Apple Reportedly in Process of Acquiring Self-Driving Vehicle Company Drive.ai

[npmacuser5]

Interesting how much technology required to do a small percentage of what the human system can do. We are amazing are we not!

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

Nah. I don’t care what a rumor says, I don’t see Apple wanting to invest their resources/money with Tesla. Teslas manufacturing is too inconsistent and not on par I would assume with what Apple would have expectations of in terms of quality by their standards.

You say that, but why would Apple be incrementally raising the price of their products each product-cycle? A theory would be to reduce that shock and get users conditioned to spending tens-of-thousands of dollars with Apple instead of just 1K here and there every year or so.

 

[ravenstar]

This is probably the most important point in your list. Poor weather conditions, glare, and/or poor lighting cause or contribute to the vast majority of all traffic collisions and accidents, and these are exactly the cases where (beyond a point) Autopilot or other autonomous systems will hand control of the vehicle back to a human...so of course there'll be far fewer accidents due to weather from Autopilot.

I can just imagine it now (this really happens around here): driving down the road at night in the winter, go around a corner and hit a snow squall and the autopilot suddenly decides it can't handle the conditions and gives up control of the car. Now an unsuspecting driver has to suddenly take control of a moving vehicle in bad conditions. Sounds like a bad nightmare to me.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Self-driving vehicles will NEVER happen. Please stop this scam immediately. The technology will never be good enough without infrastructure changes, like rail-on-road.

Tesla vehicles in self-driving mode are as dangerous as motorcycles. Meanwhile, there are several car models that have NEVER had a driver fatality.

yet, people continue to have fatal drunk driving crashes. we need self driving cars yesterday.

 

[realtuner]

But technically, humans have assistive features on roads already: Signs, pavement markings, etc. Perhaps you mean that autonomous vehicles should be able to use the same assistive devices humans use? But it seems only natural that if roads were designed for computers they'd incorporate signals tailored to the computers just as roads aimed at humans employ human readable signals. *If* autonomous vehicles became common place, I'd expect a gradual transition as these automated systems could potentially be less expensive in the long run.

In the absence of signs/markings a human can still operate a vehicle safely. A lot of driving is simply a human making a common sense decision that has nothing at all to do with signs/markings.

I arrive at an intersection and see a person standing on the curb. I don't know if they're going to cross the street or are just standing there. I stop and make eye contact with the person and wave my hand to signal they can cross. The person instantly knows what I mean. They might start to cross or they may wave back indicating they're not crossing but just waiting. In either case the person can cross safely or I can proceed safely. We both understand exactly what the other person is thinking.

How is an autonomous vehicle going to deal with this situation? With signs/markings? How does a person make "eye contact" with an autonomous vehicle? How does the vehicle signal back that it's understood and will wait for the person to cross?

Autonomous vehicles have a LONG way to go to deal with even the most mundane of situations.

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

yet, people continue to have fatal drunk driving crashes. we need self driving cars yesterday.

Or you could just sleep wherever you got drunk. So because of one's lack of self-control, we need a computer-automated vehicle to enable your actions? How about you just be a responsible adult and either arrange a ride home from a friend, or call a taxi/rideshare..? You can't make said drunk persons get into a "self-driving" car.

 

[Return Zero]

I disagree, the public actually doesn't care about statistics. If they did, seatbelt laws wouldn't be required, and mass transportation would have far more support. They care about perceived control and perceived personal risk. That perception seldom aligns with statistics. Airlines are held to a very hight safety standard and face intense scrutiny for every little incident. Gun laws in the US would become much stricter in response to public outcry were it not for a power gun lobby. I doubt autonomous cars will inspire that kind of passion or tolerate that level of regulation and scrutiny. Imagine all the cars of a particular model being taken out of service for months after an avoidable fatal incident while the software is redesigned. We expect this for aircraft because of the lack of control and perception of extreme danger, but I doubt we'd tolerate this response if a serious flaw were found in our autonomous vehicles even if more people were at risk. Logic just doesn't apply to the public.

