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Cruise CEO here. Our strategy has been to solve the challenges needed to operate driverless robotaxis on a well-equipped vehicle, then aggressively drive the c

• petilon 5y ago
  Congrats on your incredible accomplishment! Thanks for doing this the responsible way. Tesla's approach does not inspire confidence. Starting at the high end, with expensive, reliable tech and slowly bringing the costs (and bulkiness of the equipment) down is the right approach!
  • mensetmanusman 5y ago
    In my experience, expensive doesn’t necessarily mean more reliable, it could just mean higher fidelity, higher resolution (and possibly less reliable due to the utilization of parts ‘less’ produced on the global supply chain), etc. This improved resolution don’t necessarily help an AI grok the situation in real time with >20 Hz response time though.
    • Closi 5y ago
      I think the overall sentiment is more the "let's avoid premature optimisation" rather than "let's spend the most money". If you have pre-sold a 'self driving' capability which you have guaranteed to be backwards compatible on cars you have already sold, then you are effectively cutting out Lidar as an option unless you are going to go back to all those cars and screw it on. And considering that self-driving isn't solved yet, it seems like a bold move to define both your processing power and your sensing hardware in a way which makes it very difficult to (commercially) change.
• bloodyplonker22 5y ago
  It's good to hear a CEO say "we don't know the answer, but we're making a bet" rather than the typical Elizabeth Holmes style "We are absolutely correct and first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you get convicted of three counts of wire fraud and go to prison".
  • chx 5y ago
  • dannylandau 5y ago
    Good one!
  • gooseus 5y ago
    "This is a solved problem.", "We're light-years ahead of the competition", or "We expect everyone with existing hardware to be able to monetize their cars as robo-taxis by the end of next year" are other great examples.
    • walrus01 5y ago
      to be fair, this is because Elizabeth Holmes is probably a sociopath, so you'd expect to hear something overly confident like that from such. Not that we knew it at the time.
      • ladon86 5y ago
        Yes, but all of those quotes are by Elon Musk…
        • walrus01 5y ago
          True. I actually replied to the entirely wrong comment, should have been one up... I have a great deal more confidence in truly revolutionary things that have been factually delivered by SpaceX (such as 100+ re-uses of a rocket first stage now), and I question how much of that is really due to Musk at all. Maybe Musk as a figurehead. I wonder if all of the Elon fanboys know that much of what's been accomplished at SpaceX is thanks to Gwynne Shotwell, or even know who she is. Things like promising "full self driving" for 6+ years now and charging people $12500 for it leave a really bad taste in my mouth and I find it difficult to square with my overall very positive impression of spacex.
• thomastu 5y ago
  Will Cruise eventually be available on existing TNCs and other MaaS platforms? Or is the play here to create a new vertically integrated taxi service? If you've read Dan Sperling's Three Revolutions, any thoughts on what kind of [transportation future](https://www.planningreport.com/2018/03/21/dan-sperling-three-revolutions-transforming-cars-and-transportation https://www.planningreport.com/2018/03/21/dan-sperling-three...) you foresee Cruise contributing to building ?
• schrep 5y ago
  Congrats on this huge milestone! So refreshing to see a leader in this field say “we are not sure which one will work out” rather than just hyping their stuff. Can I get a test ride soon!
• afropack 5y ago
  Does Cruise plan to try compete with Uber, Lift, etc.? If feel like this tech could have a massive social impact if you sell it to local goverments so they could offer a highly efficient subsidized robotaxi service to their residents. It would democratize access to transportation and enable so many classes of underserved people to gain access to reliable transportation.
