
Ford CEO says the company 'overestimated' self-driving cars - paganel
https://www.engadget.com/2019/04/10/ford-ceo-says-the-company-overestimated-self-driving-cars/
======
Animats
Ford's problem may be Argo. Ford spent $1 billion for Argo, and paid for a big
building with the Argo name on top. But Argo didn't get their California
license to test autonomous vehicles until early this year.[1]

Self-driving has had too many "fake it til you make it" startups. Cruise
started that way, and suckered GM into buying them for $1 billion. Uber bought
Otto, and we now know how fake that technology was. Tesla hyped their basic
lane-keeper and car detector into an "autopilot" then repeatedly plowed into
clearly visible obstacles and killed people.

(Despite all the blithering about edge cases, they haven't been big problems
in practice. The serious Uber and Tesla accidents were not edge cases. They
were blatantly obvious obstacles: a semitrailer, a fire truck, a fixed
barrier, and an isolated pedestrian on an open road.)

Waymo, meanwhile, keeps plugging away, driving around, getting their level of
disconnects down each year, improving their sensors, and doing large scale
tests. Once in a while they get rear-ended. If they don't get killed by
Google/Alphabet's attention deficit disorder problem, as happened to Google's
robotics efforts, they're going to get this into production.

It's not easy, and it's not impossible. It's just hard, like television or
xerography. Those took decades from first demo until they worked well. This
doesn't fit well with the startup make-money-fast model. It does fit with the
big-company R&D lab model.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/argo-ai-acquires-permit-
to...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/argo-ai-acquires-permit-to-test-
autonomous-vehicles-in-california/)

~~~
skywhopper
I agree Waymo is doing the best here, but Waymo is nowhere near a real self-
driving car. They can't make unguarded left turns. Or drive in the dark, or
the rain. Much less the snow, or in construction, or on poorly marked roads,
or roads that aren't marked at all. Or city roads that aren't laser-mapped to
the centimeter. Or roads with many pedestrians. Or cyclists.

And even when they do make it work, how is money going to be made by someone
like Waymo? I don't see a route to the supposed massive profitability that
would justify the huge investments being made.

~~~
rifung
> I agree Waymo is doing the best here, but Waymo is nowhere near a real self-
> driving car. They can't make unguarded left turns. Or drive in the dark, or
> the rain. Much less the snow, or in construction, or on poorly marked roads,
> or roads that aren't marked at all. Or city roads that aren't laser-mapped
> to the centimeter. Or roads with many pedestrians. Or cyclists.

I work for Google, opinions are my own.

I don't know the specifics myself but I trust what you're saying is true and
agree those are real problems.

Nevertheless, one of the best things to do when you have a really hard problem
is to simplify the problem. It's not as though we have to have fully self
driving cars before they're released.

I think what would make a lot more sense is some middle ground where we have
certain sections of the road where self driving cars will be able to work well
and only allow them there.

~~~
Animats
That was the idea with Google's little bubble car. It was supposed to have a
top speed around 25mph and cruise around retirement communities. That seemed
like a feasible goal. But it cost too much to make as a product. The LIDAR
units alone would have put it over $100K.[1]

Voyage.auto [2] claims to be deploying such cars now. Or rather, their web
site contains announcements from late 2018 that they were doing so. Later
information seems to be lacking. It's a basically good idea, but they claim an
on-site staff of 5 for three cars, so they are nowhere near this making
financial sense.

A real problem with self-driving cars is the false-alarm rate for emergency
braking. If you're conservative about crash prevention, every once in a while
the vehicle is going to detect something it doesn't identify as safe and will
brake hard. That's why Uber turned off automatic braking in their cars - "to
reduce potential for erratic behavior."[3] False-alarm braking, or even strong
braking conservative by human standards, limits customer acceptance.

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/05/googles-quirky-self-
dri...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/05/googles-quirky-self-driving-
bubble-car-hits-public-roads-this-summer/)

[2] [https://voyage.auto/](https://voyage.auto/)

[2] [https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-uber-arizona-
nt...](https://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-uber-arizona-
ntsb-20180524-story.html)

------
twblalock
The problem with self-driving cars is you can get most of the way to a working
solution but that’s not good enough.

If the solution is flawed even a little bit, people will die. That will give
self-driving cars a bad reputation and people will be unwilling to ride in
them.

If you are going to geofence self-driving cars it is questionable whether they
are better than trains and buses.

I think the best we can hope for in the next 10 years is better driver
assistance systems, like GM Super Cruise or Tesla’s Autopilot (if they can
make it stop crashing into things).

