How Tesla's Autopilot and Google's Car Are Entirely Different Animals (robohub.org) 142
Hallie Siegel writes: Developers and futurologists have long talked of two paths to autonomous cars: the incremental path (where autonomous features such as adaptive cruise control, autonomous parking etc are slowly added to make the car increasingly autonomous) and the revolutionary path that abandons the human driver altogether — the Google car approach. Robocar expert Brad Templeton compares Tesla's latest autopilot technology to the approach Google is taking, explaining why some people think autonomous cars are still decades away, while others believe they are just around the corner.
are they cows? (Score:3)
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One is, the other, according the TFS, is an entirely different animal.
Very different (Score:5, Insightful)
One looks like it was designed for adults, the other for toddlers. The google car couldn't look any more childish if had pedals inside and coloured wheels.
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It's a good thing it's not a fashion contest.
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Let me know when Google makes their car available for sale.
Re:Very different (Score:5, Funny)
One looks like it was designed for adults, the other for toddlers. The google car couldn't look any more childish if had pedals inside and coloured wheels.
The Google car is designed for American adults. The look like Weebles and act like toddlers.
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Yep because the shape is the major technical challenge to autonomous vehicles.....
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If you want anyone to buy the thing then you'd damn well better get the styling right!
Re:Very different (Score:5, Insightful)
who cares what googles car looks like now. when google gets the sensors ans software working then someone that has a sense of style will come along and design one that looks good.
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"DEY TERK URR JERBS!"
You won't be so dismissive when it happens to you pal.
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If you want anyone to buy the thing then you'd damn well better get the styling right!
If you want anyone to buy the thing you need to consider putting it up for sale in the first place. Is the idea of a concept car lost on you? I mean every car company produces cars like this. No one actually ever puts them on the market.
So chillout, I'm sure when the technology is ready you'll get something that looks normal.
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That would be because the Google car isn't designed to be a commercial product- it's designed to introduce fully autonomous cars to the public consciousness in as non-threatening a manner as possible. Sure, most people probably wouldn't want to actually buy a car that looked like that, but they are for more likely to be sold on the technology in the form of a cute, easily anthropomorphic demo vehicle, and then look to see if there's a a "stylish" model available.
Furthermore, they seem to be heavily targeti
You can take your autonomous vehicles and...... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just this morning, after it's not been driven for about six years for various reasons, I paid a very large garage bill for fixing up my 1991 Honda Civic.
This car has no engine ECU, no ABS, no airbags, no lane assist, no automatic braking, no shit at all. What it DOES have is four wheels, brakes, lights and something to steer it with. It also has twin carburettors and a manual choke.
First job was to fill it with petrol, and as the engine warmed up I started to remember just how good this old car is to drive.
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Weird, my US-spec 1987 Civic Wagovan had FI... I take it Honda continued selling carbureted engines elsewhere for a while or something?
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Well, when you are retired you can drive around when no one else is on the road and actually have fun. For most of us, the bulk of our driving is our commute in traffic, and it sucks.
Just around the corner, but out of reach (Score:1)
I hope they're just around the corner, but they'll be out of reach of most people. Like Tesla now.
Maybe by the time I retire they'll be reasonable so I can tour the country and never even drive.
zombie drivers (Score:3)
combine this story about wireless EV charging [slashdot.org] autonomous cars and a crazy software developer and i wonder how long it will be before someone programs their autonomous car to drive them around in an infinite loop after they die...or at least until the car breaks down.
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Pre-compute vs. responsive system (Score:4, Insightful)
Tesla (and all other car manufacturers) approach is to have car react to environment with little advanced knowledge. This is gargantuan task and is still computationally unfeasible. Therefor, we will end up with 'good enough' Tesla-like car, that can drive anywhere but still require driver's supervision.
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Human driving is a mix of both methods. When you're on a street you're familiar with, habit takes over, and you barely notice what you're doing. On an unfamiliar street, you're much more active as a driver. At some level, humans require driving situations to be predefined, in that they need to match a familiar template. Road designs are all standardized.
In other words, the more information you have about the driving conditions, the simpler the problem. If you have a map, then you need to watch for anyt
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Google approach of map everything in excruciating detail has one big flaw
That would be a big flaw... if it were Google's approach. It's not. Google's system analyzes what it sees in real-time. At present Google is sticking to areas that it has well-mapped, but that's not essential for the vehicle to operate.
