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Ford CEO says the company 'overestimated' self-driving cars


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5 minutes ago, rmc523 said:

No.  They're still spending/investing in AVs.  AVs will still have an application, especially commercially, which is where Ford excels.  In fact, I view this as a positive.  They're finally being realistic about AVs, and not going for pie in the sky targets that aren't feasible at this point in time.  That also doesn't mean they're going to stop investing in AVs.  They're just saying don't expect to have a driverless, steering wheel/pedal-less cars zipping around everywhere freely soon - and saying not to expect that from their coming AV for 2021.

This ^^^^

Ford’s plan has always been to start with geo-fenced commercial applications and the technology is still applicable to regular vehicles.  It probably just means they aren’t going beyond this initial use case until some of the problems are overcome which is smart.  I don’t think this impacts what they’ve been working on at all.

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This is Ford's take. What is the take of GM? Waymo? There are competitors who 'claim' to be ahead of Ford in this arena - what is their take? And where does this leave the investors in companies like Lyft and Uber, who presumably have bought into the driverless future? What about the OTR trucking companies? Etc.?

This all makes for much LOL. It also makes me wonder if this is an indirect indication of why VW hasn't yet ponied up the half billion or billion for participation in Argo. FCA, meanwhile, continues to mint $$ with Jeep while investing virtually nil in this arena.

Edited by Harley Lover
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1 hour ago, akirby said:

They can and should be testing what the software industry calls border conditions - abnormal conditions like bad roads, detours, traffic lights with no power, obstructions, etc.   Until they prove these vehicles can operate safely in those conditions they shouldn't even be allowed on the street without a backup driver.   

Car and computer companies, universities, and research institutes have been doing that kind of testing since autonomous car research began. And they continue to do so. Ford and Argo AI for example started tests last year with their autonomous car fleet on Miami streets, as rmc523 mentioned. Good environment for testing those "abnormal conditions". 

There are a lot of smart engineers that will get the technology for Level 4 and 5 autonomous vehicles figured out a lot sooner that the naysayers expect. Same can't be said about certain lawmakers and government officials when it comes to a developing a good regulatory framework for autonomous cars. 

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29 minutes ago, rperez817 said:

There are a lot of smart engineers that will get the technology for Level 4 and 5 autonomous vehicles figured out a lot sooner that the naysayers expect. Same can't be said about certain lawmakers and government officials when it comes to a developing a good regulatory framework for autonomous cars. 

Here's a quote: “Self-driving cars are going to be in our lives. The question of when is not clear yet, to have it at scale is going to take a long time.” Who said that? A Naysayer? Nope - Raquel Urtasun, who is chief scientist at Uber Advanced Technologies Group.

More: "Urtasun’s comments fall in line with the rest of the self-driving industry, which after much hype and bold promises has tempered expectations and pushed out timelines for deployment. The extreme technical challenges of building cars that can predict human behavior and respond appropriately proved greater than even some of the industry’s brightest minds had anticipated."

Sounds like some posts in this thread.

Here's the source post, which is primarily about Uber's forthcoming IPO:  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-autonomous-newsmaker/uber-scientist-says-some-time-before-self-driving-cars-dominate-the-road-idUSKCN1RK2J2

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2 hours ago, rperez817 said:

Car and computer companies, universities, and research institutes have been doing that kind of testing since autonomous car research began. And they continue to do so. Ford and Argo AI for example started tests last year with their autonomous car fleet on Miami streets, as rmc523 mentioned. Good environment for testing those "abnormal conditions". 

There are a lot of smart engineers that will get the technology for Level 4 and 5 autonomous vehicles figured out a lot sooner that the naysayers expect. Same can't be said about certain lawmakers and government officials when it comes to a developing a good regulatory framework for autonomous cars. 

ALL of the folks who do software for a living and now even smart engineers working in the industry disagree with you.  A smart person would just admit they were wrong.

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1 hour ago, akirby said:

ALL of the folks who do software for a living and now even smart engineers working in the industry disagree with you.  A smart person would just admit they were wrong.

Seriously.  Not “ALL of the folks...blah blah blah” disagree with what he is stating.  The ~13 people in this thread agree that fully autonomous vehicles landing in the hands of the general population are years if not decades away.  The work to make this happen continues, that’s all @rperez817 is trying to say.  I don’t understand why you always find a reason to disagree with the truth.  