• somethoughts 5y ago
  In addition to going into highly dense cities and inserting autonomous cars into existing driver regulation; an interesting auxiliary strategy could be to partner with a master planned community that was designed from the ground up (physically and regulation wise) to be an autonomous first town where the majority of vehicles were autonomous and the majority of home owners were pro-autonomous cars. The roads and pedestrian crossings could be much clearly marked with RF transceivers, etc. and the inclement weather could be pre-considered. HOA agreement could have a "I agree to co-exist with autonomous cars" TOS clause and perhaps a built in monthly subscription. I think a ton of home builders (Lennar, etc.) and senior community developers (Ventas) would be interested if only as a PR concept. I also think a lot of remote Techies/senior citizens would be interested [1]. Sort of like this but replace golf carts with autonomous cars.[2] [1] https://news.voyage.auto/why-retirement-communities-are-perfect-for-self-driving-cars-8bc35edfa804 https://news.voyage.auto/why-retirement-communities-are-perf... [2] Tom Scott - City of Golf Carts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVGqtmd2wM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVGqtmd2wM
  • AlotOfReading 5y ago
    Cruise acqui-hired voyage, which was basically working towards this. I don't think they've done anything with it since though.
• mensetmanusman 5y ago
  I’m assuming well equipped means more capable data processing and bandwidth needs, is this the case? If so, do you have a sense for how many orders of magnitude more bits of data your sensors are acquiring versus Tesla?
• nerdwaller 5y ago
  I'm no where near as experienced as you and your team, but that is what I was thinking as I read this. Tesla rather quickly went from the expensive sensors to the camera based setup they have now and it'll be interesting to watch how all this unfolds, safely from my 2006 vehicle with nearly no computers.
  • loceng 5y ago
    There's absolutely nothing stopping Tesla from adding back lidar/other sensors if the technology becomes cheaper or it turns out visual-only isn't accurate enough; Elon has other advantages that no other company is anywhere near competing with though too, and he clearly understands this, he understands his position well - and it's strong. He's also a very agile entrepreneur/engineer and not afraid to pull the trigger on whatever ideas come to his attention as being the best decision. He's also already succeeded in Tesla's mission - which was to get other vehicle manufacturers to transition to EV, so anything else after that is really just icing on the cake; Tesla stock holders however still believe strongly in him - and I'd argue rightfully so. For now by using the cheapest technology he's arguably selling more EVs and/or making more profit per vehicle. If the market's competition requires a course change, then I don't see why he wouldn't take it - I don't think he'd fall pray to sunk cost fallacy; the reason for decisions may not be obvious to the public either, as we likely don't know details of his nuanced master plan.
    • shaklee3 5y ago
      what's stopping them is fsd has been promised on all these cars without those sensors. taking that away would likely mean a lawsuit
      • loceng 5y ago
        A promise isn't a contract, so whether it's actually guaranteed in the language in whatever agreements may be signed, will be the determining factor. And how the automative industry has functioned since its existence is risk-benefit-cost analysis, so if the cost of a future fallout is less than the short-term benefit then they tend to decide for the short-term benefit; most disgustingly in regards to known problems of vehicles, where only recalls happen if the potential harm/death rate and the cost of that is lower than the cost of replacing whatever needs to be replaced; I'd hope that practice has greatly improved, but who knows - most of our government agencies seem captured by industrial complexes.
• konschubert 5y ago
  As a bike rider, father, and sometimes inattentive human, I would like to say thank you for the safety you are bringing to our cities.
• mocmoc 5y ago
  Amazing I’ve been following cruise long time z, those videos were so funny. Keep on going and conquer the world!
• user3939382 5y ago
  My conclusion from years of self-driving, LIDAR, etc. research is that managing medium to heavy precipitation reliably might be impossible. Visual algorithms run into the same problem as human brains, and the size of e.g. rain drops interferes with the frequencies employed by radio techniques. Is anyone aware of any strategies that give us hope in solving this problem?
  • hammock 5y ago
    Airplanes couldn't fly in inclement weather for decades. Took a while but we solved it. "Oops it's pouring, can't get a Cruise, gotta fall back to an Uber" doesn't sound that terrible to me, for now. Cruise could even offer a product that compensates/insures you for that eventuality, if for example Cruise was your primary vehicle.
