First Apple Car to Be Fully Autonomous and Designed to Operate Without a Driver

[EdT]

Pretty sure you’ll still need a license in the event you need to take over

Depends where he is. If it’s a major city and the cars are self driving taxis that you aren’t waiting around forever to arrive and aren’t $30+ per trip then it might be very beneficial to someone in his situation.

As someone above pointed out the legal infrastructure hasn’t been created yet. The technology might be good and lives may be saved but when an accident happens I doubt that the humans involved want to hear about how much safer a self driving car is even if it’s true. Until laws are actually on the books for everyone this may be limited to narrow circumstances and a few companies.

 

[farmboy]

If there were tire tracks to follow many systems can use those as a proxy for lane markings. The cars usually visually determine the number of lanes since lanes versus using database information. This is because lanes can be shut down for construction, restriping, accidents, and such. Regarding the lack of connectivity, the car usually buffers a 10s to 100s of miles of roads. We have crap AT&T service by me and the car continues to navigate fine even when AT&T drops out for an hour or so. But, I assume it would not get updates on wrecks without a connection so you might get stuck in a traffic jam instead of being rerouted around it.

I doubt that the autonomous software can differentiate a tire path in packed snow on unplowed roads. Tracks are not always a dark, pavement-colored tire track surrounded by white. It's often slight terrain depth differences in white-on-white.

 

[jerryk]

I doubt that the autonomous software can differentiate a tire path in packed snow on unplowed roads. Tracks are not always a dark, pavement-colored tire track surrounded by white. It's often slight terrain depth differences in white-on-white.

I don't know the details to that level. But ML models and cameras see things differently than the human eye. What may look similar to you and I, may be quite different mathematically to the camera and the model receiving the data from the camera.

 

[Lemon Olive]

If only anyone in the general public cared about autonomous driving, this might matter.

People are fine with driving. No one is clamoring for the car to drive for them. Autonomous driving has no meaningful future. It's a nice tech POC that wastes gobs of money and resources to develop for illustration purposes.

 

[wigby]

You are comparing apples with sexy shorts. ofCourse the car tries to prevent harm - apple throttled permanently without warning or potential harm. It was a design flaw!

Same battery tech in both which is why Teslas blow up just like iPhones blow up.

 

[richinaus]

My take: We are looking at this the wrong way round. Everyone assumes Apple is making a hardware play, I think they are doing a services play and will launch their own Uber-like service. They will start small with a pilot in a few locations where the autonomy can be managed, monitored and improved.

Rationale:
- Apple's strategy is to move into services enabled by hardware
- Competing with a tech company like Uber is more their wheelhouse than taking on Ford etc
- Apple has that large investment with a Chinese lift sharing company (good way to buy into the market to understand)
- Uber is iPhone app based and enabled by the iPhone platform
- Uber started partially because of the terrible taxis in the bay area
- Uber's business practices in the past have been questionable so Apple could see themselves as helping clean up the industry (albeit by making all the drivers out of a job)
- Something like 80% of the cost of an Uber is the driver so take the driver out then you have the opportunity for a high margin business


And after I wrote all this, I was googling to see if Apple still owned the ride-sharing company and found this:

Didi Chuxing: Apple-backed firm aims for one million robotaxis

Didi Chuxing plans to have the self-driving vehicles operational by 2030.

www.bbc.co.uk

Yep, totally agree, they will go for this market, and maybe carshare.

And I was just thinking about how the iphone / ipad will integrate into the car to become the screen. Full iOS control over the car, and is seamless from out to in.

book your car, plug in the phone [on maglock] and off you go.

Very excited about this one.

 

[||\||]

EVs from Kia are far more reliable than those from Tesla.

Kia EVs haven't been in production long enough for you to know this.

 

[Kabeyun]

What is there to be seen ? the only period of time where this might be problematic is the very early stage where we have a mix of standards and humans all driving together , but once the early phase is over , there is no doubt that the amount of accidents will decrease , the amount of compute that the machine can do at any given time without getting tired or distracted is putting us humans to shame , the response time is also off the charts , just look at the world best chess player , he cannot beat todays AI`s even if they are running on years old computers , computers evolve every year , we humans do not , so again , once the early stages are done , machines will drive better then us and they will improve all the time , that's the cold hard fact , there should be no speculations on this matter.

We’ll see. The worlds best chess computer has 100% input accuracy. And if it loses a game, it lost a chess game, rather than thinking a tractor trailer truck was the sky and ramming into it. And are the “early stages” the next six months, the next six years, the the next 20 years? Do you want to be the one in the vehicle, or in its way, while they work the kinks out of a 2-ton piece of machinery moving at 75 miles an hour? We’ll see. You’re welcome to be an early adopter and take a nap in the backseat while your car does the driving and deciding. I’m going to wait to see what happens.

 

[tillathenun]

Kia EVs haven't been in production long enough for you to know this.

The e-Niro and Model 3 have been around about the same amount of time. Kia owners rarely complain about anything other than the charge point sticking in winter. Model 3 owners often list a whole series of issues they have to get Tesla to fix (not always successfully).

