Correct, it only works when certain conditions are met.
Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 05:56
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in any weather condition
LOL. Weather is probably the smallest of the problems they have solved.
German car makers have a habit of actually testing all their models in all weather conditions, routinely, around the globe.
cAUzapNEAGLb@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 02:12
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…
As of April 11, there were 65 Mercedes autonomous vehicles available for sale in California, Fortune has learned through an open records request submitted to the state’s DMV. One of those has since been sold, which marks the first sale of an autonomous Mercedes in California, according to the DMV. Mercedes would not confirm sales numbers. Select Mercedes dealerships in Nevada are also offering the cars with the new technology, known as “level 3” autonomous driving.
…
Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
…
U.S. customers can buy a yearly subscription of Drive Pilot in 2024 EQS sedans and S-Class car models for $2,500.
…
Mercedes is also working on developing level 4 capabilities. The automaker’s chief technology officer Markus Schäfer expects that level 4 autonomous technology will be available to consumers by 2030, Automotive News reported.
…
Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 04:20
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Hmm, so only on a very small number of predetermined routes, and at very slow speeds for those roads.
Still impressive, but not as impressive as the headline makes out.
VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 04:39
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And definitely not worth the $2500 a year they’re asking for the feature.
Veraxus@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 04:44
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If they assume full liability for any collisions while the feature is active (and it looks like they do), then I can see that being fair.
Cryan24@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 05:06
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Chances are, If you can afford the car, then that amount is nothing to you.
Having known one, some of their customers love their feature loaded cars to brag about and feel extra special. Some will definitely pay the 2.5k gladly.
Murdoc@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 09:17
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Conspicuous Consumption.
NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 05:38
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Come on, you have been able to pay the price of that Mercedes in the first place.
jballs@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 04:50
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I’ve seen this headline a few times and the details are laughably bad. The only reason this can be getting any press is because the headline is good clickbait. But 40 mph top speed on approved roads in 2 states only if a car is in front of you in the daytime is entirely useless. I guess it’s a good first step maybe? But trying to write headlines like this is big news is sad.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl
on 20 Apr 2024 05:32
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40 mph top speed on approved roads in 2 states only if a car is in front of you in the daytime is entirely useless.
It’s specifically designed to navigate traffic congestion, which happens under 30 mph. It can keep up with the lane, deal with lane changes, honk if someone backs into you, let ambulances through, things like that. Not sure why the article presents it as generic driving.
The reason this gets attention is because it’s the first level 3 sold to consumers.
The tech is hard, of course it’s gonna start out with laughingly limited capabilities. But it’s the first step towards more automation.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 14:43
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It’s starting in California where there are a meaningful number of high earners who are spending hours per day in 4 lane bumper to bumper traffic.
Having actual autonomy during those hours is still shit. But it’s a hell of a lot less shit than the tedium of the high attention requirements of sitting in traffic at a crawl.
just_another_person@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 02:32
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It will be litigated almost immediately. There is no current combination of model and hardware platform that a car could reasonably run that could be called “fully self driving” at any useful speed. This thing sounds like parking assist on steroids maybe, or “stalled traffic assist”. They will be sued.
VelociCatTurd@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 03:14
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Sued for what?
RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 03:29
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I mean I disagree with most of what the person you’re responding to is saying, but they are entering into a new stage of vehicular liability. By telling the driver they don’t have to pay attention there is an implied transfer of liability.
It probably says somewhere in the terms of use that Mercedes isn’t at fault or that you have to carry some special kind of insurance, and frankly computers have a pretty good shot at being better than your average human driver so they’ll hopefully be easier to insure, but nevertheless, people on both sides of every accident for the first few years with this tech will sue. Any chance to squeeze a few milly out of a 100 billion dollar car company.
VelociCatTurd@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 03:35
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Sure, anyone can sue for any reason. That doesn’t mean that a case will be successful. I do agree with you that there if a transfer of liability, until the car tells the driver that manual intervention is needed. But also, this can be used on only specific roads, under specific weather and traffic conditions, I really don’t think it’s much to ask of a robot to do. It actually seems like a pretty boring level of autonomy.
“Mercedes will accept full legal responsibility for the vehicle whenever Drive Pilot is active.”
It will only activate if all the conditions are met, but not clear on how long the driver has to take over on deactivation before they stop accepting liability…
explodes@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 03:17
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Did you read the article? There are already plenty of conditions for activating the self driving mode.
cm0002@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 03:53
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There’s tons of conditions
when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on spec ific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control.
I doubt this is a mistake, they must have really high confidence in the tech as well as with the restrictions, not even Tesla had the balls to announce that you could drive distracted.
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 06:00
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not even Tesla had the balls to announce that you could drive distracted.
That’s the difference between Level 2 and Level 3 full self driving. Teslas are Level 2.
That’s what I’m saying, they could have called this a “Ultra advanced level 2” and avoided opening themselves up to a TON of liabilities. Once you start saying this is a level 3 system and you don’t need to pay attention to the road with it, well, that shuts the door to many defenses they could use of it was “just” level 2 if something happens. So that means they must be really confident in their system
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 05:58
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There is no current combination of model and hardware platform that a car could reasonably run that could be called “fully self driving” at any useful speed.
It’s still not flawless and reguires an attentive driver but Tesla FSD Beta V12 is pretty damn impressive. They made a huge leap forward by going from human code to 100% neural nets. I don’t think we’re too far a way from a true robo-taxi and there’s going to be some humble pie served for the LiDAR/radar advocates. I highly recommend everyone to watch some reviews on YouTube if you aren’t up to speed with the recent changes they’ve made.
14th_cylon@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 02:35
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Exclusive: Mercedes becomes the first automaker to sell autonomous cars in the U.S. that don’t come with a equirement that drivers watch the road
Rachyl Jones
April 19, 2024, 12:05 AM UTC
4–5 minutes
The next time you’re traveling on the interstate and see a fellow driver whose hands are full with everything but the wheel—scrolling TikTok, applying mascara, eating breakfast—don’t panic. It’s all legal in certain states, as long as they’re in a new Mercedes with autonomous driving technology.
The luxury automaker has become the first in the nation to start selling self-driving cars—at least those that afford riders a hands-free experience—to regular consumers. So far, the company has sold at least 65 autonomous vehicles in California, Fortune has learned through an open records request submitted to the state’s DMV. Select Mercedes dealerships in Nevada are also offering the cars with the new technology, known as “level 3” autonomous driving.
Level 3-enabled cars went on sale in December, Mercedes told Fortune. California and Nevada are the only two states where the company can legally sell the technology to consumers. The two state DMVs gave Mercedes approval to begin selling the cars last year—Nevada in January, and California in June. Mercedes announced in September its planned to begin sales, but this is the first news of the cars actually reaching consumers.
Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on specific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
The sales mark a new echelon of autonomous driving available to the average American. Mercedes is the first automaker selling to customers to achieve level 3 capabilities in the U.S., with Tesla and others still offering technology at level 2—in which cars can perform specific tasks but require constant supervision from a driver. Some drivers, however, ignore those rules and operate the cars as if they are more capable than they are. Some drivers, however, ignore those rules and operate the cars as if they are more capable than they are. One family of a deceased driver has accused Tesla of hyping its assisted driving technology as fully autonomous, allegedly leading to tragic results, while California’s DMV last year accused the company of false advertising over the matter.
Meanwhile, robotaxis from Alphabet’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise operate at level 4, meaning cars drive autonomously in most conditions without human interference. But these companies currently don’t sell vehicles to consumers, and Cruise recently halted its service after California’s DMV suspended its license due to an incident in which a car dragged a pedestrian under its carriage for 20 feet.
U.S. customers can buy a yearly subscription of Drive Pilot in 2024 EQS sedans and S-Class car models for $2,500. Mercedes began selling level 3-enabled cars in its home country of Germany in May 2022. The European packages cost 5,000 to 7,000 euros ($5,300 and $7,500) for a three-year membership.
The cars sport turquoise lights on its rear-view mirrors, headlights, and taillights to let law enforcement and other drivers know when the car is operating autonomously. Drive Pilot is only available on select models that have the built-in hardware, including a sensor at the front of the car and a camera in the rear windshield.
Mercedes is also working on developing level 4 capabilities. The automaker’s chief technology officer Markus Schäfer expects that level 4 autonomous technology will be available to consumers by 2030, Automotive News reported. But the jump to level 4 is considerably more difficult than achieving level 3. While humans are still expected to take control of the car based on the circumstances in level 3, level 4 technology is supposed to offer near-total autonomy. At this level, a driver only needs to take over if the system fails. That means the technology must be able to safely respond to nearly all unexpected situations on the road.
The cars sport turquoise lights on its rear-view mirrors, headlights, and taillights to let law enforcement and other drivers know when the car is operating autonomously.
When Verge tested the EQS in September these turquoise lights weren’t road-legal yet. It’s been proposed as a standard by the SAE but each jurisdiction will have to approve it individually.
Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 02:37
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They got an army of thousands of Indians to watch the road for you?
QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 02:50
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No, you’re thinking of Amazon.
Deceptichum@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 03:53
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They got an army of thousands of Amazonians to watch the road for you?
eltrain123@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 13:07
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Time for snoo-snoo?
DudeDudenson@lemmings.world
on 20 Apr 2024 04:52
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No they just got a few dozens good lawyers instead if the lawsuits costts less than the profits and you get publicity out of it then that’s business for ya
simplejack@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 04:58
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The best lawyers are going to use AI to create their legal arguments. And you know what AI stands for. Always Indians.
No matter how you slice it, it’s Indians all the way down.
YIj54yALOJxEsY20eU@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 07:19
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This is the best comment I’ve read on Lemmy in the 6 months I’ve been here.
Ok, then I’ll do it if I don’t have to pay for other insurance on the car.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 14:06
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I wonder how much cheaper it will make auto insurance. I also wonder if this will open transportation options those who have lost a license.
conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 14:34
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Not this. It’s limited to specific scenarios on specific roads. So you’re going to need a licensed driver.
Eventually with actually full self driving? I’d hope so, though it’s going to take legislation first.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 19:41
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I kinda like that system because eventually people will put their own OSes on the car, which the manufacturer obviously can’t cover. Having separate insurance/service eliminates having to pay for it if you’re accepting the liability yourself.
The conditions for the system to work are such that if you could find a policy to cover only those conditions, it’d probably just be like a couple dollars a month. Even behaving “badly” you would be unlikely to have an accident and even if you caused an accident, it’s probably just going to be a couple thousand in property damage with no medical implication.
geophysicist@discuss.tchncs.de
on 20 Apr 2024 07:28
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I mean that’s exactly what the driver would do, I’m not sure why this is controversial
h3rm17@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 08:32
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Yeah, for real, “Someone will 100%, do you want it to be your friends/family/people you know or some absolute random stranger?” Some lemmitors would surely answer “My people, for sure”
blackn1ght@feddit.uk
on 20 Apr 2024 08:47
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The human does it out of self preservation, but the car doesn’t need to feel too preserve itself.
