[kvogt]

Cruise CEO here.

Our strategy has been to solve the challenges needed to operate driverless robotaxis on a well-equipped vehicle, then aggressively drive the cost down. Many OEMs are doing this in reverse order. They're trying to squeeze orders of magnitude of performance gains out of really low-cost hardware. Today it's unclear what strategy will win.

In a few years our next generation of low-cost compute and sensing lands in these vehicles and our service area will be large enough that you forget there is even a geofence. If OEMs have still not managed to get the necessary performance gains to go fully driverless, we'll know what move was the right one.

We shared several details on how our system works and our future plans here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkK2JX1iHuzz7W8z3roCZ...

[bloodyplonker22]

It's good to hear a CEO say "we don't know the answer, but we're making a bet" rather than the typical Elizabeth Holmes style "We are absolutely correct and first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you get convicted of three counts of wire fraud and go to prison".

[gooseus]

"This is a solved problem.", "We're light-years ahead of the competition", or "We expect everyone with existing hardware to be able to monetize their cars as robo-taxis by the end of next year" are other great examples.

[walrus01]

to be fair, this is because Elizabeth Holmes is probably a sociopath, so you'd expect to hear something overly confident like that from such. Not that we knew it at the time.

[andy_ppp]

I've met quite a few people like her and I really don't believe they are sociopaths - they say things that sound real and even convince themselves of it but as soon as you start peeling back details they don't exist. It's like you are talking to a Turing machine and it's you failing the test. People on these forums never really speak to these people because we are already largely scientists and love empirical evidence and work with and hang around similar people. There's a whole class of people who have learned to pattern match talking like us without anything to back it up. See the industry "Comms" for many many examples.

[ramesh31]

>There's a whole class of people who have learned to pattern match talking like us without anything to back it up. See the industry "Comms" for many many examples.

Have noticed this through my career as well. There is a whole class of people who go through life never actually doing anything. They just talk about people doing things. And get paid to talk about people doing things. And by the time people realize that they are just full of shit, they move on to the next place where they get paid to talk about people doing things. And they never actually did anything in the first place, so it's not like you can even say they were a bad worker.

[walrus01]

I see you've discovered the people who work in "enterprise sales" for any niche software or technical product.

[saiya-jin]

Roughly 1 in 20 folks on average out there is a sociopath (some quote from Jordan Peterson). It doesn't have to be full 110% on scheming world domination, but detectable (and obvious in daily life). I am not an expert on her or whole saga, but from my perspective many famous people show this trait. In business its almost mandatory to get/stay on top, it certainly gives one advantages compared to nice fair honest people.

[kranke155]

Sociopaths are not uncommon as people think. They think sociopaths are “mad killers” but they’re just people who don’t feel remorse when ie lying and have little to no empathy. I’ve met mild sociopaths who were just bankers who would never even think about second order and third order effects of what they were doing. It’s not some kind of rare condition.

I heard the figure was 1 in 30 but 1 in 20 is close enough.

[ladon86]

Yes, but all of those quotes are by Elon Musk…

[walrus01]

True. I actually replied to the entirely wrong comment, should have been one up... I have a great deal more confidence in truly revolutionary things that have been factually delivered by SpaceX (such as 100+ re-uses of a rocket first stage now), and I question how much of that is really due to Musk at all. Maybe Musk as a figurehead. I wonder if all of the Elon fanboys know that much of what's been accomplished at SpaceX is thanks to Gwynne Shotwell, or even know who she is.

Things like promising "full self driving" for 6+ years now and charging people $12500 for it leave a really bad taste in my mouth and I find it difficult to square with my overall very positive impression of spacex.

[virgilp]

I'll bite. Say I'm a Musk fanboy... I can assure you that all Elon fanboys I know are fully aware who Gwynne Shotwell is. Now, your turn: please explain how the following SpaceX accomplishments are thanks to Gwynne Shotwell (other that the hand-wavy "well if she didn't get the contracts none of this would be possible"):

- Merlin engine

- Vertical landing

- Raptor engine

... or, what exactly is the "much of what's been accomplished" that you talk about? Look, I'm not trying to minimize her role, she was clearly a great COO for SpaceX, but it seems weird to me that you try to minimize Musk's importance while at the same time picking one other singular person to highlight. I could understand the argument that "it's a team effort, no one person did this alone"; but if we're picking only one person to assign credits, then surely, _surely_ Musk is that one person, right? I understand the skepticism that he really does engineering & design, so here is supporting evidence: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

[brtkdotse]

Bracing myself for the downvotes, but I suspect any wins coming out of Tesla/SpaceX these days is despite Musk, not thanks to.

[ricardobayes]

I think we'll see major players leaving this industry soon. Self-driving will be a war of attrition and thus cannot be won by US companies with their insane burnrate. Europe has just as competent engineers making a tenth of their US counterparts. If I was a VC I would be head over heels investing in EU self-driving tech. They are the 'cockroaches' of this tech who will survive. I can't imagine e.g. Waymo bankrolling tens of millions of dollars in payroll for years to come.

[alex_sf]

Does it really matter? If there's no Elon, there's no SpaceX. And I say this as someone that doesn't buy into the founder cult.

[chasd00]

To me, Musk's real gift is finding the right people and convincing them to work for him at the right time.

[lisper]

Elon is probably a sociopath too. Not all sociopaths are as dysfunctional as Elizabeth.