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My understanding is that presently Google cars won't self drive outside of specially mapped areas. These are not street-view maps, but detailed telemetry scans that have to be frequently updated to stay relevant.
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My understanding is that presently Google cars won't self drive outside of specially mapped areas.
Presently, this is true. But it's not crucial to the system design. It's not part of the approach, just part of the current testing plan.
Also, as another commenter pointed out, mapping the whole world isn't as unreasonable as all that. Cars would still have to be able to deal with it when stuff changes (as they do now; even in the limited test areas changes happen faster than updates, and the cars do fine anyway), but that could be the exception-handling case, in which case the car would simply become a l
I saw a TEDTalk about this . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Gradually trying to move towards driverless cars instead of working directly on that goal is like thinking that by practicing jumping and getting better and better a jumping that you'll eventually be able to fly.
Re:I saw a TEDTalk about this . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice.
Google and Tesla are doing different things for good reasons. Tesla makes electric cars, and it needs to go carefully or it will lose its core business and customers. So they start from an electric performance car and gradually work up to an autonomous performance car. Google doesn't make cars, so it is not risking a core business; and their potential customers are mostly people who can't drive or don't trust their eyesight any longer, so anything that lets them potter to the shops is better than nothing. So they start from a new antonomous car, and work up to an autonomous performance car that can play chicken with the Audis on the autobahn.
Two different approaches. One of them is not necessarily wrong.
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Gradually trying to move towards driverless cars instead of working directly on that goal is like thinking that by practicing jumping and getting better and better a jumping that you'll eventually be able to fly.
Worked for Superman, didn't it?
Engineers vs Entrepreneur (Score:3)
I would characterise it differently. One is trying to engineer out all the risk, while the other is going to shape the perception of the risk in the market.
The reality is that no matter how long Google spends trying to make their cars safer and safer (and apparently it is already significantly safer than a human) one day their car is going to have a serious accident. Maybe it is not even the car's fault, and some grandma has a heart attack and smashes into the side of it and dies. It doesn't matter, at that
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Car crashes kill millions of people a year. Airlines full of passengers go down in horrible, flaming wrecks. It will make news, but I think you understimate how many people are willing to use an extremely useful technology even if there's a slight risk of death. Look at what happens when a serious car defect is found, like shrapnel in airbags, or brakes that don't work... a big fuss is made, sure, but no one stops driving their cars, perhaps except for people with the specific models affected.
Keep in min
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From my experience with managers/executives who talk like that, they have little practical experience and will be gone shortly after their first spectacular failure. Slow and steady wins the race. You see some interesting counter-examples from startups, but in general just incorporating the latest technology into existing systems is the way to go.
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I was just anticipating the inevitable responses along the lines of, "Oh, yeah, what about xxx?" As you say, there are far more failures than successes, and no one is claiming that the telegraph would have been invented by adding electronics to a horse :)
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Gradually trying to move towards driverless cars instead of working directly on that goal is like thinking that by practicing jumping and getting better and better a jumping that you'll eventually be able to fly.</quote>
Which isn't incorrect with incremental development.
If I'm able to increase my jumping height, eventually I'll be high enough to enter orbit, and I'm easily able to fly.
Massive Economic Benefits = Going to Happen Fast (Score:5, Insightful)
Driverless cars are going to be hugely disruptive to a large number of industry. The first Uber/Lyft like company to get them going will be able to undercut every taxi service in the entire developed world. We are talking a billion dollar industry there. They will likely be able to gain a significant share of the existing public transit spend in almost every city in the world - even those with good public transit infrastructure - another billion dollar industry. For many individuals it will be more attractive to spend the considerable amounts of money they currently spend owning a private car on an automated taxi service, which is another billion dollar industry.
The first trucking company to use driverless cars will be able to run trucks more often, for cheaper, undercutting everyone else. This is again a billion dollar industry. Eventually companies like Amazon and Walmart will have vending machine vans that circulate around an area and come to your door with milk and bread faster than you can walk down to your local store. This will change the nature of bricks and mortar retail again. That is another billion dollar industry.
