Posted on 03/22/2023 5:23:03 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
In 2017, automakers were scrambling to develop cars that could drive themselves.
Ford Motor bet a billion dollars on a startup called Argo AI to catch up to flashy tech companies like Google, Uber and Tesla. Volkswagen, the second-largest automaker in the world, signed on as a backer in 2019, investing $2.6 billion Argo AI at a valuation of more than $7 billion.
By 2021, Argo AI was valued at $12.4 billion and counted 2,000 employees, with offices on two continents and self-driving tests underway in seven cities.
There were plans to bring a self-driving taxi service to market by 2021, rivaling those by Waymo and Ford’s larger Detroit rival, General Motors.
But in October 2022, Argo AI shut down.
It was another sign that after years of big investment, investors were reining in expectations and money was drying up.
After a rush of enthusiasm, self-driving projects have grown besieged by the challenge of developing needed technology and establishing a business model that’s sufficiently profitable to justify the billions they spend.
In fact, all kinds of mobility projects are losing money — bike-share, ride-hailing, scooters and shuttles, alike.
“The challenge for Ford and for everybody else is trying to figure out how to provide these kinds of mobility services and actually build a viable, self-sustaining business out of it while keeping the cost of the service affordable for people using the services,” said Sam Abuelsamid, principal research analyst at Guidehouse Insights. “They’re still struggling. Everybody is still struggling with that part of it.”
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Do trains first, then we’ll talk.
I would imagine autopiloting a plane doesn't have to account for so much other random traffic.
Pronises, promises....
A not very long Uber ride a day is $7,000 per year. That will more than pay for a car.
1. Their time is valuable, and there is almost always something more important for them to be doing than driving a car.
2. Having a driver and a car owned by a company that is a separate corporate entity than the person getting driven around helps avoid personal liability in civil court in the event of a crash.
You are correct - flying a plane is, maybe unintuitively, much easier. You don’t have anywhere near the use-cases to handle.
That said, many of these systems aren’t equal. There are no current standards to define how “well” an ADAS feature must perform. Lane Keep Assist capabilities will vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.
Consider false positives, the LAST thing you want to happen is for these systems to kick in when they shouldn’t. So, by definition, they will have a threshold where, in some instances, they won’t kick in when you’d want them to. They’re just “assist”.
As vehicles get more capabilities around understanding their environment, along with them being better integrated together, their effectiveness will only improve.
At this time, I agree, I wouldn’t get lazy with my driving and assume the Lane Keep Assist (or any other ADAS feature) will save me all the time. This is the mistake a number of Tesla drivers have made and have paid the price for doing so.
Also, the use-cases you cite are on point. They may not be designed to handle them, I’d turn them off for everything other than freeway use. One system may try to accommodate for things like pedestrians or oncoming traffic, another may only be looking at the road and try to dictate being in the middle of a lane. ...again, no standards.
Self-driving cars are a solution in search of a problem.
I work in an industry where our clients deal with this sort of thing all the time. We are STEM professionals, and my industry is now being dominated by tech-savvy geeks who are almost pathological about pursuing technological advances for no other reason than to just do it. I knew self-driving cars didn't have a bright future when surveys showed that even people in MY industry don't find them all that appealing.
A bad idea is just that, profit poison.
Wake up.
Connected to TCAS, separated by a thousand feet and miles by design and flight plan, and listening to enroute controllers. "The crowded skies" aren't.
I've been flying for longer than I was working, and I know first hand that the only place it gets crowded up there is in class "B" airspace, and around airports - where autopilots are disengaged.
Glad to hear, though, that automotive companies are taking the danger of their autonomous activities to heart and increasing the rigor through which software is certified - but that reassures me not at all.
Great point. I'd offer two observations related to this:
1. Airplane manufacturing is probably one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the world. Much of the R&D in the industry is done under military contracts, so the industry does not have to pass the costs of these things along the way the auto industry does.
