Musk endeavours

[TUK020]

Mildly interesting article on the front page of the weekend FT about the potential decline of the UK car industry with hopes being placed on a rich mans love of Landrover Discovery. No idea why anyone would, but...

I thought it was the Landrover Defender?
The Discovery is several decades too new fangled.

[BobbyD]

If you've got a working, selling, desirable EV then it is far easier to integrate an improved battery. If you are starting from near scratch the evidence is not so good.

Something which will be as true of Big car as it is of Tesla unless ev sales are still capped at a couple of million worldwide in 6 years time... in which case we might have to reasses the inevitability of the oncoming ev hegemony.

Further meanwhile, James Dyson has stated this his new electric car will not be made in Britain.

I doubt there is very much potential about the decline of the UK car industry, it's just been shot in both feet.

Dyson, being a good Brexiteer, doesn't manufacture in the UK anymore, the planned location of his car factory was announced at the same time as the rest of the car project...

Unless there are going to be a lot more cars which might happen in India and China, all of this extra supply of cars from China, Dyson, Tesla... must make for disturbing times in legacy board rooms across the planet.

Yes, all those other car manufacturers building car factories next to theirs will really bring the tenor of the neighbourhood down...

[PeterGray]

Mildly interesting article on the front page of the weekend FT about the potential decline of the UK car industry with hopes being placed on a rich mans love of Landrover Discovery. No idea why anyone would, but...

Meanwhile Ford are seen as likely reducing their UK production.

Further meanwhile, James Dyson has stated this his new electric car will not be made in Britain.

Lets not start conflating the likely decline/disappearance of UK car production with the EV issue. There are very specific reasons for the former, which have nothing to do with the nature of global car production or the EV/ICE question.

[odysseus2000]

Mildly interesting article on the front page of the weekend FT about the potential decline of the UK car industry with hopes being placed on a rich mans love of Landrover Discovery. No idea why anyone would, but...

I thought it was the Landrover Defender?
The Discovery is several decades too new fangled.

You are probably right.

I have also loathed Landrovers as road vehicles, good for short trips on fields and very difficult terrain, but for some reasons very many folk love them.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Mildly interesting article on the front page of the weekend FT about the potential decline of the UK car industry with hopes being placed on a rich mans love of Landrover Discovery. No idea why anyone would, but...

Meanwhile Ford are seen as likely reducing their UK production.

Further meanwhile, James Dyson has stated this his new electric car will not be made in Britain.

Lets not start conflating the likely decline/disappearance of UK car production with the EV issue. There are very specific reasons for the former, which have nothing to do with the nature of global car production or the EV/ICE question.

I was brought up to the media supported certainty that the UK was just too expensive a place to manufacture, just like the US which has at least the last time I looked less manufacturing as % of GDP than does the UK.

But then I see a thriving manufacturing electronics business in New York: Adafruit and I get to thinking: But I was told it was too expensive to make in the US. Then I see a thriving new car company based in the US and I get to believing that all I was ever told about manufacturing in the UK was wrong. Then I see thriving rocket business there too with Virgin also having some of its space activity based in the US.

Then I look at honey bee queen imports and find that the UK imports most of its queen bees, so I ask one of the few UK queen producers why. He says because UK people are lazy.

Meanwhile I see local press about all the VIP's inspecting a new imported train and get to wonder how this can be as the local railworks were shut down as we couldn't make trains economically and yet we used to and this new train was made in Europe which also has high wages.

Then I am reminded of Trump saying he wants more US manufacturing and wonder if some British politician might take up the banner, with the weak £ now seems a good time to start making more stuff here.

If Tesla does succeed I wonder if it will inspire more US entrepreneurial copy cats focused on home land production. One might argue that Brexit may cause this to happen here too.

Regards,

[redsturgeon]

Then I am reminded of Trump saying he wants more US manufacturing and wonder if some British politician might take up the banner, with the weak £ now seems a good time to start making more stuff here.

