[gonehome]

They've also relegated it to a sideshow on only one of their models, rather than incorporating it into the core of their business.

I wonder if they're underestimating its importance or if there might be internal fighting within GM.

This is another advantage Tesla has being all in towards the goal.

[solidasparagus]

When an experimental project is made core to the company's traditional business, the experimental project is usually slowed down. The fewer dependencies between GM cars and Cruise, the better.

[gonehome]

Maybe - an alternative historical example is Kodak and the digital camera.

They could have it as a standard feature on their cars rather than a high trim level on one.

[tmh79]

the problem with this analogy is that digital cameras worked, self driving cars don't

[glennpratt]

That's a bit of hindsight; digital cameras didn't work for many use cases for a long time.

[javagram]

Digital cameras also didn’t kill or injure people when their limitations were reached.

I remember the QuickTake and all that. Yes, those small pixelated images weren’t the same quality as film but they had other benefits instead.

Self driving cars currently aren’t in a state where they can do anything, even waymo still has safety drivers.

[keymone]

Did pre-digital cameras kill people?

Because dumb cars with dumb humans in them kill far more than self driving cars do.

[solidasparagus]

Self-driving's problem isn't that it 'doesn't work in many use cases'. The problem is finding a single use case where today's L4 technology can actually be used given the technological, legal, PR and cost considerations.

[gonehome]

Exactly - it's more about recognizing the shift that will happen if the technology can work and what that will mean.

GM seems to think it's important since they bought Cruise in the first place, but instead of seeing failure on this as an existential threat it seems more like a side project for them.

From the outside this seems like a bad strategy and will only succeed if it turns out self-driving is impossible (which seems unlikely).

Digital cameras were toys until suddenly they weren't and then Kodak died - even though they had invented the digital camera in the first place.

It's not enough to have the tech, you have to prioritize it in the business. Xerox PARC is another example of this type of failure.

[solidasparagus]

Super Cruise, GM's Autopilot competitor, is planning to be fleet-wide by 2020[1]. But that is L2/L3 stuff, which is different than the L4 technology Cruise is focused on. You can't put L4 into GM's cars because it's not ready - it's probably dangerous and I'm doubtful it would be cost effective given the prices of sensors and the fact that you need to turn the car into a rolling datacenter.

[1] https://mashable.com/article/super-cruise-cadillac-ct5-sedan...

[jayonsoftware]

Cruise will be a tech provider like Waymo. Tesla is the only company that has an end to end product from software to hardware..think Apple.

[Animats]

Cruise will be a tech provider like Waymo.

While owned by General Motors, no. But with Softbank buying in, maybe GM is backing away from Cruise.

Is this another the Saudi Arabia sovereign wealth fund investment via Softbank? They seem to have become the world's largest source of dumb money.

Is there anybody, anywhere, yet who is deploying self-driving cars without "safety drivers" or insisting the driver remain active at the wheel? Cruise, no. Waymo, did for a while, then backed off. Volvo was supposed to be deploying by now but backed off. There are a few self-driving shuttle buses, but they're really slow, like 10mph, except when on dedicated pathways.

Companies that are claiming they will deploy in volume in the next two years are bullshitting. Nobody has Level 3 self driving working reliably in test yet. Let alone Level 4 or 5.

[dragonwriter]

> But with Softbank buying in, maybe GM is backing away from Cruise.

SoftBank was already a big investor in Cruise.

[deepGem]

“Developing and deploying self-driving vehicles at massive scale is the engineering challenge of our generation,” said Cruise CEO Dan Ammann

Wait a min, when did this happen ? and who is Dan Ammann. Why would you move Kyle Vogt into a CTO position. This is bizzare.