Hacker News Reader

Comment by 013a | Hacker News Reader

Their decision to limit the initial problem domain is genius. When it comes to autonomous driving, safety is paramount. Limiting it to highways is a good way to ensure that you can maximize the system's safety and performance, while still getting a product to market that is ahead of the competition and which allows you to gather data and iterate to expand in the future.

SpaceX wants to go to Mars. Why haven't they yet? Do you consider them uninnovative? Or maybe they're just taking their time getting the technology right, because they know (1) they're leading the industry already, and (2) if they fuck it up, it would be a highly expensive mistake they probably wouldn't recover from.

If your definition of "innovation" is "irreparably risking your business and customers' lives in the pursuit of profit", I sincerely hope I never have to interact with you in any way in the future.

View on HN

>SpaceX wants to go to Mars. Why haven't they yet? Do you consider them uninnovative?

The proper analogy is "SpaceX wants to go to Mars, and is pushing aggressively to do so" while a "Competitor sees SpaceX's cost cutting for LEO, and is aggressively copying that feature while completlely ignoring Mars"

In this case, Tesla is shooting for Mars (Complete autonomy in all situations) and is rolling out each phase.

GM, on the other hand, noticed that Tesla's phase 1 autonomy was marketable, so they copy pasted a profitable feature without copying the overall goal of getting to mars (of making an autonomous car).

Every single GE car with this feature will have THIS feature and nothing else.

Every single new Tesla will have todays features, AND tomorrows features, through software updates, because Tesla is attempting to achieve FAR FAR MORE than GM, and is willing to backport those enhancements.

Today GM looks better. In five years, it might look archaic.

Software updates won't add lidar to the cars. Sure, the ability to update software easily is an advantage for Tesla, but they're ultimately just as limited by the hardware on the car as GM is. If it turns out the current hardware isn't good enough to do what Tesla wants, todays cars are going to look just as dated in 5 years as GM's.

Nope, GM has already self-driving cars on the street here in San Francisco. Remember they own Cruise.

So, GM has decided to go to Mars as Tesla did. It has acquired the tech to go to Mars and started testing it. In the meanwhile realized it could copy a page from Tesla's book and put some semi-autonomous vehicle on the road. And, according to this article, did an excellent job.

I'm no way a GM fanboy (do they even exists), but could we be fair?

Can confirm: I see Cruise vehicles virtually every day in SF.

"I'm no way a GM fanboy (do they even exists), but could we be fair?"

You didn't even read my post, and you want to talk about fair?

I very clearly state that Tesla is updating new features into cars, while GM is not.

That Tesla gets phase 1, phase 2, and beyond, while GM merely labels phase 1 by a marketing name and will never update it ever.

There is a massive chasm here between buying a car today that will "may take you to mars", and buying a car today that "will absolutely, never, ever, ever be capable of going to mars".

So let's be fair.

GM has a Level 2, maybe Level 3, self-driving platform in its current generation of self-driving cars. It's not claiming that current cards will be able to achieve Level 4 or 5 self-driving functionality. But it is expecting that future generations of their cars will, especially once low-cost LIDARs are incorporated into their platform.

Tesla has, being charitable, a Level 1 self-driving platform. Current Tesla cars don't have the sensors or processing power to handle the demands necessary for Level 3 self-driving, let alone Level 5 (i.e., truly autonomous functionality). Hell, Tesla's current hardware platform does't even have the same level of functionality as their original self-driving hardware (using MobiEye), which was just glorified lane-keeping and self-parking, i.e., Level 1 self-driving.

Tesla is playing a dangerous marketing game and deserves to be called on their bullshit.

I read your comment. And I stand my point.

Even being very very friendly and interpreting your comment in the way you clarified it, there is an assumption in your comment. The assumption is that Tesla will be able to bring their car to Level 5, full autonomy, while GM will not be able to that. And let me ask you why you say so? Just because Tesla, in a marketing move, tells you they will be able to do that, and GM is not doing that? Maybe GM has a legal department that warned them not to do that?

To paraphrase your point, no there's no difference between a car that, according to their marketing "will maybe be able to go to mars" and a car that "has the hardware that could be maybe able to go to mars, but we prefer to tell you now because we could be liable if we fail". I understand the value of aspirational statements, but still...

