Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway).<p>Of course, people won't like this, I'm not exactly enthused either, but the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That doesn't really make sense from a business perspective.
Agreed, it seems inevitable that autonomy and insurance are going to be bundled.<p>1. Courts are finding Tesla partially liable for collisions, so they've already got some of the downsides of insurance (aka the payout) without the upside (the premium).<p>2. Waymo data shows a significant injury reduction rate. If it's true and not manipulated data, it's natural for the car companies to want to capture some of this upside.<p>3. It just seems like a much easier sell. I wouldn't pay $100/month for self-driving, but $150 a month for self-driving + insurance? That's more than I currently pay for insurance, but not a lot more. And I've got relatively cheap insurance: charging $250/month for insurance + self-driving will be cheaper than what some people pay for just insurance alone.<p>I don't think we need to hit 100% self-driving for the bundled insurance to be viable. 90% self-driving should still have a substantially lower accident rate if the Waymo data is accurate and extends.
History suggests it won't be that clean.<p>1. High-severity accidents might drop, but the industry bleeds money on high-frequency, low-speed incidents (parking lots, neighborhood scrapes). Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.<p>2. Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due to lack of reserves, and trigger a massive backlash.<p>It reminds me of early internet optimism: we thought connectivity would make truth impossible to hide. Instead, we got the opposite. Tech rarely solves complex markets linearly.
<i>> Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due to lack of reserves, and trigger a massive backlash.</i><p>Google, AFAIK the only company with cars that are actually autonomous, has US$98 Billion in cash.<p>It'd have to be a hell of an accident to put a dent in that.
They'd still at least buy reinsurance etc anyway.<p>All unlimited liability insurance companies (e.g. motor insurers in the UK) have reinsurance to take the hit on claims over a certain level - e.g. 100k, 1m etc.<p>For extreme black swan risks, this is how you prevent the insurance company just going bankrupt.<p>Reinsurers themselves then also have their own reinsurance, and so on. The interesting thing is that you then have to keep track of the chain of reinsurers to make sure they don't turn out to be insuring themselves in a big loop. A "retrocession spiral" could take out many of the companies involved at the same time, e.g. the LMX spiral.
If it's cheaper for them to pay lawyers a few tens or hundreds of millions to bury any such case in court, in settlements, or putting the agitator through any of the myriad forms of living hell they can legally get away with, then they'll go that route.<p>You'd need an immensely rich or influential opponent to decide they wanted to march through hell in order to hold Google's feet to the fire. It'd have to be something deeply personal and they probably have things structured to limit any potential liability to a couple hundred million. They'll never be held to account for anything that goes seriously wrong.
They know it’s cheaper to buy/lobby congress to limit their liability and will do so long before they payout real money.
The provider of the insurance can always insure itself for that catastrophic case. It's called Reinsurance.
Auto insurers don't face a "catastrophic liability" bankrupting scenario like home insurers might in the case of a natural disaster or fire.
> Auto insurers don't face a "catastrophic liability" bankrupting scenario like home insurers might in the case of a natural disaster or fire.<p>This changes with self-driving. Push a buggy update and potentially all the same model cars could crash on the same day.<p>This is not a threat model regular car insurers need to deal with since it'll never happen that all of their customers decide to drive drunk the same day, but that's effectively what a buggy software update would be like.
Far be it from me to tell automakers how to roll out software but I would expect them to have relatively slow and gradual rollouts, segmented by region and environment (e.g., Phoenix might be first while downtown London might be last).
That process itself could still break. (Unlikely though it may be)
Tesla certainly does it this way today. This is also the norm for IoT that I'm aware of. Nobody wants fleet-wide flag days anyway.
I think you’re right, but this thread did bring to mind the LA Northridge quake (1994):<p><a href="https://scpr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a553905/2147483647/strip/true/crop/2593x1944+180+0/resize/1414x1060!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fscpr-brightspot.s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com%2Fe8%2Fa7%2F73e7822940fc8b27a0e99caeb574%2Fgettyimages-145708349.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://scpr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/a553905/2147483...</a>
I can easily imagine auto insurers facing exactly that kind of liability if a self-driving car release is bad enough.
A bad hail storm comes close. Hail damage can total a car.
Cars are the cheap part of auto insurance claims.
Only when you are looking at one claim. If all the cars in a city get hail damage the total costs exceed the typical daily claim losses.
Exactly this; damaging a building or causing the death of a person can be 10x+ more costly for the insurer.
This is true, we had a bad hail storm come through in 2010 that dimpled an appreciable fraction of the cars in the city like golf balls. Most were deemed repairable write-offs. Went right over a couple of luxury car yards. A bunch of people at my work moved our cars undercover 10 minutes before it hit, and felt kind of silly… for 10 minutes, until it hit.<p>Car insurance premiums jumped by quite a lot that day, as far as I can tell permanently.
This is why insurance companies pay cloud seeders to move thunderstorms and reduce the probability of massive hail claims.
Would auto insurers have enough insured cars within the area of a hailstorm to matter though?
Euro importers love hail damaged Copart cars, very cheap to fix here.
I doubt autonomous car makers will offer this themselves. They'll either partner with existing insurers or try to build a separate insurance provider of their own which does this.<p>My guess, if this actually plays out, is that existing insurers will create a special autonomy product that will modify rates to reflect differences in risk from standard driving, and autonomy subscriptions will offer those in a bundle.
Bundling a real product with a financial institution is a time tested strategy.<p>Airlines with their credit cards are basically banks that happen to fly planes. Starbucks' mobile app is a bank that happens to sell coffee. Auto companies have long had financing arms; if anything, providing insurance on top of a lease is the natural extension of that.
> Auto companies have long had financing arms<p>I have in fact heard it said that VW group is a financing company with a automobile arm. From some points of view, that seems correct.
Auto companies, yes. As I understand it, airline credit cards are mostly just co-branded cards with existing banks like Chase.
> High-severity accidents might drop, but the industry bleeds money on high-frequency, low-speed incidents (parking lots, neighborhood scrapes). Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.<p>This seems like it can be solved with a deductible.
> Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.<p>It doesn't prevent chaos, but it does provide ubiquitous cameras. That will be used against people.<p>I'm ambivalent about that and mostly in a negative direction. On the one hand, I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof.<p>On the other hand, the insurance companies will force self-driving on everybody through massive insurance rate increases for manual driving. Given that we do not have protections against companies that can make you a Digital Non-Person with a click of a mouse, I have significant problems with that.
> I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof.<p>Life is hard and people make mistakes. Let the actuaries do their job, but causing an accident is not a moral failure, except in cases like drunk driving, where we have actual criminal liability already.<p>> the insurance companies will force self-driving on everybody through massive insurance rate increases for manual driving.<p>Why would manual driving be more expensive to insure in the future? The same risks exist today, at today's rates, but with the benefit that over time the other cars will get harder to hit, reducing the rate of accidents even for humans (kinda like herd immunity).<p>> Given that we do not have protections against companies that can make you a Digital Non-Person with a click of a mouse, I have significant problems with that.<p>I absolutely think this is going to be one of the greater social issues of the next generation.
>Why would manual driving be more expensive to insure in the future? The same risks exist today, at today's rates, but with the benefit that over time the other cars will get harder to hit, reducing the rate of accidents even for humans (kinda like herd immunity).<p>I think it will get cheaper because people who want to do risky things that detract from driving will self select to drive autonomous vehicles.
I hope this forces insurance companies to deal with the lenient driver licensing problem that the government refuses to deal with
Yes, imagine you bought a Google self-driving car for $70,000, and one day their algorithm gets mad at you due to a glitch, and your Google account is locked, your car can no longer be unlocked, can't be sold, and your appeals are instantly rejected and you have no recourse. Just a typical day in Google's world.
I would pay <i>so much</i> for my own SUV to self-drive as well as Waymo.<p>Keyword: my own SUV. Not a rental. With the possibility for me to take over and drive it myself if service fails or if I want to do so.<p>The significant unlock is that I get to haul gear, packages, family. I don't need to keep it clean. The muddy dogs, the hiking trip, the week-long road trip.<p>If my car could drive me, I'd do way more road trips and skip flying. It's almost as romantic as a California Zephyr or Coast Starlight trip. And I can camp out of it.<p>No cramped airlines. No catching colds by being packed in a sardine can with a stressed out immune system.<p>No sharing space with people on public transit. I can work and watch movies and listen to music and hang out with my wife, my friends. People won't stare at me, and I can eat in peace or just be myself in my own space.<p>I might even work in a nomadic lifestyle if I don't have to drive all the time. Our country is so big and there's so much to see.<p>One day you might even be able to attach a trailer. Bikes, jet skis, ATVs. People might simply live on the road, traveling all the time.<p>Big cars seem preferable. Lots of space for internal creature comforts. Laying back, lounging. Watching, reading, eating. Changing clothes, camping, even cooking.<p>Some people might even buy autonomous RVs. I'm sure that'll be a big thing in its own right.<p>It's bidirectional too! People can come to you as you go to them. Meet in the middle. Same thing with packages, food, etc.<p>This would be the biggest thing in travel, transport, logistics, perhaps ever. It's a huge unlock. It feels downright revolutionary. Like a total change in how we might live our lives.<p>This might turn big suburbs from food/culture deserts into the default places people want to live as they have more space for cheaper - because the commute falls apart.<p>This honestly sounds <i>better than a house</i>, but if you can also own an affordable large home in the suburbs as your home base - that's incredible. You don't need a tiny expensive place in the city. You could fall asleep in your car and wake up for breakfast in the city. Spend some time at home, then make a trek to the mountains. All without wasting any time. No more driving, no more traffic. Commuting becomes leisure. It becomes <i>you</i> time.<p>This is also kind of a super power that big countries (in terms of area) with lots of roads and highways will enjoy the most. It doesn't do much in a dense city, but once you add mountains and forests and streams and deserts and oceans - that's magic.<p>Maybe our vast interstate highway infrastructure will suddenly grow ten times in value.<p>Roads might become more important than ever. We might even start building more.<p>If the insurance and autonomy come bundled as a subscription after you purchase or lease your vehicle, that's super easy for people to activate and spend money on.<p>This is such a romantic dream, and I'm so hyped for this.<p>I would pay an ungodly sum to unlock this. It can't come soon enough. Would subscribe in a heartbeat.
> This might turn big suburbs from food/culture deserts into the default places people want to live as they have more space for cheaper<p>This will certainly not happen. The reason these places are culture and food deserts is precisely because people drive everywhere and the driving infrastructure requires so much space that it is impossible to have density at the levels needed to support culture.
Even just paying for the roads for these cars to drive on is a challenge with the lack-of-density they require. So many suburbs with large lot sizes just learn to live with the potholes.
that is until autonomous pothole-fixers. Just the other way, looking at the Waymo driving by and with me doing small autonomy myself i was wondering what niche they leave for me, and looking at the road i thought that autonomous pothole-fixers is going to be multi-trillion business.<p>People writing in other comments about cost of roads, new and repair - it all will change with autonomous road paving hardware.
I'm really doubting this is the case. It seems much more likely to be due to zoning laws.
It's not really.<p>If you have cheap, abundant land it makes no sense to build densely.<p>Look at Houston with ~zero zoning laws and ~infinite sprawl.<p>"A neighborhood" in a high-sprawl suburb wouldn't be able to support local mixed use amenities because even singular "neighborhoods" are gigantic enough to warrant driving across them. Once you're in the car, why would you go to the place 2min down the road instead of the far superior place 8min down the road.
Houston doesn't have zoning laws, but it does have private deed covenants enforced by the city which effectively work as zoning laws. <a href="https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Neighborhood/deed_restr.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Neighborhood/deed_restr.h...</a>
These allegedly cover only ~25% of residential lots in HTX (mostly the wealthy ones). So sure that's a similar <i>tool</i> and probably distorts things, but I would be very shocked to hear this is anywhere near as important as the infinite supply of ultra-cheap land on the outskirts of town plus public subsidized roads (which will eventually bankrupt the city).
Houston has these, parking requirements, etc. I would argue if anything that mandatory parking requirements have a larger impact than zoning. Parking lots themselves push things farther apart and make not driving unpleasant.
It only makes sense to sprawl like in Houston if you never mind spending 3-4 hours commuting to work and back. Or if you can't afford anything better.<p>Ask well-paid people who keep renting apartments in Manhattan, or in downtown SF, to say nothing of Tokyo or Seoul.
I realize "makes no sense" carries a double meaning here. I am speaking of the system-level decisions which end up actually producing infrastructure. You're right that sprawl is absolutely inhumane – we should absolutely nudge processes/incentives such that it's discouraged, but doing so is not as simple as just "get rid of zoning."
Average commute time in Houston is just under half an hour (depend on which source you read, varies from 26-29 in my quick search). Sure you can do commutes more than an hour long, but people generally don't - if they get a new job more than about half an hour away they will move.
> It only makes sense to sprawl like in Houston if you never mind spending 3-4 hours commuting to work and back.<p>Much easier to do with self driving cars though. Remember the promise? “Take a nap in your car and arrive at your destination” or “be productive on your commute”.
I live well out of Boston/Cambridge. These days, I rarely drive in. (Mostly for flights or the occasional theater). I would absolutely go in more if someone/something were driving me for a reasonable cost. I'm actually fairly convenient to commuter rail but doesn't really work except for commuting during the day which I very rarely do.
And further why are zoning laws the way they are? It's exactly because the suburbs people don't want a bunch of hippie trailer park riffraff around.
What if it's both? People drive everywhere because zoning forces car infrastructure everywhere. There's few to no safe places to walk/bike anymore.
It already has!<p>Ethnic food has thoroughly suburbanized, as has shopping.
I suspect I can get a larger variety of ethnic food of very decent quality in 1 hour in NYC than in 99% of suburbs.<p>Shopping for large items, or large quantities, definitely tends to use suburban land because it's cheaper, and a shopping center uses a lot of it. The cost for the customers is the time to drive there.
I can't speak to NYC - best case it would take me 4 hours to get there (.5 to the airport, 1 hour security, 2 hours on the plane, .5 from ny airport to the city). Meanwhile I can get to nearly anywhere in my entire MSA in less than an hour, both city and suburbs (and even a few farms). Within that the majority of ethnic food is in suburbs, though the largest concentration is still downtown.
Well, NYC is NYC.<p>I live in Baltimore, and if you ask after Chinese, Korean, Indian, or Vietnamese, without specifying city limits, you will be directed to a place in the suburbs with a parking lot (I think this is essentially true of DC as well).
If you think that culture is strictly a matter of consumption this is a reasonable clap back, but it belies its own shallow premise
What's ethnic food?
While it’s true that there is food and shopping in suburbs, I think it’s also true that suburbs are still food and culture deserts, since the food and other amenities is typically far away from most houses.
