I drive a lot and I don't know if I'm crazy or not but instead of a car which can "mostly self drive but which I must watch at all times for something could wrong", I want instead a car that watches me while I drive and which prevents me from making most dangerous things.
Rephrasing it: I don't want to be the one preventing the car from doing stupid things. I want the car to be preventing me from doing stupid things.
For example my wife's previous Toyota would gently shake the steering wheel if I were to switch lanes without using the blinker. Or it'd warn me if I were to put my blinker while a car was in the lane I was planning to go to. Or take start and stop trafic, bumper to bumper in trafic jams... I want the car to prevent me from bumping in the car in front of me if I'm not careful enough (the Toyota didn't do that).
Stuff like that.
I find it very stressful to have an "autonomous but not really" car that I must baby-sit. I want instead to feel more relaxed by knowing that the car is probably there to help me should something be about to go wrong.
I agree, but I am quite cautious of technology which prevents me from doing something and much more comfortable with and welcoming of technology that informs me that I'm doing something unsafe, so that I can not do that thing.
There is a post going around just this morning about a Tesla that stopped itself on a major bridge in San Diego and caused a huge accident and pileup. I don't want technology that has the ability to take action like that on it's own. I don't trust it's decision making enough for that.
The idea is baffling to me that anyone lets self-driving software pilot a multi-ton steel missile that contains the only body they will ever get hurtling through an asphalt field full of other humans and an environment that is often not predictable and actively hostile. I write automation for a living, and like everyone else I know that does the same I want automation in safety-critical applications to be as simple, bulletproof, and limited as possible. Self-driving software does not fall into that category right now. Some day it probably will. Until that time I won't be buying it.
> There is a post going around just this morning about a Tesla that stopped itself on a major bridge in San Diego and caused a huge accident and pileup. I don't want technology that has the ability to take action like that on it's own. I don't trust it's decision making enough for that
There is still almost no information on this crash, probably because Tesla HQ stopped Elon from writing blog posts to put the record straight on PR-harming issues [0]. The fact of the matter is that the person was not using "Full Self-Driving Beta", given it does not activate on highways yet; the only real possibility is Enhanced Autopilot, ie. the driver hit the left turn stalk, the car moved over for them, and it detected a stopped car in front of it, either triggering the AEB system (which can slam on the brakes completely independently from every other system) or TACC detected a car and came to a safe stop as if the traffic in that lane was already stopped.
My guess is confused pedals or both pedals being depressed at the same time, since the accelerator will not spin the tires if you're on the brake whatsoever.
I have driven few cars with assistive technologies and I came to the conclusion that I feel more tense in them than I do with all assistive technologies turned off.
You get way too "distracted" with those technologies imho, but you still need to check what the car is doing.
So if before I was relaxed and driving in auto-pilot mode not even thinking about it, I'm now more tense and looking over what the car is doing.
Obviously blind spot, simple cruise control or beeps that warn you in traffic the car ahead is moving are fine, but the more complex assistive technology gets the more you need to check what it's doing.
Stuff like lane assist is just...unreliable in many situations. I was more than once driving on streets that from a second to the other had the white marks disappear and the car drift dangerously off road.
I just find more relaxing and safer normal driving (unless I was doing thousands of kilometers per week I guess) than being this controller who has to check what the car is doing.
For longer drives, I can shake highway hypnosis by looking anywhere but straight ahead. Something that I could "turn on" when in light traffic and good conditions would mean I could do this more easily.
As far as "the car preventing me from doing stupid things" goes it's good in theory, but requires an excellent implementation to not suck. When driving in traffic it's basically 100% of the time that my car beeps at me when I put my turn signal on, because I'm either passing or waiting for a car to pass me when I signal. I would turn it off, but I can't do so without also disabling the RTCA which is a great feature.
I agree. It would be like an “easy bake oven” that guarantees either a perfectly baked cake, with no user input required, or your entire house burnt to the ground in a fiery explosion. I’d rather just watch it myself
This is why I think the only direction in which this can all be headed is “human roads” and “robot roads”. When the robot cars all start talking to each other/the road 100,000x/second, there won’t be a need for traffic lights, and so anytime an accident happens, it will be because of a human.
The nudge when leaving a lane is annoying and something I turn off. Going near / over the lane lines happens inadvertently from time to time while driving and the nudge often catches me by surprise. I worry it might cause me to instinctively pull the wheel back too hard by mistake causing an accident.
Going over lane lines does not happen inadvertently with any frequency to most people who are paying attention. If this is happening often enough and you're zoned out enough that this is something that might cause you to over-correct I question if you ought to be driving at all.
For me it really depends on the actual implementation. On most rentals I quickly disabled it because it really felt unsafe. But on my own car, different brand, it feels quite „naturally“ at least for me.
I feel similarly about these technologies. If I wanted to nanny another driver, I'd work as a driving instructor. Tech that assists driving I think I'd appreciate more, like the ABS brakes.
The more assistance drivers get, the less attention they pay to the road, and the safer people perceive something to be, the more likely to take risks.
I kind of like it, it's moving away from the overly aggressive looking style of most modern cars. Maybe we can have cars for adults again instead of these Transformers-style designs. A shape that is fit for purpose (aerodynamic) is part of that.
BMW and Mercedes switch places periodically in technical and design leadership, and I think it's Mercedes's time. BMW has been going off the rails recently...
As a kid I remember standing in ave when a new car came out, very few cars have that effect anymore (on me). New car design generally is pretty meh nowadays. Seems mid-2000s leading up to 2014-15 was peak.
You also grew up and the world changed in that time. I had the same thing, but I realized it was just my teenage years romanticizing the designs of that era.
Off-topic but I had the same thing with sneakers. There seemed to be all kinds of interesting experiments up until mid-2000s, but there is pretty much nothing to look at in today's stores.
Good observation. Most cars nowadays look like the "cool super car" models from Lego or Matchbox from the past. It always makes me assume their drivers are 12 year olds trapped in grown up bodies.
Current cars' aerodynamics are optimized on downforce, range comes way down the line. EVs are mostly optimized for range. Blobfish, or water droplet shape is the most aerodyanamic one out there. Once manufacturers figure out battery efficiency, I think we'll see more aesthetic cars out there again. Prius was a notable exception because it also focused on range and efficiency.
That's right, but they could make it look more like a 2016 Mercedes CLS than ... i dont know what this looks like... I mean they could work they 2010-2016 models in terms of aerodynamism.
I guess electric cars have to be different..
Electric cars struggle with range limitations (compared to their non-electric counterparts), and so manufacturers try to maximise range by reducing the drag co-efficient as much as possible, even at the cost of aesthetics (everything turns into a smooth blob).
And by avoiding other energy intensive components like radar. And hiding other energy intensive appliances behind paywalls (seat heating, heating, etc.).
Its basically gaming the metrics taken to a new extreme, but if you want to treat a evehicle like a normal combustion vehicle in winter, you basically can half the range.
The photos in that article might not be of a real chassis design. If you look at the recent test drives of actual cars in the US, e.g. here [1] or [2], the design is a more conventional S-class type.
The prototype design looks much more sleek to me, but I'm not a car guy, and I think all modern cars are ugly.
In the example shown in the photos (not the illustrations) of TFA, the awkwardness of the design comes from trying to compress the aggressive/sporty front end shapes of Mercedes' current line of ICE models into the smooth silhouette of a range-optimized EV blob.
There's a lot of visual conflict between the two motifs, as shapes that normally have boxy, sculptural depth get squashed down into basically 2D features on the surface of the smoothed out, mouse-like volume of the overall package.
The designers seem to have been stuck with the assignment of putting a Mercedes mask onto a wide, flattened jellybean. The result is mostly successful from the side views, but seems pinched and overwrought from the front.
Additionally, some of the grille shapes on the front are likely vestigal, as EVs don't require the same ventilated cooling as combustion engines. Much to the frustration of car designers, one of the key identifying features of any brand has historically been the design of the now obsolete front grille; the functional purpose that served as an aesthetic starting point is now gone. (You can trace the gradual acceptence of grille obsolescence in the evolution of Tesla's designs.)
