MitchJi
Trying to learn kindness, patience & forgiveness
From Ted:
On Tesla, Musk said the Model 3 was likely to start production in July. It will have autopilot using only cameras and GPS, rather than lidar. “Once you solve vision, autonomy is solved. That’s why our focus is so heavily on having a vision neural net that’s very effective for road conditions. You can absolutely be superhuman with just cameras; ten times better than humans.”
Musk believes Tesla will have a fully autonomous car cross the USA by the end of 2017 and said the firm is on track for being able to go cross country from a parking lot in LA to a parking lot in New York fully autonomously in November or December, with no controls touched at any point during the entire journey. "I'm fairly confident it will be able to do that route even if you change that route dynamically. It should be able to go anywhere on the highway system in any given country.”
Maybe buying December or January calls is a good idea!
But he did warn that the increasing use of autonomous cars would in fact increase traffic congestion.
“A lot of people think that when you make cars autonomous they'll go faster and that will alleviate congestion. That's to some extent true. But the affordability of [using] cars will be better than a bus, so the amount of driving will grow with the shared economy, and traffic will get far worse.”
Instead, he explained there would be a “shared-autonomy fleet”: “You buy your car, you can choose to use it exclusively, by friends or family, by others rated five star, or you can choose to share it some of the time.”
The reason for the tunnels is to reduce the effect of congestion. It's the only possible and possibly affordable way to do that. To early to know if he can make this affordable or not:
The business, which he calls the Boring Company, is initially targeting Musk's home town of Los Angeles but could extend across the US. “We're trying to dig a hole under LA – to be the beginning of what will be a 3D network of tunnels,” he told TED curator Chris Anderson at the annual conference in Vancouver. “Traffic takes away so much of your life, and it’s particularly horrible in LA. There's no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have. You can eliminate any arbitrary level of urban congestion with a tunnel network.”
For the first time, Musk also revealed details about how the network will work, explaining that cars will enter and exit the tunnel network on “elevators” built into the road. These would each require just one parking space, Musk said. Once underground, “there’s no speed limit.”
When asked about costs, Musk said the LA subway extension cost $2bn for two and a half miles so he's hoping for “at least a tenfold improvement in the cost of tunnelling per mile” with The Boring Company. If a single road needs to be 26ft to 28ft in diameter, you can shrink that diameter to 12ft, explained Musk, which cuts the cross-sectional area by a factor of four. “That's roughly half the price cut right there.”
“I have a pet snail called Gary,“ added Musk, and “Gary is capable of going 14 times faster than a tunnel boring machine. We want to beat Gary, who's not a patient little fellow. Victory is beating the snail.”
Continuing, Musk argued that tunnelling has advantages over flying cars. “There’s a challenge of flying cars – there'll be quite noisy, the wind force generated will be quite high. And with these things [flying] above, it’s not an anxiety-reducing situation. You'll think, did they service their hubcap – or will it come off and guillotine me?”
On Tesla, Musk said the Model 3 was likely to start production in July. It will have autopilot using only cameras and GPS, rather than lidar. “Once you solve vision, autonomy is solved. That’s why our focus is so heavily on having a vision neural net that’s very effective for road conditions. You can absolutely be superhuman with just cameras; ten times better than humans.”
Musk believes Tesla will have a fully autonomous car cross the USA by the end of 2017 and said the firm is on track for being able to go cross country from a parking lot in LA to a parking lot in New York fully autonomously in November or December, with no controls touched at any point during the entire journey. "I'm fairly confident it will be able to do that route even if you change that route dynamically. It should be able to go anywhere on the highway system in any given country.”
Maybe buying December or January calls is a good idea!
But he did warn that the increasing use of autonomous cars would in fact increase traffic congestion.
“A lot of people think that when you make cars autonomous they'll go faster and that will alleviate congestion. That's to some extent true. But the affordability of [using] cars will be better than a bus, so the amount of driving will grow with the shared economy, and traffic will get far worse.”
Instead, he explained there would be a “shared-autonomy fleet”: “You buy your car, you can choose to use it exclusively, by friends or family, by others rated five star, or you can choose to share it some of the time.”
The reason for the tunnels is to reduce the effect of congestion. It's the only possible and possibly affordable way to do that. To early to know if he can make this affordable or not:
The business, which he calls the Boring Company, is initially targeting Musk's home town of Los Angeles but could extend across the US. “We're trying to dig a hole under LA – to be the beginning of what will be a 3D network of tunnels,” he told TED curator Chris Anderson at the annual conference in Vancouver. “Traffic takes away so much of your life, and it’s particularly horrible in LA. There's no real limit to how many levels of tunnel you can have. You can eliminate any arbitrary level of urban congestion with a tunnel network.”
For the first time, Musk also revealed details about how the network will work, explaining that cars will enter and exit the tunnel network on “elevators” built into the road. These would each require just one parking space, Musk said. Once underground, “there’s no speed limit.”
When asked about costs, Musk said the LA subway extension cost $2bn for two and a half miles so he's hoping for “at least a tenfold improvement in the cost of tunnelling per mile” with The Boring Company. If a single road needs to be 26ft to 28ft in diameter, you can shrink that diameter to 12ft, explained Musk, which cuts the cross-sectional area by a factor of four. “That's roughly half the price cut right there.”
“I have a pet snail called Gary,“ added Musk, and “Gary is capable of going 14 times faster than a tunnel boring machine. We want to beat Gary, who's not a patient little fellow. Victory is beating the snail.”
Continuing, Musk argued that tunnelling has advantages over flying cars. “There’s a challenge of flying cars – there'll be quite noisy, the wind force generated will be quite high. And with these things [flying] above, it’s not an anxiety-reducing situation. You'll think, did they service their hubcap – or will it come off and guillotine me?”