Can you point to 1 time a GM vehicle was substantially enhanced through a software update?

If so, your point has merit.

If not, you are hiding behind hypotheticals in a very dishonest way.

I have NEVER heard of GM upgrading existing vehicles with significant new functionality through a FREE software update.

If that is the truth, that they have never done it, never announced it, and yet you come here and suggest that they are in fact doing something that they are not, that is supremely dishonest.

I researched GM for half an hour to find evidence that you are not being dishonest. That you are not hiding behind some really bad hypothetical.

But I found nothing to exonerate your position from the realm of "fantastical hypothetical rendered dishonestly", so I hope you can respond and help me.

Curious though, would you buy this car over a Tesla (basing your decision on the self driving features only)? The reason I ask is because if I buy a Tesla, I have the idea that one day it will be completely self driving one day. With this Cadillac, I would expect it to only do this specific subset of self driving for the life of the car.

Probably the Cadillac. I have no expectation of a Tesla or anyone else having a 100% autonomous vehicle during the lifetime of current cars, much less one that it retrofitted to current hardware.

> I have the idea that one day it will be completely self driving one day

Why do you think that? Can you explain how this would happen, when the car appears to lack the physical hardware (e.g. LIDARs, computing power) to do so in anything but clear conditions on highways?

Moreover, why would Tesla be interested in doing so? They gain nothing, reduce a customer's desire to upgrade to the latest model, and put themselves into major extra liability if the system ever fucks up.

They would gain a massive fleet of self-driving cars overnight.

Remember, Elon doesn’t think like other industrialists. I fully believe that he views profit as little more than a tool to reach his other goals.

Also, having worked on autonomous vehicles, my opinion is that LIDAR is really overrated, and if compute power is an issue, that can be a straightforward modular upgrade.

Here's the thing: if upgrading the hardware is as straightforward as you say it is, than GM is in a far better position to provide true self-driving in its cars.

After all, it's already got the hardware and hardpoints for installing hardware. Swapping out existing LIDAR arrays for newer arrays, or current processors for optimized self-driving processors, would be a piece of cake. Especially with GM's extremely large supply chain, capable of producing more cars in an hour than Tesla can produce in a year, and the corresponding parts for all of those cars.

> LIDAR is really overrated

Fair enough, although it does have better range than ultrasonic and it can see through rain/fog/snow better than cameras.

Tesla claims every new car already has the necessary hardware, and they're already pre-selling the upgrade. They could very well be lying, of course.

Which really means that a major motivator for Tesla at this point will be the threat of a class action lawsuit for selling a feature that doesn't exist and whose timeline keeps getting pushed back.

Too late: http://uk.businessinsider.com/tesla-class-action-lawsuit-aut...

Tesla is interested because cars are expensive enough that people don't completely replace them regularly - they might trade them in every 3 years, but they are able to trade them in because somebody else is willing to buy a 3 year old car. Thus for all car makers an important consideration is resale value - they don't directly gain anything from it, but they know if their cars have a poor resale value that translates into a lot of potential customers unable to afford to come back and buy a new car. Even if they do buy a new one they will look to a different brand with better resale because that resale value translates into cash into their pocket (there are a few rich exceptions but not enough to buy a large company on)

All car makers would love it if they could reduce the lifespan of their car. I'm just old enough to remember my parents getting calls because a car was about to turn 100,000 miles - they would fill the car with people to see that event - they had to put oil in before and after that 10 mile drive, and you could see the road through the floor boards. Today even the worst cars are expected to make it to 200,000 miles with just minimal maintenance, and still meet emissions - this is to the auto makers loss. However if anyone tries to go down the road of planned obsolescence they rightly believe that will catch up to them. Gm still hasn't complete shaken that reputation - you can see it when they put a GM name on a Japanese car and it is rated lower in reliability than the maker's version.

> Why do you think that? Can you explain how this would happen, when the car appears to lack the physical hardware

You're thinking like the Javascript Generation. People do impossible things all the time on so-called "outdated" gear. And a Tesla is far from outdated.

It could very well be a hardware problem that can be solved in software.

> Moreover, why would Tesla be interested in doing so? They gain nothing, reduce a customer's desire to upgrade to the latest model, and put themselves into major extra liability if the system ever fucks up.