I too was reminded of that when I read today that three times as many jobs were offshored during the last year than under Obama's last year...and the steel tariffs will not help that situation.

Toyota, Nissan and Honda have all demonstrated that with the right management, UK workers are quite capable of world class manufacture. The "lazy UK worker" trope is just a useful stereotype put in place by those who think can make a few more pennies by manufacturing overseas with no concern about the consequences to the country as a whole. Dyson for instance could quite easily have continued manufacture in the UK but may have had to buy a few thousand fewer acres for himself.

John

[odysseus2000]

Based on this & similar offers I am seeing, it looks to me like the $100 kWh barrier is broken at the cell level & likely close to if not broken at the pack level.

If this guy can buy & then re-sell at $100 per kWh, it seems very likely to me that the manufacturing cost is well below $100 kWh


https://youtu.be/L-Z9tcoq2nQ

[PeterGray]

I was brought up to the media supported certainty that the UK was just too expensive a place to manufacture, just like the US which has at least the last time I looked less manufacturing as % of GDP than does the UK

I was trying to make the point that talking about declines in UK car manufacturing should not be confused with the global issues relating to EV. However, since you have responded on the point, I will too!

My point is not that the UK is too expensive a place to manufacture. That may once have been the general view, but the UK produces as least many cars now as ever before. The difference, of course, being that the manufacturers are now almost exclusively foreign owned, and the growth back in car manufacturing after the collapse of the 70s is based on investment from outside the EU. The rationale for that will cease once Brexit happens, and, as Patrick Minford himself predicts, it will lead to the run down of the UK car industry. However, that has nothing to do with the more general issues of the uptake of EV, and who will end up making them (it's just unlikely it will be in the UK)

[dspp]

I didn't see this posted here( news from 30 Oct 2018, various sources):

Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car unit, has obtained a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to begin testing on public roads without a safety driver behind the wheel. The company says it is the first to obtain such a permit.

regards, dspp

[BobbyD]

Also in the news:

A Florida man named Shawn Hudson sues Tesla after his Model S crashed into a disabled Ford Fiesta while on Autopilot. Hudson says the car was going 80 mph and he was looking at his phone at the time of the crash—but his lawsuit claims Tesla’s salespeople misled him about the capabilities of the semi-autonomous feature.

...

Volkswagen, not to be left out, is reportedly in talks with Ford to create a self-driving car venture. Volkswagen could take a 50 percent stake in Ford’s AV unit, or the two could combine their units to create a separate self-driving company.

- https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-self- ... t-roundup/

[dspp]

Also in the news:

A Florida man named Shawn Hudson sues Tesla after his Model S crashed into a disabled Ford Fiesta while on Autopilot. Hudson says the car was going 80 mph and he was looking at his phone at the time of the crash—but his lawsuit claims Tesla’s salespeople misled him about the capabilities of the semi-autonomous feature.

...

Volkswagen, not to be left out, is reportedly in talks with Ford to create a self-driving car venture. Volkswagen could take a 50 percent stake in Ford’s AV unit, or the two could combine their units to create a separate self-driving company.

- https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-self- ... t-roundup/

mmmmmmm..........

"Over 98,000 miles of driving, he used it regularly, letting the computer keep the car in its lane and away from other cars.

“I was sold,” he told reporters at a press conference Tuesday morning. He would relax during the long ride, checking his phone and sending emails.

That changed one Friday morning a few weeks ago, during his daily drive from his home in Winter Garden to his job at a Nissan dealership in Fort Pierce, Florida. Driving at about 80 mph in the left lane of the Florida Turnpike, with Autopilot engaged, Hudson crashed into a disabled, empty Ford Fiesta."

Let me see. Works in an auto dealership. Does 100,000 miles a year. Hardly a naive purchaser methinks. But yes this is an issue, humans are terminally dumb. The fuller article is balanced:

https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autop ... wn-hudson/

- dspp

[odysseus2000]

Kind of wonder why the software can not detect objects on the carriage way.

