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Comment by lopkeny12ko | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't matter because it's a meaningless statistic. But sure, I'll entertain it. Last figure I heard was 1 disengagement per 200 miles. The distance between SF and LA is 380 miles. If my car can drive me from SF to LA and I only have to intervene once, that's already incredible and leagues ahead of what Waymo can offer. And since you asked, FSD 12.6 will reduce disengagements per mile by 5x.

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Waymo doesn't require a driver to supervise the car, they're supposedly running Level 4 cars. FSD requires continual supervision, you must be responsible and attentive at all times. How is this a reasonable comparison?

You say this as if there isn't an army of teleoperators behind the scenes ready to remotely take over a Waymo at a moment's notice...

It was also announced today that unsupervised FSD is coming to Texas and California in 2025.

It was also announced that there would be 1 million Tesla robotaxis on the road in 2020:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil...

There's a big difference between "someone at central command can take over when the car signals" and "someone must watch the car constantly and take over when they see it do anything bad".

The disengagement events on recent videos of FSD are still the likes of "oops it almost turned into oncoming traffic" or "oops it almost ran into a pole", that's the sort of thing you have to catch before it happens, not after.

Waymo was doing .64 disengagements per 1000 miles in 2015 and wasn't comfortable launching a taxi service on that. Even after 12.6, Tesla will be behind. The point is Tesla can't launch a driverless taxi service on its current system, not from SF to LA, not within SF, not anywhere.

My Tesla drives me around SF every day yet you're telling me it doesn't

No, he's telling you that Waymo could do the same thing (and better) in 2015, yet it took them 8 more years to launch a robotaxi service. So, Tesla robotaxi in 2032 maybe?

And yet you have to keep your hands on the wheel and pay attention at all times. Why is that?

For the record, you no longer have to keep your hands on the wheel at all times.

I think it’s a mistake to conflate the actual capabilities of the system with the user instructions for how the system is being used. SAE levels are primarily about the latter and about who takes liability for the operation of the vehicle. Conflating the two punishes car manufacturers who are cautious about the current state of their self-driving system.

Since there is nobody in the driver seat of a Waymo to intervene, how does that work?

They stall out blocking traffic (the most recent example was blocking the VPs motorcade).

You do realize that Waymos don't have drivers behind the wheel, right?

You do realize you cannot buy a Waymo for your own use?

You do realize Waymo will only operate in geofenced areas in select cities that have been premapped down to the millimeter?

Waymo is not even remotely close, nor attempting to solve the same problem. This is coming from someone who lives in SF and takes Waymo regularly. Waymo is a cool tech demo and that's about it; FSD is a real tool that people everywhere can actually use to take them where they want to go.

I don't know what to say man, Waymo takes me where I want to go several times a week (why would anyone be a repeat customer if it was just a demo?). My Tesla with FSD can't take me anywhere without me monitoring it.

Everywhere they want to go? In an electric car? These taxis would probably only drive in big cities where there are enough charging stations and service centers.

I thought they had remote drivers to take over when shit goes south?

No, remote operators are never in control of the vehicles. They give the computer hints about how to handle situations it's unable to resolve for itself, but the computer is ultimately still responsible for driving and maintaining the safety invariants.

This is fundamentally different from FSD, where the human is always responsible for driving and maintaining the safety invariants.

"They give the computer hints about how to handle situations"

That's a cute euphemism for remote operators.

It entails a completely different division of responsibilities and safety profile. Specifically, it's one of the critical differences between SAE levels 2/3 and level 4:

https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/j3016/J3016_table.jpg

To give an analogy, let's say you use a credit card. A machine processes the payment most of the time, but occasionally something looks suspicious, so it denies the payment and sends a message to a human (you) asking whether the next payment should be allowed. Do you consider yourself to be a "driver" in this system?

If so, imagine a system where all payments flash by onscreen for a human that's tasked with stopping erroneous approvals in realtime. Are humans doing the essentially the same job in this system such that both roles are "drivers"?

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