A fleet of driverless taxi services would potentially make the economics of electric cars look unbeatable. The high load factor of taxis means that you can afford to pay a lot more in capital costs in exchange for massively reduced operating costs. Automated taxis could also manage their own charging, and with apps that pre-plan journeys the car sent to you would be able to ensure it had enough charge to get you to your destination, eliminating the main problem with electric cars right now. The system could probably be built with small (cheap) onboard batteries and a limited number of swapping stations throughout a city. This could massively undercut both gas cars and private vehicle ownership without any further reductions in battery prices. Now you are talking about a trillion dollar industry.
There is no doubt that driverless cars are a challenging technology to develop. It will be extremely difficult to make them as reliable and safe as we would all like them to be. But in the end, as long as they are, say, an order of magnitude safer than human drivers, the massive economic benefits (i.e. potential profits) will ensure that they are put on the roads. When there is this level of money to be made, capitalism will find a way.
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Other industries will try to push back against them such as municipalities who earn income through traffic enforcement, and insurance companies who make big money on point surcharges.
Self driving cars will likely change our relationship with our cars as much as media on demand has with our TV. When we drive somewhere in the city, the car drops as off, looks for parking on it own, and can just keep driving around if nothing is found. Heck, if are going for the day, why pay $35 when it can drive to a further
Re: Massive Economic Benefits = Going to Happen Fa (Score:1)
Re:Massive Economic Benefits = Going to Happen Fas (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention, that self driving cars will very rarely commit traffic violations (speeding, etc). That will dry up a major revenue source for a lot of smaller towns, another billion dollar industry.
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people say this a lot. Got any data on that. And citation if you will.
Just for speeding tickets: 6 billion dollars: http://www.statisticbrain.com/... [statisticbrain.com] An average of $152 seems a bit low to me.
If you look at parking meters in San Francisco http://priceonomics.com/san-fr... [priceonomics.com] you'll see they get about $50 million for paid parking, and get $80 Million in parking violations per year.
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Sure it a lot of money on its own. But in the bigger scheme of things it just isn't.
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Not to mention, that self driving cars will very rarely commit traffic violations (speeding, etc). That will dry up a major revenue source for a lot of smaller towns, another billion dollar industry.
Actually, at first, you'll see the reverse:
Oh, that car in the next lane is driverless - so you know it's safe to cut it off. Stopping at a stop sign and the car to your right is driverless: you know it's safe to go ahead of it. etc.. Driverless cars will start uploading driving violation videos to you tube or some police agency, cities wanting their cut, will start writing tickets as fast as possible based on these videos. Very quickly, drivers will start behaving - but road death rates for the human dri
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Flying cars would also be disruptive, it doesn't mean it'll happen any time soon. Maybe it'll get approval to run on a few well painted, well lit, pre-approved roads in sunny California during daytime genuinely by itself, but from there to an all-road, all-condition vehicle that people can actually use as a full substitute for driving themselves will take many, many years. It's a long step from a test drive with humans that can take over to saying we're confident this can drive by itself, take the back seat
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What would be wrong with restricting a driverless taxi service to only certain roadways that have been configured to support them (if required)? You could just start with suitable inner city CBD areas, and build out the capacity with a combination of roadway improvements and upgrades to the car so that it can service larger and larger areas. Similarly, the first automated truck systems could just travel between terminals at the ends of motorways (which are already well formed). Human truck drivers could pic
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capitalism will find a way.
Maybe but capitalists don't solve technical problems; engineers do.
As as aside, the writer states that because Tesla's tech is evolutionary in nature, and this "problem" clearly requires a revolutionary approach, that means it's going to happen quickly. To use [what's bound to be a terrible analogy], just because it'd take forever to come up with a neon-green German Shepherd through selective breeding does *not* mean we'll be seeing genetically-engineered custom-colored dogs on the market within the next f
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I think this will come eventually. I suspect the solution will involve lots of radar, forwards and backwards, along with several pairs of 3d cameras. The problem with lidar is that it doesn't work in snow or heavy rain. Humans drive based on 3d vision, so why not have computers do it. Problems could arise if the cameras get blocked, but the same think can happen to human drivers. If there are multiple pairs of cameras, perhaps with mechanisms to clear their own view to the outside, they could be quite
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If they can just navigate between the airport and all the hotels in the city, that alone would be able to kill the taxi business.