Not really. Get in a car and you can be at all. For many in the city walking it is about as long to get to those things - the distance is less, but the time is similar and time is what counts.(which isn't very many!) the city is the food desert - there are bars and restaurants, but zero grocery stories. If you want to cook a meal you have to get to the suburbs to buy the supplies.
I very much hope that this doesn't happen. So much wasted energy for so little benefit. What's one to do in this world if they don't have the money to own a car that constantly drives them around? What's one to do if they like becoming familiar with a place, rather than watching place after place whiz by? What's one to do if they want to build relationships with the other humans in the world?
> no more traffic<p>How? There would be a huge increase in demand on the roads. You said it yourself, you’d have to build more roads.<p>Unless you meant, no more [suffering] traffic, since you could just take a nap.<p>The only way I see self driving to be a true win if it is so efficient that you can remove all the roads and they become part of the mass transit system.<p>I would demand personal vehicles to pay a premium (cost plus) as they take up more space per person and add to infrastructure maintenance cost
There are a bunch of it depends. A large part of traffic is because someone messes up - accidents cause large delays, but even a small mistake in merging can slow down several others. Though human drivers regularly tailgate, if self driving cars maintain their proper 3 second following distance we could need a lot more space. (though perhaps self driving can safely maintain even a closer distance than humans do - I don't know)
>> no more traffic<p>> How?<p>There would be no more traffic for the driver, who would be sleeping or watching Netflix
This would be an absolute energy and efficiency nightmare. I hope to god this never ever happens.<p>> No sharing space with people on public transit.<p>If people really want their own private suites they should be paying thru the nose and ears for it. Cars are a worse version of this and the car-centric lifestyle is heavily subsidized by everything from taxes to people's lives (air pollution from ICEs yes, but tire pollution is actually worse in many ways and is made worse with heavier EVs).<p>This will not fix food deserts, it will make them worse. If your car isn't packed to capacity on every single trip, it is less efficient and worse than public transit.<p>Roads are awful. We should be trying to minimize them, not expand them.<p>Whatever ungodly sum you are prepared to pay, I'm certain the actual cost is yet higher.
> If your car isn't packed to capacity on every single trip, it is less efficient and worse than public transit.<p>Cost is a great proxy for costs versus benefits. People choose cars because they are efficient for them.<p>In <i>theory</i> public transit is efficient. In practice, only if you live in a very high density area, or you value your time at $0.
There are a few low density places around the world where public transit is efficient for the average person.
cars are barely efficient in terms of time. In cost terms, cars are incredibly expensive once you add in infrastructure costs, insurance, fuel, the cost of land use, etc.<p>Public transit is efficient even outside areas of high density - see suburban Europe or India. Why are so many people here utterly car-brained?
> I hope to god this never ever happens.<p>Then I'll never buy an autonomous vehicle.<p>I get that most people just want short trips around a major city, but given we, I'm sure it's shocking, don't all live in places like that, or want to spend our time in places like that, it might behoove y'all to solve for other use cases if you want widespread adoption (or at least accept that it's <i>ok to solve for those use cases</i>).<p>Or, I guess, you can hope that everyone will suddenly decide that all they want is to live in modern Kowloon City because "roads are awful" or whatever memetic nonsense is trending on TikTok.
Public transit is a dream turned nightmare consistently for seventy-five years. Autonomy will be less efficient -- but not that much less efficient given closer car spacing, speed, and remote parking -- but it will be spectacularly more convenient and comfortable. I'm all for it. You'll survive the tire pollution.
That's one opinion. My opinion is public transport is phenomenal. It's relatively reliable (very in some places), generally clean and safe, low cost, encourages urban/high efficiency development, protects greenspace, and employees people.
I'm not sure where you live, but that doesn't match my experience at all. And I think most people agree given the overwhelming majority of people who choose to drive, notwithstanding traffic and parking. The declining public transit ridership in most metropolitan areas over time is well documented.[1] It's because in most places -- but evidently not where you live -- public transit sucks relative to private transportation and ride-hailing services. As discussed above, EV autonomy will only increase the difference.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/fta-transit-ridership-per-capita-report/737603/#:~:text=The%20FTA,as%20high-capacity" rel="nofollow">https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/fta-transit-ridership-p...</a>
> It's relatively reliable<p>In most places it is not, which is a big drawback. Every week I hear on the news how the train shut down some stations or got massively delayed for random reasons. I couldn't possibly rely on that if I need to be at work at a specific time.
What are you talking about? In most cities public transport sucks, hardly goes anywhere, gets more expensive year after year, makes housing prices go up, and is slow and inflexible enough that people still end up needing cars to go around
> Public transit is a dream turned nightmare consistently for seventy-five years<p>*In the United States. For reasons we have avoided in much of the rest of the world...
The United States is freaking huge. By the time modern transportation arrived, people were already living all over the country in pockets every which where. We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these - and in vast quantities.<p>We do have dense pockets. NYC, in particular, has a nice metro (it just needs to be cleaner and more modernized - but it's great otherwise).<p>Most countries are small. Their dense cities are well-served by public transit. America is just too spread out. Insanely spread out.<p>China is an exception in that, while a huge landmass, its large cities emerged as the country was wholesale industrializing. It was easy for them to allocate lots of points to infrastructure. And given their unmatched population size and density, it makes a lot of sense.<p>As much as I envy China's infrastructure (I've been on their metros - they're amazing!), it would be a supreme malinvestment here in the United States to try to follow in their footsteps. The situation we have here is optimal for our density and the preferences of our citizens. (As much as people love to complain about cars, even more people than those that complain really love their cars.)<p>Public transit in the US is probably going to wind down as autonomous driving picks up the slack. Our road infrastructure is the very best in the world - it's more expansive, comprehensive, and well-maintained than any nation on the planet. We'd be wise to double down. It can turn into a super power once the machines take over driving for us.<p>The fact that we have this extent of totally unmatched road infrastructure might actually turn out to be hugely advantageous over countries that opted for static, expensive heavy rail. Our system is flexible, last mile, to every address in the country. With multiple routes, re-routes, detours. Roads are America's central nervous system.<p>Our interstate system is flexible, and when cars turn into IP packets, we'll have the thickest and most flexible infrastructure in the world.<p>We've shit on cars for the last 15 years under the guise that "strong towns" are correct and that cars are bad. But as it may turn out, these sleeping pieces of infrastructure might actually be the best investment we've ever made.<p>Going to call this now: in 20 years' time, <i>cars</i> will make America OP.<p>Those things everything complains about - they'll be America's superpower.<p>The rest of the world with their heavy rail trains and public transit will be jealous. Our highways will turn into smart logistics corridors that get people and goods P2P at high speed and low cost to every inch of the country.<p>Roads are truly America's circulatory and nervous system.<p>I'm so stoked for this. I once fell for the "we need more trains meme" - that was a suboptima anachronism, and our peak will be 100x higher than expensive, inflexible heavy rail.
> The United States is freaking huge. By the time modern transportation arrived, people were already living all over the country in pockets every which where. We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these - and in vast quantities.<p>You have this narrative precisely backwards.<p>At the risk of pointing out the obvious: the great sprawl that made us dependent on cars happened <i>after</i> cars got popularized.<p>Yes, the cities were already spread out relative to each other, but that distance can be covered with trains well enough. What made us need cars, and what cars encouraged, was a huge amount of spread <i>within</i> a city or metro area. If you sprawl out over a city such that population density is constantly low, then public transit and walking can't work effectively anymore, and everyone needs to own a car.<p>US cities that were already large and well populated before the advent of cars tend to be densely built. Their cores, at least, are walkable as a result. This is true even for non-major cities -- just google "streetcar suburbs" as an example.
No, GP is right. Check out the urban/rural populations in 1900 [0].<p>Cars allowed for suburban sprawl but the country was already really spread out before cars.<p>Maybe if cars didn’t exist we would have eventually consolidated into dense population centers.<p>You’re right that US cities were large and well populated, but that’s not where most people (60%) of Americans were.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization_in_the_United_Sta...</a>
> The United States is freaking huge.<p>Completely irrelevant. I'm not interested in public transport across vast areas from city to city, I can drive or fly for those (very rare) occasions.<p>Public transport is most useful for the hyper-local day-to-day movement. I'd just want good reliable public transport within my town and neighboring areas.<p>(Actually I'd prefer to just bike, which requires secure bike parking in all destinations. I can already bike anywhere in town, but my bike will get stolen if I stop anywhere to shop or eat, so I can't do that.)
In a way, a fusion of both is possible<p>Autonomous cars that move largely along the same route could form temporary "trains", or rather convoys, moving in a coordinated fashion. That would simplify navigation, reduce chances of accidents, reduce energy consumption, and definitely give the passengers more peace of mind during the commute.<p>Such convoys would split when needed, join together when needed, notify other convoys and drivers about their route and timing. This would alleviate traffic jams considerably even under heavy load.<p>At the same time, they would consist of cars and trucks that would be capable of moving completely separately outside highways.<p>This, of course, will require some kind of centralized control over entire convoys, and a way to coordinate them. Railways and airways definitely can offer examples of how to handle that.
> This, of course, will require some kind of centralized control over entire convoys, and a way to coordinate them. Railways and airways definitely can offer examples of how to handle that.<p>Not at all. A simple peer to peer protocol based on proximity and mixing in traffic data distributed like the national weather service will do just fine.<p>These convoys seem like a perfect example of swarm algorithms fitting well where you don’t need a central coordinator.
Within a convoy, yes. Between convoys, a dispatcher service could be beneficial, distributed and federated, again, like air traffic controllers and railway dispatchers. The same self-driving car companies that produce the software and require subscription could offer it.
> Roads are truly America's circulatory and nervous system.<p>Thanks to massive lobbying by car manufacturers that did their best to destroy all traces of public transit infrastructure that existed in the US before the country moved to car dependency.
> We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these<p>You actually believe that?!
It is true. The US has great car infrastructure. The US has a lot of airplanes. For longer distances both work very well.<p>We have terrible transit though, and there are many short trips where transit should work better than it doesn't work at all. However the subject here is vast distances and the US has those and does well.
> I'm all for it. You'll survive the tire pollution.<p>Will you enthusiastically support the taxes on you needed to entirely offset this negative externality?
Rubber ppm over some threshold safety level is a negative externality worth maybe a few billion in remediation, healthcare costs, etc. (As a society, we're still not convinced pulmonary health as impacted by particulate inhalation is important - which is a mistake. It absolutely is a big deal and negative externality driving a whole host of bad health outcomes.)<p>Malinvestment into public transit in a way that serves only a limited few of the population and that costs 10x the already high initial estimates is a negative drain on the balance sheet worth 500 billion or more. And this infra is woefully inflexible and static.<p>California HSR alone is already suboptimal vs. flights, and once we have long distance autonomous self-driving, that'll meet the same demand with 1/100,0000,000th the cost (if you average out the costs and benefits of self driving over all other routes).
> You'll survive the tire pollution.<p>I tend to expect better from HN commenters. I don't have an interest in having a discussion with such a callous and dismissive comment. I hope your day gets better.<p>Tire pollution is worse than tailpipe emissions and the full effects aren't known. You're dismissive of other people's and the environment's health and you're wrong.<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyres-produce-more-particle-pollution-than-exhausts-tests-show" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...</a>
Have you thought about how much brake dust subway riders breathe in? At least I can buy a car with a hepa filter<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-07/new-york-city-subway-commuters-face-high-pm2-5-exposure" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-07/new-york-...</a>
> Tire pollution is worse than tailpipe emissions and the full effects aren't known. You're dismissive of other people's and the environment's health and you're wrong.<p>Tire pollution is now as large or larger than tailpipe particulate pollution, but it’s not a complete apples-to-apples comparison.<p>Tail pipe pollution includes CO₂, NOx, SO₂, CO, and fine particulates (PM2.5 + PM10) and is strongly linked to asthma, heart disease, climate change.<p>Tire pollution on the other hand is microplastics, synthetic rubber particles, zinc, and volatile organic compounds. Toxic to aquatic life; long-term human health effects still being studied.
A typical ICE car will consume at least 500 gallons of petrol (gasoline) per 1 gallon of tire tread worn. The environmental impact per volume of tire is certainly greater, but it's not remotely five hundred times greater.<p>I'm not saying we should disregard the issue of tire pollution. But if it was as serious as you suggest, it would be making more headlines than it is.
> People might simply live on the road, traveling all the time.<p>I think this is the plot of Kamakiriad.
How much would you pay? Why not hire an actual human driver?
human drivers are inconvenient. They need sleep, and food, and probably won't be willing to take a 5 month trip south of the border for giggles. They poop. Inevitably they will try to do weird shit like have a conversation.
This.<p>My car is my property. I own it. It does everything I want it to. It is an extension of me.<p>That question is like asking, "Why own a computer? Why not hire a mathematician to do all your computation for you?"<p>The problems a self-driving problem solves are 100x deeper than a human, and the second order effects to greater society are enormous. When everyone and everything is self-driving, the roads aren't roads any more - they're TCP/IP and logistics super highways. Anything can go anywhere for any reason at any time. This is a huge societal unlock.<p>Even thinking about how frictionful ordering an Uber is is exhausting when thinking about the idyllic future of simply jumping into my own car - my own space - and having it do exactly what I want.<p>This future is magical and I want it now.
I'm lost on why you fantasies this so much and don't just buy an RV or something?<p>Do you really hate driving that much?<p>I don't think this would change the world as you imagine it. I don't mind driving long i will just make sure i get entertainment for the purpose. Like an audio book. My wife doesn't say 'Lets go soemwere you can drive me around and i can finally do that many things in parallel'.<p>And plenty of family drive today with RVs while the parents are in the front and the kids are in the back. No one is showering while the parents drive. Do you know how slow Cars now would need to drive to make this suddenly that much more comftable than what we have today?<p>You would need to rebuild the car and streets to get to this point.
You must be a lot more comfortable as a passenger than I am, because that honestly sounds like my personal hell. I don't mind driving, but I hate being in any vehicle for extended periods. Have you considered a chauffeur?
Have a look at comma ai
George Hotz has done some interesting work, but Comma is far too indie/hacker. It's not at a scale where it can be 100% autonomous.<p>I think a fully autonomous car has to be designed around LiDAR and autonomy from the ground up. That's a hugely capital intensive task that integrates a lot of domains and data. And so much money and talent.<p>This is more in the ballpark of Google Waymo, Amazon Zoox, Tesla/xAI, Rivian, Apple, etc.<p>And as the other folks have mentioned, this becomes a really good prospect if one company can manage the autonomy, insurance, maintenance, updates, etc. A fully vertically integrated subscription offering on top of specially purposed hardware you either lease or purchase.
