Elon Musk

British media reported on Friday that Tesla had canceled plans to develop low-priced cars and instead continued to develop self-driving taxis on the same platform. Although Tesla CEO Elon Musk denied the report in a post on X, he did not specifically identify where the report was inaccurate. Moreover, he later announced that Tesla would release a self-driving taxi on August 8, which seemed to confirm in disguise that self-driving cars would be a business focus of the company in the future.

Greater Risk

Analysts pointed out that given the technical complexity of self-driving taxis, Tesla’s greater focus on it will bring greater risks.

Philip Koopman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies self-driving car safety, said: “Other companies have found that what they thought was a two- to three-year project actually took 10 Years or 20 years of research and development. Tesla discovered this too.”

Meanwhile, the development of self-driving cars is not going well. In the latest example, self-driving software company Ghost Autonomy shut down its global operations last Wednesday, citing uncertainty about its path to profitability.

Tesla
Last fall, a vehicle from GM’s Cruise self-driving unit struck and dragged a pedestrian, and the subsequent scrutiny from regulators led the company to lay off employees and cut $1 billion in spending. However, GM CEO Mary Barra said in February this year that “self-driving technology has huge benefits” and that the company has a “very valuable asset.”

Moreover, Elon Musk chose to develop self-driving cars using radar and cameras, rather than lidar. “It’s like tying one’s hands behind their back,” Koopman said. Lidar is a remote sensing technology that uses pulsed laser light, much like radar uses radio waves.

Industry insiders say that the advantage of lidar is that it can work under any lighting conditions and has a wider detection range than cameras, but cameras have stronger visual recognition capabilities.

It will take several years

Koopman added that any company developing a self-driving car would need a year or two of perfect performance to prove the technology, but the industry is still far from that “perfection.”

Some Tesla investors and analysts say valuing Tesla’s self-driving taxi business is much more difficult than lower-priced cars.

“Tesla promised eight years ago that all of their cars would be fully autonomous, but even they themselves have changed their development thinking several times in the meantime. Many believe they are still several years away from fully autonomous driving. Years,” said John Krafcik, former CEO of Alphabet’s self-driving technology company Waymo.

Regulatory Review

Tesla’s ambitions in self-driving taxis come as the company faces unprecedented scrutiny from lawsuits and government investigations. The scrutiny undermines Tesla’s touted claims about the capabilities of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD) systems. Both systems are designed to assist the car in steering, braking and lane changes and are not considered autonomous.

In December, Tesla, under pressure from U.S. safety regulators, agreed to recall more than 2 million Autopilot-equipped cars and implement remote software updates to the system, even as it disputed the U.S. government’s safety concerns. , added more warning measures for car owners.

The recall comes after the National Highway Traffic Administration (NHTSA) investigated crashes involving Autopilot technology. The investigation has raised concerns that Tesla is not taking enough safety measures to warn distracted owners.

Tesla Model 3 with FSD turned on

Tesla also faces a criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice over its claims that its cars can drive themselves. Tesla has clearly warned owners that they must keep their hands on the steering wheel to maintain control of the vehicle and that Autopilot will not make the car drive itself.

Bryant Walker Smith, a professor at the University of South Carolina, is an expert on autonomous vehicle law. He said that Tesla cars are not yet able to support the advent of truly self-driving taxis.

Smith said Tesla’s assisted driving system faces additional scrutiny because “Tesla and its CEO have made a series of unfulfilled promises and highly questionable claims over the years about the capabilities and near-term launch timeline of self-driving.” statement”.

Regulatory restrictions

Beyond that, industry officials say Tesla must comply with U.S. federal and local regulations regarding taxi fleets and self-driving vehicle testing. The issue of liability for self-driving cars has also not been resolved.

Depending on the state, the development of self-driving taxis may require deployment and testing permits, which may subsequently be revoked. The California Department of Motor Vehicles suspended the permit for GM’s self-driving subsidiary Cruise last October after one of its self-driving taxis hit and dragged a pedestrian.

U.S. safety officials are updating certain regulations in 2022 to provide a path for the deployment and testing of fully autonomous vehicles. These cars do not require traditional human controls such as steering wheels and pedals. Officials stress that such cars must still provide the same level of occupant protection as would be the case if a human was driving the car.

However, industry insiders say that if Tesla can succeed, it will bring more consumers into the auto industry, not just those who can currently afford expensive Tesla cars.

Jamie Meyers, an analyst at investment firm Laffer Tengler Investments, holds Tesla stock. He has been impressed by Tesla’s innovation and still believes in Tesla.

