Random EV thoughts.....

unkel

The most revealing is that the Tesla team working on AI is only a few dozen people. That's barely bigger than the Comma AI team (Open Pilot). These are the two most serious teams (aiming for "winning" self driving) who do not use lidar because they believe computer vision is enough. I have to say they had me convinced a long time ago. A human only has vision too, and very limited vision at that with also very limited processing power and very limited memory and very limited experience. And only one set of eyes, that can only look in one direction at a time. And yet that human is able to fully self drive

AndyBoBandy

KCross wrote: »

This is worth a look if you are a bit of a nerd and want to see how Tesla's vision technology works and how they improve it over time.

At about 12 minutes in.. quite incredible.

They discover that some signs (in this case stop signs) can be obscured in various different ways, so they send an update/request out to the fleet (of 1,000,000 cars), and if any of the fleet come across something similar, they send a photo of it back to Tesla to help them better understand and adapt to it for future iterations of the FSD software. So they are literally getting feedback from anywhere a Tesla could be driving. They are basically learning.

Incredible.

Lumen

unkel wrote: »

The most revealing is that the Tesla team working on AI is only a few dozen people. That's barely bigger than the Comma AI team (Open Pilot). These are the two most serious teams (aiming for "winning" self driving) who do not use lidar because they believe computer vision is enough. I have to say they had me convinced a long time ago. A human only has vision too, and very limited vision at that with also very limited processing power and very limited memory and very limited experience. And only one set of eyes, that can only look in one direction at a time. And yet that human is able to fully self drive

Unfortunately safe driving around humans isn't a vision problem, it's a theory of mind problem.

n97 mini

unkel wrote: »

The most revealing is that the Tesla team working on AI is only a few dozen people. That's barely bigger than the Comma AI team (Open Pilot). These are the two most serious teams (aiming for "winning" self driving) who do not use lidar because they believe computer vision is enough. I have to say they had me convinced a long time ago. A human only has vision too, and very limited vision at that with also very limited processing power and very limited memory and very limited experience. And only one set of eyes, that can only look in one direction at a time. And yet that human is able to fully self drive

Humans are far from perfect at self-driving. For machine/AI self-driving to succeed in the market it has to be virtually flawless.

unkel

n97 mini wrote: »

Humans are far from perfect at self-driving. For machine/AI self-driving to succeed in the market it has to be virtually flawless.

I don't get your logic. It has succeeded already to a large extent. Very basic as it is today, Tesla's AP (just level 2 autonomous driving and pretty flawed at that) is already safer than humans. If you don't believe the stats, insurance companies gave a discount if you bought the optional extra AP (back when it wasn't standard on all Teslas)

Euro NCAP will no longer give a new car 5 star safety unless it has autonomous driving level 2 (to be more precise: LKAS, ACC and AEB)

And all this stuff is only available in cars a good 5 years now, still in its infancy. Yet US authorities approval has been requested (last year) and is likely to be granted this year for cars without a steering wheel to drive around on the public road

ELM327

unkel wrote: »

I don't get your logic. It has succeeded already to a large extent. Very basic as it is today, Tesla's AP (just level 2 autonomous driving and pretty flawed at that) is already safer than humans. If you don't believe the stats, insurance companies gave a discount if you bought the optional extra AP (back when it wasn't standard on all Teslas)

Euro NCAP will no longer give a new car 5 star safety unless it has autonomous driving level 2 (to be more precise: LKAS, ACC and AEB)

And all this stuff is only available in cars a good 5 years now, still in its infancy. Yet US authorities approval has been requested (last year) and is likely to be granted this year for cars without a steering wheel to drive around on the public road

His (correct) logic is that the general public perceive a 0.1% failure rate in a human driver to be better than a 0.01% in an AI FSD

unkel

True, but that might have less bearing on where we are going than you think. It is not necessarily a barrier at all for public acceptance of (partially) self driving. It could very well be the norm in say 3 years time that the insurance premium for a human only driven car is USD1000 and the premium for the same car with decent level 2 autonomy is only USD500. Soon after nobody would be driving a car 100% manually any more and (partial) self driving will become the norm. Within years, not decades. From my above examples this has already started happening.

n97 mini

unkel wrote: »

I don't get your logic.

Flying is a lot safer statically than driving, but yet a lot of people are afraid to fly.

And what makes it even more bizarre is people who are afraid to fly will get a taxi, driven by a complete randomer, to/from the airport!

unkel

n97 mini wrote: »

Flying is a lot safer statically than driving, but yet a lot of people are afraid to fly.

I get pleasure out of telling those people that there are no humans involved in taking off or landing, autopilot does all that

AndyBoBandy

unkel wrote: »

I get pleasure out of telling those people that there are no humans involved in taking off or landing, autopilot does all that

Well, Take off & landing* is still mostly done by humans, but everything else is done by the autopilot..

