:
| Hah. I've been saying that for a while, much to the amusement of
| some of my friends and coworkers. Some of them claim that their
| kids will never need to learn how to drive. Maybe I'll have the
| last laugh, although I wish I'd be wrong about this.
|
| I _hope_ that by the time I 'm too old to drive - a few decades
| from now - self-driving are available, but I'm not betting on it.
| peterwwillis wrote:
| Put the cars on rails, focus on the safety and switching systems.
| We don't need full AI, we just need to not have an individual
| human be solely responsible for the operation of the vehicle at
| all times.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| Building intelligence into a path for vehicles to follow is
| probably an easier and less expensive option.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| Since when has VW been at the forefront of self driving cars? Is
| there a reason their insight would be especially accurate?
|
| This just reflects VWs ideas to accomplish the goal... ie: they
| have none.
|
| Let me know when Google says it's not possible.
| leoh wrote:
| The fact that they're a reasonably competent outsider arguably
| bolsters their position.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Their future sales are dependent upon there NOT not being
| self driving cars which arguably reduces their position
| dramatically.
| [deleted]
| threeseed wrote:
| Apple is in the top tier of self driving cars though.
|
| And since he recently worked there I am sure he knows quite a
| bit about where the industry is at.
| what_ever wrote:
| > Apple is in the top tier of self driving cars though.
|
| Citations needed. I consider Waymo, Cruise and couple of
| other companies in the top tier.
|
| Disc: Googler
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Apple is in the top tier of self driving cars though.
|
| I mean all we have to support that they're working on self
| driving cars at all is DMV records, articles, and pictures of
| their car efforts. We have no idea how far along they are.
| junipertea wrote:
| Apple was dead last in the last self driving report in
| California.
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-13/apple-
| s-a...
| Edmond wrote:
| Maybe this exec should be fired for incompetence and lack of
| vision.
|
| While self-driving is obviously a challenging problem, I am still
| bemused by people who think "it will never happen".
|
| An auto exec who believes that, is unfit for the job and
| definitely unfit for the future of that job.
| baybal2 wrote:
| I think people who overhyper very lacklustre neural algorithm
| based CV systems, thinking they can do what they cannot, are
| unfit for the job.
| jariel wrote:
| To the contrary he should be admired for his candour.
|
| It's very easy for execs to talk up utopian smack, it's harder
| the other way around.
|
| I for one agree: L5 may not be viable for many decades at
| least, not with the tech we have. It may never happen because
| conditions will change to the point wherein it won't make
| sense.
|
| What is viable, that nobody really talks about are 'controlled
| areas' - for example, highways built for long-haul trucks with
| 0 human drivers. This is a great place for AI because the
| conditions are set for all the crazy unknowns (esp. humans) to
| be controlled.
|
| Special roadways within cities, where there are no pedestrians,
| AI drivers only, that can communicate with 'the grid' etc -
| could not only mean full L5 'driverless' but no stop-signs
| either - traffic could be designed to flow much, much more
| efficiently using 'today's tech'. Cars won't have steering
| wheels, they can be called 'on demand' and 'parking' will be
| very different, more like 'temp storage' and won't involve
| humans. All viable.
| tylerrobinson wrote:
| > Special roadways
|
| This is a point that always seems to be missing. All of our
| roads are/were constructed at a specific size with specific
| engineering requirements and specific materials. If we have a
| major change in the technology of the cars, it seems to be
| perfectly reasonable that we could have a new type of road to
| accommodate that. For example, before interstate highways it
| probably would have sounded strange to imagine high-speed
| roads with limited entry and exit. And before that, may have
| sounded strange to have automated stoplights and traffic
| signals.
| jariel wrote:
| Not just materials: human drivers. Signage, sizes, safety
| tolerances. etc.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'd probably never say "never" to this sort of question. I can
| believe many decades out though.
| daenz wrote:
| A leader that fires people for challenging relevant mainstream
| opinions is not any kind of leader I want to work for or
| follow.