By getting the in the car, the passengers should be aware of the risks and that if there is an accident, the car will protect pedestrians over the occupants. The pedestrians had no choice but the passengers have a choice of not getting in the vehicle.
I feel like car manufacturers are going to favour protecting the passengers as a safety feature, and then governments will eventually legislate it to go the other way after a series of high profile deaths of child pedestrians.
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 09:17
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You’re probably over-estimating the likelyhood of a scenario where a self driving car needs to make a such decision. Also take into account that if a self driving car is a significantly better driver than a human then it’s by definition going to be much safer for pedestrians aswell even if it’s programmed to prioritize the passengers.
On the flip side, if you know a car will kill a passenger to save an outsider, it becomes very easy to “accidentally” murder a passenger and get away with it…
Nah, I think most people would crash into a tree rather than clear a sidewalk. Cars are designed to protect you in a crash. Pedestrians don’t have seatbelts, crash zones, and airbags.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 12:31
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I think you’re way over estimating driver reflexes and reaction capabilities. I don’t think most accidents give a good long time to consider the next step.
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 09:14
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Who would buy a car that will sacrifice the passengers in the event of an unavoidable accident? If it’s significantly better driver than a human would be then it’s safer for pedestrians aswell.
It’s not really an issue. 99.9% of the time the passengers will already be safe and the pedestrian is the one at risk. The only time I see this being an issue is if the car is already out of control, but at that point there’s little anyone can do.
I mean, what’s the situation where a car can’t break but has enough control where it HAS to kill a pedestrian in order to save the passengers?
Tesla on their autopilot during night. All the time basically. There were number of motorcycle deaths where Tesla just mowed them down. The reason? They had two tail lights side by side instead one big light. Tesla thought this was a car far away and just ran through people.
That’s a problem with the software. The passengers in the car were never at risk and the car could have stopped at any time, the issue was that the car didn’t know what was happening. This situation wouldn’t have engaged the autopilot in the way we are discussing.
As an aside, if what you said is true, people at Tesla should be in jail. WTF
Yes. As it should be. I’ll buy the car that chooses to mow down a sidewalk full of pregnant babies instead of mildly inconveniencing myself or my passengers. Why the hell would you even consider any other alternative?
cholesterol@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 16:19
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qevlarr@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 07:45
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Autonomous my ass. Is a person remote controlling it from a low wage county?
Wanderer@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 08:13
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This is really cool and you’re all sad wankers.
Oh it doesn’t work in all these conditions.
Well it went from not working at all to a completely self driving car in certain situations. That’s great. It’s the future. We are living in the future
When the train can park next to my house so that my grandma on a wheelchair can get in, or get me to a KFC in the middle of the night, or move a random piece of furniture, I’m in.
A nice bike lane infrastructure would be a blast too, for when you don’t need to move a cargo.
Both are must for large cities, but unrealistic pretty much everywhere else.
Good job that most trips don’t involve moving a grandma or furniture. Most people rent something if they want to move furniture anyway so that seems like a non issue.
As for KFC deliveries. That doesn’t involve your own personal car so that doesn’t make any sense. No one is complaining about delivery vehicles.
Cycle lanes are good. Last mile is the real problem. Cargo bike are a thing.
So we need cycle lanes, we need trains, both of those are policy issues. Once they have self driving cars, or they invent taxis, that you can use to pick your grandma up for 1% of human trips. What’s the excuse then?
Agree. But last mile problem is more easily solved by self driving cars. Also if it functions as a mini bus then there will be even less cars.
nucleative@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 08:33
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Wonder how this works with car insurance. Os there a future where the driver doesn’t need to be insured? Can the vehicle software still be “at fault” and how will the actuaries deal with assessing this new risk.
machinin@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 09:52
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I believe Mercedes takes responsibility if there is an accident while driving autonomously.
Sizzler@slrpnk.net
on 20 Apr 2024 10:16
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And this is how they will push everyone into driverless. Through insurance costs. Who would insure 1 human driver vs 100 bots, (once the systems have a few billion miles on them)
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 12:26
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And that will probably be safer for everyone, honestly. Better or worse will vary by individual perspective.
It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out, with local city traffic being essentially reduced to all taxis and only the countryside 4x4 and farm vehicles being the last hold out of human control because of hilly terrain. Once the lorries go fully self-controlled (note: modern lorries have a lot of driver support aids as it is.) it’ll only be a matter of time.
Totally agree that car incidents will go down dramatically, some police forces will see their entire income disappear. Soo many changes that we can’t even imagine coming.
dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 17:08
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Good points. I bet local towns are the biggest holdout just because of dependence on ticket revenue.
I did think about that whilst I included farm vehicles but meant support rather than harvesters.
I wonder if any lessons have been used and applied from the farm industries automation which is great when applied to a specific area as opposed to general driving.
It’s very GPS driven from what I’m aware with the accurate measuring GPS units being thousands of pounds which obviously restricts it for use in the consumer market.
nucleative@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 14:58
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You’re probably right. Another decade or two and human driver controlled cars might be prohibitively expensive to insure for some or even not allowed in certain areas.
I can imagine an awesome world where that’s a great thing but also imagine a dystopian world like wall-e as well. I guess we’ll know then which one we chose.
bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
on 20 Apr 2024 15:12
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I feel you’re misapplying the advantage. Right now people hit other people in cars and insurance is what it is. It would be more appropriate to say that humans will pay normal rates, while autonomous car companies will charge you an insurance subscription, and work out much lower rates with the insurer.
You would think that’s how it should be right? Not a chance. They’ll find another reason to stiff you.
bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
on 20 Apr 2024 20:14
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As long as there is free competition, the cost will be around 10% over the operating cost. After that point it becomes worthwhile for another competitor to step in.
If memory serves, that’s not an intentional feature, but more a coincidence, since if the driver thinks the cruise control is about to crash the car, they’ll pop the brakes. Touching the brakes disengages the cruise control by design, so you end up with it shutting down before a crash happens.
nucleative@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 16:59
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That makes perfect sense. If the driver looks up to notice that he’s in a dangerous, unfixable situation, slams the breaks, disconnecting the autopilot (which have been responaible for letting the situation develop) hopefully the automaker can’t entirely say “not our fault, the system wasn’t even engaged at the time of the collision”
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club
on 20 Apr 2024 12:01
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Which is how it should be. The company creating the software takes on the liability of faults with said software.
No. I don’t think this is a good solution. Companies will put a price on your life and focus on monetary damage reduction. If you’re about to cause more property damage than your life is worth (to Mercedes) they’ll be incentivized to crash the car and kill you rather than crash into the expensive structure.
Your car should be you property, you should be liable for the damage it causes. The car should prioritise your life over monetary damage. If there is some software problem causing the cars to crash, you need to be able to sue Mercedes through a class action lawsuit to recover your losses.
femtech@midwest.social
on 20 Apr 2024 16:53
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Wrongful death and human body damage is a lot more expensive.
Oh, there are a lot of Tesla/self driving cars fanboys out here. They’re caught up in the idea that these corporations will save us from traffic congestion/paying taxes for public transit/car accidents/climate change/car ownership/ you name it and self driving cars will solve it. They don’t tend to like it when you try to bring reality to their fantasy.
Self driving cars are a really cool technology. Electric cars as well. However, they don’t solve the fundamental problem of transporting a 200lb person using a 3000lb vehicle. So they’re at best a partial solution. I also don’t really want a future where corporations own more of our stuff and force into monthly payments for heated car seats and “prioritise human life” premium options.
Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico the car insurance company. In one of his annual letters Buffett said that autonomous cars are going to be great for humanity and bad for insurance companies.
“If [self-driving cars] prove successful and reduce accidents dramatically, it will be very good for society and very bad for auto insurers.”
Actuaries are by definition bad at assessing new risk. But as data get collected they quickly adjust to it. There are a lot of cars so if driverless cars become even a few percent of cars on the road they will quickly be able to build good actuarial tables.
bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
on 20 Apr 2024 15:10
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His statement is extremely flawed - insurance companies dream of accepting premiums and never paying out accidents.
Hugin@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 15:44
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He understands there is enough competition in the market that as payouts and accidents go down premiums will have to. There is enough competition they can’t just keep rates high they would be undercut and lose customers.
For BH it’s doubly bad as the large cash reserves GEICO has to maintain are used to borrow against at very low rates. If those reserves drop he has less to borrow against for investing.
bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
on 20 Apr 2024 20:13
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I would agree it’s bad for insurance company employees. But the purpose of an insurance company is to collect premiums and deny claims.
Get hurt in america, your insurer will hold a demo!
WalrusDragonOnABike@reddthat.com
on 20 Apr 2024 21:26
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When you’re clients are a handful of companies who will more aggressively change insurers than consumers to save a penny and have their own legal teams, it becomes harder to price gouge or illegally deny claims.
If I wanted to be cynical, it’s also that it’s a bit different when it’s not Average Joe asking for a payout, but Mercedes, for example. It may shift the legal playing field with the insured parties not being consumers, but car manufacturers. Even worse for insurers, car manufacturers would be more successful in negotiating the initial deal as well.
Yes, clearly Warren Buffet is the one in the wrong here. 🤔
blackn1ght@feddit.uk
on 20 Apr 2024 08:48
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On a slightly unrelated note, the Mercedes EQ class are really ugly, both internally and externally.
Thorny_Insight@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 09:11
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Most new Mercedes are. Especially from the rear. I can’t imagine what they were thinking when designing those.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 09:48
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I think most German cars have had a bad generation.
Mercedes: recent designs have been divisive, sometimes I see one and think they look ok and other times they elicit a yikes. More importantly, Mercedes don’t have a single car in their lineup right now that outshines their rivals. Usually there’d be at least one. There is no reason to have a Mercedes right now.
BMW: does it even need to be said? BMW has designs and recognisability that others would kill to have, yet they destroy that design language and pump out absolutely hideous cars. This is not a Chris Bangle moment. People aren’t initially reeling at these designs but coming around to them and seeing them as being amazing and ahead of the curve like those of the late 90s and into the 2000s. BMWs are ugly now. I’ve even seen car reviewers such as Johnny Smith literally censor the grilles in their videos lol.
