[bsaul]

Now that tesla has started to pretend selling autonomous cars now is making sense, the field went from research ( where researcher honestly reports shortcomings themselves) to the horrendous world of SV start up, where everything should be considered a lie until the day someone can actually buy the stuff and test for himself.

And so you end up with posts like this trying to analyse a video frame by frame to assess the reality of the technology, and yet everyone including the author tries to guess where's the catch ( is the green light really trustworthy ? Why is the video accelerated ? Etc..).

[delinka]

"...until the day someone can actually buy the stuff"

I'm reasonably certain we can stop right there. It's a heavily regulated field and these things can't be sold until they've been rigorously tested. I know SV isn't known for its coziness with regulatory agencies, but in the field of safety, they'll have to play ball or take on all the liability the lawsuits will throw at them.

[beambot]

Plus, many of the players do not have the intention of ever letting you "buy" the hardware. You will be buying transportation from A -> B, and it might just come in the form of an autonomous car (or a human driver).

[ericd]

Cruise is now owned by GM, which I really doubt is going to throw something out into the market without testing very rigorously first.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

I get GM cars as rentals pretty often and while they're better than Chrysler I don't have a lot of faith in their product.

[ericd]

My point was that they don't take a cavalier SV-style approach to testing things.

[greglindahl]

Many Silicon Valley startups don't take a "cavalier SV-style approach" to testing things, either. There are a ton of medical device startups, for example.

[pinnbert]

Researchers have egos and do not honestly report shortcomings.