
Comma.ai will ship a $999 autonomous driving add-on by the end of this year - piyushmakhija
https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/13/comma-ai-will-ship-a-999-autonomous-driving-add-on-by-the-end-of-this-year/
======
mortenjorck

      Mountain View to San Francisco
    

Is this product actually just limited to driving 280 / 101? If so, that's a
really interesting way to launch a minimum viable product in the self-driving
space: Obviously you can't launch with anything incomplete in terms of safety,
but you _can_ launch with a highly restricted supported geography.

~~~
Fricken
He's saying that he's done that drive without touching the wheel. It will work
in other places, but he emphasizes that you still have to pay attention, as
with autopilot.

He gives the full talk here:

[https://techcrunch.com/video/george-geohot-hotz-presents-
the...](https://techcrunch.com/video/george-geohot-hotz-presents-the-comma-
one/57d8713d1c689950401ac8c2/)

Yes, he's a punk and seemingly on drugs, but surprisingly, Hotz is not a
bullshitter as far as I can tell.

~~~
jsmthrowaway
> Yes, he's a punk and seemingly on drugs

What makes you say this?

~~~
Fricken
I guess you didn't watch the video. He goes out of his way to trash talk every
big player in the industry. It's entertaining, informative, and cringeworthy.

I like George Hotz, but I was attempting to preempt anyone who might dismiss
his substance because they don't like his style.

~~~
tim333
It was a bit over the top and reminded me of the Silicon Valley TV show which
he cited as an influence.

------
etendue
> The $999 price point is designed to be affordable, and is possible because
> of the components Comma uses in its product, which tend to be inexpensive
> off-the-shelf electronics.

"Inexpensive off-the-shelf electronics" aren't rated for automotive
environmental conditions, nor do they have the immunity to interference (e.g.,
single event upsets) required for safety-critical systems.

~~~
TD-Linux
Off-the-shelf in the context of electronics means that they didn't custom
design some parts of it (for example using a SoC module rather than custom DDR
layout), not that the parts are consumer rated.

~~~
dharma1
Which SoC is it? Jetson?

~~~
commaai
Snapdragon 820

~~~
dharma1
Nice. Same as these guys? [http://www.nauto.com/](http://www.nauto.com/)

So you could basically deploy this as software only, on recent 820 based
smartphones? Just need a fish eye lens attachment and CAN bus to USB cable (or
USB OTG GPIO)

------
Kenji
_The company’s Autopilot system is in active use, and in fact just got an
update this past weekend that should vastly improve its performance and
decrease the possibility that the car doesn’t brake when it should._

I am not gonna lie - that does not give me a lot of confidence in this system.
"Oh, and by the way, it sometimes doesn't brake when it should." That quickly
equals injury or even death with a car. You do not want to move fast and break
things with your car.

~~~
mikeash
How many crashes can be summed up as "the driver didn't break when they
should"? The system doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be better than
the human. And actually, it doesn't even have to be better than the human:
only the _combination_ of the system _and_ the human needs to be better than
just the human alone.

------
justathrowout2
Hotz is a proven, remarkable engineer.

But if there was ever a case for a "business guy" to be involved with a pitch
this was it.

His messaging works at some level - "I'm shipping something REAL and SMALL and
ACHIEVABLE"

But his pitch has two huge problems:

(a) The delivery is rough. He comes across as patronizing and manic. I want to
put my life in his hands?

(b) He fumbles (like Musk has) with the difference between his pitch "Mountain
View to San Francisco without touching the wheel" and the reality "It is fully
functional. It’s about on par with Tesla Autopilot"

Lots of potential in the product but for me this pitch diminished the chances
that I'd ever own the device.

~~~
lucb1e
> Hotz is a proven, remarkable engineer.

Wait, Hotz, that name... is this Geohot?

...

Turns out, it is! [1] That makes this statement a lot more believable to me.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hotz)

~~~
cbHXBY1D
Yes, it's geohot's company but I don't think it lends it anymore credibility.
Hacking is very different from building a viable product.

Moreover, some of his comments make me distrust his judgement. Just from a CNN
article this year:

> "For awhile, I thought it was going to be incredibly difficult to
> contribute," he said. In January 2015, he started working as a researcher at
> Vicarious, a company that's building artificial intelligence algorithms. "I
> started reading all the papers. I thought, 'This stuff isn't that hard. This
> isn't ultra sophisticated. This is basic,'" he said. Moreover, "the mistakes
> people are making are basic."

> "I started to look around at the other players. These people are noobs," he
> said.

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-
comma...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma-ai-
andreessen-horowitz/index.html)

~~~
spectrum1234
Because he's a genius?

~~~
T-A
Because just about everybody in this space, except a small number of well
known, mostly academic old-timers, is a noob.

------
uxcn

        “It is fully functional. It’s about on par with Tesla
        Autopilot,” Hotz said. It doesn’t have a lot of sensors
        as the Comma One relies on built-in car front radars and
        comes with a camera.
    

This seems a bit precarious.