VW: the drivetrains are still completely fine, but my god the cabin quality has suffered. The penny-pinching is insane. Touch controls galore, with no backlight for night time driving? Two window controls and a touch toggle to switch between controlling the front/rear windows? Are you fucking serious, VW? VW used to be the king of affordable priced car with an interior that was closer to the likes of Audi/BMW/Mercedes/Volvo than it was to Renault/Citroen/Honda/Toyota/etc. but they’ve thrown that away to save pennies.
Audi: ok their general design still holds up well. But their interior is being cheapened just like VW’s. No doubt a decision from the top. Also the e-Tron’s camera mirrors are unbelievably shit. The Honda e (fuck you Honda for discontinueing, btw) had a much better implementation. And it was fucking dumb to sell the e-Tron GT for £2k less than its Porsche equivalent. Who would buy an Audi when for £2k more you can buy a Porsche?
Porsche: ok Porsche is still mostly excellent, but the first gen Taycan has a little more screen than I’d like. The 2nd generation Taycan is genuinely an engineering masterpiece, though. It feels like the car has finally had as much love poured into it as they do their 911s. People should watch Engineering Explained’s technical overview of it, it’s staggering how much they’ve improved it. But Porsche is somewhat niche anyway, they’re not enough to make the overall German car market look better.
The most frustrating one is VW. They’re supposed to be the mass-market, default, bread-and-butter European brand. And of all times to fuck up, doing it in a time when people are still forming their opinions on EVs is such a massive fuck up. People will look at the ID.3, then look at the likes of the MG4 or upcoming Renault 5 and think “oh, so VW can’t make good EVs”, and that will stick to them for a long time. Look at how long people thought Skoda was a crappy brand for! It was only around 2010 when “huhu crappy communist 80s car” meme truly died. Perceptions last and they’re choosing to trash theirs to recoup some money lost to dieselgate.
Rant over. I’m pretty fed up with the car market right now. I’m gonna keep my MX-5 until the rust claims it.
German brands right now are engaging in stupid “premium theatre”, by which they make their cars seem premium by using stuff like fancy headlights or doors that sound good, but are completely cheaping out on other stuff to an extent that’s gotten ridiculous. They’re being lazy and just resting on their built-up brand image. And that image will collapse if they don’t pull their finger out.
blackn1ght@feddit.uk
on 20 Apr 2024 10:17
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I’ve been watching a lot of car reviews lately and yeah, I think you’re right on all points. I watched a review of the new BMW 7 series and even the air control vents are capacitive sensors refer than little levers and it just seems unnecessary. What was hilarious was that the door release is right by the air vent control, so the review I watched saw the reviewer accidentally open the door when they were trying to control the air vent.
There’s way way way too much reliance on touch screens in cars. I’m not even sure if you’d legally be allowed to use them in some countries, I feel like you’d have to pull over to just change the HVAC settings! You’d swear it was designed by someone that’s never driven a car. They’re decisions that are probably coming right from the top and the actual interior designers are pulling their hair out.
There’s also a common theme across manufacturers where settings for features are lost when the car is switched off. So you have to go into the settings and change them back every single time you get into the car.
If I were in the market for a car (specifically electric), I’d probably go for Kia. The ev6 and ev9 look really nice. I’ve seen a couple of EV9s on the road recently and I was surprised at how much smaller they actually seem than on videos.
Like you though we’re going to keep our car (Nissan Quashqai) as long as possible. There’s no bullshit and it’s practical and comfortable.
TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 14:20
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If I were in the market for a car (specifically electric), I’d probably go for Kia. The ev6 and ev9 look really nice. I’ve seen a couple of EV9s on the road recently and I was surprised at how much smaller they actually seem than on videos.
Yeah the Koreans seem to have done well with EVs. It’s old now but the Kona was very well received with its EV variant. Someone a couple of doors down has an EV6 and loves it.
Personally I really love the design of the Hyundai Ioniq 5, it’s got that retro-futuristic vibe that I like and it’s based on the same drivetrain platform as the EV6 and EV9 (sidenote, that Hyundai-KIA EV platform is called E-GMP, and pronounced “E-gimp”, which I find hilarious)
mojo_raisin@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 16:03
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Mazda has very nice interiors and didn’t go the touchscreen route.
Sizzler@slrpnk.net
on 20 Apr 2024 10:18
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Those grills are going to be modder meme material, they are basically ai designed grills anyway. Think cartoonesque, Roger rabbit ultra-exaggerated grills with detail highlighted.
orenishii@feddit.nl
on 20 Apr 2024 12:33
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Haha are you me?!
I’ve just got a Landrover Defender 2023 (75th) and was so glad is just had buttons for everything. I had a touch screen but other than navigation no need to touch it.
Even optional analog dials instead of digital.
Was looking at the van equivalent of the new mercedes (v-class) but same ipad horror on the inside. Glad some brand are reversing this silly phase.
And was long time BMW driver before that but I quit 5 series before electric and the hideous grills. Such a shame.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 16:21
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Lul, yeah. (And with a dash of subjective beauty standards + stuff like how the design is gonna & then actually does age - like I can tell which good looking new Alfa Romeo will age horribly as a design, and which not … or like when manufactures keep too many old-gen equipment/parts though new designs, like how Mercedes milked their models in the previous decade.)
And then there are some brands that produced like one good looking model, just to prove they could, but then immediately continue with only ugly ones & refuse to elaborate on the matter.
It feels like the car has finally had as much love poured into it as they do their 911s. People should watch Engineering Explained’s technical overview of it, it’s staggering how much they’ve improved it.
But Porsche is somewhat niche anyway, they’re not enough to make the overall German car market look better.
I wouldn’t mind the dominant VAG-internal top-down trickle moving from Audi->VW to Porsche->VW.
Also for the record Porsches are about as common in Germany as Teslas. More common than Mazda or Mitsubishi. Granted, about 50% of those are Cayennes and Macans so that Bildungsbürger mums can drive Anne-Luisa to the farmer’s market.
Look at how long people thought Skoda was a crappy brand for!
Because it was, until the Czech moved from “VW but with less fuss, a proper Slav doesn’t need no fancy stuff but a workhorse” to “Eh the Wolfsburg guys are getting too crappy let’s get Bohemian”. It’s all VAG in the end but the brands do have their pride and independence.
PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks
on 20 Apr 2024 18:57
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TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 07:07
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Because it was
Yeah, until the mid 90s where VAG started throwing money at them, preparing for the takeover a few years later, not 2010-2015.
That’s my point, perceptions last a long time. Skodas were good long before the market caught on to that fact.
deafboy@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 09:44
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And they managed to do it without us obsessing about their CEO several times a day? I refuse to believe that!
elrik@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 12:36
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How is this different from the capabilities of Tesla’s FSD, which is considered level 2? It seems like Mercedes just decided they’ll take on liability to classify an equivalent level 2 system as level 3.
vin@lemmynsfw.com
on 20 Apr 2024 12:42
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Ummm, yeah, that’s the real difference between level 2 and 3 - who is liable
No… it means they’re confident enough to assume the risk, Tesla is not. They’ve been using their tech in europe for a while now without issue, Teslas meanwhile still love to hit a variety of new and exciting objects.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 14:01
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And that’s a huge difference for consumers. I would never use a self drive feature where I am still responsible, that’s pointless and would just create more anxiety for me.
They’re assuming liability but that doesn’t mean it’s safe or more capable than other systems.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social
on 20 Apr 2024 20:36
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They’re not confident enough to assume the risk if you look at the requirements you have to meet to use it. Under 40MPH on approved freeways in heavy traffic during daylight hours with clear skies and clear markers painted on the ground. This is essentially useless for a majority of people as it’s just going to inch ahead for you in gridlock traffic provided the road meets all the other requirements.
elrik@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 22:13
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Yeah I don’t really understand either. Under those conditions any comparable level 2 system would operate without ever requiring the driver to take over.
candybrie@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 18:24
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In California, that actually sounds extremely useful.
rsuri@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 17:11
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According to the mercedes website the cars have radar and lidar sensors. FSD has radar only, but apparently decided to move away from them and towards optical only, I’m not sure if they currently have any role in FSD.
That’s important because FSD relies on optical sensors only to tell not only where an object is, but that it exists. Based on videos I’ve seen of FSD, I suspect that if it hasn’t ingested the data to recognize, say, a plastic bucket, it won’t know that it’s not just part of the road (or at best can recognize that the road looks a little weird). If there’s a radar or lidar sensor though, those directly measure distance and can have 3-D data about the world without the ability to recognize objects. Which means they can say “hey, there’s something there I don’t recognize, time to hit the brakes and alert the driver about what to do next”.
Of course this still leaves a number of problems, like understanding at a higher level what happened after an accident for example. My guess is there will still be problems.
PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks
on 20 Apr 2024 17:12
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philpo@feddit.de
on 20 Apr 2024 17:27
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It’s not about the sensors, it’s about the software. That’s the solution.
skyspydude1@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 12:47
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Please tell me how software will be able to detect objects in low/no-light conditions if they say, have cameras with poor dynamic range and no low-light sensitivity?
GoodEye8@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 18:11
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You’ve inadvertently pointed out how Tesla deliberately skirts the law. Teslas are way more capable than what level 2 describes, but they choose to stay as level 2 so they wouldn’t have to take responsibility for their public testing
Socsa@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 21:15
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Yeah it’s pretty much an insurance product. They came up with a set of boundary conditions someone would underwrite for their “stay between the lines” tech.
EurekaStockade@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 13:22
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don’t come with a requirement that drivers watch the road
Seems it’s like every other Mercedes then
HolidayGreed@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 15:23
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KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 17:47
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They got certification from the authorities, and in the event of an accident, the manufacturer takes on responsibility.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 17:49
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lol, ‘manufacturer takes on responsibility’ so… I’m just fucked if one of these hits me?
see a mercedes, shoot a mercedes. destroy it in whatever way you can.
KISSmyOSFeddit@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 17:52
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No you’re guaranteed that the Mercedes that hit you is better insured for paying out your damages than pretty much anyone else on the road that could hit you.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 17:57
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lol corporations don’t have responsibility though. that’s the whole point of them. they’re machines for avoiding responsibility.
Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 20 Apr 2024 19:11
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Please touch grass soon.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 19:22
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more likely glass first, if I try. not in a pedestrian friendly area.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 19:26
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In this case the responsibility to pay will ultimately fall on everyone, not just on the pedestrian getting hit. Still not good, but you won’t be SOL.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 19:31
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been hit before, not buying it. gonna be proactive about self defense.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 19:45
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I’ve been hit 4 times
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 23:20
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then you know destroying these fucking things is self defense.
If these have lidar (unlike teslas) then they might be better at detecting obstructions but I feel like real world road conditions are not kind to cameras and sensors.
QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 21:19
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Fixed lidar sensors are not as reliable as it’s made out to be, unfortunately. Dome lidar systems like those found on Waymo vehicles are pretty good, but way more advanced (and expensive) than anything you’d find in consumer vehicles at the moment. The shadows of trees are enough to render basic lidar sensors useless, as they effectively produce an aperiodic square wave of infrared light (from the sun) that is frequently inseparable from the ToF emission signal. Sunsets are also sometimes enough to completely blind lidar sensors.
None of this is to say that Tesla’s previous camera-only approach was a good idea, like at all. More data is always a good thing, so long as the system doesn’t rely on the data more than the data’s reliability permits. After all, cameras can be blinded by sunlight too. IMO radar is the best economical complementary sensor to cameras at the moment. Despite the comparatively low accuracy, they are very reliable in adverse conditions.
The sad part of this is somehow thinking that payment solves any problem. Like, idk what they would pay me, just bring back my dead wife/child/father whatever. You can’t fix everything with money.
QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 20:59
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It only works on a small handful of freeways (read: no pedestrians) in California/Nevada, and only under 40 MPH. The odds of a crash within those parameters resulting in a fatality are quite low.
Autonomous system, with no meaningful human attention
Key word is ‘assisted’ driving. ADAS should roughly be a nice add, so long as human attention is policed. Ultimately, the ADAS systems are better able to react to some situations, but may utterly make some stupid calls in exceptional scenarios.
Here, the bar of ‘no human paying attention at all’ is one I’m not entirely excited about celebrating. Of course the conditions are “daytime traffic jam only”, where risk is pretty small, you might have a fender bender, pedestrians are almost certainly not a possibility, and the conditions are supremely monotonous, which is a great area for ADAS but not a great area for bored humans.
melpomenesclevage@lemm.ee
on 20 Apr 2024 17:50
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that paid for it to be, like everything else that’s legal?
ShepherdPie@midwest.social
on 20 Apr 2024 20:31
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Because it’s an extremely narrowly defined set of requirements in order to use it. It’s “approved freeways with clear markings and moderate to heavy traffic under 40MPH during daytime hours and clear conditions” meaning it will inch forward for you in bumper to bumper traffic provided you’re in an approved area and that’s it.
Well, not always hands on wheel. I have spent over an hour straight on an interstate with hands off. Ford’s system watches your eyes and lets your hands stay off if it’s decent conditions and on a LIDAR-mapped freeway. Note I wouldn’t trust it at night (there have been two crashes, both at night with stopped vehicles on freeway), but then I wouldn’t really trust myself at night either too much (there are many many more human caused crashes at night, I’m not sure a human at freeway speed could avoid a crash with a surprise stationary vehicle in middle of the road).
merthyr1831@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 17:42
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Love how companies can decide who has to supervise their car’s automated driving and not an actual safety authority. Absolutely nuts.
Cqrd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 20 Apr 2024 17:50
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They actually did get certified by an authority
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 20:41
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An “authority” of people who fell for some marketing bullshit.
QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 20:51
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Spoken like someone who clearly knows nothing about the technology.
Cqrd@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 20 Apr 2024 20:55
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Read the dammed article, it literally said the DMV for California and Nevada. It’s the fucking government.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works
on 20 Apr 2024 19:22
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Assuming a functional legal system, they’d be liable for damages if they lie about product safety.
raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 20:41
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That’s gonna do the people murdered by an algorithm a lot of good… /s
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 20:58
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You can’t have a babysitter following every human to make sure they don’t do something dangerous. Except for high risk areas, liability is the most practical option.
DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca
on 20 Apr 2024 23:12
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Or maybe, like, regulation?
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 09:46
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So you want to read 50 page regulation about how to boil water in your home because boiling water can hurt people?
And how do you regulate AI when you have no idea how it works or what could go wrong. Not as if politicians are AI experts. Driving itself is already heavily regulated, the AI has to follow traffic rules just like anyone else, if that is what you are thinking.
DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca
on 21 Apr 2024 12:22
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Why do you believe that judges (or even juries made of lay people) can make sense of the very things that you’re so confident legislators or regulators cannot?
I’m not saying regulation is perfect, and as a result, certainly there is a role for judicial review. But come on, man…lots of non sequiturs and straw dogs in your argument.
DreamlandLividity@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 13:09
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Quite often, juries don’t have to rule on technical matters. Juries will have available internal communications of the company, testimonies of the engineers working on the project etc. If safety concerns were being ignored, you can usually find enough witnesses and documents proving so.
On the other hand, how do you even begin to regulate something that is only in the process of being invented? What would the regulation look like?
Trollception@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 04:30
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Who said there was no safety authority involved? I thought it was part of the 4 level system the government decided on for assisted driving.
Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 18:02
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if it can drive a car why wouldn’t it be able to drive a truck?
I’m surprised companies don’t just build their own special highway for automated trucking and use people for last mile stuff.
machineLearner@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 18:56
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yeah that would be great. Say, you can save on that a little if you put wheel guides on the road since theyre all headed in the same direction, and maybe you can replace the tires with something that fits into that guide pretty well so that you don’t have to replace them as much. Matter of fact, all of these trucks can become electric if they run electricity through the track or above it. This is a revolutionary idea!!
Zannsolo@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 19:08
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We could make it work on a guide line and attach a bunch of trailers to one truck. You’re a genius.
fuzzzerd@programming.dev
on 20 Apr 2024 20:00
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Some might even call that invention a train.
Strobelt@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 20:04
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This idea seems to be getting some steam. I’m all aboard it!
OozingPositron@feddit.cl
on 21 Apr 2024 05:20
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A monorail of course.
DrinkMonkey@lemmy.ca
on 21 Apr 2024 11:50
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The truck division of Mercedes (Daimler) is already testing the trucks in the US. They plan commercial usage in 2027. MAN is testing in Europe in wants to start commercial usage in 2030.
twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 21 Apr 2024 17:39
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On private roads in Canada, the mining giant Teck is starting to use autonomous transport trucks.
To me this is less frightening for public safety and more for reasons related to climate change, since this kind of industrial expansion will be less contingent on worker availability.
Mind you, the whole push toward driverless vehicles seems insanely redundant as a concept, since driverless tech in the form of high-speed rail has been around for decades in an infinitely more efficient way than could ever be offered by personal vehicles.
DAMunzy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 21 Apr 2024 23:03
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It’s called a train, no?
Etterra@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 18:40
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Musk: Fuuuuuuu
daikiki@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 23:42
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According to who? Did the NTSB clear this? Are they even allowed to clear this? If this thing fucks up and kills somebody, will the judge let the driver off the hook 'cuz the manufacturer told them everything’s cool?
No_Ones_Slick_Like_Gaston@lemmy.world
on 20 Apr 2024 23:55
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According to that teal light.
Trollception@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 04:29
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You do realize humans kill hundreds of other humans a day in cars, right? Is it possible that autonomous vehicles may actually be safer than a human driver?
KredeSeraf@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 04:43
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Sure. But no system is 100% effective and all of their questions are legit and important to answer. If I got hit by one of these tomorrow I want to know the process for fault, compensation and pathway to improvement are all already done not something my accident is going to landmark.
But that being said, I was a licensing examiner for 2 years and quit because they kept making it easier to pass and I was forced to pass so many people who should not be on the road.
I think this idea is sound, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to address around it.
Trollception@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 04:49
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Honestly I’m sure there will be a lot of unfortunate mistakes until computers and self driving systems can be relied upon. However there needs to be an entry point for manufacturers and this is it. Technology will get better over time, it always has. Eventually self driving autos will be the norm.
MeDuViNoX@sh.itjust.works
on 21 Apr 2024 05:19
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Can’t the entry point just be that you have to pay attention while it’s driving for you until they figure it out?
KredeSeraf@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 05:44
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That still doesn’t address all the issues surrounding it. I am unsure if you are just young and not aware how these things work or terribly naive. But companies will always cut corners to keep profits. Regulation forces a certain level of quality control (ideally). Just letting them do their thing because “it’ll eventually get better” is a gateway to absurd amounts of damage. Also, not all technology always gets better. Plenty just get abandoned.
But to circle back, if I get hit by a car tomorrow and all these thinga you think are unimportant are unanswered does that mean I might mot get legal justice or compensation? If there isn’t clearly codified law I might not, and you might be callous enough to say you don’t care about me. But what about you? What if you got hit by a unmonitored self driving car tomorrow and then told you’d have to go through a long, expensive court battle to determine fault because no one had done it it. So you’re in and out of a hospital recovering and draining all of your money on bills both legal and medical to eventually hopefully get compensated for something that wasn’t your fault.
That is why people here are asking these questions. Few people actually oppose progress. They just need to know that reasonable precautions are taken for predictable failures.
Llewellyn@lemm.ee
on 21 Apr 2024 11:37
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But then it’s good that the manufacturer states the driver isn’t obliged to watch the road. Because it shifts responsibility towards the manufacturer and thus - it’s a great incentive to make technology as safe as possible.
Trollception@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 14:26
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To be clear I never said that I didn’t care about an individual’s safety, you inferred that somehow from my post and quite frankly are quite disrespectful. I simply stated that autonomous vehicles are here to stay and that the technology will improve more with time.
The legal implications of self driving cars are still being determined and as this is literally one of the first approved technologies available. Tesla doesn’t count as it’s not a SAE level 3 autonomous driving vehicle. There are some references in the liability section of the wiki.
EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 16:47
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Nope. Someone absolutely downvoted him. Because, just like Reddit, the downvote button here is the ‘wow fuck that guy for saying a thing i don’t like’ button.
Transporter_Room_3@startrek.website
on 21 Apr 2024 18:55
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Also a “I don’t like you/this page/the content and will go out of my way to systematically down vote everything you have done and everything in this particular thread” button.
moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
on 21 Apr 2024 18:36
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Because some of us have fat fingers and accidentally downvote when we scroll on mobile.
One of the things I liked about reddit was that, since it saved downvoted posts, I could go through the list every once in a while and undownvote the accidents.
Can’t do that here though, and I sometimes notice posts or comments I’ve accidentally downvoted.
Anyway, people shouldn’t care so much, we don’t have a karma system or the like here anyways, so why does it matter?
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world
on 22 Apr 2024 00:12
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Anyway, people shouldn’t care so much, we don’t have a karma system or the like here anyways, so why does it matter?
Well, only speaking for myself, I don’t care, it just seemed so weird since it was an accurate single word, so I was curious.
I also wonder sometimes if it’s a bot system purposely trying to force engagement.
Lol trust me, I get downvotes all the time for things I say here on Lemmy. If I let them bother me I’d be in the psychiatric system by now.
What client are you using? I can browse both upvoted and downvoted comments in Voyager
moonpiedumplings@programming.dev
on 22 Apr 2024 21:02
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I’m using eternity, which hasn’t received any updates, on my phone, and the default lemmy web interface on my computer.
