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Apple Working Toward Fully Autonomous Car With No Steering Wheel or Pedals, Aiming to Launch in 2025

Bobcat32 said:
Siri. Siri everyone. That is A.I and that is severely lacking.
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True, but Apple being Apple, Siri could never catch up on speed since user data couldn’t be harvested in the same extend and scope like the competition. But I agree Siri, sucks and is not a good predecessor for upcoming products based on a.i. developed by Apple.
 
ramallite said:
If you thought having to upgrade a phone every 1-2 years just to keep up was bad.....
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Right after I upgraded to carOS 2.0, my car could no longer go faster than 46MPH. Then I stupidly upgraded to carOS 3.0 and now the car doesn't go any faster than 16MPH. It seems pretty "long in tooth" after 3 years, so I think it's time to upgrade.
 
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mi7chy said:
But when something goes wrong it's still the driver that's using it wrong.
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For driverless cars to be better they don't have to be perfect. They just have to make fewer mistakes causing fewer deaths and injuries than humans. But the world won't see it that way. It will expect them to be flawless and will pushback keeping humans behind the wheel longer than necessary resulting in more death and injury.
 
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That's already happening. Anytime there's an incident with Tesla, there's a big news story about it. I've made the same point that you've made: It's not about comparing driverless cars to perfection. It's about comparing them to the status quo
 
Madhatter32 said:
Who would buy a car with no steering wheel? Why even build a car that is not legal to sell? Sounds like a huge waste of resources to me.
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Who would buy a vehicle that can't be pulled by horses?

Who would try to ride on something with wheels?

Who would buy a horse to ride when they have perfectly good legs?

Who needs to go somewhere else anyway?

Legality is only an issue until you can prove safety. Based on the incredible responsiveness & accuracy of SIRI and the dazzling accuracy of MAPS always getting me where I want to go, make those two things the core brains of this car and we'll get the great human joy of surprise destination discoveries on most trips. ;)
 
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So thrilled to know that apple is rising up the bar so in 2025 they have to move the launching date to about 10 years more or so... they can be as stupid as they are geniuses... both ends they do it big time...
 
I still put my chips on; the first X# of years it will be a service you subscribe to.

Sorta like a taxi or Uber that arrives at your house when you need it and could stop on the way to work to pick up other workers at same building. Then scurries off to pick up others or run to a charging station to top off batteries after dropping you off.

Come get you after a night on town or a show & dinner etc
Just tell Seri where & when & your set, no parking or insurance etc etc
 
MacRumorUser78 said:
Geez, I wish I knew how I was going to feel years out. What's the secret?
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I’ve been driving since I was 15, I’m not giving up that responsibility to a damn computer. Bad enough all the computers on cars nowadays, much less trusting them to make those sort of complex life and death decisions. I’ll take the consequences of making them myself as an active participant, not letting the car do it and watching things unfold out of my control. Screw that noise.

Red Barchetta is one of my ride or die songs, so is Black Sunshine. Take that for what you will.
 
HobeSoundDarryl said:
"Based on the incredible responsiveness & accuracy of SIRI and the dazzling accuracy of MAPS always getting me where I want to go, make those two things the core brains of this car and we'll get the great human joy of surprise destination discoveries on most trips. "
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Excuse my french but...

are you on ****ing drugs?

thats all... and im one of those humans who will never get a fully autonomous car... I cannot let a machine decide what is better for me in critical situation unless we are in the year 3050... other than that i wont let any choppy intent of AI to take control over my life... I'm saving full submission for when an actual fully functioning self aware AI exist
 
There are currently ENTIRELY self driving semi trucks RIGHT NOW on our hiways with full commercial loads

Started right here in Tucson Az
Right now the TuSimple trucks are driving loads between Phoenix & Houston Tx and points in between for over a year now

So there is that....
 
filchermcurr said:
This is TERRIFYING to me. We all know, through countless examples, that software and hardware and the people designing them are fallible. You're one bug, random cosmic phenomenon, or hack away from being stranded in the middle of the road at best or splattered on the side of a building at worst. (And in the fun in betweens like mowing down a group of pedestrians, t-boning another car, driving off the side of a twisty mountain road, etc.)

I can only hope that the self-driving bits are isolated from the entire world, but we know they're going to be connected to an always-on 5G network to receive updates and/or check a licensing server or something. That makes them vulnerable.

Terror aside, the user interface confuses me a bit. I assume you give it a destination. What happens when you get to the destination? Right now we get vague "your destination is on the right... somewhere..." messages, especially in "less developed" areas. There has to be a way to guide the car to the right place. Or what if you have, I dunno... to throw up or have raging explosive diarrhea or you spot a dying child on the side of the road or you spontaneously burst into flames or any other instance where you'd need to pull over? What if you want to back into your driveway because you're too lazy to walk around the car to haul groceries in? What if it's cold and you have a long rural driveway and you want to drive to the end to check your mail and then drive back to your house?! Or maybe you want to slow down to enjoy the view.

