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Let's think what the self-driving vehicle will do for those that are blind. While self-driving cars would be a nice luxury for most of us, it's a life changer for those that are vision impaired.
 
Has no one mentioned Apple will need to build lots of dealerships to service the cars? No way the Apple store is going to service them.

Maybe the cars will be throwaway items though with nothing repairable. This actually wouldn't surprise me today :rolleyes:

These electric cars don't need regular service like conventional cars except for the occasional tire and brakes, they last forever. Apple could also work with a pure renting model.

That said, this project is so big that Apple would need to split the division into a separate company to manage it.
 
Let's think what the self-driving vehicle will do for those that are blind. While self-driving cars would be a nice luxury for most of us, it's a life changer for those that are vision impaired.

Just a shame they won't be able to find where the car is! ;)
 
I still worry that many here are just thinking that driverless cars are far easier a problem to crack.

I can 100% totally see these things being possible on special controlled roads/areas, so that other people know they are entering a computer driver car area, hence you then put to onus on us normal folks to be the ones that have to modify our behaviour when entering their controlled zone.

THAT I can see as you have shifted the rules.

The other way round, just seems there is a long long way to go.

I hope I'm wrong as I'd love to see them, even though they will be vastly expensive.

Right now, I think cities would grind to a halt with them, as there would be things cropping up all over the city that the car can't cope with, it will get stuck, traffic will build up behind it, and it was all jam solid.

I want to be proved wrong :)
 
I still worry that many here are just thinking that driverless cars are far easier a problem to crack.

I can 100% totally see these things being possible on special controlled roads/areas, so that other people know they are entering a computer driver car area, hence you then put to onus on us normal folks to be the ones that have to modify our behaviour when entering their controlled zone.

THAT I can see as you have shifted the rules.

The other way round, just seems there is a long long way to go.

I hope I'm wrong as I'd love to see them, even though they will be vastly expensive.

Right now, I think cities would grind to a halt with them, as there would be things cropping up all over the city that the car can't cope with, it will get stuck, traffic will build up behind it, and it was all jam solid.

I want to be proved wrong :)

And that's how it starts. First highways (huge traffic efficiency opportunity btw). Then major roads. Then... and later once the kinks are worked out... the city.
 
Maybe this is meant to be a second car kind of vehicle, for getting around town, doing shopping, picking up kids from school, etc.
 
One things for sure, cars are going to get really boring in the future. Forget having fun flooring it on the on-ramp. These cars will surely only allow a very leisurely pace and never allow any speed limit to be broke even by 1 MPH. Forget fancy high performance sports cars or off road trucks because what is the point? The computer will dictate exactly how the auto must be used at all times.

As a person who enjoys vehicles and driving I guess I'll miss it when it's gone, but I'm hoping just like the CD and MP3 couldn't quite kill off the vinyl LP (It's still alive and kicking with increasing market share) there will still be a few cars available for those of us who like to drive our vehicles.

BS, some rich people don't like to be like everybody else, don't expect an "all the cars are the same and boring" and democratic crappy world, because there is a lot of people with a lot of $$$$ who like another things, thanks God. That's why +250 000 $ supercars already exist, not because they're logical and promote legality and equality and all that stuff
 
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You think any company is going to release a half-assed self-driving car? No way. It's going to be at least 5x better than a human driver if they release it.

Still waiting on Apple to release an OS without bugs. :rolleyes:

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Even if YOU are a model drive, 30 years with zero accidents. Do you really trust everyone else on the road..? Just look at the statistics.

Show me the statistics otherwise...

Show me the statistics on self driving cars developed by Apple. Let's start with trust in their other products as a lead measure to their capability first.

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a computer is excellent at vigilantly monitoring the mundane tasks. Lane drifting, pulling out into intersections at the wrong time, fatal accidents related to these lapses in attention can easily be remedied with self driven cars, and if nobody accidentally crosses into your lane while reaching down for the coffee they spilled - you don't have to make a split second, life saving maneuver. That's just my 2 cents.

^^ all of those things already exist on cars. is Apple just going to copy them and claim that technology is theirs?

my point being I have little trust in Apple to develop anything that's perfect. history doesn't prove me wrong.
 
Lol wut. About 99.9% of accidents are caused by people making "informed decisions:"

LOL back.....self driving a cars aren't going to fix or protect you from the decisions made by other drivers. Computers are good at calculated decisions but they are not able to use good judgement. There's a difference.

Besides, I stand by my point that Apple has yet to get simple iOS launches down pat. Hell, let's not forget their attempt to launch Apple Maps. No thanks, I don't need to risk lives on that skill set.
 
