7 ms·
Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase: "Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement
by zetazzed 1y ago
Ok, I appreciate that timelines in this space are long. But the opening phrase:
"Toyota Motor Corporation (“Toyota”) and Waymo reached a preliminary agreement to explore a collaboration focused on accelerating the development..."
reads a bit like a parody of corporate speak about a project nowhere close to happening. Did they agree to deploy? Or reach an agreement to collaborate? No, that's too strong. They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development.
- lxgr 1y ago> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development. Compared to "FSD this year", every year for the past five years, I honestly find the approach pretty refreshing.
- aantix 1y agoExcept there’s FSD videos everywhere on X with every minor release, demonstrating the progress.
- xnx 1y agoIf progress is noticable in a 20 minute video, Tesla has a long way to go.
- spiderice 1y agoAs do Waymo and Toyota
- acdha 1y agoYes, that’s called marketing. Believe it when they do what Mercedes does and accept liability rather than trying to shirk it.
- aantix 1y agoIf marketing is a 20 min video demonstrating both progress and regressions for each minor rev, then I’ll take more of that.
- brenns10 1y agoI'll believe it when they accept liability for the actions of their autonomous vehicles. Videos mean nothing.
- iknowstuff 1y agoYou fell for Mercedes’ marketing so that’s hilariously ironic
- acdha 1y agoI’m sure that sounded more clever in your head but an actual legal agreement is more than marketing.
- slg 1y agoNo, they really are no different. A legal guarantee doesn't actually mean the car is safe, it means they will pay for it when the safety features fail. Those fees paid out can just be considered a marketing expense to make the car appear safer.
- kadushka 1y agoit means they will pay for it when the safety features fail Tesla will not - it will blame the human driver for not paying attention. That's the difference.
- slg 1y agoThis is misinterpreting what I'm saying. I'm not arguing for the safety of Tesla's system. I'm saying that judging the safety based off of corporate marketing decisions is a mistake and putting a guarantee on a product is a marketing decision.
- phs318u 1y agoEven if this originated as a marketing thought bubble, there's no way that such a decision could've been made without direct approval from the executive (including the CEO), and only after taking advice from their general counsel and consulting with the board. The potential reputational damage is too immense for such a decision to be made by "marketing" alone. What you're describing has happened before and the courts awarded massive punitive damages against the motor company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimshaw_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
- kevin_thibedeau 1y agoThey edit their videos to remove the mistakes. It's all a lie if it only works 90% of the time and you don't know when it's going to fail after being lulled into inattention.
- aantix 1y agoThey constantly highlight regressions.
- sofixa 1y agoWaymo made a very good point about this, fundamentally that's the problem with a progressive rollout - drivers will stop paying attention when the software is "good enough", and the result will probably be crashes. So for them, it was all or nothing - either it fully drives itself, or it's not worth deploying.
- adrr 1y agoProgress would be get certified for self driving. For comparison, Mercedes, BMW, Honda etc have L3 cars on the market. Mercedes just got approved full highway speeds in EU and working on L4 certification.
- gonzobonzo 1y agoI just checked out Mercedes, and it appears to be geofenced with a lot of restrictions[1]: > DRIVE PILOT can be activated in heavy traffic jams at a speed of 40 MPH or less on a pre-defined freeway network approved by Mercedes-Benz. DRIVE PILOT operates in daytime lighting conditions when inclement weather is not present and in areas where there is not a construction zone. Please refer to the Operator’s Manual for a full list of conditions required for DRIVE PILOT. Only on select freeways and only under 40 mph (and only during daytime with good weather conditions) sounds like it wouldn't be particularly useful. Still, the tech is cool, and moving in the right direction. It's just always hard to really tell the state of things without doing some digging, because there's a ton of misinformation that gets thrown about whenever this topic comes up. [1] https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot#2 https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot#2
- adrr 1y agoThat’s what the government allows them to do. They got approved for freeway speeds in EU and are trying to get approved in CA. You need to prove that the car is safer than a human driver.
- ehsankia 1y agoThere's now a thing called "FSD", yes. But it's not FSD as in Full Self-Driving, as in L4. It's still an L3, the driver still needs to be at the wheel and paying attention. "Full Self Driving" implies L4. What Waymo has, with no one at the wheel, is L4.
- mynameisvlad 1y agoFSD is Level 2. The driver must, at all times, be supervising the car. L3 implies that the car, in exceptionally ideal and limited circumstances, takes over full control unsupervised. Even if you were to take Mobileye's definitions, it would still be equivalent to other companies at best (hands off, eyes on).
- slt2021 1y agothis is just the opposite extreme of "FSD this year"
- vachina 1y agoFSD is something you can BUY and USE right now. Toyota is writing an MoU. They’re not the same.
- proudestmonkey 1y agoWaymo is something that actually drives itself and you can hail right now. FSD is not actually “full self-driving”.
- DerekL 1y agoTesla doesn't even call it that, there's “(Supervised)” after that. That's like calling it “Full Self-Driving (Not!)”.
- adrr 1y agoFSD can’t self drive on any street though. Its just L2 like cruise control and lane centering.