Hey @echelon,<p>Interesting thoughts on Comma. Ever thought of working in AV? We're quite similar to Comma but for construction vehicles. We have a couple customers, just raised our seed, and are now expanding our team with some very critical high-ownership founding engineers.<p>Some info about us:
- <a href="https://crewline.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://crewline.ai/</a>
- <a href="https://crewline.ai/blog/crewline-manifesto" rel="nofollow">https://crewline.ai/blog/crewline-manifesto</a><p>LMK if this is of interest.
-Freddie
freddie@crewline.ai
I would hope geohot is exploring options to partner with one of the automakers. Because it sure looks like the future is not bright for their device. Cars are steadily switching to encrypted canbus and don't work with Comma. It's a dead end unless they work a deal with someone to be allowed on the bus.
Absolutely wild to me how a dystopian hell world scenario for me can be someone else's utopia.
Get a Model Y or even a Cybertruck. It's not there quite yet but holy shit it's almost there.
Your dream sounds like a nightmare for everyone else in America. I hope it never comes to fruition.
I think there will actually be a couple interesting adjustments/market forces acting in the car companies' favor.<p>First, if the insurance applies to fully autonomous driving only, then I suspect they’ll reach a point where the cost of insurance+automation ends up being less than just insurance through third parties.<p>Second, cutting into the traditional insurance market share is likely to increase costs for those who remain on traditional insurance, assuming there’s a significant enough number of people jumping ship. Combined, this creates a huge incentive for more users to jump on the self-driving bandwagon.
Autonomy + insurance is an interesting way to arrive at what the insurers are already trying to push with their tracker dongles, where they encourage you to drive like a mouse by putting bits of carrot in front of you.<p>I had been worried that non-tracked insurance would become increasingly expensive once we reached a tipping point where more and more drivers accepted the devil's bargain, but likely the trackers will be obsoleted by autonomy.
Curious where you live? The only place I ever paid insurance premiums that high (and not quite that high) was in Ontario. I pay $70.
In NYC with clean 15+ year driving record my premium is $270 a month after discounts with USAA. Geico, Allstate, Progressive all quote me $400/mo minimum. Have driven everything from old beaters to brand new economy cars with little difference. Friends who also drive are paying around $350/mo on average.
> In NYC with clean 15+ year driving record my premium is $270 a month<p>This is terrible.
In Germany (major city) I pay 166 Eur a month for two cars, one normal (premium brand) family car and second being V8 coupe. I make about 25000km a year in total and have 6 years no claims. No accidents in my driving history (over 15 years).
Price is for full coverage with low excess.
> In NYC with clean 15+ year driving record my premium is $270 a month after discounts with USAA. Geico, Allstate, Progressive all quote me $400/mo minimum. Have driven everything from old beaters to brand new economy cars with little difference. Friends who also drive are paying around $350/mo on average.<p>You're taking about full coverage, right?
Yes but when I tried to switch to liability only it was $20 cheaper. What I pay seems to be the floor, it’s definitely the lowest of anyone I know so far who isn’t claiming to live outside of NYC. Meanwhile my motorcycle insurance, liability only, for an older sport bike was only $400/year with Progressive.
Interesting, when I was in high school I could not afford car insurance so I didn't't even bother with a drivers license, motorcycle license and insurance was like $80/yr.<p>(that was a while back though).
Wow.That a bit high even for NYC. Are you male?
I have a join policy with my wife with Geico for $166 a month.
This includes upgraded $100,000 liability limit roadside assistance and windshield insurance.<p>I have a crossover/wagon 330 horsepower V6 engine.
Similar here. In Atlanta, have never had an at-fault accident in my life. I pay just under $400/mo for full coverage on my 2019 coupe and my wife's 2015 crossover.
Wow that is crazy, also in the US my wife & I pay about $30/each a month.
I always chuckle when discussions start comparing insurance premiums without defining the insurance itself.<p>Might as well compare the prices of apples and oranges and vacuums and space stations.<p>These comments could be quoting liability only insurance or comprehensive/collision for a kia or comprehensive/collision with bodily injury for a rivian R1S. The insured amount would differ by hundreds of thousands of dollars.<p>For reference, I have only ever paid for maximum liability only insurance including uninsured/underinsured coverage ($500k/$250k), but not bodily injury, and my premium for 10k miles per year is less than $50 per month. Used to be less than $40 per month before 2022.
Why would you forego bodily injury liability coverage? Most states require it, and it makes sense if you have even modest assets.<p>The medical portion of my insurance that covers me (unlimited PIP) is like $17 a month, I can't see driving much and not spending that, even with relatively limited expectations for how much easier it might make things.
Sorry, I meant I forego Personal Injury Protection, not Bodily Injury. I purchase the maximum amount of bodily injury (I forget if it’s $250k or $500k, but it’s up there).
Sounds like insurance in Canada is very cheap. Here in California we pay about $400/month. This is for a couple with no accidents in 30 years, in the sweet spot of old enough to have plenty of driving record with zero accidents but not too old to have any age-based penalties, so that's about as cheap as it gets.<p>Apparently when our child reaches driving age we should expect to be paying about $1000/month for insurace. We'll see when the time comes.
The average car insurance premium in the US is over $2000/year, and over $2500/year for full coverage. I imagine that has an outlier effect and the median is lower, but I'd be surprised if the median was under $100/month. I'm paying just under $1000/year (and yes, in Ontario).
I actually I'd be even willing to downgrade my car one level if I'm not driving and just sitting in the back seat. Will likely be cheaper for me to own even with the increased subscription.
Maybe, but it might just push many would-be car owners to just use a service and forego buying a car altogether. What's the point of paying the capital expense, and a subscription expense for a car vs just calling up a Waymo. The traditional car makers should really be wary as they've historically been terrible at service offerings.
In the next step, somebody will notice that many people drive to the same destination (like a large shopping mall or an airport) and try to offer to take them in the same self-driving car for a discount. Over time those vehicles might grow to seat as may as 30-100 people and stop at multiple destinations
Incredible startup idea. While we wait for the self driving tech, maybe we could pay specially trained people to drive these vehicles?
I get your joke. But I like paying more to ride by myself.<p>It’s the driving I don’t like.
If you rarely drive using a service might be worth it. However if you drive more often it will be worth having your own car because it is ready when you want to go. I have a second car that I rarely use - but if I got rid of it a uber is 15 minutes away when I want to go, and the local rental car place is always sold out if I didn't reserve a week in advance.<p>Even if I'm using a service, someone needs to make the cars the service uses - the car manufactures are not going anywhere, they just get a different customer.
People said this about Uber 15 years ago, and well, that didn’t happen.
Waymo does a lot of urban miles and they do so fairly timidly. The flip side of the that coin is Tesla FSD and you don't hear people simping for their safety record much around here.<p>What if the difference between human and computer is basically nil (for the next ten years or so) and turns out to cost as much as glass coverage?<p>Furthermore, it's not like you can slap this stuff on a 2000 Ford Tarus. You're inherently incurring the insurance burden of a fancy modern car with obscenely expensive everything to even get into the kind of vehicle that could/would be equipped with autonomy.
>> Waymo data shows a significant injury reduction rate. If it's true and not manipulated data, it's natural for the car companies to want to capture some of this upside.<p>If you can insure the car for less, the car company can charge more for the car. I don't want to pay a subscription (rent) for a car I buy.
> the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck.<p>That's one alternative.<p>Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update.<p>"Continuous development" isn't always a selling point when it's something with your life in its hands. A great example is Tesla. There are plenty of people who are thrilled with the continuous updates and changes to everything, and there are plenty of people that mock Tesla for it. Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them.
> Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them.<p>More likely, one group is a large market that companies will cater to and the other group is a small market that will be very loud about their displeasure on the internet.
> Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update.<p>Doubt that is a politically tenable model.<p>"You're telling me my son Bobby died in a crash that could have been prevented with finished software but they only roll it out to people who have the money for a new car despite no technical limitation?" -- yeah, good luck
Think about how many hoopties are already on the road with broken lights, bad alignment, bald tires, no ABS/ESP/TC, dangerous suspension geometry like semi trailing arms, no oil changes, etc. Why don’t we start handwringing about poor vehicle maintenance?
If it is a self-driving software update that the manufacturer could push but chooses not to (or could trivially port), I think it becomes much more difficult liability-wise and legally for them. I'm not saying that is the correct way, but I think it is how it would work in practice.
We do in some places. Where I live (Iowa) we don't - but most people take better care of their car than that so it is pointless. As a kid I remember parts of MN requiring inspection and a few years latter dropping it when they realized nearly every car was passing so there was no point (this was emissions only not safety). In Texas there are regular inspections - but if you go to border towns you see a lot of those poorly maintained cars on the road (despite the inspection) and so people see more need for them and they keep them.
I mean that's basically how every car with half-assed barely-functional auto lane keeping sold in the last 7 years has worked.
I'm getting up there in age and I'm getting a bit tired of designers moving things around.<p>It's taking longer to update my muscle memory each time.<p>I still get pissed off at the Play Store app regularly for moving the search bar AND not focusing keyboard input on it when I click the search icon.
> Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update.<p>We can always choose. The subscriptions aren't mandatory? And there's an alternative to the subscription where they offer it to you for a one time cost.
If the choice is offered. But with the way the markets are today, I wouldn't be surprised if we both paid at time of purchase, and then had to pay a subscription fee still.<p>After all, heated seats are still installed and baked in to the MSRP, even if you're not subscribing to make them work.
> Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update.<p>The Mercedes-Benz model.
The consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.
That's definitely the attitude I hear from the Tesla-can-do-no-wrong crowd, but in reality most of the people I meet in the Tesla-mocking crowd are under 40- younger on average than the other group.<p>The non-Tesla manufacturers have noticed this and positioned products accordingly. Tesla does Musk-driven-development so only caters to the one group.
Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle.<p>Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers.<p>What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming.<p>Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted.<p>You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.
I know a lot of people who work on medical device software and think Teslas approach to updates is insane. A safety critical system simply should not have routine updates that affect UX or major performance characteristics.
Tesla owners aren't that young.<p>This site claims the average age of Tesla owners is 48 (updated for 2025):<p><a href="https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/11/tesla-owner-demographics/" rel="nofollow">https://hedgescompany.com/blog/2018/11/tesla-owner-demograph...</a><p>Which should not be that surprising. Teslas were priced as premium vehicles initially, and then dropped as competitors appeared and to take advantage of tax credits. Teslas also benefit dramatically from owning a garage and adding a charger to it, which mostly homeowners can do.<p>A homeowner buying an expensive car is very likely older and richer.<p>Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has.
That's my impression too. You'd need to be 80 years old to be excited by a toyota.
Says someone who seems to have absolutely no idea about 'car culture' and no realisation about just how un-cool Tesla's have become.<p>I associate them with their wanker of a CEO, Uber drivers, and parents complaining about being stung on EV depreciation.
I'm 31 and I'm very excited by the '86 Chevy truck I just got. You know why? It's _not_ "smart". The smartest thing on it is the old-school AM/FM radio. There's no software updates, there's nothing (built-in) tracking my every move. It's just a simple, repairable truck, for, you know, _driving_.<p>People have this strange obsession with over-complicating everything they possibly can.
Let's be real. A staggering amount of drivers are incapable to switch on Automatic Cruise Control or trigger automatic parking. They know how to start the car, how to switch lights and wipers on/off and that's about it.<p>Paying subscription for something what they are never going to use is going to be a hard sell.
And to be even more real, a staggering amount of drivers won't be able to afford an autonomous driving subscription even if they wanted to. Or a car new enough or in good enough condition to have functional self driving.
This is the real truth.<p>For all of the Musky wank chat about the future, with FSD, robots, and popping over to Australia on a Starship ... a vanishingly small amount of people will actually be able to afford it once they "get the pricing right".<p>We're talking about some impressive technology ... doused in snake oil from the top.
Probably a big chunk of these tried ACC a few times, found that ACC sucks unless you're on perfectly clean empty highway, and said "screw it I'll drive it myself".
I have auto parking and never use it, it came with the advanced parking sensors that I do use heavily. I forget how to use auto cruise because I drive outside of the city so rarely, it takes me awhile to “trust it” again when I do some highway driving.
> <i>Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go</i><p>In America, maybe. Chinese manufacturers are already treating self driving as table stakes. If I have a choice between a subscription car and one that just works, I’m buying the latter.<p>> <i>continuous development and operations/support</i><p>ICE vehicles require continuous servicing and manufacturer support.
> a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support<p>Corporations could decide to only advertise shipped features, not beta tests.
I agree with you. Subscription revenue has explicitly been part of Tesla's strategy for years. I'm not sure when this statement first appeared in their SEC findings, but this is from their 2021 10-K:<p>"As our vehicles are capable of being updated remotely over-the-air, our customers may purchase additional paid options and features through the Tesla app or through the in-vehicle user interface. We expect that this functionality will also allow us to offer certain options and features on a subscription basis in the future."
Agreed, autonomy is a service and not a feature of the car. It has to be. There is inherent cost as you use it and associated liabilities, legal requirements for auditing, technical need for maintenance and dealing with updates in a timely fashion.<p>You could make the point that owning the car is a lot less important if you don't drive it yourself. If Uber didn't have to pay drivers, they could expand their area of operation to basically everywhere. Drivers need to be paid so having them drive long distance is relatively expensive. That constrains the area of operation. But otherwise, cost per mile is very low. So, orchestrating pickups in the country side becomes possible.<p>It's going to enable night time travel as well. Nap/sleep while traveling. Wake up at your destination. That's going to revolutionize commutes as well and enable people to live much further away from work. A four hour commute is much less of a problem if you can spend the time working or napping.<p>That in turn is going to do wonders for real estate prices. Because there are a lot of nice places to live that are currently far away from cities and therefore still relatively affordable. We got a preview of that during the lock downs when people figured out that remote working is a thing.
The other possible future is you rent the car for exactly when you need it and don’t pay a monthly bill— or your monthly bill pays for a certain number of rides/minutes/miles per month. In which case the subscription costs are managed by the provider, who might be the manufacturer and might not.<p>At least in cities, a fully-functioning, on-demand autonomous fleet would probably be superior to car ownership in just about every way except as a status symbol.
The monopolist providing this service would be de-incentivized from ever equipping for all the demand, and the last 10% of capacity being bid on by the last 20% of demand would make this a constant stress and struggle.<p>Meanwhile it's an excuse for another century of more car lanes and less mass transit infrastructure.
There used to be a service like this, called Car2Go. Not autonomous, but more like how scooter/bike rentals work. It was fantastic, and in no way profitable.