[ksec]

Indeed. It is very rare ( if not the only few I remember ) to see Silicon Valley or any VC funded Tech companies that is unsure of his / her tech or themselves. Their absolute optimistic nature ( If you could call it that ). People who are unsure of things, especially with leading edge tech, unproven tech and extreme difficulties tends to get my vote. I will now be keeping an eye on Cruise. Although I still think driverless cars in mainstream use is at least another 5 - 10 years away. There are just too many edge cases, but I hope people continue to work on it, as it will be part of the solution to solve housing and property market issues.

[drzaiusapelord]

Game theory and personality dynamics strategy applies to C-levels too! For some industries, companies, etc you want to be a Holmes type of total confidence. It depends who your market is, and by that I mean the VC's you want to attract. If they go for the "arrogant boy/girl genius" schtick then that's what you do. If they want a humble intellectual, then that's what you do instead. Conversely, you may alternate between the two depending on your audience. Maybe you're humble in HN comments, but maybe a monster in VC meetings. Look at Elon's larger than life "boy genius" PR persona. It works really well. He may not be a total fraud like Holmes, but his shoddy car AI has killed at least a couple people in cases where if the car had a lidar-like system, that truck or whatever would have been identified instead of seen as part of the sky.

Also Cruise wants to license to automakers, not make their own car, so they have to act like trustworthy partners in their PR. Elon has his own car company and instead is antagonistic and belittling to automakers because he thinks there's a competitive advantage to it. Any positive sentiment towards his competitors is potentially lost sales for Tesla. Capitalism encourages zero-sum thinking and rewards zero-sum strategies.

CEOs are marketers and salespeople primarily and as such know how to play different roles for different situations. They code switch just like everyone else. The role isn't for everyone in tech because a lot of tech people don't have the people, political, and acting skills for it.

tldr; capitalism doesn't work well with honesty, in fact it works best with dishonesty. You don't have a personal relationship with a CEO or company, you're just absorbing marketing delivered via executive personalities. Personalities are perfectly valid marketing tools in capitalism. Take that as you will.

[astrange]

Theranos didn't use the normal set of VCs because they all thought it was a scam; they raised from some random rich people who weren't professional tech VCs instead. It's unfortunate the only thing she was convicted for was defrauding them, since being accredited investors they should be able to live with that.

As for Elon, he's currently doing a bad boy anti-government bit in an attempt to make Tesla "electric cars you can buy even if you're a Republican". Since we want those people buying EVs instead of coal rolling, that's a good thing.

[toss1]

>> It's unfortunate the only thing she was convicted for was defrauding them, since being accredited investors they should be able to live with that.

NO.

Investors are supposed to be able to live with all the usual risks of technology, execution, marketplace dynamics, etc.

They are NOT supposed to be OK with deliberate fraud.

If you invest at Early_Round when the tech looks promising, but then it fails to develop, CEO truthfully tells everyone what failed, the plan to overcome the failures, and you invest in Later_Round, or don't, and it ultimately fails and you lose your investment, fine.

BUT, if you invested in Early_Round and then the tech fails to develop, but the CEO straight-up lies to you and says they are "light years ahead of everyone else", shows phony endorsements from major industry players, and more so that you invest again in Later_Round, and then lose your shirt - that's fraud, and all involved in the fraud should be prosecuted, convicted, and jailed.

Anything less will create an environment where blatant lying for 100s-of-$millions is okay, and that is doomed to systemically fail.

[jhbadger]

But I think the point is that she wasn't convicted of endangering people's lives, which many would consider a far greater crime than just a con defrauding some gullible marks. People depended on those tests. They made choices (such as whether or not to have surgeries) based on the results.

[toss1]

I agree with your point, and I definitely wonder what was the failure in prosecution that produced those not-guilty verdicts. Not only was people's health involved with the fraudulent testing service, but the healthcare consumers did not in any way sign up for that.

The specific comment that I was responding to seemed to say it should be okay to defraud Accredited Investors should be "able to live with that".

[astrange]

If you're selling a pump and dump like crypto or Uber, you want the CEO to lie to you because it shows he's good at lying! Then you all go out and lie with him, then Softbank gives you a billion dollars for no reason.

[CPLX]

Tim Draper wasn’t random.

[anamax]

How many other SV VCs joined Draper? FWIW, I heard that Ellison also put in some early money. If that was it, then will you agree that "mostly outside of the usual SV crowd." is accurate

How many rounds did Draper participate in? If Draper stopped after the first round or two, then it "got some early money from SV but everything else came from outsiders."

[dannylandau]

Good one!

[GeorgeTirebiter]

An extremely wise set of decisions. I also see no reason, a priori, to 'blind' a vehicle to certain spectra of EM emissions; nor to accept that only passive sensing (cameras) can be used, when Active Sensing (probing, if you will) that Radar and LiDAR use is clearly giving the control computers more information about Reality (tm).

By using all (or almost all) available Active and Passive sensing technologies, fused with geofencing and operating at 'low-ish' speeds -- surely must be the fastest way to achieve 100% accident-proof self-driving vehicles that operate on ordinary city streets. Congratulations, Cruise. Keep up the Good Work.

