Redundancy is great, but there’s still so many use cases where things can fail. Also, how well do you think these systems will be maintained by average owners, even fleet owners? There’s always points of failure, and without a robust failover solution, you can never sleep or or read or work or use your phone or have a… Read more

I jammed a Vanagon and a Golf together and stuck a lidar dome on top for a quick and very dirty futuro-AV:

Because systems that do most of the work--like Autopilot or any L2 system--makes drivers less attentive, and that’s why we get accidents without safe failover. There’s been many, many studies about this, starting with Mackworth’s 1948 study of vigilance tasks: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1080/17470214808416738 Read more

No, man, this setup uses cheap-ass, non-complex systems! Those posts are a trip sensor with like a cell-phone level computer on them! This isn’t complex! Read more

The requirement that the driver be ready to take over any moment is by far the biggest problem here. If you can’t sleep in an AV, what the hell good is it? Read more

Absolutely! It’s fun, too! I mean, why not? Read more

You and 15 minutes with a sawzall could have a convertible one, I bet! Read more

The word you’re looking for is chiaroscuro. Like a Caravaggio. Who was widely considered the best cart repair technical manual painter of his day. Read more

https://jalopnik.com/what-its-like-to-drive-the-crap-out-of-and-drag-race-a-1832935564 Read more

Oh hot damn look at that Read more

Fantastic! Read more

Ohhhhhh. That’s just shadows and light, playing tricks on you.  Read more

Uh. What camo? Read more

Motherfucker, PLEASE. The book isn’t anti-autonomous cars at all. I fucking WISH writing anti-Tesla articles made one tiny bit of difference on book sales. It doesn’t. And I’m not anti-Tesla. But if this is your reaction to this story, perhaps you should seek out your clergyperson or a trusted relative. Maybe a… Read more

Oh yeah, the desk! I love the desk. I’ll take a slide-out desk over lane-keeping assist any day. Read more

“Full Self-Driving” and “pay extra attention to the road” and “do not become complacent” are all there in that first paragraph on the screen and they are statements in conflict with one another. You shouldn’t be able to call something full self-driving if you immediately have to say to pay extra attention to the road… Read more

You’re completely missing the point. It’s great you use the L2 system well and responisbly! Fantastic! That’s great. But the system is being marketed as more than it is, and the need to be vigilant is consistently downplayed. Tesla’s own video shows hands off the wheel. Failover/handoff can’t just be assumed away. If… Read more

“Terminator taught us.” Read more

Oh, I’ve been in plenty of engineering autonomous prototypes. The tech is not the problem here. I am excited about the tech. It’s humans. We’re not wired to be in systems that do 90% of the work while simultaneously being ready to take over at any moment. Again, this is not just me saying this--there’s decades of… Read more

No, that’s my whole job! Read more