    • grayfaced 5y ago
      But if self-driving succeeds then there won't be enough gig-drivers ready-to-go to cover a self-driving outage.
      • hammock 5y ago
        Taxis, available with e.g. a simple phone call, have existed since before telephones and cars really, and they still exist now even as ride-sharing has taken over. They will exist as Cruise rises.
        • oefrha 5y ago
          There might be taxis, but not enough for everyone who wants to catch one. It’s already difficult enough on rainy days.
        • lmm 5y ago
          They exist because they're a viable business because there is enough approximately consistent demand. That's not guaranteed to continue.
  • 5y ago
• pulse7 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing! Sharing details on how your system works brings confidence to customers...
  • belter 5y ago
    Did you watch the videos? Based on the reply to the question: What sets Cruise technology apart from others like Waymo, Tesla...In other words, how was this difficult technical problem, solved in a way others were unable to do so far... And whose reply you can hear here (video at the correct time): https://youtu.be/ABto5nqWgc0?list=PLkK2JX1iHuzz7W8z3roCZEqML0G2R9jX8&t=209 https://youtu.be/ABto5nqWgc0?list=PLkK2JX1iHuzz7W8z3roCZEqML... Thank you, but wont be volunteering to ride one of these.
    • wutbrodo 5y ago
      Lol, what answer do you expect from a question like that? At a high level, Cruise is taking the same approach as Waymo, and a different one from Tesla: start with lots of hardware, HD maps, and a targeted operating domain, then try to scale. Answering in any more detail would be a) giving away trade secrets and b) rely on knowing trade secrets about Waymo's cars that they probably don't know.
• bheights321 5y ago
  I see a few neighborhoods missing on the signup sheet. Are the crazy Bernal Heights streets a bit too much for this stage? :) Looking forward to ride from my home there!
• self_driving 5y ago
• gibsonf1 5y ago
  Unless you have a conceptual AI with causal systems understanding reacting in real-time to a spacetime model of the world based on current and recent events, people are going to get injured and or killed by unusual real-world events riding in these autonomous cars. Although cats and dogs have great perception, we don't let them drive our cars for a reason.
  • wutbrodo 5y ago
    > people are going to get injured and or killed by unusual real-world events riding in these autonomous cars I don't think anyone inside or outside of the AV industry is expecting that there will be zero injuries or fatalities involving AVs. Why would that be the bar, when AV rides displace human drives that already injure and kill tens of thousands?
    • gibsonf1 5y ago
      The difference would be frequency of injury and/or death as AV cars can't think and react dynamically to non-pattern situations.
      • wutbrodo 5y ago
        Sure, and they can't get drunk or fall asleep either. Even for taking for granted that AVs can't find an operating domain in which "non-pattern situations" are covered by failsafes, it's far from obvious that the net advantage goes to human drivers.
• spywaregorilla 5y ago
  You guys ever think about selling your LIDAR data?
• femto 5y ago
  What’s your view on whether self-driving cars should automatically be 100% liable for any accidents? I ask this in the context of machines being governed by classical deterministic physics, so there is an argument that there is no such thing as an accident involving a self-driving car: only a design flaw. This is a genuine question, as I can see that companies with self-driving systems that work, and who do serious fault analysis and rectification, might be in favour of 100% liability. 100% liability would stop cowboys from entering/surviving in the industry and sullying the reputation of self-driving. A company’s system would have to perform well enough that any residual risk of injury could be covered by an affordable insurance policy.
  • JaimeThompson 5y ago
    How does one take into account lack of maintenance by the end user in a strict 100% liability situation?
    • julienb_sea 5y ago
      This problem should be solvable in software. The car can simply refuse to operate in a situation where maintenance is required.
      • ironman1478 5y ago
        How do you know maintenance is required in a completely automated fashion?
        • Retric 5y ago
          Service intervals based on time and usage combined with certified repair. From a passengers perspective airlines are strictly liable but presumably airlines could then sue the relevant third parties in such a case. I suspect a similar model could work fine for self driving cars.