I just want to drive my own car myself.
I do think it will be great for the visual impaired, but all the legal implications before this can take off seem an enormous obstacle.
Self driving car need to avoid accident, sees two cyclists, one with a helmet and one without. Will the car calculate that it´s better to hit the cyclists with helmet as he is less likely to get a head injury on impact.
Same with small cars and big trucks, better to hit the big truck as it´s less likely to hurt the people inside. Then you hack your car so it will hit smaller cars instead, as that will make less of an impact on you car.
Decisions, decisions.....
 
I just want to drive my own car myself.
I do think it will be great for the visual impaired, but all the legal implications before this can take off seem an enormous obstacle.
...

I can see it would be a great thing for some, if you could leave work, drive to a bar, have a few drinks at the end of a long hard hot day.
Some ice cold beers, then get in your car and it drives you home safely.

THAT I could see as being a very popular ADDITION to a current normal car.

If you image you had the normal car, you could just sit the passenger seat, press home, and it took you home.

We are YEARS away from that but would be good :)
 
I just want to drive my own car myself.
I do think it will be great for the visual impaired, but all the legal implications before this can take off seem an enormous obstacle.
Self driving car need to avoid accident, sees two cyclists, one with a helmet and one without. Will the car calculate that it´s better to hit the cyclists with helmet as he is less likely to get a head injury on impact.
Same with small cars and big trucks, better to hit the big truck as it´s less likely to hurt the people inside. Then you hack your car so it will hit smaller cars instead, as that will make less of an impact on you car.
Decisions, decisions.....

Self driving car will analyze the trajectories of both the bikes and also the way you think. It will narrowly avoid both cyclists, and even lock the doors to prevent you from getting one of them with your door.
 
I can see it would be a great thing for some, if you could leave work, drive to a bar, have a few drinks at the end of a long hard hot day.
Some ice cold beers, then get in your car and it drives you home safely.

THAT I could see as being a very popular ADDITION to a current normal car.

If you image you had the normal car, you could just sit the passenger seat, press home, and it took you home.

We are YEARS away from that but would be good :)

Now, that would be great. Guess taxi drivers will be a dying breed.

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Self driving car will analyze the trajectories of both the bikes and also the way you think. It will narrowly avoid both cyclists, and even lock the doors to prevent you from getting one of them with your door.
Ahh, good. No worries then;-)
 
Ummm...false?
1) who says the mini van has sensors on it? Based on the shoddy images we have seen, these could be a bunch of cameras for all we know.
2) How are you going to solve the issue of a lack of charging stations? How about the effort involved in creating the energy to charge and maintain all of there electric cars? It's not as simple as saying "they are more efficient than an internal combustion car"

Hmm, I thought folks had identified many of the things on the mini van. They are certainly cameras. But the round disks are something else. I called them sensors, but whatever they are they are certainly related to informing the car about its location.

Charging is very easy. Electricity is easy and fast to work with. In the suburbs where people have garages this will be no trouble at all, folks will just have a charging station put in for a few hundred bucks. Gas stations who start loosing customers will turn over a spot to electricity charging (along with a coffee station for folks to wait the half hour to charge their car).

As for most of the other electricity issues that is easy as well. The cars will largely charge overnight when they electricity grid is already underutilized. The reduction in gasoline usage will free up a lot of money and energy usage. If the grid needs more energy sources we will just add solar (or natural gas if gas prices seem like they are going to stay permanently low). The utilities would love it if the energy load was more consistent and by simply charging a bit less for energy at night that could be done. The cars would be programmed to pull energy during the cheaper night time.

I don't know what city folks will do though. I suppose folks who normally park their car on the street will have to find some solution. The city may put in charging stations where you run your credit card and get a charge. I've seen a public charging stations like that at the Bill Clinton Museum. Or maybe once a few weeks (city drivers often don't rack up the miles) those folks will park in a garage where they will get charged up.
 
Oh I'm aware they are testing them under carefully supervised conditions, and with drivers ready to snatch control in an instant.
And in the UK we have on special new areas made for them.

I'm not saying you can't make something that seems to be ok in many situations. The problem I think is the media as got wind of this, and have taken 2+2 and make 8 from it.

Driverless cars mixed in with normal daily traffic on normal roads, not WIDE open American roads, with other drivers and people all milling around crossing the road at any time, anywhere, etc etc, is the type of thing that needs to be either not done, or perfect.

Not too bad is not good enough.

A bit like a plane, it either does not fly, or it flies perfectly as we've worked out flying. Crashing a bit would not be tolerated.

