Selfdriving is already going to be a hugely valuable technology even if it requires an extra few thousand dollars per vehicle for hardware. Why get greedy?
I assume Tesla skipped LIDAR not really because of greed, but because the end consumer price of the car wouldn't have made sense. The other players aren't currently trying to sell cars with LIDAR to consumers. Is there an entity that has passed on LIDAR for different reasons?
You're telling me that a new non-driverless car for say, $15k would outsell a (otherwise identical) driverless car for $25k? The value added by driverless is well above the cost of LIDAR.
Achieving marketable driverlessness first is going to be way more important than cutting costs slightly. Everyone else who doesn't achieve it early is going to be hosed, and no amount of cost cutting will help. They'll just become suppliers or licensees for whoever achieves and patents it first, contractually ceding the lion's share of the profits
Waymo is likely either targeting operators (not end consumers) or at least waiting until LIDAR is much cheaper before they do.
The painting lasted less than 24 hours though.
http://www.e-farsas.com/parede-desenhada-com-o-tunel-papa-le...
Perhaps not a crash, but I could see AI avoiding it by hanging behind.
[Disclaimer: Within a 1h radius there is not a single road with two lanes; without attentive truck drivers who signal when it is safe to pass I'd be spending at least 4h more per week on the road.]
and still we are mainly just concentrating on on road experiences, surely DARPA has concerns wholly dealing with off road and unmarked terrain. it would be very interesting to see how one deals with a standard off road trails
Edge cases deal with extreme parameters (min or max), what you're describing is neither and poses a significant problem that needs to be dealt with.
In fact it kind of makes sense - in the world where we all have on demand self driving cars delivered via an app, there's no rationale for customization anyway.
Tyres might be an even bigger problem. See the Bugatti Veyron: "It uses special Michelin PAX run-flat tyres, designed specifically to accommodate the Veyron's top speed [258mph / 415 km/h], and cost US$25,000 per set. The tyres can be mounted on the wheels only in France, a service which costs US$70,000" from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugatti_Veyron
Who do you imagine will vote for the many billions of dollars it would cost to build these self-driving Veyron tracks for the absurdly wealthy? The people who can afford 200+ mph cars can probably afford to employ drivers anyway.
High-speed car shuttle trains might be the better solution, if you insist on using cars.
The advantage of lanes over trains is that
a) it would be an order of magnitude cheaper to convert a car lane into a self driving lane than build an entire railway line b) self driving cars can still go on normal roads at lower speeds, so you solve the last mile problem
Yeah, right. Lack of scale is definitely why the Veyron was so costly. It definitely isn't the difficult engineering with a W12 engine or the $75k tires to keep it from killing the passengers in the event of a flat.
Also, most people don't drive "high end cars". I hope self driving eventually isn't something restricted to the wealthy.
> The point of self driving is not really about replacing drivers but making overall transportation more efficient.
Long haul between cities is not where cars are inefficient. Cars are inefficient in traffic.
> it would be an order of magnitude cheaper to convert a car lane into a self driving lane than build an entire railway line
Not really. You're stealing lanes from cars that can't self drive or can't drive 200mph, so you're making everything worse for everyone else if you do this. You also need to build on ramps and off ramps everywhere because your 200mph lane cannot safely use the same exits as the 70mph lane next to you.
> self driving cars can still go on normal roads at lower speeds, so you solve the last mile problem
The last mile is the real problem, though. Traveling between cities rapidly is not a real problem except for shipping.
Its not impossible, but the goals of an F1 car are directly at odds with a consumer sedan.
Is this something people seriously feel government regulation of is needed?
Let people paint whatever they want on their damn cars (within reason). If it triggers a poorly handled edge case that's what insurance and/or lawsuits are for.
An accident that's the result of several consecutive "on in a $largenumber" situations stacked on top of each other isn't something society should be regulation. Regulation that junk is how you wind up with blue laws that only serve to enable society to unfairly harass people decades down the line
Insurance claims and lawsuits are cold comfort for those severely injured in crashes.
I'm not saying regulating the wraps is the right decision, but regulating that autonomous cars must be able to properly react to such scenarios probably is.
My current thinking goes into the direction of small private electrical golf carts for cities since those fulfill the most important requirements given to me by those who say they'd never want to give up their car. One could even make them foldable and stack them upright when parked. Slow speeds mean that not much of a safety buffer is needed in the material.
Being able to make longer trips in the same vehicle is surprisingly low on the list. It is given mainly by people with kids who want to load the vehicle in front of their house and not have to pay for several vehicles (thus having a golf cart and a normal car does not sound appealing).
Maybe someday. The problem is that there isn't really a sharp divide between dense urban core and everything else. I think about the largest city nearest to me and traffic can get pretty high speed even nearby fairly dense areas. Traffic is often jammed up but when it isn't it doesn't just move at sedate speeds.
Many golfers carry their clubs. The chess guy has his chess set in the car. Shopping bags from the lunch break shopping trip - all things you live in your personal car. Sure you can carry them in, but you don't want to.
Parking is one reason given. Maybe. But if you don't live and/or work in a dense part of a city, parking isn't a big issue. Feel free to argue that people might be better off if there were less parking but today's reality is that a lot of people don't have any parking issues on a day to day basis.
The bigger argument is around improved utilization. But the cost of owning a car is usually more about mileage than time and shared vehicles will actually have to travel more miles because they won't always be transporting a passenger. There are some age-related costs, especially in states where it snows. Yes, some people want the latest and greatest but then they have the option of leasing today.
Apparently painting vehicles grey can cause people not to see them as well. Having photo realistic images of road scenes seems much worse.
Have they never watched roadrunner cartoons?