Ask HN: Is comma.ai snake oil or they are actually delivering something?

I work in the self driving car industry. Building a level 5 self-driving car is not possible with a small team. Period.

What they are building is more of advanced cruise control. This I believe they can succeed at. ACC is orders of magnitude less difficult than level 5 AV.

It's an open source company you can find all their releases on GitHub and try it yourself if your model is supported https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/blob/devel/README.md#ha...

Yeah it's pretty amazing for $700 and time if your car isn't already supported

check YouTube videos

They definitely ship code, and people seem to like them. I really like their model, the hacker culture, the holy crap we built a self driving car for <1k, but I don't know if they'll be a real contender in industry.

I share your sympathy towards hacker culture but I would like to hear actual experience rather than wishful thinking.