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A comment on GM Cruise raises $1.15B at a $19B valuation from Softbank and Honda. Parent comment

Re:GM Cruise raises $1.15B at a $19B valuation from Softbank... by slg on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @05:30PM (#19853637)
I don't know the details of the law, but I would bet that Teslas don't qualify on a technicality of the law rather than the fact that Tesla simply has not operated an autonomous vehicle on a public road in the state of California. You might be right that they are doing it to save embarrassment, but that is a rather cynical mindset considering it can also be explained by just not wanting to publicize their progress.

It is also worth pointing out that Tesla's ability to run software on its fleet of hundreds of thousands of cars gives them a huge advantage regarding data collection. If their cars are truly as safe as they claim (a huge if and one we have no real public proof of yet), the lack of having this report on disengagements in California is not going to be a stumbling block in getting regulatory approval.

EDIT: Since I am being downvoted, I looked up the regulation [1]. Teslas likely don't to qualify as "autonomous vehicles" according to definition b. Although that is a pretty bad definition in my opinion. Also I am not praising Tesla here, just pointing out that their ability to avoid this regulation is not an indication of the quality of their self-driving tech.

[1] - https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/d48f347b-8815-458e...

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Re:GM Cruise raises $1.15B at a $19B valuation from Softbank... by gamblor956 on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @06:07PM (#19853900)
Considering that Elon Musk has never once failed to publicize even imagined progress (that would simply be par for any other business), it would boggle the mind to believe that he would be keeping any type of market-leading progress a secret, especially in the market where he has literally bet the future of the company and this type of news could encourage competitors to drop out of the market.

the lack of having this report on disengagements in California is not going to be a stumbling block in getting regulatory approval.

Actually, if Tesla hopes to legally sell self-driving cars in CA, that is going to be a huge stumbling block.

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Re:GM Cruise raises $1.15B at a $19B valuation from Softbank... by slg on Tuesday May 07, 2019 @06:24PM (#19854004)
How many businesses volunteer themselves to be subject to regulation that doesn't apply to them, especially when that regulation gives their competitors insights into the company's R&D capabilities?

Tesla has sold over 50k Model 3s in California in 2018[1]. Regulators would be ridiculous if they put more value in the data from 111 Waymo vehicles compared to the data from tens of thousand of Tesla vehicles.

And once again, I am not saying Tesla is leading here or has superior technology. But people like you are letting their bias against Musk and Tesla cloud their judgement on this issue.

[1] - https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/California-s-su...

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Re:GM Cruise raises $1.15B at a $19B valuation from Softbank... by hef19898 on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @06:09AM (#19857424)
So you are saying instead if running the required test vehicles with trained drivers in California like Waymo does Tesla is running unsupervised Beta tests with 50k cars? For self-driving? Not sure if that's how new cars are certified...
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