[XorNot]

One argument would be that once you have many vehicles operating with LIDAR, it's unclear which systems are sufficiently robust against being disrupted by interference from other systems. Same with RADAR - while this is not new technology, we've never really had a regime with potentially dozens of systems operating in close proximity.

For all Tesla's problems, the automation-via-cameras solution is the one I find myself having the least problems with: using a single, obvious input (to humans), you don't wind up in a situation where you can have multiple differently-capable systems disagreeing on what they're seeing.

[GeorgeTirebiter]

Generally, you solve this problem by using different (randomized) wavelengths, modulation (e.g. pulsed in a pattern), or if interference is inevitable, do something like WiFi or BLE does. It's not a big problem in practice.

I can only suggest you think harder about the 'all cameras' approach. Imagine say a snowstorm. Hail. Rain. Ice sheets. Sun in your 'eyes'. Cameras, basically, suck. Elon's game is to use suck-tech and make it un-suck with computons. Bad Choice.

[wutbrodo]

> I also see no reason, a priori, to 'blind' a vehicle to certain spectra of EM emissions

The reason is simple: cost. The goal isn't to build a proof-of-concept safe AV, it's to build one that meets the safety bar _and_ is as cost-effective as possible, in a reasonable timeframe.

I happen to agree with the target-then-scale approach, but I also agree with Kyle that it's not a given that this is approach is definitely superior to the one that launches everywhere and tries to improve functionality.

[bluGill]

Sure, but we already know that humans are not very good drivers (car accidents are #1 or #2 causes of death for age groups between 5 and 50). If you can do better than humans with more input, then that is compelling reason to use more input even if you can do just as good with a cheaper system.

[wutbrodo]

I agree, but was narrowly addressing the claim " I also see no reason, a priori, to 'blind' a vehicle to certain spectra of EM emissions". Cost is the a priori reason, albeit one that is potentially balanced by others.

[femto]

What’s your view on whether self-driving cars should automatically be 100% liable for any accidents?

I ask this in the context of machines being governed by classical deterministic physics, so there is an argument that there is no such thing as an accident involving a self-driving car: only a design flaw.

This is a genuine question, as I can see that companies with self-driving systems that work, and who do serious fault analysis and rectification, might be in favour of 100% liability. 100% liability would stop cowboys from entering/surviving in the industry and sullying the reputation of self-driving. A company’s system would have to perform well enough that any residual risk of injury could be covered by an affordable insurance policy.

[Sebguer]

If you listen closely, you can hear Cruise's legal team shouting, "No you can't make a public comment on what level of liability you think we should accept" no matter where you are in the world!

[babyshake]

Of course, knowing that self-driving cars are 100% liable would incentivize some people to attempt to be hit by one of these vehicles for a payout. A more realistic level of liability would be for 100% liability for accidents resulting from an "unforced error".

[hgomersall]

I still think the cars should anticipate risks and behave accordingly. Out and out fraud aside, they should basically never injure anyone.

[Jeff_Brown]

There's always some kind of risk. The bridge you're on could fall down. Somewhere, someone will have to judge whether a bad outcome was a failure.

[hgomersall]

Well as a pedestrian or cyclist, I'd like to make that risk judgment, not the vendor of the car that the person passing my bought from.

[worik]

I agree

For one thing electric cars are too quiet.

There should be a law that someone with a bell has to walk in front of the car to let people know it is coming

[numpad0]

Well, a noise making device has already been mandated because the startup car company refused to voluntarily install one. It hadn't been formalized because every other brands basically had it forever.

[rightbyte]

100% liable as drivers.

[abandonliberty]

The most common cause of motorcycle injuries that make it to the hospital (and statistics) is someone turning left in front of them in an intersection where they have right of way.

Not quite this, but you get the idea:

https://nypost.com/2021/05/20/motorcyclist-rider-survive-hor...

I couldn't find the clip of a motorcyclist patiently stopped at an intersection get taken out by an out of control left turner. Lots of fully legally stopped vehicles get hit.

[JaimeThompson]

How does one take into account lack of maintenance by the end user in a strict 100% liability situation?

[julienb_sea]

This problem should be solvable in software. The car can simply refuse to operate in a situation where maintenance is required.

[nradov]

In the general case it's impractical for electronic sensors to accurately measure the mechanical state of the vehicle. How do they tell us the suspension is rusted out and about to break? (In theory you can play some clever tricks with eddy currents or something but that's not going to be feasible for real world sensing.)

[outworlder]

That is not much of a problem in practice. A 'rusted out' suspension doesn't happen overnight. There could be regulatory requirements for self-driving cars to be considered 'streetworthy'. Out of compliance, robotaxi disabled.

The tricks you mentioned are already used for some aircraft inspections.

What the software needs to worry about would be other types of failures. Software is much more likely to detect issues before the driver. Say, brake performance is outside the expected range, or appears to be degrading too quickly.

[ironman1478]

How do you know maintenance is required in a completely automated fashion?

[walrus01]

My fear is that car manufacturers will turn cars into a totally dealer serviceable only thing (even more than they are now), like the car version of the glued shut Microsoft surface that gets a 1/10 on the ifixit repairability score.

[ironman1478]

In the case of Cruise this wouldn't be a problem because you wouldn't own the vehicle. Its a robotaxi service. Your point is still valid, though I'd ask, how do you even solve certain classes of issues? Like lets say you had to replace a camera. You can't just plop one in and have it work. There is a ton of complex calibration work that needs to happen, both intrinsic & extrinsic.