Granted it looks great. But unfortunately it had to sacrifice somce aerodynamics for it. The outgoing model had a Cd of 0.24, while the new model has 0.27.
I was all excited about replacing my 2007 Prius with the new one, but now I'm not so sure. Perhaps I'll wait for the Lightyear 2 which is hugely more slippery at a Cd of 0.175.
Historically these cars were made to be “ugly” because car makers were afraid to eat into sales of their regular cars. You could see it across the board ranging from the Honda Insight, to the Prius, to BMW’s weird looking i series cars.
There was never a reason, aerodynamic or not, to make the design look so ridiculous except if you’re the GM of the 3 Series or S class you don’t want someone else eating into your sales with a different product line.
Is it the Googlefication of cars? I remember when Google and later Material became the lodestone of interfaces, arguably moving most online graphics towards infantile colors and curves.
For reference, level 3 is not exactly well-defined; the main requirements for level 3 over a level 2 system are[0][1]:
- OEDR is required, which is "monitoring the driving environment (detecting, recognizing, and classifying objects and events and preparing to respond as needed) and executing an appropriate response to such objects and events (i.e., as needed to complete the DDT and/or DDT fallback [fallback to driver])".
- for DDT fallback, "At Level 3, an ADS is capable of continuing to perform the DDT for at least several seconds after providing the
fallback-ready user with a request to intervene. The DDT fallback-ready user is then expected to resume manual
vehicle operation, or to achieve a minimal risk condition if s/he determines it to be necessary." It also mentions a scenario like a blown tire, disappearing lane lines, or a malfunctioning sensor/spatial input device.
- "DDT performance by a Level 3 ADS assumes that a fallback-ready user is available to perform the DDT as
required. There is no such assumption at Levels 4 and 5."
- "A Level 3 highway overtaking assistance feature automatically performs the lateral and longitudinal vehicle
motion control actions, as well as associated OEDR, necessary to pass a slower-moving vehicle on a
multi-lane highway when activated by the driver or fallback-ready user." .
Otherwise, the ODD (operational design domain, ie. what conditions the level 3 system can perform in) is entirely defined by the manufacturer. The document includes low speed traffic as an example of level 3 operation:
> A Level 3 traffic jam feature performs the complete DDT on a fully access-controlled freeway in dense traffic,
but requires a human driver to operate the vehicle upon ODD exit (e.g., when traffic clears, as well as before
entering the congested freeway, and again upon exiting it).
Some other goodies:
- level 4 "May delay user-requested disengagement", and level 4 may still have ODD, although it cannot assume a driver fallback is available
I look at level 2 through level 4 as a spectrum of how much warning a driver gets before they have to take over.
Level 2 is 0 seconds; the driver has to watch constantly.
Level 4 is indefinite, or alternatively we could say "minutes". The car can pull over if necessary.
For this particular level 3 system, it's 10 seconds. That seems pretty reasonable for level 3.
And as you said, the ODD of levels 3 and 4 is entirely up to the manufacturer. Only level 5 has a domain by definition, which is matching human ability.
Even your Level 5 domain is dubious as I've written before. Jim would drive in a blizzard, some Level 5 car refuses to drive in a blizzard. Is the car faulty by this definition or is Jim a lunatic ? I think it's probably Jim.
I think Level 4 is clearer because it's closer to public transit. Somebody else (the machine) is driving, so if I'm day dreaming, or indeed asleep, nothing bad happens. I can listen to tunes, have an argument with someone, breast feed a baby, whatever, the driver is driving the car, I'm just a passenger.
As I understand it, there's no reason you'd need a Driving License to ride in a Waymo for example. Waymo is driving, you're in the back like a cab, why would you need a license?
>Jim would drive in a blizzard, some Level 5 car refuses to drive in a blizzard. Is the car faulty by this definition or is Jim a lunatic ?
What if staying where he is poses a greater risk to Jim than driving on the road? Why should the car decide for Jim what an acceptable level of risk is, when Jim (presumably) has more information to make that decision?
I'm sure you could make the same argument for why the elevator should work even in a fire. But, you might have noticed if you live or work in a tall building, it explicitly doesn't work in a fire. We decided as a society you don't get to make that choice - because it's very rare this is actually a good idea but people would do it anyway.
There are multiple reasons why the two situations are not comparable:
1. The elevator does not belong to you. The building manager setting whatever policies on its usage that they want does not violate your right to use your property however you like. For it to be analogous, during a blizzard the road would have to refuse to let your car onto it.
2. While you use the elevator, no one else (such as fire crews) can use it. You driving your car does not prevent anyone else from doing the same.
3. In a fire, there are alternative routes of escape other than the elevator. I suppose the same is not true in a skyscraper. Do elevators shut down in those too? If you're several kilometers from, say, a hospital, you may not have any reasonable alternatives to driving to the hospital in inclement weather.
I wouldn't think that the idea that hardware should obey its operator would need to be defended in HN of all places.
> I suppose the same is not true in a skyscraper. Do elevators shut down in those too?
Generally, yes. In very tall buildings it will often be possible to seek authorization to use elevators for evacuation but you need to specifically arrange for the elevators and rest of the building to be suitable, in most cases it makes more sense for the evacuation plan to rely on stairwells instead. Walking down even 100 flights is a huge annoyance, but it's not impossible for able-bodied adults.
You'll know if you visit a building where the elevators are to be used in evacuation because they'll say very clearly on them that's what you should do, it's part of the regulations authorizing such things in the US and other countries I looked at with this allowance.
In addition most tall residential buildings have "Remain in place" strategies where evacuation would rarely be needed because the building is supposed to be designed so that most occupants are in no danger from likely emergencies such as a fire in another residence.
> I wouldn't think that the idea that hardware should obey its operator would need to be defended in HN of all places.
"I am entitled to whatever I want" is indeed a pretty common libertarian nonsense we see on HN but it tend to get shot down more often than not. There's no reason that hardware should be designed to do unreasonable things just because that's "obeying its operator".
>There's no reason that hardware should be designed to do unreasonable things just because that's "obeying its operator".
You're not talking about designing a piece of hardware to do unreasonable things. You're talking about designing a piece of hardware to be unable to do arbitrary things. Why do I say arbitrary? Because the designer is not omniscient. They cannot conceive of all the possible future situations in which their product will be used. Are you really unable to imagine situations where it might be necessary to drive on the road regardless of the conditions outside?
That aside, this has nothing to do with libertarianism or "doing whatever you want". I'm not saying if you decide to drive on the road in such conditions you should not be liable if you cause an accident. I'm saying, simply, "people should be able to use their property however they like". That doesn't seem like such a controversial idea to me. Or are you saying you shouldn't be able to do that? You don't trust yourself to use your property responsibly?
What if there were some situation where I needed to rig the battery of my car to discharge so fast it explodes? Since the hardware can be physically driven to do that, obviously the software should support doing it. The designers of the software are just nannying me by not enabling the 'self destruct' capability that my property has. They just don't trust me to use it responsibly.
> Even your Level 5 domain is dubious as I've written before. Jim would drive in a blizzard, some Level 5 car refuses to drive in a blizzard. Is the car faulty by this definition or is Jim a lunatic ? I think it's probably Jim.
I would put it up to the "reasonable person" test. I'm not sure what's dubious about the fact that "human level" doesn't and can't mean you're a perfect match to every human.
> I think Level 4 is clearer because it's closer to public transit.
I don't know if it's clearer in the general case. Basically any set of operating restrictions that is sub-human counts as level 4, and you could have a detailed and nuanced list of operating restrictions on level 4 that's just as complicated or more complicated than a level 5 setup.
> As I understand it, there's no reason you'd need a Driving License to ride in a Waymo for example. Waymo is driving, you're in the back like a cab, why would you need a license?