A power gun lobby exists because a huge portion of the public stands behind it. It's not just a few rich people or something. That's another topic though, as is the mass transportation issue (too many confounding factors there).

Sure, the public might not care about raw stats, but they do care about patterns which might end up becoming significant stats. The Boeing incident didn't really escalate until the second plane crashed. People recognize these patterns of danger and quickly change their minds. If one fluke crash happens, they don't care as much. If two happen in exactly the same way in a small time window, they suddenly care. If someone sees repeated stories in the news about people being hurled out of their cars in a crash because they weren't strapped in, they will care about seat belts. Anyway, all of this is just hypothetical until carmakers actually advertise full autonomy. Until then, they just need to do a better job emphasizing or requiring driver attention while using assist features. I think autonomous cars will indeed eventually be subject to that same scrutiny you mention. As long as manual control is still an option, though, there will always be that fallback (passengers on airplanes don't have the option of taking control).
[doublepost=1559841720][/doublepost]

In the absence of signs/markings a human can still operate a vehicle safely. A lot of driving is simply a human making a common sense decision that has nothing at all to do with signs/markings.

I arrive at an intersection and see a person standing on the curb. I don't know if they're going to cross the street or are just standing there. I stop and make eye contact with the person and wave my hand to signal they can cross. The person instantly knows what I mean. They might start to cross or they may wave back indicating they're not crossing but just waiting. In either case the person can cross safely or I can proceed safely. We both understand exactly what the other person is thinking.

How is an autonomous vehicle going to deal with this situation? With signs/markings? How does a person make "eye contact" with an autonomous vehicle? How does the vehicle signal back that it's understood and will wait for the person to cross?

Autonomous vehicles have a LONG way to go to deal with even the most mundane of situations.

I agree that they have a long way to go, but your example is a little overly-complex. The autonomous car will simply recognize that there are people nearby and proceed slowly, unless people start walking in front or on an intercept course, in which case the car will stop and wait for them to pass. Eye contact is not needed.

The bigger problem is those crowded intersections where there is an endless stream of people. Current autonomous cars simply would never make it through XD

 

[rpat701]

You don’t really know if they tried to buy Tesla. It’s speculation. I’m aware of the story that they made an offer. Still, we don’t know for sure.

Agreed - it'll never be confirmed. However, when those stories surface with an actual dollar value and time frame they tend to be leaks from offered term sheets.

 

[ravenstar]

In the absence of signs/markings a human can still operate a vehicle safely. A lot of driving is simply a human making a common sense decision that has nothing at all to do with signs/markings.

I arrive at an intersection and see a person standing on the curb. I don't know if they're going to cross the street or are just standing there. I stop and make eye contact with the person and wave my hand to signal they can cross. The person instantly knows what I mean. They might start to cross or they may wave back indicating they're not crossing but just waiting. In either case the person can cross safely or I can proceed safely. We both understand exactly what the other person is thinking.

How is an autonomous vehicle going to deal with this situation? With signs/markings? How does a person make "eye contact" with an autonomous vehicle? How does the vehicle signal back that it's understood and will wait for the person to cross?

Autonomous vehicles have a LONG way to go to deal with even the most mundane of situations.

I understand your point, but I don't think this is particularly unsurmountable. A pedestrian already has the right of way at an implied crosswalk (at least in my state), and a car could stop, pause to wait for the pedestrian to move, then slowly start forward if the pedestrian doesn't make a move to cross the road. Most ambiguous situations can be dealt with by choosing a cautious course of action and evaluating the response of the environment and altering the plan as needed. If the environment sensing is there, the planning and reacting is comparatively easy.

