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lionkor

> In fact, no one has come close to making an AV

Correct me if im wrong, but Honda has done this?

https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35729591/honda-legend-lev...

https://global.honda/newsroom/news/2021/4210304eng-legend.ht...

Toyota:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2021-08-02/toyota...

And Cruise:

https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1132494_cruise-opens-up-...

I don't really see how this all qualifies as "not close to AV", when really, it looks quite viable (with some already driving autonomously...?)

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AV is basically level 4 or 5 in the SAE classification ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car ). And those vehicles are either not existing yet (i.e. just marketing ploys), or far from it (requiring remote drivers, for example), or just research prototypes that have not been really tried at scale.

>or just research prototypes that have not been really tried at scale.

Furthermore, all of those research prototypes are geofenced, since they rely on extremely detailed mapping and lots of training data from humans driving the same routes. There is not a single AV in the world close to capable of driving on any road, at any time, in any condition, that a skilled human could drive on without ever having seen it before.

In my mind, that means we are indeed nowhere close to a true AV.

I'm not sure I agree with this success metric: for one thing, there's plenty of roads any given human can't or won't drive on due to perceived difficulty.

But when I think "autonomous vehicle" I definitely don't think "arbitrarily capable of driving on roads" - I think something capable of navigating well-understood national roads. I don't see any inconsistency with the idea that there'd be "no automation" zones or roads, or that pre-approved travelways for AVs is a failure scenario.

What is the value add of AVs if they are only restricted to well-understood, national roads? Wouldn’t their purpose be better served by high speed trains along those roads instead?

My (and Doctorow’s) definition of AV is so stringent because AVs need to deliver the same value add of regular cars relative to other forms of transportation: i) relatively fast, ii) unscheduled, and most importantly, iii) point-to-point transportation between any two points connected by roads. Trains are bad at iii), decent at ii) if run often enough, and far superior at i). If iii) is off the table, then the relative value add of cars is greatly diminished.

Cruise has robo-taxis operating in San Francisco [1].

Obviously we don't know to what extent they have remote drivers but you wouldn't be able to run such a service if every ride required them.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP1rvCYiruh4SDHyPqcxlJw

When I was recently in SF, one early morning I came across a Cruise vehicle on a one way street at a 30 degree angle blocking traffic (of which there was very little at the time). Another was pulling up behind it (maintenance vehicle?). Not sure what the story was with it.

This is literally what the entire article is about.

> I don't really see how this all qualifies as "not close to AV", when really, it looks quite viable (with some already driving autonomously...?)

Also Tesla. You can see real advancements in these videos of Tesla FSD Beta [0].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/c/AIDRIVR/videos

Tesla has nothing close to an AV. They're at about Waymo 2014 level at best.

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