If it's relying on voice commands to accomplish any of this, well, I'm skeptical that it will work out. We've been hearing for YEARS that Siri has 'gotten better', and yet it's still miles away from being able to reliably accomplish controlling a car. Unless car Siri has been rewritten specifically for that purpose and they hired a whole new team to do it.

Maybe you have to write shortcuts for things like "pants caught on fire" that will pull over.

Not to mention the regulatory hurdles... This seems like an optimistic AirPower situation to me.
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Many good points. To offer some counter-point for consideration:

Paragraph 1: how is it better now? Aren't we all subject to random cosmic phenomenon? Aren't the "medicated" & "sauced" basically "hacked" now... on a daily basis… in great numbers? Don't some of us get stranded in the middle of roads at least at some point in our life? Isn't there daily splattering somewhere now? Ever see stories of human drivers mowing down pedestrians, t-boning, driving off mountain roads, etc? All you need here is for advanced systems to do what human drivers already do LESS than human drivers. Perfection? Probably not. But could systems do it better than very fallible humans? Seems plausible.

Paragraph 2: aren't human drivers already doing dangerous things with 5G while driving? Aren't some of them already "compromised" by opting to reply to a text or similar while driving?

Yes, there is another point about acts of terror but if Apple can minimize the amount of hacks of iPhone already, they can probably minimize the hacks of iCar. Hackers usually want money. Where’s the money in hacking control of a car vs. hacking iPhones and gaining access to bank account info? If there’s not lots of the latter, there will probably be much less of the former. Perfection? Probably not. But probably not a commonplace issue either. Many cars already have SOME connected systems. How often are they hacked even as a joke or as proof they can be hacked?

Paragraph 3: I seriously doubt it would be so rigid that you couldn't dynamically alter instructions on the fly. Think of this like having a driver- a chauffeur: you could use your eyes when on less-mapped roads and guide the driver. I've done this many times in the last 2 decades with cab drivers not quite knowing where I'm wanting to go. Basically "back seat driver" stuff. How am I guiding that driver? With voice instructions.

Just as GPS voice instructions help human drivers know when to turn left or right, etc, the human getting involved in the "nitty gritty" could function as "reverse GPS": "car turn left at the next light", "car at the upcoming fork in the road, take the right fork," etc. (hopefully "car" is many times "smarter" than Siri but GPS instructions work just fine one way now so why not the other way when this driverless car needs some human help?
  • "Car pull over ASAP" (for throwing up or diarrhea, or aiding others) "...and call 911 ambulance" rather than you having to do that too with your phone.
  • "Car back into the driveway when we get home"
  • "Car, drive me down to the end of the driveway"- get the mail- "Car, back me back up the driveway"
  • "Car slow down to the minimum speed limit, begin tour guide mode and provide detailed narration of what we can see out of the windows"
Seem impossible? Try a robot vaccuum. “Roomba, clean the living room and bedroom 2” and it does! If you have a small pet (cat? turtle? hamster?), they can hitch a ride from Roomba start to destination and not be killed in a fiery crash into the first wall that evil pet "car" can find. Odds are very high they ride to the living room or bedroom 2 without issue.

Paragraph 4: Amen brother. If Car is managed by Siri 2021, doomed, doomed, doomed. Either Siri 2025 is going to get a LOT smarter, or "Car" is going to be "brained" by a far superior Siri replacement. If Siri 2021, I would expect to never run out of car battery because we'll be sitting in the garage all the time while car is responding to nearly all requests with "here's what I found on the web for you." I would not trust a walking cane if it had some dependency on Siri.

Paragraph 5: if your pants catch on fire in an Apple car, it will be entirely your fault. And others will be slinging "cheap Chinese chargers" and other nonsense at you even if you have hard evidence of Apple causes. First rule of Apple fan sites: Apple can do no wrong... EVER.

Lastly, regulatory hurdles fall quickly for campaign contributions and reasonable proof of safety. However, if there is enough of the former, the latter can become less important. Best hope for the latter is care about PR image overriding maximize profits at all costs. Else, see Ford Pinto story.
 
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zakarhino said:
The more I read about this project the more I think at least one incarnation of it will be as a geofenced, city-exclusive full self driving taxi pod directly integrated into Apple Maps. Maybe the other car with pedals and self driving assistant technology is the one that can be purchased and parked at home.
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To be able to "own" this car, you better hope you are right. This driverless UBER will probably need to be out there working 24/7 when you don't need it to generate enough gig money to help pay that ApplePay financing over 99 years. ;)
 
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I wouldn't have car without pedals or steering wheel etc. I just don't trust the technology to have all the solutions. In general, and maybe I missed it, i haven't seen reports of how self driving does in snow where you can't see lines on the roads etc.
 
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