Reality speaks for itself (Score:1)
Then you have google who is taking a multi year approach of refining the technology before even letting consumers see it.
Tesla is (in my mind) looking hard to make noise about their products and it is dangerous to push out alpha "self driving" software out to the masses. It is quite a difficu
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None of the videos that I can see fail when used on the highway, which is the only place Tesla Autopilot is supposed to be used.
To steering wheel, no way. (Score:2)
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You get out of the car and tell it to go park itself. Who cares where it goes?
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As long as it sends an Instagram... :)
To avoid confusion, (Score:1)
"Futurologist" == "Fully Qualified Idiot" (Score:2)
Seriously, stop listening to these cretins. They give you fairy-tales and other stupid stuff they believe in. They do not give anything of any worth, but drown out people with an actual clue of what is possible and what not and how long things can be expected to take.
Entirely different. (Score:1)
They're entirely different kinds of electric cars, altogether.
Quick! (Score:1)
It's been 24 hours since the last Tesla story!
The Three Modes (of robotic/autonomous vehicles) (Score:2)
1) autopilot - the user need do nothing except enter destination/route and the user can be anywhere in the car, liability for accidents etc is the car manufacture
2) accident avoidance - the user is in control, but the car will not allow an accident to happen, liability for accidents etc is the car manufacture
3) manual - user is in complete control and can do damage, liability for accidents etc is the current driver
This allows for those that want to drive, to be
Tesla autopilot is the roomba of self driving cars (Score:2)
Tesla autopilot is the roomba of self driving cars. It's enough to generate interest in self driving cars and will spur more development till we have something more intelligent.The roomba would blindly go in circles but now we have vacuum cleaners that scan the room and create optimal paths.
It's a step in the correct direction.
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Regardless of how they get there I'll certainly never buy one. The technology if of course interesting and in some parts very advanced but even so this seems like an awful lot of effort to remove a steering wheel.
You must not hate driving like I hate driving.
Re:Still not interested (Score:5, Insightful)
I love driving, I hate driving with all the drooling morons on the road that cant do safe lane changes or drive with any semblance of skill.
So I want everyone else to get self driving cars.
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By the way, I haven't posted for some time and I see that I can no longer insert any HTML tags in postings. Do I need to enable one of the giant swarm of domains that Noscript is blocking on the page or go to some obscure prefs page or what?
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ajax from Google
cdn from slashdot
taboola
None required if you open reply link in new tab.
(quote) text [slashdot.org] (a href) italics (i) bold (b) and (code) still works.
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taboola
I don't think you need taboola, but I did recently have to add slashcdn.com
Re:Still not interested (Score:5, Insightful)
*Summon car from parking space*
*Drive like maniac to destination*
*Let car find it's own damned parking space*
*Summon car from parking space*
*Drive like maniac home*
*Let car find it's own damned parking space*
rinse and repeat
Re:Still not interested (Score:4, Insightful)
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Speeding around me in the slow lane when I'm already going ten over, but have a full two-second gap in front of me.
I agree with everything you said but this. If somebody can pass you on the right, then you're in the wrong damned lane. It doesn't matter how fast you're going. My drive to and from work is hellish, and it's almost entirely due to people hanging out in the left lane and forcing people to pass on the right or weave through traffic to get past them. At times, there a whole stack of cars in the left lane (often riding each other's ass) and the right lane is clear for literally miles. Keep right except to pass,
Re:Still not interested (Score:4, Insightful)
seems like an awful lot of effort to remove a steering wheel.
Yeah, who needs to reduce the 1.24 million deaths and millions more injuries suffered?
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I've seen a thousand texters on the highway that are just as dangerous as that video. You can't cure stupidity, but a car that will automatically slow down before hitting the one in front is better than someone using their smartphone while driving without such a feature.
I'm all for improving public transit, but it takes a generation or so for everything to reorient itself to suit it. So, sure, I'm all for increased spending on public transit infrastructure. Then the 20 year buildout. Then another 25 before
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You can't cure stupidity
Right, it's like a cold. There's no cure and taking something that subdues your body's natural response actually makes things worse. Much like a cold, we should stop trying to cure it and stop treating it, as well.