| Edmond wrote:
| >A leader that fires people for challenging relevant
| mainstream opinions is not any kind of leader I want to work
| for or follow.
|
| There we go...most of the skepticism about self-driving cars
| appears to be driven by ideology and less by the actual
| evidence. "Mainstream opinions"...it is not an opinion, there
| are literally thousands of these cars being tested/piloted
| and improved upon constantly.
|
| Might it take a little longer to get to nirvana? probably,
| but it borders on delusion at this point for anyone to say it
| will never happen.
| daenz wrote:
| >There we go...most of the skepticism about self-driving
| cars appears to be driven by ideology and less by the
| actual evidence. "Mainstream opinions"...it is not an
| opinion, there are literally thousands of these cars being
| tested/piloted and improved upon constantly.
|
| You can't provide evidence of something that hasn't
| happened, and level 5 autonomous vehicles haven't happened.
| All you can provide is evidence of things we have already
| achieved, and use that to support a strong _opinion_ that
| we will be able to achieve more things.
|
| Anyways, back to my original point, firing someone for
| having an informed counter-mainstream opinion is the sign
| of a weak and petty leader.
| antirez wrote:
| It was quite clear to many of us that autonomous driving at a
| certain level is a very hard goal to reach, but it may happen in
| the long run. However what is incredible is that actually a form
| of AD, that is public transportation, is available for centuries
| yet in many places in the world this option is ignored. Guess
| why? The key is in the "public" part.
| jakeogh wrote:
| A car that has "self" is equiv to a living being, and it wouldn't
| be ethical to lock it inside a box. It's not going to happen any
| time soon and it will never happen with conventional binary
| computing; a non-wetware system capiable of emulating a mouse
| would melt itself through the road.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22061718
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21250424
| mprev wrote:
| Your framing of the issues seems so far removed from the rest
| of the discussion that I can only assume I'm misunderstanding
| your point. Could you elaborate?
| ogre_codes wrote:
| This is arguably one of the biggest competitive advantages Tesla
| has. For $47,000 I can get an EV from Tesla with a better self-
| driving system[1] than a $100k Audi, BMW, Mercedes, or Lexus. I
| haven't pulled the trigger on a Tesla yet, but I can't imagine
| paying $40,000+ on a new car that isn't a Tesla right now. For
| many people Tesla has made EV and self-driving table-stakes and
| nobody else is delivering on that.
|
| [1] Yes, I know about the accidents
| ptx wrote:
| So, considering the accidents, maybe Tesla is "better" at self-
| driving in the same way Intel was better at speculative
| execution before they had to patch it.
| mamon wrote:
| The only company that knows what they are doing is Waymo
| (which actually launched self-driving taxi service in
| Phoenix), Tesla and others are kind of "fake it until you
| make it" crowd.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Waymo has 600 cars in a very limited/ well known area and
| most of their cars still rely on safety drivers. If Waymo
| is around in 20 years their service might get to the small-
| ish city I live in.
|
| The big thing I would want self-driving capabilities for is
| long cross country driving. A thing Waymo doesn't offer
| even to people in it's service area.
|
| Tesla has hundreds of thousands of cars which range over
| the entire country and has driven millions of miles doing
| exactly the sort of self-driving I most care about.
|
| The two barely overlap in terms of offerings so I'm not
| sure what the point of comparing them even is.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>I can't imagine paying $40,000+ on a new car that isn't a
| Tesla right now
|
| It's personal & subjective, and nobody will persuade anybody in
| a thread, but FWIW I absolutely positively can.
|
| - I'm unlikely to utilize self-driving any time soon
|
| - The stories of their firmware terrify me. And I don't _want_
| a DAW and computer games running on my ECU :O
|
| - More pragmatically though, the Tesla UI paradigm is
| completely foreign to my way of driving/thinking.
|
| I'm looking for a "HOTAS" type UI, where I can do anything I
| want without taking my eyes and focus off the road. A UI that's
| one giant screen, that may change position of buttons from
| minor firmware to another, is basically as scary and alienating
| concept as I can imagine.
