Self driving cars are still decades away

[Maserschmidt]

Ford CEO: “This was harder than we thought. But we’ll have something by 2021.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-09/ford-ceo-tamps-down-expectations-for-first-autonomous-vehicles

[steronz]

Well that’s a heck of a point there, Jim.

“We overestimated the arrival of autonomous vehicles,” Jim Hackett said Tuesday at a Detroit Economic Club event. While Ford’s first self-driving car is still coming in 2021, “its applications will be narrow, what we call geo-fenced, because the problem is so complex.”

So something by 2021, but not a self driving car.

[Barbarian]

FYI here is the latest ‘hack’ of a Tesla on autopilot: some paint on the road and the car veers into oncoming traffic.
Tesla says it’s not a big deal because the human is supposed to be paying attention.

[KellyCriterion]

Musk is clearly unphased by the skepticism coming from some SDMB quarters.

In the last few days…

1. Tesla release a 2 minute “full self driving” video, clocks 2.5m+ views in three days.

2. Musk again publicly comments on how close a fully autonomous car is:

"There are three steps to self driving. There’s being feature complete, then there’s being feature complete to the level where we think the person in the car doesn’t need to pay attention, and then there’s a reliability level where we can also convince regulators that this is true. We expect to be feature complete in self driving this year. We expect to be confident enough from our standpoint to say that we think people don’t need to touch the wheel or look out the window somewhere probably around second quarter of next year. And we expect to get regulatory approval, at least in some jurisdictions, toward the end of next year.

“That’s roughly the timeline I expect things to go on. Probably for trucks, platooning will be approved by regulators before anything else. If you’re driving a long-haul you could have one driver up front, and have four semis behind in a platooning manner, and I think the regulators will probably be quicker to approve that than other things.”

Looking at a history of Tesla’s achievements to date, he added: "All these things, we said we’d do them, and we did it. We’re gonna do the RoboTaxi thing too. The only criticism, and I think it’s a fair one, is that I’m not always on time. But I get it done, and the Tesla team gets it done. We expect to have the first RoboTaxis operating next year, with no-one in them.

"When things are on an exponential curve of improvement, it’s very difficult to wrap our minds around it because we’re used to working on a linear base. But when you’ve got massive amounts of hardware on the road, the cumulative data is increasing exponentially. The software is getting better at an exponential rate. I feel very confident in predicting autonomous RoboTaxis from Tesla next year.

Musk talks about this stuff like it’s tantalisingly close. I’m rooting for him. Go Elon, go!

[Tired_and_Cranky]

@KellyCriterion

Musk talks about this stuff like it’s tantalisingly close. I’m rooting for him. Go Elon, go!

I’m rooting for him too but I’m also skeptical. Musk is an unreliable source of information about what Tesla will accomplish. He’s even been sued by the SEC for his misstatements.

[Ravenman]

@KellyCriterion

Musk is clearly unphased by the skepticism coming from some SDMB quarters.

…

Musk talks about this stuff like it’s tantalisingly close. I’m rooting for him. Go Elon, go!

I’m still waiting for that coast-to-coast autonomous drive he said was going to happen in 2016. I have little doubt that Tesla will get there someday, but Musk is generally happy to adopt Trump-like predictions based primarily on his hopes and dreams.

[KellyCriterion]

@Ravenman

I’m still waiting for that coast-to-coast autonomous drive he said was going to happen in 2016. I have little doubt that Tesla will get there someday, but Musk is generally happy to adopt Trump-like predictions based primarily on his hopes and dreams.

“We could have gamed an LA/NY Autopilot journey last year, but when we do it this year, everyone with Tesla Full Self-Driving will be able to do it too” Elon Musk, May 2019
(Datestamping some of these quotes so we can check back in later ;)).

[Snowboarder_Bo]

Waymo bringing self-driving trucks to Phoenix area freeways:

Google’s self-driving vehicle division says it’s bringing autonomous trucks to the Phoenix area.

Waymo announced Wednesday that its self-driving tractor-trailers will start driving on freeways this week and will expand to more routes over time.

Waymo’s self-driving passenger vehicles are ubiquitous in the eastern Phoenix and its suburbs, where the company conducts extensive testing and runs a taxi service.

The company says the big trucks use the same sensors as passenger vehicles but they’re configured differently. The testing will start with two drivers in each truck.

Companies including Uber and TuSimple have driven self-driving trucks on Arizona roads. Waymo says it tested trucks in Arizona in 2017.

[chappachula]

Google’s self-driving vehicle division says it’s bringing autonomous trucks to the Phoenix area.

Waymo announced that its self-driving tractor-trailers will start driving on freeways this week…
** with TWO drivers in each truck.**

So, in other words there are absolutely no self-driving trucks on the road.
(In fact,the trucks are so NON-self-driving that they require twice as many humans. )

The title of this thread remains true: Self driving cars are still decades away.