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6 minutes ago, 02MustangGT said:

Seriously.  Not “ALL of the folks...blah blah blah” disagree with what he is stating.  The ~13 people in this thread agree that fully autonomous vehicles landing in the hands of the general population are years if not decades away.  The work to make this happen continues, that’s all @rperez817 is trying to say.  I don’t understand why you always find a reason to disagree with the truth.  

Do you do software for a living?   Because thats the ALL I was referring to not everybody.  

He is not saying the work continues and it’s decades away.  He thinks it’s literally going to happen I just a few years and we’ll see tens of thousands of fully autonomous vehicles on public streets. Just like he thinks more BEVs will be sold than non BEVs in a few years and that car awards mean something.  He’s an idealist out of touch with reality.

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9 minutes ago, 02MustangGT said:

Seriously.  Not “ALL of the folks...blah blah blah” disagree with what he is stating.  The ~13 people in this thread agree that fully autonomous vehicles landing in the hands of the general population are years if not decades away.  The work to make this happen continues, that’s all @rperez817 is trying to say.  I don’t understand why you always find a reason to disagree with the truth.  

Thank you 02MustangGT sir. akirby claims knows each and every person around the world and in outer space who "do software for living", how could he be wrong? ?

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4 minutes ago, rperez817 said:

Thank you 02MustangGT sir. akirby claims knows each and every person around the world and in outer space who "do software for living", how could he be wrong? ?

I meant all the people here who do software for a living.  But I’m absolutely positive the other 27 million programmers would agree.

 

Care to answer the question I posted above on those 2 scenarios?

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Like lemmings the auto industry has swallowed AVs hook line and sinker-with a lot of help from Silicon Valley.  Amazing isn't it when a couple of years ago we would be reading about the terrific .."driving dynamics of brand X."  "What great handling blah blah".  I guess we have all of a sudden lost our appreciation for cars??

I couldn't believe my Seeking Alpha post yesterday when I read Hackett's sudden realization.

Oh and sort of related, yesterday in WSJ Opinion page an article by Holman Jenkins.."Get Ready for a Pileup, Tesla"  ..."The company braces for a $300billion onslaught of money losing green cars".  Key paragraph..."Now Wall Street finds Tesla sales are not adding up as hoped this year.  Morgan Stanley is forecasting 344,000,  below the low end of Tesla's last predicted range.  An obvious culprit is the dwindling US tax rebate to buyers.  The handout, once $7,500, has been cut in half and will soon fall to $1875.  It turns out economics applies after all."

GuessI'll hold onto my XOM stock for a while.

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5 hours ago, Harley Lover said:

FCA, meanwhile, continues to mint $$ with Jeep while investing virtually nil in this arena.

FCA was somewhat late to the game creating a strategy for autonomous vehicles and related services. But now they're onboard. Last year, they opened a dedicated autonomous driving test facility at their Chelsea Proving Ground. Also, FCA now has partnerships with Waymo for Level 4 AVs, BMW for Level 3, and Aptiv for Level 2+. They have the goal of getting to Level 5, but like other car and computer companies, haven't announced specific dates for that yet. https://www.autonews.com/assets/PDF/FCA-5-year-plan-Technology-Update.pdf

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9 hours ago, akirby said:

Do you do software for a living?   Because thats the ALL I was referring to not everybody.  

What do you mean by “do software”?   Coding?

Yes and no, my profession is Cyber Security, so there is some coding involved, but not my primary responsibility.  Although I have been in IT in various roles for 20+ years that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with you.  

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4 hours ago, jpd80 said:

I do not agree with beta testing of AVs on the road at this point, that is like proving a drunk driver can make it home without crashing their car.

 

A former coworker has a friend who has a Volvo XC90 that they used whatever self driving it has to get themselves home after drinking a little too much....

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9 hours ago, Bob Rosadini said:

Oh and sort of related, yesterday in WSJ Opinion page an article by Holman Jenkins.."Get Ready for a Pileup, Tesla"  ..."The company braces for a $300billion onslaught of money losing green cars".  Key paragraph..."Now Wall Street finds Tesla sales are not adding up as hoped this year.  Morgan Stanley is forecasting 344,000,  below the low end of Tesla's last predicted range.  An obvious culprit is the dwindling US tax rebate to buyers.  The handout, once $7,500, has been cut in half and will soon fall to $1875.  It turns out economics applies after all."