[Retric]

Service intervals based on time and usage combined with certified repair. From a passengers perspective airlines are strictly liable but presumably airlines could then sue the relevant third parties in such a case. I suspect a similar model could work fine for self driving cars.

[willcipriano]

Put a rfid tag in the tire, store how many rotations that tire takes over time. Once it reaches a threshold, refuse to spin that tire further.

[et2o]

Tire wear is a complex interaction of various factors such as compound, slippage, road surfaces, torque, weather etc and not just wheel revolutions

[ytdytvhxgydvhh]

I wonder about that. The top maintenance issue that comes to my mind is sufficient tread on tires. Bald tires will still work great on dry streets but as soon as it starts raining, you start skidding. I honestly don’t know if software could intervene quickly and reliably enough there.

[14]

The software could require a trip to the dealer for a visual inspection of the tires at set intervals. Hopefully free of charge for something so simple. A quick hookup to the computer and the interval is reset.

[toomuchtodo]

Tesla vehicles can detect and notify the driver of tires with low tread remaining. It's detected by a delta in rotation speed between other tires and the tire needing replacement. Seems like a software implementation is straightforward.

https://driveteslacanada.ca/software-updates/your-tesla-can-...

[JaimeThompson]

In a world where most dealers and manufactures what you to pay a subscription for everything it isn't likely to be free of charge.

[astrange]

That seems like bad value when you can look at your own tires. (And should in case they get a sidewall bubble.)

[jackvalentine]

This is what service intervals are for - your car likely requires an service every 12 months or XXXX kilometers whichever comes first. The service doesn't just include actual work on the car it includes an inspection of the lights, tyres, etc and a report to the owner saying "tyres need replacing in the next couple of thousand Ks they're almost at the wear indicator".

[BurningFrog]

I've given it some thought, and I think the SDC manufacturer must be liable for any accidents the SDC causes. Who else is there? The passengers certainly can't be responsible for any programming or manufacturing errors.

There are corner cases and exceptions, but that has to be the rule.

Which should mean that as and SDC owner, you don't have to pay car insurance.

[rfrey]

>the SDC manufacturer must be liable for any accidents the SDC causes.

There's the rub... How do you seperate those from the rest?

[wutbrodo]

We already have a system that relies on assigning fault among the multiple parties involved in an accident. This same approach applies just as well to SDC accidents. It would be even easier than the status quo, given the much richer data SDCs could be regulatorily mandated to provide.

[harpersealtako]

If there is disagreement between the relevant parties, through the court system (or through insurance agreements).

[BurningFrog]

The whole event will be recorded by at least the SDC vehicle.

[darepublic]

When you say accidents you mean where the robo car erred? Asking because ofc it's possible to get into an accident where you are not at fault and I think this would also be true of robocar

[user3939382]

My conclusion from years of self-driving, LIDAR, etc. research is that managing medium to heavy precipitation reliably might be impossible.

Visual algorithms run into the same problem as human brains, and the size of e.g. rain drops interferes with the frequencies employed by radio techniques.

Is anyone aware of any strategies that give us hope in solving this problem?

[abeppu]

Though ... how good a job are humans actually doing in heavy precipitation? I know that under normal circumstances our brains constantly do a bunch of work to create the illusion of a comprehensive high res visual field even though we really only have detail at the fovea. When it's raining heavily, and we think we can see "enough" to drive ... are we right? Or are we just lucky and pedestrians and cyclists are more likely to be off the road at those moments and so accidents increase but not to the point of disaster?

[potatolicious]

Agreed - I think the "but can it drive in a whiteout blizzard" question is best redirected to: "can a human?"

I suspect there are operating conditions the AVs won't solve acceptably - some of those conditions IMO are also conditions where we should not accept a human to solve acceptably. In general I feel we have a lackadaisical culture around driving that encourages/excuses unsafe behavior, and is overoptimistic about people's ability to drive well.

[honkdaddy]

I grew up in a part of Ontario where total whiteouts can happen fairly frequently on both major highways leading in and out of my small town. It is in fact possible to drive dozens of km in near or total whiteout conditions simply by the hazard lights of the car ahead of you. You very frequently will see lines of cars km long, all going <20km/h, white knuckled and crawling home. Maybe one in every couple thousand goes in the ditch.

I don't think vision-based FSV will ever reliably handle winter conditions like this. The engineering and QA effort just isn't worth the cost-benefit when you factor in the very small amount of drivers who are consistently exposed to conditions like that. My father, who spent his career commuting to the city on that highway, was disappointed when I explained this to him.

[numpad0]

I was once in the passenger seat in a downpour. My father was driving to the nav, and it seemed like we were traversing Mekong underwater. It was a complete instrument driving condition, except at most a feet of road markings were visible. The car was on local roads. He made cautious turns and drove slow, because it was obviously scary. Suddenly the nav said "Ding! you have reached your destination" in what seems to be middle of a road, and we immediately started making noises at the nav.

Then a person knocked on a window through the brown wall. It was someone we were to meet at the destination. He greeted us, and told us to come out. We tried to explain we can't just walk all perhaps a quarter mile to the place in this heavy rain, leaving the car left at a roadside. He insisted it'll be a short walk, and gave us no choice. Only when we stepped out, we realized that the car is right in the middle of the premise we were looking for, just couple feet from the main door.