[Maserschmidt]

@chappachula

So, in other words there are absolutely no self-driving trucks on the road.
(In fact,the trucks are so NON-self-driving that they require twice as many humans. )

The title of this thread remains true: Self driving cars are still decades away.

The guy who ran Google’s self-driving car program agrees with you. (as do I)

Aurora CEO Chris Urmson discusses the future of self-driving cars

[Richard_Pearse]

@Maserschmidt

The guy who ran Google’s self-driving car program agrees with you. (as do I)

Aurora CEO Chris Urmson and the future of self-driving cars | The Verge

He thinks decades for privately owned self driving vehicles but “within 5 years” for fleet vehicles, e.g, taxis / Uber types. Which means he thinks the technology is good for the shorter timeframe but other factors will delay the pickup by the general public.

[KellyCriterion]

"Sometime next year… the car will be autonomous without supervision.

Sometime thereafter… convince regulators… the car can go around with no one in it."

Elon Musk, June 2019.

[Tired_and_Cranky]

GM and Cruise Automation’s SDC test fleet isn’t doing so hot. It has close calls every 450 miles while taking 80% longer than a person-driven car to complete trips. The software also behaves unpredictably and stops working frequently. The biggest highlight for SDC fans is that the fleet’s collisions seem to be taking place while people are driving the cars. Of course, if the software worked well, people wouldn’t be driving them very often.

GM's Cruise Self-Driving Prototypes Are Riddled With Technical Glitches,...

[scr4]

@Richard_Pearse

He thinks decades for privately owned self driving vehicles but “within 5 years” for fleet vehicles, e.g, taxis / Uber types. Which means he thinks the technology is good for the shorter timeframe but other factors will delay the pickup by the general public.

And obviously the incentive is much greater for fleet vehicles. For private owners, it’s merely a convenience. For fleet operators, it replaces the cost of employees. (Or “contractors” as some operators call them.) A self-driving car that operates 24/7 is worth the cost of 4.2 full-time employees (24x7 = 168 = 40x4.2).

[steronz]

“Close to 10%” of Autopilot software team reportedly departs after shakeup

Some choice quotes in this [latest bit of gossip](July | 2019 | Ars Technica
software-team-reportedly-quits-after-shakeup/).

Musk told subordinates that “he was unhappy with the progress in developing fully automated driving capabilities. He is also upset that some team members have told him they can’t meet the timelines he has set for developing the technology,” according to sources who talked to Efrati.

Musk has long been optimistic about Tesla’s Autopilot progress. In 2015, Musk declared that building a fully autonomous vehicle was “a much easier problem than people think it is.” He predicted that Tesla would solve it in about two years.

But other companies have found the transition from “feature complete” to full autonomy to be quite difficult. Waymo, for example, has had cars capable of driving on a wide range of road types since about 2015. Yet four years later, the company still has safety drivers behind the wheel for most trips.

[Maserschmidt]

There is definitely some panic happening on both the AV and EV fronts. Here’s a good summary article of recent events and comments from leaders (note: the VW/Ford alliance he mentions did just get announced, they’re swapping and consolidating AV and EV technology work).

As for Elon Musk, I would love to see an accounting of all the capital he’s burned through in his career, and how much profit or loss has resulted from it

https://www.fastcompany.com/90374083/for-years-automakers-wildly-overpromised-on-self-driving-cars-and-electric-vehicles-what-now

[Dewey_Finn]

This article was in The New York Times yesterday, about the Ford/Volkswagen joint venture. It includes a quote from a German university professor, “Autonomous driving is a very, very expensive technology. One has to invest today in order to make the first sales in 2030, maybe. Therefore it makes a lot of sense for Ford and VW to work together.”

[madmonk28]

An article from today’s NY Times: “Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’”

A year ago, Detroit and Silicon Valley had visions of putting thousands of self-driving taxis on the road in 2019, ushering in an age of driverless cars.

Most of those cars have yet to arrive — and it is likely to be years before they do. Several carmakers and technology companies have concluded that making autonomous vehicles is going to be harder, slower and costlier than they thought.

“We overestimated the arrival of autonomous vehicles,” Ford’s chief executive, Jim Hackett, said at the Detroit Economic Club in April.

Despite High Hopes, Self-Driving Cars Are ‘Way in the Future’ (Published 2019)

[NetTrekker]

Remote driving will probably happen much sooner -

“The War to Remotely Control Self-Driving Cars Heats Up | WIRED”

The War to Remotely Control Self-Driving Cars Heats Up

[Red_Wiggler]

@NetTrekker

Remote driving will probably happen much sooner -

“The War to Remotely Control Self-Driving Cars Heats Up | WIRED”

The War to Remotely Control Self-Driving Cars Heats Up | WIRED

[grunts thoughtfully]