Yeah, its called taxi<p>we already have those
Subscriptions are how things are going to go in general. This is just one example of the larger trend. Companies find it very annoying that they have to keep coming up with ways to provide new value in order to keep getting money from people.<p>Some car companies are already trying out subscriptions for stuff that requires zero ongoing support, like seat heaters. Outside of cars, so much software is switching to subscriptions, whether or not it makes sense. The software for my security cameras has become completely infested by ads, but you can pay for a subscription to make them go away. I own the cameras outright, but not really, since the software needed to use them is basically rented, either with cash or with my eyeballs. Most paid apps I come across these days want a monthly fee to keep using it, they're not content to just sell me a copy.
> Of course, people won't like this<p>I love it because I have exactly zero interest in using this and wouldn’t want to pay for it anyways- and I’d rather more of the drivers around me were actually driving as well.
If that’s the way things go, subscription, there aught to be insurance coverage built into that. It’s required anyway and the extent to which a driver relies on SD, and has to pay a sub, then it’s the SD responsible for accidents, not in full but part, and insurance can reflect that as well. But if the two are inextricable as a requirement anyway, there should be baked in standardized procedures for “things have gone wrong, which was a known inevitability, and this is the framework for handling it.”
Or isn’t the alternative a local AI that runs autonomously?<p>We’d may for updates and new models, but no need for a subscription.<p>Of course the manufacturer makes more money with a subscription and this is the reason they want it.
And therefore opens up other features to subscription models as well. We've already seen it in some cars, tested in others, etc.
Apple products are good counter examples to your point. The cost of the basic software and OS w/ updates is included in the hardware
Why would I own my own car in this scenario (vs paying one of the autonomous driving companies to send a car my way when I need one)?
Why would I own a car when I can Waymo one?
Having your stuff in it already, it's always available immediately (for you), not needing to worry as much about getting it dirty at the beach or with a dog, going to remote places where calling a Waymo may be infeasible or would take a really long time. Probably also cheaper if you drive really frequently.
I don't know you or your situation, but many people (including the idealized version of Rivian's target market) like going places that Waymo currently doesn't. There's also tradeoffs with cost, wait time, # of passengers, cargo, etc. Some people may also want to automate "boring" driving while still having the option to do "fun" driving
My cars are more than just transportation. They're mobile storage lockers where I can keep my stuff reasonably secure. They're a place to sit warm and dry while I wait for something else. They're (semi) private changing rooms where I can put on my cycling kit. Regardless of who does the driving I'll never give up owning (or at least leasing) my own private cars.
Because lugging around two child seats when you get out at the other end fucking sucks.
Why do people own cars when they can just Uber?
Because it’s not convenient enough, and too expensive.<p>Fix those two and personal car ownership will plummet in many places.<p>Many people don’t <i>want</i> to own a car, pay for insurance, gas, tires, oil changes, parking, washing etc.<p>Car ownership sucks horribly for most people, it’s just currently the best option. That will change.
> pay for insurance, gas, tires, oil changes, parking, washing etc.<p>If you use a car you are paying for those costs. There is no getting around it. If you uber it is indirect, but part of your costs per ride is going to those things. Renting a car gets someone else to do them - but you are paying them to do that somehow. (self driving make trade parking for gas where parking is expensive, so in the densits areas this can make sense, but only because the car is driving empty out to the suburbs in the morning and empty back into the city in the evening - so it increases traffic)<p>If you own your car you can choose to not keep it clean. The rental will not allow that choice and so you pay for it.
And why do you think Waymo will fix all of this?
This is better solved by leveraging more traditional forms of transportation. Making biking, walking, and various forms of transit easier, safer, and more effective. Cars, whether self-driving or not, are in direct opposition to this.<p>I'm sure they could be useful to folks that have the specific use-case for it, but the vast vast majority of trips in a person's day-to-day are better solved by robust multi-modal options and public transit. The benefit there is that less drivers means that traffic is actually better for everyone.
I don’t particularly think that.<p>Someone will, I don’t know who. Soon.
Almost all these points apply ride hailing with or without driver-less.<p>How do Waymo prices compare to Uber where Waymo exists?
I’m with you but there are plenty of places where public transit is superior to driving and people still drive.
If you want to leave the waymo boundaries?
Can you waimo to another city or to camping?
Uber charges like $100 per hour the customers. I feel once we reach autonomy this will be the baseline.
Unrealistic for 99% of the world, billions live where they earn such sum for more than a week. Not all of those have cars, but many do. This is just some little SV + maybe NY bubble thinking. Also EU would show a big fat finger to such predatory pricing.
yeah but what if comma.ai or something cannibalizes this with open source tech?
if we talking about future, its where self driving AI is actually better than 99.9% of the human and human driving manually would void insurance
Eh they are offering a one time payment for autonomy for $2500 which is equal to 4.1 years of paying $50/mo.<p>It's not a unreasonable cost for development but also maintenance of the self driving system.
Imagine having a vehicle with +680 hp (or 1000 hp in case of Rivian quad) and then drive it autonomously... <i>sigh</i> where's the fun in that?
There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end (regardless of the horsepower). That's what autonomous driving is for imo.<p>There is a lot of fun in driving a high-hp car on track or offroad or in some not-much-populated area or in plenty of other scenarios. That's where using autonomous driving mode would feel preposterous to me.
> There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end<p>And I wish this would be more broadly recognized. Every time there's a story about someone important freaking out about something related to autonomous driving, I'm at least somewhat afraid they'll use it as justification to deny me access to it for those specific use cases.<p>And honestly, those are the only use cases I really care about or feel comfortable with right now. Of course my car is also too old to support much more than that.
How much fun is it actually to drive around doing daily errands or commuting?<p>Personally, I look at the 40,000 people killed each year in traffic crashes in the US, and I think, the sooner we all stop driving (on public roads) the better.
You make a good argument in favor of not allowing 680hp light vehicles on public roads.
[dead]
Interesting contrast to all this tech is that my wife liked the Rivian, but when I told her they won’t do car play that interest went to 0. Can CarPlay not play nice with these things or do they want to keep all the tech dollars to themselves?
Direct quote from RJ Scaringe, founder/CEO of Rivian:<p>> This is a decision. It's generated, I said there's many millions of decisions, many of them will never get noticed and they're just under the surface. One of those decisions that's been noticed quite a bit is the fact that we've intentionally not included CarPlay in the vehicle. And that's not to say we don't think a close partnership with Apple is important. So we have Apple Music integration, we have a bunch of Apple integrations that are yet to come, we have a great relationship with the team at Apple. But it was more to say, we just felt and continue to feel very strongly about creating a consistent, fully integrated digital experience where you're not jumping between apps, let's say from a CarPlay app back to the vehicle app. And it's quite jarring when you don't have, let's say vehicle level controls when you're in the CarPlay environment. That view we've had since the early, early days. I think that's going to become even more important and more true in a world of integrated AI.<p><a href="https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/14/transcript" rel="nofollow">https://cheekypint.transistor.fm/14/transcript</a>
I can think of an easy way to have the controls accessible no matter what's going on on the touchscreen, but then again that's probably what disqualifies me from being the CEO of a big car company.
Rivian's infotainment system uses Google Maps which I am not a big fan of. I wish they would support CarPlay <i>in addition</i> to everything else, so that I wouldn't lose my maps.
All of the mentioned issues are mostly solved with Apple CarPlay Ultra though so this doesn't explain to me why they don't offer that.
I see CarPlay (and CarPlay Ultra) as being for auto makers who don't want to put in all the effort to design and drive a good proprietary UI (CarPlay is a godsend in cars with crappy UI, i.e. most of them).<p>Rivian is a luxury vehicle brand with a first-class UI/UX. I imagine going with their own first-class UI <i>and</i> CarPlay Ultra would be a mess; two separate interfaces for the same controls, but laid out differently. Makes a lot more sense they'd be working with Apple to integrate more Apple features into their own UI, rather than having to maintain two separate first-class UIs that are bound to have discrepancies.<p>And there's the more obvious answer that they want the entire driving experience to feel like a Rivian experience, given how important that's been for luxury EVs on the software side. Supporting a canned OS would make the vehicle "feel" the same as every other car that also supports it.
Because the real reason is they don't want you using somebody else's software.
Bullshit response. It would cost Rivian nothing to allow Apple (and Android) devices to use the monitor in the car as a second screen to be able to play music and whatnot, they just don’t want to to increase vendor lock in.<p>They could easily make their screen compatible with Carplay/Android Auto and provide whatever experience Rivian wants to at the same time, and they could let the drivers choose which to use.<p>And I write this as someone with a Model Y who does not miss Carplay (although it would be nice to have).
It’s not a bullshit response. It’s hidden in swathes of typical CEO bullshit corp-speak, but underneath that he’s clear that they’ve made the deliberate decision to be responsible for the full infotainment UX/UI, despite the trade-offs this brings.<p>We may both disagree with their decision, but that doesn’t mean the explanation is bullshit.<p>And to be fair, as you point out, if they do <i>a really good job</i> with the UI/UX (as Tesla have mostly done) then you’ll probably not miss CarPlay <i>most of the time</i>.
Could they? I've been told Apple certifies every car before they allow carplay and this costs a lot. I can't verify (the people who tell me this are under NDA and so won't speak on the record)
You'll need to spend an additional $1500 over 10 years for Rivian Connect+ to use music streaming services on their infotainment system. No additional cellular costs for using CarPlay or Android Auto.
Car companies are notorious for having awful software, awful update systems, and awful software teams. So much so that people have come to think that if a car doesn't have CarPlay, that it probably sucks to interface with (which is a safe assumption). Even Tesla is working on adding CarPlay, despite having good software. A lot of people refuse to even consider the idea of a car without CarPlay, and the car companies are to blame
I was hesitant buying my Tesla this year (first one) as I really liked having CarPlay in my prior car (Jeep). But after having it a while, it's really a non-issue. The Tesla Apple Music app is pretty good. Their maps and navigation is pretty good (and integrated with FSD). And I can easily just use the bluetooth connection for a couple other minor things I occasionally use.
I’ll start off by saying that the model Y is one of the best mid-level cars I’ve driven so the issues I mention below are worth the tradeoffs to me.<p>In my experience, Tesla navigation can be pretty bad when navigating my large urban city. During peak traffic times it often tries to send me down roads that are notoriously known for traffic backing up. Most times when I end up following those suggested routes, my ETA essentially becomes meaningless.<p>I’ve found Google, Waze, and Apple maps to be a lot better in this respect.<p>I do miss having CarPlay. That’s not to say I think the music integration you mentioned is bad, but I find the overall UI in my model Y to be a bit confusing - and the lower icons seem to sometimes randomly change from what I have them set as.
Same. I love the tesla model y, but it's not perfect. The screen UI is pretty good for the most part, enough that I don't think about carplay too often.<p>But I do tend to stream audio from my phone more than from the tesla UI, and so I do miss carplay when I think about it.
> Their maps and navigation is pretty good (and integrated with FSD)<p>I got a loaner with fsd and tried it out.<p>There was this one trip I took to a store and for some reason, the nav route detoured off the road to the next street over, then joined back with the route.<p>I think this is a thing nav systems do and people just ignore it and go the right way.<p>except the tesla tried to drive the dumb route.<p>lol
In 6 years I don’t want your laggy legacy system with unsupported apps. I want my new phone to power the experience. Most of my experience in a car is digital, the physical needs to do its best to get out of the way. I hope Rivian fails for missing this obvious point.
You know 5 years from now Apple and Google will charge the car manufacturers millions to enable CarPlay / Android Auto.<p>Enshitiffication has one end, they will screw everyone long term.<p>I don't blame any manufacturer who bows out.
Where I live I am often surrounded by Waymo vehicles... is Lidar 100% safe for people to be around? I ask because I read an article about how Lidar on one of the new Volvos could destroy your phone camera if you pointed it at it? If Lidar can do that to a phone camera, can it hurt your eyes?
Your eyes will be fine (assuming that we are talking about automotive LiDAR specifically).<p>Automotive LiDAR is designed to meet Class-1 laser eye-safety standard, which means "safe under normal conditions." It isn't some subjective/marketing thing, it is an official laser safety classification that is very regulated.<p>However, if you try to break that "normal conditions" rule by pressing your eyeball directly against an automotive LiDAR sensor for a very long period of time while it is blasting, you might cause yourself some damage.<p>The reason for why your phone camera would get damaged, but not your eyes, is due to the nature of how camera lenses work. They are designed to gather as much light as possible from a direction and focus it onto a flat, tiny sensor. The same LiDAR beam that is spread out for a large retina can become hyper-concentrated onto a handful of pixels through the camera optics.
Why wouldn’t your eye lens focus LIDAR photons from the same source onto a small region of your retina in the same way that a phone camera lens focuses same-origin photos to a few pixels?<p>Sorry if this is a silly question, I honestly don’t have the greatest understanding of EM.
It's incredibly important to understand that eyes and glass have different optical properties at these wavelengths. It's hard to conceptualize because to us clear is clear, but that's only at visible light. The same way that x-rays and infrared and other spectra can show things human eyes can't see, or can't see things visible light can see, it's a 2 dimensional problem. The medium and the wavelength are both at play. So, when you have the eye which is known to absorb such light, and artificial optics which are known to pass it without much obstruction, they're going to behave like opposites. Imagine if the glass/plastic they used in the car blocked the light. Wouldn't really work.<p>There is a flip side to this though. Quick searches show that the safety of being absorbed and then dissipated by the water in the eye also makes that wavelength perform worse in rain and fog. I think a scarier concept is a laser that can penetrate through water (remember humans are mostly bags of salt water) which could, maybe, potentially, cause bad effects.
Depends on the wavelength of lidar. Near IR lidars (850 nm to 940 nm, like Ouster, Waymo, Hesai) will be focused to your retina whereas 1550 nm lidars (like Luminar, Seyond) will not be focused and have trouble penetrating water, but they are a lot more powerful so they instead heat up your cornea. To quote my other comment [1]:<p>> If you have many lidars around, the beams from each 905 nm lidar will be focused to a different spot on your retina, and you are no worse off than if there was a single lidar. But if there are many 1550 nm lidars around, their beams will have a cumulative effect at heating up your cornea, potentially exceeding the safety threshold.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46127479">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46127479</a>
Follow up question that you might know: would multiple LIDAR sensor actually be additive like that? If you can stand a foot away from a car's LIDAR sensor and be unharmed, then can't you have:<p><pre><code> | Distance | # of Sensors |
| 1 | 1 |
| 3 | 9 |
| 5 | 25 |
| 10 | 100 |
| 25 | 625 |
| 50 | 2500 |
| 100 | 10000 |
</code></pre>
x^2 sensors at x feet from you and have the same total energy delivered? If sensors are actually safe to look at from 6in or 3in, then multiple the above table by 4 or 16.<p>It seems like, due to the inverse square law, the main issue is how close you can get your eye to a LIDAR sensor under normal operation, not how many sensors are scattered across the environment. The one exception I can think of is a car that puts multiple LIDAR arrays next to each other (within a foot or two). But maybe I'm misunderstanding something!