 

[truthertech]

If they do have a comparatively high fatality rate, which is debatable but admittedly hard to prove either way due to sample size differences, it's probably because many of the people who drive them are more prone to be dumb risk-takers. They either put too much trust in autopilot, or they drive more recklessly because the unusually high torque and low center of gravity allows them to.

Don't fall for the fake news. It's not hard to prove. Fatalities are tracked 100%, so there are great statistics/evidence.
[doublepost=1559843789][/doublepost]

An Apple self driving car will be technologically irrelevant every couple of years. That is Apple's DNA. They can't, for any reason, stick with anything for more than a few years. For a less then $1000 phone that's ok. For an $80,000 car not so much.

That's not how this works. The main technology is software, which will be updated over the air as Tesla does it. Not much else that will distinguish cars except design, which is where Apple will rule once again.
[doublepost=1559843843][/doublepost]

Agreed - it'll never be confirmed. However, when those stories surface with an actual dollar value and time frame they tend to be leaks from offered term sheets.

LOL.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Or you could just sleep wherever you got drunk. So because of one's lack of self-control, we need a computer-automated vehicle to enable your actions? How about you just be a responsible adult and either arrange a ride home from a friend, or call a taxi/rideshare..? You can't make said drunk persons get into a "self-driving" car.

we've spent millions of dollars on advertising telling people "DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE" and they still do it. it's not just 1 person, but at least >100 million people drink and drive every year (CDC statistics).

so tell me, what's your solution now because saying "how about you just be a responsible adult..." hasn't been working for the past decade.

 

[Jaro65]

Self-driving vehicles will NEVER happen. Please stop this scam immediately. The technology will never be good enough without infrastructure changes, like rail-on-road.

Tesla vehicles in self-driving mode are as dangerous as motorcycles. Meanwhile, there are several car models that have NEVER had a driver fatality.

You mean like a cement truck?

 

[hank moody]

In light of the Pro Display stand announcement, it wouldn’t surprise me if they develop a car and charge an extra fee to get the “beautifully functional” steering wheel.

I dont understand this type of comments. People always complain

Imagine if Apple sold the screen with the stand together for 7k.
Now, you break your stand, you need another... you buy another 7k screen???

I, being a huge minimalist guy, hate when companies offer extra items when i just want to buy one. I want the SCREEN to put on my already bought wall and its mount, i dont want the stand!!!! So, dont make me to pay it!

And if i want, i can buy, it has a price!! Easy no?
And if i break it, i can buy another, easy no??

If Apple offered the pack for 7k, people could cry too because now they cant buy the stand alone... god i hate people.

Apple is always trying to make things right and people always crying.

 

[Jimmy Bubbles]

we've spent millions of dollars on advertising telling people "DON'T DRINK AND DRIVE" and they still do it. it's not just 1 person, but at least >100 million people drink and drive every year (CDC statistics).

so tell me, what's your solution now because saying "how about you just be a responsible adult..." hasn't been working for the past decade.

Do you remember natural selection?

 

[Return Zero]

Don't fall for the fake news. It's not hard to prove. Fatalities are tracked 100%, so there are great statistics/evidence.

I didn't fall for anything, I left it pretty ambiguous as to whether they do or do not have higher than usual fatality rates.

If you know of clear statistics, please share. I know fatalities and incidents are tracked overall, but separating down to make/model, options like autopilot, whether those options were engaged, cause/fault, etc. seem almost impossible to nail down with any statistical significance. Then there's debate in how to measure and compare, whether by miles driven, vehicle years, etc. I'm definitely all ears if you know more, though.

 

[farewelwilliams]

Do you remember natural selection?

Is that your solution?

 

[Moof1904]

I am a pilot with several certifications (VFR, IFR, multi-engine, complex aircraft) so I can say from experience that creating a so-called "self-flying plane" auto-pilot to fly an aircraft through a full flight plan from a beginning-of-the-runway takeoff to landing (full stop at the end of the runway but no taxi to a gate) is substantially easier than creating a self driving car to replace drivers in all conditions.