Phrased differently, when you "treat" a cold, you make the cold easier to deal with on a by-moment basis, but you also make the cold last longer; you literally make it easier for the cold to be a cold. Likewise, when you "treat" stupid, you make the stupid easier to deal with on a by-moment basi
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There's no cure and taking something that subdues your body's natural response actually makes things worse.
That's not true. People with compromised immune systems (e.g. smokers) tend to suffer fewer cold symptoms. Most of the damage from a cold is your body's overreaction - it's self-inflicted.
But that's a tangent. Let's take your analogy at face value. You are assuming that the technology for treating a cold will never improve. What happens when the technology improves to the point where taking medication can reduce the duration of a cold - will you still recommend not treating it? Because that is what is happe
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I was wrong about smokers - it's drinkers. Smoking gets your immune system too fired up and it does more damage than in healthy people. Drinking seems to have the opposite effect.
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That's not true. People with compromised immune systems (e.g. smokers) tend to suffer fewer cold symptoms.
So symptoms are worse than illness, now? By subduing your body's natural response, you are making the illness worse, even if you don't feel the symptoms anymore; just like someone with a compromised immune system. You think we disagree, but you actually simply restated my exact point. Someone with a compromised immune system already has subdued natural responses and, thus, fewer symptoms; treating the symptoms by subduing those responses is, as you continue to correctly state, after your following incorrect
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So symptoms are worse than illness, now?
For both colds and stupid people driving, the answer is yes. A cold without symptoms is just a parasitic virus. My modern diet has more than enough calories for a parasite here and there. If there are stupid people on the road, what do I care if they can't hurt me?
but any damage is the result of the infection.
No, sorry. Look up "inflammatory response". Your body can be an absolute bastard to itself.
So your solution is to do away with all drivers by automating the whole process?
Yes, why is this a problem? I don't see manually driven cars going away any time soon. It will just (eventually) be very expensive to insure them compared t
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For both colds and stupid people driving, the answer is yes. A cold without symptoms is just a parasitic virus. My modern diet has more than enough calories for a parasite here and there.
That only holds up at controlled levels of infection. Unchecked (because you trained your immune system to ignore it and let it just do its thing), the common cold will eventually overtake your body. Before you say it, yes, I know we don't hear of people dying from the common cold; I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure out why.
If there are stupid people on the road, what do I care if they can't hurt me?
And if that were the only symptom, we might be able to agree on that point. However, their stupidity is not simply limited to one activity, or even a handful; and it is certa
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You are presuming that bad driving is a proxy for stupidity. I submit that a person could be a brilliant rocket scientist and also be a terrible driver.
On a societal level, if we removed natural death,
There is nothing "natural" about a car accident.
I also feel researching immortality and life-extension techniques is immoral
Well, I don't feel that way. Any research that yields something like immortality would necessarily also attack the aging process - which would remove your objections.
Probably best not to do away with it, then.
We can't "do away with it". Natural selection is not something we can remove. We will all die someday. Many of us reproduce, and not all of our of
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Well, I don't feel that way. Any research that yields something like immortality would necessarily also attack the aging process - which would remove your objections.
It would remove one of my objections. For reference, here's just one of my (already stated) objections that is not solved by attacking the aging process:
Death is a function of society's immune system; it keeps one person from gaining too much power and keeping it indefinitely
Please note that this was the first objection I made, so it's not even like you can claim you stopped reading after the objection you attacked and began your reply without having read this one.
As I've learned that it is impossible to argue against someone who doesn't acknowledge your responses, I'm out.
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As I've learned that it is impossible to argue against someone who doesn't acknowledge your responses, I'm out.
Or - and I'm just throwing this out there - you could point out that I made an error, I could acknowledge that I made a mistake and we could continue the discussion.
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Do you like making money? If so, I may have a nice bet for you.
Tell me, when you do you think we'll have fully autonomous consumer-grade passenger vehicles on public roads in a percentage greater than 10%?
Depending on your answer, we can use an escrow account, and I'll give you at the odds at which I'm willing to make that bet.
Say, five years? I'll give you 5:1 odds, no bets smaller than $10,000 USD. Ten years? 3:1 odds, same minimal risk on your part. 15 years? How's 2:1 sound? Increase the minimal to 20k
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10% is a big number when cars are lasting 10+ years. I could see 10% of new car sales, but these things are going to be expensive at first. I think the first autonomous cars are going to be big luxury vehicles, not normal consumer-level stuff. And what is "fully autonomous"? No steering wheel? Good enough for a commute in a typical urban/suburban environment? In snow?