Do you if there has been any work how lasers affect other animals and insects?<p>Am I being catastrophically pessimistic to think that in addition to swatting insects as it moves forward, the cars lidar is blinding insects in a several hundred meter path ?<p>I’m very optimistic about automated cars being better than most humans but wonder about side effects.
If we have automated anti-mosquito vehicles just roaming around, the world would be a better place. There might be some second order effects from removing mosquitoes that we haven't predicted, but fuck mosquitoes.
GP is slightly wrong. IIRC those problematic LIDARs are operating at higher power than traditionally allowed, with the justification that the wavelength being used is significantly less efficient at damaging human eyes, therefore it's safe enough at those powers, which is likely true enough. But it turned out that camera lenses are generally more transparent than our eyes and therefore the justification don't apply to them.
Your eyes a much larger sensor area than the opening, they do the opposite of concentrating light in a small area.
I looked this up for a laser-based projector, Class 2 is "blink reflex should protect you" and "don't be a doofus and stare into it for a long time". Look up the classifications on the google and you'll see other things like "don't look into the rays with a set of binoculars" and stuff.<p>Class 1 is pretty darned safe, but if you're continually bathed by 50 passing cars an hour while walking on a sidewalk... pitch it to a PhD student you know as something they should find or run a study on.
I have a Class 1 Makita (green) laser level, wide strong beam, excellent tool for landscaping. I accidentally looked into it from a 10 cm distance. It did not leave permanent damage, but for a few days I had the dot burned on my retina. And yes, I almost immediately closed my eye - within a few hundred ms's.
Don't look into the laser with the remaining eye
What about if you're walking or biking next to congested motorway and most of the vehicles have LiDAR running at the same time? That's a lot of photons.
This is inconsistent with the basic concept. It’s projecting and reading lasers . By default some emissions will hit people in the eye. Even invisible light can damage tissue , especially in the eye
Depends on the type of LIDAR. LIDAR rated for vehicle use is at a wavelength opaque to the eyes so it hits the surface and fluid of your eye and reflects back rather than going through to your cones and rods.<p>It isn't however opaque for optical glass (since the LIDAR has to shine through optical glass in the first place) so it hits your camera lens, goes straight through, and slams the sensor.
You seem to be implying that all automotive lidar are 1550 nm but that's not true. While there are lots of 1550 nm automotive lidars (Luminar on Volvo, Seyond on NIO) there are also plenty of 850 nm to 940 nm lidars are used in cars (Hesai, Robosense, etc). Those can pass through water and get focused to your retina, but they are also a lot lower power so they do not damage cameras.
Also although that energy longer than 1400nm is generally absorbed by the cornea and lens, it is still energy, and it is not a hard bandpass filter per se. Safety is relative at higher wattages.
NGL I thought sub 1550nm LIDAR had been banned for use in new automotive applications already? I clearly must be mistaken but I had thought that was the case.
Not banned. In addition to the Chinese lidars I mentioned, the Valeo Scala on Audi cars is 905 nm, and then there are also Ouster (865 nm), Innoviz (905 nm), Livox (905 nm) etc. The large spinning lidar on top of the Waymo Jaguar I-Pace is also purportedly 905 nm, although in the past they also had a swivelling 1550 nm lidar in the dome of the Chrysler Pacifica cars (situated just underneath a smaller spinning 905 nm one).<p>The eye safety threshold for 850/905 nm is a lot lower than 1550 nm, so they output way less power, but the much better sensitivity of silicon sensors makes up for it partially. You can also squeeze out more range using clever signal processing and a large optical aperture (which allows you to output more light, but since the light is spread out across the aperture, the intensity doesn't exceed the threshold). Typically, the range of 850/905 nm lidars is less than that of 1550 nm lidars though.<p>On the bright side, due to lower power, there hasn't been any instances (to my knowledge) of 850 nm and 905 nm lidars damaging cameras, whereas at least two different 1550 nm lidars have been known to destroy cameras (Luminar and AEye).<p>On the Luminar lidar website [1] they proudly advertise "1,000,000x pulse energy of 905nm".<p>[1] <a href="https://www.luminartech.com/technology" rel="nofollow">https://www.luminartech.com/technology</a>
During the presentation, Rivian speaker specifically said it is safe for your camera sensors. Check the youtube video of their presentation
There are two kinds of safe. Safe when it's working as intended, and safe when it breaks.<p>But yes there are lidar sensors out there where if broken in the right way could burn out your retinas permanently.
I watched the livestream and they said their hardware is "Camera Safe". I am not sure if camera safe and eye safe are correlated, but I would hope/expect that they would not release something that isn't known to be eye safe. I guess it's possible that the long term effects could prove bad, and we will all end up getting "Lidar Eye" dead spots in our vision.
Digital camera sensors are much more sensitive than eyeballs, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that it won't leave a permanent line across your eyeball like it can to a camera sensor
Lidar Eye? No, how the heck would that happen? I mean, there is a dangerous source of light outside (we call it the "sun"), and yet we manage fine.
Your body has signs to knock it off when you're staring at the sun, does it do the same thing for Lidar?
I mean, technically the Sun is "above" us and the LIDARs are at...eye level? So not exactly the same, at least to my layman eyes
When it becomes a widespread issue they'll just release Meta Glasses 5/Apple Vision 3 with the appropriate eye protection, and vision will be very affordable.
The existing regulations here might be insufficient. There is definitely risk if the devices are not carefully designed to be safe.
To date I can't think of any existing lasers which you are intended to look at during daily use. Most consumer facing lasers are either class 1 but hidden (CD-ROM), or class 2 but basically not shined into your eye (barcode reader).<p>There was another discussion a week back <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126780">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46126780</a><p>The lack of accessible certification/testing docs for the lidars is also worrying. Where is the proof that it was even tested? Was it tested just via simulation, via a dummy eye stand-in, or with a real biological substitute?<p>What if there are biological concerns other than simply peak power involved with shining NIR into the eye? (For instance, it seems deep red light has some (beneficial) biological effects on mitochondria. How do we know that a pulsed NIR laser won't have similar but negative effects, even if it doesn't burn a hole in your retina.)
> class 2 but basically not shined into your eye (barcode reader)<p>TIL barcode readers can cause serious eye damage when misused. You'd think they'd have warning labels on these things given how common self-checkout is nowadays and how curious/stupid children can be
If it's like everything else, it's "move fast, break things". I'm sure if it turns out to be harmful, we'll find out decades before regulation catches up
>I can't think of any existing lasers which you are intended to look at during daily use<p>Iphone face unlock users lidar to scan your face when you look at it.
In terms of plain wattage, it cannot be dangerous. Unless, of course, you were to stand with your eye up against the sensor and maybe stare at it for a few minutes.
I loved to see that they plan on running the Rivian Assistant LLM onboard using their new Gen 3 hardware. Great that they see that as a valuable feature and I hope to see the industry move that way.
it seems like car-makers themselves feel burdened to make their own self-driving tech, as opposed to outsourcing the software to a third party.<p>Dell and HP don’t make operating systems…it seems like having a handful of companies focused on getting the self-driving part right without the need to also specialize in manufacturing would be beneficial.<p>My first inclination was to be bullish on Rivian, and there’s no question that their vehicles are beautiful. But is there anything to suggest they have an advantage over Tesla or other automakers when it comes to self-driving?
Most traditional OEMs in the automotive industry are integrators. They write a specification, and a Tier 1 supplier provides a black box matching that spec. (Tier 1 in turn provides a spec to its suppliers and integrates their parts)<p>This has several consequences
- Tier 1 suppliers are waiting on input/approval from OEM before proceeding with projects
- Tier 1 suppliers don't necessarily have the capital to do work "at risk", even if they could build the part without approval/specifications. (TBH - some do)
- Each layer of the supply chain lacks context on the whole project and product line and cannot achieve efficiencies outside of the scope of its contract.<p>These haven't really been a problem for mechanical parts and E/E parts that have well-defined functions and interfaces and have a lot of re-use from previous generations. It works really well with Kaizen (incremental innovation).<p>To outsource it, a traditional OEM would need to completely specify the behaviour of said self-driving system, baseline the specification, put out the requests for quotation, etc. Tier 1 then needs to analyse the spec, estimate it, break it down in to sub work packages, work with its suppliers, etc. From an optimisation point of view, this is really inefficient partitioning of the problem space. For greenfields development, an emergent specification via experimentation may be better - but that won't fit in traditional V-model sub-contract OEMs/Tier 1s use.<p>That flow doesn't need to be followed; the suppliers could raise/allocate capital and build the self-driving stack "at risk" - and this seems to be done (Tier IV, Waymo, etc). But as it's new technology, I assume Rivian think they can do better by themselves and can get the capital for the development as part of an integrated solution while they are smaller it might seem they should not waste limited capitial that way - but integration will save a lot of inefficiency in sharing specifications across boundaries, full system integration and deriving emergent specification via experimentation rather than some MBSE folly.
Not only is Rivian betting on an integrated platform being important for their own cars long term, they’ve also essentially sold that portion of their business to VW. They are investing in the software platform for a lot more cars than just the rivian branded ones.
Don't many automakers outsource level 2 driving aids these days? Typically someone like Mobileye?
Level 2 is simpler and more mature, so it should be easier to specify, package and integrate.<p>It can follow the traditional OEM outsourcing route, where OEM has high-level models and gets suppliers to implement the details.
e.g. I can find public information that Subaru use Veoneer cameras, Xilinx chipsets, but defines their own algorithms. I would speculate they have an outsourced company convert algorithms to FPGA netlists/embedded code.
(On the other hand, I know other OEMs have a more complex mesh of joint ventures)
Aside from Mercedes-Benz, level 2 is the best we have, though?<p>Edit: Re-reading your post, you were talking about the future. You make good points; I will be interested to see how it plays out. Probably as long as the technology remains radar and cameras, it will continue to be easily outsourced.
Have you ever heard of comma.ai? What do you think about it?
HP did write their own operating system: HP RTE. It wasn't until decades later, after the platform became commodified and they stopped designing their own chips, that they went with someone else's.<p>And of course, Microsoft made their own cards back in the day, and they still make the XBox as integrated hardware.<p>This technology is way too early for commodification. Right now, Rivian is a data play.<p>Their platform means they have consistency other providers don't have. They have data from the existing trucks on the road, and they'll roll out these sensors long before they roll out self-driving. Cleverly they've also pitched these as "adventure" vehicles, which means they'll have some data from rarer situations, not just highways. Off-road performance, for example, will add anomalies that they can use to stress-test self-driving code. If a car could handle areas without roads, it is less likely to kill people if a mudslide happens. Or a shadow falls across the bridge.
> as opposed to outsourcing the software to a third party.<p>All about margins and data protection<p>> Dell and HP don’t make operating systems…<p>They come from an era where this style of thinking didn't really exist and now they're in an era where market share almost entirely prevents new players/ideas from entering. If it was 2025 and OS market share wasn't static and the PC was just taking off, we'd probably see far more attempts at OS development to better monetize the PC products the vendors sell.
It’s probably a sensible concern that if they use someone else’s tech, they’ll be subsidizing that company’s eventual mastery of the self-driving space, who will then be able to control pricing. The only long game, I imagine, is to create your own self-driving tech, so that your own customers are investing in your own long term success, not someone else’s.
One aspect is that Tesla is all cameras, whereas Rivian sees it as important to have multi-sensor suites (cameras, ultrasonic, radar, and in Gen 3: lidar). TBH as a customer I prefer to know that the latter is protecting me instead of just cameras.
They could have a better driving assistance package than 99% of other cars on the road for 1/10 the price by using OpenPilot as the LKAS, or installing a Comma in the car.<p>Real shame nobody has taken that approach, not even a fork
Comma had made essentially no efforts to meet the requirements of automotive systems the last time I looked at them. They would be an incredibly risky supplier for systems that could easily come under regulatory scrutiny.
That's not completely true.<p><a href="https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/docs/SAFETY.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/master/docs/SAFETY...</a><p>It's an... interesting approach, They essentially reduce the surface area as much as possible. I don't buy that it's enough, but, again, interesting to see what they do.<p>Besides, a big OEM could pour an army of developers and turn the Comma approach into an ASIL D, it would be quite a lot of work but within the realm of possibility.
Aptera has: <a href="https://aptera.us/openpilot-release" rel="nofollow">https://aptera.us/openpilot-release</a>
I recently ordered a Comma Four, which I will install BluePilot on and use with my Lightning. I'm looking forward to seeing how competent it is. Gets good reviews, at least, so I'm hoping.<p>I do wonder if there will be many more iterations, though, with so many manufacturers switching over to an encrypted canbus and locking out the control method comma uses.
HP-UX?
These companies are only surviving because of US protectionism. This tech is more expensive than then Chinese equivalent from 2-3 years ago (look at what Xiaomi or BYD released as their 2024 models).<p>These cars will not sell well outside of the US.
is everyone designing their own silicon getting so much additional them-specific utility out of it that it's actually worth it?
Rivian has a huge interest in being the outsourcer for legacy automakers. They’re not able to sell $100k cars enough and even with the promised R2, they probably will only be a small-ish player in the EV market. Their CEO recognizes how crazy good Chinese EVs are and currently they’re not even a competitor for Tesla.<p>But, VW is willing to pay $5B for their software platform. I think they want to extend that to being able to sell custom chips and “AI” capabilities, whatever that means.
Which honestly is crazy to me. I have a Rivian, and to say the software is disappointing would be an understatement. There are heisenbugs galore; some examples:<p>* Doors refuse to open<p>* Lose the ability to control media playback using any controls<p>* Any button in the UI just opens and closes the windows<p>Granted, I'm a server side/backend engineer mostly, and I don't know much about writing software/firmware for a very hostile emf environment. But if any project I worked on had bugs like this, fixed at the rate they're fixed on Rivian, I would assume a badly flawed architecture or non existent technical leadership<p>Yet VW paid billions for this very software. I can't imagine how bad it must've been on their own stack that they gave up and bought this other seemingly broken stack
This sounds nothing like my experience, you should get that vehicle serviced.
Service can’t do anything about the state machine being wrong.<p>The Rivian app does not permit you to send a command to the car while the app thinks the car is processing a command. Trunk opening? You can’t unlock the door. On top of this, if you try to open the trunk while outside Bluetooth range and then Bluetooth connects, you are still stuck waiting for the pending command to complete.<p>Oh, and the ridiculous “hey let’s always remind you that you own a Rivian” Live Activity seems to synchronize on a schedule that involves being hours and hours out of date.<p>The Rivian app sucks.
