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Comment by sschueller | Hacker News Reader

"Keep conversation to a minimum so you can focus on the road"

This from a company that claims they have Full Self Driving on a closed course with no external factors or weather. Why are the Teslas in the loop not self driving? This is a private course, no government regulation like on a public road.

"The vehicles used on the Loop system are in fact banned from using driver aids, with Clark County officially outlawing their use anywhere in and around the facility. Even common features like automatic emergency braking and lane keeping are required to be disabled."

Doesn't make any sense to me. Are Teslas driving on the road in Clark County unable to use FSD?

The whole concept seems to stupid to me. You have a person driving up to 4? passengers at a time in a tiny loop. This is the most inefficient thing ever. A regular autonomous rail loop [1] would have been so much cheaper and efficient.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skymetro

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it's like he managed to reinvent metro, only significantly worse: less throughput, more manual labor, less stops, tiny tunnels. Dude, put cabins holding 1-50 people on rails, stick an elevator controller on it, and that's it... why won't you do that Elon? why?

He hates trains. There is a great video on the loop.

https://youtu.be/4dn6ZVpJLxs

It sounds like the Clark County restrictions are a very cautious conservative requirement for an untested system. They don't want a tunnel full of burning Teslas on their hands.

I don't think this whole concept should be dismissed out of hand. Obviously autonomous driving is in the plans - and presumably if the concept is successful they'd develop their own vehicle more suitable for public tranist.

Why not a railway? It seems to me the Boring Company are essentially shifting the complexity from the fixed tunnel equipment (rails, signals, points - all the stuff you get in standard railways) into the autonomous car. Whether that's cheaper overall is yet to be seen - but it may well be. Subsurface railway is notoriously expensive (and the tunnel boring part is just the beginning - the fitout is also incredibly expensive). If they can move as much as possible into a factory environment and make the tunnels not much more than a concrete tube, they're going to significantly reduce the cost.

The only big downside of this approach that I can see is the efficiency of the vehicles - rubber tired cars or buses are less efficient than trains.

Musk has a history of moving rapidly. I think the goal is similar to those swerving construction barriers: to force people to slow down. There's a fear that they'll turn on the automated systems, assume that they'll provide safety, and proceed to drive at 100mph in these tunnels. If there's a serious accident, are they going to have room to use the jaws of life to pry open the car? Will an ambulance fit down those tunnels? I'm pretty dubious a fire truck could fit through those tunnels, especially in the turns.

Looking at the screenshots, there are at least some parts of those tunnels where it would be extremely difficult to get emergency services in. And even if you can get them in, if there's a fire I would imagine those entire tunnels would be filled with caustic smoke from the batteries. It's not like outdoors where it's simply going to drift away.

Apparently, according to article, they are not allowed to use it.

The original idea was to have the cars hit 155mph on full self-driving, no light rail system can do that.

I’m curious why the county would apply such draconian rules, it kinda defeats the whole purpose. And why do they even have authority over transportation rules, isn’t that a federal matter?

No, the Boring company claims 155mph as a maximum speed limit for their loop system in general, not as the intended speed for this specific loop system.

If this was the intended end state I'd agree with you but it's not. This phase is about derisking and incorporating learnings for future projects.

Learning what? Subways are 160 years old. Trains have been in tunnels for centuries. Car tunnels have been around for a century almost too. This is really embarrassing.

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