~~~
PorterDuff
It seems to me that self-driving cars can't be just as safe as the status quo,
but have to be far far better. It's an unreasonable need, but human nature.

I'll bet that to really make it work well, you also need to redesign roads to
suit the new cars.

In any case, I'll believe it when I see widespread/universal adoption of self-
driving in constrained environments (mining vehicles, warehouses, storage
yards). Step two will be things like garbage trucks (slow, expensive,
otherwise automated, phone home when it gets in trouble).

~~~
krapp
>It seems to me that self-driving cars can't be just as safe as the status
quo, but have to be far far better. It's an unreasonable need, but human
nature.

What would be the point of self-driving cars which were no safer than the
status quo? That's just removing freedom from drivers and adding more
complexity to infrastructure for no added benefit.

It's also exactly the narrative that proponents of self-driving cars have been
driving (pun intended), self-driving cars would eliminate all, if not nearly
all, accidents and fatalities.

~~~
rtkwe
What they're talking about I think is the usual statement that self driving
cars only need to be slightly better than the status quo (in deaths per mile
driven) to make sense because then anyone moving from driving to using a self
driving car decreases the number of deaths. From a raw statistics POV this
makes sense, if a self driving car is even just a little bit better than the
average driver on average anyone switching to an autocar will decrease the
number of injuries.

What they're saying (and I agree) is that human nature means people won't be
willing to get into a car that's 'just a little better than average.' There's
a couple reasons I think that will be true: 1) people generally think they're
better than they are at driving 2) moving from people to autopilot moves the
responsibility from generic 'bad drivers' causing accidents to a single
system. Going from a diffuse responsibility to a more concentrated liability
on the part of the manufacturer will probably mean they'll be blamed much more
for the failures of their cars.

~~~
plopz
I think insurance companies can affect this behavior. If self driving cars are
safer, then the insurance companies could lower rates for those cars, creating
some economic incentive to override the irrational human brain.

------
gvkv
I think a more fundamental problem here is that self-driving cars are as much
an infrastructure problem as they are a technological one.

As an analogy, consider hybrid vs electric vehicles. In places like North
America with large, open spaces, electric vehicles really only serve a
specific type of urban driver. The culture, infrastructure and geography
dictate 600km distances which really aren't practical at the moment with
current battery tech. Whereas hybrid vehicles can (or could) quite easily
reach that range with options to recharge once you get to your destination or
have a longer stopover and still use existing infrastructure. The focus on
purely electric is a lost opportunity for anyone who needs power or long
distance.

Similarly, cars could be designed to be self-driving in the easy cases;
highways, certain urban thoroughfares, particular times of day and the like
where existing vehicle and pedestrian flow patterns eliminate the edge cases.
coordinating systems along the aforementioned types of roads could be
installed as was done for cellular service and GPS and other protocols could
be developed to ensure safety and reliability as well as fallback in case of
emergencies.

Instead, we've decided on all-or-nothing bets which don't move things forward
--or at all--and my worry now is that we'll lose an opportunity to pick the
low-hanging fruit and solve the harder problems incrementally over time.

~~~
BonoboBoner
But chasing the higher hanging fruits might allow for breakthroughs that you
would not see if you only went for the low hanging fruits.

The range anxiety is less and less problematic with EV. The Tesla Roadster 2
already is said to have a range of more than 1.000 km. Add current research in
the fields of solid state batteries and super capacitators and you have the
possibility to reach those numbers even with less expensive versions of EV.
German automakers already calculate that by 2026 electric engines will be
cheaper and more capable than their ICE counterpart.