I agree that the app leaves something to be desired - my personal pet peeve is that it shows stale or cached data while waiting to do some async update, leading to just outright fabricated charge or lock state. Never had those kinds of problems with the truck's software proper though
Why can’t they just copy Tesla? Chinese manufacturers do just that and skip the hard steps
Same, I've had mine for a couple of years now with no notable software issues at all.
I have seen issues like that. Rebooting has always fixed it, but it is notable.<p>I really wish they would hire a strong frontend team. I can almost always figure out what happened just from the signal, and it's usually a state machine getting stuck. Which I have some sympathy for, but also you just can't have that happen in something that is going to feel polished and responsive.
This comment is pretty funny to me, as a car guy. What’s there to service? It’s a software issue.
Presumably, but you don't really known until you pay to take it in for service and they tell you there is nothing wrong but they don't have a fix (gee, great experience). On the "know it's software" side e.g. I had what appeared to be random issues with audio crackling on my PC I assumed was software/driver related, it turned out there was a faulty USB hub causing an issues for the whole bus but it was just most apparent in the audio device.<p>Stuff like "Doors refuse to open" is vague enough it could be a similar kind of issue which needs physical service/replacement rather than just a software update, especially if other buttons are triggering completely separate actions with the windows. Or it could very well be 100% software issues, which could be more apparent with additional details like "only does it after transitioning from this screen or pressing things in this order" type problems.
As a car guy you should know that there's tech in cars these days. Or do you calibrate everything from tpms monitors to re pointing/tunes in your garage?<p>If something's wrong with your car's head unit firmware or android auto connection or whatever, of course you'd have a technician look at it?
> Or do you calibrate everything from tpms monitors to re pointing/tunes in your garage?<p>Pretty much, yeah. I race SCCA and build race cars. Exactly why I want nothing to do with these, you don’t own it. You’re leasing the hardware that’s hogtied to the software.
Oh man, you're in for a bad time then, as pretty much everything - yes even amateur racing cars - has software in it now, and you don't own any of it.<p>As a car guy, it surprises me you weren't aware of this trend yet but I guess we all find out sooner or later. But hey - maybe that '89 Carrera will keep on trucking for a few more decades though - good luck!
You're not wrong, but I am still sad about this trend. Especially the "you don't own any of it" part. I always think about this:<p><a href="https://theoutline.com/post/1398/why-can-t-karen-sandler-get-the-source-code-for-her-pacemaker" rel="nofollow">https://theoutline.com/post/1398/why-can-t-karen-sandler-get...</a>
I love these replies, hahah. You really think I’m not aware of the software that’s running my 2017 Shelby? The difference is (you know this, I think you’re being purposely obtuse) it’s never connected to the internet, it’s never getting updates, and it’s not a complete car OS that locks you out of doing anything.<p>I think you might be the one needing the luck
I own a Rivian too, and previously owned a Tesla. While I too have my gripes about the UX on the Rivian, it still beats the cr*p out of a Tesla.
stuff like that happens with tesla.<p>one funny one is that periodically you can trigger the "more cowbell" rainbow road easter egg. You can cancel the road animation, but you can't cancel the easter egg music or control the volume.
I was just in a discussion on this very topic. It's the build vs buy equation applied to silicon. Early in the tech boom the entire silicon stack was proprietary and required a lot of time and investment to train up people who could design the circuitry, we got our first "ASICS" which was basically a bunch of circuitry on a die and you then added your own metal layer so it was like having a bunch of components glued to a board and you could "customize" it by putting wires between the parts. Then we had fabs that needed more wafer starts so they started doing other peoples designs which required they standardize their cells and provide integration services (you brought a design and they mapped it to their standard cells and process). And as the density kept going up they kept having loots of free space they needed to fill up. The 'fabless' chip companies continued to invest in making new parts until the pipeline was pretty smooth. And at that point the level of training you needed a the origin to get it into silicon dropped to nearly zero, you just needed the designs. And into that space people who were neither 'chip' companies, nor were they 'fabless' OEMs, realized they could get their integration needs met by asking a company to make them a chip that did exactly what they wanted.<p>One the business side, the economics are fabulous, your competitors can't "clone" your product if they don't have your special sauce components. So in many ways it becomes a strategic advantage to maintaining your market position.<p>But all of that because the all up cost to go from specification to parts meeting the specification dropped into the range where you could build special parts and still price at the market for your finished product.<p>A really interesting illustration is to look at disk drive controller boards from the Shugart Associates ST-506 (5MB) drive, to Seagate's current offerings.
It is illustrative because disk drives are a product that has been ruthlessly economized because of low margins. The ST-506 is all TTL logic and standard analog parts, and yet current products have semiconductor parts that are made exactly to Seagate's design specs and aren't sold to anyone else.<p>So to answer your question; apparently the economics work out. The costs associated with designing, testing, and packaging your own silicon appears to be cost effective even on products with exceptionally tight margins, it is likely a clear winner on a product that enjoys the margins that electric vehicles offer.
I would wager that's because there isn't a lot of existing silicon that fits the bill. What COTS equipment is there that has all the CPU/Tensor horsepower these systems need... AND is reasonably power efficient AND is rated for a vehicle (wild temp extremes like -20F to 150F+, constant vibration, slams and impacts... and will keep working for 15 years).<p>Yea, Tesla has some. But they aren't sharing their secret sauce. You can't just throw a desktop computer in a car and expect it to survive for the duration. Ford et all aren't anywhere close to having "premium silicon".<p>So you're only option right now is to build your own. And hope maybe that you can sell/license your designs to others later and make bucks.
I share your skepticism. This feels like an attempt to tap the trainloads of money piling into "AI", for a company that is in pretty desperate need of more cash to stay alive.<p>In a vacuum there are potentially some advantages to doing your own silicon, especially if your goal is to sell the platform to other automakers as an OEM.<p>But custom silicon is pricey as hell (if you're doing anything non-trivial, at least), and the payoffs have a long lead time. For a company that's bleeding cash aggressively, with a short runway, to engage in this seems iffy. This sort of move makes a lot more sense if Rivian was an established maker that's cash-flow positive and is looking to cement their long-term lead with free cash flow. Buuuuut they aren't that.
I have the same question. It makes sense that they might need bespoke software, but how could they possibly be more efficient at creating chips than an AMD/Nvidia?
Possibly. Realistically this is replacing the expensive category of FPGA (Zynqs or similar with strong hardware CPU cores), this means they get all the peripherals they desire in hardware, and they can pick the core variant in order to optimise for their workloads (all the different vector extensions for example). There's an interesting market for that kind of thing, either full FPGA to ASIC replacement, or drop in replacement FPGAs of lower cost (The Rigol MHO98 replaced the Xilinx FPGA of the previous generation with a substitute from Fudan). If you're shipping a lot of hardware, that sort of thing becomes worthwhile.
I hear many Rivian customers really love Comma.ai, so much that they are #1 on Comma dash.
Probably a lot of overlap in the venn diagram of people who would like the two
things. Mostly the "Early Adopter" circle.<p>Also a lot of cars have a lot of limitations with comma.ai. Yes, you can install it on all sorts but there are limitations like: above 32mph, cannot resume from stop, cannot take tight corners, cannot do stop light detection, requires additional car upgrades/features, only known to support model year 2021. Etc.<p>Rivian supports everything, it has a customer base who LOVE technology, are willing to try new things, and ... have disposable income for a $1k extra gadget.
I’ve seen videos of massive touch screen stuttering, is it still a thing on rivian?
a lot of the gen1 users will likely swap over to it though. They basically have dropped improvements for gen1 autonomy which is rug-pullish :(
It is nice to see a car company investing in a sensor platform that could actually safely self-drive.<p>It is unfortunate that the existing market participants seem hell-bent on destroying consumer confidence in self-driving before this will make it to market.<p>We desperately need a safety regimen for self-driving cars that takes it as seriously as airplane safety.
Meanwhile, the only thing people really want from Rivian is CarPlay / Android Auto support, lol.
CarPlay and affordability. I was totally smitten last year with the R1S during a test drive. I'm not a car person but felt that spark people must feel when they obsess over their vehicles.<p>But it wasn't pushing-six-figures smitten, which is where you're at when you get a new one with customizations.
>afforadbility<p>This 1000%.<p>Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker.<p>Instead, we are getting these boutique, expensive vehicles packed full of tech, but in the end, they still fundamentally suck as cars compared to gas alternatives, especially hybrid. I got a Prius Prime for my wife last year, the car is way better than any EV on the market in terms of usability. Driving to work and back can all be done in EV mode easily, and then when you wanna go somewhere, you can keep the car above 80 mph easily and get there faster without worrying about where to charge.
> Electric cars are supposed to be simple.<p>The only part an EV doesn't have is the engine and gearbox. Admittedly, these <i>are</i> pretty major components, but it's a technology mature enough to be extremely reliable if the manufacturer cares to make it so.<p>But what an EV has instead is a massive battery, charging electronics, a DC-DC converter keeping the 12V battery charged, and various electric motors and actuators for the air conditioning and coolant loops. These are significant more reliable than oily engines in lab environments, but the automotive environment tests the mettle of seemingly resilient components.
> Electric cars are supposed to be simple. Give me something in a shape of a Civic, with the engine replaced with a motor and a battery good for 150 miles, and sell it for $10-12k new. Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker.<p>I think this is more or less the pitch behind Slate (<a href="https://www.slate.auto/en" rel="nofollow">https://www.slate.auto/en</a>), though it's more of a truck/SUV form factor.
> still fundamentally suck as cars compared to gas alternatives<p>i can assure you my expensive EV does not suck as a car compared to gas alternatives, its better in almost every way. insane performance compared to any gas car, superb handling, way better driving UX tech, silent, clean. & 400mil range is just fine for me thanks. Yes it cost a lot.
Sounds like you want a Nissan Leaf? They exist.
This sounds a lot like some of the BYD offerings which, regrettably, aren't available in USA.
Unfortunately federal standards now require the backup camera, so the entertainment cluster comes along basically for free from that.
This.
> Don't even need an entertainment cluster, give me a place to put a tablet or a phone and just have a bluetooth speaker.<p>Illegal - backup camera is required. Speakers probably too for alerts. Also you are super naive if you think that's where actual cost is.
Yep. I certainly wanted an R1S, but ended up in an EV9 due to CarPlay plus huge lease incentives. No regrets, and will probably get another after this lease is up.
I get where carmakers are coming from though.<p>Cars used to compete on distinctions between driving experience/fuel economy/reliability/etc. In comparison, differences between electric cars is mostly superfluous. They're very interchangeable.<p>For the next generation of car buyers, infotainment and features are going to be the main features. And if you are handing all of that away to the tech companies, your entire company is going to just become another captive hardware partner of the tech giants.
I don't know. I would argue that driving experience and reliability are still very much going to be things in the electric car market. I'm an EV9 owner and we have issues w/ the suspension making it feel sloppy over some bumps. There's going to be a ton of nuance in terms of how all of these different electric vehicles drive, ride, and are experienced. And those are all going to come down to the vehicle manufacturers themselves, not just the technology partner for screens.
If they actually planned to compete on it they could just offer Carplay support as an option, no?
Oh wow it doesn't have Carplay/Android Auto? Yes they definitely differentiated themselves, into me not wanting one anymore...
... So the answer is to make a series of worse products?
It's maddening that $100k purchases get totally nerfed by bad software. Absolutely crazy to me that I can go out find a super nice car I want and have to walk away because of bad software or no carplay support.
I hear this a lot and it's surprising to me. We have three cars in our family (two with carplay and the Rivian) and carplay always feels like such a downgraded experience compared to that of the Rivian.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'll take a car infotainment system that doesn't <i>need</i> CarPlay/AndroidAuto to be usable (and lacks it) over one that requires a phone attached via CarPlay/AndroidAuto to be usable.<p>I use Android Auto on rental cars all the time.<p>My daily driver is a Tesla (Model S /w MCU v2) that doesn't have it. And doesn't need it to provide a usable experience.
If the software has the same library as your phone, then I could why you see it as on par.<p>Android Automotive has a much smaller library than Android Auto, so the selection for audio apps, such as podcasts and music, are much more limited. The options for map software is smaller too. Also Android Automotive doesn't necessarily use your phone's existing internet connection. Depending on the maker, you have to subscribe to a separate data plan.
I've only rented Teslas but I can see how most people would consider CP/AA to be unnecessary given the quality of their integrated software. But for me, the two things Tesla can't do (and CP/AA can) is<p>1. Waze;<p>2. My preferred third-party podcasting app.
And real door handles. And real buttons. And better customer service.<p>Who was this announcement for? I’m at a point where I think Rivian’s real customers are investors.
I want the smaller size and cost of the R2
What, no. I'd buy a Rivian R2 right now to replace my Model Y if it 1) existed and 2) matched FSD features.
Not investors, though
I think it makes sense to do an ASIC later, but not now. Chip development is expensive and risky. They ought to at least start selling a product with positive gross margin first.
Its possible that they have tried that and the market isn’t giving them what they need at the price they want. I do mostly agree with you though; its the economics of the car thats gonna supercharge adoption.<p>EDIT: another commenter mentioned that their platform is used by other companies (VW perhaps?). With that information, it might make more sense to do this.
This is really poor execution. You're taking a complex, low margin vehicle and introducing even more cost and supply chain complexity. On top of that, you're essentially making a proxy bet that more expensive hardware (LIDAR) will beat Tesla's software bet.<p>It's absolutely fair to criticize Elon for his ridiculous FSD timeline claims, but here we are now evaluating the market: if you have experienced the latest FSD, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet.
> <i>if you have experienced the latest FSD, Waymo's and now Rivian's bet is just so obviously the exact wrong bet</i><p>I have. It’s wild for anyone to say this.<p>Waymo works. FSD <i>mostly</i> works, and I seriously considered getting a Tesla after borrowing one last week. But it needs to be supervised—this is apparent both in its attention requirement and the one time last week it tried to bolt into a red-lit intersection.<p>The state of the art is Waymo. The jury is still out on whether cameras only can replicate its success. If it can’t, that safety margin could mean game over for FSD on the insurance or regulatory levels. In that case, Rivian could be No. 2 to Waymo (which <i>will</i> be No. 1 if cameras only doesn’t pan out, given they have infinite money from Google). That’s a good bet.<p>And if cameras only works, you’ll still have the ultra premium segment Tesla seems to have abandoned and which may be wary of licensing from Waymo.
Waymo operates on guardrails, with a lot more human-in-the-loop (remotely) help than most people seem aware of.<p>Tesla's already have similar capabilities, in a much wider range of roads, in vehicles that cost 80% less to manufacture.<p>They're both achieving impressive results. But if you read beyond headlines, Tesla is setup for such more more success than Waymo in the next 1-2 years.