“From an engineering perspective, Tesla is more or less in place. (Developing self-driving taxis) is a natural business adjacency. Given Tesla’s premium brand image, we think people are more inclined to accept this Try it,” he said in an email.

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In an email to employees, CEO Kyle Vogt also said the company would make a new takeover bid that would allow employees to sell stock (two days after Cruise withdrew its previous takeover bid).

“I am sorry that we have veered off course under my leadership, and this has profound consequences for Cruise,” Vogt wrote in an email.

“As CEO, I take responsibility for the situation Cruise is currently in. There are no excuses or sugarcoating what happened. We need to redouble our efforts on safety, transparency and community engagement.”

Vogt also noted that the way the company works with regulators, the media and the public “must improve.”

Attached the incident detail:

 In August this year, ten Cruise Robotaxi vehicles suddenly stalled on the road, causing a traffic jam. A few days later, a Robotaxi crashed into a road construction area and got stuck in the wet concrete; another Robotaxi hit a fire truck at an intersection, causing its passengers to be sent to the hospital.

 The California Department of Motor Vehicles announced on October 25 that Cruise's self-driving cars pose an "unreasonable risk" to public safety and "fail to meet standards for on-road operations."

 Cruise has suspended all public operations of its self-driving cars and will issue a recall for 950 vehicles.

 Cruise is facing multiple federal investigations into the safety of its vehicles, including two cases in which its self-driving cars failed to yield to pedestrians on sidewalks.

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Carlson said, “The central question is whether cars driven by computers rather than humans need to comply with safety standards associated with human drivers: requirements for mirrors, sun visors, windshield wipers, etc.” Cruise declined to comment.

Cruise currently offers limited service in San Francisco, using a small fleet of Chevrolet Bolt cars fitted with driverless technology. Cruise wants to deploy its Origin cars, which have subway-like doors and no steering wheel.

GM petitioned the NHTSA in 2018 to allow a Chevrolet Bolt-based car without a steering wheel or brake pedal on U.S. roads. In 2020, GM withdrew the petition after the agency took no action.

In December 2021, NHTSA opened a formal safety investigation into Cruise vehicles with self-driving systems following two reports of injuries from rear-end crashes.NHTSA said Cruise’s vehicles “may brake inappropriately hard or stop. “

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The patent abstract shows that the present invention discloses a driving safety quantification system for autonomous driving vehicles, including a driving area environmental risk quantification module, a surrounding traffic participant conflict interference quantification module, a self-vehicle behavior risk quantification module, a vehicle driving safety quantification module, The display module, in which the output of the driving area environmental risk quantification module, the surrounding traffic participant conflict interference quantification module and the self-vehicle behavior risk quantification module is finally synthesized into the vehicle driving safety quantification module and the real-time safety value of vehicle driving is calculated, using different colors The difference is displayed on the display module, prompting the driver the safety status of the automatic driving system. Patent diagram is as follows:

The system quantifies the environmental complexity, the interference of surrounding traffic participants, and its own behavior status factors that affect the safety of human drivers while driving, and can provide different degrees of safety warnings and constraints for the autonomous vehicle system and its human drivers. The vehicle keeps it in a relatively stable driving state.

In terms of actual intelligent driving, Huawei chose the automatic driving technology route of multi-sensor fusion and coordination. In April this year, Huawei’s high-end intelligent driving system ADS 2.0 was released. It will not rely on high-precision maps to achieve high-level assisted driving. The M5 high-end intelligent driving version is equipped with Huawei ADS 2.0 for the first time.

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The patent granted to Baidu provides a collision warning method, device, electronic device and self-driving vehicle, which involves the field of computer technology, especially in the field of self-driving technology.

The specific implementation plan is: when the movable object has the risk of colliding with the target obstacle, determine the cumulative number of times the target obstacle has been detected; if the cumulative number is greater than the preset number of times threshold, give an early warning, which can improve the collision warning accuracy.

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Musk said today at an energy conference in Norway that he is currently focused on two things: SpaceX’s Starship and the self-driving Tesla electric car.

I’m currently focused on two technologies that I hope to complete by the end of this year,” he said. The first is to put our ‘Starship’ into orbit, and then to enable Tesla cars to drive themselves.”

Musk added: “The self-driving technology will have to be widely rolled out at least in the U.S. and potentially to Europe (by the end of the year), depending on regulatory approval.”

“Starship is SpaceX’s next-generation launch vehicle, with the ultimate goal of replacing the current workhorse Falcon 9 for cargo missions and eventually carrying astronauts to the moon and Mars. The Starship is scheduled for its first orbital launch in 2022.

