You can cherrypick without mapping (Nikola rolling a truck down a hill).
You can map without cherrypicking (Waymo/Cruise allow you to record your ride in fully driverless vehicles in SF right now).
Waymo and Cruise can drive SF because they limit the number of scenarios and they collect ultra-HD maps for that tiny area. Throw a Waymo van in Knoxville, TN and it fails left and right, even in similar scenarios due to the lack of the quality map.
> you’re committing fraud.
Where is the fraud? Waymo and Cruise are not selling cars. They are selling only the rides which they have the ability to provide. Not only that, they pretty prominently display mapping as a part of their stack, so it's not like investors are deceived.
No they won’t. That’s the entire point. It doesn’t scale from a cost perspective. The entire thing is funded by their search ads monopoly right now. They can’t pull in the revenue they need to maintain the map from ride fares alone.
> Mapping is probably the closest thing to a solved problem in autonomous driving.
LOL! Not even close to true. “We can do it” != “we can do it without burning billions of dollars per year”
> so it's not like investors are deceived
Investors (and consumers) are absolutely deceived. I don’t really care: being a VC is risky. But these types of videos are intentionally deceiving. Only the best of many runs is shown. Editing is often used. The routes have HD mapping that won’t be collected universally (due to cost problems). How is that not deception in your mind?
> LOL! Not even close to true. “We can do it” != “we can do it without burning billions of dollars per year”
"We can do it" = closest thing to solved. No one can say without a doubt we can do it for the other parts.
> How is that not deception in your mind?
You used "fraud". Fraud requires damages to a party. All the VCs have asked these questions and were given answers satisfactory enough to invest.
Here's a basic one they can tell investors: the top 10 cities for ride-sharing comprise 70% of the total market. It will cost $X to map and permanently have access to the vast majority of the market. We believe in addition, we can induce demand so this 70% of the market becomes a massive multiple of the current market.
If you're going to be this snarky, at least do some basic research.
I literally work at an automotive OEM that maintains its own AV team and map infra. I have seen the balance sheets. It’s not going to scale.
Also, you make the inverse claim without evidence or any purported industry expertise. Where’s your evidence that Waymo can just walk into a new city without ballooning costs? If they can do it, why don’t they? That which has been asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
> You used "fraud". Fraud requires damages to a party
Tesla owners bought a product called “Full Self-Driving”. You are illiterate if you don’t consider that product name tantamount to fraud if the car can’t drive itself.
Investors were clearly lied to. Once again, I don’t care about VC money. Part of the game to lose it.
An automotive OEM would probably have a hell of a time scaling a video streaming website or a search engine as well. Yet it scaled when a tech company did it.
> Tesla owners bought a product called “Full Self-Driving”.
Can you point out where I used the word "Tesla"?
https://medium.com/cruise/hd-maps-self-driving-cars-b6444720...
https://blog.waymo.com/2019/09/building-maps-for-self-drivin...
https://zoox.com/journal/putting-our-robots-on-the-map/
When you're ignorant on a topic, it's not surprising that every fact you come across might end up being misconstrued as discovering some well-hidden secret.
You are a moron and I seem to have struck a nerve. Hello, salty Tesla owner or engineer.
Meanwhile working at an automotive OEM speaks to your qualifications on the subject about as much as being a mechanic at a car dealer: it doesn't.
The only person who sounds like they've had a nerve struck is the one who immediately devolved into name calling the moment they were called out.
I think we're seeing what happens when FOMO meets "missed out". It'd just be more humorous if you weren't projecting your anger onto me.
Where? A narrow area in which you can create ultra-HD maps that are in no way indicative of the general case?
If you’re at Cruise, I can only grab a ride between 10 pm and 5:30 am (lol, lmao). If you’re at Waymo, your beta is still closed (though I have several invites from former colleagues) and you only serve a tiny fraction of realistic destinations in the city. Do you think this proves your point? Let me restate my position: you can’t scale to the general case. You never will. You will be stuck in Phoenix and specific part of SF forever. Your business will never be viable. Your vehicles will never be able to navigate roads without a prohibitively costly mapping effort in that region that doesn’t scale. Your valuation will continue to decline. What part of offering unsafe rides to friends and family right now changes that?
You're already behind on which cities are being mapped by the way.
Funded by investors or search ads, not ride fares. And in a $200k vehicle that will never be economically viable. Your resume will be embarrassing in a few years if you stick around. Do yourself a favor and get out before you go to zero.