> <i>Tesla is setup for such more more success than Waymo in the next 1-2 years</i><p>Iff cameras only works. With threshold for "works" beig set by Waymo, since a Robotaxi that's would have been acceptable <i>per se</i> may not be if it's statistically less safe compared to an existing solution.<p>Waymo also sets the timeline. If cameras only <i>would</i> work, but Waymo scales before it does, Tesla may be forced by regulators to integrate radars and lidars. This nukes their cost advantage, at least in part, though Tesla maintains its manufacturing lead and vertical integration.)<p>Tesla has a good hand. But Rivian's play makes sense. If cameras only fails, they win on licensing and a temporary monopoly. If cameras only work, they are a less-threatening partner for other car companies than Waymo.
In the increasingly rare instances where Tesla's solution is making mistakes, it's pretty much never to do with a failure of spatial awareness (sensing) but rather a failure of path planning (decision-making).<p>The only thing LIDAR can do sense depth, and if it turns out sensing depth using cameras is a solved problem, adding LIDAR doesn't help. It can't read road signs. It can't read road lines. It can't tell if a traffic light is red or green. And it certainly doesn't improve predictions of human drivers.
Which begs me the question why Tesla took so long to get here? It's only since v12 it starting to look bearable for supervised use.<p>The only answer I see is their goal to create global model that works in every part of the world vs single city which is vastly more difficult. After all most drivers really only know how to drive well in their own town and make a lot of mistakes when driving somewhere else.
It was only about 2 years ago that they switched from hard coded logic to machine learning (video in, car control out), and this was the beginning of their final path they are committed to now. (building out manufacturing for Cybercab while still finalizing the FSD software is a pretty insane risk that no other company would take)
Path planning (decision-making) is by far the most complicated part of self-driving. Waymo vehicles were making plenty of comically stupid mistakes early on, because having sufficient spatial accuracy was never the <i>truly</i> hard part.
Sensing depth is pretty important though. Especially in scenarios where vision fails, radar for example works perfectly fine in the thickest of fog.
> <i>The only thing LIDAR can do sense depth</i><p>This is absolutely false. LiDAR is used heavily in object detection. There’s plenty of literature on this. Here’s a few from Waymo:<p><a href="https://waymo.com/research/streaming-object-detection-for-3-d-point-clouds/" rel="nofollow">https://waymo.com/research/streaming-object-detection-for-3-...</a><p><a href="https://waymo.com/research/lef-late-to-early-temporal-fusion-for-lidar-3d-object-detection/" rel="nofollow">https://waymo.com/research/lef-late-to-early-temporal-fusion...</a><p><a href="https://waymo.com/research/3d-human-keypoints-estimation-from-point-clouds-in-the-wild-without-human/" rel="nofollow">https://waymo.com/research/3d-human-keypoints-estimation-fro...</a><p>In fact, LiDAR is a key component for detecting pedestrian keypoints and pose estimation. See <a href="https://waymo.com/blog/2022/02/utilizing-key-point-and-pose-estimation" rel="nofollow">https://waymo.com/blog/2022/02/utilizing-key-point-and-pose-...</a><p>Here’s an actual example of LiDAR picking up people in the dark well before cameras: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/U8eq8BEaGA" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/s/U8eq8BEaGA</a><p>Not to mention they’re also highly critical for simulation.<p>> It can't read road signs. It can't read road lines.<p>Also false. Here’s Waymo’s 5th-gen LiDAR raw point clouds that can even read a logo on a semi truck: <a href="https://youtube.com/watch?v=COgEQuqTAug&t=11600s" rel="nofollow">https://youtube.com/watch?v=COgEQuqTAug&t=11600s</a><p>It seems you’re misinformed about how this sensor is used. The point clouds (plus camera and radar data) are all fed to the models for detection. That makes their detectors much more robust in different lighting and weather conditions than cameras alone.
Tesla literally has a human in the driver seat for each and every mile. Their robotaxi which operates on geofenced “guardrails” has a human in the driver seat or passenger seat depending on area of its operation, and also has active remote supervision. That’s direct supervision 100% of the time. It is in no way similar in capability to Waymo.<p>We’ve been hearing Tesla will “surpass Waymo in the next 1-2 years” from the past 8 years, yet they are nowhere close. It’s always future tense with Tesla and never about the current state.
My first instinct is also that Rivian's strategy doesn't make sense. Self-driving is a monumentally hard problem, to be successful you need a world-class engineering and research team, resources and time.<p>I suspect that when Rivian has an L3 product, Waymo will be already offering an L4 package to car manufacturers.
It's not camera vs lidar, it's AI vs AI.<p>Waymo's AI so far has been narrowly focused few cities. Good start, but remains to be seen who will scale out quicker. IMO both will succeed.<p>Right now if you want a personal car Tesla's FSD is the only option and will remain so for likely a decade. Waymo doesn't seem to be excited about their mission at all. If it moves to Google's graveyard they'll be like "meh" while it's mission critical for Tesla.
This is such a wild take. Waymo is expanding to cities across the country, doing millions of paid rides every month. Meanwhile Tesla's "Robotaxi" is tooling around Austin with a few cars, every one of which has a driver in the front seat. On the personal vehicle side, Tesla hasn't done anything new or interesting in years, and sales are slumping. FSD never seems to actually become good enough to actually be "full self driving", it's just year after year of Tesla stans coming in here to tell us how "the latest version is incredible, actual full self driving is just around the corner!"
Your statement on more expensive hardware likely isn't true if you factor in full costs. Lidar gives you things for free with little extra processing (or power) that optical takes extra work to do poorly with higher latency.<p>Also LIDAR has just plain dropped in price, well over 10x, while nVidia hardware (even the automotive specific variants) have not.<p><a href="https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/20/lidars-wicked-cost-drop/" rel="nofollow">https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/20/lidars-wicked-cost-drop...</a>
Waymo is delivering millions of paid rides per month all over the country with no one in the driver's seat. Tesla <i>still</i> can't manage that in one small city without a backup driver in the front.<p>But yes, just like the dozens of other times I've read this comment for years now, I'm sure "the latest version of FSD" is so groundbreaking, and it's all about to change!
> You're taking a complex, low margin vehicle<p>Taxi services are not low margin. A taxi typically does about 500,000 miles over its lifetime; adding $10,000 to that cost is 2 cents per mile, increasing price by about 1%.
I own FSD, its no where near autonomy.
Quite the qualification for self-driving: "as long as there are clearly painted lane lines."
Fully autonomous driving in all conditions in all locations is clearly a hard problem that's still not solved.<p>I'm very happy with any company that clearly spells out the situations where their tech works, and the situations where it doesn't yet work.
I can't find how it will operate. Will it detect a situation where lines are not painted sufficiently clearly, warn you, and disengage? Or will you need to detect where it begins to operate wonky because lines aren't painted sufficiently clearly and to take over? I guess it's the second. It's hands-off, not eyes-off.<p>Also, I would like to see a car company that is further down the road of full autonomy clearly describing all the long tail scenarios. It's just impossible.
I've been saying that it's semi-solved, in the sense that we have a decent idea of how to get there without requiring major breakthroughs. (By "we" I mean Waymo.)
I notice that tesla seems to choose (highlight in blue) the left and/or right lane lines or the car in front of you. But it still seems to work without lines.
The endless list of "exception" cases is why I'm continuous skeptical about any sort of full-self-driving claims.<p>Sure, you can cover everything they can think of. But there are so many cases you can't predict, or which don't have an obvious solution, and it often comes down to a human judgement call that doesn't always have a programmatically-clear right answer.
That was specifically for their existing Gen2 highway assist expansion. Not the Gen3 custom silicon full autonomy that they were discussing for the rest of the presentation.
+3.5 million miles out of ~4.x million miles of existing roads -- not too shabby.<p>Seems like a good start to me, and I'd rather they approach as cautiously as possible.
In the future, we could use some sort of traffic management system, were cars which conform to a standard are able to 'link-up' and move as one unit like a train, it would relieve alot of the stop and go and improve flow on congested roads, possibly with denser traffic. I'd bet alot of daily commuters woild subscribe to something like that.
That was planned a very long time ago. It was too early, and we completely squandered it. Now the spectrum allocated for V2V it is gone.<p><a href="https://www.butzel.com/alert-The-Latest-Development-in-the-Saga-of-Spectrum-for-Connected-Cars" rel="nofollow">https://www.butzel.com/alert-The-Latest-Development-in-the-S...</a>
Yeah, I saw a demo of this in a robotics lab at my local university like 20+ years ago and thought full self-driving was right around the corner.<p>It will probably EVENTUALLY show up, but I'm thinking it's more like decades away at this point.
Those blue stripes look amazing in a retro-future kind of way. About time cars started getting back some personality.
Is there some tight coupling on autonomy + electric cars? Seems the only 2 viable hands-free car companies are Tesla and Rivian. I don't see myself ever getting an electric car, but it doesn't seem like the big car companies are anywhere near this.
No, there is no coupling between EVs and automation.<p>Ford BlueCruise and Mercedes Drive Pilot are equipped on some ICE vehicles, and are hands-free driving on (some) highways.<p>Mercedes Drive Pilot is classified as L3 which is better than Tesla or Rivian.
> Mercedes Drive Pilot is classified as L3 which is better than Tesla or Rivian.<p>Try to find videos where people actually use it. A handful of 1 minute long promotional and car reviewers' videos. It's mostly a marketing move.
I know this ain't a bitch-about-bluecruise thread but it's crazy to me they shipped it as is, it disengages silently as a matter of course - only indication is an animation on the speedometer. You basically have to keep your hands in the wheel just in case, not to mention shouting at you to pay attention when you glance over at the radio. Handsfree but keep your eyeballs facing front !
> Mercedes Drive Pilot is classified as L3 which is better than Tesla or Rivian.<p>"DRIVE PILOT can be activated in heavy traffic jams at a speed of 40 MPH or less on a pre-defined freeway network approved by Mercedes-Benz. DRIVE PILOT operates in daytime lighting conditions when inclement weather is not present and in areas where there is not a construction zone." [0]<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot#2" rel="nofollow">https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot#2</a>
I think the shift to EV is inevitable.
The coupling is more with cost than drive train, but consumers most likely to pay extra for autonomy are the same ones willing to pay extra for electric.<p>Which is why you see it on the Mercedes ICE vehicle. Because it's a high cost vehicle to start with.
The reason for this is Rivian and Tesla bet big on software defined platforms… ie every piece of hardware talks to a small number of central computers instead of many independent systems. This gives them a huge leg up in developing software than can actually take all the available input and use it to control all aspects of the vehicle.<p>Downside is all the buttons are on a screen. But I’ve grudgingly decided it’s worth it for software upgrades.
No, the only Level 3 self-driving system is Drive Pilot by Mercedes. They have it on the S-Class and EQS sedans, so one ICE/hybrid and one EV.<p>It even comes with legal liability for the car manufacturer, that's how confident they are in the tech. None of this kind of hopium: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autonomous_Tesla_vehicles_by_Elon_Musk" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...</a>
It's not real L3, it's marketing department L3. Two years after launch it's still only supported in two US states. Now that Mercedes got their headline, it's effectively abandonware.<p>If it was real L3, Drive Pilot would be considered the vehicle operator for legal purposes. Mercedes would take <i>full</i> responsibility for any driving infringements or collisions that occur during its use. In reality, Mercedes cannot indemnify you from driving infringements, and for collisions they only promise to cover "insurance costs" which probably doesn't include any downstream reputational consequences of making an insurance claim.
So confident that it only works with a lead car to follow, on select stretches of freeways, below a certain speed, on sunny days
The R2(-D2) livery is a fun touch
Why do people what self driving cars at all? I certainly hate the thought of having to pay for any of this. Even if the end product is subscription based, all these feature cost money up front making new cars super expensive.
I'd love to get in my car and go to sleep for a couple of hours or read a book whilst it drives me somewhere. Imagine if it could even pull over and charge up without any kind of intervention too. You could get in your car, and get a full nights sleep whilst it drive you somewhere 500 miles away.<p>Also, at some point, I'm probably going to be too old to drive safely, which will restrict my travels. Not if self driving gets to the point where that doesn't matter anymore.
Too bad the law says you can’t do this
Cool and all, but up until companies started putting this stuff in cars they cost $30k. Now the average car is 50k. The average car is now more expensive than my BMW 3 series with the premium package from a few years back. I don't want to pay for your fantasy of going to sleep in your car and waking up someplace new. I dont want to pay for the ability of my car to self park or be summoned to me. Most new features of cars dont interest me in the slightest.
> I don't want to pay for your fantasy of going to sleep in your car and waking up someplace new<p>So vote with your wallet. And take a bus.
You're suggesting that the only alternative to autonomous self-driving cars is public transit?<p>By the way, I do vote with my wallet. I won't buy a car that has these features. I won't buy a car that serves me ads. I won't buy a car that charges a subscription fee. However, this is becoming increasingly challenging. Most luxury vehicle manufacturers want to pad their bottom lines by charging a premium or worse a subscription for things I (and I suspect many people) don't want.<p>These premium features ultimately trickle down so every new car must have a rear-view camera and many have LED lighting. Examples of two premium features that now everyone must pay for. My eldest daughter failed her driving test because she used the rear view camera when parallel parking. Yes these cameras are mandated but you fail if you use them. The tail light on an F-150 can cost upwards of $3,000 to replace. A tail light!<p>My first car, a jeep, came with a bikini top, no doors. the windshield actually folded down without a special tool, and I used a kerosene heater in between the seats when it was cold. Now wranglers come with touch screens, heated steering wheels and cruise control. Apparently they are difficult to find with a manual transmission. I loved mine back in the day but as you say I'll vote with my wallet and will not buy from Stellantis.<p>I'll happily get my kids a Slate. Of course your mileage may vary and if you want to pay for these premiums then power to you. I just don't want to subsidize your choice.
> You're suggesting that the only alternative to autonomous self-driving cars is public transit?<p>No. But hopefully one day. I don't mind if you want to subsidise my choice or not. I want self driving tech to get to the point that it is safer than manually driven cars, and I then want people who want to still drive manually to be slowly priced off the roads and then outright banned from doing it.<p>My preference is that you stop being allowed to drive manually, and as far as I can see, that's the future, as long as the technology works out.
Average includes trucks and other stuff which are very above the average and pull it up, because god forbid the avg joe from getting a Honda civic instead of a f150 or above.<p>Also, inflation is a thing.
You can get a new Honda civic for less than 30k$ today, as well as other sedans and small cars.