Maybe I need to try some other options.
stoly@lemmy.world
on 21 Apr 2024 18:39
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There are people who are pathologically contrarian. I’ve had to end a friendship over it—the endless need to say something negative about literally everything that ever happens and an unwillingness to be charitable to others.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 23 Apr 2024 12:50
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I have the theory that archive.is, waybackmachine and 12ft.io are no secret anymore, and that just posting “paywalled” comes across as too lazy to copy/paste or (a lot easier) to use this addon to reduce the work to a click. i dont mind, but i can understand why others might see it that way
CosmicCleric@lemmy.world
on 23 Apr 2024 15:41
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and that just posting “paywalled” comes across as too lazy to copy/paste
Blaming the victim, and justifying paywalls.
or (a lot easier) to use this addon to reduce the work to a click.
My phone browser doesn’t use add-ons.
i dont mind
And yet, you took the time out to reply, to chastise me for saying it.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 25 Apr 2024 11:35
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sheesh, you are quite aggressive, i did not want to offend. and as i said, i don’t mind it, i even posted the archivelink, for which you thanked me. check your target before firing, mate :-)
(also, theres always firefox mobile. can apple users use it with addons/firefox browser engine now? i don’t follow apple development actively)
threaded - newest
Yeah I doubt this can drive American roads in any weather condition and not have issues.
Correct, it only works when certain conditions are met.
LOL. Weather is probably the smallest of the problems they have solved.
German car makers have a habit of actually testing all their models in all weather conditions, routinely, around the globe.
Read article
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…
…
…
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Hmm, so only on a very small number of predetermined routes, and at very slow speeds for those roads.
Still impressive, but not as impressive as the headline makes out.
And definitely not worth the $2500 a year they’re asking for the feature.
If they assume full liability for any collisions while the feature is active (and it looks like they do), then I can see that being fair.
Chances are, If you can afford the car, then that amount is nothing to you.
Having known one, some of their customers love their feature loaded cars to brag about and feel extra special. Some will definitely pay the 2.5k gladly.
Conspicuous Consumption.
Come on, you have been able to pay the price of that Mercedes in the first place.
These 2500 are not going to hurt.
Many people use credit to buy a car out of their league.
They may do so. I have no mercy for them.
Then those people might as well take an extra loan for 2500 a year. I’m not sure what the point is you’re trying to make here.
Yes, but it’s actually level 3.
Not the Tesla “full self driving - no wait we actually lied to you, you need to be alert at all times” bullshit.
We’ll wait and see i guess
I’ve seen this headline a few times and the details are laughably bad. The only reason this can be getting any press is because the headline is good clickbait. But 40 mph top speed on approved roads in 2 states only if a car is in front of you in the daytime is entirely useless. I guess it’s a good first step maybe? But trying to write headlines like this is big news is sad.
It’s specifically designed to navigate traffic congestion, which happens under 30 mph. It can keep up with the lane, deal with lane changes, honk if someone backs into you, let ambulances through, things like that. Not sure why the article presents it as generic driving.
The reason this gets attention is because it’s the first level 3 sold to consumers.
The tech is hard, of course it’s gonna start out with laughingly limited capabilities. But it’s the first step towards more automation.
It’s starting in California where there are a meaningful number of high earners who are spending hours per day in 4 lane bumper to bumper traffic.
Having actual autonomy during those hours is still shit. But it’s a hell of a lot less shit than the tedium of the high attention requirements of sitting in traffic at a crawl.
Fucking subscription. No.
Had this been BMW I would have assumed it was an onion article.
Why?
It will be litigated almost immediately. There is no current combination of model and hardware platform that a car could reasonably run that could be called “fully self driving” at any useful speed. This thing sounds like parking assist on steroids maybe, or “stalled traffic assist”. They will be sued.
Sued for what?
I mean I disagree with most of what the person you’re responding to is saying, but they are entering into a new stage of vehicular liability. By telling the driver they don’t have to pay attention there is an implied transfer of liability.
It probably says somewhere in the terms of use that Mercedes isn’t at fault or that you have to carry some special kind of insurance, and frankly computers have a pretty good shot at being better than your average human driver so they’ll hopefully be easier to insure, but nevertheless, people on both sides of every accident for the first few years with this tech will sue. Any chance to squeeze a few milly out of a 100 billion dollar car company.
Sure, anyone can sue for any reason. That doesn’t mean that a case will be successful. I do agree with you that there if a transfer of liability, until the car tells the driver that manual intervention is needed. But also, this can be used on only specific roads, under specific weather and traffic conditions, I really don’t think it’s much to ask of a robot to do. It actually seems like a pretty boring level of autonomy.
roadandtrack.com/…/what-happens-if-mercedes-drive…
“Mercedes will accept full legal responsibility for the vehicle whenever Drive Pilot is active.”
It will only activate if all the conditions are met, but not clear on how long the driver has to take over on deactivation before they stop accepting liability…
Did you read the article? There are already plenty of conditions for activating the self driving mode.
There’s tons of conditions
I doubt this is a mistake, they must have really high confidence in the tech as well as with the restrictions, not even Tesla had the balls to announce that you could drive distracted.
That’s the difference between Level 2 and Level 3 full self driving. Teslas are Level 2.
That’s what I’m saying, they could have called this a “Ultra advanced level 2” and avoided opening themselves up to a TON of liabilities. Once you start saying this is a level 3 system and you don’t need to pay attention to the road with it, well, that shuts the door to many defenses they could use of it was “just” level 2 if something happens. So that means they must be really confident in their system
It’s still not flawless and reguires an attentive driver but Tesla FSD Beta V12 is pretty damn impressive. They made a huge leap forward by going from human code to 100% neural nets. I don’t think we’re too far a way from a true robo-taxi and there’s going to be some humble pie served for the LiDAR/radar advocates. I highly recommend everyone to watch some reviews on YouTube if you aren’t up to speed with the recent changes they’ve made.
archive.is/Mm7Q2
Exclusive: Mercedes becomes the first automaker to sell autonomous cars in the U.S. that don’t come with a equirement that drivers watch the road
Rachyl Jones April 19, 2024, 12:05 AM UTC
4–5 minutes
The next time you’re traveling on the interstate and see a fellow driver whose hands are full with everything but the wheel—scrolling TikTok, applying mascara, eating breakfast—don’t panic. It’s all legal in certain states, as long as they’re in a new Mercedes with autonomous driving technology.
The luxury automaker has become the first in the nation to start selling self-driving cars—at least those that afford riders a hands-free experience—to regular consumers. So far, the company has sold at least 65 autonomous vehicles in California, Fortune has learned through an open records request submitted to the state’s DMV. Select Mercedes dealerships in Nevada are also offering the cars with the new technology, known as “level 3” autonomous driving.
Level 3-enabled cars went on sale in December, Mercedes told Fortune. California and Nevada are the only two states where the company can legally sell the technology to consumers. The two state DMVs gave Mercedes approval to begin selling the cars last year—Nevada in January, and California in June. Mercedes announced in September its planned to begin sales, but this is the first news of the cars actually reaching consumers.
Drivers can activate Mercedes’s technology, called Drive Pilot, when certain conditions are met, including in heavy traffic jams, during the daytime, on specific California and Nevada freeways, and when the car is traveling less than 40 mph. Drivers can focus on other activities until the vehicle alerts them to resume control. The technology does not work on roads that haven’t been pre-approved by Mercedes, including on freeways in other states.
The sales mark a new echelon of autonomous driving available to the average American. Mercedes is the first automaker selling to customers to achieve level 3 capabilities in the U.S., with Tesla and others still offering technology at level 2—in which cars can perform specific tasks but require constant supervision from a driver. Some drivers, however, ignore those rules and operate the cars as if they are more capable than they are. Some drivers, however, ignore those rules and operate the cars as if they are more capable than they are. One family of a deceased driver has accused Tesla of hyping its assisted driving technology as fully autonomous, allegedly leading to tragic results, while California’s DMV last year accused the company of false advertising over the matter.
Meanwhile, robotaxis from Alphabet’s Waymo and GM’s Cruise operate at level 4, meaning cars drive autonomously in most conditions without human interference. But these companies currently don’t sell vehicles to consumers, and Cruise recently halted its service after California’s DMV suspended its license due to an incident in which a car dragged a pedestrian under its carriage for 20 feet.
U.S. customers can buy a yearly subscription of Drive Pilot in 2024 EQS sedans and S-Class car models for $2,500. Mercedes began selling level 3-enabled cars in its home country of Germany in May 2022. The European packages cost 5,000 to 7,000 euros ($5,300 and $7,500) for a three-year membership.
The cars sport turquoise lights on its rear-view mirrors, headlights, and taillights to let law enforcement and other drivers know when the car is operating autonomously. Drive Pilot is only available on select models that have the built-in hardware, including a sensor at the front of the car and a camera in the rear windshield.
Mercedes is also working on developing level 4 capabilities. The automaker’s chief technology officer Markus Schäfer expects that level 4 autonomous technology will be available to consumers by 2030, Automotive News reported. But the jump to level 4 is considerably more difficult than achieving level 3. While humans are still expected to take control of the car based on the circumstances in level 3, level 4 technology is supposed to offer near-total autonomy. At this level, a driver only needs to take over if the system fails. That means the technology must be able to safely respond to nearly all unexpected situations on the road.
That’s actually a pretty neat solution lol
When Verge tested the EQS in September these turquoise lights weren’t road-legal yet. It’s been proposed as a standard by the SAE but each jurisdiction will have to approve it individually.
They got an army of thousands of Indians to watch the road for you?
No, you’re thinking of Amazon.
They got an army of thousands of Amazonians to watch the road for you?
.
I would let Xena Warrior Princess drive with a 300ms latency, no doubt.
Ah, the ol’ reddit swi- oh wait…
Ah, the ol’ Lemmy Switcheroo!
Time for snoo-snoo?
No they just got a few dozens good lawyers instead if the lawsuits costts less than the profits and you get publicity out of it then that’s business for ya
The best lawyers are going to use AI to create their legal arguments. And you know what AI stands for. Always Indians.
No matter how you slice it, it’s Indians all the way down.
This is the best comment I’ve read on Lemmy in the 6 months I’ve been here.
yeah, fuck that.
I think you can afford that if you own an EQS
Those cars cost well over $100k each. The demographic buying that doesn’t care about $2500.
They’re also accepting full liability if anything happens while using this feature so it’s actually a type of insurance
Ok, then I’ll do it if I don’t have to pay for other insurance on the car.
I wonder how much cheaper it will make auto insurance. I also wonder if this will open transportation options those who have lost a license.
