Ex-Uber Engineer Claims a Self-Driving Car Drove Him Coast-To-Coast (theguardian.com)

"Anthony Levandowski, the controversial engineer at the heart of a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, claims to have built an automated car that drove from San Francisco to New York without any human intervention," reports the Guardian. Levandowski told the Guardian that he completed the 3,099-mile journey on October 30th using a modified Toyota Prius, which "used only video cameras, computers and basic digital maps." From the report: Levandowski told the Guardian that, although he was sitting in the driver's seat the entire time, he did not touch the steering wheels or pedals, aside from planned stops to rest and refuel. "If there was nobody in the car, it would have worked," he said. If true, this would be the longest recorded road journey of an autonomous vehicle without a human having to take control. Elon Musk has repeatedly promised, and repeatedly delayed, one of his Tesla cars making a similar journey. A time-lapse video of the drive, released to coincide with the launch of Levandowski's latest startup, Pronto.AI, did not immediately reveal anything to contradict his claim. But Levandowski has little store of trust on which to draw.

Comments

Color me skeptical

[mattyj]

This guy is mostly famous for being a big liar and a thief. Not buying it. Also not sure why anyone would care about this.

Re:Color me skeptical

[AmiMoJo]

This claim contains an obvious lie. The car does not have 3000 miles range. It can't refuel itself. Even if it could, it can't clean all its cameras if they get dirty (Tesla has the same problem). And one illegal run doesn't prove general capability anyway.

Of course it'll work SOMETIMES.

[Mal-2]

Self-driving works the vast majority of the time. How many attempts were made (by him and/or others) that we're not hearing about because they had to be aborted? Just doing it once is not exactly Lewis & Clark territory here.

Trust in Ability vs. Trust in Ethics.

[SuperKendall]

He doesn't lack a store of trust because of the accident, he lacks the store of trust because he's a thief.

So a guy who is highly desired by TWO companies for his autonomous driving knowledge cannot be "trusted" to have managed to drive cross country in one?

I wouldn't trust him very much in terms of a contract, but he obviously has the TECHNICAL skills to do what he claims. And there is video of course.

Like I said, what he did was not even that TECHNICALLY challenging, so it's more likely than not he did what he claims - despite how he may have treated employers he worked for.