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Comment by no1youknowz | Hacker News Reader

This article is a bit sketchy, but serves my point-ish. They say Volvo is going to release a true self-driving car by 2021. But then it goes on to mention level 4.

Let's pull it back a little and say by 2021, they release level 4.

If any automaker is going to do Level 5 in the snow. It's going to be Volvo. Being a Swedish company (albeit owned by a Chinese firm now), they have a particular track record when it comes to prioritising safety in terrible driving conditions.

I'm pretty sure that they are going to work it out.

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/26/volvo-self-driving-car-sleep...

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Current breed of Volvos are already amazing at assisting drivers. Lane control + speed control + steering control is already as close to autonomous driving as anything out there on the market.

But they are doing the smart thing:

- they keep these things separate and always under driver's control

- they downplay the significance of these systems and don't market as THE BEST EVER THING ULTRA POWERFUL UNBELIEVABLE BREAKTHTROUGH UNRIVALLED BY COMPETITION ©™ They are simply adding these features one by one to all their line-up

- they have a specific goal called Vision 2020 [1]: "Vision 2020 is about reducing the number of people that die or are seriously injured in road traffic accidents to zero." This is a way more powerful and important goal than the self-serving goal of creating autonomous cars.

- oh. And yes, they work in conditions that are way more different than California. Sweden has such things as constant low sun, snow, rain, sleet, active wildlife etc. etc.

So yes, all things considered I'd root for Volvo, not for Tesla or any other American company.

[1] https://group.volvocars.com/company/vision

I have a 2018 XC60 and it's been really great on the whole, but very clearly Not There Yet™:

+ During a dark and wet night a few weeks ago, I used Pilot Assist (lane/speed/steering control) and it genuinely saw the lane lines better than I was able to during major unexpected downpours. I was in control the whole time, but it was a great help along the way and made the drive a lot more comfortable.

- Some of these systems work together rather poorly. For instance, the Pilot Assist system seems to identify white lane lines better than yellow ones, and on US highways (where the left-most edge is often yellow) it will drift left. However, the lane keeping system seems to see the yellow line just fine, so it will vibrate the steering wheel to warn that I'm getting too close, while Pilot Assist continues to insist on moving left. The solution is to get out of the left lane.

But I'm very optimistic and supportive about Volvo's trajectory in this area, to all of your points above.

Oversharing: I've been driving a Volvo XC90 with Pilot Assist and a Tesla Model 3 with autopilot. Of the two systems, I really preferred the Volvo -- but not, ironically, because it was better, but rather because it's worse.

The Volvo's system is very clearly about 70% there. Sometimes on sharp curves it just misses the lines and drifts into another lane. Sometimes it seems to basically just follow the car in front, which means that it will blindly follow a bad driver in doing stupid things. However, the upside of this is that its weak behavior (and willingness to yield to driver input) makes it so obviously an "assist" system that I would never really put a lot of faith in it, or trust it entirely. Thus to me it's just sort of a better version of the lanekeeping system.

The Tesla, on the other hand, really wants to drive the car. It hates taking feedback from me, and will often boot me out of autopilot mode if I disagree over, say, my position within a lane. It does a much better job seeing lanes and handles lane changes automatically. But: because it's so forceful and doesn't like my input, I find it much more stressful to drive. I don't trust it enough to let it have the absolute control it wants, and find myself missing Volvo's pretty-dumb-but-not-demanding system.

  Sweden has such things as constant low sun, snow, rain, sleet, active wildlife etc. etc.

California has those things too depending on geographic area of the state.

They've also set trucks that can reliably drive around private roads, mines and loading zones without having to handle much in the way of novelty or people as a practical near term goal they'll probably make a commercial success of even if fully autonomous cars are decades away or incapable of ever being viable for regular unsupervised road use.

Obviously it helps that they're already a leading truck manufacturer, but it's interesting to note how many other ventures have gone for the "eliminate the taxi sector and reinvent car ownership" over the low hanging fruit for [semi]-autonomous vehicle markets.

How in the world a car company can attract ( let alone provide environment or infrastructure etc ) sufficient software talent to achieve this ?

How does NASA attract software talent? Not all smart people are in silicon valley selling ads or spying on people.

Plenty of smart people are staying away thanks to the increasing costs to live in the Bay Area.

Also, not all engineers have a risk-taking mentality. The Bay Area attracts mostly the "hacker" types, but there are plenty of more conservative – yet equally technically capable – individuals who prefer working for the government or a Fortune 500 company, where IT is just one of the many departments. Essentially, these are the people who might as well have chosen a career in banking or any other well-paying science-based field. To them, having a stable job is the highest priority.

Against which you have to balance the risk of taking the NASA job, but not getting paid for a few weeks or months every year.

If you really want a 'NASA' job, your best bet is one of their subcontractors that do most of the actual engineering.

JPL is still at work during the current shutdown...

They also get backpay so they are not really losing money.

In a world where "software talent" can be attracted to work on "boring" subjects such as advertising, do you have to ask this question? The same incentives apply.

In most of Europe, software engineers are paid the same as other highly skilled engineers. And Europe has plenty of engineering talent. What it doesn't have, though, is people willing to take and fund bold projects. But building the safest cars in the world[1] is not considered bold at Volvo. That's how they differentiate themselves in the crowded premium car market from Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW.

[1] http://www.thedrive.com/sheetmetal/17546/euro-ncap-volvo-xc6...

Aren’t the Tesla Model S/X the safest cars in the world, though?

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/06/insurance-institute-for-high...

An aside:

"While IIHS and dozens of other private industry groups around the world have methods and motivations that suit their own subjective purposes, the most objective and accurate independent testing of vehicle safety is currently done by the U.S. government, which found Model S and Model X to be the two cars with the lowest probability of injury of any cars that it has ever tested, making them the safest cars in history.""

Oy. "that suit their own subjective purposes"? Really?

"So, why the difference between the two crash tests? NHTSA's evaluation does not include small overlap front-end collisions, which the IIHS blames for about a quarter of the injuries and fatalities in front-end crashes."

Seems like it’s disputed. Still, of the safest cars mentioned at the end of the article, none are made by Volvo.

EuroNCAP tests are a way more advanced than those done in North America[1]:

"Ford Mustang hits the wall with 2-star Euro NCAP score [...] Lack of modern safety technology and other flaws mark Ford's sports car down in the latest round of tests. That's the lowest score a brand new vehicle has achieved in quite some time. [...] In NHTSA tests the Mustang scored five starts in every metric."

[1] https://www.evo.co.uk/ford/mustang/18757/ford-mustang-hits-t...

Good info, thanks!

He ment crash saftey :) If you are in a collition, Volvo is world leading. Tesla is only safer because is can break in advance.

Unintentionally hilarious use of homonym, thanks! (Cars that can't be driven can't get into many accidents...)

Volvo XC90 is

Teslas are safest for the NHTSA tests, but not the European tests, which, IIRC are better measures of safety

$$$, just like every other company.

How did they attract sufficient software talent for their other advanced active safety systems?

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