~~~
dawnerd
My car, a Passat 2016 has both of those and does an okay job keeping itself in
the lane and such. Only with VW would be more aggressive about updating their
cars firmware. They've got all the components to be pushing forward. But just
like all the other car companies they'd rather wait until 2017 models to make
any improvements.

~~~
brianbreslin
Its probably built into their old school model that even if they could do
firmware updates (likely still via USB), that they don't in order to get you
to replace the entire vehicle sooner. Just speculating

------
primitivesuave
I would love nothing more than for Bay Area congestion to be solved by self-
driving cars, but I take this announcement with a grain of salt because it
lacks any mention of liabilities and regulatory hurdles. Unless the management
can answer the difficult questions, unforeseen difficulties likely await
anyone who installs this device in their car. Insurance companies may refuse
to cover accidents caused by the device, and automakers may even void the
warranty if there is any demonstrable link between self-driving and increased
engine wear & tear.

I am fairly confident that self-driving will proliferate a feature offered by
the automaker at the time of purchase, just as adaptive cruise control and
lane assist is becoming commonplace right now. It may be difficult to convince
an average consumer to rig up a device in their car that isn't supported by
their automaker.

~~~
uxcn
Autonomous driving isn't really regulated though. Google's Chauffeur is the
only autonomous software I'm aware has even passed a state driving test.

~~~
primitivesuave
That's a good point, although what I'm more concerned with is industry
pushback against third-party self-driving upgrades, similar to how ECU
tampering voids the warranty of most cars.

~~~
uxcn
Autonomous software is a lot more complex than the software the ECU uses
(which is still complex), so there may be a genuine argument against allowing
people to modify cars not designed for autonomous driving. It definitely
raises a really serious liability question.

Even with those systems working exactly as designed, there are some serious
liability questions I don't think anyone has really answered yet.

------
slg
How does this actually control the vehicle? Is there a physical component that
literally moves the steering wheel or presses the brakes?

~~~
hoahluke
It only works with vehicles which have built-in capability of auto steering
and braking

~~~
slg
What do you mean by "auto steering and braking"? Does this simply turn on
settings that already exist in the car or does this actually control the car
through fly by wire commands? If it is the latter, is this something that car
manufacturers actively support third parties doing? To the layman like me,
that seems like a huge potential liability.

~~~
trevyn
The latter. I remember listening to an interview with George where he chose
Honda/Acura because they're "generally hands off about these kind of things"
meaning aftermarket mods.

~~~
MBCook
So basically it should work if it's a drive by wire car.

------
spectrum1234
Surprised with all the skepticism here. It's not perfect but this guy is a
hardware, software, and AI genius and this could very well speed up the self
driving race by several years or even more. When it comes to price, it could
speed things up by more than a decade. With some funding and a solid team this
could move incredibly quickly.

~~~
zump
AI genius? lmao

------
asimuvPR
All I can think about is the reliability of the hardware and how a failure
could set back the market years (if not more due to regulation). I really hope
this was properly engineered by seasoned automotive engineers.

 _fixed typo_

------
BWStearns
This may be insensitive but is the name too close to "coma" given the odds
that one of their users will end up in one (through the product's fault or
not)?

~~~
philplckthun
Wow! Slow down there, Satan. I can already see the headlines.

~~~
BWStearns
Really now, Satan? That's all I had to do to get the top job in hell? Do I get
to be the second coming for holding elevator doors when I'm in a rush?

I was just questioning the wisdom of passing out the free headline tragedy-
puns with your branding. It would be an equally terribly name for a line of
DIY transcranial direct current stimulation kits. Again, it's not because
these products _are_ dangerous[0], but that they will likely be perceived that
way. Any possible blame _will_ be laid at their feet at least through
innuendo, so why make it easy and catchy?

[0] I make no assertion about the actual safety of either.

------
jlarocco
This is by far the sketchiest autonomous driving product I've seen so far.

Does the NHTSA do any testing for products like this? I'm usually not big on
government regulation, but there definitely needs to be some kind of
regulation and oversight for this kind of thing.

------
spiderfarmer
George is trashtalking the sellouts, but I wouldn't be surprised if comma.ai
is sold in the first quarter of 2017.

~~~
dharma1
It may well be the strategy - I'm not convinced they actually expect people to
stop worrying about death, buy and use the $999 box. They will certainly not
ship large amounts of units by end of the year, and risk several accidents at
this stage with effectively very alpha software/hardware combo.