If you go for that easy middle ground like hybrid cars that you suggest, you
limit yourself to the local maximum of that solution. Hybrid cars have the
same maintenance cost as non hybrid cars and additionally the complexity of
balancing both engines. The only saving in maintenance cost is by going full
electric. In the same way you might only achieve certain breakthroughs by
actually going for full autonomy even if it wont work perfectly for the next
decades for all edge cases.

~~~
dmix
Bloomberg believes Teslas numbers are a little optimistic and claim it's not
possible with "current" battery technology:
[https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/tesla-s-newest-promises-break-
th...](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/tesla-s-newest-promises-break-the-laws-of-
batteries-1.924595)

It doesn't mean Tesla won't do it. But it will be a big deal if they do.

------
ilaksh
Well it's been a day or two since I've had a comment buried so I might as well
not mince words.

It's an incredibly difficult problem and Ford is way behind. So it makes sense
for him to try to reduce expectations.

On the other hand, there are a lot of other companies than Ford doing self
driving cars, and some are very advanced.

It is really amazing to me that people are still in denial about the existence
of self driving cars.

They have existed and worked with various limitations for decades. The latest
from Tesla and Waymo are still limited in some ways but also extremely
capable.

Teslas can now do all of the driving from one freeway to another up until you
enter a normal street.

Waymo is way beyond that. From what the riders are saying at
r/selfdrivingcars, the only time the employees actually need to take over are
occasions where there are very risky maneuvers in heavy traffic. Now, I
believe they could relax the safety parameters and the cars would execute the
same as the Waymo employees in those situations. It's just that there is no
margin for error sometimes with traffic and if there is an accident at this
stage they want to be able to blame the employee.

So what's holding Waymo back from removing the employees from the car is
mainly just an abundance of caution.

~~~
tyingq
Has Waymo expanded the list of routes significantly? Last I read about it, the
number of disengagements was very low, but the cars were traveling a pretty
low of number of fixed routes in areas with good weather and visibility.

~~~
ilaksh
They are not fixed routes at all as far as I know. It takes people where they
ask to go on the app according to what I've heard. It is a geofenced area.
Phoenix pretty much always has good weather and visibility that's why they are
starting there.

------
linuxhansl
I've been saying this for a while. Truly autonomous cars are decades away.

My line has always been that I hope that by the time I can't, or am not
allowed, to drive any more, autonomous cars will be ready... But that I am not
even sure about that.

Many of my friends have ridiculed me. They think their elementary-school-kids
will not need to learn how to drive. Perhaps I'll have the last laugh. (But
actually I hope I'm wrong about this.)

~~~
nostromo
Here in Seattle, we have single-lane roads that go both directions.

When two cars are facing each other, there is a lot of human interaction and
understanding about who should go first, who should pull off into a parking
spot, or perhaps who should reverse into the intersection to let the other
pass.

This is one of thousands of edge-cases that are going to be extremely
challenging to automate. I'm not sure it's even possible without some
understanding of the counterparty, their intentions and body language.

One problem with developing these technologies in California is that
California has very wide, very regular roads. High visibility and dry
conditions are the norm. There are few uncontrolled intersections (in Seattle
they are the rule, not an exception). I think California's history as a
motorist culture has conversely made it one of the easiest places to automate.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Here in Seattle, we have single-lane roads that go both directions.

We have those in California, too.

> One problem with developing these technologies in California is that
> California has very wide, very regular roads.

Except where it doesn't.

> High visibility and dry conditions are the norm.

San Francisco, for instance, has fog about 1 in 3 days of the year.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>Except where it doesn't.

It has few enough that you can route around them and still get where you're
going.

~~~
bradlys
> It has few enough that you can route around them and still get where you're
> going.

I think this is a misconception. California has many residents who live in
areas that don't have the super wide roads you're thinking it has. It has a
wide gamut of roads and many residents (such as myself) are surrounded by more
narrow roads. I'm not even in San Francisco. I'm in a suburb in the bay area.
(San Carlos)

~~~
wozniacki
Exactly where in San Carlos do you think a self-driving / autonomous vehicle
would not be able to traverse without affecting the safety or enjoyability of
a pedestrian / bicyclist / another vehicle?

The following seems to show a road next to a playground in San Carlos.[1] You
think thats too narrow a road for an autonomous vehicle to navigate without
endangering kids? Have you familiarized yourself with the latest in autonomous
/ self-driving tech?[2]

I think your fears are overblown or purposely exaggerated.