This memory surfaces to my mind in the context of human drivers and inclement weathers; I'm still one piece, but maybe that has more to do with my luck, not necessarily due to myself playing every games extra safe.

[rossjudson]

Humans certainly don't reliably handle these conditions. ;)

It does seem like "something else" is needed for these kinds of low-visibility scenarios -- frankly, when nobody should be on the road.

[bluGill]

The reason all that works is people drive to what they expect. In such conditions you might hit a human standing on the road, no human would be there in the first place, only other cars with flashing lights. As such so long as you stay in the correct lane for your direction of travel and go slow you don't need to see because there is no real danger most of the time. Most of the time...

[Pxtl]

The worst is when one goes into a ditch and the car following them follows into the ditch because their main indicator of where to go was the running lights and tire tracks of the car in front.

[user3939382]

Where I grew up people would go together off the side of the mountain this way in very heavy fog.

[synthos]

rumble strips are amazing in whiteouts. its a relief when you hear it because you now know where the side of the road is...

[leetcrew]

people are actually pretty good at driving in blizzards in locales where they happen often. snow tires (and possibly chains), good clearance, and great caution can get you a long way.

obviously you try to avoid driving in these conditions when possible, but sometimes a moderate storm is much more intense than forecast and you get caught out. pulling off to the side of a snowy mountain pass doesn't guarantee your survival either.

[walrus01]

I know next to nothing about lidar engineering but 60GHz band radars can still function out to several hundred meters in rain. It is significantly attenuated as the rain rate (in mm/hour) increases, but it takes a lot of rain to make it completely useless.

[mensetmanusman]

This depends on how powerful your antenna are, $200 wigig transmitters will struggle with much range over those distances.

[walrus01]

And how directional and narrow the gain pattern is.

[rabuse]

Summers in South Florida will put that to the challenge.

[hammock]

Airplanes couldn't fly in inclement weather for decades. Took a while but we solved it.

"Oops it's pouring, can't get a Cruise, gotta fall back to an Uber" doesn't sound that terrible to me, for now.

Cruise could even offer a product that compensates/insures you for that eventuality, if for example Cruise was your primary vehicle.

[grayfaced]

But if self-driving succeeds then there won't be enough gig-drivers ready-to-go to cover a self-driving outage.

[hammock]

Taxis, available with e.g. a simple phone call, have existed since before telephones and cars really, and they still exist now even as ride-sharing has taken over. They will exist as Cruise rises.

[lmm]

They exist because they're a viable business because there is enough approximately consistent demand. That's not guaranteed to continue.

[oefrha]

There might be taxis, but not enough for everyone who wants to catch one. It’s already difficult enough on rainy days.

[somethoughts]

In addition to going into highly dense cities and inserting autonomous cars into existing driver regulation; an interesting auxiliary strategy could be to partner with a master planned community that was designed from the ground up (physically and regulation wise) to be an autonomous first town where the majority of vehicles were autonomous and the majority of home owners were pro-autonomous cars.

The roads and pedestrian crossings could be much clearly marked with RF transceivers, etc. and the inclement weather could be pre-considered. HOA agreement could have a "I agree to co-exist with autonomous cars" TOS clause and perhaps a built in monthly subscription.

I think a ton of home builders (Lennar, etc.) and senior community developers (Ventas) would be interested if only as a PR concept. I also think a lot of remote Techies/senior citizens would be interested [1]. Sort of like this but replace golf carts with autonomous cars.[2]

[1] https://news.voyage.auto/why-retirement-communities-are-perf...

[2] Tom Scott - City of Golf Carts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVGqtmd2wM

[AlotOfReading]

Cruise acqui-hired voyage, which was basically working towards this. I don't think they've done anything with it since though.

[petilon]

Congrats on your incredible accomplishment! Thanks for doing this the responsible way. Tesla's approach does not inspire confidence. Starting at the high end, with expensive, reliable tech and slowly bringing the costs (and bulkiness of the equipment) down is the right approach!

[mensetmanusman]

In my experience, expensive doesn’t necessarily mean more reliable, it could just mean higher fidelity, higher resolution (and possibly less reliable due to the utilization of parts ‘less’ produced on the global supply chain), etc.

This improved resolution don’t necessarily help an AI grok the situation in real time with >20 Hz response time though.

[Closi]

I think the overall sentiment is more the "let's avoid premature optimisation" rather than "let's spend the most money".

If you have pre-sold a 'self driving' capability which you have guaranteed to be backwards compatible on cars you have already sold, then you are effectively cutting out Lidar as an option unless you are going to go back to all those cars and screw it on.

And considering that self-driving isn't solved yet, it seems like a bold move to define both your processing power and your sensing hardware in a way which makes it very difficult to (commercially) change.

[martythemaniak]

"Today it's unclear what strategy will win"

Thank you for saying the honest, obvious answer. I am tired of people claiming to know what the implementation details of a technology that does not exist. As a nobody retail investor, I have long positions on autonomy (Tesla, Nvidia, GM/cruise, Google), not specific takes on it.

I'm fact, I think the radar/vision debate is not going to matter long term, as there can be multiple winners and the tech will likely converge.

https://www.greennewdealio.com/transportation/teslavswaymo/

[phkahler]

The challenge I like to bring up is construction zones. How will cars cope when a road is unexpectedly under repair? Traffic is taking turns sharing the left shoulder with a flag man directing you?

