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GM Says It Will Put Fleets of Self-Driving Cars In Cities In 2019 (detroitnews.com)
General Motors has laid out a plan to not only mass-deploy self-driving cars on public roads in 2019, but to do it profitably. "With a driverless ride-hailing service as its framework, GM is counting on cost reductions, advancements in autonomous technologies and growth of the ride-hailing market to enable a successful self-driving car launch in 2019," reports The Detroit News. From the report: The automaker is using the all-electric Chevrolet Bolt as its autonomous mule, dovetailing Thursday's autonomous projection with GM's earlier vow to roll out a profitable electric vehicle platform by 2021. "For GM to get the benefit they're looking for, they need these cars on the road at scale as soon as possible," said Navigant Research analyst Sam Abuelsamid. "With ride-hailing services, consumers are saved from sticker shock of how much an EV costs -- and the cost of automation in early years is going to be expensive, too." GM didn't say exactly where it plans to launch its driverless ride-hailing service, but identified "dense urban environments" in the presentation. The Detroit automaker's testbeds for the self-driving Bolt are in Warren, San Francisco and Scottsdale, Arizona.
I'm moving to the country.
I remember back then that OS/2 was supposed to be the future. Folks were investing millions in it.
What will happen if self-driving cars turn out to be a flop? Will we be able to at least salvage some of all that money that venture capitalists are throwing at it . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
A Beowulf cluster of Bolts
Taking over the cars and forcing all their processors to mine bitcoins.
A swarm of Killbots controlled by terrorists/hitmen/hackers.
.
It's that they won't even sell the Bolt(Opel Ampera-e) in most of Europe. It's just a compliance car.
L'Idiot
A Lot of Property in 2019" I especially like the part about "For GM to get the benefit they're looking for, they need these cars on the road at scale as soon as possible," Yes, because rushing code to production is ALWAYS a good idea, especially when it involves large heavy objects that can kill.
Agile Spaceport - You will never find a more wretched hive of scrum and villainy. We must be cautious.
are going to be killed by these things before we realize they were a bad idea?
CAPTCHA: Embalm
^^^
That's capable of actual autonomous driving in a city without running people over, halting regular traffic unexpectedly (read: dangerously) , causing jams or killing just all the cyclists.
Will we be able to at least salvage some of all that money that venture capitalists are throwing at it . . . ?
Who are we? Are you a VC that has put money into it? If so you should know better than to speculate with money that you can't afford gone.
For everyone else the money isn't gone, it was invested into researchers and tools and have been spent to create jobs.
The only ones who might have lost on it are venture capitalists, but they know that the money they put out doesn't always come back.
The result of the research isn't gone either. Even if it can't be used in urban areas it can be used for automated farming among other things.
Heck, one thing I expect will come from this is an app that lets you hold up your smartphone in a cluttered apartment and ask it where your keys/wallet/whatever is.
Self-driving cars will always be nice killer bots. You can kill both passengers and target without trace.
"Malfunction"
If an auto-driving auto gets into an accident, whose insurance covers the cost? What if you are drunk? What if you are pulled over for a sobriety check? I do not believe these questions as well as many others, have been addressed. Can you be charged with a DUI in a self-driving vehicle? An auto manufacturer pushing for more cars with questionable record of autonomy is no better than a pharmaceutical company pushing questionable drugs through the rubber-stamping FDA, yes, yes I know there are people who will consider this flame bait, however Celebrex comes to mind. I am sure there are other instances as well. The business of a company is to make money, but autonomy of vehicles has a long way to go. Having people unknowingly place themselves at risk for a buck does not make sense.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
How you can waste something that is free to make?
Not really an apples-to-apples comparison, OS/2 flopped but only because a different brand of OS won the market while computer use itself exploded. For self-driving cars as a genre to flop it must either end up being unfeasible (cold fusion), unpractical (flying cars), too expensive for the mass market (private jets) or unwanted (3D TV) so that there is no winner just a dead end. Cars exists and are obviously all of the above. Self-driving cars would quite clearly practical and wanted. So it comes down to whether it can be done, at a cost people can pay.
