And you know what? All I want out of the first fifteen years of self-driving is a really good highway autopilot.

As in one I can hopefully sleep at the wheel on a late night trip between midwestern US cities.

John Henryism can navigate the suburbs, stroads, and drivethrus. If they achieve a backup safety system that monitors the humans, well, ok great.

But right now, I want long distance automation, and I can handle the messy last mile. Highways are much easier to get uniform infrastructure convergence: some sensors, PSA warnings, better signs + markings + construction notices, etc.

I think Uber making as big a splash at it did sidetracked this low hanging fruit. IMO that was where the bootstrap bucks were, because you would have gotten freight/shipping to pay the cost of the next gen software, and would have provided the impetus for the convergent infrastructure.

Alas, they are obsessed with robotaxis.

Actually, seems like you want a train

Trains don't operate from door to door. The last mile problem persist, unless you travel between railway connected city centres. Not everyone lives anywhere near a railway station.

(I live in Europe which has relatively good railway network, still I prefer my Tesla as transport method.)

There are trains that transport cars.

True, they also run such a trains here in Finland, an overnight trip from south to north (Lapland). The train tickets for our family of 5 plus a car are so expensive (total 1200 eur) compared to minimal marginal cost for using our EV (150 eur), that we always choose the car.

highways don't go door to door, and that's what they were suggesting.

They were suggesting they want to use the same vehicle door to door with it being automated during the freeway bit. A train would still mean find some transport to the station, wait for the train, ride train, find transport from station.

Or a train that takes cars, like a Ferry, obviously that massively cuts down on space efficiency but it’s not impossible.

Called a Motorail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorail

Like the euro tunnel

I'll answer that with another piece of prognostication: good highway self-driving will cause massive disruption to the airline industry.

Would you rather do this for a business trip to a 400-500 mile away city:

- fixed time to depart (and fixed for leaving your destination!)

- have to book ticket weeks in advance for a reasonable flight

- no flexiblity if plans change

- pack a small bag

- transit to an airport (parking or cab or whatever)

- arrive a sufficient amount of time in advance

- check in

- go through security

- get on plane, stuck in seat, no/crappy food

- get off plane, go to car rental place

- rent car (not yours, sucks)

- cost: 100-200$, and if you want to bring anyone it's a multiple of that.

- no cell phone, restricted to plane wifi if they have it

- door-to-door is what, 4 hours? Man I hope there isn't a delay....

Or, with self-driving:

- pack your car or minivan to the brim with stuff you need

- leave when you want

- sleep / stop to eat / stop to bathroom when you need it

- full cell coverage / hotspot

- take additional people

- EV cost is like... 20-40$ for the trip if you include wear and tear?

- door to door is... 5-6 hours

If the car is driving for you, it is far less stressful, flexible, much cheaper, especially if you want to take your family.

Trains are a ... bit ... better than airplanes, but still inflexible, surprisingly expensive, won't have your car at the other end, have to haul around your luggage rather than chuck it into YOUR CAR.

When good highway self-driving comes, I will probably never fly anything less than 1000 miles. If I get a self-driving RV that's EV self-recharging at charge stations? Hell I might get rid of my apartment.

I don't see how self-driving changes the calculus. Sure, sometimes I'll drive 5-6 hours instead of flying, but that's already the status quo.

Meanwhile, I don't see many people going somewhere 400-500 miles away regularly. Most places seem either much closer or much further.

If money is a concern, you can always take the bus.

Both trains and planes centralise assets, services and pathways, allowing for rent seeking and anti competitive behaviour, government and regulatory capture, and by their very nature are anti consumer and pro big business. Hence their dominance and the increasing pressure on self driving EVs.

>allowing for rent seeking

You are saying this in a thread about a company that regularly sells features as a subscription and revokes them upon resell, as well as voids warranty if you get it repaired anywhere that's not a Tesla shop. Tesla have entrenched themselves as rent seekers from the beginning.

But cars need infrastructure (roads) which tend to create the same exact thing (big construction corps getting all the cake, thanks to political connections). The scale is for sure smaller but still...

... the scale is smaller

Lol you describes me. I could fly my work routes but I take the car exactly because every reason you stated

Sure, and let me know where I can effectively vote and petition for extensive trains.

But until they get built freeway autopilot is nice.

> But right now, I want long distance automation, and I can handle the messy last mile.

Me too, and my Tesla handles daytime good-weather non-construction highway driving pretty well with just the standard autosteer. I finish a long road trip much less fatigued in a Tesla than I have in any other car. (Part of that is the seats. Tesla really sweats the details of making seats comfortable.)

But FSD is kind of a sad joke. Off-highway navigation only works in particular major cities, the car stops at green lights, tries to turn right from the left lane, etc. And Elon thinks that's worth an extra $15k. Nope. It really isn't, at least for me.

Obviously the article goes into a lot more depth, though in my opinion things could be a bit clearer if they first established if Autopilot performs any differently on freeways or not and then try to see if controlling for any of the other possible confounds has any effect. I'm also not overly fond of their reweighting method, if not done carefully you'll just be amplifying a lot of noise.