Some people I've talked to insist that an up to date map is "all that's needed" and that all such projects will need to be put in the system. Haha, a water main broke and they think people are going to update a database for them?

A traffic light is out and the police are DC directing traffic at an intersection. This will happen inside any given geo-fence eventually.

The list goes on... forever. Tell me how self driving cars don't need full AGI.

[XorNot]

A decent chunk of this list can be handled by the car coming to a safe stop and signalling that it is unable to proceed and you need to navigate the situation.

I suspect a lot of these could also be handled by that being a remote connection where a human is given the camera input and can indicate how the car should proceed (i.e. broken water main is a road obstruction that won't clear, and the obvious answer is a manual override to mark the road as unusable so the nav system reroutes).

[moss2]

Let's hope the only passenger has a driver's license and isn't drunk or having a medical emergency.

[XorNot]

In both those cases they wouldn't be able to drive anyway, and the result is not more dangerous or worse then the alternative.

[phkahler]

>> In both those cases they wouldn't be able to drive anyway...

Well that's not even a robo-taxi then.

[glbeaty]

Both Cruise and Waymo have remote operators who can direct the cars when they phone home.

Here's an example Vogt discusses a bit: https://youtu.be/sliYTyRpRB8?t=202

...of course this brings up many other problems, like network connectivity and inter-city transport, which the companies have as far as I know not commented on. IMO the sensible solution is obviously to just require passengers be able to take over if given plenty of warning, but for whatever reason Cruise isn't doing this.

[kgin]

Been so impressed with the Cruise approach. No hype, no promises, just keeping quiet, working hard on a very hard problem until it’s ready to launch. Congrats to everybody who’s been a part of this.

[pm90]

Well to be fair they did get acquired and get access to a bunch of resources allowing them to fully execute. A lot of the hype machine is a result of the necessity of getting access to those resources. It’s just a difficult situation.

[schrep]

Congrats on this huge milestone!

So refreshing to see a leader in this field say “we are not sure which one will work out” rather than just hyping their stuff.

Can I get a test ride soon!

[silverlake]

Tesla limited themselves to cameras because Musk said “humans can do it with two eyes”. He also didn’t like the look of LiDAR on cars. Such an idiotic decision. Good to see Cruise is not lead by a mega-maniacal CEO.

[ironrabbit]

As of a few years ago, lidar added at least $7500 to the cost of a car. That's a huge price difference for a consumer.

[kibwen]

Currently Tesla is charging $12,000 for access to their self-driving package. Even if we assume that the price would increase to $19,500 if they included a lidar (I'm skeptical), it would be the difference between paying $12,000 for a feature that doesn't work versus $19,500 for a feature that might work. This is a luxury option no matter which way you swing it.

[walrus01]

Definitely a luxury option for showing off at this point, as a status symbol, lots of people out there daily drive cars that don't have a bluebook value anywhere near $12k for the entire vehicle.

[mandeepj]

> lidar added at least $7500 to the cost of a car

That was Adam years ago in the Self-driving world. Now, it costs only few hundred dollars only, starting with $99.

https://velodynelidar.com/products/puck-lite/

[justapassenger]

Problem isn't how much LIDAR used to cost or costs now. Problem is that customers paid for a product, and they still don't have it, many years later. And what is being showed nowadays is nowhere close to what was advertised.

[mypalmike]

Cruise is a ride service - they don't sell cars. So the actual question is: How much does it cost to pay an Uber driver over the lifetime of a car?

[sam_goody]

A more accurate summary of Tesla's position is that they beleive that the incoming data from different systems (lidar, radar, visual, etc) must be merged and very often there is contradictory data.

Resolving that correctly takes time (in ms), adds complexity and will sometimes be incorrectly judged.

Since the visual data is the more accurate the vast majority of the time, it will anyways take precedence over the other input. As humans have proven that visual is technically enough, they decided it makes more sense to squeeze the most out of the visual, rather than collecting other data, crunching it, then (in most cases) discarding it.

I am not sure they are right, and am pretty sure that even if so - they need better cameras.

But misquoting them doesn't really help your argument.

[gerash]

I believe those arguments are simply justifications for the fact that most people won't be able to afford Teslas with Lidars

[mocmoc]

Amazing I’ve been following cruise long time z, those videos were so funny. Keep on going and conquer the world!

[thomastu]

Will Cruise eventually be available on existing TNCs and other MaaS platforms? Or is the play here to create a new vertically integrated taxi service?

If you've read Dan Sperling's Three Revolutions, any thoughts on what kind of [transportation future](https://www.planningreport.com/2018/03/21/dan-sperling-three...) you foresee Cruise contributing to building ?

[ayewo]

You didn’t need to, but you decided to show up on HN to clearly articulate your strategy, so I applaud you for this.

> Our strategy has been to solve the challenges needed to operate driverless robotaxis on a well-equipped vehicle, then aggressively drive the cost down.

There are broadly two ways to achieve your desired outcome of aggressively lower costs:

1. use money raised from VCs to subsidize the final cost of the product, or;

2. use money earned from customers as a natural consequence of growing demand for your product, in spite of strong competition from established OEMs, to fund your expansion.

