The EV and AV (autonomous vehicle) markets may be in for some tough times ahead

AV apparently means autonomous vehicle.

 

I don't understand why EV's and AV's are so tightly link in peoples minds and so many press articles. They are two completely different technologies and aren't dependent on one another in any way. Maybe it's because Tesla is all electric and has been the biggest early adopter of AV. Personally, I love EV's and expect them to dominate in the next 10 years. I have no confidence true AV's (level 5) will be common place in 10 years, at least not if they are sharing the road with non AV's. It seems like they are close, but as a software developer, I know the last 10% of most tech takes 90% of the time to develop. And close, even if better than human drivers, isn't going to be good enough for most users.

 

I'm seeing these requirements for true autopilot:

• dynamic cruise control (~90%) - keeps a safe distance and relative speed after leading vehicle
• lane keeping (~90%) - keeps the car from wandering off the road
• blind-side monitoring (~95%) - keeps the car from changing lanes into other traffic
• collision avoidance braking (~85%) - applies brakes when driver fails to react
• collision avoidance steering (pending) - steers car to avoid an accident or minimize the collision impact
• sign reading (~50%) - reads sign both speed and other on the road
• traffic light reading (~10%) - reads traffic lights and should include human traffic hand and light signals
• all of the above to destination (~10%) - a combination of steering and sign reading

Bob Wilson

 

Article talks about Ford. What a joke. Ford is a piece of S&%* company. Recently with EPA attempts to roll back fuel economy standards (a phase out of petrol effort) and Colorado in response through its Gov put forward an effort to mirror California. Ford immediately started lobbying against this. I can't wait for Tesla to put Ford out of business with its electric truck. A great service to human kind that will be. Same article talks about Ford quality. Two days ago I was talking to a woman driving on a freeway in public service fleet maintained Ford Fusion- the peddle delinked from the throttle and went to the floor force her to coast to a stop.

Same useless Alpha or seeking liars themed site cited above in a related article is trying to link AV to job losses- a beyond obvious implication. Now according to the site Ford has joined Google (haven't we seen this movie where this laggard couldn't get the point last time) and this PTIO new coalition (note the 'opportunity' in the title indicates sleaze and scam) in an initiative aimed apparently at spreading misinformation and slowing down AVs and EVs to protect petrol in the name of jobs and so called job creators wage slavers is now bringing the rhetoric of protecting the public by slowing down tech to protect petrol. Google may be part of that group with laggards like GM and Ford that really do nothing but try to bask in its shadow but there is no way that such groups will ever slow down AV in the rest of the world. What are we going to be told by these petrol scam artists next? Stuff like: China and the rest of the world have had AV for decades but its too dangerous for US. These people are smoking crack. Trying to snuggle up to an actual tech company for tech suppression on the global stage to protect useless rent seeking petrol just isn't going to work anymore, cat is out of the bag.

 

Like to see Colorado injunct new Ford sales in the state.

 

Well, yes and no. EVs are already electronically controlled to a greater degree than gasmobiles, and they tend to have larger and more functional touchscreens to control certain features.

In fact, the original idea of a "skateboard" design, which most or all the newer EVs have or are moving toward, was to have everything controlled by a "fly-by-wire" system. But as I understand it, auto makers are required to have the steering controlled by direct mechanical connection (altho with power assist), so at least steering isn't mechanically independent of the driver's controls.

In all EVs, the acceleration/ deceleration is controlled by the computer. In some EVs (not Teslae), the brakes are controlled/blended by the computer.

The point I'm making, in a rather long-winded fashion, is that it's far easier, and less expensive, to automate the driving controls of a modern EV than it is to automate all those same controls in a typical modern gasmobile.

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Don't worry about posts from "101101". He's the forum "eccentric" who sees conspiracies everywhere. But other than spamming us with "new" threads daily to keep repeating his wall-of-text ramblings and conspiracy theories, he's harmless. Well... mostly harmless (apologies to Douglas Adams ).

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Despite being a strong fan of Tesla, I don't find Elon Musk's claims about full autonomy in two years or less to be even remotely credible. Tesla has virtually stalled in its development of autonomous driving tech, and in my opinion won't significantly advance until Elon finally admits that his cars need omnidirectional real-time active scanning, in the form of lidar and/or high-res radar array scanning.

Waymo/Google seems to be more advanced... not too surprising since they've been working on it years longer than Tesla. But since Waymo hasn't put their tech into any mass produced car, I don't know how advanced they actually are as compared to Tesla. Tesla is at least willing actually put their system -- even as unfinished and only semi-functional as it is -- into its production cars. According to accident statistics, Tesla cars equipped with Autopilot+AutoSteer have a significantly lower accident rate than those without. (40% lower as measured by airbag deployment regardless of whether AutoSteer was on at the time of the accident, which means that AutoSteer must lower the accident rate by significantly more than 40%!)

That means that Tesla cars equipped with AutoSteer are actively saving lives and avoiding crippling accidents every day -- unlike Waymo or any other company developing autonomous or even semi-autonomous cars.

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Just adding:

A classic case of letting perfect be the enemy of 'good enough.' I'm using dynamic cruise control pretty much all the time and finding it keeps safe following distances and handles intrusion into my lane quickly, accurately, and efficiently. I've seen the effect playing back a dash cam at high speed.

His writing style, like James Fenimore Cooper, can make attempts to understand take more time than it should. However, his recent posts including links to his sources helps.

Bob Wilson

 

I knew I was gonna get in trouble for making my comment an unqualified statement.

It appears mathematically certain that Tesla's Autopilot+AutoSteer is reducing the accident rate, and therefore logically also the fatality rate, much more than any other company, simply by the sheer number of cars on the road with Autopilot+AutoSteer installed.

Last I read, Waymo was only letting specially trained drivers drive their test cars. Even if Waymo's accident rate was zero, it still couldn't possibly equal Tesla's reduction in the number of accidents -- total number, not percentage -- simply because Waymo's fleet of test cars can't be that large.

62,000 cars for Waymo sounds like an improbably large number just for a test fleet. I know that Waymo is gearing up to deploy a fleet of self-driving taxis in the Phoenix area very soon, but surely that's not going to take anywhere near 62,000 cars! Just what is Waymo going to do with the rest of those? And how many years will that purchase of 62,000 cars be spaced over? Surely it's not all 62,000 in a single year?

Anyway, if Waymo starts competing with Tesla for the honor of saving the most lives and reducing the accident rate by the highest number, then that's a win-win for everyone!