Not this. It’s limited to specific scenarios on specific roads. So you’re going to need a licensed driver.
Eventually with actually full self driving? I’d hope so, though it’s going to take legislation first.
I kinda like that system because eventually people will put their own OSes on the car, which the manufacturer obviously can’t cover. Having separate insurance/service eliminates having to pay for it if you’re accepting the liability yourself.
The conditions for the system to work are such that if you could find a policy to cover only those conditions, it’d probably just be like a couple dollars a month. Even behaving “badly” you would be unlikely to have an accident and even if you caused an accident, it’s probably just going to be a couple thousand in property damage with no medical implication.
Have you seen Tesla’s price for full self driving? And they don’t take liability
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I like to imagine somebody in a call center remotely driving your car.
Fine print will say it’s still your fault though if they crash
On a lever 3 system it’s not. If it is then it’s level 2.
This is also the company that promises to prioritise the vehicle occupants over pedestrians.
Linky
I mean that’s exactly what the driver would do, I’m not sure why this is controversial
Yeah, for real, “Someone will 100%, do you want it to be your friends/family/people you know or some absolute random stranger?” Some lemmitors would surely answer “My people, for sure”
The human does it out of self preservation, but the car doesn’t need to feel too preserve itself.
By getting the in the car, the passengers should be aware of the risks and that if there is an accident, the car will protect pedestrians over the occupants. The pedestrians had no choice but the passengers have a choice of not getting in the vehicle.
I feel like car manufacturers are going to favour protecting the passengers as a safety feature, and then governments will eventually legislate it to go the other way after a series of high profile deaths of child pedestrians.
You’re probably over-estimating the likelyhood of a scenario where a self driving car needs to make a such decision. Also take into account that if a self driving car is a significantly better driver than a human then it’s by definition going to be much safer for pedestrians aswell even if it’s programmed to prioritize the passengers.
On the flip side, if you know a car will kill a passenger to save an outsider, it becomes very easy to “accidentally” murder a passenger and get away with it…
Nah, I think most people would crash into a tree rather than clear a sidewalk. Cars are designed to protect you in a crash. Pedestrians don’t have seatbelts, crash zones, and airbags.
I think you’re way over estimating driver reflexes and reaction capabilities. I don’t think most accidents give a good long time to consider the next step.
Who would buy a car that will sacrifice the passengers in the event of an unavoidable accident? If it’s significantly better driver than a human would be then it’s safer for pedestrians aswell.
It’s not really an issue. 99.9% of the time the passengers will already be safe and the pedestrian is the one at risk. The only time I see this being an issue is if the car is already out of control, but at that point there’s little anyone can do.
I mean, what’s the situation where a car can’t break but has enough control where it HAS to kill a pedestrian in order to save the passengers?
Tesla on their autopilot during night. All the time basically. There were number of motorcycle deaths where Tesla just mowed them down. The reason? They had two tail lights side by side instead one big light. Tesla thought this was a car far away and just ran through people.
That’s a problem with the software. The passengers in the car were never at risk and the car could have stopped at any time, the issue was that the car didn’t know what was happening. This situation wouldn’t have engaged the autopilot in the way we are discussing.
As an aside, if what you said is true, people at Tesla should be in jail. WTF
Tesla washes their hands of any wrongdoing with terms of use where owner agrees he’s responsible bla bla bla.
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Yes. As it should be. I’ll buy the car that chooses to mow down a sidewalk full of pregnant babies instead of mildly inconveniencing myself or my passengers. Why the hell would you even consider any other alternative?
🤔
I’d consider a 5yr old a baby en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Medina
Autonomous my ass. Is a person remote controlling it from a low wage county?
This is really cool and you’re all sad wankers.
Oh it doesn’t work in all these conditions.
Well it went from not working at all to a completely self driving car in certain situations. That’s great. It’s the future. We are living in the future
The better future isn’t better cars it’s removing cars
We had that. It wasn’t a future.
Getting on a train definitely feels like the future compared to a car.
Don’t have to drive, faster, cleaner, more space, more comfort, can buy food, can go to toilet, better view.
When the train can park next to my house so that my grandma on a wheelchair can get in, or get me to a KFC in the middle of the night, or move a random piece of furniture, I’m in.
A nice bike lane infrastructure would be a blast too, for when you don’t need to move a cargo.
Both are must for large cities, but unrealistic pretty much everywhere else.
Good job that most trips don’t involve moving a grandma or furniture. Most people rent something if they want to move furniture anyway so that seems like a non issue.
As for KFC deliveries. That doesn’t involve your own personal car so that doesn’t make any sense. No one is complaining about delivery vehicles.
Cycle lanes are good. Last mile is the real problem. Cargo bike are a thing.
So we need cycle lanes, we need trains, both of those are policy issues. Once they have self driving cars, or they invent taxis, that you can use to pick your grandma up for 1% of human trips. What’s the excuse then?
I used to be a city dweller, like you. But now, in bumfuck nowhere, we deliver our own food.
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/3548ae85-2b85-4195-ac27-ded664a2efe5.png">
how dare someone enjoy driving
Agree. But last mile problem is more easily solved by self driving cars. Also if it functions as a mini bus then there will be even less cars.
Wonder how this works with car insurance. Os there a future where the driver doesn’t need to be insured? Can the vehicle software still be “at fault” and how will the actuaries deal with assessing this new risk.
I believe Mercedes takes responsibility if there is an accident while driving autonomously.
And this is how they will push everyone into driverless. Through insurance costs. Who would insure 1 human driver vs 100 bots, (once the systems have a few billion miles on them)
And that will probably be safer for everyone, honestly. Better or worse will vary by individual perspective.
It’ll be interesting to see how it pans out, with local city traffic being essentially reduced to all taxis and only the countryside 4x4 and farm vehicles being the last hold out of human control because of hilly terrain. Once the lorries go fully self-controlled (note: modern lorries have a lot of driver support aids as it is.) it’ll only be a matter of time.
Totally agree that car incidents will go down dramatically, some police forces will see their entire income disappear. Soo many changes that we can’t even imagine coming.
Good points. I bet local towns are the biggest holdout just because of dependence on ticket revenue.
I included that line thinking of America, it vastly reduces police interaction chance as well which gives me more thought.
Farm vehicles are far more automated than any cars these days.
I did think about that whilst I included farm vehicles but meant support rather than harvesters.
I wonder if any lessons have been used and applied from the farm industries automation which is great when applied to a specific area as opposed to general driving.
It’s very GPS driven from what I’m aware with the accurate measuring GPS units being thousands of pounds which obviously restricts it for use in the consumer market.
You’re probably right. Another decade or two and human driver controlled cars might be prohibitively expensive to insure for some or even not allowed in certain areas.
I can imagine an awesome world where that’s a great thing but also imagine a dystopian world like wall-e as well. I guess we’ll know then which one we chose.
I feel you’re misapplying the advantage. Right now people hit other people in cars and insurance is what it is. It would be more appropriate to say that humans will pay normal rates, while autonomous car companies will charge you an insurance subscription, and work out much lower rates with the insurer.
You would think that’s how it should be right? Not a chance. They’ll find another reason to stiff you.
As long as there is free competition, the cost will be around 10% over the operating cost. After that point it becomes worthwhile for another competitor to step in.
Will it pull a Tesla and switch off the autopilot seconds before an accident?
Wow I hope we see some regulation about that kind of thing.
If memory serves, that’s not an intentional feature, but more a coincidence, since if the driver thinks the cruise control is about to crash the car, they’ll pop the brakes. Touching the brakes disengages the cruise control by design, so you end up with it shutting down before a crash happens.
That makes perfect sense. If the driver looks up to notice that he’s in a dangerous, unfixable situation, slams the breaks, disconnecting the autopilot (which have been responaible for letting the situation develop) hopefully the automaker can’t entirely say “not our fault, the system wasn’t even engaged at the time of the collision”
Which is how it should be. The company creating the software takes on the liability of faults with said software.
No. I don’t think this is a good solution. Companies will put a price on your life and focus on monetary damage reduction. If you’re about to cause more property damage than your life is worth (to Mercedes) they’ll be incentivized to crash the car and kill you rather than crash into the expensive structure.
Your car should be you property, you should be liable for the damage it causes. The car should prioritise your life over monetary damage. If there is some software problem causing the cars to crash, you need to be able to sue Mercedes through a class action lawsuit to recover your losses.
Wrongful death and human body damage is a lot more expensive.
You’ve been downvoted, but I don’t get why. Are people in denial that corpos will put money above all else?
Oh, there are a lot of Tesla/self driving cars fanboys out here. They’re caught up in the idea that these corporations will save us from traffic congestion/paying taxes for public transit/car accidents/climate change/car ownership/ you name it and self driving cars will solve it. They don’t tend to like it when you try to bring reality to their fantasy.
Self driving cars are a really cool technology. Electric cars as well. However, they don’t solve the fundamental problem of transporting a 200lb person using a 3000lb vehicle. So they’re at best a partial solution. I also don’t really want a future where corporations own more of our stuff and force into monthly payments for heated car seats and “prioritise human life” premium options.
Fanboys gonna fanboy I guess!
Berkshire Hathaway owns Geico the car insurance company. In one of his annual letters Buffett said that autonomous cars are going to be great for humanity and bad for insurance companies.
“If [self-driving cars] prove successful and reduce accidents dramatically, it will be very good for society and very bad for auto insurers.”
Actuaries are by definition bad at assessing new risk. But as data get collected they quickly adjust to it. There are a lot of cars so if driverless cars become even a few percent of cars on the road they will quickly be able to build good actuarial tables.
His statement is extremely flawed - insurance companies dream of accepting premiums and never paying out accidents.
He understands there is enough competition in the market that as payouts and accidents go down premiums will have to. There is enough competition they can’t just keep rates high they would be undercut and lose customers.
For BH it’s doubly bad as the large cash reserves GEICO has to maintain are used to borrow against at very low rates. If those reserves drop he has less to borrow against for investing.
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I would agree it’s bad for insurance company employees. But the purpose of an insurance company is to collect premiums and deny claims.
Get hurt in america, your insurer will hold a demo!
When you’re clients are a handful of companies who will more aggressively change insurers than consumers to save a penny and have their own legal teams, it becomes harder to price gouge or illegally deny claims.
If I wanted to be cynical, it’s also that it’s a bit different when it’s not Average Joe asking for a payout, but Mercedes, for example. It may shift the legal playing field with the insured parties not being consumers, but car manufacturers. Even worse for insurers, car manufacturers would be more successful in negotiating the initial deal as well.
Yes, clearly Warren Buffet is the one in the wrong here. 🤔
On a slightly unrelated note, the Mercedes EQ class are really ugly, both internally and externally.
