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A comment on Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car. Parent comment

Re:Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car by jacquesm on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @08:26AM (#15080884)
The degree to which globular wheels would complicate such a design is such that it would leave you being passed by your competitors right out of the gate, on top of that it would complicate all kinds of things such as certification and potentially reliability and safety as well as supply chain issues after delivery.

Solving too much is a fantastic way to crash a project.

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Re:Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car by coldtea on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @09:58AM (#15081564)
>The degree to which globular wheels would complicate such a design is such that it would leave you being passed by your competitors right out of the gate

We don't know that. We just know that we're not familiar with them. If anything, globular wheels could make some kind of automated steering easier.

And of course, it's obviously not like Apple only tried that design: they tried globular wheels, fat wheels, thinner wheels, wooden wheels, and what have you to see what works better -- like they did when they designed the iPhone, etc.

https://www.cultofmac.com/181782/every-iphone-prototype-appl...

https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/6/14188624/apple-prototype-i...

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Re:Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car by jacquesm on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @12:56PM (#15083099)
> tried globular wheels, fat wheels, thinner wheels, wooden wheels, and what have you to see what works better

Yes, and 'standard wheels' would have saved them time, money and other resources and would have increased the chances of bringing a self driving car to market.

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Re:Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car by coldtea on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @02:04PM (#15083694)
>Yes, and 'standard wheels' would have saved them time, money and other resources

Time from what? It's not some team considering other kinds of wheels was holding back their self-driving researchers...

You seem to have an overly linear and heavy-first concept of how such a development should go.

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Re:Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car by jacquesm on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @04:45PM (#15084916)
> Time from what?

Time from focusing on the bit that mattered. Anyway, the article linked underscores my point far better than I'm able to do.

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Re:Apple Scales Back Its Ambitions for a Self-Driving Car by scj on Wednesday August 23, 2017 @02:27PM (#15083879)
I wonder if replacement spherical wheels for a 10-year-old car would be available. Would they even make studded spherical wheels for winter?
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