Nov 20, 2023·edited Nov 20, 2023Liked by Timothy B Lee
We're gonna miss Cruise when its gone. Sure its technology was clearly worse than Waymo's, but it did basically work! They were so close. Now yet another tech market is headed towards monopoly...
Tesla is obviously working hard on FSD, but I don't consider them to be direct competitors with Waymo. FSD is a driver-assistance product—it's only designed to be used with direct customer supervision, whereas Waymo doesn't even let passengers sit in the driver's seat. Elon Musk has talked about eventually having Tesla robotaxis but given that they haven't even started testing driverless vehicles (which Waymo has been doing for 3+ years) I would say they are years away from Tesla driverless cars becoming widely available.
Waymo has done more than 35 million miles of testing with safety drivers and more than 4 million miles driverless. Tesla customers have used Autopilot for orders of magnitude more miles than that, but I don't know how much data Tesla has collected from those miles. But I don't think lack of data is going to be a problem for Tesla. The problem is more with the quality of data—if a customer disengages, it's hard to know if that's because Autopilot made a mistake or the customer just needed to make a bathroom stop. Whereas Waymo's safety drivers are trained to make careful notes each time they intervene, which makes the resulting data more useful for training.
It's a great question and one I wish I had a better answer to. I used to be optimistic about Nuro because delivery seems like an easier problem—at a minimum you don't need to worry about injuries to passengers. But despite an early start and lots of funding, Nuro hasn't expanded significantly.
My understanding is that part of the issue is that for regulatory issues they are limited to lower speeds (I think 25 mph) which means they can't operate on the "main road" in many suburban neighborhoods. And it's been hard to find grocery or pizza stores that have access to a lot of potential customers without crossing high-speed roads. They could start off in urban neighborhoods, of course, but then they'd have to deal with all the chaos that Waymo and Cruise have been struggling with over the last year.
I think you are being far too charitable about his ‘hardcharging’ style, which looks from here like pure tech bro arrogance and disregard for the safety of others in deference to profit. His leaving is not a loss for the industry, it is a gain because without trust the public will never embrace this technology and his policies abused any trust they might have had. We have enough unjustified fears about AI without having CEOs who cut corners with things that can do real damage like vehicles.
I mean Brian Salesky had a less hard charging style and Argo didn't make it. I (obviously) think Vogt should have done more to prioritize safety and transparency. But there's also genuine value in setting a clear vision and pushing your people to work hard to achieve it. I think it'll be hard for Vogt's successor to do that as well as he did.
How is it success to have the largest state in the nation ban your business after seven years of work? Why should we elevate people who burn through $2 billion with a viable business that crashes and burns because they created a toxic environment that disregarded safety in favor of good PR? Sorry, not buying any of it.
When did I describe Cruise as a success or say we should elevate them? I feel like you're reacting to things I didn't write.
My view is that overall Kyle Vogt handled things badly and firing him was the right move, but there's a danger his successor will over-correct in the opposite direction.
Thanks for the article. Last days I wondered whether Chinese AV would beat American ones. I saw in videos circulating those cars freely in many Chinese cities. Do regulators from both countries differ greatly on any aspect of the car technology? Chinese regulators beat America by certifying the first eVTOL vehicle in history, obviously, geopolitics involved. But which is the main focus of China in AV? I'm almost convinced that it's not safety.
I have not done enough reporting on the Chinese market to be able to answer questions like this. I don't speak Chinese and have not visited, so it's hard to tell from a distance what is "real." I definitely think that the US and China are the two leading countries for AV technology right now.
We're gonna miss Cruise when its gone. Sure its technology was clearly worse than Waymo's, but it did basically work! They were so close. Now yet another tech market is headed towards monopoly...
Legacy automakers unable to compete in a new software space. Isn't Tesla hard at work on autonomous driving as well?
Tesla is obviously working hard on FSD, but I don't consider them to be direct competitors with Waymo. FSD is a driver-assistance product—it's only designed to be used with direct customer supervision, whereas Waymo doesn't even let passengers sit in the driver's seat. Elon Musk has talked about eventually having Tesla robotaxis but given that they haven't even started testing driverless vehicles (which Waymo has been doing for 3+ years) I would say they are years away from Tesla driverless cars becoming widely available.
I was wondering the same, thanks!
Do you have a rough idea of how many km worse of data Tesla and Waymo collected in human and autonomous mode?
Also, do you have a rule of thumbs for how much time with human data helps the same as how much time actually experimenting the autonomous drive?
Waymo has done more than 35 million miles of testing with safety drivers and more than 4 million miles driverless. Tesla customers have used Autopilot for orders of magnitude more miles than that, but I don't know how much data Tesla has collected from those miles. But I don't think lack of data is going to be a problem for Tesla. The problem is more with the quality of data—if a customer disengages, it's hard to know if that's because Autopilot made a mistake or the customer just needed to make a bathroom stop. Whereas Waymo's safety drivers are trained to make careful notes each time they intervene, which makes the resulting data more useful for training.
Thanks 🙏
What about the delivery plays like Nuro?
It's a great question and one I wish I had a better answer to. I used to be optimistic about Nuro because delivery seems like an easier problem—at a minimum you don't need to worry about injuries to passengers. But despite an early start and lots of funding, Nuro hasn't expanded significantly.
My understanding is that part of the issue is that for regulatory issues they are limited to lower speeds (I think 25 mph) which means they can't operate on the "main road" in many suburban neighborhoods. And it's been hard to find grocery or pizza stores that have access to a lot of potential customers without crossing high-speed roads. They could start off in urban neighborhoods, of course, but then they'd have to deal with all the chaos that Waymo and Cruise have been struggling with over the last year.
I think you are being far too charitable about his ‘hardcharging’ style, which looks from here like pure tech bro arrogance and disregard for the safety of others in deference to profit. His leaving is not a loss for the industry, it is a gain because without trust the public will never embrace this technology and his policies abused any trust they might have had. We have enough unjustified fears about AI without having CEOs who cut corners with things that can do real damage like vehicles.
I mean Brian Salesky had a less hard charging style and Argo didn't make it. I (obviously) think Vogt should have done more to prioritize safety and transparency. But there's also genuine value in setting a clear vision and pushing your people to work hard to achieve it. I think it'll be hard for Vogt's successor to do that as well as he did.
How is it success to have the largest state in the nation ban your business after seven years of work? Why should we elevate people who burn through $2 billion with a viable business that crashes and burns because they created a toxic environment that disregarded safety in favor of good PR? Sorry, not buying any of it.
When did I describe Cruise as a success or say we should elevate them? I feel like you're reacting to things I didn't write.
My view is that overall Kyle Vogt handled things badly and firing him was the right move, but there's a danger his successor will over-correct in the opposite direction.
Thanks for the article. Last days I wondered whether Chinese AV would beat American ones. I saw in videos circulating those cars freely in many Chinese cities. Do regulators from both countries differ greatly on any aspect of the car technology? Chinese regulators beat America by certifying the first eVTOL vehicle in history, obviously, geopolitics involved. But which is the main focus of China in AV? I'm almost convinced that it's not safety.
I have not done enough reporting on the Chinese market to be able to answer questions like this. I don't speak Chinese and have not visited, so it's hard to tell from a distance what is "real." I definitely think that the US and China are the two leading countries for AV technology right now.
Thanks indeed for fast reply. I'll keep searching and share the info I find.