        • walrus01 5y ago
          My fear is that car manufacturers will turn cars into a totally dealer serviceable only thing (even more than they are now), like the car version of the glued shut Microsoft surface that gets a 1/10 on the ifixit repairability score.
• bendbro 5y ago
  I expect the media led zeitgeist to slime you on a few fronts: 1. AI/automation/tech bros undercutting the working class. 2. The mortal danger of self driving cars to pedestrians and the public- perhaps with an AI bias/racism zest. 3. The price, location-availability, or otherwise explicit exclusion of people that damage the cars or are otherwise unprofitable being harmful. 4. The proliferation of self driving cars reducing public transit use, thus reducing public transit investment, reducing transit access for poor, increasing pollution, and clogging roads. 5. Something something self driving taxis are subsidized by the government via public investment in roads. All of these arguments are bullshit and I am not excited to hear people recite them to me in 5 years.
  • babyshake 5y ago
    All-electric fleets of safe, non-honking AVs that are fine with whatever routes are required of them and go to designated areas to park and charge are going to make our downtown areas so much better.
    • astrange 5y ago
      The urbanist PoV is that anything car-shaped is bad for a city and it doesn't matter how smart it is. The proper answer is micromobility, aka ebikes and smaller vehicles that don't need to ever go highway speeds. Full size EVs are still bad for air quality too because of tire dust.
      • bluGill 5y ago
        Full sized EVs have their place in cities. However it isn't for mass transit, the train or bus is for getting people around. EVs are for getting goods and maintenance tools around. This is a small minority of traffic in most cities.
  • mvhvv 5y ago
    Just because you don't want to think about externalities doesn't mean they don't exist. There are a lot of strong ideological assumptions you have to make to handwave all these away as "bullshit".
• soaxre 5y ago
  No, the different strategies are that Tesla has a vehicle actually being used by hundreds of thousands of people and is slowly incrementally improving their self driving with massive amounts of feedback and data, while these demo companies are doing if statements around the block.
  • justapassenger 5y ago
    > vehicle actually being used by hundreds of thousands of people and is slowly incrementally improving their self driving with massive amounts of feedback and data Throwing data at the problem isn't going to solve it. Only people without expertise in AI think that's how it works.
  • Fricken 5y ago
    The coca cola company sells even more units of non-self driving products than Tesla, and for a fraction of the cost!
  • ra7 5y ago
    > while these demo companies are doing if statements around the block. [citation needed] I only ever see Tesla fanbase making outrageous claims like this without any supporting evidence.
    • soaxre 5y ago
      Well, you are ignoring the point. The whole differentiating strategy between Tesla and everyone else is the incrementally improvement of large amounts of vehicles versus the magic “hey, we came out of nowhere and now just drive ourselves”. This has been repeated though out tech history and the incrementally improving real life one always wins.
      • ra7 5y ago
        And Tesla will just ingest large amounts of data from their fleet and magically dump an L5 solution one day? That's believable? Elon Musk has been promising imminent L5 self driving every year for the past 7 years; that requires more than incremental improvement. The ones actually doing incremental improvements are companies like Cruise and Waymo, making it work one geography at a time.
• panabee 5y ago
  thanks for pushing the frontier of self-driving cars and articulating this strategy. historically, the pattern in tech is to succeed with strategy 2 -- that is, ride moore's law and achieve exceptional performance by combining commodities into super systems. google server farms are the canonical example. obviously, this is only a pattern and not a law. tesla's pathway represents strategy 1: start with super machines then drive costs down. for non-SDC experts like me, could you share why it felt more compelling to start with super machines then drive costs down? excited to see cruise help lead society into the future! thanks again.