While it's a bit presumptuous to assert the latter before we've solved the former it seems to me that the cost estimates for a sufficient sensor array and equipment are well within the economically feasible compared to a taxi driver, limo service, truck driver and the luxury market - whether it'll be cheap enough to become a standard feature and whether it'll work under all conditions is a topic of debate but not really necessary to address. If it'll work in downtown Phoenix, it works somewhere and it would be strange if they can't expand on that.
It doesn't mean that the first to market will be the winner in the long run though, before Google there was AltaVista and before Facebook there was MySpace. A self-driving car could be a huge game changer where "traditional" driving experience metrics don't matter because you're not driving, even taxis and such are heavily influenced by what they'd like to drive all day and it could be very disruptive for what we consider a "good car". But that's just competition, some might flop and implode like Nokia did in the cell phone market but that's because Apple and Google took over. Cell phones as such very much live on.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Though commandeering an autonomous Chevy Bolt in the near future to murder you is an outlier possibility, someone so motivated could just navigate a suitably equipped autonomous aerial vehicle into your home or current vehicle right now.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
" a genre to flop it must either end up being unfeasible (cold fusion), unpractical (flying cars), too expensive for the mass market (private jets) or unwanted (3D TV)"
...overhyped (3D printing), actively suppressed (leisure society)...
I remember back then that OS/2 was supposed to be the future. Folks were investing millions in it.
What will happen if self-driving cars turn out to be a flop? Will we be able to at least salvage some of all that money that venture capitalists are throwing at it . . . ?
When you push 3 tons of autonomous steel to market at the speed of IoT, you end up with the integrity and security of IoT as the result.
You can't "salvage" human lives lost. Fuck these companies for pushing to be first to market faster than they should. I'm not necessarily against automation. I'm against the kind of fucking greedy mentality that makes any product ultimately unsafe.
When human drivers kill 40,000 people a year in the US, but autonomous solutions "only" kill 30,000 people a year due to avoidable glitches, Greed will still arrogantly sell that as a win.
When human drivers kill 40,000 people a year in the US, but autonomous solutions "only" kill 30,000 people a year due to avoidable glitches, Greed will still arrogantly sell that as a win.
In my book, that is a win. And if the glitches were avoidable, that's even better, because that means the numbers will only go down in the future.
Even if autonomous vehicles resulted in 30,000 deaths a year (which they won't), saving 10,000 lives a year is a win. And the difference is that while the number of human-driver deaths keeps climbing (because people are too busy talking or texting on their smartphones to pay attention to the road), the number of autonomous deaths will decline as the software and hardware improves.
In fact, greed will drive auto makers to improve the safety of autonomous vehicles, because they'll want to minimize their legal liability.
...overhyped (3D printing)
3D printing is not going to flop. It may not do everything some people said it would, but it's going to stay, and it will get even better.
Will it be in my driveway when I step out the door, or will I have to wait for it like I do for a taxi today? Will it be clean? Will it have my music selection, with safe car seats installed, my sunglasses in the glasses holder or am I going to have to have a bag of stuff to bring every time I use one? I can't really see this being better in any way than the taxi's we have today.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
When human drivers kill 40,000 people a year in the US, but autonomous solutions "only" kill 30,000 people a year due to avoidable glitches, Greed will still arrogantly sell that as a win.
In my book, that is a win. And if the glitches were avoidable, that's even better, because that means the numbers will only go down in the future.
Latest drug on the market kills 75% of people because they rushed to market? Oh well, we can only improve from here!
Latest pesticide poisons 75% of humans because of Greed? Oh well, more jobs to help reformulate!
Let's hope your Charlie Sheen flavored formula of "winning" doesn't become infectious. Greed kills enough people today.
Latest drug on the market kills 75% of people because they rushed to market? Oh well, we can only improve from here!
You're forgetting to mention that without the drug, 100% of the people would have died anyway. Oh, no, greed is saving 25% of the people!
Even if autonomous vehicles resulted in 30,000 deaths a year (which they won't), saving 10,000 lives a year is a win.
