Lamenting the decline of the car

[lio45]

Apparently the Hummer EV is already sold out!

I like it, the only flaw being the price.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by drew

^ full size truck pricing (at higher end trims) is rapidly approaching the upper 5-figures, and even into the 6-figures in some cases...

Very good point. I'd buy this Hummer EV in a heartbeat over a top trimmed F-series at ~$80k that burns dead dinos to move.

Though I'd clearly prefer something like the electric Ranger or S10 at the pricepoint of a Corolla or Civic. But that's my personal view and I'm not a representative buyer.

[WarrenC12]

I have my Cybertruck reservation.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

Are trucks exempt from vehicle emissions standards?

Are there different standards?

hard to tell. https://www.riv.ca/ECVehicleEmissionReqs.aspx has links but many are dead.

The auto manufacturers have always used the far less stringent emissions standards of trucks to get around the car emissions.

When Chrysler first brought in the mini-van is was a stroke of genius and certainly filled a big gap in consumer demand but there was much more to it than just good marketing. Much tougher emissions came in the 1980s for cars and Chrysler saw a great way around this by bringing in the mini-van which was "technically" not a car but a truck which allowed it to circumvent all the tighter emissions controls.

Now of course monster SUVs are the evasion tactic of the 21st century as they too are "technically" trucks. The difference today is that the big auto companies know that their days of being able to hide emissions is over as nearly all of the Western world will have banned sales of all ICE cars AND light-duty trucks {ie SUVs and Ford 150and similar size} by 2040.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by milomilo

And expensive. How does anyone justify buying these things?

Cheaper than the last hummer. These aren’t trucks for the every man.

[speedog]

Originally Posted by lio45

Apparently the Hummer EV is already sold out!

I like it, the only flaw being the price.

The fact that it doesn't actually exist is not a flaw?

[SFUVancouver]

Tesla daylight FSD videos are something else. There's undoubtedly corner cases, and user intervention and the neural net 'dojo' is working all-out to solve those as they arise, but it sure as hell looks like the foundation of FSD has been realized and is functional in real world conditions. Thoroughly impressed.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Tesla daylight FSD videos are something else. There's undoubtedly corner cases, and user intervention and the neural net 'dojo' is working all-out to solve those as they arise, but it sure as hell looks like the foundation of FSD has been realized and is functional in real world conditions. Thoroughly impressed.

Yes, amazing progress.

I do wonder now how many years we'll be sitting in the driver's seat, hand on the wheel, essentially doing nothing. Actually allowing a car to navigate itself legally might be a slow process.

[logan5]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Tesla daylight FSD videos are something else. There's undoubtedly corner cases, and user intervention and the neural net 'dojo' is working all-out to solve those as they arise, but it sure as hell looks like the foundation of FSD has been realized and is functional in real world conditions. Thoroughly impressed.

It almost sends a shiver through me that this here. I know it still has a ways to go but it is groundbreaking is so many ways. The one video o watched, the car passed a cyclist in the road (at night) by veering into the far lane a few feet to get by the cyclist. Just a routine manoeuvre, but still cool to see.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Tesla daylight FSD videos are something else. There's undoubtedly corner cases, and user intervention and the neural net 'dojo' is working all-out to solve those as they arise, but it sure as hell looks like the foundation of FSD has been realized and is functional in real world conditions. Thoroughly impressed.

Given the highly publicized fatalities with autopilot, it kind spooks me if they're beta testing in the real world.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by drew

^ full size truck pricing (at higher end trims) is rapidly approaching the upper 5-figures, and even into the 6-figures in some cases...

MSRP maybe. Trucks have much larger discounts from MSRP than most cars though.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by whatnext

Given the highly publicized fatalities with autopilot, it kind spooks me if they're beta testing in the real world.

People will have to get their heads around the fact that autopilot is already orders of magnitude safer than human drivers. It won't be easy.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

People will have to get their heads around the fact that autopilot is already orders of magnitude safer than human drivers. It won't be easy.

But it's not infallible and drivers think it is. I am also suspicious when all the self-driving tests seem to be in place like Arizona - show me the data for Vancouver on a dark, rainy December day at 6pm. I don't trust those systems to be fully autonomous in those conditions.

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by WarrenC12

People will have to get their heads around the fact that autopilot is already orders of magnitude safer than human drivers. It won't be easy.

I think this is why full self driving is taking so long - the bar is much higher than it is for human drivers. Every year something like a million people die on the roads around the world, and we just shrug it off. If every car were self driving and they were were 100x safer than people, that would still be 10,000 deaths every year. I'm not so sure that people would accept that. The standard is incredibly high.

Originally Posted by whatnext

But it's not infallible and drivers think it is. I am also suspicious when all the self-driving tests seem to be in place like Arizona - show me the data for Vancouver on a dark, rainy December day at 6pm. I don't trust those systems to be fully autonomous in those conditions.

Sure, just show the data for human drivers in the same conditions.

[GreaterMontréal]

Autopilot is not yet like K 2000. I will always prefer do drive.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Mister F

..Sure, just show the data for human drivers in the same conditions.

There's a whole bunc of "intuition" that goes into driving in bad conditions, along with skills learned over time. It's one reason I've awlays said occasional rideshare drivers are more dangerous than regular driver.

Here's an article on autonomous driving and poor weather:

Snow and Ice Pose a Vexing Obstacle for Self-Driving Cars
Most testing of autonomous vehicles until now has been in sunny, dry climates. That will have to change before the technology will be useful everywhere.

...A few companies, including Alphabet’s Waymo and Argo, backed by Ford and Volkswagen, are testing self-driving cars in winter conditions. But as a whole, the industry is far more focused on demonstrating and deploying vehicles in fair-weather locations such as California, Arizona, Texas, and Florida.

As even optimists about self-driving cars temper forecasts on their arrival, testing in sunnier climates is seen as a way to move the technology out of first gear. But the warm-weather bias could limit where autonomous vehicles can be deployed, or cause problems if it is rolled out in colder climates too quickly.

“It’s a very noticeable blind spot,” says Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, which annotated Czarnecki’s data and works with other autonomous-driving companies. “Deploying autonomous vehicles in bad conditions is not really tackled, or really talked about.”..

...Inclement conditions are challenging for autonomous vehicles for several reasons. Snow and rain can obscure and confuse sensors, hide markings on the road, and make a car perform differently. Beyond this, bad weather represents a difficult test for artificial intelligence algorithms. Programs trained to pick out cars and pedestrians in bright sunshine will struggle to make sense of vehicles topped with piles of snow and people bundled up under layers of clothing.

“Your AI will be erratic,” Czarnecki says of the typical self-driving car faced with snow. “It’s going to see things that aren’t there and also miss things.”...

https://www.wired.com/story/snow-ice...-driving-cars/

[milomilo]

What the EV would probably do in those snowy conditions is what the human driver won't; refuse to drive as it is unsafe. So the human driver will say "stupid computer", take the wheel, then crash.

[urbandreamer]

I went 4x4 shopping today:

[drew]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

MSRP maybe. Trucks have much larger discounts from MSRP than most cars though.

If it's a truck sitting on the lot, sure.

But if you want something specific, like a diesel or some specific options that need to be ordered, you don't get those discounts.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by SFUVancouver

Tesla daylight FSD videos are something else. There's undoubtedly corner cases, and user intervention and the neural net 'dojo' is working all-out to solve those as they arise, but it sure as hell looks like the foundation of FSD has been realized and is functional in real world conditions. Thoroughly impressed.

Amazing as they progress, it's the edge cases that drive the regulatory regime.