• GeorgeTirebiter 5y ago
  An extremely wise set of decisions. I also see no reason, a priori, to 'blind' a vehicle to certain spectra of EM emissions; nor to accept that only passive sensing (cameras) can be used, when Active Sensing (probing, if you will) that Radar and LiDAR use is clearly giving the control computers more information about Reality (tm). By using all (or almost all) available Active and Passive sensing technologies, fused with geofencing and operating at 'low-ish' speeds -- surely must be the fastest way to achieve 100% accident-proof self-driving vehicles that operate on ordinary city streets. Congratulations, Cruise. Keep up the Good Work.
  • wutbrodo 5y ago
    > I also see no reason, a priori, to 'blind' a vehicle to certain spectra of EM emissions The reason is simple: cost. The goal isn't to build a proof-of-concept safe AV, it's to build one that meets the safety bar _and_ is as cost-effective as possible, in a reasonable timeframe. I happen to agree with the target-then-scale approach, but I also agree with Kyle that it's not a given that this is approach is definitely superior to the one that launches everywhere and tries to improve functionality.
    • bluGill 5y ago
      Sure, but we already know that humans are not very good drivers (car accidents are #1 or #2 causes of death for age groups between 5 and 50). If you can do better than humans with more input, then that is compelling reason to use more input even if you can do just as good with a cheaper system.
      • wutbrodo 5y ago
        I agree, but was narrowly addressing the claim " I also see no reason, a priori, to 'blind' a vehicle to certain spectra of EM emissions". Cost is the a priori reason, albeit one that is potentially balanced by others.
  • XorNot 5y ago
    One argument would be that once you have many vehicles operating with LIDAR, it's unclear which systems are sufficiently robust against being disrupted by interference from other systems. Same with RADAR - while this is not new technology, we've never really had a regime with potentially dozens of systems operating in close proximity. For all Tesla's problems, the automation-via-cameras solution is the one I find myself having the least problems with: using a single, obvious input (to humans), you don't wind up in a situation where you can have multiple differently-capable systems disagreeing on what they're seeing.
• silverlake 5y ago
  Tesla limited themselves to cameras because Musk said “humans can do it with two eyes”. He also didn’t like the look of LiDAR on cars. Such an idiotic decision. Good to see Cruise is not lead by a mega-maniacal CEO.
  • gerash 5y ago
    I believe those arguments are simply justifications for the fact that most people won't be able to afford Teslas with Lidars
  • ironrabbit 5y ago
    As of a few years ago, lidar added at least $7500 to the cost of a car. That's a huge price difference for a consumer.
    • kibwen 5y ago
      Currently Tesla is charging $12,000 for access to their self-driving package. Even if we assume that the price would increase to $19,500 if they included a lidar (I'm skeptical), it would be the difference between paying $12,000 for a feature that doesn't work versus $19,500 for a feature that might work. This is a luxury option no matter which way you swing it.
      • walrus01 5y ago
        Definitely a luxury option for showing off at this point, as a status symbol, lots of people out there daily drive cars that don't have a bluebook value anywhere near $12k for the entire vehicle.
    • justapassenger 5y ago
      Problem isn't how much LIDAR used to cost or costs now. Problem is that customers paid for a product, and they still don't have it, many years later. And what is being showed nowadays is nowhere close to what was advertised.
    • mandeepj 5y ago
• martythemaniak 5y ago
  "Today it's unclear what strategy will win" Thank you for saying the honest, obvious answer. I am tired of people claiming to know what the implementation details of a technology that does not exist. As a nobody retail investor, I have long positions on autonomy (Tesla, Nvidia, GM/cruise, Google), not specific takes on it. I'm fact, I think the radar/vision debate is not going to matter long term, as there can be multiple winners and the tech will likely converge. https://www.greennewdealio.com/transportation/teslavswaymo/ https://www.greennewdealio.com/transportation/teslavswaymo/
• callalex 5y ago
  What does the word “aggressively” accomplish here? You’re talking about a future hypothetical, so why bother?
• kgin 5y ago
  Been so impressed with the Cruise approach. No hype, no promises, just keeping quiet, working hard on a very hard problem until it’s ready to launch. Congrats to everybody who’s been a part of this.