When a hacker attacks a freeway full of autonomous vehicles during rush hour and causes 1,000 deaths to include one of your loved ones, you'll likely be revisiting your "winning" position here. The end result of a bug in this case isn't family pictures being lost to ransomware. Lives are on the line this time, and yet all I see are manufacturers rushing to market like they always do. Liability may be able to put a price tag on a life, but your loved one is gone forever, due to something that could have been likely avoided. We don't expect computers to perform a little better than humans, we expect them to perform a LOT better because they should not suffer from many of the fallacies of humans. When it comes to approving autonomous solutions, a 25% reduction should not be accepted. A 90% reduction should be the goal.
And the difference is that while the number of human-driver deaths keeps climbing (because people are too busy talking or texting on their smartphones to pay attention to the road), the number of autonomous deaths will decline as the software and hardware improves.
If you want to reduce problems with distracted driving, then fucking punish violators. Enough of this slap on the wrist bullshit. $1,000 ticket when caught the first time. Impound their car and take away their license for repeat offenders. Heavy fines and real jail time when manslaughter is the end result.
In fact, greed will drive auto makers to improve the safety of autonomous vehicles, because they'll want to minimize their legal liability.
Bullshit. Liability will be buried in the EULA every autonomous rider will refuse to read and blindly agree to. Liability for mega-corps is a fucking joke today. That won't change in the future, even when human lives are on the line.
When a hacker attacks a freeway full of autonomous vehicles during rush hour and causes 1,000 deaths to include one of your loved ones, you'll likely be revisiting your "winning" position here.
An when a hacker takes over an airplane. you'll be revisiting the plan to allow air travel.
Latest drug on the market kills 75% of people because they rushed to market? Oh well, we can only improve from here!
You're forgetting to mention that without the drug, 100% of the people would have died anyway. Oh, no, greed is saving 25% of the people!
Greed is responsible for rushing products prematurely to market, which has consequences. Consequences that are often easily avoidable. A bug in this case can end a life, not just lose the family pictures to ransomware or leak webcam video.
You're also dismissing other risks with autonomous vehicle networks coming under attack and being responsible for causing more deaths than we have today, which perhaps could have also been avoided had a half-ass solution not been rushed to market. It's very odd how we assume that autonomous solutions could never have a very dark downside. Guess that's not surprising. We once believed the housing market could never crash, and billed the Titanic as unsinkable.
When a hacker attacks a freeway full of autonomous vehicles during rush hour and causes 1,000 deaths to include one of your loved ones, you'll likely be revisiting your "winning" position here.
An when a hacker takes over an airplane. you'll be revisiting the plan to allow air travel.
I'm not advocating for a "good-enough" solution in any product, particularly where shit solutions can result in loss of life.
Greed has dismissed Quality because Limited Liability makes it worth it, and justifies rushing to market with half-assed solutions.
Far too often, Risk gets tossed out the window by Greed, with the end result of the masses being abused as test monkeys. We're better than that.
Right in their bailout-taking asses.
Greed is responsible for rushing products prematurely to market, which has consequences.
If the products end up saving lives overall, it's not premature.
which perhaps could have also been avoided had a half-ass solution not been rushed to market
We can also avoid a bunch of accidents if we didn't rush a bunch of immature teenagers behind the wheel, after they complete some half-ass test.
You're also dismissing other risks with autonomous vehicle networks coming under attack and being responsible for causing more deaths than we have today
You haven't shown that these risks are real.
I have a question, âoewhere is g.m. going to park this fleet? At Hertz, or Enterprize?
My prediction isn't that it will flop, but that it simply won't happen in 2019. There's no way that AI is going to be advanced enough in just two years. Even if it can handle 99% of the things reality throws at it, that 1% it can't handle will still happen several times a day.
For example, will it be able to understand the traffic cop's hand signals? Will it know to make an illegal U-turn when a parked train is blocking a grade crossing, then find a route that isn't blocked? Will it be able to read the sign next to a traffic light saying what lane it corresponds to?