[1] Laureola Park San Carlos, CA Playground

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g3ITuPd7Gw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g3ITuPd7Gw)

[2] The $800M Robo Taxi That Could Beat Uber

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjDLwnTyybo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjDLwnTyybo)

~~~
bradlys
2 blocks from that playground.

[https://goo.gl/maps/vokEswX4S8z](https://goo.gl/maps/vokEswX4S8z)

I live on that street. The streets adjacent to it are also plagued by a
plethora of cars on both sides. Much worse than what streetview is showing
because streetview is done midday on weekdays when everyone is gone. (Notice
how most of the driveways are empty and recycling cans are out - it's the
middle of a Thursday that this was taken) It used to be that people would park
with their cars on the curb to give more access but I don't see people doing
that anymore.

Certain weekends and at night these streets are very full with cars. Much more
than google street view shows. It's deceptively smaller than it appears. It
looks as if two cars might be able to slip by but frequently not the case. I
can't actually remember the last time I saw two cars go by each other side by
side without one pulling over to wait for another to pass on my street in
particular. The more main street to the south has the same problem but is even
wider.

The streets in particular are pretty wide for this issue but because of street
parking being available on both sides, it's an issue.

------
pepper_sauce
I'd rather have frequent, reliable and safe public transport than self-driving
cars. Can we pour billions of dollars into that instead, please?

~~~
tobyhinloopen
Self-driving cars are the future of frequent, reliable and safe public
transport.

Why own a car when you can have a self-driving car pick you up from anywhere,
bring you anywhere, and drive away to the next customer when it's done.

Sure some people would still want to own a car, or drive one themselves, but
eventually I can imagine self-driving shared cars will become cheaper and are
still a reliable way of transportation. For many people, owning a car will no
longer be desirable since shared self-driving cars suit their needs.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Because where I live it takes at least an hour for a taxi to decide to come
get me (and that's being generous: last time it was about 4 hours). Uber
simply says "no cars available" and Lyft frustratingly shows cars 10 miles
away that simply disappear. Just because the car has no driver doesn't mean
that the economics change enough to service a low population density area.

The reality is that there are huge swaths of the US where you need personal
transportation.

~~~
danans
> The reality is that there are huge swaths of the US where you need personal
> transportation.

Yes, but 80% of the population lives in urban areas, so would be better served
by improved public transit. That doesn't mean anyone is taking your personal
car away if that's the best way to get around in a low population density
area.

------
EnderMB
I've often wondered why consumer-level self-driving cars are being pushed as a
thing when the logical step would be automating service vehicles first - low-
risk vehicles that cover the most miles, which can go much slower if working
24/7\. Instead of trying to replicate complex pedestrian routes at standard
speed, why not handle established delivery routes instead, and optimise over
time for new routes?

It's interesting to see how the numerous players in the field, including
startups across the globe, are trying to handle this problem, but no one seems
to be close. It's a slow race, where everyone is noisy in order to not seem
they've been overtaken.

~~~
Heliosmaster
almost.. like trains?

~~~
giancarlostoro
Curious have you ever been on one? Not sure how fast or slow they are for
cargo but I have taken a train from Orlando to Hollywood (near the Miami area)
approx a 3 hour drive by car. On a good day its a 6 hour train ride, I think I
have been on there for 10 hours before. Some people for waaay longer from
further up north.

I rather be on the road but a train was cheaper than spending money on tolls
plus gas. Saving money then was a necessity for me.

~~~
pjc50
I can't believe that "have you ever been on a train" is a real question.

Depending on the route, I could see those numbers being reversed in the UK and
Europe; intercity trains are fast but pricey, even allowing for the much
higher fossil fuel taxes.

Commuter trains are a similar story; while it's expensive and unpleasant to
commute into central London by train, doing it by car will be even slower,
incur the congestion charge, and there's nowhere to park.

~~~
icebraining
The price various a lot.

\- In Belgium you can ride from anywhere in the country to anywhere else for
7.5€ (if you buy a prepaid ticket for 10 rides), which is hard to beat even
with a car with great mileage.

\- In Portugal, you can go from Lisbon to Porto for 15€ (buying a couple weeks
in advance). By car, that won't even cover the tolls.

------
dugditches
If it allows for development of more systems to to augment a driver's ability
or limitations. Rather than relying on some unfeasible HAL dream. Things such
as:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_avoidance_system)

BMW has been working on something similar, in the goal of developing new
safety/comfort for riders. I tried showing it to some older riders who gave
the whole 'they want to automate everything etc etc carburetors drum brakes
kick starts points etc'
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfGmfV9em1A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfGmfV9em1A)

