2024-05-27

12.21 - Checkers

May 27, 2024Newsletter archive →

Timothy Lee, May 21, "Tesla fans—and CEO Elon Musk himself—are excited about the prospects for Tesla's Full Self Driving (FSD) software. Tesla released a major upgrade—version 12.3—of the software in March. Then last month Musk announced that Tesla would unveil a purpose-built robotaxi on August 8. Last week Elon Musk announced that a new version of FSD—12.4—is coming out in the coming days and will have a "5X to 10X improvement in miles per intervention."

But I think fans expecting Tesla to launch a driverless taxi service in the near future are going to be disappointed.

During a late March trip to San Francisco, I had a chance to try the latest self-driving technology from both Tesla and Google's Waymo.

During a 45-minute test drive in a Tesla Model X, I had to intervene twice to correct mistakes by the FSD software. In contrast, I rode in driverless Waymo vehicles for more than two hours and didn't notice a single mistake.

So while Tesla's FSD version 12.3 seems like a significant improvement over previous versions of FSD, it still lags behind Waymo's technology.…" Read More

Just Published!!! Go to Amazon.com… You can still be first on your block to have one J.

SmartDrivingCars ZoomCast 373 / PodCast 373 Waymo-Tesla-NVIDIA-SDC Summit & more

F. Fishkin, May 19, "Waymo is playing chess while Tesla is playing checkers? Princeton's Alain Kornhauser and co-host Fred Fishkin weigh in on that piece from Understanding AI. Plus NVIDIA's CEO says Tesla is far ahead in self driving, The Boring Company reaches 2 million rides, this week's Smart Driving Car Summit and more. Tune in and subscribe!

0:00 open
1:13 Understanding AI -Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers.
4:54 6th Princeton Smart Driving Car Summit coming this week
9:58 Yahoo Finance interviews NVIDIA's CEO who says Tesla is far ahead in self driving
20:20 Teslarati- T
27:10 Understanding AI- Ukraine war driving innovation in drone technology
28:45 Bloomberg- AV start-up Gatik takes off by picking off easier routes

The Boring Company has given rides in Las Vegas to two million passengers

Alain Kornhauser, May 12, "…"Read more

G. Mercer, May 18, "It wasn't supposed to be this way. Rome was supposed to be a republic, not a kingdom: "There once was a dream that was Rome…"¹ And cars were supposed to be built to order, not to stock. After over a century of "Pile 'em high and sell 'em cheap!" the Covid shock and chip shortage were supposed to have taught us this lesson: don't pile 'em up (keep production below demand, and thus inventories low) and sell 'em dear (because demand would always exceed supply, and low inventories would relieve the urge to discount).

And for a while it worked. Temporary chip restraints on supply and temporary pandemic boosts to demand² held sales volumes low and kept sales prices high, and inventories at dealerships evaporated. The OEMs made good profits and so did the dealers. But today both the restraints and the boosts are gone, OEM and dealer profits are normalizing, and inventories are building again. (You can see charts on all these variables everywhere online, so I won't inflict them on you here.) Even Tesla, which for years was "supply limited" (there was an immediate buyer for every car they made) is now "demand limited" (with a third or more of its revenue generated by cars in inventory - that is, cars which were built with no pre-arranged buyer lined up).…" Read More

J. Mathews, May 13, Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang believes Tesla's (TSLA) full self-driving (FSD) system is the most advanced system out right now. It also just so happens that Tesla's FSD is powered by Nvidia's chips.

"Tesla is far ahead in self-driving cars," Huang said in an exclusive interview with Yahoo Finance.

"One of the things that's really revolutionary about version 12 of Tesla's full self-driving is that it's an end-to-end generative model," Huang added.

"It learns from watching videos — surround video — and it learns about how to drive end-to-end, and using generative AI, predict the path and how to understand and how to steer the car. So the technology is really revolutionary and the work that [Tesla's] doing is incredible."… Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said on the company's earnings call she expects automotive to be the "largest enterprise vertical within [the] Data Center [segment] this year," and a potential multibillion-dollar business for the company." Read More

Hmmmm… Of course this makes sense to me. People keep driving, data keeps flowing to Tesla. New situations continue to be experienced to enrich the learning process, which undoubtedly is still in its infancy. We may not even be in kindergarten, yet. That learning takes place on nVIDIA "data center" chips that just keep humming delivering societal value in improved driving that today enables a better and safer driving experience. It is that continued humming of more and better nVIDIA chips that will have absorbed more than sufficient experiences that they'll safely, affordably, equitably and sustainably deliver high-quality rides in such high volumes that a desirable mass transit system emerges that is more in tune with basic human desires for a decorum of breathing room and freedom in their chosen living environment rather than being crammed into sterile Orwellian supposedly SmartCities of crammed Pruitt-Igoes of where folks are forced to live rather than want to live. Mass labor needs and mass social services needs cause concentration of housing to serve the needs of conventional mass transportation because to date its economies of scale only existed if many were crammed in short periods of time. It wasn't divisible. 240 car trains operate once per day because the energy and labor required to move 240 cars is not divisible into 240 individual chucks, each of which could be moved every 6 minutes throughout a day. This concentration of demand to serve the fixed needs of supply is what is supposedly so smart about smart cities. That concentration of humanity imposes fundamental societal challenges, and it is largely due to the indivisibility of fundamental aspects of fixed-cost elements of conventional mass transit systems. A bus driver is needed to drive the bus, even if there is no one in the bus. Bus driver is expensive, so do everything that you can to jam as many people into the bus. What if the driver was replaceable by something really inexpensive? Would one really want to run big buses infrequently? Alain

Timothy Lee, May 23, "When I started working on Tuesday's story back in March, I wasn't expecting it to focus so much on Tesla. My plan was to take some Waymo rides, talk to some locals about their experiences with Waymo, and then write a Waymo-focused piece. But while I was there, I got an unexpected chance to test-drive Tesla's FSD software. I decided that a Waymo vs. Tesla framing would make for a more interesting story.

