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Comment by Fricken | Hacker News Reader

Yep, they're pretty close. Late this year or 2018 they'll have cars driving around empty. GM has consistently been underestimated by the public, but they've played their cards very well. It's in no small part due to the drive and leadership of Kyle Vogt, who is on his way to the big leagues to join the ranks of Musk, Bezos, and Jobs and those guys.

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Once they actually have cars driving empty we will actually learn how close or how far are they. I've seen a lot of PR muscle flexing from big companies before and no longer believe any such stuff. They do that to impress investors and the public, but this has nothing to do with reality.

This PR announcement isn't the only data point, GM has the goods to back it up.

Your comments sound like a PR statement, what goods? How do you know how close they are?

Looks to me that they designed a mass-producible car outfitted with self-driving systems (which is very cool!). But they are only just starting to do employee testing. Waymo has been doing that for years.

Waymo is ahead on the technology. They were ready to begin public trials with their Koala cars in 2015, but the California DMV shut them down, and many of their key people jumped ship.

Waymo has since been proceeding a bit more cautiously, and their efforts at this point are oriented more towards smoothing out ride feel, testing under adverse weather conditions, and their early rider program in Phoenix.

Whether it's Waymo or GM to officially be the first to have an empty car driving on public roads, the other won't be far behind, though the victory will be largely symbolic. GM's cars still need a lot of polish, and Waymo needs better manufacturing partnerships.

Waymo already had a car driving with a blind person.

I'm not talking about one-offs.

Yep, they're pretty close. Late this year or 2018 they'll have cars driving around empty.

I'd like to know more, do you have a source for these claims?

It's a prediction, I can't provide a source for events that haven't occurred.

But Reuters reported they intend to put 'thousands' of autonomous Bolts on the road in 2018:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-gm-autonomous-exclusive/e...

Cruise has released some impressive demos on their YouTube page, of vehicle driving around downtown SF:

https://youtu.be/KSRPmng1cmA

Cruise reported to the California DMV that they averaged on unplanned disengagement every 180 miles through 2016:

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/disen...

What's also interesting is that Cruise is hiring 'autonomous vehicle support advisors', which is for remote assistance. Not something you need to do if you plan to have a test driver in the front seat for year(s) to come:

https://getcruise.com/careers/listing/791711

Also, because Kyle Vogt said so, and he's never bullshitted me before, he's got credibility.

> Cruise reported to the California DMV that they averaged on unplanned disengagement every 180 miles through 2016

Isn't this disengagement rate several orders of magnitude too high to support fully autonomous vehicles?

For comparison, it's about 28x higher[1] than Waymo reported for the same period. I'm not sure how similar the driving conditions were but I would guess pretty close.

1. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b... (Page 3 of PDF)

That's their average for the year. They were way worse at the beginning, and way better by the end. They continue to improve, though I can't give you data on that until late December when this year's disengagement reports are filed. Like once you get to the point where you can go, say, 10 miles in urban traffic without a disengagement, the improvements from then on (as measured by disengagements) improve dramatically, up until you get to the point where it's really hard to discover new edge cases. Waymo in 2016 was at 1 disengagement every 5000 miles, and that's a 4x improvement over 2015.

> they'll have cars driving around empty.

> It's a prediction, I can't provide a source for events that haven't occurred.

Using the words "they will" makes it sound like an assertion. How are you so confident about "events that haven't occurred" will indeed occur? You listed out reports and demos, none of which necessarily suggest that "Late this year or 2018 they'll have cars driving around empty"? Do you have additional inside information that the rest of us don't have?

> Also, because Kyle Vogt said so, and he's never bullshitted me before, he's got credibility.

Is this a serious comment?

If I tell you the sun is going to rise tomorrow morning, I don't actually know it's going to do that until it does. That's kind of the thing about future events, it should go without saying. Nothing you've written is a counter argument. You just used way more words than you need to to say 'I don't believe you'. Yay.

My points are that GM is doing well, and that they are scaling up their operation to a degree that wouldn't make sense if they didn't intend to deliver the minimum viable commercial robotaxi service sometime over the next year or so.

The counterpoints are that 'this smells like PR bullshit', and that Kyle Vogt is an asshole (because no asshole has ever successfully led a technology company before).

You guys have nothing substantiative to argue with.

> The counterpoints are that 'this smells like PR bullshit', and that Kyle Vogt is an asshole

I literally said none of that...

Is there anywhere that allows autonomous cars to be tested on real roads without a fallback human driver?

Arizona. Their weather and regulatory climate has Waymo, Cruise, and Uber all testing there. I believe Michigan and Florida are also willing to permit fully autonomous cars on their roads, but most of the action is in and around Phoenix.

Last I saw, the tests in Phoenix had human back-up drivers. Has something changed recently?

Nobody is driving without backup drivers yet yet. It's not because they aren't allowed.

Volvos were supposed to be rolling in London and Gothenburg this year but it hasn't happened yet. They were supposed to have a member of the public who could snooze or read a book.

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