SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Yes, the phrase used in the headline is a direct quote. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is teasing new details about the company's future, set to be announced later this week. The news may be in reaction to slipping stock prices and troubles with regulators following a recent crash:
While offering no other details, the master plan is likely a follow-up to a 2006 blog post titled "The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)," in which Musk laid out his vision for Tesla, including eventual plans for the Tesla Roadster, the Model S sedan and the upcoming (and more affordable) Model 3 sedan.
It may not be a bad idea for Musk to roll out some optimistic news. In recent weeks, the electric car company has become the subject of a federal safety investigation following at least two crashes — one fatal — possibly related to its highly touted autopilot feature; Tesla has announced a drop in Model S shipments; and Musk himself has come under fire after proposing that Tesla purchase SolarCity, which he is also the chairman of, much to the chagrin of shareholders.
[...] Tesla shares are down almost 10% year-to-date, and down more than 16% in the past 12 months.
You may also be interested in this NYT editorial about "Lessons From the Tesla Crash".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ilPapa on Monday July 11 2016, @08:25PM
The AC backed into the truth here: There will not be widespread self-driving cars in any of our lifetimes. It's a fantasy. Sure, we'll have something like cruise-control on steroids, but if you think you're going to be able to call a driverless Uber to take you to your 4 hour per day job, you might as well just wait for a personal jet pack.
As an article in the NYT put it just this weekend,
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday July 11 2016, @09:02PM
> There will not be widespread self-driving cars in any of our lifetimes. It's a fantasy. Sure, we'll have something
> like cruise-control on steroids, but if you think you're going to be able to call a driverless Uber to take you to your
> 4 hour per day job, you might as well just wait for a personal jet pack.
I'm going to have to disagree, because the tech is almost there, a least for roads in "first-world" countries. It's not a pipe dream with physics getting in the way.
We're missing enough cheap sensors and processing power to deal with the worst corner cases, during which a single operator based halfway around the world could already get pinged to tell the safely-stopped machine what to do next.
Are there dollars/euros/yuan/yen enough to make it widespread? Good question. I expect constant monitoring, insurance rates, mandatory maintenance and such to create a strong incentive (heck, you can't drive an old car inside Paris anymore). But the tech will work better than the humans before we have time to finish hunting all the lawyers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Tuesday July 12 2016, @05:32AM
because the tech is almost there
The last 10% of any project always consume 90% of the budget.
An automatic car on a road where only automatic cars are allowed? Not a problem. Can be done tomorrow.
An automatic car on a road where any vehicle may appear? No way. Hey, even pretty flexible humans have problem with that - and a computer does not even come closer to a sentient being who, actually, *understands* what is happening.
That truck half a mile ahead? That would have been an obvious observation for a human, and an effortless, light braking - up to a full stop, if need be (a fire truck, an accident, construction, etc.) Even if the driver cannot *clearly* see the obstacle, he will be watching it, and decreasing the speed if necessary - humans are not that bad in detecting deviations from a pattern (such as an empty, straight or curved road.) If a computer does not see an obstacle, it presumes that there is none and barges ahead.
A fully automated self-driving car that can tackle any situation has to be equipped with a decent AI. There is no workaround. You cannot depend on fixed algorithms if you sometimes have to stop and ask the officer who has the road blocked. I have done that.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Wednesday July 13 2016, @02:27AM
The project director for Google Cars disagrees with you. This week, he changed his prediction for go-anywhere driverless cars from "end of the decade" to "30 years away".
And thirty years away in tech is the same as "never".
You'll have a personal 3D-printed jet-pack before you have a driverless car that can take you where you want to go.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 13 2016, @04:21PM
> The project director for Google Cars disagrees with you.
No, he doesn't.
I said "[at] least for roads in "first-world" countries", and you reply with "go-anywhere".
I've spent enough time in Asia to know the difference.