*ILS can land a plane, but 99 times out of 100, the pilots will knock of the AP and manually land (that 3 tone bell you hear about 3-4 minutes before touchdown is AP disengage).

n97 mini

unkel wrote: »

I get pleasure out of telling those people that there are no humans involved in taking off or landing, autopilot does all that

The details aren't really relevant though. Statistically flying is safer, yet people are afraid to fly.

AndyBoBandy

Fould this gem from 2010

https://www.rte.ie/archives/2020/0311/1121681-electric-car-charging-points/

So by 2011, every town in Ireland with 1,500 or more people will have an electric car charger courtesy of eCars....

Days of Future Past indeed.. And Eamon Ryan is about to get back into Government!!

Tesla are the only company to increase sales in April.

https://stats.beepbeep.ie/

ELM327

12 to 14.. woohoo :P

NIMAN

Deleted User wrote: »

Tesla are the only company to increase sales in April.

https://stats.beepbeep.ie/

Jez, they are some shocking sales figures for 2020 so far

edit: is that April 2020, or all of 2020 so far?

ELM327

April 20 vs April 19 YoY

MJohnston

They're actually registration figures too, sales are likely to be pretty much zero, I would expect.

Black_Knight

Imagine getting a car now, bringing it home, sitting it in the driveway because there's nowhere to go, and then calculating how much it is depreciating day on day just sitting in your driveway, because you've exhausted all other avenues of entertainment.

liamog

Black_Knight wrote: »

Imagine getting a car now, bringing it home, sitting it in the driveway because there's nowhere to go, and then calculating how much it is depreciating day on day just sitting in your driveway, because you've exhausted all other avenues of entertainment.

I'm not sure about you, but I've generally found that cars last slightly more than 8 weeks. If you get the car now it will still be usable when the restrictions are lifted. Only people who care about the numbers on the plate will be affected!

Black_Knight

liamog wrote: »

I'm not sure about you, but I've generally found that cars last slightly more than 8 weeks. If you get the car now it will still be usable when the restrictions are lifted. Only people who care about the numbers on the plate will be affected!

I'm more pointing at the pain of getting a new car and not being able to do anything with it.

I've never owned a new car, so number plates don't really matter much to me.

liamog

Here was me putting in you the box of posters who condemn any purchase of a new car, especially if you need to use the dreaded 'f' word to pay for it.

Sorry

unkel

When you getting the MINI? I take it you have your 'f' sorted? :pac:

liamog

Mini was originally due in July. The dealer has been shut due to the current situation and Mini's factory was closed for a while. I'll be giving them a shout after the 18th to see what the story is.
Probably need to start thinking about selling the Up!, but for now it's all good.

I'm about two months behind due to unexpectedly replacing a boiler so any delay won't hurt too much.

Black_Knight

liamog wrote: »

Here was me putting in you the box of posters who condemn any purchase of a new car, especially if you need to use the dreaded 'f' word to pay for it.

Sorry

You're not entirely wrong.

I don't condemn purchasing a new car, I've just never really been in a position or put myself in the position to do so... because I don't like the idea of using the F word when I don't need to. As such, personally I see much better value in buying second hand.

Fair play to those who can buy new, I just can't.

NIMAN

No point slagging of people who buy news cars.
Without them there would be no 2nd hand cars for sale.

NIMAN

NIMAN wrote: »

No point slagging of people who buy new cars.
Without them there would be no 2nd hand cars for sale.

It is mostly companies that buy new cars (at huge discounts), most people who acquire new vehicles lease/rent them.

liamog

Deleted User wrote: »

It is mostly companies that buy new cars (at huge discounts), most people who acquire new vehicles lease/rent them.

That's kind of splitting hairs, wether an individual purchases the car via HP, PCP or cash is somewhat immaterial. For HP and PCP technically the car may be owned by the bank until the final payment but the depreciation is still paid for by the consumer.

Gumbo

Deleted User wrote: »

It is mostly companies that buy new cars (at huge discounts), most people who acquire new vehicles lease/rent them.

Irrelevant to the discussion.
New cars leaving the factory and then leaving the forecourt creates second hand cars for the rest of us.

unkel

Gumbo wrote: »

Irrelevant to the discussion.
New cars leaving the factory and then leaving the forecourt creates second hand cars for the rest of us.

My car depreciated about GBP40k for the first owner over 3 years. Then it depreciated a further GBP32k for the second owner over the next 3 years. Given the resale value of the batteries, the car now only has a maximum of a few more thousand to depreciate. Many thanks to the previous owners for taking the brunt of the financial burden away from me

Black_Knight

Random thought. I've not charged at home in over 3 weeks. Trips have been so short, and those I have made to the shops or a local park have mostly had chargers on site. A glimpse into what it would be like if offices/shops/parks all had complimentary charging.