  • pm90 5y ago
    Well to be fair they did get acquired and get access to a bunch of resources allowing them to fully execute. A lot of the hype machine is a result of the necessity of getting access to those resources. It’s just a difficult situation.
• backtoyoujim 5y ago
  Does your car stop at stop signs ? Because at least one of y'all have to for this to work.
• starioIC 5y ago
  From personal experiences I do not see how they are ready. They actively avoid the rules of the road and engage in dangerous driving actions because the car “sees” and obstacle or warning.for example when a car is double parked the self driving vehicles will swerve into the opposite lane, and in some cases almost hit another car, bike rider, or person. When at stop signs they will sit back and wait even thought it is their turn. At times they will slam on brakes causing rear end accidents because the car saw a bird or reacted to steam from the ground. Please talk with your legal team about embellishments made in insurance claims against other drivers.
  • glbeaty 5y ago
    How long ago did you see Cruise cars doing these things?
• phkahler 5y ago
  The challenge I like to bring up is construction zones. How will cars cope when a road is unexpectedly under repair? Traffic is taking turns sharing the left shoulder with a flag man directing you? Some people I've talked to insist that an up to date map is "all that's needed" and that all such projects will need to be put in the system. Haha, a water main broke and they think people are going to update a database for them? A traffic light is out and the police are DC directing traffic at an intersection. This will happen inside any given geo-fence eventually. The list goes on... forever. Tell me how self driving cars don't need full AGI.
  • XorNot 5y ago
    A decent chunk of this list can be handled by the car coming to a safe stop and signalling that it is unable to proceed and you need to navigate the situation. I suspect a lot of these could also be handled by that being a remote connection where a human is given the camera input and can indicate how the car should proceed (i.e. broken water main is a road obstruction that won't clear, and the obvious answer is a manual override to mark the road as unusable so the nav system reroutes).
    • moss2 5y ago
      Let's hope the only passenger has a driver's license and isn't drunk or having a medical emergency.
      • XorNot 5y ago
        In both those cases they wouldn't be able to drive anyway, and the result is not more dangerous or worse then the alternative.
        • phkahler 5y ago
          >> In both those cases they wouldn't be able to drive anyway... Well that's not even a robo-taxi then.
    • 5y ago
• TheArcane 5y ago
  Sounds exciting! Are you hiring? I had a recruiter from Cruise drop out on me because I wanted to stay and work from Canada and wasnt in a position to relocate to the US.
• KKKKkkkk1 5y ago
  Hey Kyle, Why did your previous CEO Dan Ammann quit just before this launch?
• ayewo 5y ago
  You didn’t need to, but you decided to show up on HN to clearly articulate your strategy, so I applaud you for this. > Our strategy has been to solve the challenges needed to operate driverless robotaxis on a well-equipped vehicle, then aggressively drive the cost down. There are broadly two ways to achieve your desired outcome of aggressively lower costs: 1. use money raised from VCs to subsidize the final cost of the product, or; 2. use money earned from customers as a natural consequence of growing demand for your product, in spite of strong competition from established OEMs, to fund your expansion. Historically, the former has a lower likelihood of success relative to the latter and that’s because the former is really just a cash transfer from VCs to consumers. The latter is how Apple and Tesla have been able to grow into what they are today. The reason the 2nd kind is so effective is that, when executed correctly, it often leads to a vicious cycle: your growth will lead to steadily increasing order volumes with your suppliers. This will in turn lead to sourcing for more suppliers to keep up with your growth. At a certain point, a supplier will feel confident that you are here for the long haul, causing them to take on more risk by pouring additional capital into their business to expand capacity. This will improve their ability to accommodate your current and future needs quickly, cheaply or both. In other words, reality is multidimensional. It is rare for an individual company to aggressively drive down the costs of its product single-handedly, unless that company is ready to assume an enormous amount of risk currently being borne by its ecosystem of partners and suppliers.
• zppln 5y ago
  Will you share your systems safety work? How many fatalities per drive hour do you expect?