Billions of people take the bus and/or the train every day. Those don't go everywhere, they just get you close enough. If you restrict the self-driving cars to roads on which certain standards are met, the tech is already there to carry over 99% of first-worlders daily.
The major problem with automatic cars is that the manufacturer will have to defend every accident, and enforce every maintenance, because people expect to discharge all liability. And that's not a line item any accountant, and their CEOs, want to see on a balance sheet.
Which probably implies that the Chinese will beat the West to it.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Thursday July 14 2016, @02:39PM
"Go-anywhere" was not my reply. It was the exact phrase used by the project director of Google Cars.
And please tell me, if they're only going to stick to the same routes as trains and buses, what is the possible benefit of replacing one train with 500 cars?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday July 14 2016, @04:30PM
> "Go-anywhere" was not my reply. It was the exact phrase used by the project director of Google Cars.
Which you quoted to object to my statement...
> And please tell me, if they're only going to stick to the same routes as trains and buses, what is the possible benefit of replacing one train with 500 cars?
Did I type the "same routes"? Don't be daft.
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Monday July 11 2016, @09:29PM
No, robot cars are coming much sooner than mid-century. Much, much sooner.
A robot car doesn't need to be Platonically perfect.
It doesn't need to be a better driver than Mario Andretti.
It doesn't even need to be able to always get a perfect score on every DMV test.
It just needs to get in about 10% fewer crashes as the median human driver on the road today -- a bar that we've probably already cleared.
For individual owners, the rate break you'd get from the insurance company will probably convince enough people to sustain sales -- but that's peanuts compared to commercial driving. A robot truck, for example, isn't limited to eight hours on the road per day; nor does it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in salaries and health insurance and liability insurance and all the rest. Similar calculations apply for all other professional drivers.
Amazon alone has an overwhelming interest in roboticising all its jobs, including indirect jobs such as those that move goods to and between warehouses that they likely subcontract to the likes of UPS today. Robot trucks would likely cost Amazon a tenth of what they currently pay, once you factor in increased productivity and reduced overhead and not paying UPS shareholder profits and the rest...
...and if you think any sort of conspiracy could keep them from cutting those costs, let me invite you to bid on my auction for the Brooklyn Bridge.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Monday July 11 2016, @11:07PM
Catch-22. There need to be enough robot cars on the road to actually collect the data about safety. I'd bet that insurance companies actually raise rates at first for robot cars just because they'll be unproven outside of Google's data.
- A robot car does need to be Platonically perfect
- A robot car does need to be a better driven than Mario Andretti
- A robot car must get a perfect score on every DMV test
The press shows over and over again every time there's a collision involving either a Tesla or a Google car that it's going to frame Tesla/Google as inherently unsafe. Never underestimate the ability of mass brainwashing to overcome what should be an easy, logical conclusion.
Sure, eventually the data will speak for itself, but that's going to take quite a while.
(Score: 2) by quintessence on Tuesday July 12 2016, @04:34AM
When ABS was introduced, it took a few decades for it to gain traction, and as even as early as the 1980s when it was just starting to become widespread, there were doubts from even innovative manufacturers like BMW as to its effectiveness (which is the reason they gave for not employing it sooner).
Even today, ABS increases braking distances on slick surfaces. It is still mandatory on all vehicles. It has still reduced the total number of crashes by a fair amount.
You lack history in how features are adopted in the automotive world. An overall gain is more important from a regulatory standpoint. The brainwashed masses will simply not be early adopters, but short of an outright ban, the numbers will trickle forwards with every tech advancement, which is far more accelerated now than in the 1980s.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VanessaE on Tuesday July 12 2016, @11:58AM
If your ABS system is taking decades to gain traction, you're either driving incredibly fast, or you have the worst implementation of that system that was ever devised.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Thursday July 14 2016, @02:42PM
You know more about robot cars than the project director of Google Cars?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opinion/sunday/silicon-valley-driven-hype-for-self-driving-cars.html?ref=opinion&_r=1 [nytimes.com]
You are still welcome on my lawn.