
Delphi's self-driving car - bane
http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/03/covered-wagon-upgraded-delphi-will-go-cross-country-in-a-self-driving-car/
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mariusz79
When there is a talk about Apple going into self-driving car, there are
hundreds of comments. When Musk mentions that Tesla will have self-driving car
almost everyone here has an orgasm, but when a company that's well established
in automotive industry drives their car from SF to NYC, we can't get even 30
comments in 12 hours?

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GeorgeHahn
They didn't do the drive yet, this is just a piece of fluff to fill the time
between their initial announcement and the drive (which will start next week).

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mariusz79
Actually they are already on the road.

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minthd
Poor car companies. Between the possibility of this technology available as
retrofits for old cars, the common use case for this as a taxi without the
need to own it(and the efficiencies that come with it) ,the possibility of car
sharing using this tech(like uber-pool) , and the long life of many current
cars - the future of car companies seems hard(maybe after some brief period of
big demand).

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ssharp
You're assuming there will be mass movement towards self-driving car pools. I
don't think that's the case. I think personal car ownership will persist for
quite some time, even with self-driving cars. Having a car in your driveway
whenever you want is pretty convenient for just about everyone living in a
suburb. Even assuming good cost-reductions from pooling, I'm not sure you can
completely make the value proposition to offset convenience.

~~~
rogerbinns
US cars are on average idle 23 hours a day. Sharing a car between two means
roughly halving the fixed costs of ownership, and the more sharing the more
reduction in fixed costs. Additionally running a fleet is cheaper because of
economies of scale such as maintenance, insurance, charging/fueling. AAA has
an infographic showing the biggest costs being depreciation and insurance:
[http://publicaffairsresources.aaa.biz/wp-
content/uploads/201...](http://publicaffairsresources.aaa.biz/wp-
content/uploads/2014/05/Your-Driving-Costs-infographic.png)

A pool also allows other things, such as pricing based on demand - ie being
cheaper outside commute hours, spontaneous pooling (eg for a $5 discount can
the car go 2 minutes out of its way to pick someone else up?) and being able
to bring the right vehicle for each situation (eg a small efficient two seater
for a commute, something larger for a family trip to Ikea etc).

Sure some people will continue to outright own their cars, but for most the
pooled economics will be compelling, and companies will be able to instantly
adjust pricing and convenience. Or to put this another way, how many thousands
of dollars a year cheaper do you think it will take for the majority of car
ownership to change to on demand usage?

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agumonkey
It may also refactor distribution. People may not go to the grocery store, the
store will come to them, or not. Just like in the old days, you'd get a
morning delivery, and weekly/monthly too for different kind of products.
Stores, if they stay 'material based' will look like IKEA, where you walk
inside scenes and pick what you want, while something is loading an SDCar
(npi) from a factory not too far away.

Damn I feel like a guy in the 60s drawing this
[http://imgur.com/vmOYZAl](http://imgur.com/vmOYZAl)

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rogerbinns
I can't see many ways in which much of anything stays the same. For
distribution my guess is that delivery companies will spring up (quite
probably the same as the car pool companies during off hours) and deliver for
anybody. By that I mean that my favourite Chinese restaurant currently has its
own delivery vehicles and personnel, but I am expecting generic delivery
companies for any/all business.

They just need lockboxes in the vehicle which the end user unlocks with their
phone/pin/whatever. You could even do things like share your location with the
service so that deliveries arrive as you get home, whenever that is.

The "city of the future" drawing is interesting. I'm expecting that commercial
space will cluster together, optimised around foot traffic, and without vast
swathes of asphalt between them, not too different than malls. Residential
space is a bit harder to guess - decreasing density will be more manageable,
but come at the expense of travel times and delivery fees.

What I like most about the driverless future is just how locally mobile it
will let everyone be. No more licenses, no more having to have good vision, no
more having to worry about age, intoxication, and even time of day.

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Turing_Machine
They've reached El Paso, TX, having started in San Francisco:

[https://twitter.com/AmyMessano](https://twitter.com/AmyMessano)

(Amy Messano is their PR person)

Apparently they racked up a speeding ticket in Arizona. :-)

~~~
agumonkey
Reminds me of drivers grunting when their GPS warns of speed limits (I
actually checked, my father's one reacted under 1 second from the moment our
car passed the sign on a highway).

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bbulkow
They share the parking lot of my company, and the cars look pretty cool.

What I don't understand: cars are not encrusted with sensors like Google's
self driving cars.

Would love an explaination of their tech to hide sensors.

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TeMPOraL
Didn't Google just bolt a ton of sensors on top of an existing car and called
it a day? Also, it seems that only they are using LIDARs - apparently Tesla is
doing self-driving cars without them (look at the Model S - do you see _any_
sensor?), and so are some major car manufacturers.

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masklinn
> Tesla is doing self-driving cars

Tesla is absolutely not doing self-driving cars at the moment, they're doing
limited autopilot (which IIRC already exists to an extant on other high-end
sedans e.g. auto-steering using lane detection on highways)

~~~
TeMPOraL
[http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-
think/transportation/self...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-
think/transportation/self-driving/tesla-model-s-to-combine-safety-sensors-to-
go-autonomous)

Current Teslas apparently have enough hardware to drive themselves around, but
this year they plan to enable only a limited set of features because of safety
reasons.

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72deluxe
I was hoping with this title that it was about a self-driving car written in
Delphi / Pascal. Turns out I was disappointed.

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ashwinl
Completely agree about the prejudice against the well established. I am not
affiliated with the Delphi project, but work in this space. Not having
knowledge of the effectiveness of the Delphi autonomous system, can't speak to
that. But, with regards to their mechanical design, this team has demonstrated
autonomous capability with a familiar and covert form factor: obscured GPS
antennas, LIDAR and cameras. And computing. Not visible in either the rear
seat or trunk [1, 2].

Also important to mention that this product is a partnership between Delphi
and Ottomatika [3]. Ottomatika is the company that won the 2007 DARPA Urban
Challenge from CMU and provides the SLAM and software expertise.

Admittedly, the Google's of the world help with the lobbying and regulatory
efforts which eventually expedite the technology transfer to the market for
the Delphi's and smaller startups in this space [4].

[1]
[https://twitter.com/harrymccracken/status/578624426079494145...](https://twitter.com/harrymccracken/status/578624426079494145/)

[2]
[https://twitter.com/DelphiAuto/status/580388500291342338](https://twitter.com/DelphiAuto/status/580388500291342338)

[3] [http://ottomatika.com/blog.html](http://ottomatika.com/blog.html)

[4] [http://www.getcruise.com](http://www.getcruise.com)

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falcolas
Looks like, similarly to the Google car, this is also heavily dependent on
detailed maps of roads. The advanced radar-based sensors are pretty slick, but
I'm curious about their limitations in terms of the size of the objects they
can detect, and how far away.

My car uses some similar technology for automatic cruise control and crash
avoidance, but either the hardware or software is primitive, since it
occasionally tries to protect me from rear-ending a car in the other lane.

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druidsbane
I'm interested in finding out what kind of inter-car communication these
companies are considering; direct reports from cars on the scene as well as
official beacons that cars can subscribe to along highways and in cities.