Earlier today, Musk also said that the world must continue to extract oil and gas to sustain civilization, while also developing sustainable energy sources. He said, “The truth is, we’re going to need oil and gas in the short term, or civilization will collapse.”

When asked if Norway should continue to drill for oil and gas, Musk said, “I think some additional exploration is necessary at this time. One of the biggest challenges facing the world today is: the transition to sustainable energy and a sustainable economy. That will take decades to accomplish.”

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There was only one Waymo employee in the car, responsible for sitting in the back and recording video.

He said that basically, no one noticed that the car was being driven unmanned. The one or two that did notice were double-checking and couldn’t believe their eyes.

Many netizens were amazed by Waymo’s performance in this video: this is real full self-driving, right?

Many of the “good guys” also ate/cueed Musk.

Some people even put out some videos of Tesla.

" Meanwhile, let's take a look at Tesla's FSD -"

Ah, this ……

Of course, there are also questions.

"When will the average person be able to buy one and how much will it sell for?"

What is the level of this Waymo video?

For the last question at the beginning, the answer is, of course: not for sale.

This is actually still Waymo’s test.

According to official sources, since March this year, Waymo has been on the road in San Francisco for self-driving tests, completely removing the human driver kind.

The passengers (testers) in these cars are all in-house employees, and the people driving the hair videos are Waymo’s software engineers.

They can choose to have Waymo drive them to get a cup of coffee each morning and then drive them to work.

As of today, the test has surpassed 500,000 miles (about 800,000 kilometers, in urban areas).

While removing the human driver from the vehicle in San Francisco is a major milestone for Waymo, it is not the first time the company has deployed a fully self-driving car in the city.

Waymo, the world’s leading self-driving technology company, started in 2009 and became an independent subsidiary of Alphabet from Google.

Prior to that, Waymo put its self-driving system Driver on two other different types of car platforms in 2015 and 2017, respectively, and tested them in Austin and the East Valley of Phoenix, gaining years of experience.

One of these tests in the East Valley of Phoenix opened a fully self-driving taxi pilot service in 2020, taking hundreds of orders per week.

Waymo says it will soon open up testing to the public through the Trusted Tester program.

For this 40-minute fully unmanned takeover video, the most frequently asked questions from the general public are.

Is there a remote takeover control function?

In this regard, the engineer said that Waymo has a remote operation center, that can answer the car

may encounter problems, but can not be directly manipulated.

— Since there are remote interaction centers, some people have said.

"That's not exactly full autonomy. Like FSDbeta, it still requires some human-machine interaction in tricky situations."

However, some people say that is not the biggest problem of fully automated driving is that now Waymo is still running in the electronic fence with a map.

"It would only be if Waymo could be allowed to run a lap outside the electronic fence and without the map being implanted in advance."

In addition, it must be mentioned that a sharp-eyed friend found that the car seemed to have violated the law and occupied the bike lane for about 2 minutes and 12 seconds.

He also ate the municipal parking management account. (Manual dog head)

He also found a stop violation at 3:43 as well.

Finally, he gave an overall rating of:

"The drive/stop was so bad that a FedEx car came up through the left turn only lane specifically to get around it."

So, what do you think of Waymo’s performance this time?

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Cruise has worked hard to transform its self-driving technology from a long-term research project into a profitable business. But the market signals are not good, as investors are reducing their bets on technology risks and reassessing the specifics of large-scale deployments of self-driving vehicles on public roads, driven by economic conditions such as global inflation.

So far, shares of self-driving car technology company Aurora Innovation Inc (AUR.O) have fallen 80 percent. Automakers, including Ford Motor Co (F.N), have scaled back investments in their self-driving car units or sought partners to share costs.

Cruise losses have reached $900 million in the first half of 2022, compared with losses of $600 million in the same period last year and before rides were charged. GM executives said that the main reason for the much higher losses is that, after shelving the IPO plan, the company added wages to retain employees, resulting in higher payroll costs.

Chief Executive Officer Mary Barra said Tuesday she remains bullish on Cruise and reiterated her optimistic forecast that the Cruise unit could make $50 billion a year from self-driving car services and technology by 2030.

But whether it can turn around its losses depends on factors beyond GM’s control, such as winning approval from California regulators to significantly extend Cruise’s operating hours and expanding its self-driving cab coverage area.

Cruise applied to U.S. auto safety regulators in February for a waiver to deploy 2,500 self-driving cars without human control systems such as steering wheels and brake pedals. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published the application last week and opened it for public comment for 30 days.

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