There is no problem with the devices as such.
The problem will be the Law and Humans acceptance of driverless car accidents.

If we as humans can accept that accidents will happen, and there is no one we can blame then we can have them.
At the moment, we have the easy target to blame. The driver

If we are taking the driver away, either we will blame the company that makes the car, and demand to know why the car did what it did.

Or we are just going to have to accept accidents happen and there is no one to blame and claim against.

Just remember, someone's daughter will get driven into and killed by a computer controlled car and they are going to want to know why the computer decided driving into their daughter was the best decision.

They could argue, why did the car not drive the other way, and the company will have to explain how their software decided what it did was for the best.

Is self preservation the number 1 priority of the software?

Scenario.

You are sitting in your driverless car, 30 mph.
A dog barks loudly and the child jumps out into the road just yards in front of you, not enough time to stop.

1: Your car can apply the brakes in a straight line, but it's calculated it will not stop in time, and has recognised it's a small human, but will hit it, at say 20mph. But you and the car will be safe.

2: It could steer evasively to the left, but there is an adult on the pavement it would hit if it did that movement and a wall it may hit also. Child would be safe, you might be safe depending on the wall, Adult would get hit.

3: It could steer to the right, but there is an oncoming car you would hit then, saving the child in front of you, the adult on the pavement, but risking injury to the driver of the car coming towards you. this also would wreck your car, and possible major injury for you.

It will have done all these calculations in fractions of a second, and evaluated it's best move in a split second.

Which one should it do?

And which one of the 3 people or their families is going to argue in court that it should not have taken that choice.

Or, as I say, we are just going to say, well, computer knows best and not blame anyone?

I assume if it's your car, you would wish your computer in your car to take the action that best looks after your safety. So the child gets it! as the other two options place you, your car's passenger at the greater risk, than just carry on and apply the brakes. The blame then going onto the child for running out, not your fault.

These are nice speculations, but that isn't going to be the way the car reacts. The car is just going to brake as fast as it can. Since it will probably brake faster than most humans can react, this will be enough in most cases.

What this will take will be legislative action that insulates the car companies from some amount of liability. As you say, self driving cars will have to be really really good before they are allowed to operate at all in anything but test situations. But once they are that good, the car companies will ask congress for some exception to protect them in the rare cases. The trade off will be the MASSIVE decrease in driving fatalities. I'm assuming the stats will quickly become apparent that self driving cars are 90% less likely to get into a fatal accident than human driven cars (or something like that) and this will be a sufficient trade off to give the car companies a bit of legal protection.

But yes we've a long way to go, I suspect, before these cars can drive well at night or in the rain. And also for the tech to be affordable enough.
 
That's not what any of the rumors suggest.

Exactly these are just rumours and it "suggests" what's happening or the perception of what's happening. That's why I said "maybe". It's all hypothetical right now. Who knows but the brass at Apple are doing with cars.
 
Silliest, persistant rumor to date. Yet so many are falling into believing this. lol If anything it would have to do with iOS, devices and media. Hey who knows right? For all you believers know, this could be a diversion for the Spaceship being built in Cupertino.
 
Exactly these are just rumours and it "suggests" what's happening or the perception of what's happening. That's why I said "maybe". It's all hypothetical right now. Who knows but the brass at Apple are doing with cars.

Of course we don't know but a lot of the comments seem to be centered around what people think is feasible for Apple as a consumer electronics company, not what the rumors themselves seem to be suggesting. If this project was just around bolstering CarPlay I don't think you'd have a VP of iPhone hardware (a mechanical engineer) leading the project. I don't think Tim Cook would be authorizing a team of 1000 to work on it and I don't think you'd have members of Jony Ive's design team meeting with auto executives/engineers/designers.

Maybe Tim Cook's big ambition is to take Apple beyond consumer electronics. Or maybe he believes the auto industry is right for disruption and that cars are slowly becoming computers. Marc Andreessen tweeted if Tesla can do it so can Apple if if wants to. Last year Tim Cook said in an interview he expected iPhone to be the primary revenue driver for Apple for the next 5 years. Perhaps this project is about what comes after that.
 
The biggest complaint of elderly in nursing homes: "Where's my car?!?!"

It is comforting knowing that when I get there I won't have to worry about that. My car will drive me to Walmart 3.0.
 
No idea if this is true or not but I surely like the outlook to one day be able to say:

"Siri, bring me home!"​

I would hope by then, they had killed Siri off, She is worthless.

Hopefully Jeeves will take me home and be able to do everything Siri can't do.
 
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