I think they will get somewhere, if not in self driving cars then something
else to do with machine learning.

------
isuckatcoding
Jailbreaking cars now? Good for him! Can't wait to see this in action.

~~~
tim333
He actually registered as a Honda technician so as to get official access to
the system.

~~~
lucb1e
Licensed or unlicensed, he's hacking it anyway. In the Hacker News sense of
the word.

------
kelvin0
Anyone seen the programming challenge on the comma.ai website:
[http://geohot.com/projective_challenge.tar.gz](http://geohot.com/projective_challenge.tar.gz)

"In the pics directory, you'll find 5 short "videos" with 10 frames each of
driving the same set of road. Different cars, different mountings, etc...

Your goal, write a program to localize them all with respect to each other in
3 space.

Deliver a 3-D map of the location and orientation of all pictures."

Very cool!

------
stale2002
Go Go GeoHotz! You need to host meetups or something sometime so I can come by
and checkout your kick ass awesome self driving cars. -bcwade

------
joering2
Wow, its incredible how many people bash this startup here, incredible to see
it from this community here.

I mean what they have done to you? It's not like they gonna sell tickets to
Hell or scam someone, so what's the big deal with more entrepreneurship in the
town?? Be nice to your fellow entrepreneurship -- you might end up working for
them one day.

~~~
mdonahoe
You may think differently when someone you know or care about is killed by an
AI controlled vehicle.

Apparent reckless use of technology frightens people, regardless of the actual
risk.

~~~
joering2
I'm not saying their solution is perfect. Nothing is. But will I send a hate
mail to utensil factory because I cut myself with their kitchen knife? No, I
won't.

~~~
nzjrs
There is a gulf of a difference between saying 'nothing is perfect' and
therfore excusing crap - and making a reliable safe product.

That difference is engineering, and we undervalue it at our peril.

~~~
dexterdog
Do you think comma.ai is undervaluing it? Do you think they don't know that
they will be under an irrational microscope the second they release an MVP?

~~~
nzjrs
Based on the actions and arrogance of their founder, yes.

------
cbanek
Pretty exciting for sure.

Interesting that they're talking about California driving. In an episode of
Bloomberg's Hello World I saw recently, Hotz actually demonstrated his self
driving car in Nevada. They mentioned that the state of California asked him
to stop driving on the public roads.

Regulations ahoy!

------
Rainymood
Haven't seen any comments on the actual presentation. I'm about halfway in so
far and am really enjoying it. His energy, his style, his slides, it all just
fits so well together he feels like a less polished and maybe a bit more crazy
mix between Balmer and Jobs. I love it. A lot of fun to watch!

------
nzjrs
Wouldn't touch this with a 30 foot pole.

Hopefully sane legislation will prevail and end this madness soon.

~~~
dexterdog
That's what we need is the government involved. They'll solve everything.

~~~
Chronic9q
They have solved everything in Scandinavia. They've just about solved black vs
white racism too. Yes, go look it up.

~~~
nzjrs
Well that got weird fast.

------
user731955373
Pretty sure this will inevitably become coma.ai.

------
joseakle
Why not position it as an accident avoidance system?

Most accidents occur due to distracted drivers. A self braking car preventing
drivers from rear ending other cars can easily be justified as a good
investment. Having something like this to "upgrade" any car to a better safety
system makes more sense to me from a marketing standpoint.

------
pmontra
They say they get the video feed. I can imagine why they want it (training?)
but having somebody potentially watching what's in front of your car all the
time is much worse than having them know where you are. I won't buy that
product. However I think that if this really works it will sell well.

~~~
DanBC
> I can imagine why they want it (training?)

Also avoiding liability.

------
omgmog
Hopefully when it ships it'll be more than an Android phone and some
3D-printed ABS...

[http://i.imgur.com/VIqWuDG.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/VIqWuDG.jpg)

~~~
henrikschroder
Am I the only one who looked at this and thought it was satire through and
through? He effectively launched the one comma club? It had a little too many
digs at other SV startups and companies, and references to the HBO show...

------
goeric
Huge props to Geohot for getting this to market (barring it ships). Curious -
if it replaces the rear-view mirror, then what do you use as a rear-view
mirror?

~~~
lucb1e
Your side mirrors? It's legal to drive with two out of three mirrors for a
reason (or at least, it is here, I assume it's the same in the USA).

------
joesmo
If it really works like they say and can be added to any car, that's pretty
huge. I'd definitely buy one. I wonder what it takes to install it ...