Most new Mercedes are. Especially from the rear. I can’t imagine what they were thinking when designing those.
I think most German cars have had a bad generation.
Mercedes: recent designs have been divisive, sometimes I see one and think they look ok and other times they elicit a yikes. More importantly, Mercedes don’t have a single car in their lineup right now that outshines their rivals. Usually there’d be at least one. There is no reason to have a Mercedes right now.
BMW: does it even need to be said? BMW has designs and recognisability that others would kill to have, yet they destroy that design language and pump out absolutely hideous cars. This is not a Chris Bangle moment. People aren’t initially reeling at these designs but coming around to them and seeing them as being amazing and ahead of the curve like those of the late 90s and into the 2000s. BMWs are ugly now. I’ve even seen car reviewers such as Johnny Smith literally censor the grilles in their videos lol.
VW: the drivetrains are still completely fine, but my god the cabin quality has suffered. The penny-pinching is insane. Touch controls galore, with no backlight for night time driving? Two window controls and a touch toggle to switch between controlling the front/rear windows? Are you fucking serious, VW? VW used to be the king of affordable priced car with an interior that was closer to the likes of Audi/BMW/Mercedes/Volvo than it was to Renault/Citroen/Honda/Toyota/etc. but they’ve thrown that away to save pennies.
Audi: ok their general design still holds up well. But their interior is being cheapened just like VW’s. No doubt a decision from the top. Also the e-Tron’s camera mirrors are unbelievably shit. The Honda e (fuck you Honda for discontinueing, btw) had a much better implementation. And it was fucking dumb to sell the e-Tron GT for £2k less than its Porsche equivalent. Who would buy an Audi when for £2k more you can buy a Porsche?
Porsche: ok Porsche is still mostly excellent, but the first gen Taycan has a little more screen than I’d like. The 2nd generation Taycan is genuinely an engineering masterpiece, though. It feels like the car has finally had as much love poured into it as they do their 911s. People should watch Engineering Explained’s technical overview of it, it’s staggering how much they’ve improved it. But Porsche is somewhat niche anyway, they’re not enough to make the overall German car market look better.
The most frustrating one is VW. They’re supposed to be the mass-market, default, bread-and-butter European brand. And of all times to fuck up, doing it in a time when people are still forming their opinions on EVs is such a massive fuck up. People will look at the ID.3, then look at the likes of the MG4 or upcoming Renault 5 and think “oh, so VW can’t make good EVs”, and that will stick to them for a long time. Look at how long people thought Skoda was a crappy brand for! It was only around 2010 when “huhu crappy communist 80s car” meme truly died. Perceptions last and they’re choosing to trash theirs to recoup some money lost to dieselgate.
Rant over. I’m pretty fed up with the car market right now. I’m gonna keep my MX-5 until the rust claims it.
German brands right now are engaging in stupid “premium theatre”, by which they make their cars seem premium by using stuff like fancy headlights or doors that sound good, but are completely cheaping out on other stuff to an extent that’s gotten ridiculous. They’re being lazy and just resting on their built-up brand image. And that image will collapse if they don’t pull their finger out.
I’ve been watching a lot of car reviews lately and yeah, I think you’re right on all points. I watched a review of the new BMW 7 series and even the air control vents are capacitive sensors refer than little levers and it just seems unnecessary. What was hilarious was that the door release is right by the air vent control, so the review I watched saw the reviewer accidentally open the door when they were trying to control the air vent.
There’s way way way too much reliance on touch screens in cars. I’m not even sure if you’d legally be allowed to use them in some countries, I feel like you’d have to pull over to just change the HVAC settings! You’d swear it was designed by someone that’s never driven a car. They’re decisions that are probably coming right from the top and the actual interior designers are pulling their hair out.
There’s also a common theme across manufacturers where settings for features are lost when the car is switched off. So you have to go into the settings and change them back every single time you get into the car.
If I were in the market for a car (specifically electric), I’d probably go for Kia. The ev6 and ev9 look really nice. I’ve seen a couple of EV9s on the road recently and I was surprised at how much smaller they actually seem than on videos.
Like you though we’re going to keep our car (Nissan Quashqai) as long as possible. There’s no bullshit and it’s practical and comfortable.
Yeah the Koreans seem to have done well with EVs. It’s old now but the Kona was very well received with its EV variant. Someone a couple of doors down has an EV6 and loves it.
Personally I really love the design of the Hyundai Ioniq 5, it’s got that retro-futuristic vibe that I like and it’s based on the same drivetrain platform as the EV6 and EV9 (sidenote, that Hyundai-KIA EV platform is called E-GMP, and pronounced “E-gimp”, which I find hilarious)
Mazda has very nice interiors and didn’t go the touchscreen route.
Those grills are going to be modder meme material, they are basically ai designed grills anyway. Think cartoonesque, Roger rabbit ultra-exaggerated grills with detail highlighted.
Haha are you me?!
I’ve just got a Landrover Defender 2023 (75th) and was so glad is just had buttons for everything. I had a touch screen but other than navigation no need to touch it. Even optional analog dials instead of digital.
Was looking at the van equivalent of the new mercedes (v-class) but same ipad horror on the inside. Glad some brand are reversing this silly phase.
And was long time BMW driver before that but I quit 5 series before electric and the hideous grills. Such a shame.
Lul, yeah. (And with a dash of subjective beauty standards + stuff like how the design is gonna & then actually does age - like I can tell which good looking new Alfa Romeo will age horribly as a design, and which not … or like when manufactures keep too many old-gen equipment/parts though new designs, like how Mercedes milked their models in the previous decade.)
And then there are some brands that produced like one good looking model, just to prove they could, but then immediately continue with only ugly ones & refuse to elaborate on the matter.
This one?
I wouldn’t mind the dominant VAG-internal top-down trickle moving from Audi->VW to Porsche->VW.
Also for the record Porsches are about as common in Germany as Teslas. More common than Mazda or Mitsubishi. Granted, about 50% of those are Cayennes and Macans so that Bildungsbürger mums can drive Anne-Luisa to the farmer’s market.
Because it was, until the Czech moved from “VW but with less fuss, a proper Slav doesn’t need no fancy stuff but a workhorse” to “Eh the Wolfsburg guys are getting too crappy let’s get Bohemian”. It’s all VAG in the end but the brands do have their pride and independence.
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Yeah, until the mid 90s where VAG started throwing money at them, preparing for the takeover a few years later, not 2010-2015.
That’s my point, perceptions last a long time. Skodas were good long before the market caught on to that fact.
And they managed to do it without us obsessing about their CEO several times a day? I refuse to believe that!
How is this different from the capabilities of Tesla’s FSD, which is considered level 2? It seems like Mercedes just decided they’ll take on liability to classify an equivalent level 2 system as level 3.
Ummm, yeah, that’s the real difference between level 2 and 3 - who is liable
Ah so it’s marketing BS then, got it.
No… it means they’re confident enough to assume the risk, Tesla is not. They’ve been using their tech in europe for a while now without issue, Teslas meanwhile still love to hit a variety of new and exciting objects.
And that’s a huge difference for consumers. I would never use a self drive feature where I am still responsible, that’s pointless and would just create more anxiety for me.
They’re assuming liability but that doesn’t mean it’s safe or more capable than other systems.
They’re not confident enough to assume the risk if you look at the requirements you have to meet to use it. Under 40MPH on approved freeways in heavy traffic during daylight hours with clear skies and clear markers painted on the ground. This is essentially useless for a majority of people as it’s just going to inch ahead for you in gridlock traffic provided the road meets all the other requirements.
Yeah I don’t really understand either. Under those conditions any comparable level 2 system would operate without ever requiring the driver to take over.
In California, that actually sounds extremely useful.
According to the mercedes website the cars have radar and lidar sensors. FSD has radar only, but apparently decided to move away from them and towards optical only, I’m not sure if they currently have any role in FSD.
That’s important because FSD relies on optical sensors only to tell not only where an object is, but that it exists. Based on videos I’ve seen of FSD, I suspect that if it hasn’t ingested the data to recognize, say, a plastic bucket, it won’t know that it’s not just part of the road (or at best can recognize that the road looks a little weird). If there’s a radar or lidar sensor though, those directly measure distance and can have 3-D data about the world without the ability to recognize objects. Which means they can say “hey, there’s something there I don’t recognize, time to hit the brakes and alert the driver about what to do next”.
Of course this still leaves a number of problems, like understanding at a higher level what happened after an accident for example. My guess is there will still be problems.
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It’s also limited to slow traffic on some roads
“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.” www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot#:~:te….
It’s not about the sensors, it’s about the software. That’s the solution.
Please tell me how software will be able to detect objects in low/no-light conditions if they say, have cameras with poor dynamic range and no low-light sensitivity?
You’ve inadvertently pointed out how Tesla deliberately skirts the law. Teslas are way more capable than what level 2 describes, but they choose to stay as level 2 so they wouldn’t have to take responsibility for their public testing
Yeah it’s pretty much an insurance product. They came up with a set of boundary conditions someone would underwrite for their “stay between the lines” tech.
Seems it’s like every other Mercedes then
<img alt="" src="https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/ce76498f-8a12-4dff-b176-9688d372d25b.jpeg">
Hey I’m watching it on my mirrors.
Break down of different self driving levels
How is that legal?
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They got certification from the authorities, and in the event of an accident, the manufacturer takes on responsibility.
lol, ‘manufacturer takes on responsibility’ so… I’m just fucked if one of these hits me?
see a mercedes, shoot a mercedes. destroy it in whatever way you can.
No you’re guaranteed that the Mercedes that hit you is better insured for paying out your damages than pretty much anyone else on the road that could hit you.
lol corporations don’t have responsibility though. that’s the whole point of them. they’re machines for avoiding responsibility.
Please touch grass soon.
more likely glass first, if I try. not in a pedestrian friendly area.
In this case the responsibility to pay will ultimately fall on everyone, not just on the pedestrian getting hit. Still not good, but you won’t be SOL.
been hit before, not buying it. gonna be proactive about self defense.
I’ve been hit 4 times
then you know destroying these fucking things is self defense.
If these have lidar (unlike teslas) then they might be better at detecting obstructions but I feel like real world road conditions are not kind to cameras and sensors.
Fixed lidar sensors are not as reliable as it’s made out to be, unfortunately. Dome lidar systems like those found on Waymo vehicles are pretty good, but way more advanced (and expensive) than anything you’d find in consumer vehicles at the moment. The shadows of trees are enough to render basic lidar sensors useless, as they effectively produce an aperiodic square wave of infrared light (from the sun) that is frequently inseparable from the ToF emission signal. Sunsets are also sometimes enough to completely blind lidar sensors.