|
| I get that I am in a minority nowadays - a lot of
| manufacturer's are replacing switches, buttons and knobs with a
| touchscreen and deep menus, but not thankfully all just yet :|
| drcross wrote:
| Tesla's increasing have voice commands for most functions.
| What you said was true before but isn't now. Honestly this
| feature, being able to push updates to the entire fleet when
| ready is a significant killer feature.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Again, at the risk of sounding like a grouchy old man
| (which I suppose I am :P), when I'm chatting with my wife
| and kids, I have limited intetion of interrupting that
| conversation to turn on the lights or seat warmer or wipers
| or change a song :-/. And even when alone - the amount of
| time and subconscious effort to hit a button, vs converse
| with the computer...
|
| Honestly - these shouldn't be "either or". Sure, have a
| screen and voice for those who prefer - but leave a button
| or six for us ol' timers :-)
| pts_ wrote:
| They should look into how the US Navy switched back to
| physical switches from touch screens on ships for unambiguous
| commands.
| brianwawok wrote:
| Gas and steering are physical controls though.
|
| Radio and other such features do not need dedicated
| buttons. Crazy how many buttons my normal car has.
| demosito666 wrote:
| Everything you need at least once week while driving in a
| car should be doable without taking your eyes from the
| road for more than a second. Radio, AC, window heating
| and such fall under this category. And you have exactly
| the same amount of buttons on a screen anyway, they're
| just not physical.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Again, that's a personal preference.
|
| Next, Previous, Pause, Play, Mute - I personally want
| them to be physical controls. On steering wheel ideally,
| on the dashboard otherwise. I use them multiple times a
| drive, and I don't want to take my eyes off the road to
| do them.
|
| Same with seat heat, lights, wipers - anything I may want
| to do while driving, I want a button.
|
| Setting up the exact shade of my dashboard light - that
| can be buried in a menu :D
|
| Basically... when you say "Crazy how many buttons my
| normal car has" :
|
| - You say that as a bad thing
|
| - I see that as a _brilliant_ thing... IFF done well:
|
| Of course, physical buttons/levers/knobs can still be
| done well, or poorly.
|
| Having many identical buttons in a confusing layout is
| just as bad as touchscreen - I have to look at them to
| use them.
|
| Having buttons in a good, intuitive layout; especially
| buttons which are distinct from each other, as opposed to
| row of 6 buttons all the same, is brilliant. Even better
| if it's a distinct combination of buttons, knobs,
| switches, levers, etc - anything to help haptic feedback
| and intuitive access. Sometimes I think people who are
| against buttons may simply never had a car with _good_
| physical UI: /
|
| (simple thing - my old 2004 WRX has a next / previous
| knob-like-thing, rather than two identical buttons next
| to each other [1]. It felt ridiculous when I first saw it
| - but then I realized its quality of purpose vs sexiness
| - I never ever ever have to think or be distracted even a
| millisecond to know exactly how to skip a song :).
| Compare to cars which have several identical square
| buttons for next, previous, pause, play; or temp up, temp
| down, fan up, fan down, A/C -- that's just horrible UI by
| clueless people for customers who don't know / haven't
| experienced better :-/ ]
|
| 1: Bottom right of the stereo: https://images.crutchfield
| online.com/ImageBank/v200311131204...
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > It's personal & subjective, and nobody will persuade
| anybody in a thread, but FWIW I absolutely positively can.
|
| I wasn't trying to paint a broad picture because as you
| suggest, it's subjective. But there is some evidence that I'm
| not alone.
|
| https://www.wheelsjoint.com/tesla-model-3-is-wreaking-
| havoc-...
|
| > I'm looking for a "HOTAS" type UI, where I can do anything
| I want without taking my eyes and focus off the road.
|
| I agree, the cockpit design on the Tesla is not my choice and
| may actually be a deal breaker. But since there is a 30 day
| no commitment period I'm willing to give it a shot and see
| how it works in actual use.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>But there is some evidence that I'm not alone.