~~~
ilaksh
They mentioned the car has to have built in radar already.

~~~
trevyn
My understanding is that this will only work with late-model Honda/Acura with
LKAS & ACC packages, they hack into these systems for control.
[http://automobiles.honda.com/sensing/](http://automobiles.honda.com/sensing/)

~~~
ilaksh
OK so reading that, those new cars actually have most if not all of the self
driving autopilot type features built in, very similar to Tesla (but not
anywhere near Googles level). So I am guessing this device mainly just engages
those built-in systems a little more frequently than they were designed? I
mean what does the product actually do, or is it just basically Honda didn't
want to market it as self driving yet but this guy decided he would?

~~~
rurban
> similar to Tesla (but not anywhere near Googles level).

With that comment you probably mean the inherent difference of the
Tesla/Hotz/German style of live online interpretation of the world, compared
to the inferior Google style offline collected Google maps, where the SW
matches the view with the offline world. Because in the Google world you
cannot drive a street which is not in the system. The Google system is not
advanced enough to interpret changed speed signs, changed roads, temporary
road contruction, ...

------
Houshalter
Some thoughts in no particular order, edited from an IRC discussion I just had
on this:

The price is extremely low. If you drive just 20 minutes per day, and your
time is worth at least minimum wage, it makes sense to buy this for just a
year, and hopefully it lasts longer than that. But there is a monthly
subscription cost ($300 per year) i didn't factor in. And wtf, since when does
hardware have a subscription cost? Oh, and to purchase one you need to have
lots of "points" with the company, which you can earn by using their app. This
is really weird, why not just raise the price if you can't meet demand?

The price also doesn't seem high enough to cover the risk. If each accident
costs 10 million in lawsuits (i have no idea how much they will actually cost,
but that seems like a good made up number, and corporate legal fees are
expensive anyway) then they better have less than 1 accident per 10,000
vehicles that use it, just to break even. honestly i hope they have 0
accidents because they could bring in regulators and ruin the fun for
everyone, as well as the very delicate reputation of self driving cars (people
are already predisposed to distrust machines)

I can't believe this works at all. Wouldn't you need like multiple gpus to
process all this camera data in real time? How do you account for the variance
between vehicles? How many cameras do they have and what is the resolution?
That unit looks really small.

It looks like it's just trained by predicting what a human would do. Human
drivers are imperfect, and so I imagine this machine will learn to imitate the
imperfections of human drivers, combined with it's own imperfections. It's
also unclear how they trained it, because the dash cam videos don't give
information on when users tapped the brakes or moved the steering wheel. They
must be doing some interesting semi-supervised learning.

Apparently the cars have limits on how hard it can slam on the brakes or turn
the wheel. He advertises this as a good thing that will prevent the AI from
doing anything too bad, but I don't see how. This limits what the AI can do in
a real emergency. Worse, it suggests that the AI needs these training wheels.
That without them it would cause accidents, and that's very concerning.

I just can't believe that this works. Deep learning is completely amazing and
can get 99% accuracy, but this requires 99.9999%. Those extra 9's are super
super hard. Fortunately this doesn't need to be perfect, it only needs to be
better than humans. And while deep learning is starting to beat humans in some
machine vision tasks, I'm not confident this is true in general. In the real
world there will be weird edge cases, like a car painted in a very atypical
pattern, or ice on the road, or a bug on the windshield, etc. Humans are more
capable of handling new, out of sample situations, and machines can fail
epically at them.

~~~
dexterdog
Most accidents cost nowhere near $10 million. Hell, the 9/11 payouts only
averaged $1.7 mil.

~~~
Houshalter
Yes but that's very different. Most accidents aren't the suing a company but a
driver. This would be more like someone suing a car manufacturer because they
made a faulty steering wheel or something. And I based that on the economic
value of life, as estimated by various government agencies to be around that
number:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#Life_Value_in_the_US)
But it should also include legal fees which aren't cheap at all.

~~~
dexterdog
You're also assuming fatalities which are not common. You're also assuming
that the software company will be able to be found liable after both a waiver
and a proven history of safety testing. Currently we have about 15 fatalities
per 100k drivers. 40% of those are alcohol related so I'm going to count those
as saves right away. Many of the rest are weather/sleeping/texting/etc that
are easily savable. Even if we pretend those will all still happen, the goal
is a 10x safety increase which would mean .9 per 100k. Even at your outlandish
10M number that would not kill the company, but the reality is closer to 1/10
that amount and even less if the legal hurdles are properly-managed.

------
xkcd-sucks
they must have really good liability insurance

~~~
dexterdog
Disclaimers are much cheaper.

------
dharma1
I wonder how many hours after launch until the first accident, and who is
liable

------
cloudjacker
I rang their doorbell once, might have ended up working there!

------
stevehiehn
This seems really frig'n dangerous.