You "need" a license and insurance because Waymo and other self-driving companies will never ever allow a scenario where they're liable for accidents. They'll move heaven and earth to prevent it.
Do you have any source that you need a license and insurance to ride with a Waymo car?
Because according to the Waymo One public service rules [1] you need to be 18 or older to use the app and order a Waymo, but they don't mention anything about requiring a license or insurance.
It would also be a weird requirement, since you sit in the back and couldn't control the car even if you wanted to.
> “From our perspective at Waymo, a Level 4 vehicle is a vehicle in which you can put a rider who doesn't have a driver’s license or vision and they could move from point A to point B,” Krafcik said. “If you need a driver’s license, you can’t call it self-driving.”
It is well-defined given its scope as a taxonomical classification, rather than a technical specification.
From the opening paragraph [0]:
“This document does not provide specifications, or otherwise impose requirements on, driving automation systems (for further elaboration, see 8.1).
[1]:
“8.1 This document is not a specification and imposes no requirements.
This document provides a logical taxonomy for classifying driving automation features (and ADS-equipped vehicles), along with a set of terms and definitions that support the taxonomy and otherwise standardize related concepts, terms and usage in order to facilitate clear communications. As such, it is a convention based upon reasoned agreement, rather than a technical specification.“
I have been on Jeff's side of this bet since they announced it. Level 5 is simply too high of a bar to reach in the next few years, and in fact we are going about it the wrong way. We need smart roads more than smart cars.
(Note that there's an escape hatch here, which is that the AI falls back to some human in a call center for guidance to get out of sticky situations. In my opinion that still doesn't qualify as level 5.)
There's such an (exciting!) opportunity for us to create automated people mover systems that connect small and large systems to get people from very close to A to very close to B.
The design and engineering activities involved in solving this would be very enjoyable work, and the human benefits when (eventually) operational would be huge.
Every solution would need to be custom for its city/region, but one of the common ideas is concentric circles of trains, spaced at appropriate(ly large) distances, with trains running between in perpendicular direction. Basically wheels and spokes.
The wheel trains could stay in motion always, only slowing at connection points where the perpendicular trains would temporarily turn and run in parallel. Both trains would slow, cars would connect, passengers would come and go, and then trains would separate. Perpendicular train curves back in for its perpendicular direction of travel, and "wheel" train picks up speed and heads for the next spoke connection. Obviously any problem causes the joined trains to slow, even to a stop if necessary (to prevent human harm).
There are so many different possibilities here, but ultimately I think it should be possible for a human to walk 5-10 minutes to some station, get on some people mover, and eventually get out of another people mover within 5-10min walking distance of their ultimate destination... all without ever setting foot outside of a train aside from start/end points.
Hehe, the tldr was still too long for my time/attention. However...
> It’s much saner to have one car break down and allow 999,999 people to keep on schedule.
Obviously that's very wrong, as we know that one car breaking down on the freeway has a major negative effect on everything behind it. And if it's something bigger than one car... I recall one evening in Dallas when a chemical tanker turned over and created a situation which required all traffic on a major freeway to take an exit, use the access road, and then eventually return to the freeway. Even though it was after evening rush out, the ripple effect eventually spanned to two sequentially related freeways. Basically long road travel in the city stopped for hours.
In my mental fantasy, I see two vertical levels. One is for passengers and operates with more connections and stops, and one is for cargo (where transfers can be fully automated like with a successful airport luggage routing system... or probably some kind of system which Amazon has already perfected at scale).
They two improvements I see over today's public transport realities are:
1. If greenfield is possible, which unfortunately it really is not (unless we are planning a whole new urban environment), there is a physical network design which balances maximum travel time from any point to any point. This would be something elevator designers have already managed for big towers, I would think. But this time, it's in two dimensions.
2. There are novel temporary linkings of different vehicles to allow passengers to transfer from one to another without stopping either vehicle. I suppose in the extreme case, each passenger could be in a small sit/stand capsule, and some plucking and moving of capsules could be done by robotic systems which are aware of everything (including route/dest.)
Really, these are just lame solutions based on our current understanding of nature. Teleportation is the best answer ;).
I can only speak of Netherlands from experience, and it is not what I mean. I don't expect anywhere else has done what I have envisioned.
The usual challenge is that the cities are old and organically structured. So the possible paths for public transport are limited; and there's very little space for big interchanges.
But what exists is way, way better than nothing. With trains, metros, trams, and buses (and walking), you can get around quite well. It just can take a long time due to timing mismatches between modes.
When the tram comes only once every 15 min, and your metro drops you without enough time to walk (or run!) to the tram, it means you now wait 15min for the next one. When I was commuting to work in Amsterdam via tram+metro, it took me at minimum 30 minutes with walk+tram+metro+walk. If I rode my bike, it was the same. But if timings didn't work out well, the public transport option could be +25 min longer... so 55min. And on cold sh*tty rainy days (half of winter), the metro would be jammed with people such that you might need to stand and wait for the next one. The bike option was always possible, but it's no fun to ride in cold rain with wind.
In summary, it was better than 60 minutes of bumper to bumper driving commute in Dallas/Fort Worth, but it had much room for better alternatives... if one could go greenfield.
Train is only accounted for 16% of travel done even in the place where it’s most popular in Europe (Switzerland). So no, train isn’t the answer. An important part, yes.
It would be very nice to be able to "link" my electric car into a convoy of other electric cars at say "San Diego" and allow the system to take said convoy to somewhere in "Los Angeles" and reassert control.
This would solve a lot of the "last mile" problems that we currently have with train stations in the US (need to park at one terminus, need to get picked up at the other, can't deal with accidents on rails, etc.).
It'd be even nicer to have investments in public transport infrastructure to allow large population centers to not depend on cars for the majority of A to B trips.
The problems of last mile train stations in the US are completely self-inflicted, to cater for the current status quo of car-centric development, you don't need massive parking lots in central train stations for the majority of big population centres in Europe.
> It'd be even nicer to have investments in public transport infrastructure to allow large population centers to not depend on cars for the majority of A to B trips.
Your suggestion requires that we demolish and redo entire swathes of cities before we would gain any benefits. My suggestion can be implemented piecemeal on specific corridors and start gaining benefits immediately.
Path dependence is a thing. Political will is finite with short time horizons. Something which can be implemented piecemeal is less optimal but more likely to gain enough momentum to deliver real benefits.
That's just kicking the can further down than what's been already kicked. If the only matter for political will is short-term gains then there's absolutely no possibility of revamping decrepit and inadequate structures such as the lack of public transportation in the US.
At some point it'll be needed to do it, the longer the wait the more painful it will become. As you pointed out, it's already pretty fucking painful to achieve it, introducing new features unto an inadequate system is just compounding the issues in the long-term for just a small short-term gain, it's not really smart to do it.
Instead of starting to properly address the issue of transportation at scale, your suggestion will just add a component of "smartness" to a system that is already overloaded and definitely not good for society. Car-dependency is not a net positive. I'm not against people using and having cars but depending on them for transportation between large population centres is an absurd waste of resources for a society...
Simple and easy solutions have a tendency to create even larger problems, it's unfortunate there's no political will in the USA to revamp its transportation system because it's clear to not be the most efficient way for your society to move around.
They are absolutely not popular. I've never heard of them, despite having both family and friends who went on yearly car trips across (one or more of) Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, and Denmark.
Looking into it, it seems they were popular decades ago, but they've been all but shut down by the 2010s due to unprofitability, and only a handful of seasonal routes remain now.
Though who knows, if gas prices keep increasing, they might enjoy a brief resurgence for a decade or so until enough people have switched to EV.
But it will take quite a bit of an increase. I looked at the longest route, 1300km Hamburg-Verona (which would actually interest me!) and it costs 400 to 600€, depending on the date. That's well over twice as much as the current gas prices, even being generous; while I guess it includes sleeping arrangements, you could stay in a very fancy hotel with the money you saved.
