[Cuelaw57]

I watched Tesla’s AI Day presentation (YOUTUBE - Tesla AI Day). It confirmed for me that Tesla is a software company that makes cars.

I also watched Volvo Cars Tech Moment 2021 presentation on 6/30/21 (TECH MOMENT 2021) comparing the 2 presentations confirmed for me that the tech in Tesla EVs will always be superior to VC and other EV manufacturers. While VC has hitched it wagon to AAOS, TSLA is developing its own software, especially for autonomous driving (unsupervised driving in VC nomenclature).

It will be interesting to see whether TSLA’s camera only approach or VC’s camera, radar and lidar approach succeed in robust and safe autonomous driving in all conditions.

 

[DeaneG]

I think we'll be waiting a very long time for either approach to work well enough for unsupervised driving. I've owned a Model 3 for four years, and while the car's "self driving" software is on its fourth full rewrite, its capability is not significantly better than the day I bought it, and not significantly better than my P8's adaptive cruise with lane keeping. Elon is a visionary but extremely optimistic about what it takes to add more nines to something that is at beta-test level, 90% functional and reliable.

 

[JT Rock]

Right, not everyone realizes that the development time, for a feature like this, will take exponentially longer to reach near 100%. In other words, perfect safety is not obtainable. It's a matter of how many 9's they can achieve to be considered for mass adoption. While they're almost there for well mapped roads in good weather, it'll take many more years to be able to account for every type of unexpected situation.

 

[1moreRobot]

I think the road infrastructure will be a major bottleneck. Musk seems to think machine learning can make a car read and interpret the road as well as the human eyes and brain can. He doesn't like the idea that the roads themselves will need to have some embedded smarts to pass along information to the cars (he describes that as a "brittle" system that can fail too easily). But we have some majorly janky roads in the United States — I'm shocked and amazed at what we're expected to drive on some times on major interstate highways. I think it's going to be a long time before a car-based system can interpret weird and unexpected deviations that are part and parcel to U.S. road construction and maintenance.

However, I do expect that the technology will continue to mature and that it will greatly improve on roads that are decently maintained, striped, etc.

 

[He Keith]

Just like Apple controls their entire ecosystem and thus can be more agile and deliberate on features, so does Tesla. Also unlike most car makers which usually refresh their models every 4-5 years, Tesla makes smaller refinements over time and has not made a substantial change to tasked exiairng models pit side of the Plaid which is still mostly the same Model S. I am not sure they are a software company making cars, but that they realize the car portion is a common and the software is where most of the innovation will be.

Volvo is first and foremost a car company that happens to need software to run the car. Where Tesla sees the software as the competitive advantage, Volvo is concentrating on the car technological advancements it needs to make and is offloading the core OS to Google. As EVs become common place the question will be which approach is better for each company. Once the novelty of EVs wears off each maker needs to decide what their differentiator will be then. Now they are all focused about getting in on the front end of this new market and less on the software bells and whistles to help differentiate them. Yeah AAOS has some nice leading capabilities with natural language interaction, but at the trade off of incomplete and missing features and some bugs. Clearly for now Volvo took the make it more mainstream like and focus on the EV portion. Nothing wrong with this approach, I like that my P8 is very common place. I actually like the lack of attention I get as most people would not notice the difference from my P8 and my wife’s T5. Volvo dropped exhaust tips on the 21 XC40 T5 so other than wheels and grille the cars look the same.

 

[Stephen Cerruti]

I think that when people state it's going to take a long time to get to level 5 they are looking at Tesla's work and making a fair assessment.

However I think we will get to level 5 very soon and in a way that is surprising and disrupting, not evolutionary but revolutionary.

Most cars are capable of self driving today, they'll need a computer and sensor package once it becomes available.

But in an interview with Germany's Manager magazine, Waymo CEO John Krafcik dismissed Tesla as a Waymo competitor and argued that Tesla's current strategy was unlikely to ever produce a fully self-driving system.

 

[1moreRobot]

Level 5 is no steering wheel, no pedals. Do you really think that’s soon to come?

 

[He Keith]

I think with all. The issues Tesla has, and discards, not causing investigations we re a long way off. And my becaus I am old school and in tech, I would never trust full autonomous driving. There are just far too many variables that can disrupt the AI. The US road infrastructure would need a major overhaul and far more maintenance that it gets today.