But that meant leaving some of my Waymo-focused reporting on the cutting room floor. So today I want to share a few additional things I learned about Waymo in San Francisco. …

All taxi services are local

These experiences underscore a basic fact about taxi services: they are rooted in specific geographic areas. To offer a taxi service in San Francisco, Waymo needs the infrastructure to charge, clean, and repair vehicles in San Francisco. It helps to have a good relationship with police and firefighters in the city. And ultimately, it's important for San Francisco voters to have a positive impression of Waymo—not only as customers but also as drivers and pedestrians who share the road with Waymo vehicles.

Waymo has spent several years investing in the infrastructure and relationships required to make Waymo's San Francisco taxi service successful. I don't know if Waymo will ultimately be successful—the company has a number of remaining challenges. But I think it's going to be hard for a company to succeed in this business if they don't make these kinds of investments in the cities where they offer taxi services.…" Read More

Z. Visconti, May 25, "The Boring Company announced the news on X on Friday after it surpassed one million passengers in its underground loop in Las Vegas, Nevada, last March. The company is currently operating rides in its Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC) loop, the first of the company's underground ride-hailing network.

The company has been approved for 81 additional stops throughout Las Vegas, dubbed the Las Vegas loop, and it has already been drilling to the site of upcoming stations from the LVCC loop...." Read More

Tim Mak, May 6, "There's no place in the world where drone innovation is happening faster than in Ukraine.

The drone war has been an equalizer in the mismatched war of aggression by Russia. With fewer funds and fewer soldiers, Ukraine has needed to out-think and out-innovate the Russian military. And nowhere is that more evident than in drone technology, which has grown by leaps and bounds since the full-scale invasion just over two years ago.

"It would be fair to say that Ukraine has done a great amount of work in the drone area by using the cheapest parts for drones to develop the most effective weapons," said Alexander Chernyavskiy, the head of the Ukrainian charity fund Free in Spirit. "The U.S. creates the most advanced drones in the world… in Ukraine, we don't have [many] resources to buy such expensive drones."…" Read More

David Welch, May 8, "....Against this gloomy backdrop, Gatik will be worth watching. The company has 65 trucks on the road today, most of which have a human minding the wheel. The company charges delivery fees to clients including Walmart, Kroger, Georgia-Pacific and Tyson Foods. Some of its customers also are investors. A few of its trucks deliver freight for Walmart and the Canadian retailer Loblaw with no drivers.

Gatik's progress stems in part from what its vehicles don't do. Its trucks provide middle-mile delivery services from distribution centers to stores on easy and predictable routes. The trucks rarely go to more than five different destinations and usually no farther than 300 miles. With the driver out, the top speed is 45 miles per hour.

With just a handful of potential destinations, the mapping, traffic and edge-case data required is far less for a Gatik truck that it is for a robotaxi, which needs to navigate every five-point intersection and acute-angle turn wherever they operate.

Gatik's trucks also avoid schools, highways, major pedestrian areas and, notably, fire stations. Cruise and Waymo both caught heat from the San Francisco Fire Department because their vehicles impeded emergency responders…. " Read More

F. Lambert, May 22, "Tesla has finally decided to release its Autopilot safety data report after taking a break of more than a year.

For years, Tesla used to release a "Vehicle safety report" that tracked miles between accidents in its vehicles based on the level of Autopilot used or not used and compared it to the industry average…." Read More

SmartDrivingCars Summit Evening May 29 -> May 31, 2024

Alain Kornhauser, May 5, "We promise civil and lively discussions as to how to improve the Quality-of-Life (QoL) for many while disrupting the QoL to as few as possible. Focus will be on the business aspects…

Giving Oneself a Ride

Latest on ADAS Safety, Functionality, Regulation and potential Collaboration (given anti-trust relaxation), consumer value

Getting a Driverless Ride

By people and goods using public roads
"Proof-of-Concept" (Safety Update and Last "50 feet" delivery concepts)
"Proof-of-Market" (Arizona, California, Texas, ... rural & beyond)
"Proof-of-Policy/Politics/Sociology" (Regulation + Opportunities for Collaboration on Safety (given anti-trust relaxation.))
By people and goods on private property.
"Proof-of-Concept" (Safety Update)
"Proof-of-Market" (Return-on-Investment (RoI) focus on: Private "ways", Manufacturing, Ports, Terminals, Warehouses, Mining, Farms)
"Proof-of-Policy/Politics/CorporateGovernance" (OSHA, Unions)

Workshop

MOVES – Style Deployments "anywhere". (See Example)
Design, Analysis, Simulation, Animation & Business Case

…." Read More