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Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

Tesla's other advantage is a global fleet that is actively logging millions of real-world miles a day. I don't think that can be understated at this stage.

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Google may have a lot fewer miles, but they're much higher quality miles. The sensor suite on their car is much superior, so they're getting much better data. Even if the eventual Google car uses cheaper sensors, the data they get from the superior sensors helps a lot training the algorithms.

I don't see how this will work though. Unless you plan to equip all those future cars with the same high quality sensors as those on the Google ones (which I've heard are prohibitively expensive).

If those sensors eventually do become really cheap, then Tesla could use them too and negate any advantages Google might have had.

They're already cheap (see elsewhere in this thread for links). Tesla has opted not to implement them because Elon thinks LIDAR isn't needed [1]. Of course without LIDAR you get situations like autopilot running into white tractor trailers because it can't see them...

[1] http://9to5google.com/2015/10/16/elon-musk-says-that-the-lid...

I think the main point would be to compare the images from the high-quality sensors with those of the low-quality ones, so that they can make good guesses to how accurate they are and what quality they can get away with.

Does google collect high velocity data like tesla's? I heard that the google self driving car was limited to 25mph in the areas where they tested it, and so their data may only be reflective of that.

Google operates several kinds of cars -- I see the Lexus ones driving at highway speeds on 101 all the time.

As owner of a Tesla is it possible to opt-out of this logging? Or is it a required condition of buying the car?

Google has Waze data. Which I would think serves as a GREAT set of labels for the data that the self driving cars collect.

Waze is just where people are going...the data tesla collects could be from sensors like a front-facing camera, radar, 360 degree ultrasonic sensors, etc.

A Google <-> Uber partnership could reveal something similar.

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