Sure someone will say, what about the 737-MAX problems, yes that was/is a huge debacle on Boeing's part, but the main point is that so many people are underestimating the extreme complexity of delivering a 100% self driving car to replace the driver in all conditions. It took about 80 years before commercial aviation started to become very safe, the evolution of self driving cards will take many decades to reach the kind of safety and consumer confidence we see in commercial aviation.

I disagree that we are many decades away. The flaw in your logic is the assumption that technology development is linear. The advancement of technology is very much non-linear, more like exponential. This is because technology begets technology. The advances that took the airline industry 80 years will not take the auto industry the same 80 years. Did the airline industry have advanced neural nets and massively parallel processing on dedicated chips at the beginning of that 80 years? Did the airline industry have a fleet of vehicles feeding millions of miles of telemetry data, per day, to the advanced neural net? I'll concede that replacing a car's driver in all conditions is substantially more difficult than the aircraft autopilot you describe. but it will not take many decades to reach the goal.

 

[hank moody]

Do you remember natural selection?

Because taking with a truck driven by a drunken guy is natural selection?

 

[srazz]

Self-driving vehicles will NEVER happen. Please stop this scam immediately. The technology will never be good enough without infrastructure changes, like rail-on-road.

Tesla vehicles in self-driving mode are as dangerous as motorcycles. Meanwhile, there are several car models that have NEVER had a driver fatality.

I hoping this is sarcasm because you can't be further from the truth. Teslas autopilot is second to none and if you weren't so negative on this subject a little research and you'd find out that Teslas using autopilot are much safer that driving any other non-autopilot vehicle.

 

[code-m]

Sure, i'm not saying Apple CANT expand into the car market in some way. I think it would be a great move to solidify revenues from alternative sources from pure tech.

But the moves / rumours we have seen so far over the years about "car" related stuff is just so jumbled and a mess and the market has seemingly moved faster than Apple seems capable of in this regards.

So the question I have still remains. What is their plan because as the years go on, everyone else in the car industry has seemingly moved faster and further on their own and don't seem all that interested in using someone else's tech. Apple would need to have something so dramatically different/ superior if they want to convince anyone else to use their self driving car tech (if that's what they're working on).

Many of the big tech companies advantage is that they are diversified and that is something they have to do to stay competitive and boost they revenue. The car manufacturers have not quite diversified, however when you grow it becomes harder to sustain the same level of profit as the market demands.

Think of how many pies Amazon has they hands in compared to what the original company was, it has been a long diversified round. Look at Apple, Google, etc.

Do you know of any automakers getting into the mobile phone business? The tech industry is waiting for no one and will gobble as many closely related industries that suit they vision.

Who would have thought even a decade ago that Apple would get into producing its own entertainment consumption service.

 

[Trhodezy]

Why do you think Tesla’s have such a high fatality rate?
[doublepost=1559831909][/doublepost]
So many people here about to die in their Teslas
[doublepost=1559831966][/doublepost]
Indeed. The government should ban Tesla’s like they do 737 Max!

This is cute. Do you know the even higher fatality rate of nearly every other car on the road? Good game kid. Back to your parent's basement.
[doublepost=1559855079][/doublepost]

I hoping this is sarcasm because you can't be further from the truth. Teslas autopilot is second to none and if you weren't so negative on this subject a little research and you'd find out that Teslas using autopilot are much safer that driving any other non-autopilot vehicle.

He's a troll. Leave the little kid to it.

 

[StellarVixen]

Self-driving vehicles will NEVER happen. Please stop this scam immediately. The technology will never be good enough without infrastructure changes, like rail-on-road.

Tesla vehicles in self-driving mode are as dangerous as motorcycles. Meanwhile, there are several car models that have NEVER had a driver fatality.

Self driving cars will only be good when every car on the road becomes self driving. I don't see that happening in my lifetime.