Naievily I would have thought the pattern recognition algorithms would be able to identify a stopped vehicle, but for some reason this seems to be very difficult.

Regards,

[BobbyD]

Kind of wonder why the software can not detect objects on the carriage way.

Naievily I would have thought the pattern recognition algorithms would be able to identify a stopped vehicle, but for some reason this seems to be very difficult.

Regards,

Only for Teslas...

[dspp]

Kind of wonder why the software can not detect objects on the carriage way.

Naievily I would have thought the pattern recognition algorithms would be able to identify a stopped vehicle, but for some reason this seems to be very difficult.

Regards,

Only for Teslas...

NO.

Read the article !

This is not just a Tesla issue.

"Similar systems offered by Tesla competitors, including Volvo, have the same shortcoming. It’s a function of how they use radar data. The sensor picks up everything from speed signs to Mack trucks, so engineers curtail false positives—slamming your brakes for no reason can be very dangerous—by focusing on the stuff that’s moving. "

[PeterGray]

"Similar systems offered by Tesla competitors, including Volvo, have the same shortcoming. It’s a function of how they use radar data. The sensor picks up everything from speed signs to Mack trucks, so engineers curtail false positives—slamming your brakes for no reason can be very dangerous—by focusing on the stuff that’s moving. "

Remind me never to buy a self-driving car until they sort that one out then! I dare say it's more complex than the description sounds, but not paying full attention to stationary objects in front of the car sounds like a very dangerous road to go down!

[dspp]

"Similar systems offered by Tesla competitors, including Volvo, have the same shortcoming. It’s a function of how they use radar data. The sensor picks up everything from speed signs to Mack trucks, so engineers curtail false positives—slamming your brakes for no reason can be very dangerous—by focusing on the stuff that’s moving. "

Remind me never to buy a self-driving car until they sort that one out then! I dare say it's more complex than the description sounds, but not paying full attention to stationary objects in front of the car sounds like a very dangerous road to go down!

It is absolutely fine to drive a SIL-2 / SAE-2 level car the way the manual says, ie. with the human monitoring continually and ready to intervene:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car

I think checking texts and email on your phone doesn't quite meet that definition.

Engineering is indeed tricky. So too are users .......

regards, dspp

[BobbyD]

Kind of wonder why the software can not detect objects on the carriage way.

Naievily I would have thought the pattern recognition algorithms would be able to identify a stopped vehicle, but for some reason this seems to be very difficult.

Regards,

Only for Teslas...

NO.

Read the article !

This is not just a Tesla issue.

"Similar systems offered by Tesla competitors, including Volvo, have the same shortcoming. It’s a function of how they use radar data. The sensor picks up everything from speed signs to Mack trucks, so engineers curtail false positives—slamming your brakes for no reason can be very dangerous—by focusing on the stuff that’s moving. "

Tesla have hit 3 stationary firetrucks in 2018 alone... other 'similar' systems get a passing remark with no details... Goes back to my belief that L2 and the whole safety driver set up is fundamentally unsafe though. Even if this guy was nominally watching the road on his 125 mile commute rather than playing snake on his phone the chances of him actually being aware enough to avoid the collision aren't great. The human brain simply isn't designed to remain engaged for prolonged periods of boredom, it's the automotive equivalent of watching paint dry, trust the system, feel perfectly safe, no sense of danger, got to look out the windscreen but we all know nothing is going to happen, nothing happened the last 6 months doing this commute, this is stupid... oh look nothings happening, yellow car, yellow car, you're always playing yellow car... nope no danger... wonder whats for dinner tonight... hope it's meatballs... feeling very sleepy... yikes whys there a ford fiesta in my passenger seat?

