What does the cost and number of supported vehicles have to do with whether or not the software is hacky? (Hint: nothing; it has nothing to do with it.)
> The stock "automatic cruise control" is most cars is far worse and far more dangerous than Comma
That's a pretty extraordinary claim to make without presenting any evidence.
> one that undoubtedly makes driving safer for themselves and other vehicles on the road.
Ditto.
The front page of the Comma website claims "millions" of miles have been driven using it; given that in the US there's about 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven, I don't think we have anywhere near enough data to make any claims about Comma's safety. It may actually be safer, but I don't think we have a way to know that yet.
And also, given that Comma supports several different vehicles, I suspect that we'll have to consider its safety record on a per-make (and in some cases possibly per-model) basis, not on the system as a whole, in order to compare apples to apples.
Is that a downside? Anyone who's ever struggled with hardware driver problems knows that the more hardware configurations your software (notionally) supports, the more likely you are to have show-stopping bugs.
In a home PC, some reliability is arguably a fair trade-off for versatility. Not in a car.
1: https://data.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/...
But watching people nitpick various variants of electric crossover SUVs, I realize I would probably like just about all of them because none of my cars have been anything like that up to now.
So I keyed in my other two cars to see if I could put the comma into it and alas I cannot. They are 2013 and 2016 models respectively.
And yes the system in the Mach E is brand new:
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a32896537/fords-driver-ass...
The stock "automatic cruise control" is most cars is far worse and far more dangerous than Comma, and those companies aren't getting taken down by lawsuits. At the end of the day, the driver is responsible for the operation of the vehicle. Comma is a tool the driver can use, and one that undoubtedly makes driving safer for themselves and other vehicles on the road.