- LanceJones 1y agoI use it every day on every street in Vancouver. Where do you come up with your information?
- adrr 1y agoYou’re driving. Why you can’t watch a movie like you can on a Mercedes L3 car.
- tuckerman 1y agoThe ODD for drive pilot is so limited, I don’t think it’s really comparable. I have very little faith that their approach will scale to anything more than a traffic jam pilot gimmick. It’s fair to argue that FSD is limited as well but I believe their approach is much more scalable.
- beambot 1y ago5 years...? I bought mine with FSD in 2018, and that was years after it was "right around the corner." Worst Kickstarter of all time... Though I do like the car itself.
- ffsm8 1y agoYeah, FSD was promised with the release of the first model S, 2012 - to be ready by "next year" As such, it's been roughly 12 years just around the corner for Tesla and Musk enthusiasts. To be more specific: Musk explicitly said in that marketing event that buying anything other the Tesla wouldn't make economic sense, as they'll earn their own price back as self driving Taxis within the following two years. Still blows my mind that people believed him anything as these kinds of unrealistic promises were at the heart of every event since the start. Believing someone with promises like that is - from my perspective - begging to get scammed. From that point of view, people should be glad the delivered cars were decent. Most purchases with outlandish promises end with merchandise that is borderline unusable.
- esalman 1y ago> Compared to "FSD this year", every year for the past five years, I honestly find the approach pretty refreshing. As an 11 years Toyota driver I agree.
- bagels 1y agoThis is at the other extreme end though. They could do nothing and call the agreement to explore satisfied. Would rather they wait till they've removed at least three of the hedging words.
- RandallBrown 1y agoDoesn't Waymo already have FSD?
- WorldWideWebb 1y agoThis headline brought to you by the marketing department.
- AustinDev 1y agoSay everything and nothing in less than nine words.
- pelagic_sky 1y agoFeels more like the typical battle amongst PR, Marketing and Legal.
- timewizard 1y ago"We've agreed to let the engineering staff from both companies directly exchange information in a place and form that we would not normally allow to occur. Hopefully they work out a way to glue our two stacks together."
- xmprt 1y agoDon't forget that this is also a PRELIMINARY agreement. So it's not clear what the terms even are.
- cryptoegorophy 1y agoWhat kind of development? LiDAR on every Toyota? Would be very interesting. If every car on the road was self driving we would not need a giant chunk of code to work around human behavior
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jannyfer 1y agoIt reads like a Memorandum of Understanding. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorandum_of_understanding
- benatkin 1y agoAnd if they don't develop a formal contract after 5 months, it's a deadMoU5
- skybrian 1y agoIt’s too early to be of much interest to outsiders, but impressing people likely isn’t the intention. By announcing that they’re talking, they don’t need to keep its existence secret anymore or worry about it getting into the news at some random time as a “secret project.”
- lurk2 1y ago> They will EXPLORE collaborating on ACCELERATING development. Concepts of a plan
- beAbU 1y agoHere in Ireland we often see news announcements in the construction sector that goes something like "We received the go ahead to submit an application for planning permission to commission an impact study to determine whether it's viable to survey the land for construction suitability."
- owyn 1y agoYeah, that's pretty amazing corporate speak. And the development time lines are long. I'm cautiously optimistic about this. Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains, there is a Taxi/Van in Japan called the Alphard and it's pretty nice! Toyota also has the e-pallete, which is a self driving bus for their new Woven City project. It would be great to see a new vehicle platform co-developed for those purposes because the Toyota "electrical" architecture is about 10 years behind (all CanBus). If I was them I would sort that out before building new EVs. If you look at a bz4x and pop the hood, it looks like an IC vehicle! There is no frunk, just legacy junk. It was never designed as an EV, they just put an electric motor and a battery in a Rav4 type platform and called it a day.
- hnburnsy 1y ago>Even if it is just a Toyota vehicle with Waymo brains Does the Waymo brain need all the Waymo hardware? >With 13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar, and an array of external audio receivers (EARs), our new sensor suite is optimized for greater performance... https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo-driver/ https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...
- owyn 1y agoThe new Lexus TSS which is lane keeping and cruise control and auto park and safety oriented stuff has 11 cameras I think? Plus some lasers and sonar and whatnot. 4 of them are for the cool 360 top down view. I'd love to count up all the sensors on a current production car. I googled but failed. Maybe in the manual? There's a lot. But they probably could use less if they had better software and networking in the car. I think automotive systems tend to be built like: add 1 ecu and 1 sensor for 1 function. So they can do all the functional safety analysis for that one system in isolation. I expect they can't just keep adding all these single purpose functions and features without a central computer indefinitely but they don't have one right now. A brain like waymo (probably has?) could possibly fix that.
- pavel_lishin 1y agoVeridian Dynamics' "Project Jabberwocky" is gonna be great.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lifeformed 1y agoAnd it's only a preliminary agreement.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- reustle 1y agoJapan is the champion of announcing the consideration of making an announcement. They did this all through covid, too.
- MarceliusK 1y agoI think this kind of vague language is pretty common when two giant companies want to signal interest without actually committing to anything risky