The Uber which took out the crossing cyclist also had a safety driver... It's a strange set up when you consider some parents take their babies out for a drive to lull them to sleep...

One of the best precautions against this sort of mistake would be simple vehicle to vehicle communication.

[dspp]

Only for Teslas...

NO.

Read the article !

This is not just a Tesla issue.

"Similar systems offered by Tesla competitors, including Volvo, have the same shortcoming. It’s a function of how they use radar data. The sensor picks up everything from speed signs to Mack trucks, so engineers curtail false positives—slamming your brakes for no reason can be very dangerous—by focusing on the stuff that’s moving. "

Tesla have hit 3 stationary firetrucks in 2018 alone... other 'similar' systems get a passing remark with no details... Goes back to my belief that L2 and the whole safety driver set up is fundamentally unsafe though. Even if this guy was nominally watching the road on his 125 mile commute rather than playing snake on his phone the chances of him actually being aware enough to avoid the collision aren't great. The human brain simply isn't designed to remain engaged for prolonged periods of boredom, it's the automotive equivalent of watching paint dry, trust the system, feel perfectly safe, no sense of danger, got to look out the windscreen but we all know nothing is going to happen, nothing happened the last 6 months doing this commute, this is stupid... oh look nothings happening, yellow car, yellow car, you're always playing yellow car... nope no danger... wonder whats for dinner tonight... hope it's meatballs... feeling very sleepy... yikes whys there a ford fiesta in my passenger seat?

The Uber which took out the crossing cyclist also had a safety driver... It's a strange set up when you consider some parents take their babies out for a drive to lull them to sleep...

One of the best precautions against this sort of mistake would be simple vehicle to vehicle communication.

BD,

I think the reason that Tesla have hit a few things is simply because there are so many Teslas out there, being used at SIL2 by real humans in real traffic. I don't see that many other cars out there with this capability in the real world - do you ? (that is a genuine question as I would like to get a grip on the data)

The data I have seen is that if a Tesla is in auto mode then it is on average safer than a human, i.e. whilst it may still make mistakes it is less likely to do so than softmeat wetware.

I think we've all had scares when the car in front on a motorway does a quick lane change exposing an imminent hazard. That seems to be what happened here. What we don't know is whether any of the Tesla systems came into play and reduced the effect of the impact. What I know personally is that using a more basic SIL1 in a VW it tries to slam the anchors on (and that is relevant as it is a distance-following situation, not a lane guidance situation), but I can well envisage that this circumstance would have been too difficult to fully overcome. What I can also imagine is that the plaintiff's lawyers will be out there bigging this up so as to get a high negotiated settlement, and all the anti Tesla shorts will be likewise bigging this up as with any of the other bad news stories.

regards, dspp

[odysseus2000]

I understand the problem with reacting to things that are not moving would lead to false braking and dangerous unacceptable behaviour.

My naive question is why can't the systems tell the difference between things on the highway and things not on the highway in the way a human finds easy. There are multiple cameras giving super human binocular vision so it seems there is something humans can do that machines can't even when they have better eyes.

From what I have gleaned some aspects of the problem concern velocity and how fast the systems can work out what is what. They seem to work fine at low speeds, e.g. not hitting pedestrians but have problems at high speeds and are disabled.

The allowing of un-supervised driving in the US maybe suggest that the problem has been solved or is the un-supervised driving only limited to low speeds?

Just kind of interested in what the limits are if anyone knows.

Regards,

[dspp]

The issue is bad outcomes with false positives.

e.g. If the car slams the anchors on, thinking that something is in the highway, and the car behind it rear ends it, and there was nothing in the highway. That's a suefest.

You get a lot of false positives in the realworld.

The lawyers don't care if the autonomous system is in general better than the meat system. They sue about the particular instance.

That's before we even get to "cash for crash" fraud. Imagine gaming Teslas this way ........

(for a technical perspective please go read the literature on the subject, there is a heck of a lot of it)

regards, dspp