There's a high mountain pass with a glacier being in the way, the Lötschenpass. There's only a hiking path over it. A few kilometers to the west, there's another high mountain pass, the Gemmipass that has an extremely steep drop to the south such that in medieval times not even a mule track was possible. People avoided the rockfaces by going over an even higher saddle to which they got on by a steep grassy ridge. Today there's a cable car and hiking path blasted into the rocks, somewhat like the path to Angel's Landing in Zion National Park.
Up to today there are no roads over that mountain range between the Cantons of Bern and Valais for about 100 km. Only the Lötschberg railroad tunnel. People from the eastern part of Valais "have trains you can just drive your car into".
I myself have a customer card of the railroad operator because it's the most direct way to the south, and we go about once a month. They also offer transportation through a second mountain pass to Italy. After 35 minutes of driving and after one hour of relaxing we enjoy Italy's dolce vita.
There are other railroad operators taking cars. I know one in the Canton of Grisons, and between France and England there's another one.
This is a "road smell"; not unlike a code smell, it's when the current scenario has such awkward and ugly (and low chance of success) solutions that you must stop and consider the premise and original goal.
In this case, the original goal is to get people from A to B. And, pardon the pun, but cars and roads are a dead end solution.
Just think about any large scale governmental software project and amplify that 10-100x. That's what I imagine :-)
> The design of the website was overseen by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and built by a number of federal contractors, most prominently CGI Group of Canada. The original budget for CGI was $93.7 million, but this grew to $292 million prior to launch of the website. While estimates that the overall cost for building the website had reached over $500 million prior to launch and in early 2014 HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said there would be "approximately $834 million on Marketplace-related IT contracts and interagency agreements," the Office of Inspector General released a report in August 2014 finding that the total cost of the HealthCare.gov website had reached $1.7 billion and a month later, including costs beyond "computer systems," Bloomberg News estimated it at $2.1 billion.
> To give a simple example, the US spends a ton of infrastructure. Yet it doesn't even have really smart traffic lights like the Dutch do.
That's not an example of what it would cost, though.
> Just think about any large scale governmental software project and amplify that 10-100x. That's what I imagine :-)
If I imagine the software costing ten million dollars, and then balloon it to a billion, I think that's still only half a percent of the annual road budget.
Same, I don't see it happening unless most cars in the road have the capabality of intercommunication to perform sensor fusion with other cars. This implies that everyone gets on board using the same protocol.
As for smart roads, what would these imply? Bear in mind maintenance costs and the fact that asphalt is 100% recycled and reusable.
Maybe something as simple as an active RF emitter in the reflective or similar spikes added to the road surface. It wouldn't require a networked infrastructure, or complex standards. Just something capable of penetrating feet of snow or inches of dirt and grime.
The car would always have other sensors to fallback on, but this would reduce the amount of time that the DDT disengages due to inclement weather or other road hazards.
Add to this emitters in cones and possibly emergency vehicles.
I don't think adding RF emitters / magnets to the road surface actually solves any problems. A driver needs to know the trajectory of the road several seconds into the future. At useful speeds, that's on the order of 100 meters. Either you dynamically generate a map in a local reference frame, or you localize within a static map in a global reference frame. RF beacons won't provide enough resolution to be useful for dynamic mapping beyond a couple of meters. RF beacons may incrementally help with localization within a global map by providing additional observations for a localization filter, but no one doing global mapping is asking for that since they're already using lidar to do it.
I think useful "smart" road infrastructure would necessarily be horribly complicated, since the point of it would be to offload otherwise necessary complexity from the vehicles using the road. Perhaps the road could track the real time kinematics of all the cars on the the road using some combination of cameras, lidar, UWB, etc. It could then communicate that information via RF to the vehicles that want to receive it, along with local mapping information.
The automotive industry has been excited about "vehicle-to-vehicle" comms for the past 15 years aka V2V. Technically, all the standards that have emerged from the industry's efforts seem lame and nothing interesting has come of it. The FCC granted a chunk of 5Ghz spectrum for automotive DSRC use, and have subsequently taken back most of it for lack of use. It's still allocated for automotive, but it's now in the hands of the cell modem providers to do something useful with it.
How does one power active RF emitters on miles and miles of road surface? The vast majority of surface level roadway doesn’t even have powered illumination in most places, which leads me to think the lowest hanging fruit for this type of thing would be something passive, like the RF equivalent of cats eyes.
So how does this compare with Tesla? Is what I’d want to know. These levels maybe ok for engineers . Consumers like me watch YouTube videos to tell how good a car is at self driving
This is an eyes off autonomy level. So you can read a book while it does its thing. It however only works in a very narrow set of conditions.
Tesla doesn't have anything that's eyes off yet. You need to monitor the road. Tesla seems to be going for breadth first (FSD beta working everywhere and doing every manouver) and not depth (autonomy only for highway without changing lanes but reliable enough for eyes off)
If that's the case, then I think Mercedes chose the best option. It's when doing long drives on highways it's really useful to be able to read a book, work, play a board game with the passengers, talking in a focused way, nap etc.
It's most likely also much easier to make a car drive autonomously on highways versus on smaller roads, city roads, dirt roads etc.
Much better than what Tesla offers since you can read a book, watch a movie, etc. Basically you don't have to pay attention. And Mercedes might be taking on legal liability for the system. They do that in Germany, not sure if they're doing that in the US.
Yes, as a manufacturer they (and everyone else in the chain of commerce) have strict liability for damages caused by product defects in the US, even with the US’s comparatively weak consumer protection laws.
I’d be surprised if that wasn’t the case in Germany, independent of any decision Mercedes would make beyond the one to make and sell the car.
Might also be a problem because I am sure this is a calculated risk. We can pay X amount of law suites until our profit is impacted.
Didn't Ford do a similar thing with their explorer? They knew about a roll over issue but decided that it was finacilly cheaper to pay the lawsuits than recall the vehicle.
But the level they're selling still requires that the driver be able to resume control when notified. So the "the car notified the driver to take over, disengaged, and shortly following that the driver crashed the car" narrative is still possible, even when the "shortly following that" might actually be "0.1s later". Sorry, our tech wasn't engaged at the time, you're actually the one at fault here.
Yes, the standard requires that the driver be given "a few seconds" to resume before the system disengages, but things can change dramatically in a few seconds at highway speeds.
I don't see that in the link you provided? I think I heard of this crash, but I don't remember specifics, and it looks like Tesla didn't comment.
On a page of statistics they put together, they said "we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before impact", and that seems sufficient for a level 2 system.
It makes much more sense to me then the non-sense Tesla does. Tt is a use case which would be very valuable for me. In Germany they are now in principle allowed to offer this up to 130km/h on the motorway. They don't offer it yet, but that would already be a killer feature for me.
This is a gimmick. Mercedes is claiming liability for the car because the feature only works in extremely limited set of circumstances (traffic jam, cruising at less than 39 mi/hr).
Tesla's Autopilot has long been able to do this in this domain, and it does it well; they just don't claim liability yet because $reasons (I'm sure they're gearing up for it with Tesla Insurance).
As we see in the announcement, Drive Pilot doesn't even perform automated lane changes yet, which even Ford's BlueCruise system can do.
Assuming liability for malfunction is the stellar opposite of "gimmick." It's an actual SLA on a GA feature rather than pre-alpha toy tech that a certain despicable company that won't be named hoists on all public roadway users in the vicinity of their garbage vehicles.
But it’s not just a gimmick, as you point out, they are claiming liability for accidents in those limited circumstances. If that’s a gimmick, then we need more gimmicks.
It also makes no sense that level 3 means it provides 10 second notice if you need to take over. Cameras can't see 10 seconds ahead of you at highway speeds to know whether there's a situation it can't navigate.
My 2016 adaptive cruise control already does this. There must be more to it than this. ACC will follow the car in front of me to a complete stop if necessary already. And then resume too.
My understanding is that in this case Mercedes if fully liable if something goes wrong - so you are allowed to watch a movie or read a book. If the car proceeds to crash into the car in front of you, Mercedes is on the hook, not you.