Historically, the former has a lower likelihood of success relative to the latter and that’s because the former is really just a cash transfer from VCs to consumers. The latter is how Apple and Tesla have been able to grow into what they are today.

The reason the 2nd kind is so effective is that, when executed correctly, it often leads to a vicious cycle: your growth will lead to steadily increasing order volumes with your suppliers. This will in turn lead to sourcing for more suppliers to keep up with your growth. At a certain point, a supplier will feel confident that you are here for the long haul, causing them to take on more risk by pouring additional capital into their business to expand capacity. This will improve their ability to accommodate your current and future needs quickly, cheaply or both.

In other words, reality is multidimensional. It is rare for an individual company to aggressively drive down the costs of its product single-handedly, unless that company is ready to assume an enormous amount of risk currently being borne by its ecosystem of partners and suppliers.

[bendbro]

I expect the media led zeitgeist to slime you on a few fronts:

1. AI/automation/tech bros undercutting the working class.

2. The mortal danger of self driving cars to pedestrians and the public- perhaps with an AI bias/racism zest.

3. The price, location-availability, or otherwise explicit exclusion of people that damage the cars or are otherwise unprofitable being harmful.

4. The proliferation of self driving cars reducing public transit use, thus reducing public transit investment, reducing transit access for poor, increasing pollution, and clogging roads.

5. Something something self driving taxis are subsidized by the government via public investment in roads.

All of these arguments are bullshit and I am not excited to hear people recite them to me in 5 years.

[babyshake]

All-electric fleets of safe, non-honking AVs that are fine with whatever routes are required of them and go to designated areas to park and charge are going to make our downtown areas so much better.

[astrange]

The urbanist PoV is that anything car-shaped is bad for a city and it doesn't matter how smart it is. The proper answer is micromobility, aka ebikes and smaller vehicles that don't need to ever go highway speeds.

Full size EVs are still bad for air quality too because of tire dust.

[bluGill]

Full sized EVs have their place in cities. However it isn't for mass transit, the train or bus is for getting people around. EVs are for getting goods and maintenance tools around. This is a small minority of traffic in most cities.

[mvhvv]

Just because you don't want to think about externalities doesn't mean they don't exist. There are a lot of strong ideological assumptions you have to make to handwave all these away as "bullshit".

[starioIC]

From personal experiences I do not see how they are ready. They actively avoid the rules of the road and engage in dangerous driving actions because the car “sees” and obstacle or warning.for example when a car is double parked the self driving vehicles will swerve into the opposite lane, and in some cases almost hit another car, bike rider, or person.

When at stop signs they will sit back and wait even thought it is their turn. At times they will slam on brakes causing rear end accidents because the car saw a bird or reacted to steam from the ground.

Please talk with your legal team about embellishments made in insurance claims against other drivers.

[glbeaty]

How long ago did you see Cruise cars doing these things?

[gibsonf1]

Unless you have a conceptual AI with causal systems understanding reacting in real-time to a spacetime model of the world based on current and recent events, people are going to get injured and or killed by unusual real-world events riding in these autonomous cars. Although cats and dogs have great perception, we don't let them drive our cars for a reason.

[wutbrodo]

> people are going to get injured and or killed by unusual real-world events riding in these autonomous cars

I don't think anyone inside or outside of the AV industry is expecting that there will be zero injuries or fatalities involving AVs. Why would that be the bar, when AV rides displace human drives that already injure and kill tens of thousands?

[gibsonf1]

The difference would be frequency of injury and/or death as AV cars can't think and react dynamically to non-pattern situations.

[wutbrodo]

Sure, and they can't get drunk or fall asleep either. Even for taking for granted that AVs can't find an operating domain in which "non-pattern situations" are covered by failsafes, it's far from obvious that the net advantage goes to human drivers.

[afropack]

Does Cruise plan to try compete with Uber, Lift, etc.?

If feel like this tech could have a massive social impact if you sell it to local goverments so they could offer a highly efficient subsidized robotaxi service to their residents. It would democratize access to transportation and enable so many classes of underserved people to gain access to reliable transportation.

[nerdwaller]

I'm no where near as experienced as you and your team, but that is what I was thinking as I read this. Tesla rather quickly went from the expensive sensors to the camera based setup they have now and it'll be interesting to watch how all this unfolds, safely from my 2006 vehicle with nearly no computers.

[loceng]

There's absolutely nothing stopping Tesla from adding back lidar/other sensors if the technology becomes cheaper or it turns out visual-only isn't accurate enough; Elon has other advantages that no other company is anywhere near competing with though too, and he clearly understands this, he understands his position well - and it's strong. He's also a very agile entrepreneur/engineer and not afraid to pull the trigger on whatever ideas come to his attention as being the best decision. He's also already succeeded in Tesla's mission - which was to get other vehicle manufacturers to transition to EV, so anything else after that is really just icing on the cake; Tesla stock holders however still believe strongly in him - and I'd argue rightfully so.

For now by using the cheapest technology he's arguably selling more EVs and/or making more profit per vehicle. If the market's competition requires a course change, then I don't see why he wouldn't take it - I don't think he'd fall pray to sunk cost fallacy; the reason for decisions may not be obvious to the public either, as we likely don't know details of his nuanced master plan.

[shaklee3]

what's stopping them is fsd has been promised on all these cars without those sensors. taking that away would likely mean a lawsuit

[loceng]

A promise isn't a contract, so whether it's actually guaranteed in the language in whatever agreements may be signed, will be the determining factor.

