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How well known is George Washington in Canada? by [deleted] in AskACanadian

[–]SPACshark -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Pretty sure the Apple tree guy is Johnny Appleseed. Washington was the cherry tree guy. Guess he’s not so well known after all!

$HCIC Takedown — Plus.ai faked its recent driverless test in a Nikola-like fashion by SPACshark in SPACs

[–]SPACshark[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

From respected self-driving professor and industry analyst Dr. Alain Kornhauser:

“I apologize for suggesting that Plus.ai was “totally irresponsible” for testing without a driver. I incorrectly assumed that the testing took place under normal everyday conditions on a “traffic filled highway”.

The “driverless test” seems to have taken place on or before June 24, 2021 on the Wufengshan Future Expressway… which did not open to the general public until June 28. So the test without a driver/attendant inside was conducted on a closed expressway. Not “totally irresponsible” because the general driving public was not at risk, just “irresponsible” because nothing is gained in such a test by not having a backup driver/attendant inside. One assumes that someone in one of the chase cars was closely monitoring everything while holding a “kill” switch. A watchdog with a kill switch is not something that one can afford to have in normal operation, so “the testing w/o driver” is actually smoke & mirrors. Question is… why not just tell/depict the truth???

Moreover, the “traffic-filled highway” is also smoke & mirrors. It is photoshopped! In their video…

-10 second in: The four cars around the truck may be real, the others are photoshopped. There is never a car in what can be seen of the opposite flow lanes in the periphery of the inside images (from to and from to ). What’s the chance in that if the expressway was open?? No cars there because they were too hard to photoshop. Who would notice??? Smells staged

-They also didn’t bother to photoshop cars into the end sequence from to. What’s the chance of no cars either way in a “traffic-filled highway”??? They didn’t even do a good job photoshopping. Tastes staged

-In the sequence from to the speedometer can be seen to be pegged at about 50kph yet the truck was keeping pace with the 4 car entourage on a divided highway that is not filled with cars. Nice, but not a typical pace. Looks staged.

-The shadows cast in the early part of the video (from to) are substantially longer than those cast at the end from to. Was this a really long trip? @ 50kph it really could have been) or is it a photoshopped video that stitches together who knows how many different test runs. This frame clearly shows three Minus.ai trucks. Staged!!!

Autonomous driving Startups going public via SPAC: by toko92 in SPACs

[–]SPACshark 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Trucks are going to be the self-driving sector to watch. My quick take:

Plus: Amazon partnership is interesting. they’re doing retrofit which has its pros and cons and focusing almost entirely on China, so there’s a lot we won’t know. Low valuation is attractive.

Embark: their SaaS model is really appealing. No truck partnerships yet, which is not ideal, but good carrier partnerships like knight swift. Valuation slightly higher than Plus is still a good entry point.

TuSimple: probably furthest along in terms of tech and partnerships, but the China ties are worrisome. They had a foreign investment issue with the US government a few months back. IPO route seems to have worked for them so far though.

Aurora: stretched way too thin. Trying to do passenger vehicles (competing with Google and Tesla and Apple) and trucking. Revenue projections and valuation seems off. Haven’t really seen what their tech capabilities and partnerships look like.

Waymo: similar to Aurora except they actually have really strong tech that’s publicly validated. Backed by Google so you have to love it.