~~~
wetpaws
That's what most of people don't understand - self driving cars are
evolutionary, not revolutionary. You are not getting a car that can do
everything - just a car that does progressively slightly more and more every
day, like automated parking on 2019 toyotas or adaptive cruise control, etc.

~~~
slavik81
If my car could drop me off at the front door and go park on its own, that
would be a significant improvement over the status quo. A personal automated
valet is perhaps a little easier than an automated driver that does
everything. Low speeds also means stopping or starting on a dime, which would
allow it to be more conservative about identifying obstacles than when driving
at highway speeds.

I don't really understand why nobody aimed for that sort of incremental
improvement. Maybe the sensor package is too expensive to use in such a
limited fashion?

------
hguhghuff
Game changing technology tends to be overestimated in the short term and
underestimated in the long term.

~~~
Err_Eek
Any examples?

~~~
barry-cotter
Personal computers, mobile phones, genome sequencing, MOOCs, email, the
telegraph, phones, the railway.

There are examples where it was just straight up overestimated as well of
course, like AirPower in warfare but air travel was definitely under estimated
too. A plane is a flying bus and people travel across a continent for a
weekend trip.

------
dsego
If you think that self-driving cars are going to take over anytime soon, I
have some bitcoin to sell you.

~~~
whttheuuu
i mean, bitcoin is doing quite well..

------
NicoJuicy
I don't understand why all these car companies are trying to create it
themselves ( doubted it since it was starting to be a hype)

Self driving cars is currently a not solved solution ( too complex). Instead
of putting in billions of dollars to be the best.

Put in billion of dollars to work with the best when a decent solution comes
out ( eg. currently that's Waymo) and delegate responsability. Currently, i
wouldn't partner up with any of them.

~~~
bluGill
There is a real danger that someone else comes up with a solution that is
enough better than humans that governments outright ban anything else. This
risk has a huge downside.

Car companies need to hedge this risk. There is evidence that self driving
cars can work (they already do in some areas), so the amount of effort worth
putting in his pretty high.

~~~
toasterlovin
Car companies are extremely capable lobbyists. They'll probably be fine.

------
alentodorov
So we’re entering the through of disillusionment, which is only part 3 of the
hype cycle tough.

------
qwertywertyu
It has been obvious to intelligent observers since the self-driving car hype
started that this hype is hugely overblown. My own opinion is that fully self-
driving cars capable of competing with human drivers will remain a dream for
at least two more decades. What really interests me is why and how the hype
became so powerful, even among people who one would think would know better.
How much of the hype is explained by stupidity and how much of the hype was
created as a deliberate scam? I also wonder if maybe the military is more
involved that people might think. After all, even if self-driving cars are
decades away, the autonomous technology created as a product of self-driving
car research can be already used, now, for military appications. A tank
doesn't have to avoid killing people the way that a car on public roads does.

------
Frondo
Of course the car companies are all in on an improvement to their devices that
would sell more of them; what I really want, though, is far more buses on the
road (big ones on the arterials, van-sized ones on the side streets) and a
much larger and more intricate trolley system.

I don't want to see a world that enhances and entrenches private vehicle
movement; that's not necessary. The goal is to get from place to place. I want
to step outside, walk a block, wait 3 minutes, and get on a bus or a
marshrutka and be on my way without ever thinking about gas, traffic,
insurance, or any of that.

All this "when self-driving cars..." is missing the point: we can move people
conveniently and easily and more earth-friendly with what we've got, we just
don't use it well because car companies want to sell everyone a private
vehicle.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I don't disagree with you, but...

Follow the money. If there was sufficient profit in what you describe, it
would be happening. Since it's clearly not then it has to be done by
Government. That means actual people lobbying their local and state government
for change.

And on top of that, it has to be marketed properly. Where I live there's
essentially no taxi/Uber/Lyft service (see my comment above about waiting 4
hours for a taxi), but the County has an on-demand bus service that you can
call and they'll pick you up at your home. However, since I've never had to
take it, the few times I needed a taxi (e.g., to go pick up my car from the
shop), I never even remembered that it exists!

------
MR4D
I think Ford is correct here. Getting the problem 99% right means a lot of
people get killed and injured.