I doubt your liability is waved when reading a book while using the adaptive cruise control in your car.
“Like related Level 2 driver-assistance systems, Mercedes' Level 3 technology handles driving speed, following distance, and steering. In the meantime, it keeps tabs on a preset route and traffic signs and signals. The system can also brake and/or maneuver to avoid potential situations.”
So, it reacts to traffic signs, and can change lanes to pass slower cars.
The article doesn’t mention the cutoff speed for L3 though. I think in Germany it is limited to 60km/h or 40mi/h.
Also, only certified in Nevada currently (but California to follow soon). And seems like available only in S class or EQS class.
Basically, for now benefits chauffeurs of expensive limo companies ferrying customers along the Las Vegas strip (admittedly an over simplification for the purpose of humour)
Cannabis legalization and everything else: "We need to study the potential effects for 20 years to be absolutely sure it's safe."
Allowing Mercedes let cars drive 130km/h on their own: "Seems about fine, signed."
Not complaining about the lack of bureaucracy in this case but it is crazy how fast they got the initial law change passed and now they've even updated the speed to 130, even though no car is capable of qualifying yet.
There is(was?) a phrase here: „Wenn Volkswagen hustet, geht es Niedersachsen nicht gut.“ meaning If VW is coughing (the whole of) Niedersachsen suffers.
Apparently said by former chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
> According to the SAE levels of driving automation, a Level 3-capable vehicle can take over certain driving tasks, but a driver is still required to be present and ready to take control of the car at all times when prompted to intervene.
The first part of the article mentions the driver being able to take a meeting or watch a movie. That’s complete horseshit if they need to be ready to take control of the car at all times.
In Germany (where this system is already available) Mercedes takes liability and the system gives the driver a 10 second advanced warning before they have to take over.
It's also only available on certain stretches of the Autobahn. If the system allows you to enable it, you can use it. The German law allows autonomous driving up to 130 km/h although Mercedes currently only allows their system to work up to 60 km/h.
This has to be the standard for all but the most egregious examples of other-driver-at-fault crashes. That, together with marketing standards, e.g. you can say FSD but you have to also disclose Level 2, should help clean things up while incentivizing good development.
Didn't find anything, but I imagine it's similar to normal car insurance. In Germany most insurances are capped at 100m (legal minimum is 7.7m). Most expensive accident in history was 32m.
It's important to note that healthcare is much cheaper in Germany than in the US. In addition to that, compensation for injuries also tends to be much lower. That massively affects the costs of accidents.
In Germany if you are liable for an accident the health insurance of the affected people will bill you for all incurring costs. At market rate, not at "health insurance discount" rate. I wouldn't bet that the cost in that case is lower than in the US.
Sometimes it pays off to have a cool head with tech too: have you ever seen a broken down Mercedes on the side of the road? Well, I just thought about it too, and no, never.
The article is correct. The SAE explains this in more detail and makes the distinction between being constantly ready to immediately take over and being asked to resume driving.
Is this supposed distinction actually meaningful? I don't know...color me unconvinced.
When I interpret "being constantly ready to immediately take over" language, it's unambiguous that I need to maintain full situational awareness as if I were driving the vehicle.
Physically and mentally transitioning from partial to full situational awareness obviously takes some time, and yet from the graphic in the SAE link, the chart remains entirely ambiguous about the permitted time between "when the feature requests" and when "you must drive".
Furthermore, a quick review of SAE J3016 Rev 2021-04 reflects equally ambiguous language in § 5.4 NOTE 4 (my emphasis):
> NOTE 4: In the event of a DDT performance-relevant system failure in a Level 3 ADS, or in the event that the ADS exits its ODD, the ADS will issue a request to intervene within sufficient time for the fallback-ready user (whether in-vehicle or remote) to respond appropriately.
I'm curious what the normative minimum of "sufficient time" will be in practice.
There’s a big difference between “constantly vigilant” and “you can chill out and watch YouTube, and just, like, don’t be drunk or super stoned
The way I’m reading the SAE, it’s closer to the second. Like, it’s actual real self driving, but might need the user to take back control with a modicum of warning if it sees, say, a construction zone ahead or if it detects too much standing water on the road.
Chilling out and watching youtube is still a huge issue though. You lose situational awareness and, drunk or not, you cannot react to sudden urgent issues that confuse the system.
There are studies on this, but most of them are paywalled.[1] The key value issue is "takeover time", where a level 3 system asks the driver to take over. Values studied are in the 5 to 7 second range.
This is marginal. Volvo was trying for a level 3 system where, if the driver did nothing, the vehicle ended up safely stopped, preferably out of traffic. That's the gold standard for level 3.
"Under German law, to be allowed to operate at Level 3 above 37 mph, vehicles will have to be able to autonomously reach a 'safe haven' such as a breakdown lane in case of an emergency."[2] Mercedes is not there yet. They claim 10-second handoff, but they really want the human back on line in 3 seconds.[3] Look away from the road for 5 seconds, and the system starts complaining.
I can’t find anything supporting “they really want the human back on line in 3 seconds” in your 3rd link. Quite the contrary:
> You’re allowed to take your hands off the steering wheel, to take your eyes off the road, and even to turn your head to the side. But you can’t take a nap.
>
> As I discovered in my short closed-course test-drive, some flexibility is built into the system. For instance, as long as you’re belted, it’s OK to look back to a child in the back seat for three to five seconds.
>
> You can push it too far, though. After consulting with the engineer in the passenger seat, I closed my eyes completely, and just eight or nine seconds later a prompt popped up asking me to confirm I was still alert. I ignored it, which soon started the 10-second countdown toward disengagement.
Human back online in three seconds is really not much different from instantaneous. Certainly not reasonable to read a book with both hands on the book and not on the steering wheel.
The graphic in that link is very helpful in describing the feature set by driving automation level. However, the green/blue color coding is misleading IMO. That tiny blue box in Level 3 means that while you are technically not driving and can take your eyes off the road, you must be ready to start driving at any time. 10 seconds warning really is not a lot of time at highway speeds when you must unexpectedly context switch between whatever you were doing and driving. It seems to me that the real leap in ability occurs when going from Level 3 to Level 4, not Level 2 to Level 3. I also have a hunch that if/when we get to Level 4 we will end up with a bunch of sublevels (Level 4.1, 4.2, 4.n) that progressively expand the conditions under which the system will operate over a period of decades as we asymptotically approach Level 5.
It certainly sounds like a contradiction, but I suppose it comes down to how much time the driver has to take control "when prompted to intervene". If they are expected to take control in (for example) less than one second's notice, then yes driver must keep their attention on the road at all times.
If the car is able to recognize far enough in advance that it doesn't know what to do in a situation and reduce speed, pull over, etc., then that could be enough time for a person to put down their phone and take control of the vehicle.
Big difference between needing to keep attention on the road because the car is liable to hit parked cars obstructing the travel lane, and merely having to be ready to start paying attention when the operational design domain of a L3 system is no longer met. Like for this Drive Pilot, when traffic speeds up to 40 MPH.
The only thing is whether or not Mercedes will take liability for their system if it causes an incident while operating within their defined driving limitation (eg. 35mph). If they still say "it's up to you", it's tough to trust it enough to read a book or watch a movie.
> The first part of the article mentions the driver being able to take a meeting or watch a movie.
I think the idea here is that typical executive meetings ( which of course Mercedes owners would be) are monotonous and boring and it would not take more than 20% of your attention in any case.
Roughly same for movies as it has to be Hollywood franchise movies which even if one is watching first time, it still feels like seeing same thing thousand times before. And now concentrating on road looks more interesting than movie.
All Mercedes has to do is put `*` on Movies/Meetings and define them appropriately to be on firm legal grounds.
It is 100% attention. The caveat is there is ample time after the car notifies you to take control where you put down your task, look around and gain situational awareness. How often that happens is a question. Seemingly rare enough you could reliably do a meeting, that latter part is just a presumption though.