So if we were betting (and I'm not), I would guess that a very high percentage of luxury cars (in the $100,000) range will be autonomous over
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Nobody will take my bet. :( I don't blame them.
Anyhow, for fully autonomous, I mean no user-control aside from setting the destination though I'd allow for route specifications. And yes, there are stupid drivers who are unsafe. They need to go. At first blush you appeared the type who claims that autonomous vehicles will be here, and mainstream, in five years. They pop up here fairly often. Now that I see your reply, you appear more reasoned.
We'll have them. Just not for a while. Probably not until I'm gone
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I was hoping they'd be here in time for my kids not to drive (my oldest is 9). But unless I'm willing to be on the bleeding edge and fork over $100,000+, it's not going to happen. Oh, well :)
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There is zero proof that all those deaths and injuries will be eliminated.
That's a very hard statement to refute! LOL, are you trying to put words in my mouth so that you have someone to argue with?
You 'humans are bad at everything' tech fanboys are pretty much the reason I hate reading any articles about self driving cars these days.
I don't think I said that, either. It is all speculation, of course, but it's pretty hard to imagine a scenario where machines suddenly stop improving.
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So, your idea of 'spur of the moment' is 'order a vehicle and wait around for half an hour for it to turn up'?
I have noticed that the greatest proponents of 'driverless cars' never seem to have any real need to drive anywhere.
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I can mostly predict when I need a car ~30 minutes ahead of time, with things like regular commutes on order so I don't even have to call for one then.
On the other hand, having to wait half an hour seems to be an unusual length of time to have to wait, unless you're looking at an extremely unusual situation. I'd expect 5-10 minutes to be a more normal waiting period for a car to pull up.
I'm a proponent of driver-less cars, and while I don't want to 'have' to drive(that being an active activity), I still ne
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What would be the point of standardizing on unpractical prototypes? If people did this with cars we'd be using tillers and combination throttle/brake levers. All computers would be programmed with jumpers.
Re:Here we go again (Score:4, Insightful)
Who needs compatibility? The "standard" you're talking about is the rules of the road, as we all experience them. The only thing missing is person to person communication... eye contact, waving someone to go first at a 4-way stop, etc.. Eventually, it would also be nice to have cars that can talk to each other well enough to safely form "draft trains" to conserve energy, but that will require some changes to the law anyway. In the meantime, since Elon is pals with the Google guys, I wouldn't be surprised if they're already talking about that sort of thing with each other. On the contrary, I'd be surprised if they weren't.
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Eventually, it would also be nice to have cars that can talk to each other well enough to safely form "draft trains" to conserve energy
I'm really hoping they can use it to improve traffic flow in congested situations. Human drivers require a lot more space around their cars to move safely both in front and side-to-side. They also require a lot of slack in traffic signalling: yellow lights, slow acceleration off the line, etc. Inter-car communication would greatly improve that. Combined with reclaiming traffic lanes now used for parking (since you can send your car off to park elsewhere), cities could become far more efficient places to tra
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Definitely no argument from me there. While computers can do better than people in that regard, people are worse than they should be, by a lot. Paying attention, and a sense of urgency, would make traffic flow a lot more smoothly. Traffic intersections in particular are valuable commodities: get through it, and expand your following distance (if you have to) on the other side. Just getting a few more cars through on this cycle of the lights will greatly improve total throughput.
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I suppose it has nothing to do with having free beta testers? Once the tech has been tested thoroughly, get ready to pay premium prices that car makers are famous for charging.
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Almost all Teslas with the installed hardware was sold with the autopilot feature included.
Initially it was included in the tech package option - and without the tech package you would not buy the upgrade later.
The option to not pay for the autopilot is something that was added around the time the 70D was released - with included most of the tech package in the base model - but not the autopilot software.
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There are already autonomous driving systems that can handle controlled drift on slippery surfaces far better than all but the best human drivers. And road maintenance won't change in the slightest compared to a human-driven car.
I do agree that modern-style cars are unsustainable as a primary means of transportation in the long term, but rail is completely unsuitable as a solution - it works great for mass-transport between a limited number of points, but if you want to give it enough destination-flexibili