None of this is to say that Tesla’s previous camera-only approach was a good idea, like at all. More data is always a good thing, so long as the system doesn’t rely on the data more than the data’s reliability permits. After all, cameras can be blinded by sunlight too. IMO radar is the best economical complementary sensor to cameras at the moment. Despite the comparatively low accuracy, they are very reliable in adverse conditions.
The sad part of this is somehow thinking that payment solves any problem. Like, idk what they would pay me, just bring back my dead wife/child/father whatever. You can’t fix everything with money.
It only works on a small handful of freeways (read: no pedestrians) in California/Nevada, and only under 40 MPH. The odds of a crash within those parameters resulting in a fatality are quite low.
Human drivers are far more dangerous on the road, and you should be applauding assisted driving development.
This presumes the options are only:
Key word is ‘assisted’ driving. ADAS should roughly be a nice add, so long as human attention is policed. Ultimately, the ADAS systems are better able to react to some situations, but may utterly make some stupid calls in exceptional scenarios.
Here, the bar of ‘no human paying attention at all’ is one I’m not entirely excited about celebrating. Of course the conditions are “daytime traffic jam only”, where risk is pretty small, you might have a fender bender, pedestrians are almost certainly not a possibility, and the conditions are supremely monotonous, which is a great area for ADAS but not a great area for bored humans.
that paid for it to be, like everything else that’s legal?
Because it’s an extremely narrowly defined set of requirements in order to use it. It’s “approved freeways with clear markings and moderate to heavy traffic under 40MPH during daytime hours and clear conditions” meaning it will inch forward for you in bumper to bumper traffic provided you’re in an approved area and that’s it.
www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot
Right, this is an insurance product more than a tech product.
Still seems not legal to not pay attention to the road. Wouldn’t fly over here at least.
Correct, it only flies in California and Nevada, where the DMV approved it
How is that different than LKAS + ACC?
Those still require your full attention and hands on the wheel.
In theory. In practice, it just beeps at you if your sandwich hand is steering.
Well, not always hands on wheel. I have spent over an hour straight on an interstate with hands off. Ford’s system watches your eyes and lets your hands stay off if it’s decent conditions and on a LIDAR-mapped freeway. Note I wouldn’t trust it at night (there have been two crashes, both at night with stopped vehicles on freeway), but then I wouldn’t really trust myself at night either too much (there are many many more human caused crashes at night, I’m not sure a human at freeway speed could avoid a crash with a surprise stationary vehicle in middle of the road).
Love how companies can decide who has to supervise their car’s automated driving and not an actual safety authority. Absolutely nuts.
They actually did get certified by an authority
An “authority” of people who fell for some marketing bullshit.
Spoken like someone who clearly knows nothing about the technology.
Read the dammed article, it literally said the DMV for California and Nevada. It’s the fucking government.
Assuming a functional legal system, they’d be liable for damages if they lie about product safety.
That’s gonna do the people murdered by an algorithm a lot of good… /s
You can’t have a babysitter following every human to make sure they don’t do something dangerous. Except for high risk areas, liability is the most practical option.
Or maybe, like, regulation?
So you want to read 50 page regulation about how to boil water in your home because boiling water can hurt people?
And how do you regulate AI when you have no idea how it works or what could go wrong. Not as if politicians are AI experts. Driving itself is already heavily regulated, the AI has to follow traffic rules just like anyone else, if that is what you are thinking.
Why do you believe that judges (or even juries made of lay people) can make sense of the very things that you’re so confident legislators or regulators cannot?
I’m not saying regulation is perfect, and as a result, certainly there is a role for judicial review. But come on, man…lots of non sequiturs and straw dogs in your argument.
Quite often, juries don’t have to rule on technical matters. Juries will have available internal communications of the company, testimonies of the engineers working on the project etc. If safety concerns were being ignored, you can usually find enough witnesses and documents proving so.
On the other hand, how do you even begin to regulate something that is only in the process of being invented? What would the regulation look like?
Who said there was no safety authority involved? I thought it was part of the 4 level system the government decided on for assisted driving.
if it can drive a car why wouldn’t it be able to drive a truck?
I’m surprised companies don’t just build their own special highway for automated trucking and use people for last mile stuff.
yeah that would be great. Say, you can save on that a little if you put wheel guides on the road since theyre all headed in the same direction, and maybe you can replace the tires with something that fits into that guide pretty well so that you don’t have to replace them as much. Matter of fact, all of these trucks can become electric if they run electricity through the track or above it. This is a revolutionary idea!!
We could make it work on a guide line and attach a bunch of trailers to one truck. You’re a genius.
Some might even call that invention a train.
This idea seems to be getting some steam. I’m all aboard it!
A monorail of course.
That’s more of a Shelbyville idea
.
They are testing them already. I only have a German article that came out this week tagesschau.de/…/fahrerlose-lkw-man-test-autobahn-…
The truck division of Mercedes (Daimler) is already testing the trucks in the US. They plan commercial usage in 2027. MAN is testing in Europe in wants to start commercial usage in 2030.
On private roads in Canada, the mining giant Teck is starting to use autonomous transport trucks.
im-mining.com/…/teck-adds-autonomous-mining-truck…
To me this is less frightening for public safety and more for reasons related to climate change, since this kind of industrial expansion will be less contingent on worker availability.
Mind you, the whole push toward driverless vehicles seems insanely redundant as a concept, since driverless tech in the form of high-speed rail has been around for decades in an infinitely more efficient way than could ever be offered by personal vehicles.
It’s called a train, no?
Musk: Fuuuuuuu
According to who? Did the NTSB clear this? Are they even allowed to clear this? If this thing fucks up and kills somebody, will the judge let the driver off the hook 'cuz the manufacturer told them everything’s cool?
According to that teal light.
You do realize humans kill hundreds of other humans a day in cars, right? Is it possible that autonomous vehicles may actually be safer than a human driver?
Sure. But no system is 100% effective and all of their questions are legit and important to answer. If I got hit by one of these tomorrow I want to know the process for fault, compensation and pathway to improvement are all already done not something my accident is going to landmark.
But that being said, I was a licensing examiner for 2 years and quit because they kept making it easier to pass and I was forced to pass so many people who should not be on the road.
I think this idea is sound, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to address around it.
Honestly I’m sure there will be a lot of unfortunate mistakes until computers and self driving systems can be relied upon. However there needs to be an entry point for manufacturers and this is it. Technology will get better over time, it always has. Eventually self driving autos will be the norm.
Can’t the entry point just be that you have to pay attention while it’s driving for you until they figure it out?
That still doesn’t address all the issues surrounding it. I am unsure if you are just young and not aware how these things work or terribly naive. But companies will always cut corners to keep profits. Regulation forces a certain level of quality control (ideally). Just letting them do their thing because “it’ll eventually get better” is a gateway to absurd amounts of damage. Also, not all technology always gets better. Plenty just get abandoned.
But to circle back, if I get hit by a car tomorrow and all these thinga you think are unimportant are unanswered does that mean I might mot get legal justice or compensation? If there isn’t clearly codified law I might not, and you might be callous enough to say you don’t care about me. But what about you? What if you got hit by a unmonitored self driving car tomorrow and then told you’d have to go through a long, expensive court battle to determine fault because no one had done it it. So you’re in and out of a hospital recovering and draining all of your money on bills both legal and medical to eventually hopefully get compensated for something that wasn’t your fault.
That is why people here are asking these questions. Few people actually oppose progress. They just need to know that reasonable precautions are taken for predictable failures.
But then it’s good that the manufacturer states the driver isn’t obliged to watch the road. Because it shifts responsibility towards the manufacturer and thus - it’s a great incentive to make technology as safe as possible.
To be clear I never said that I didn’t care about an individual’s safety, you inferred that somehow from my post and quite frankly are quite disrespectful. I simply stated that autonomous vehicles are here to stay and that the technology will improve more with time.
The legal implications of self driving cars are still being determined and as this is literally one of the first approved technologies available. Tesla doesn’t count as it’s not a SAE level 3 autonomous driving vehicle. There are some references in the liability section of the wiki.
…wikipedia.org/…/Regulation_of_self-driving_cars
You’re deciding to prioritize economic development over human safety.
*at 40mph on a clear straight road on a sunny day in a constant stream of traffic with no unexpected happenings, Ts&Cs apply.
Only on closed courses. The best AI lacks the basic heuristics of a child and you simply can’t account for all possible outcomes.
Yes.
Yes, the judge will let the driver off the hook, because Mercedes told them it will assume the liability instead.
Guessing their insurance is privately funded
Paywalled.
here you go
Ty!
On a different subject, why would someone downvote a one-word comment that accurately describes what the content is behind?
Reddit 1.3 is just like that.
Doesn’t answer my question though.
.
Nope. Someone absolutely downvoted him. Because, just like Reddit, the downvote button here is the ‘wow fuck that guy for saying a thing i don’t like’ button.
Also a “I don’t like you/this page/the content and will go out of my way to systematically down vote everything you have done and everything in this particular thread” button.
Because some of us have fat fingers and accidentally downvote when we scroll on mobile.
One of the things I liked about reddit was that, since it saved downvoted posts, I could go through the list every once in a while and undownvote the accidents.
Can’t do that here though, and I sometimes notice posts or comments I’ve accidentally downvoted.
Anyway, people shouldn’t care so much, we don’t have a karma system or the like here anyways, so why does it matter?
Well, only speaking for myself, I don’t care, it just seemed so weird since it was an accurate single word, so I was curious.
I also wonder sometimes if it’s a bot system purposely trying to force engagement.
Lol trust me, I get downvotes all the time for things I say here on Lemmy. If I let them bother me I’d be in the psychiatric system by now.
~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~
What client are you using? I can browse both upvoted and downvoted comments in Voyager
I’m using eternity, which hasn’t received any updates, on my phone, and the default lemmy web interface on my computer.
Maybe I need to try some other options.
There are people who are pathologically contrarian. I’ve had to end a friendship over it—the endless need to say something negative about literally everything that ever happens and an unwillingness to be charitable to others.
I have the theory that archive.is, waybackmachine and 12ft.io are no secret anymore, and that just posting “paywalled” comes across as too lazy to copy/paste or (a lot easier) to use this addon to reduce the work to a click. i dont mind, but i can understand why others might see it that way
Blaming the victim, and justifying paywalls.
My phone browser doesn’t use add-ons.
And yet, you took the time out to reply, to chastise me for saying it.
~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~
sheesh, you are quite aggressive, i did not want to offend. and as i said, i don’t mind it, i even posted the archivelink, for which you thanked me. check your target before firing, mate :-)
(also, theres always firefox mobile. can apple users use it with addons/firefox browser engine now? i don’t follow apple development actively)