Slashdot Mirror
What Effect Will VW's Scandal Have On Robocars?
pRobotika writes: It's looking bad for Volkswagen, German car manufacturers and possibly even car manufacturers as a whole. But the revelations that VW put software in their cars to deliberately cheat on emissions tests could have even greater repercussions. Robocars' Brad Templeton looks at the effect for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. From the Robohub article: "There may be more risk from suppliers of technology for robocars. Sensor manufacturers, for instance, may be untruthful about their abilities or, more likely, reliability. While the integrators will be inherently distrustful, as they will take the liability, one can see smaller vendors telling lies if they see it as the only way to get a big sale for their business."
Tomorrow's Slashdot headline:
"How Will The Apple Watch Affect the Future of Self-Driving Cars?"
or,
"What Year Will The Self-Driving Car Cure Cancer? We Ask Travis Kalanick."
You are welcome on my lawn.
... people actually "care" about "what VW did"? Is it because you're told to by the media? Frankly, I applaud them for this. The only thing the EPA is good for is dumping toxic metals in rivers and freezing to death those who would dare use wood burning stoves in their off-grid homes. Let the market...the consumer...not the government...decide how much pollution is too much.
By the time 3-eyed babies appear, the perps or their trail may be long gone.
Indeed, this is why I support some regulation despite my libertarian tendencies. It's entirely too easy to cause far more damage than you could every repay in seeking what amounts to a 'modest' profit. By the time it could be handled in a post-liability fashion, the person is already dead or broke. Leaving potentially thousands or even millions of people injured without the ability to seek redress.
As such, stopping them sooner rather than later is a 'once of prevention is worth a pound of cure' move.
I don't read AC A human right
what ever happened to personal responsibility?
Personal responsibility is whatever the court and/or jury decides it is. Sometimes the judgement is probably too far in favor of giving idiots what they don't deserve. Sometimes it allows a company that's negligent to get off lightly for something that they really should not have ever sold. Sometimes it works out as it should.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
One thing has nothing to do with the other. This is just misleading propaganda from companies that have dropped the driverless ball. This is about lying cheating executives. Executives can lie and cheat about anything. Are those tires safe? Is the gasoline really unleaded? Do the ignition switches kill people?
If anything the companies that are leading the charge with driverless don't have a long track record of cheating and killing their customers. The reality is that they are going into this new arena with unblemished records. This probably scares the crap out of the old companies.
For instance, anything that Ford, GM, or Chrysler tell me is probably a lie or an exaggeration. I don't really trust any of the Japanese Manufacturers and even the Koreans aren't looking too good with the emissions testing. Thus I am far more likely to believe a Tesla, Google, Apple, etc. If they say their car can go 200 miles on a charge I will actually plan on going roughly 200 miles on a charge. If GM tells me that I can go 200 miles on a charge I will assume that they lobbied the government to allow them to have a tail wind and go downhill the whole time. Plus they won't mention that the battery caught fire 3 times each test and the driver's seat is the battery.
So this straw man argument is just pure PR being put out to distract us from the fact that the old school car companies are run by a bunch of psychopathic MBA types. And instead of changing their ways they are trying to paint the aggressive young newcomers with the same brush.