 

[farewelwilliams]

Insurance companies may not be so enthusiastic about it until many more vehicles can be demonstrated to have perfect driving records under software control. And "pending regulations" is a gigantic, years-long hurdle--local, state and federal regs would have to be established, and right now there are just about zero legislations being promulgated.

1. Not "perfect driving records", but "10x better than the average of their human drivers".
2. Tesla started their own insurance companies that uses video data to gauge how well the human drives (and adjusts premiums accordingly)
3. If the data shows a FSD car with human supervision can drive 10x better over billions of miles of data, it would be irresponsible for lawmakers to delay approval of using that specific FSD technology as a million people die from car crashes every year.

 

[no_idea]

It will have an all-day battery life

 

[swingerofbirch]

Pretty sure you’ll still need a license in the event you need to take over

I actually do have one.

My driving issues are complicated . . .

In short, I never should have driven. But I was forced to in high school against my will because I went to a school that was far away and my parents couldn't take me and there was no bus. But I had severe anxiety to an extent that it was dangerous and shouldn't have happened. I don't want to detail some of the close calls. But it should have never happened. I've kept my driver's license for ID purposes and have been able to renew it since then without another test, but I haven't driven in two decades. I tried once in my neighborhood. I can manage like 10-15 mph driving. The problem is that I can't think fast enough at higher speeds. I'd be fine driving if all the roads were 15 mph speed limit. Maybe I was meant to drive in the early 1900s.

I've developed some other health problems since then, as well.

 

[shapesinaframe]

Samsung already got Kia making their car

 

[DakotaGuy]

Quite often the Asian manufacturers have proved to produce very reliable vehicles. So, what is “quality”?

Toyota and Kia are both considered Asian manufacturers, but Toyota builds a MUCH higher quality product. Just because Kia is Asian doesn't mean they build good products. I'd put them below most automakers Asian, US and European in quality.

 

[aleni]

Just like the iPhone it will be a total flop. Who would want to try this out? Something new? That’s crazy!

A phone is something that’s not gonna wreck your life if it had a bug, an automated car without manual overriding made by a new player in town scares me.

 

[SFjohn]

My Kia’s infotainment system was developed by Microsoft, and its UI is astonishingly bad.

Sounds like a good reason to partner with Apple.

 

[SFjohn]

I’m wondering about the liability issue. It seems it might have been some what addressed in California but in other jurisdiction?

My guess is when stage 5 auto driving arrives those cars will include lifetime insurance in the price ( if they are for sale for individuals ). For those that want to drive themselves, insurance will be much more expensive.

 

[SFjohn]

I own two Tesla's and you have nailed it here. Tesla quality is a dumpster fire.

Has Tesla quality improved over time, or is it still as bad as you describe?

 

[SFjohn]

That’s when they quietly removed the shift-key capitalisation function that enabled you to change the case of a word from lowercase, to UPPERCASE to Capitalcase just by selecting the word and toggling shift.

I guess there must have been a patent issue for them to remove such a useful function.

What I find really odd is there was never any complaints about it online. I started to wonder if it was just me that it stopped working for 🤔

Double tap on caps key.

 

[shapesinaframe]

Double tap on caps key.

Not the same thing. Prior to iOS 13 it was possible to select a word in a body of text then press shift to be presented with the various capitalisations of that word as autocorrect options.

 

[cardfan]

Samsung already got Kia making their car

Dude, you’re getting a Kia. Lol.

Poor apple. But then again this is pretty stupid already.

 

[ericwn]

A phone is something that’s not gonna wreck your life if it had a bug, an automated car without manual overriding made by a new player in town scares me.

Folks playing on their cell phones while driving set the bar rather low to make such cars a success. These retards scare me way more tbh.

 

[AustinIllini]

Has Tesla quality improved over time, or is it still as bad as you describe?

It used to be like "This car isn't fit to sell" bad. Now it's more like "yeah, this is acceptable and really cool to own and drive" but it doesn't stand up well to the major manufacturers.

Best way to describe it is "The whole thing feels like it doesn't fit together quite right"

 

[SFjohn]

It used to be like "This car isn't fit to sell" bad. Now it's more like "yeah, this is acceptable and really cool to own and drive" but it doesn't stand up well to the major manufacturers.

Best way to describe it is "The whole thing feels like it doesn't fit together quite right"

Thank you, that's really helpful information.

 

[sidewinder3000]

Does anyone else think that it’s weird that the way this article describes the product, it feels sort of like a B to B offering? Apple is all about amazing design, look and feel, and being insanely great. I’m just not sure how that jives with fleet vehicles? Those sorts of cars don’t need to have the design, fit, and finish of typical Apple products. Plus, Apple doesn’t really make products specifically designed for business use first. They create products for consumers that are often so popular that people choose to use them in business, but that’s not their bread and butter, not their market strategy. So something‘s amiss here. Wrong info, missing info, something‘s not quite right.