By tackling small chunks such as geofencing, and things like autonomous busses
on planned routes, the industry will move the ball forward in slow, steady
steps.

But to me, the idea that a real self-driving car would be around the corner
(i.e. 2020 or 2021) is just laughable. People underestimate the difficulty of
that last 1%. My best guess is that the last 1% is greater than the first 99%.

Or, as Yogi Berra might say - the first 99% is the easy part; the second 99%
is the hard part.

------
gwbas1c
I'll believe in self-driving cars once the robots start sorting my trash and
recyclables for me... And once my Tesla stops driving like it's drunk!

------
esalman
Driving on the road is about cooperating with the other people so that
everyone benefits. Almost everyone underestimated the social aspect of it.

~~~
laumars
I doubt they underestimated the social aspect of it given I was at a talk
about self driving cars about 10 years ago and one of the developers went into
detail about how the hardest part they had to work on was the social aspect of
driving.

I remember at the time being surprised to hear that as it's always something
I'd taken for granted but it's something that I've consciously noticed ever
since.

~~~
esalman
Thank you for pointing it out. I am sure there were always a few who did focus
on the social aspect. I just feel that the direction in which the car industry
and self-driving tech has grown obviously suggests that they underestimated
it. Everyone would agree that if every car in the road is autonomous, it will
be possible to nearly eliminate accidents and casualties and increase
commuting efficiency. Unless there is a bug in the system or a rogue actor
takes over that is- but that's a different type of risk. However, people are
still buying cars with no self-driving capabilities and financing them for
next 5-6 years or even longer. Let alone the infrastructure which is crumbling
away instead of being readied for autonomous tech. That's why people like the
Ford CEO are having to come out and recognize issues like this.

~~~
laumars
I wonder if we're using the same term to describe different things since I'm
not talking about the social stigma of owning an autonomous car.

I'm talking about social in terms of reading the intentions of other drivers
(eg joining a busy motorway or deciding who goes first on a spot island when
all lanes have stopped and waited for the other) and other hazards (eg
pedestrians crossing the road without looking properly because they're
distracted with young kids, chatting to friends, or tapping on their phone)

As a driver you developer an intuition for how other drivers would react in
different situations. Sometimes that's based on the speed of a vehicle, the
angle of the car or driving style (eg are they bumper to bumper with the car
in front?). Sometimes it's based on profiling/prejudice about people who drive
certain brands of cars (eg BMW owners do tend to be pushier drivers than
perhaps someone in a Fiat 500 - obviously this isn't always the case but you
might still be more cautious if you see someone approach a busy junction in a
powerful car).

Another thing experienced drivers might react to is if they see a series of
brief break lights ahead at roughly the same point but cars aren't swerving
around an obstruction then that might suggest there's a speed trap.

There's even been times when I've been on a motorway and a car has suddenly
swerved in front of me however I was already hovering over the break just in
case as I was expecting it through a series of subtle clues I picked up from
their driving style. I knew that they were about to change lanes without
checking their mirror even before they committed to the manoeuvre themselves.

There are so many hints and cues that drivers pick up on from other drivers.
So much non-verbal communication. And that was the hardest part to train an
AI. Sure you can teach them to react to hazards _as they happen_ but having
them pre-empt hazards _before_ they happen without having that algorithm react
to every false positive is a whole over level of engineering. It's something
that takes humans literally years of driving every day to get good at and we
already come pre-programmed with more sophisticated hazard detection before we
even sit our bum behind that steering wheel than AIs have currently.

So this is the social aspect I was referring to. And I'm sure autonomous cars
will learn this in time too - or at least get a close enough approximation
where they're "good enough" for general purpose driving.

edit: I should have added that one good thing about AI is at least it's
reaction times are lower. That reduces the significance of pre-emptively
spotting likely hazards somewhat.

------
Mikeb85
For self driving cars to actually work, you really need the road
infrastructure to support them, and for a majority of cars to be self-driving
so they can coordinate with other vehicles. A car run entirely by sensors
without receiving outside information will always be doomed to fail.

------
bitxbit
We know how an autonomous car will drive in a system made up of mostly human
drivers. But what we do not know is what that system will look like when
autonomous cars take over. That’s a huge leap and I don’t think we have yet to
even address that question.

