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Blog Elon Musk Groans About Delphi’s $450M NuTonomy Acquisition

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Delphi Automotive announced today that it will acquire autonomous vehicle technology company nuTonomy Inc. for $450 million.

By combining efforts with nuTonomy in Boston, Singapore, and other pilot cities around the world, Delphi will have 60 autonomous cars on the road across three continents by year-end, with the goal to further accelerate global fleet expansion and technology development, according to a release.

“Our mission has always been to radically improve the safety, efficiency, and accessibility of transportation worldwide,” nuTonomy co-founder and CEO Karl Iagnemma said in a release. “Joining forces with Delphi brings us one step closer to achieving our goal with a market-leading partner whose vision directly aligns with ours. Together we will set the global standard for excellence in autonomous driving technology.”

The acquisition of nuTonomy is the latest in a series of investments that Delphi has made in the mobility space, including the acquisition of autonomous driving software developer Ottomatika and data service companies Control-Tec and Movimento.

Delphi is also working to build a self-driving car by 2019 through a partnership with Mobileye, Tesla’s former supplier of the camera vision system used in its Autopilot self-driving efforts.

Tesla Elon CEO Musk commented about the acquisition news on Twitter in a way that did not come across as supportive. He offered one word: “Groan”.


 

 
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If I can interpret Mr. Musk's monosyllabic response, he is essentially saying "you have to be kidding. AI is hard. Doing it safely and right takes a lot of talent, money, time, and data. I'm not seeing a lot of anything like that here, only a turn-key attitude about an unsolved problem. Don't think, Verge reporter, that by bringing it to my attention, you think you've alerted me to serious competition. GM thinks they have comparable technology to what we built, but the Bolt-autonomy program has problems clearing intersections and keeps getting rear-ended by driving unpredictably versus a human operator. Look at the secret Apple Titan project that flopped. We scuttled MobileEye because they were too slow for our rate of research, and that product is central to what NuTonomy is building, apparently."

Gentleman that he is, I think "groan" was his only appropriate response.
 
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If I can interpret Mr. Musk's monosyllabic response, he is essentially saying "you have to be kidding. AI is hard. Doing it safely and right takes a lot of talent, money, time, and data. I'm not seeing a lot of anything like that here, only a turn-key attitude about an unsolved problem. Don't think, Verge reporter, that by bringing it to my attention, you think you've alerted me to serious competition. GM thinks they have comparable technology to what we built, but the Bolt-autonomy program has problems clearing intersections and keeps getting rear-ended by driving unpredictably versus a human operator. Look at the secret Apple Titan project that flopped. We scuttled MobileEye because they were too slow for our rate of research, and that product is central to what NuTonomy is building, apparently."

Gentleman that he is, I think "groan" was his only appropriate response.

GM has zero at-fault AV incidents so far, and now is going to run in New York City, not just the lunatic asylum that is San Francisco. Google and Uber moved to the suburbs of Arizona from SF to play it safe.

I experience unpredictable drivers every single day that I drive. Oddly, I don't ram them. Not even at red lights or crosswalks with pedestrian in them.

Tips:
  • It is the front of your car that is the most likely to ram an object.
  • If you do not stop before you reach the car in front of you, you will strike it.
  • The windshield is an engineered product. They make it out of a clear substance for a good reason. This allows you see objects in front of you that you could hit.
  • In order to use a windshield to it's full advantage, it is always best to look through it at objects you might strike.
You're welcome!
 
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GM has zero at-fault AV incidents so far, and now is going to run in New York City, not just the lunatic asylum that is San Francisco. Google and Uber moved to the suburbs of Arizona from SF to play it safe.

I experience unpredictable drivers every single day that I drive. Oddly, I don't ram them. Not even at red lights or crosswalks with pedestrian in them.

Snarkiness aside, the Bolt vehicles are getting rammed from behind on a regular basis. Also, they run red lights and that's why they aren't in San Francisco. Feel free to find that dashcam footage on Youtube.
 
Snarkiness aside, the Bolt vehicles are getting rammed from behind on a regular basis. Also, they run red lights and that's why they aren't in San Francisco. Feel free to find that dashcam footage on Youtube.

Bolts are mainly in San Francisco. It was tough to get permission for NY, they were really anal about it. Must have police escort, etc.

You are welcome to find out:

SF: Cruise Automation - Careers -

NY: Cruise Automation - Careers -

Here's the latest:

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/c...-1e56023ec3cc/GMCruise_100717.pdf?MOD=AJPERES

These tend to be the little minor dings you see in urban settings on cars. The rear car apologized, he had a leg cramp? More likely a Beer or Text Cramp since it was 2:35am and bars close in SF at 2am. Some have even been hit and run.

Go into the densest, nastiest part of the nearest major city near you. It won't be SF, but it will be adequate. Look at the bumpers of cars for marks. That means there was a collision. When I was in Paris, it seemed to be over 50% of the cars had dents.

In a large city, hundreds of such collisions are likely to occur each week. And GM runs a lot of cars.
 
I knew it. The GM Bolts are going out and getting drunk at bars which is why they are driving slowly through intersections and erratically. Makes perfect sense. :p

Thanks for the extra details, I appreciate learning here.

Bolts are mainly in San Francisco.
(...)
These tend to be the little minor dings you see in urban settings on cars. The rear car apologized, he had a leg cramp? More likely a Beer or Text Cramp since it was 2:35am and bars close in SF at 2am. Some have even been hit and run.
 
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