And how the automative industry has functioned since its existence is risk-benefit-cost analysis, so if the cost of a future fallout is less than the short-term benefit then they tend to decide for the short-term benefit; most disgustingly in regards to known problems of vehicles, where only recalls happen if the potential harm/death rate and the cost of that is lower than the cost of replacing whatever needs to be replaced; I'd hope that practice has greatly improved, but who knows - most of our government agencies seem captured by industrial complexes.

[bluGill]

No, courts look at the spirit of the language and the letter of the law. The letter takes precedent only when it is clear that the two parties are not intending to defraud each other and there is just a misunderstanding. If the court decides both parties had a different understanding of the contract than the letter, then what they understand is what is used. As a lawyer in court your jobs it to make the court believe what you understood the contract was about is what they use - if the letter supports you then you yell that, and since the letter is a easy to prove while a shared understanding that is different from the letter is impossible the letter normally wins.

Marketing is admissible in court as evidence of intended contract. Since marketing is generally easier to understand the legalese, if the court decides the marketing is misleading they will tend to punish you for that and accept the marketing as the shared understanding over whatever the letter of the contract is.

Note that I used a lot of wishey-washy words like tend... Each court case is different, and there is no real rule of what courts will do in any given situation. Consult a lawyer for legal advice about your specific situation.

[callalex]

What does the word “aggressively” accomplish here? You’re talking about a future hypothetical, so why bother?

[backtoyoujim]

Does your car stop at stop signs ?

Because at least one of y'all have to for this to work.

[mensetmanusman]

I’m assuming well equipped means more capable data processing and bandwidth needs, is this the case?

If so, do you have a sense for how many orders of magnitude more bits of data your sensors are acquiring versus Tesla?

[panabee]

thanks for pushing the frontier of self-driving cars and articulating this strategy.

historically, the pattern in tech is to succeed with strategy 2 -- that is, ride moore's law and achieve exceptional performance by combining commodities into super systems. google server farms are the canonical example.

obviously, this is only a pattern and not a law.

tesla's pathway represents strategy 1: start with super machines then drive costs down.

for non-SDC experts like me, could you share why it felt more compelling to start with super machines then drive costs down?

excited to see cruise help lead society into the future!

thanks again.

[TheArcane]

Sounds exciting! Are you hiring? I had a recruiter from Cruise drop out on me because I wanted to stay and work from Canada and wasnt in a position to relocate to the US.

[KKKKkkkk1]

Hey Kyle,

Why did your previous CEO Dan Ammann quit just before this launch?

[bheights321]

I see a few neighborhoods missing on the signup sheet. Are the crazy Bernal Heights streets a bit too much for this stage? :)

Looking forward to ride from my home there!

[konschubert]

As a bike rider, father, and sometimes inattentive human, I would like to say thank you for the safety you are bringing to our cities.

[pulse7]

Thank you for sharing! Sharing details on how your system works brings confidence to customers...

[belter]

Did you watch the videos?

Based on the reply to the question: What sets Cruise technology apart from others like Waymo, Tesla...In other words, how was this difficult technical problem, solved in a way others were unable to do so far... And whose reply you can hear here (video at the correct time):

https://youtu.be/ABto5nqWgc0?list=PLkK2JX1iHuzz7W8z3roCZEqML...

Thank you, but wont be volunteering to ride one of these.

[wutbrodo]

Lol, what answer do you expect from a question like that? At a high level, Cruise is taking the same approach as Waymo, and a different one from Tesla: start with lots of hardware, HD maps, and a targeted operating domain, then try to scale. Answering in any more detail would be a) giving away trade secrets and b) rely on knowing trade secrets about Waymo's cars that they probably don't know.

[zppln]

Will you share your systems safety work? How many fatalities per drive hour do you expect?

[spywaregorilla]

You guys ever think about selling your LIDAR data?

[soaxre]

No, the different strategies are that Tesla has a vehicle actually being used by hundreds of thousands of people and is slowly incrementally improving their self driving with massive amounts of feedback and data, while these demo companies are doing if statements around the block.

[justapassenger]

> vehicle actually being used by hundreds of thousands of people and is slowly incrementally improving their self driving with massive amounts of feedback and data

Throwing data at the problem isn't going to solve it. Only people without expertise in AI think that's how it works.

[ra7]

> while these demo companies are doing if statements around the block.

[citation needed]

I only ever see Tesla fanbase making outrageous claims like this without any supporting evidence.

[soaxre]

Well, you are ignoring the point. The whole differentiating strategy between Tesla and everyone else is the incrementally improvement of large amounts of vehicles versus the magic “hey, we came out of nowhere and now just drive ourselves”. This has been repeated though out tech history and the incrementally improving real life one always wins.

[astrange]

The large number of vehicles makes it harder because you can't do hardware upgrades and a regression will kill someone.

[ra7]

And Tesla will just ingest large amounts of data from their fleet and magically dump an L5 solution one day? That's believable?

Elon Musk has been promising imminent L5 self driving every year for the past 7 years; that requires more than incremental improvement. The ones actually doing incremental improvements are companies like Cruise and Waymo, making it work one geography at a time.

[Fricken]

The coca cola company sells even more units of non-self driving products than Tesla, and for a fraction of the cost!