~~~
lm28469
Most countries don't even fix pot holes in their capitals, I don't see them
rebuilding their entire road infrastructure for autonomous cars.

~~~
tspike
The idea of self-driving cars being practical somewhere like Bangalore is
laughable.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Traffic saturated cities like Bangalore and Beijing have the strongest reasons
to make self driving vehicles work, however. It is laughable that Americans
would be the ones to do this, given their relatively traffic light cities
(even LA is nothing compared to BJ) and high rates of personal car ownership.

~~~
omosubi
Don't the traffic saturated cities have a better incentive to make public
transportation as good as possible? Less people on the roads seems like it
would benefit everyone in that case, whereas most american cities are too
sparse to support that kind of infrastructure

~~~
seanmcdirmid
They do that as well. The problem persists inspite of Beijing’s huge and
growing subway system. Take myself as an example, I decided taking a taxi to
work was worth it over a subway ride because of the crowded conditions...even
though it lived and worked near stations on the same line.

American cities has plenty of space to build new roads, that isn’t possible in
many Chinese cities. Anyways, roads and private transportation will always be
there, why not optimize it along with a decent public transit system to boot?

------
w_t_payne
Yeah. Machine vision is hard. Really hard.

~~~
toasterlovin
It's that, but it's also that "driving" is a problem with a really large
surface area. There are so many edge cases that it's insane. And every single
major metro area basically has subtly different rules and baseline assumptions
about how people will drive.

------
nrs007
Companies that do not figure out a long-term partnership model will definitely
not find this sustainable. Spending billions of $$ without a clear revenue
mechanism in short-term is definitely not sustainable, even though AV will be
trillion $$ industry long term. And if you doubt my last statement about AV
becoming a Trillion $$ opportunity, read this book on AVs by Spencer Burns
(legit automobile guy) and you will see his reasoning.

------
rjplatte
Highway driving is the first step. Limited challenges, different problem
space. Once that's completely nailed down, we'll start to see workable urban
solutions.

The reality is that human drivers will be better at interacting with other
human drivers in close quarters for the time being.

------
return0
I think we all underestimate it. Driving a car in a road without assistance is
solving the robot navigation problem forever. Its the answer to life, the
universe and everything. There is still great progress and it will probably
work in some limited sense.

------
fallingfrog
When you add up the amount of money that Americans spend on car payments, auto
insurance, and gasoline every year, if that same amount of money were spent on
public transit you’d have a really nice system which would also be self-
driving from the rider’s point of view.

------
meroes
As a total layperson, I think the focus should be on long term car-to-car
networking. Skip this visual feedback rut we are in and make every new car
broadcast its position, velocity, acceleration, heading, etc.

Problem is how to get manufacturers on board en masse.

~~~
0xffff2
>Problem is how to get manufacturers on board en masse.

I think security is a much, much larger problem. Designing a safe, secure and
reliable system for vehicles to communicate information with each other on an
ad-hoc basis and designing a system to make use of that information in a way
that doesn't allow bad actors to cause mayhem may be an equally hard problem
to solve as the generalized computer vision that we need to make the current
self-driving thrust work.

------
md8
Having been working in "AI" field and delivered couple of projects. I think,
Automation/AI always needs humans.

What we see from all these hyped tech, is just the MVP version. You discover
the problems when it's in production.

------
erfgh
Is there a way to short the self-driving cars business? I have found the whole
idea of self-driving cars ludicrous since the beginning and it boggles my mind
why people with experience in computers do not feel the same.

------
sorenjan
I don't see the point of every car manufacturer making their own self driving
cars. They don't make their own air bags, ABS, transmissions, etc. Leave that
to suppliers like Bosch instead.

------
jimjimjim
Overestimated? How come anybody that has any history with computers knows how
difficult it is going to be but such a vast amount of people, including people
with money are so bullish about them.

After doing some projects in kuala lumpour and singapore I knew that self
driving cars were going to be incredibly difficult. one minute, driving along
with no problems, next minute a huge amount of rain got dumped out of the sky,
next minute the rain had stopped but some roads were impassable, some merely
flooded but still open, others were undrivable on the sides but ok if you
drove down the center.

How do you code for that?

