>Everything has been carefully mapped out ahead of time.

That sounds sustainable and scalable to earth-size, for sure.

Well, it's been mostly done once with Google maps and street view. Presumably once it was done once and in use cities would have a vested interest in keeping it updated themselves. Judging by how many large potholes stick around for years near me I wouldn't keep my hopes up about it being well maintained though

Earth size? When was the last time you drove in Madagascar? Most driven miles are the same commute in the same city 10 times a week.

I wonder if you know what some of the roads in Madagascar are like, or just picked a country.

https://www.dangerousroads.org/africa/madagascar/3415-route-...

(A colleague is there now.)

People in Madagascar would answer differently.

People in Madagascar depend on 4x4 monsters. Yet manufacturers still sell RWD coupes. It's worthwhile without them as a target market.

> Everything has been carefully mapped out ahead of time

This doesn’t scale. This is also how Zoox, Tesla, and Cruise do their demo videos to scam more money out of investors: they collect ultra-HD maps in a very narrow area or a very specific route. Then they drive the route/area about a thousand times, recording each drive. Then they upload the drive with the fewest mistakes to YouTube. Just like me taking a thousand half-court shots with a basketball, hitting one, and then claiming I can do it every try. There, I just gave you the formula to raise $100mm from FOMOing VCs.

There’s also no such thing as a Level 4 Autonomous vehicle. It doesn’t exist.

Many of the original Google self-driving car project members came over directly from Google Street view, which has since scaled all over the world. Autonomous vehicles have big scaling issues, but it's not the maps holding them back.

Street view is not an ultra-HD map for autonomous driving. Cruise isn’t using street view, or anything so primitive and easy to collect in comparison, to navigate SF. And it doesn’t scale in and of itself without being backed by a search ads monopoly that prints money at will.

Telsa doesn't have such ultra-HD maps at all. They build some maps for some simulations and training but the car does not locate itself in such maps when driving.

> Then they drive the route/area about a thousand times, recording each drive. Then they upload the drive with the fewest mistakes to YouTube

This is certainty not what Tesla does, from Tesla vehicles you will find literally 1000s of videos uploaded by Testers on every possible routes.

And Tesla has also never relied on VC funding for any of its self-driving tech.

> Telsa doesn't have such ultra-HD maps at all. They build some maps for some simulations and training but the car does not locate itself in such maps when driving.

They do have such maps, but only for the routes of their demo videos. That’s the entire accusation — it’s a Fugazi. A man behind a curtain. A mechanical Turk. Fake.

This video was posted 3 years ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tlThdr3O5Qo

I have never seen a Tesla perform as well as the one in that video in ANY user video. I drove a Model 3 with FSD for 4 months and it never came close to performing that well. Not even close. They either recorded a special map for that scam video, drove the route a thousand times and took the best recording, or both.

> This is certainty not what Tesla does, from Tesla vehicles you will find literally 1000s of videos uploaded by Testers on every possible routes

In the real videos, the cars fail to navigate simple scenarios constantly. You can’t even watch the videos without cringing at the constant mistakes and dangerous maneuvers. For Pete’s sake, just search “Tesla phantom braking” on YouTube and behold.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu18KYAhSzo

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9iGWDdnoONE&t=50

> And Tesla has also never relied on VC funding for any of its self-driving tech.

No, just unsophisticated customers paying $12k for vaporware and massive government subsidies. So sorry — they’re not scamming VCs. Just real customers and the taxpayers.