This keeps the vehicle resale value high, which constrains demand, which keeps their margins higher than all other auto manufacturers.

As a Tesla model 3 reservation holder, I wish they would decide they're an electric car company, not an electric autonomous car company. I badly want the former. I'm not interested in the self-driving part until it's really good. This half-hearted level 2 stuff is uninteresting to me - I see it as dangerous and marginally useful. The fact that it comes with heavy handed control and surveillance by the company makes it worse.

I'd rather wait 5-10 years for someone like Waymo to figure it out and then roll it out than see a car I really want today get crapped up with features that are incidental to its raison d'etre. Honestly this and the delays may be enough to make me cancel my res.

Nobody outside of Tesla appear to buy the idea that a car without LIDAR can be fully autonomous within a relevant timeline. I mean, sure, maybe we'll solve fully autonomy with only the limited sensors on a Tesla in 20 years, but question whether you will still have a car you buy tomorrow 20 years from now.

Tesla claims that they can do it with the sensors they have, but please do note that none of the other autonomous vehicle players -- many of whom appear to have much more sophisticated offerings than Tesla -- think it can be done.

> but question whether you will still have a car you buy tomorrow 20 years from now

I know I'm in the minority, but both of my cars that I drive are almost 20 years old (one's a 1999, the other a 2004). Prior to the 2004, I owned a truck from 1996 (ran great until I spun a journal bearing for no good reason).

I also once owned a 1979 Ford Bronco...

Personally, neither. I strongly believe that the only autonomous tech a general purpose, manned car should ever have is assistive and emergency systems, not replicative systems. Meaning, collision breaking, lane-keep assist, road-departure warning, adaptive cruise, blind spot monitoring, etc. You can get these on an Accord nowadays.

General purpose cars are used in too many situations for general purpose autonomous systems to operate in. Moreover, the addition of autonomous systems means that the human behind the wheel will be less vigilant about keeping themselves and other drivers safe. I very strongly believe that autonomous systems beyond L2 actually do not make the car safer, except in situations where the driver is impaired; they just make the car more convenient.

L4 has definite possibility for things like uber where pickup and dropoff are within the same city. But it seems increasingly unlikely that we'll see L5 within our lifetimes, at least from any ethical company who doesn't oversell what the system is capable of.

> Their decision to limit the initial problem domain is genius

Is it? It sounds like "If you can't think of an answer, change the question."

That's like Microsoft saying "We can't keep viruses out of our computers, so we're not going to try. Instead, we just won't let them access the internet anymore."*

(*Yes, I know that pre-internet C-64's and Apple ]['s had viruses, too. Work with me here, people!)

There is no evidence in this article that GM's system is technically inferior - if anything, the opposite. Whatever the question is, your strained analogies are beside the point.

> Their decision to limit the initial problem domain is genius

I believe it's called "Level 4" autonomous driving. It's meant to drive only on safe routes for which the carmakers have already tested their technology.

In theory, all self-driving cars should be classified as Level 4 right now, because I don't think any of them is good enough for being classified as Level 5.

As the article notes, current systems are maybe Level 2ish but the guidelines are vague enough that it's hard to say for sure.

Level 4? What are you on about? Level 4 is "no driver attention is ever required for safety, i.e. the driver may safely go to sleep or leave the driver's seat". That's very far from anything on the market today.

> What are you on about?

Please don't be rude here. Your comment would be fine with just the two last sentences.

Sorry @mtgx, that was rude of me.

Levels quantify the level of autonomy Level 4 is hands off and eyes off.

They do not quantify the domain a car can be level 4 in one domain and level 3 2 or 0 in any other.

The domain specific qualification is what all car manufacturers are essentially going for with the exception of Tesla which will all due respect is using a system which is borderline level 3 according the the manufacturer with a single sensor type that was designed primarily for ADAS and calling it an autopilot.

The MobilEye powered Tesla’s will never be a level 4/5 certified even the NVIDIA ones, in fact with how the current regulation is brewing current Tesla Autopilot actually might regress considerably more than some of it's competitors like Audi and GM because Tesla wants to provide full autonomy but doesn't have anywhere near the hardware to do so, and as regulation will eventually catch up to them they are quite likely to lose it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com