Comment by madamelic
Comment by madamelic 9 hours ago
I strongly believe that we are going to see many brands hit L4 and L5 before 2030.
Multiple manufacturers seem to be circling on the same advancements and leaps, they all seem to be working with each other to get regulations in place for them to deploy their cars.
I do believe we are about to see AV's version of "making reusable boosters being reused boring" moments with AVs where suddenly multiple companies are doing what others thought impossible years before. Even the much demeaned Tesla FSD is shockingly human-like and reliable on v13.
The issue that Waymo specifically is going to have is scalability. Unlike other brands who have AV, Waymo doesn't have manufacturing capabilities in-house currently nor logistic or a generalizable model. I think Waymo is definitely ahead of the pack but time will tell if the brands who went slower will pass them up due to Waymo not having a financial reason to push to financial viability on any timeline shorter than "after Google runs out of money".
If Waymo's plan is to have to map the entire US to be capable of driving in it, that's going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time vs having cars that can roll out of the factory and drive straight to their assigned city unassisted.
Interesting! I take the opposite of this argument.
I ride in Waymos constantly. They are boring technology to me that I no longer think about. Effectively complete trust in them for the areas they drive in. The driving is so steady and consistent that I forget I'm in an autonomous vehicle. The only thing I want is for them to be able to take me to Oakland and to SFO via the freeway, but am comfortable waiting for those to become unlocked on the assumption that my trust level will remain consistent as their unlocked region footprint grows.
I don't trust Tesla's self-driving as far as I can throw it. I'm not a huge Elon hater or anything like that. https://teslafsdtracker.com/ gives me pause! 1 in 10 rides has a critical disengagement and it hasn't improved in three years. I will concede that the distance travelled appears to be improving rapidly, and increasing distance could explain why rides continue to have a critical disengagement, but man I just can't overstate how uncomfortable that makes me feel. I want nothing to do with sitting in the back seat of an autonomous vehicle that needs someone to take over every 1 in 10 drives.
Also, as a consumer, the notion of wanting to choose a system that relies purely on vision over one that is a combination of lidar and vision is just nonsense. Just because humans drive with vision + thinking doesn't make me feel like that is the ideal solution. I want systems that use all the tech at the machine's disposal to make me as safe as possible by handling edge cases that a human driver would fail at.