|
| Oh, absolutely - as I said, I'm in a minority.
|
| But I feel a lot of it is: Sexiness of how it looks vs
| Practicality of usage
|
| The problem is, sexiness is immediately obvious &
| attractive. Practicality takes a long time and active
| observation to notice and appreciate. I fear that
| touchscreens with bad UI _will_ win; though I hope
| eventually there may be some backlash from consumers - or
| at least thought and compromise from manufacturers. :- /
| 01100011 wrote:
| Is Tesla following accepted industry best practices for
| designing their algorithms? If not, Tesla is exposing itself to
| a tremendous amount of liability when their autonomous system
| fails(and, as software engineers, we know it will fail). I
| applaud them for pushing the technological envelope and driving
| expectations. I'm not criticizing them for the damage those
| failures will cause, because it may be offset by reductions in
| human caused damage. I'm saying there is established legal
| precedent that will cost them dearly if they're not properly
| developing and testing their code(ISO26262, MISRA, etc). See
| the Toyota accelerator debacle for background.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| I wouldn't want a loved one driving a Tesla with autopilot
| enabled. Some of the people who have died so far have been tech
| enthusiasts who knew the limitations of autopilot, yet they
| still grew complacent and it cost them their lives.
|
| If my non techy family see the Tesla performing what they deem
| to be self driving then they will quickly trust it 100%.
| temporaryvector wrote:
| >I can't imagine paying $40,000+ on a new car that isn't a
| Tesla right now
|
| Aside from the fact that the Tesla is not available where I
| live, if I was only going to own one car, it would not be a
| Tesla. A Tesla (or any other EV, really) does about 80% of what
| I need a car for, so it would be perfect to buy as a second car
| for me, to be used most of the time and have the other car be a
| backup for when I really need to.
|
| If I had to settle for only one car, it would probably have to
| be something like a Chevy Volt, which I am quite sad got
| discontinued. Even then, that would get me about 95% of the way
| there.
| listenallyall wrote:
| Level 5 means no human intervention, under any circumstance. Ice,
| snow, night, fog, unmarked roads, tunnels, mega-urban, isolated
| rural, parking lots/structures, etc, etc. I think he's correct.
| It's hard to think of any technology that works without human
| intervention whatsoever, no matter the conditions.
|
| We've had autopilot for decades, we're certainly not flying
| planes without pilots. Or even getting them from runway to gate
| without humans. Nor is anyone claiming that pilot-less planes are
| coming soon.
| MiroF wrote:
| Most humans can't drive safely in all conditions without
| outside human intervention.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Planes are different in that there is a large ratio of
| passengers to "drivers". There isn't the same economic
| incentive to eliminate pilots when the cost of flying a plane
| is still going to be quite a few dollars a minute.
|
| The thing is, there are some conditions where people probably
| just shouldn't be driving. Like we shouldn't be driving in a
| heavy snow storm, at least not for most trips where you can
| just wait it out. Planes will wait out storms, even with human
| pilots. I don't see a problem with "level 4.9" cars that
| occasionally say "I'm going to wait out the storm" or that will
| avoid certain routes (such as "crazy mixing bowl" intersections
| where you can instead just take a side street)
| tomp wrote:
| How much do pilots actually pilot vs how much do they just
| assume responsibility? I.e. I as a passenger feel much safer
| knowing that there's someone _actually_ responsible to prevent
| me from dying (because if the plane crashes, the pilot dies
| with me), not just some C_O suits pushing PR through legal
| trying to gaslight the public and avoid any culpability (
| _cough_ Boeing _cough_ ).
| ottowinter wrote:
| That's exactly the point, even if pilots use autopilot most
| of the time (level 4 autonomy).
|
| Guess when they take control? When something bad is happening
| (and there are literally a million things that can go wrong
| and the autopilot could not fix, ever).
|
| Guess why MCAS did not result in more crashes (the system has
| been known to malfunction a couple of times before the
| crashes)? Righty because there were pilots that could
| manually control the plane well enough to land safely.
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