No '*', Mercedes takes full responsibility and there are many seconds before it shifts control (and liability). The system can reliably predict when it will want to give back control.
Right, these things seem worse than nothing if they're good enough to make you completely distracted, paying no attention to the road, but them dump control over to you the minute something unexpected happens.
That describes Tesla FSD, not this. Tesla does level 2 in more varied of situations, but that warning time before taking control is a very key difference. Enough that you can pay 0 attention to be able to look around and see what's up before taking control (vs, you're expected to swerve the car when it fails)
L3 driving is only available at low speeds, approx 35mph which means only useful for stop-and-go traffic. Many cars with adaptive cruise control can already do this.
I created a mySAE account to download the full spec. What I found is that the manufacturer generally has fairly free reign to define their "operational design domain (ODD)" for level 3 systems, aka what conditions the car's "level 3" operation is designed for and can operate under. The only real requirement for level 3 is that OEDR is required (monitoring the driving environment (detecting, recognizing, and classifying objects and events and preparing to respond as needed) and executing an appropriate response to such objects and events (i.e., as needed to complete the DDT and/or DDT fallback [fallback to driver]).
The big difference is MB is taking liability in the event of a collision and he car won’t simply hand control back to the driver. This is much more advanced than any L2 system and the fact MB is taking liability is a whole different ballpark.
> L3 driving is only available at low speeds, approx 35mph
In that case, this paragraph from the article doesn't make much sense (in fairness, it was on pretty shaky ground to begin with):
> Mercedes’ Level 3 conditionally automated driving assistant can, on suitable highway sections [emphasis added] and where traffic density is high, offer to take over the driving, leaving the driver free to do something else, like watch a movie or participate in a meeting.
Highways during rush hour in many cities have traffic that moves very slowly for many miles/hours. This L3 is perfect for those situations where people are reading books during the stop and go.
The difference is the confidence level. The required level of supervision. Other cars, like Teslas, can “do” this task, but not with enough certainty that they are safe to do it while not being actively monitored by a driver.
I think it’s a branding issue. It was supposed to be a SV darling to do it first, not some legacy German carmaker.
You can see significantly more negativity for non-SV tech, especially when they do something outside of the narrative. If it’s an electric car, should be batteries and not fuel cells for example.
This is also one of the reasons why if a company wants to go big needs to move to SV. It looks much better when things happen the correct way, you don’t have to do all that convincing.
> It was supposed to be a SV darling to do it first, not some legacy German carmaker.
I feel quite vindicated by this, because I've always been (perhaps irrationally) rather suspicious of Tesla. Software company suddenly decides to make 'luxury cars'? Cool story bro.
My opinion is that the German triad (BMW, VW (and subsidiaries, including Porsche), Merc-Benz) may have lost some ground to Tesla when it comes to EVs and self-driving cars, but they have an immense mind- and market-share and will quickly recover lost ground. They have a pretty good engineering-first mentality, too.
Plus, they have always built generally good cars (late 1990s-early 2000s unreliability notwithstanding).
In fact, this is not surprising at all. Audi claimed in 2017 that its A8 was capable of Level 3 self-driving[1], but the system was subsequently downgraded. In the intervening years, the Germans' research into self-driving cars has drastically expanded.
> My opinion is that the German triad (BMW, VW (and subsidiaries, including Porsche), Merc-Benz) may have lost some ground to Tesla when it comes to EVs and self-driving cars, but they have an immense mind- and market-share and will quickly recover lost ground. They have a pretty good engineering-first mentality, too.
Americans, SV and HN especially, are also oblivious to this.
The current VW CEO was just sent packing.
Why?
Software quality.
They know it's do or die and the level of investment into it is huge, they've been hiring software devs like crazy, in Germany.
Exactly. More like they are selling vaporware. I paid $7500 for the self driving mode _a full year ago_ and it I definitely don't expect it to ever work now. They clearly sold customers something they didn't have.
If you are a Tesla AP owner, I have a question for you that has been bothering me for a while. Would you demand a complete refund if Tesla announced a Level-3-ish model with LiDAR? Because for a while I have been wondering if that's why they are so keen on camera-only self driving.
When Tesla's sky-high P/E was predicated on software supremacy. I was informed self-driving robotaxis would be a multi-billion dollar industry that Tesla and Uber would dominate, destroying legacy automakers in the process. This was back when Uber had a self-driving program, it's been downhill since. TO answer your question more concretely: I'd say since 8-10 years ago.
But, like, that's after they were making EVs. The roadster was announced in 2006, and started production in 2008 - 15 years ago.
They went from making EVs, which are cars with some software inherently in them, to making different cars with even more software in them. They're a car company first, who have been increasing the amount of software they've written to put in their cars.
The comment I was replying to was suggesting they were a software company first, which then pivoted to making cars. Which is... just... what?!?
Yes, you technically answered my question, so thanks for taking the time and making the effort and whatever, but just not in a way that is actually helpful in the context that I asked it.
I suspect there's a semantic collision on the meaning of first: it can refer to temporal ordering (occured before other events), first can also also refer to primacy/importance (which was my reading. i.e. to be read as "Tesla is fundamentally a software company which happens to sell cars." A take I never agreed with, but was the basis of the overvaluation.)
In my mind it makes sense for Mercedes-Benz to be the first one to do this. There's probably a laundry list of automotive firsts that are associated with just the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
Sure, they even did some cool self driving experiments back in the 80s-90s but the tech wasn't ready. There must be a video of a mercedes loaded with PCs driving slowly but autonomously.
Anyway, the way I see it is, to get positive reaction you need to drive and follow the narrative. That is, for example, providing arguments about how it should be done as if it is a public debate and then reveal your tech. Then you will have fanboys and and hateboys and people will feel involved and if you do it in SV your ability to do what you say you do would not be questioned as much because magic happens in SV.
You say that your car is basically a computer o wheels and the story gets traction, when a car company makes a self driving car it doesn't fit and will need to do much more convincing because the techies will be digging in to find faults. The computer on wheels might cause crashes but the techies will be much more forgiving and look for excuses.
And Mercedes has been pumping huge amounts of money into it for at least a decade. They're just much more conservative than typical SV companies so they only publicly announce products when they're ready.
I don't think the Benz Patent-Motorwagen is considered an S-Class. Technically you could say that the S-Class is derived from the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, but you could also say that about any other car.
For some reason, a large part of HN users seem to hate every fundamentally new technology. It seems the majority here thinks the next 20 years will be like the last 20 years, with only minor, gradial improvements. And every idea of a bigger shift is a scam.
I have yet to see a good explanation of this.
Maybe this is the case on every forum, simply because that is the prevailing attitude among people in general? During the evolution of mankind, fundamental shifts have probably not happened during a lifetime. So maybe our brains are wired to fight the idea of fundamental change as nonsense or betrayal?
Reflecting on the infamous dropbox comment, I think it has to do with being jealous of the attention someone else's idea and/or implementation is getting. After all, I could build Twitter in a weekend - but I didn't - but the fact that you're getting all this attention. Grr. I want to be the star of the show!
I try to push back against this attitude by leaving positive comments to the effect of "Hey, this is cool!" for cool things, but it's an eyedropper against the ocean sort of situation.
It seems to me that a large part of HN users are over forty. I'm over forty. When I was twenty, every new technology that promised the world was to be believed. Now that I'm over forty, the bar for believing in a new hype is very very high.
This may be more a result of news outlets exaggerating claims, than of actual creative entities themselves overpromising.
The thing is, most Mercedes employees are over forty. So while news outlets might exaggerate, Mercedes doesn't really. They tend to only publish products when they're ready.
But the twenties of today are also wary of many thing that we, the fourtier tech (bearded white males? true in my case) cared about.
"We" built a free, open, internet. Which brought the twentiers mostly surveillance capitalism by a few monopolists. "We" built a system in which companies that seed division can generate trillions of revenue from that. Twentiers (tweens?) rightfully are sceptical about the things I am sceptical about today, but which I rooted for (and spent my energy on) in my twenties.