~~~
icebraining
The market for self-driving cars that run everywhere except in places with
monsoons is still quite big.

~~~
jimjimjim
Yeah true. Though probably each location will have it's own problems. Fallen
branches, missing man hole covers, gangs of window washers.

------
himanshuxd
I really really like driving cars and I don't think self-driving cars is the
future it could be a small part of the future though.

------
mathattack
Didn’t they fire the last CEO for being too slow to adopt new technologies?

------
deytempo
It would be a lot simpler if they just skipped to self flying cars

------
bilater
Just the dip in the gartner hype cycle...

------
andy_ppp
I don’t actually believe this will prove to be correct, it just might take a
decade longer and or be on more limited routes but it will happen.

~~~
simonh
Autonomous vehicles operating on limited routes (geofenced) at first is
exactly what is described in the article, so it's not clear to me what you
disagree with.

~~~
andy_ppp
I suppose you could say that, but I’m saying it’ll be late rather than not be
possible. I suspect roads will start being built with automation in mind for
example, and push bikes might be required to have a small transceiver to alert
the cars AI to their whereabouts. I think Ford are saying here that it just
won’t be good ever, I’m saying it will be better, later and slower to be
everywhere but will still exist.

~~~
simonh
Nowhere in the title or body of the article does it suggest it won't be
possible. In fact it's simply saying it's harder than many people thought.

------
jodrellblank
In one browser tab, everyone's clamouring for autonomous self-driving cars.

In another browser tab, a gamer is streaming himself driving in Euro Truck
Simulator 2 for over four hours.

If only we had a way to connect people who would willingly do a job, with
companies which would pay to have a job done, minus the cutthroat capitalist
exploiters/employers.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
I'm totally getting one of those:

[https://www.amazon.com/Karl-Marx-Told-You-T-
Shirt/dp/B075CTQ...](https://www.amazon.com/Karl-Marx-Told-You-T-
Shirt/dp/B075CTQ3ML)

------
Wyndtroy2012
How come all of us people that drive cars and are not in the car production
business ,all knew the predictions Hackett and the rest made was loony?

------
person_of_color
SDCs are a slipperly ope to AGI.

~~~
s_kilk
They're really not. Nothing on the horizon right now points to AGI.

~~~
platzer
Merely scaling up a GAN and optimizing it's network structure and training
procedure allowed GANs to create nearly realistic high resolution faces. If
you can generate realistic faces, then you can likely also generate realistic
action and thought sequences simply with an even larger model.

An action/thought sequence is just a 4D tensor with some outputs controlling
actuators. Thinking is just production of actions while actuator output
neurons are inhibited, which can simply be implemented by a product with some
sigmoid activated neurons.

Coherent combinations of such sequences can be produced by feeding both the
current sensory inputs and the preceding internal state as conditioning vector
to both the generator and discriminator.

You simply need to find a way to train the discriminator not only to tell real
from fake, but to determine the value of the generator's outputs and make it
backpropagate those values in time during training over several generated
episodes by TD.

As the GAN is conditioned on its own previous state, it can learn by trial and
error how to combine the short action and thought sequences it produces, can
thus learn to produce coherent ("real") language and logic.

Based on such intuitions, I'd say it is impossible to tell when AGI will come
exactly, but currently technology _looks damn promising_.

~~~
badpun
> If you can generate realistic faces, then you can likely also generate
> realistic action and thought sequences simply with an even larger model.

I'd really be willing to take bets that, for the next thirty years (paid out
at the end of that period), nothing remotely like AGI will happen. Should fund
my retirement pretty nicely.

~~~
leesec
What's your standard for AGI? Passing the Turing test?

I would also be willing to bet a lot that will happen within 30 years.

~~~
badpun
AGI being at least on par with humans when it comes to creativity and
invention? I.e. writing great novels, coming up with compelling philosophy,
coming up with new, good mathematics etc.

------
drderidder
Driving is fun. Being a passenger is not so much fun. Technical issues aside,
for this simple reason I don't see self-driving cars becoming popular.

~~~
WhompingWindows
Driving is not fun. Being a passenger is much more fun. For this simple
reason, I see self-driving cars becoming popular.

There are different opinions out there. I for one would rather learn and relax
than drive.

------
sdan
Infrastructure, machine learning, sensors, and other components are there. We
already got self driving cars.

Now human adoption and acceptance is the problem.

~~~
mrweasel
We have self driving cars, they just can't go where we want and need them to
go, and won't change for decades.