2. When it comes to technology development, one of the biggest limitations of the auto industry is that there are very different economies of scale when it comes to building costs into the price of the product that is sold to the customer. Incorporating technology in a car that is: (A) rarely used for more than several hours in a typical day, and (B) is driven by a single occupant most of the time it is being used, tends to be very costly to the end user -- especially in comparison to aircraft that carry hundreds of passengers and is kept in service for as many hours as possible.
I have a couple of Subaru Outback’s (love them) that have the lane assist. Normally I like it, but is sure can be picky about what it sees as the Middle of the lane, and the beeping gets annoying on very windy roads.
Also, when there’s snow I will always turn it off. That’s not because it can’t see the lane lines, as it will not try to “assist” if it cannot see the edges of the lane and there are are indicators that let you know if it can or not.
The problem I that snow on the road can make patterns that appear to be lane edges, and they can shift across the road randomly.
One time I had the car jerk the wheel to the side trying to keep in the “lane”, and that is obviously not optimal is snowy slippery roads. So it always get turned off when there’s snow on the road.
This is one of the reason I just don’t see self driving cars as inevitable. Just too many situations like that where a computer will make the wrong decision. I’m just not convinced that we can program a computer to recognize false or misleading information, that we humans know instinctively.
So perhaps I’ll be proven wrong, but I’m just not convinced that it can be done consistently and reliability for anything other than predicable roads and conditions.
Ever notice how there are far fewer pedestrians, or dogs and children running in front of your vehicle, or stop signs, stop lights, and railroad crossings, up in the air as compared to on the road?
Yes, flying has its own unique challenges, and I do not pretend to be able to list all the known factors; and many of them have to do with local weather patterns and the effects on flight, as well as monitoring the physical responses of the plane’s control surfaces, shutting down hot engines, icing, etc., which aren’t as applicable to cars (”Captain! The steering wheel isn’t responding!”)
But from a layperson’s perspective, it looks like a lot of the airplane constraints, revolve around things which were designed by people as part of the plane, and can therefore be quantified within some error bounds, as opposed to the arbitrary and hard-to-identify-and-differentiate-instantly, interruptions (”bouncing ball in the road implies little kid to follow”), which drivers on the road have to deal with.
The adaptive cruise control works fine for most cases, though. The same with the range estimator (it's an EV) as long as my driving habits haven't changed. When I go on a trip, though, it takes about 200 miles or so before it figures out that 80 mph driving (read: lower range) is the new normal. After the first 200 or so miles the range estimate is pretty accurate. The same for when I'm done with the trip and resume local driving (the range estimate assumes a low range until it has time to realize that 55 mph is the norm with only a few miles here and there of 75 mph).
1) you will not own your car, but you’ll be happy
2) you will not steer your car, but you’ll be happy
3) you will not charge your car, your social credit score is low this period, improve behavior then you be happy again, comrade.
4) you will not live in suburbs or countryside, but you will be assigned a unit in new dense-society-smart-urban-cool-city and you’ll be ecstatic about life. If not, submit complaint to the People’s Social Credit Court.
Those bikes and scooters all over town were quite fun at first. Then Covid came and they all disappeared. Apparently riding public bikes spreads disease. Now they are being ridden by homeless people who overpower the locking systems. Then they tear the batteries out to power their tent houses. I saw a homeless guy riding a scooter with two other scooters on it with him heading towards the levee. I am reminded of the biblical caution about casting your pearls before swine.
No doubt, that’s the vision that they are dead serious about.
On long distance driving, I appreciate the warnings feature when there's a car next to you, with an increased warning when the turn indicator is on.
Self driving Winnebago
https://www.rvtravel.com/man-puts-rv-on-cruise-control%2C-walks-back-to-make-coffee/
You can’t fix stupid.
I agree that for the vast majority of folks self-driving cars are not needed.
However, the baby boomers are gonna keep getting older and we are eventually going to be menaces on the road.
At some point it will be safer to have a self-driving car than a ninety five year old geezer at the while.
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