All of those things are going to be surmountable eventually, but not by 2019.
dom
criminal Liability can not be EULAed a way nor can they make an victim sign an EULA
Yes, but ... I think 3D printing is likely to always be a half century behind current manufacturing technology. For example, when last I checked, 3D printing couldn't do more than the most basic semiconductor. Will they get better? Of course. But state of the art electronics will be becoming more sophisticated as well -- probably at about the same rate. The same is likely to be true of sophisticated materials.
Doesn't mean 3D printing is useless. For example, maybe it could be used to fabricate repair parts on demand for toys and appliances. But I don't think it ever will be likely to be able to fabricate state of the art sensors and other tools for space missions. That's a problem, BTW. If you're going to send folks out on a three year mission to look at Mars, how are you going to provision their vehicle with adequate spare parts since you don't know what's going to break?
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
I'm on your side. I don't see how they can possibly come up with the necessary software in two years or less. And keep in mind that many of the "1%" problems have potentially lethal consequences. But GM has to be aware of the problems, so either the nature of what is planned must not be what we think or there must be something we (you and I) don't know.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
For GM's effort to be successful, their lobbyists will also submit model legislation progressively requiring the abandonment of personal vehicles and hold harmless laws / limited liability for the manufactures and operators of autonomous vehicle systems. Brings to mind history:
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to convictions of General Motors (GM) and other companies for monopolizing the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines (NCL) and its subsidiaries, and to allegations that this was part of a deliberate plot to purchase and dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation."
The driver is the auto industries attempt to create an artificial market. Historically, the fundamental basis of personal vehicles was the suburban lifestyle and commuting. Now, most major urban areas have Growth Management plans in place to concentrate residential growth into concentrations ('urban villages') with access to mass transit, urban cores are gentrifying, and worst for them, vehicles themselves are lasting longer and have reached asymptotic performance improvement, and ludicrous price points.
See "Average age of household vehicles for several years" ( https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/s... ). A car in 1969 had an average lifetime of 5.1 years, in 1990 it was 7.6 years, 2009 it was 9.5 years, and now in 2016 it is 11.6 years. Who is buying is also a problem for them ( http://www.autonews.com/articl... ):
The average new car buyer is now 51.7 years old and earns about $80,000 per year, while the average age of the population is 36.8 years old and the median income is roughly $50,000, Szakaly said. ... “It takes four millennials to replace one boomer” in terms of economic impact, Szakaly said. “There’s going to be this gap between baby boomers and millennials.”
Also, look at the auto industries track record handling any sort of technical problem ( https://www.cheatsheet.com/aut... ). And we can't even get automated trains, an essentially 1 dimensional problem, correct. Two years, right - it takes a commercial aircraft nearly a decade to get a type certification, with 'only' hundreds of lives at stake.
Basically, eventually they hope to follow the same defacto monopoly model of the cable companies - regional and local monopolies with non-existent competition.
Yes, but ... I think 3D printing is likely to always be a half century behind current manufacturing technology. For example, when last I checked, 3D printing couldn't do more than the most basic semiconductor. Will they get better?
I am tempted to ask what cave you have been in :-)
See https://www.siemens.com/innova...
Siemens has achieved a breakthrough in the 3D printing of gas turbine blades. For the first time, a team of experts has full-load tested gas turbine blades that were entirely produced using additive manufacturing.
I am designing for the https://markforged.com/ now, using embedded graphite composites. For some applications, they are already better than traditional manufacturing, especially in the economics for scaling to production.
"Gee, a construction cone is out of place, 'better slow down..."
"Gee, a plastic bag blew into the road, 'better stop..."
I predict these cities will have the slowest traffic in the country.
The times I've checked that kind of thing out, each particular kind of production environment needed a custom designed 3-D printer that essentially only worked in that environment...and was a lot more expensive than the standard 3-D printer.
So I expect the GP was correct for general purpose 3-D printers. This is a long way from saying they're useless, but they appear to be significantly over-hyped.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
A third alternative is that this is an expanded prototype project that got hyped by a marketing team that didn't bother to understand it. Of course, it's also true that what you call "1%" problems is actually a lot rarer than 1%, but that doesn't suffice, as they need to be a lot rarer than 1%.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
You're also dismissing other risks with autonomous vehicle networks coming under attack and being responsible for causing more deaths than we have today
You haven't shown that these risks are real.