This is a train.<p>You want a train.<p>If you don't like sharing space with other people, you want a private room on a train.<p>These cars and their supporting infrastructure should cost more than a private room on a train because they are less efficient and have more negative externalities than a private room on a train.
It remains to be seen, but there is reason to believe that self driving cars will be enough safer than regular cars that I as a citizen want everyone to have them if you have a car.<p>I have kids who walk, ride bikes, and I do the same. There are a lot of terrible drivers out there - the average driver who thinks they are better than everyone else is still terrible (yes this includes me - I'm one of the few honest enough to admit I'm not good, but I'm about equal to everyone else)
One day, all personal transport will be AI, and lunatics like me who enjoy performance driving will have special vehicles we drive at a track. Self driving cars are great. That you can’t afford one is just a matter of time.
Could happen. But we still allow horse-drawn carriages on some roads. I think I'll be long dead (and I wouldn't be surprised if everyone in this discussion will be long dead as well) before we kick human drivers off the road.<p>If we really gave a shit about driving-related fatalities, there is a <i>lot</i> of fruit hanging <i>way</i> lower than replacing the average sober driver.
I like approaching it from an accessibility standpoint. I don't need it and I enjoy the act of driving. That said, if I had vision impairment and wanted freedom to travel further from home with no assistance self driving cars make a lot more sense.<p>The product isn't necessarily "for me", but that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist.
I'm extremely visually impaired. I'd rather see (ha) good public transport. I also sincerely doubt (and hope so) that I'd be legally able to drive a car simply because it has "self-driving" - what if I need to take control of it? What happens if someone gets hurt because of it? Am I liable, even though I don't have a license?
Driving can be annoying. I like it in some cases, but it's no fun when there's a ton of traffic, lots of stop lights, etc. I'd love to be able to push a button and let it handle the grunt work in those cases.<p>Sometimes I want to do something else. Maybe adjust my music, or send a text. If the car can keep me going while I do that, it would be nice.<p>I live with two people who can't drive. Often I have to take them to things. Tonight I'm going to spend about 90 minutes going, waiting, and coming back, so one of them can do something. It would be great if I could just put them in the car and say, have fun, see you later, and stay home while the car takes them there and back.
Anecdotally, whenever I have to tote someone around who cannot drive, it is nearly universally true that they also cannot get in and out of the car without help, too. So that has to be arranged, a self-driving car won't be able to solve it.
Doing long highway drives is effortless. Think cruise control, but you can let go of the wheel.<p>The hardware necessary for level 2 autonomy is estimated to cost about US$400 in a Tesla. Much higher for companies using Lidar though prices are coming down as well.
I would like self-driving car for myself, but more so, I would like it for all the other drivers on the road who regularly try to kill me or destroy my car.
Because you haven’t tried it. I want to buy Cadilac ev but the biggest downside is the lack of FSD. Once you go FSD you never go back.
My sister plans to just buy the self driving subscription for the month they go on road trips and thats it. Far better than buying it up front.
I don't think so. My financial situation isn't hers though, and I don't even own one. I borrowed a friend's for a 550 mile road trip this past weekend and then for a few days after. It's there enough to do the usual daily trips with minimal interaction, so while road trips is the obvious situation for it it's also really nice to have the rest of the time. It sucks that it costs so much when it could be free, but we still live under capitalism so that's just how that one goes.
You sound like someone who doesn't spend 1+ hour every day commuting in traffic. :)
The replies to this comment are very telling. Everyone is highlighting various desires and issues with cars:<p>- Cars are dangerous to people not in cars
- Cars require your undivided attention (and even that isn't fool-proof)
- Cars are inaccessible: age, eyesight, control operation, etc.
- There's a lot of traffic (iow there's a lot of cars)<p>What people are expressing a desire for is more robust public transit and transportation facilities that protect everyone: peds, drivers, cyclists, etc.<p>The best way to solve all of these problems, totally ignoring self-driving for a moment, is to reduce the total number of vehicle miles traveled. Reduce the number of car trips. Reduce the length of car trips. If there are less cars, there is less danger from cars. If there are less cars, there is less traffic. The only way to have less cars is to provide alternatives: street cars, bike trails, pedestrian facilities, sub-regional buses and trains, inter-regional trains (or buses).<p>Literally all of these problems get significantly better when there are less drivers on the road. Trains can provide the inter-regional travel that allows you to work, read, hangout, sleep, etc. without the constant danger of having to watch the road the entire time.<p>Self-driving cars will certainly be useful, but I think people are really missing the point that the root of the problem is cars specifically. They can (and will!) still be available for people that truly want or need them, but harm reduction is the name of the game. Even changing a portion of your trip from car to something else can make a huge difference! It doesn't have to be door-to-door, it could be that you drive to a park-n-ride. Or you stop driving to the local downtown in the spring, summer, and fall.<p>Most of the people in this comment section want better public transit. It can be made to work even if the goal is to go skiing or mountain biking once you arrive. Cars need to stop being the default and become the exception. It's cheaper, more efficient, safer, and healthier.
> What people are expressing a desire for is more robust public transit and transportation facilities that protect everyone: peds, drivers, cyclists, etc.<p>I'm going to take a guess here that you're in a bubble. Most people don't give more than a passing thought to protecting anybody else on the road but themselves and their own loved ones. You could say enlightened self interest means this should extend to random strangers, but I bet that as a practical matter it does not. I'd even go farther and suggest that the largest plurality of people who support public transit want it so that it will take <i>other</i> people off the road, not them.
Citation needed.<p>There’s plenty of evidence that traffic is almost exclusively induced demand and that as you build other facilities and expand existing ones that more people use them. “Just one more lane bro”, etc.<p>America tends to be car-centric because that’s the only perceived option.
People that want more public transit probably never did public transit. It took me a few horrible interactions on a public transit and some disgusting experience in car share to never support anything “communist”. Specially when you get kids.
I think it helps you drive. It takes away the tedium of driving and reduces your workload.<p>Big wins are: 1) stop-and-go traffic 2) long boring highway trips<p>infrequent but just as important - emergency braking<p>That said I absolutely hate that this seems to give tesla the "courage" to remove physical driver controls (like turn signal stalks, drive select stalks, full controls for wipers, lights and defrost)
As an aside, IIRC they put the turn signal stalk back in a recent update. It saves them a few bucks per car to use buttons instead, but there are people who will not buy a Tesla without a turn-signal stalk -- and the loss on that is probably 500x what is saved by not putting in a stalk.
What I'm wondering is that the stack up of licensed processor IP looks like.
As opposed to more tech, I'd prefer (significantly) less mass.
Out of all things I'm actually surprised they went straight to custom silicon, but gotta respect that decision. It's likely the only way to compete with Tesla right now.
Gotta hand it to Rivian. Solid progress. Not having those features is why I didn’t buy one before. These advances make it a bit more attractive.
That all sounds great but with CARIAD now being involved at Rivian I won’t hold my breath on that roadmap being executed.
Rivian coming for Teslas crown? I honestly think Rivians are unattractive. Like if a jeep and scion had a drunken tryst. Haven’t seen the interior before though.<p>But I’d be glad if somebody was competitive enough to force Elon to behave again.
acquiring steradian semiconductors was a quite good move.
Is the paint job supposed to resemble R2-D2?
Yeah, but does it have CarPlay yet?
I'm getting real tired of seeing Silicon Valley reinvent trains.
RIVN doing quite well today.
If only they had a good designer. They have the ugliest frames.
I cannot give a shit about hands free driving. If I have to pay attention I may as well just drive the damn car.<p>I will care when they sell the cars without steering wheels.
how about they try to make their cars profitably first....
looks like they're profitable already if counting cars and software on them.<p><a href="https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/rivian-releases-third-quarter-2025-financial-results" rel="nofollow">https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/rivian-releases-third-qu...</a>
They'd rather make their board and CEO profitable first...
No, Waymo is just going to license their tech to normal automakers, like Toyota, and those licensees will win. Rivian is run by a Musk-wannabe but even this stock pump isn’t going to help with his sociopath, multibillion dollar compensation package.
The CEO is different from Musk in a few key ways<p>1. He has a STEM PhD (from MIT)<p>2. He is conservative in what he discloses<p>3. Not outspoken or political<p>IMO one of Rivian’s benefits is its image as the anti-Tesla
What stock pump, its cratered on the news.
Incendiary language aside, this does seem pretty likely to me. Waymo has already talked about wanting to license their driver for personally owned cars eventually; it just doesn't make sense for them to do so until they can cover more of the country (or countries). The more areas they cover, and especially when they can cover various popular freeways connecting different metro areas, the more it'll make sense for them to start partnering with automakers to sell the technology to consumers.
Yet no AndoidAuto. Pass.
Can anyone explain why RIVN is down 8% after this announcement? Were investors expecting hands free handjobs or something?
I hold some RIVN and I'm wondering why they're spending resources on custom silicon instead of using something off-the-shelf. What is their advantage here? Can they hire the right people? Can they ship enough units to pay for it?<p>Those are my bearish questions. On the bullish side, the VW deal shows that they're willing and able to license part of their platform, so possibly have a big chance to recoup costs and maybe turn a profit just on that side, which justifies a big software + autonomy investment.
If their idea is both novel and useful, and if it actually works, and they can actually produce it, then: They can sell it to other automakers.<p>(GM has made a lot of cars with their own transmissions. And at various times, they've supplied -lots- of them to other automakers all over the world. They've made a lot of money doing this.<p>Someone's gotta build the machine vision/control systems for all of these self-driving cars; that someone may well be Rivian.<p>It's not as sexy as something like a new convertible might be, or a $40k self-driving electric car, and a consumer might not even know that the new car in their driveway has expensive Rivian parts buried inside, but that future can be very profitable for them.)
>On the bullish side, the VW deal<p>Oh, I think everyone missed this. Rivian is betting Elon made a big mistake by designing FSD to be strictly for Tesla. Rivian are doing FSD to license it out to other manufacturers. They're planning to open a new market.
But how could they beat Waymo or Tesla? At some point, these companies will offer an L4 package to car makers.
I was just thinking about this recently. It doesn’t seem to make sense for each brand to have its own self driving implementation.
Who cares about Tesla, the comparison here is Waymo who has already been doing this for much longer.
Frankly, the "need" for custom silicon seems self-imposed, with the idea of appearing to be a technology company first rather than a car / vehicle company.<p>Cruise automation was also for years working on custom silicon, I knew people there. Many people working on the custom devices didn't really believe in the mission statement either, but they were paid well, and got to do fun work, so they took the job.<p>What makes Rivian, or Tesla better at making the "normal" car pieces compared to Toyota, or Honda? The answer is they're really not better at those things and quite worse typically ; bad fit and finish, rattles, corroding suspension components, difficult to buy replacement parts, etc.<p>If these companies were truly about making electric cars available to all, a partnership with a car company that knows how to do the "regular car stuff" makes a LOT more sense.<p>Instead you have these companies that might be innovative in the drive train, electronics, batteries, and co-packaging who have to learn all the "hard" stuff normal car companies have been doing for a 100-years.<p>Now, instead of moving into a partnership with a regular car company, they're becoming hardware/software organizations making custom silicon with custom software.<p>Even doing custom silicon and the associated software takes YEARS of expertise to do it and not have a 1000 warts, not withtsanding going into a MOVING VEHICLE where the risks of making mistakes is life and limb.<p>So, my conclusion is this is more fancy smoke and mirrors to impress investors and the general public, but not in the best interest of end-users (people who buy vehicles to use as transportation).
Fair point. I think they wanted to sound super futuristic (they often borrow a page from Apple's book) but they forgot they're not Apple.
Maybe they think custom silicon is biting off more than they can chew, coming at a time when they need to focus on R2 production and scale-up.
They just told potential buyers to not buy an outdated Gen2 or an early R2, assuming it is not delayed.
It could be that Gen 3 shipping late 2026 is a concession that R2 might be delayed until then.<p>Personally I think they will ship R2 Gen 2 vehicles to the early adopters that are less concerned with ADAS.<p>My R2 reservation is very late (I had to redo it for reasons) so I probably won't be able to order one until it's available anyways.
Excessive hype leading up to selling the news, happens all the time.
“Buy the rumors and sell the news.” Just typical market stuff.
Any company adding fancy hardware (beyond good cameras and inference chips) to achieve self driving is on the wrong track at this point. Software is what will win this game.<p>Of course, Waymo has achieved good results with A LOT of fancy hardware. But it's hard to see how they stand a chance against Cybercab mass production (probably behind schedule, but eventually).<p>I think Rivian has the best-looking line of EVs out there. Maybe they will be able to come from behind in self-driving tech. But this big reveal is not that promising, IMO.
An alternate take here:<p>The "fancy" hardware is going to get dirt cheap, and in a game where you're asking your customer to trust you with their lives, reliability is going to win. Combine that with time to market, and Tesla feels like a pretty clear "risky bet" at best... Maybe they make it work, but they have to do it before the other companies make lidar cheap, and prices have fallen dramatically over the past 10 years, for much better hardware.
Yeah, that is all reasonable. I think the jury is still out on if sensor fusion can really get far enough up the march of nines (will it work in 99.99 percent of scenarios)? Karpathy has given some good interviews about why Tesla ditched the sensor fusion approach and switched to vision-only.<p>Same can be said for vision-only, of course. Maybe it won't every quite get to 99.99.
Watching this unfold... I keep thinking about the supply chain... how many rare minerals go into this custom silicon?<p>ALSO what happens when the first generation hits end-of-life... will there be a clear path to recycling? I want to believe these platforms will last more than a subscription cycle...<p>BUT I guess we won't know until we see a teardown...
Why would more minerals go into custom silicon than off-the-shelf silicon? How would recycling be any different?
typical automotive 905 nm lidars are just CMOS chips similar to cameras and regular computer chips
Rivians have been spotted with giant Velodyne VLS-128 "Alpha Puck"s since several years ago [1]. But from last I checked, Rivian's ADAS is still struggling with ping-ponging in lanes on curved stretches, and it only works on a small set of pre-mapped highways. Highly doubtful that "universal hands free" is coming.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/mqijd2/rivian_r1t_spotted_with_lidar_rig_in_palo_alto_as/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/mqijd2/riv...</a>
The ping-ponging is certainly a Gen1 problem. (My Gen1 does this.) Gen1 was essentially an off-the-shelf Mobileye unit, and the performance was, as expected, not good.<p>Gen2 autonomy stack is completely unrelated to Gen1, and from what I hear is a completely different level of reliability.<p>(also - this presentation covered yet another, unrelated, gen3 autonomy stack, which shares none of the hardware or models with the existing gen2 stack, either.)
The big lidars are for ground truth collection. They get used in projects ranging from autonomous development all the way down to budget adaptive cruise control or parking sensor benchmarking.