Because a lot of people here are very pessimistic ("this won't work/it's not viable/it's fake/etc"), and whenever there's actual progress that contradicts their previous predictions, they try to save face, move goal posts, etc because obviously they couldn't have misjudged the technology.
To be fair I don't think this particular "L3" is groundbreaking but what I said still applies.
You have to be, working in self-driving I know for a fact a lot of "shortcuts" were used in a lot of places. For example, using LiDAR data, map data, overfitting on a short section of road to make it seem the solution is universal when it's just "hardwired".
I wouldn't necessarily call it fake, but it was unsustainable and sometimes oversold.
Good luck communicating this to everyone that takes every opportunity to shit on Tesla and tries to claim that Tesla is falling behind in self driving.
> Mercedes’ Level 3 conditionally automated driving assistant can, on suitable highway sections and where traffic density is high, offer to take over the driving, leaving the driver free to do something else, like watch a movie or participate in a meeting.
Objectively speaking, the article IS complete horseshit, if it resorts to suggesting "watching a movie" or "participating in a meeting".
Which has got nothing to do with the technology itself, though.
Maybe I'm picking wrong examples, but lately almost every "distruptor" company or tech either turned to be an outright scam or a net negative social outcome.
Uber never got big in places with decent worker protection laws, which makes me believe that their entire business model depends on exploiting their totally-not-employees. So, I disagree. It might have made the world better for their customers, but that doesn't tip the scale for me.
Much like airbnb, if it was true to its original mission, it would work well, aka people looking to earn some side cash. But if you are working a low-paid driver "0-hour" contract job without health insurance and a self-funded minimum cover insurance and no PTO, sick days or benefits, that kind of sucks.
I’ve read convincing arguments that while drivers may believe they are better off, the cost/income numbers are such that drivers essentially break even. If true, Uber is merely taking advantage of their drivers lack of sophistication re: vehicle wear/depreciation, and the drivers are not actually better off financially. Even if we find no ethical complaint, a shift in the cost/income value perception by drivers seems like a notable risk.
> It seems the majority here thinks the next 20 years will be like the last 20 years, with only minor, gradial improvements. And every idea of a bigger shift is a scam.
More like the last 200 years will be like the last 200 years. When has there been some truly "giant shift" that swept the world in less than a decade?
The automobile we know today was an outgrowth of the decades of developments of steam engines to farm tractors to passenger vehicles and was only fully enabled once we built the interstate system and has required decades of further development particularly of safety systems to bring us to the comfortable place we are now.
I imagine this technology will eventually be useful, but so many more developments and earned experience needs to be gained before we can build out the rest of the infrastructure that will truly allow this technology to become a ubiquitous improvement over our current state.
It's maybe not that we're negative on the new technology, it's just that we'd like to acknowledge this gap and concentrate on the issues that it creates rather than getting lost in the perennial shine of the new.
These aren't exactly giant shifts though, just incremental progress. Maybe with the exception of cars vs horses, but this shift took at least half a century and two disruptive world wars happened in that time. For the other things, the enabling technologies were microchips and the internet, and those also took their time to grow.
If the web was not a giant shift, then I don't know what is. If mobile was not a giant shift, then I don't know what is.
The web created a searchable, worldwide instant knowledge base in which mankind shares what it knows.
Mobile makes everyone connected to everybody else, where ever they are.
For all of these examples, the time going from "most people are aware of it" to "most people use it" was less than 20 years.
Example: Most people in developed countries started to become aware of email in the 90s. In the 2010s most people had an email. Probably even in the 2000s already.
These were mostly 'predictable' consequences of miniaturization in electronics and connecting computers into networks which had been happening since the late 1940s and the 1960s. And those idea didn't come out of nowhere either, science fiction invented most of those concepts long before they could be technically realised (see Star Trek's communicators).
This is not a new technology. L3/L4 autonomous vehicles have existed for 50+ years.
Even in cars, it's not a new technology. But it's very easy to claim something without backing it up. Which is exactly what tesla has been doing with this "new technology" for the last 10 years. People are cautious about hearing news about self-driving, because in the past there have been some pretty major caveats.
Because I've been in the driver's seat of a tesla vehicle when it attempted to turn into oncoming traffic, color me skeptical. No reason for it to turn left, but started to crank the wheel left into oncoming traffic. It's dangerous to call that autonomous, precisely because of how good it "looks" from the outside. The closer people are to this, the more they'll trust it.
That is a hand-selected collection of seconds long snippets. By the manufacturer. That does not give me any sense of how well this car can drive itself.
I mean, there are a bunch of long form videos on Youtube from people who rode Waymo's service in Phoenix in particular. How long do you want to watch a car drive around ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPZH2PlmzFs is at least in San Francisco which is maybe more interesting than a Phoenix suburb
Oh, I see, sorry. I think the "as well as they do now" is a constraint which means the answer will be null because of continuous improvement.
But I believe the video with the blind guy does have a long form version somewhere, so if you consider that (different vehicle, much older technology) to be "as well as they do now" in the sense you meant then that's still roughly in the six year mark.
xracy talked about autonomous vehicles which will include at least trains. London's Victoria Line underground service build in the 1960s was always ATO, which is closer to L4 in this scheme than L3, under normal operation the original Victoria Line trains basically require the driver to push a button, closing the doors and then once the train concludes all of its doors are safely closed it will leave, drive to the next station, stop and open the doors, then we just rinse and repeat.
Now, trains don't actually use the car terminology, in trains we'd call this GoA2, Grade of Automation 2, with the next steps being GoA3 in which there's a human who knows how to operate the train manually in principle, and they are on the train, but they aren't up front "driving it" unless something went wrong; and then GoA4 in which the train doesn't have anything resembling a human driver it just has passengers, in an emergency some central authority will set out to rescue the passengers from their disabled train. There are a handful of GoA4 train systems, but they're probably only 5-10 years old.
There are largely two common takes on self-driving cars here:
- "Self-driving cars are a suspect and dangerous technology which is unlikely to perform as well as the companies promoting it claim, and may not become broadly useful for decades, if ever" (I broadly fall into this camp) - These people don't like it because it's a 'self-driving' car, FSVO self-driving.
- "Self-driving cars are coming any day now, and will be a transition straight to robo-taxis lead by visionary super-genius Elon Musk" (This has probably become less common as the promises from that camp haven't materialised over the last decade) - These people don't like it because it is insufficiently robo-taxi-y or musky.
There's possibly an argument that the first camp has become too cynical in response to the second, but as it stands there just isn't that much mindshare for this sort of cautious progress.
It used to be common to point out that 1/3rd of all of the self-made multimillionaires in the USA eventually go bankrupt. I don't know what the current statistic is, but 20 years ago I studied the issue in some detail, and the pattern was:
1. entrepreneur sees an opportunity that no one else sees
2. entrepreneur takes some big risks to take advantage of the opportunity
3. entrepreneur becomes wealthy because they took risks to take advantage of the opportunity
4. other entrepreneurs (or businesses) become interested now that the new opportunity has been proven
5. after 10 or 20 years of hard work, the original entrepreneur wants to shift their attention elsewhere, maybe relax, at the very moment that outside money is pouring into this opportunity
6. original entrepreneur goes bankrupt, as their attention was shifting away from their business just as competition was intensifying.
On a much larger scale, it seems Elon Musk is at risk of exactly this pattern. His attention shifted away from Tesla just as Tesla is facing increasing competition.
I am paraphrasing a quote I have heard before, "Pioneers get the bullets and settlers get the land." Might not be actual bullets but pioneers today have to deal with legislators, put up charging stations, develop most components from scratch and so on. These are the modern day bullets. If they don't get bought by a larger company the larger company launches a competing product with the benefit of the experiences of the pioneer.
Can't argue that Tesla's smaller than Mercedes when Tesla's market cap is so much larger. In 2021, at it's peak Tesla's market cap crossed $1.2 Trillion. Daimler at it's peak this year only reached $81 Billion (although climbing). Why couldn't Tesla just buy out Daimler? Even now Tesla sitting at a valuation of $372 Billion. It could happen tomorrow.
