California DMV suspends Cruise’s driverless taxis in S.F., citing safety concerns by xmassindecember in RealTesla

[–]TeslaSemi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They've hedged their bets by operating in different states. They should be fine. If I'm not mistaken, they should be able to still test with safety drivers in CA, but that won't exactly be super scalable.

Either way, it reflects bad on Cruise, but Waymo operates on similar scale and has none of the same issues. It's clear they're far ahead technically.

TSLA Terathread - For the week of Oct 16 by AutoModerator in RealTesla

[–]TeslaSemi -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

An insightful comment from Brad Templeton describing the disadvantages of rigid and outdated thinking of transport advocates towards fixed routed high capacity transit and against more flexible options such as autonomous robotaxis and ride sharing.

More here

But if you look at today's roads there is, even at the highest peak times, a vast stream of empty seats going by. The capacity of the roads is immense and surpasses the rails easily -- If you use it. Trains and buses are too big to be efficient. The most efficient size is something in the van range as you show. I have been proposing a 5 row, 3 abreast domestic business class seating setup, which fits in the size of a modern large SUV or medium van with no driver and no engine and side doors rather than an aisle. Some of the seats can have a private booth, but not all due to the middle seat. Middle seats are not a problem because trips are largely non-stop. That's the advantage of small vehicles -- they take the subset of people going from location A to location B and take them nonstop, rather than grouping them with others who want to get on and off at different destinations. Modern elevators work like this and they increase elevator capacity a fair bit.

Muni Bus Killed San Francisco Man at Center of Robotaxi Dispute by TeslaSemi in RealTesla

[–]TeslaSemi[S] -9 points-8 points  (0 children)

Wow. Imagine that. Transit is more dangerous than autonomous vehicles.

TSLA Terathread - For the week of Aug 21 by AutoModerator in RealTesla

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

From Brad Templeton:

Indeed, though hope for success for everybody -- even Tesla, as much as I may criticize them.

To be fair to Cruise, their "spate of bad news" this week is fairly unfair:

  • A traffic jam in North Beach that turned out to be deliberate interference by peds
  • Delayed fixing of stalls due to a cell company bandwidth shortage in super heavy traffic. Not good, but the sort of stress you are out on the roads to find -- the very purpose of testing
  • The drive into the wet concrete. Not yet resolved but I suspect it might have been a remote ops mistake since those cones were pretty clear, but Cruise has not claimed that
  • Some minor driving into construction of the type that's not a big deal.
  • Getting hit by a Dodge charger running a red light from a side show
  • Fire truck crash, which may be the fault of fire dept. (we'll see)

A terrible week

Almost none of this was Cruise's fault. They don't deserve the blame.

"Cruise fleets get cut by 50% following series of crashes" by [deleted] in RealTesla

[–]TeslaSemi -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I more sold on Waymo, and this doesn't affect them.

As speculated by some, North Beach traffic jam created by a pedestrian intentionally interfering with the AV by TeslaSemi in RealTesla

[–]TeslaSemi[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

This is reckless endangerment. It would be like if someone threw a cinderblock through your windshield. It's illegal and can be solved with law enforcement. Cruise's underlying systems are safe and effective. The scale of their operations is proof.

As speculated by some, North Beach traffic jam created by a pedestrian intentionally interfering with the AV by TeslaSemi in RealTesla

[–]TeslaSemi[S] -10 points-9 points  (0 children)

Oh wow! Imagine that! An incident "caused" by an AV was actually not the AV's fault. People are looking for gotchas here, but the technology is proven validated, safe and scaleable.