He may not have the precise risks correct, but there will be problems that haven't been prepared for. These are complex systems, and it's impossible to thoroughly test them before distribution. But I see no reason to believe that they'll average worse than humans. That, however, is something that only time will reveal.
OTOH, it's nearly certain that they will have unexpected failure modes. This really needs to be prepared for, but we all know it won't be. If there's a major problem and all the autonomous cars in a city need to be shut down, there won't be a sufficient backup system. The only one that occurs to me is a manually operated public transit system, and that would be far too expensive to maintain at even a minimal level of utility. (Note that I did not say use. This is a backup to the normal system, so while it needs good testing, it can't be a part of normal operations.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I didn't think the state & local laws were anywhere near prime-time ready for anything but prototypes or "autopilot" mode with driver.
If it flops they'll just ask for another 800 billion bailout. No real loss on their part.
When human drivers kill 40,000 people a year in the US, but autonomous solutions "only" kill 30,000 people a year due to avoidable glitches, Greed will still arrogantly sell that as a win.
I doubt it. Guns, outside of law enforcement, suicides and gang-murders kill so few people it's barely a rounding error[1], and yet there are still plenty of people who want them banned. Same with terrorism, mass shootings, etc. It's about fear, not numbers.
[1] Citation
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
The times I've checked that kind of thing out, each particular kind of production environment needed a custom designed 3-D printer that essentially only worked in that environment...and was a lot more expensive than the standard 3-D printer.
I guess it whether 'hype' existed or not would depend on which Golgafrincham Ark ( “A”, “B” and “C” ) one has a ticket for. The Internet is full of penny a word bloggers and FaceBook walls people post to without reading. I can't speak to it because I simply probably don't read places where it is common place. My 3D printing experience resulted from passing around specifications and tables. The sales people didn't hype anything, all I contacted were actually upfront if their product fit and even referred me to other manufactures. MarkForged gave me a referral to some local folks who were using their machines in production. So it was way opposite of hype.
All tools have a direct relationship between the price, accuracy, material worked, reliability, and specialization - sometimes 10x$ or even 100x$ ( especially for measurement ) for something that looks the same to a layperson - be it baking, plumbing, wood working, metal forming, etc. "A" passengers recognize this holds because of simple math and physics, if your part is x, you will need a tool accurate to 10x to harness the Gaussian curve to get repeatable parts. "C" passengers intuitively know from experience that the hammer needs to be harder than the thing it's hitting.
Both know that a 'standard' tool is an oxymoron, the definition of a tool is that it is functionally aligned with it's task. Admittedly, just yesterday I used a rock, but I picked an appropriate size and shaped rock to temporarily shim a joist.
A quick glance at PR Newswire ( "hypefeed' ) would seem to indicate the hype has substantially diminished - you can always tell from what sorts of things the text mentions, i.e. 'possibilities' vs. "3% decreased material usage".
Exactly. When they say "GM is counting on....advancements in autonomous technologies" it means they don't even have the thing designed yet. Two years is barely enough time to test a highly reliable system (like autopilot, for example). If you don't have it designed yet, there's no way you're going to get it on the road in two years.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"In my book, that is a win. And if the glitches were avoidable, that's even better, because that means the numbers will only go down in the future."
It's a win, I agree. BUT ... When autonomous vehicles kill or maim folks, it's a safe bet that the US -- and probably other countries as well -- legal systems are going to find the manufacturer liable. Who else are they going to blame? Given the tendency of juries to make ludicrous damage awards against outfits with deep pockets, that could eventually end up making the manufacture of autonomous vehicles unaffordable.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
You are clearly right that the degree of hype depends on where you read the article, but most people don't read the articles aimed at specialists.