Tell me Elon's the savvy businessman you claim him to be. If Gates were running the company, he would have acquired half the auto industry by now.
As an owner who experiences the “joy” of dealing with a tesla on a daily basis it’s simple: Tesla is over-valued. There’s so many little gotchas and shortcuts taken that I find it impossible to believe this company is worth what people claim it is on paper. The theoretical wealth of this company stems from consumer/investor ignorance in my opinion. That’s why he hasn’t acquired more of his competitors, the value can’t be realized, it needs to stay bottled up as “potential” for lack of better words.
Umm that's not how mergers and takeovers work. He bought Twitter on a bully offer, half of which was paid with Tesla stock. If anything, this is the best way to convert overhyped stock into real value.
> If Gates were running the company, he would have acquired half the auto industry by now.
I love this. I haven’t heard it put this way before. I’m tempted to agree with you. Gates was one of the most aggressive, cutthroat, successful empire builders of this century.
Market cap has little to do with actual size of a company (employees, manufacturing capacity, ...), nor can a company with a larger market cap automatically buy a smaller one. Especially the latter completely ignores how markets work.
These mistakes are particularly egregious when you bring meme stocks like Tesla into it.
Market cap does not equate to cash on hand. Let's say I give you a banana for $1. You bring that banana to a marathon where someone will pay you $5 for it. That does not mean I now have $5.
Tesla could dilute their stock and sell more, but that is quite the dilution. Further, the sell price might not be just the market cap value, particularly for a profitable company. Though, exactly those kind of take overs do happen (and with tesla's numbers, not too hard to imagine)
Buying a major car company is buying a whole heap of liabilities and depreciating assets. The major value drivers (contributors to market cap) are brand, patent portfolio, and future revenues from existing capex.
Tesla doesn't want to support the supply chain of new and used parts for a legacy car company, they can barely keep up with their own (and they only make 4 models!).
“Legacy” is not a pejorative term, it’s descriptive. They have a dealer network. They have a parts counter. Their operations are the result of a 120 year legacy. Their valuation is based on longstanding economics of the automobile industry.
I’m saying all this to draw a comparison against Tesla. Tesla doesn’t want a dealer network, or a parts counter, or a typical car company valuation. Buying a legacy car company is not in Tesla’s interest, because they don’t want to play by the rules (unwritten or written) that every other auto manufacturer plays by.
Well, you know, you also get an established luxury brand, a cadre of brand-loyal customers, a significant increase in the manufacturing base and tons of proprietary tech. Are you telling me Mr. Musk would have bothered to create his own brand if he had enough capital to buy an existing brand to start with? The latter is a much safer strategy in bringing a car to market. He took big risks creating his own brand because he lacked the initial capital to buy one outright.
you inherit all the politics that comes with an existing company as well.
owners and CEOs are powerful but not infallible; Carlos Ghosn got thrown in jail when he got too big for his britches as CEO of Nissan (in Japan Inc.'s view, at least).
Why did my comment get downvoted? I'm sharing something that I learned back when I was doing serious research about entrepreneurship, and I'm pointing out that it applies to Elon Musk, an observation which should be relevant to the conversation.
I suspect because you did not relate your comment back to the article, it seems off topic to an article about Mercedes getting level3 self driving approved for nevada highways.
It is somewhat predictable that eventually responses would in particular start to focus on the elephant in the room.. fundamentally a parent comment should be about the article
Perhaps Tesla will suffer, very possible, but where are the Mercedes Satellite Constellations and re-usable Rockets? Mercedes Brain-Computer Interfaces?
Musk's businesses seems so financially diversified that one bombing overnight could just take some cash from the others. He's already leveraged Tesla stock to buy a massive Social Media platform, right? But the profitability of Twitter is certainly another point to be decided.
physiologically, the devices have a limited lifespan due to fact that the tissue will start scarring over and render the electrodes worthless, it's an invasive procedure that can only be done once or twice. Neuronal actions are chemical interactions, not digital computer signals as well.
I agree the work they've done is kind of exciting, but they didn't solve one of the crucial issues that's been blocking the field and technology from flourishing, implantable electrodes have been around for a long time.
Searching 'neuralink "scar"' ('' removed) got me information about the ethical issues of Neuralink@UC Davis, and a 2020 article about potential polymers to use in the wires.
I will continue to wait and see how the tech develops - I certainly was never planning on being one of the first early adopters anyways, but I still see a lot of potential for Paraplegics, and then obviously Consumer usage eventually.
I'm not expert but was involved in adjacent field, so I do not have a singular explanation and one pager. Neuroscience/biology research is complex, but a good indicator is that there are hundreds of papers on trying to modulate responses to implants. They have not gotten very far on a resilient solution to it, and like I said, it's been decades since they've discovered this problem and the fact that neural link doesn't even bring it up leads me to believe they are just BS ing everyone in the same way elon ignored major questions about FSD for tesla, they are nowhere near solving the actual crux of the issue.
The longevity and viability of their work being anything more than terminal experiments is the main thing, those obviously do not make it to normal human usage. Implantable electrodes have been around for a while and are not new technology.
That has existed in academia for 10-20 years. The only thing different is the marketing + the move fast break things ethos both of which are typically frowned upon in academia.
Do research yourself don't listen to randos on internet. Just look up on google scholar results for "implantable electrodes scarring" you can get hundreds of papers on it.
Isn't the definition of level 3 that you don't have to do this? Is your point that the claim of level 3 readiness is false or that all autonomous driving is somehow inferior to non autonomous driving?
If you are responsible for two tons of metal flying down the road at 70 mph you need to be fully engaged in that task.
We can handle being passengers and we can handle being drivers but we can't switch in a split second.
So my contention is that level-X where X is less than "I can fall asleep in the back seat" is a deadly valley between unassisted driving and passive passenger.
You’re correct, but this is the point of this announcement - 10secs to reorient yourself is a lot of time - it’s vastly different to “oops, you’re about to crash in 0.5s, sorry, you’re on your own”
10 seconds may be a lot or a little, depending on what you were doing. Humans are bad at grayscale rules and time estimation, so it's far safer to say "you're either a passenger or a driver" than to say "you're either a passenger or a driver or a person doing something that can easily be switched away from in 10 seconds".
A few examples of activities that could be hard to switch away from in time:
* Eating breakfast with food in my lap and the spoon halfway to my mouth.
* Typing an email.
* Reading a book.
Some of these could allow you to physically have your hands on the wheel in time, but then you still need to context switch your brain and then get up to date on the road.
> That's the thing - you're not. Once engaged, Mercedes takes liability, so you're no longer responsible.
Legally (though surely to be tested in court).
Morally though, I'd say the driver is still responsible if they kill someone. It doesn't feel right to say "Oh well, it's Mercedes' fault, shrug" after your car with you in it drives over someone else.
People are so blase about these prototypes roaming free - do people really think the trolley problem is directly applicable to these technologies or is just greed like everything else?
As I've said previously, this is just a marketing trick. It's not a technology breakthrough. It's a basic traffic jam assistant, which can be labeled as 'level 3', if Mercedes assumes liability. The conditions are limited to very low risk situations (low speed, straight highway, clear weather), which makes the expected cost of liability low.
Rephrasing it: I don't want to be the one preventing the car from doing stupid things. I want the car to be preventing me from doing stupid things.
For example my wife's previous Toyota would gently shake the steering wheel if I were to switch lanes without using the blinker. Or it'd warn me if I were to put my blinker while a car was in the lane I was planning to go to. Or take start and stop trafic, bumper to bumper in trafic jams... I want the car to prevent me from bumping in the car in front of me if I'm not careful enough (the Toyota didn't do that).
Stuff like that.
I find it very stressful to have an "autonomous but not really" car that I must baby-sit. I want instead to feel more relaxed by knowing that the car is probably there to help me should something be about to go wrong.