 

[mozumder]

This is cute. Do you know the even higher fatality rate of nearly every other car on the road? Good game kid. Back to your parent's basement.

You mean like my Hondy Odyssey and Kia Sorento models that have had a total of ZERO drive fatalities?

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/29/record-9-models-have-zero-highway-deaths-iihs-says.html

Facts don't care about your feelings. No point getting emotionally triggered and crying about this fact.

Face it: Self-driving cars are death-traps. They will never be useful without strucutral road changes and should be banned immediately from the roads until that happens. Trash them.

 

[avanpelt]

I dont understand this type of comments. People always complain

Imagine if Apple sold the screen with the stand together for 7k.
Now, you break your stand, you need another... you buy another 7k screen???

I, being a huge minimalist guy, hate when companies offer extra items when i just want to buy one. I want the SCREEN to put on my already bought wall and its mount, i dont want the stand!!!! So, dont make me to pay it!

And if i want, i can buy, it has a price!! Easy no?
And if i break it, i can buy another, easy no??

If Apple offered the pack for 7k, people could cry too because now they cant buy the stand alone... god i hate people.

Apple is always trying to make things right and people always crying.

Seriously? They charge $200 for a VESA mount or $999 for a stand. You have to use one of those unless you plan on propping the $5,000-$6,000 display up against a wall. Show me another 32” monitor that doesn’t come with a way to mount it (either via VESA or stand) in the box. The thing should come with at least one way to mount it in the box. To not include that is just tacky, in my opinion.

I work in medical imaging where the monitors start at ~$1,500 and go up to about $25,000 a piece. Never in 15 years in this field have I unboxed a monitor at either end of that cost spectrum that couldn’t be mounted without purchasing additional hardware.

 

[Trhodezy]

You mean like my Hondy Odyssey and Kia Sorento models that have had a total of ZERO drive fatalities?

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/29/record-9-models-have-zero-highway-deaths-iihs-says.html

Facts don't care about your feelings. No point getting emotionally triggered and crying about this fact.

Face it: Self-driving cars are death-traps. They will never be useful without strucutral road changes and should be banned immediately from the roads until that happens. Trash them.

Fair point, 9 cars. Out of how many hundreds of thousands of variants? 9. Haha.

So riddle me this then, if you deem the normal driving method (one driver in a car) to be the safest method; then it would be safe to assume that if there were 4 drivers in a single car being able to monitor 360 degrees, with the ability to all communicate instantly and know the exact stoping distance from cars ahead and behind as well as being able to compute this all quicker than say, just one driver. Would this not theoretically be safer?

My car can see blind spots and take evasive manoeuvres. Can avoid people side swiping me. Pedestrians walking in front of me. It emergency breaks faster than I can; not because of the car in front but because the 4th car in front has stopped and the other 2 behind haven’t realised it yet.

This is just a tiny example. Tiny. I love my self driving car and it’s multitudes safer than any car I’ve driven.

Don’t knock partial or eventually full self driving cars until you’ve tried it for an extended time.

Each to their own of course, if someone wants to drive something else they can. It’s does make me wonder why you’d bother to have a horse and cart when you can have a futuristic car though.
[doublepost=1559859811][/doublepost]It’s also worth noting that your facts are statistics from 2015, unless I am mistaken. 4 years on and I’d like to see the new figures.
[doublepost=1559860091][/doublepost]It may also be worth noting further; do you have any research that suggest Tesla’s are less safe and have a higher fatality rate than all other mass market cars?

As far as I understand it, Tesla is rated one of the safest (as are most EVs) on the road. I also understand that there has been more fatalities in, say, a BMW M3 than a Tesla.

This logical reasoning is no different from listing 9 zero fatality cars and then saying that all other cars are death traps. So then it’s not just self driving cars but ALL other cars (outside of the aforementioned 9) on the road that are death traps and as such should equally be banned on the roads. Would you agree?