The competitive landscape of autonomous car companies

[cwerdna]

Even most of Waymo’s testing is outside California, and yet we only know the California disengagement rate.

I had to look this up and you are correct. Waymo drove 2 million autonomous miles in 2017 mentions this

Waymo's vehicles drove 2 million miles in self-driving mode across 25 cities in 2017, putting its total autonomous miles to 4 million. It accelerated its testing to prepare for its ride-hailing fleet's launch this year, allowing it to "gather as much data as possible in order to improve [its] technology." According to its annual report submitted to the government of California, Waymo drove 352,545 of those miles in The Golden State from December 2016 to November 2017. Within that period, the company reported a total of 63 disengagements (instances wherein the human test driver had to step in), which means its vehicles drove an average of 5,595 miles for every disengagement.

 

[tander]

...

1. Progress on autonomy is a function of data.​

And it is true that:

2. Tesla has the most data.​

Then it follows that:

3. Tesla is making the most progress on autonomy.​

This is the logical conclusion I keep coming back to, but I’m very open to the possibility that it’s not correct. I am looking for someone who articulate why this conclusion isn’t sound.

Some ideas:

• lidar is too important (I would like to see more hard data on this)
• data from testing in autonomous mode is what matters (perhaps for path planning and control?)
• computing, not data, is what matters (esoteric)
• HD mapping data is what matters (assumes everything else is already production-ready)
• AI talent is what matters (needs elaboration)
• what else?

Interesting write up.
1. Seems like there are different approaches but for Tesla especially it's very data driven
2. Even if they don't, they are adding something 1000 new data collectors every day, and that number is only going up
3. That seems probable, but they also have to be careful about legal/insurance limitations, there still hasn't even been a Federal bill passed so they can't just let everyone start using it even if they are the most advanced

 

[Lasairfion]

Looks like it'll be the insurance companies pushing the standardised testing envelope for this. Thatcham's new 3D model test will become a part of Euro NCAP this year. As such I expect all companies, including Tesla, will need to make auto-driving functionality fit to a standard model (such as actually coming to a full stop).

 

[strangecosmos]

Cool video. Helpful information. Funny to hear how much cultural variation there is between countries.