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Comment by warent | Hacker News Reader

> "But Musk told reporters that Boring officials have abandoned the concept of the skate, saying it was “far more complex” than his new plan: guide wheels that can be attached to the front tires of autonomous, electric cars, steadying the vehicles as they move forward through tunnels."

So basically this only works with Tesla vehicles at the moment. I'm wondering how that's going to expand in the future--if at all.

Do they have a standard which other vehicle manufacturers are expected to include in their car designs to be compatible with these tunnels?

This is making me question the viability of it, because without buy-in from manufacturers, it seems seriously unlikely that any government is going to approve a sprawling Tesla Guide Wheel Tunnel™ network.

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> guide wheels that can be attached to the front tires of autonomous, electric cars, steadying the vehicles as they move forward through tunnels."

So the o-Bahn Busways in Aus, just underground....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Bahn_Busway

https://youtu.be/X89WSVjyBRw

Guys, guys, hear me out. I have a crazy idea.

What if we use special cars only for the tunnel with some kind of ride sharing system? and then we put the cars on rails? This keeps them on track and also the rolling friction is much lower.

Also, we could continuously charge the battery of the car if we have some kind of wire going alongside the tunnel and a slip contact.

Actually we could make the cars much bigger as well, so they can hold more people.

Get me patent lawyer.

amazing idea, i suggest we also reduce the size of the battery as it won't really be needed unless there is a power failure.

It looks like you've just invented the underground...

I read it as being sarcastic. I expect that OP knew this :-)

If you can figure out how to let people transport their vehicles through your tunnel without your car having to make scheduled stops, or follow a single path then you've got a business.

Okay, I see your point.

If you want to transport your car somewhere there are already lots of business that exist, but I guess I could try to make another one.

Yes he mentioned it would be a standard any autonomous EV could add, and specifically said it would not be a walled garden.

Makes sense to add these to the vehicles so the tunnel can be as ‘dumb’ as possible, since we’ll need a lot of tunnels to make a dent in traffic.

Note also Tesla’s prior commitment to opening their patent portfolio for OEMs to use. Seems similar approach (platform play).

> Musk played a simulation showing the wheels folding neatly underneath the car’s undercarriage when not in use. Adding them during assembly or after-market would cost $200 to $300, he said, and would not interfere with the vehicle’s normal operation.

Folding wheels .. right

I can see some interesting failure modes where the wheels fold up in normal driving. Yeh I know its not supposed to happen but one Uk maker had steering wheels that could come off whilst driving - this was used in my mech eng course as a cautionary example.

>Yeh I know its not supposed to happen but one Uk maker had steering wheels that could come off whilst driving

Steering wheels come off in MANY race cars, IndyCar it's basically a necessity so you can get in and out of the cockpit.

In the case you mention it just sounds like design incompetence.

Well it was a BL company I believe

Another question is why the autonomous vehicles would need guide wheels? Sounds decidedly non-autonomous to me.

It’s for added safety factor at high speeds (150mph).

Huh, TIL Tesla Autopilot only works at speeds below 50 mph. I thought it was mainly for highway driving, but highways are more like 60-100 mph. I assumed it worked at highway speeds. What gives?

What? Where did you read this? I have a Model 3 and Autopilot works at regular highway speeds (65+ mph). I use it for highway driving all the time.

Considering the elevator bottleneck at the end I don't think theoretical speeds are that important anyway.

It works at highway speeds (though the max you can set it to is 90mph). I think if you're going faster than 90 it may hold that speed, but it won't accelerate above 90 on its own.

TYDL because you are wrong.

My mistake, I had to search for the max Autosteer speed and Google gave me an old article. Seems they have been upgrading steadily from 45 mph in January 2017 to (currently) 90 mph?

But then my original question remains: why do they need guide wheels for this, when they can do 90 mph without them on normal roads?

>why do they need guide wheels for this, when they can do 90 mph without them on normal roads?

The tunnel in the article is very narrow. Imagine trying to drive at 90mph through a car wash without touching the sides.

Even that’s wrong. My S would do autopilot to 90 mph in 2016.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823234503355158528?s=20

Ah, that's HW2 cars. The original autopilot cars were already going up to 90.

My 2015 S 70D Autosteer works between 30 kph and 150 kph, roughly 20 mph to 90 mph.

The intention seems to be to standardize: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1075227724430471168

Point of interest, look into "road-rail vehicles", which have been around for quite a long time. Railways are far from completely standardized yet we have solutions for driving conventional vehicles on rails.

Also automated guideway transits (aka peoplemovers) which is what this essentially is. So much better than rail in terms of practicality / cost / compatibility with existing road network.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guideway_transit

Doesn't the removal of the skate also put the vehicle's speed back in the hands of the driver? So now one slow guy will slow down everyone in that tunnel?

Also, the skate was supposed to provide the automation. How does <random EV> autonomously navigate the tunnel network?

It's a Musk thing; not sure why you necessarily expect it to make any sense.

random ev gets certified before entry.

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