 

[SeattleCat]

I find it amusing that our goals for autonomous driving vehicles is a perfection that we do not see in human drivers.

In America annually approximately 36,000+ people die in car crashes and another 4 million plus are injured sufficiently to need medical intervention.

If all cars were autonomous in America and 5000 people were killed and 100,000 injured would we call this a roaring success or failure?

on a separate topic I wonder if our P8 has enough processing power to go fully autonomous?

 

[SeattleCat]

Of course with the rampant litigation in America if there were 5000 deaths there would be a huge amount of suing.

 

[He Keith]

I find it amusing that our goals for autonomous driving vehicles is a perfection that we do not see in human drivers.

In America annually approximately 36,000+ people die in car crashes and another 4 million plus are injured sufficiently to need medical intervention.

If all cars were autonomous in America and 5000 people were killed and 100,000 injured would we call this a roaring success or failure?

on a separate topic I wonder if our P8 has enough processing power to go fully autonomous?

I agree, just watch “idiots in cars” channel on YouTube. I find the best is computer assisted driving to help complement the human weakness. Too many Tesla crashes because their system has too many holes and people trust it too much. Forcing engagement from the driver while preventing the human mistakes IMO is where the seeet spot is for next 5-10 years with the growing ability for the human to be less engaged.

 

[1moreRobot]

Forcing engagement from the driver while preventing the human mistakes IMO is where the seeet spot is for next 5-10 years with the growing ability for the human to be less engaged.

It’s a tricky chasm to cross though. We use Pilot assist a lot on our other Volvo (we just don’t trust it enough on the xc40 and the missing steering wheel function really bugs us). But I really have to remind myself to not get too complacent. Sometimes several seconds will go by and I’ll realize I’ve been taking in scenery or futzing around with something on the dashboard screen and haven’t looked ahead on the road.

This phase where it’s advanced enough to be useful but not advanced enough to be always trusted is dicey.

 

[SeattleCat]

It’s a tricky chasm to cross though. We use Pilot assist a lot on our other Volvo (we just don’t trust it enough on the xc40 and the missing steering wheel function really bugs us). But I really have to remind myself to not get too complacent. Sometimes several seconds will go by and I’ll realize I’ve been taking in scenery or futzing around with something on the dashboard screen and haven’t looked ahead on the road.

This phase where it’s advanced enough to be useful but not advanced enough to be always trusted is dicey.

Scary thing is many people loose focus / day dream and realize miles have gone by in cars with no reactive protection relying on the kindness and skills of strangers.

I love the cars sensors that help people. I always work on being 100% present when driving. The acceleration of the P8 helps make being present a lot of fun

 

[TS1]

Just like Apple controls their entire ecosystem and thus can be more agile and deliberate on features, so does Tesla. Also unlike most car makers which usually refresh their models every 4-5 years, Tesla makes smaller refinements over time and has not made a substantial change to tasked exiairng models pit side of the Plaid which is still mostly the same Model S. I am not sure they are a software company making cars, but that they realize the car portion is a common and the software is where most of the innovation will be.

Volvo is first and foremost a car company that happens to need software to run the car. Where Tesla sees the software as the competitive advantage, Volvo is concentrating on the car technological advancements it needs to make and is offloading the core OS to Google. As EVs become common place the question will be which approach is better for each company. Once the novelty of EVs wears off each maker needs to decide what their differentiator will be then. Now they are all focused about getting in on the front end of this new market and less on the software bells and whistles to help differentiate them. Yeah AAOS has some nice leading capabilities with natural language interaction, but at the trade off of incomplete and missing features and some bugs. Clearly for now Volvo took the make it more mainstream like and focus on the EV portion. Nothing wrong with this approach, I like that my P8 is very common place. I actually like the lack of attention I get as most people would not notice the difference from my P8 and my wife’s T5. Volvo dropped exhaust tips on the 21 XC40 T5 so other than wheels and grille the cars look the same.

Your reasons are many of the same I had for buying P8’s. We pulled into one our favorite restaurants a week or so ago and actually parked next to a T5 the same color as my P8. You really had to look to Tell the differences.