That said, you seem to be agreeing with my point that the high quality 3-D printers are designed for specific jobs. The one that prints titanium can't print cement, etc. This means that their utility in space is limited, though there are other places where they can be extremely useful. I agree that it's reasonable that the high quality printers be more expensive, but that *is* a factor limiting some of their uses, so it's not only the limitation in the materials that they can handle, the speed they can print, the resolution they can print at, or the maximum/minimum size they can print...though those are also limitations on any particular printer. Yes, this is a reasonable trade-off, but it argues against "just ship a 3-D printer with your space ship to make all the spare parts". (Well, the cost isn't a argument against *that* use case, but the rest are.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I never understood that streetcar conspiracy. A streetcar is nothing more than a bus that can't leave its track or its power source. Due to its electric motor and steel wheels it is quieter and more efficient, but those are its only advantages over a bus.
Having to pay to install and maintain trackage and power infrastructure makes streetcars expensive to run because you can't amortize the expenses across other users like you can with paved roads.
But I think the biggest problem is that you can't change routes without a major construction project. Once people no longer want to travel on the existing route, you're screwed.
It should have been obvious that once cars became prevalent, streetcars were doomed.
dom
You are clearly right that the degree of hype depends on where you read the article, but most people don't read the articles aimed at specialists.
One of the progressive trends in manufacturing is that, what was once advanced manufacturing tool chains has radically come down in price and accessibility - i.e. not so much specialists any more. A buddy of mine, a residential general contractor, just build a 3-axis CNC router from of the shelf extrusion and MDX sheets for making cabinet panels. He's a little smarter than the average bear, but only has an associates degree from a community college - but the documentation and online forums were there (community knowledge). I am using the free-tier of Onshape ( https://www.onshape.com/ ), a parametric CAD ecosystem that ten years ago would have cost $30,000 a seat - and almost all their partners have free tiers from advanced simulation and visualization capabilities. Online market places like https://www.shapeways.com/for-... are maturing, with phenomenal delivery models. I'm fairly certain somebody in the auto industry is paying attention to projects like https://www.osvehicle.com/faq/ and there is impetus to nail down markets before they become wide spread. Even the early hype is back filling in, and it is sort of amusing that the really innovative stuff now happening is unmentioned because it simply not sound-bite-able.
That said, you seem to be agreeing with my point that the high quality 3-D printers are designed for specific jobs. The one that prints titanium can't print cement, etc. This means that their utility in space is limited, though there are other places where they can be extremely useful. I agree that it's reasonable that the high quality printers be more expensive, but that *is* a factor limiting some of their uses, so it's not only the limitation in the materials that they can handle, the speed they can print, the resolution they can print at, or the maximum/minimum size they can print...though those are also limitations on any particular printer.
I generally agree with you. But it's the case with ordinary paper printers also :-)
Yes, this is a reasonable trade-off, but it argues against "just ship a 3-D printer with your space ship to make all the spare parts". (Well, the cost isn't a argument against *that* use case, but the rest are.)
To my point about "really innovative stuff now happening is unmentioned", your case is true for current space ship designs.But there is a decade(s) long wrap around effect with manufacturing technology. It is much different when you can design from the ground up, accommodating the capabilities of the tool chain and materials - one big part becomes several smaller parts to fit in the envelope, for instance.
Way back when, a friend of mine (aeronautical engineer) and I had a chance to crawl through a Soviet Mir ground test article ( identical in all aspects to the actual station in orbit ). We started denigrating the seemingly astonishing primitiveness of what we were observing. He paused, and said "Ya know, every thing here can be fixed with ordinary hand tools, all fasteners the same, cabinets had reach room ... I'd feel safer in this knowing I could fix or jury-rig everything!". In other words, they designed for a resilient total life-cycle.
The big lag now, is recycling materials back into feed stock - a totally non-glamorous technological arena, and undeserving of hype! :-)
One has to laugh at all these self driving car companies that do their development in places were it doesn't snow and often doesn't even rain a lot.
Self driving car startups should be in places like Detroit and Buffalo...
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
I haven't seen them rushing anything to market. Just because people started talking about it on facebook a couple years ago, doesn't mean they have only been working on the technology for 2 years. They have been working on this technology for a long time; it certainly isn't getting pushed out the door like wifi enabled toasters.