GuessI'll hold onto my XOM stock for a while.

In the immortal words of Milton Friedman, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program...  https://electrek.co/2019/04/10/tesla-gm-back-ev-federal-tax-credit-bi-partisan-bill/

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10 hours ago, akirby said:

And just to be clear I do think we’ll have AVs in small specialized fleets and available as driver aids.  But not tens of thousands driving unrestricted on public streets.

I’ve been in software development (coding) for over 30 years.  Akirby is spot on in my opinion.  AV’s will be a niche market for years. 

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1 hour ago, 02MustangGT said:

What do you mean by “do software”?   Coding?

Yes and no, my profession is Cyber Security, so there is some coding involved, but not my primary responsibility.  Although I have been in IT in various roles for 20+ years that doesn’t mean that I have to agree with you.  

I mean having to write software that is bulletproof and handles every contingency and border condition without crashing or malfunctioning.  That's completely different than writing some code here or there or doing smartphone apps.

My point is that it's relatively easy, given the right sensors and other technology, to make a car drive itself under normal conditions.  To make it handle all of the adverse conditions that I mentioned above without causing an accident or just having the AV stop dead in the middle of the road is where the problem lies and that's not going to be easy to solve despite what some people believe.   And that's what the industry experts are starting to say now.  You can't believe people who have a financial stake in continued investment in their technology because the truth might hurt their funding.

But it will be feasible to offer AVs in controlled circumstances such as a local pizza delivery zone or downtown commercial delivery zone where you can have a detailed map of the area and cover all the normal traffic situations and more importantly you can just shut down service in adverse conditions.

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17 hours ago, Harley Lover said:

This is Ford's take. What is the take of GM? Waymo? There are competitors who 'claim' to be ahead of Ford in this arena - what is their take? And where does this leave the investors in companies like Lyft and Uber, who presumably have bought into the driverless future? What about the OTR trucking companies? Etc.?

This all makes for much LOL. It also makes me wonder if this is an indirect indication of why VW hasn't yet ponied up the half billion or billion for participation in Argo. FCA, meanwhile, continues to mint $$ with Jeep while investing virtually nil in this arena.

Notice how everyone went quiet after the Uber thing happened months ago?  I think they realized they should do more things behind the scenes rather than thumping chests.

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Again, I'm going to use aviation as an example... Auto pilot has been around for many years and it gets more sophisticated every time a new plane is designed or new systems are upgraded. But it still requires a HUGE amount of human input to fly the plane properly. Pilot-less planes is still science fiction stuff and will probably never happen. And here is the rub... aviation automation is a lot simpler than self-driving vehicle. Airplanes are generally not dealing with interfaces with other airplanes in close proximity. There is generally enough time to warn the pilot of pending danger or problems. The reason we automated airplanes before cars is because it is easier... but as the Boeing 737 Max mess demonstrates, it can still cause a lot of problems. If you don't trust an airplane to fly itself, there is very little reason to hand your life to a car that drives itself. We are not there yet... not even close.

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14 hours ago, rperez817 said:

FCA was somewhat late to the game creating a strategy for autonomous vehicles and related services. But now they're onboard. Last year, they opened a dedicated autonomous driving test facility at their Chelsea Proving Ground. Also, FCA now has partnerships with Waymo for Level 4 AVs, BMW for Level 3, and Aptiv for Level 2+. They have the goal of getting to Level 5, but like other car and computer companies, haven't announced specific dates for that yet. https://www.autonews.com/assets/PDF/FCA-5-year-plan-Technology-Update.pdf

And how much investment does all of this represent?

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13 minutes ago, Harley Lover said:

And how much investment does all of this represent?

The autonomous vehicle testing facility at FCA's Chelsea Proving Ground is $30 million+ investment. https://www.fcagroup.com/stories/nafta/en-us/Pages/chelsea_gets_30_million_investment_for_autonomous_driving.aspx

I couldn't find FCA's portion of the total investment involved for the work they are doing as a partner with Waymo, BMW, and Aptiv. Don't know how the accounting works for those arrangements. The total investment for research, development & testing among all of those participating companies together is in the billions of $.

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