19 Comments
Aug 5Liked by Alex Kantrowitz

General Motors' Subscription Service

$800.00 month

You give them your schedule, the vehicle picks you up 7:30am for a meeting, the vehicle leaves, 12:00pm picks you up for lunch, leaves, returns 1:00pm to take you to next destination...

Vehicle Subscription Services replace vehicle ownership/leasing. No drivers, no insurance, gas, maintenance.

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I like the Midjourney car. I’ve got concerns about its crash safety ratings, but overall, a plausible vision.

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Aug 4Liked by Alex Kantrowitz

Huh? San Francisco issued a report finding that autonomous vehicles are *less* safe than human drivers and has asked California to stop the expansion of their use in cities:

https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/cruise-waymo-driverless-cars-san-francisco-18132953.php

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Fascinating report – looking forward to experiencing Cruise myself!

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Interesting article on NPR this morning about 5 incidents, this week alone, where autonomous vehicles do not properly recognize emergency situations or personnel, fire, police, construction, etc.

This is another bit of unique training that will need to be established and refined, and then take place city by city as vehicles and uniforms look different. But perhaps with cooperation between the autonomous driving companies and public service, perhaps some some optical symbols or RF can be added to the vehicle training to demand a stop, manually redirect from outside the vehicle, etc. Otherwise this can get a lot worse, very fast.

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Have you been following David Zipper’s reporting on the problems of these vehicles? https://slate.com/technology/2023/07/cruise-autonomous-vehicles-safety-waymo-self-driving-cars-ad-new-york-times.html

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This is a great antidote to the oft reported stories about the demise of FSD in cars for purchase - i.e Tesla, Mercedes, etc - and the layoffs at Waymo, Argo, etc.

Despite the challenges at the edge (emergency vehicles), shared FSD is the way. Death rates due to vehicles at an all time high since the 80’s, pretty much everyone on their phone while driving and at least in Cali driving 20 feet from the car ahead going 85 mph - human driving should honestly become illegal in most situations.

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I fear what autonomous cars will do to the average person’s feeling of agency. However, I was recently diagnosed with a rare eye disease and am going blind very slowly. On that account, I am extremely grateful that autonomous cars are coming in the near future.

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