I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords

Self Driving Roadkill Tech 42 Comments

Cruisin’ into robo-bankruptcy;

The bad news continues for Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company owned by GM.

Last month Cruise’s ability to operate in San Francisco was suspended after their cars were involved in two separate accidents. One of the accidents was very serious and involved a woman who was hit by a car driven by a person in an adjacent lane. The victim was sent flying into the lane of the Cruise taxi which braked but wound up running over the woman. Even worse, the taxi performed an automated procedure to move itself out of the way and wound up dragging the victim under the car.

In the wake of that event, Cruise suspended its operations throughout the US.

It gets worse.

G.M. has spent an average of $588 million a quarter on Cruise over the past year, a 42 percent increase from a year ago. Each Chevrolet Bolt that Cruise operates costs $150,000 to $200,000, according to a person familiar with its operations.

Half of Cruise’s 400 cars were in San Francisco when the driverless operations were stopped. Those vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per vehicle. The workers intervened to assist the company’s vehicles every 2.5 to five miles, according to two people familiar with is operations. In other words, they frequently had to do something to remotely control a car after receiving a cellular signal that it was having problems.

42 Replies to “I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords”

    1. VOWG – Meanwhile back in Alberta:

      “Imperial Oil (TSX:IMO) says it has completed the conversion of all its haul trucks to autonomous operation at the Kearl oil sands mine in northern Alberta. There are now 81 fully autonomous trucks in service, making this one of the largest autonomous fleets in the world. ”

      Each haul truck weighs about 1400 tonnes (empty I believe).. What could possibly go wrong?

      https://www.canadianminingjournal.com/news/kearl-oil-sands-trucks-all-autonomous-says-imperial/#:~:text=Oil%20Limited%20(Calgary)-,Imperial%20Oil%20(TSX%3AIMO)%20says%20it%20has%20completed%20the,autonomous%20fleets%20in%20the%20world.

  2. So 600 people were required to drive 400 vehicles remotely?

    they could save 200 staff (plus management) if they just put them in the vehicle, and called them CruiseMen

    1. I once toured a car assembly plant. One of our group asked the plant manager “Why isn’t there more automation?”

      The plant manager’s reply, “We tore out a lot of our robots, cause we found we were operating a robot repair plant.”

      1. Reminds me of the old joke that the factory of the future will be staffed by one man and one dog. The man will be there to feed the dog and the dog will be there to make sure the man doesn’t touch anything.

  4. ” Those vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per vehicle.”
    ——————

    So, ‘self-driving’ doesn’t mean what one would think it means.

    Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to have one of the one-and-a-half people drive the car and ‘Uber’ people around?

  5. Not sure that there’s any driver that could have missed that lady. Dragging her off the road, however…

    1. i just purchased a new GMC Denali pickup truck (gas engine) with Super Cruise , only works in Canada on Transcanada Highway , it works quite well so far, I’m not a huge fan of EV’s at this point, but they ain’t going away. The technology will get better and cheaper.

      1. Hope you’re not planning on having a sleep in the back seat while cruising Medicine Hat to Regina. All the automation in the world still requires human supervision.

  6. And the real fallacy is the claim that driverless cars are “safer” than those piloted by actual humans. Of course this is utter nonsense, but the claim persists. The fact is that a small subset of actual drivers are dangerous. They drive recklessly, drunk, inattentively, or they’re just poor drivers. The vast, vast majority of drivers are safe and do exceedingly well behind the wheel.

    But we live in a strange era of a time when people believe they can save their own lives and to do so, they need to live in a pain-free, insular, cocoon. But that notion is sadly mistaken. Should one eat properly, exercise and work vigorously? Yes. Should people drive defensively? Of course. But can you prevent disease? Well … if we just end fossil fuels … we can “save the planet” and hence, save our lives. Yeah … these people understand nothing … but live in constant fear.

    1. I agree that there is probably about 10% who drive recklessly, drunk, inattentively or just poor drivers BUT put that against the normal 20% failure rate of Chinese electronics.
      That’s 10% failure against 20% failure.

  7. I work at a car company HQ. They are now paying employees twice as much for a successful EV sales lead than an ICE lead.

  8. Can anyone explain to me what benefit there is to driverless cars? What problem is this meant to solve? Surely to God it can’t just be to save on driver’s wages?

      1. The thing that I laugh about is that driverless cars and peopleless offices are competing against each other. Society will catch on eventually.

      2. So it IS to save on driver’s wages. I’m not surprised really: these people- and their supporters- are terminally stupid.
        Also: no-one is making you drive, and I enjoy doing so.

    2. The problem of an autonomous and free society – cant have that and the Great Reset. The automobile is the single greatest invention to provide autonomy and freedom.

  9. I wonder if the “problems” are engineering features that are integral to the mandated social credit score integration options mandated by the deep state or am I being paranoid. A software glitch sounds so much better than a kill switch.

  10. A lot of “engineers” are clueless twits with NO self awareness, and such fools work on designing these shit- mobiles.
    Yes, I’v worked with many such clueless fools! We have a few of those who post in here.

    1. I think Chicago airport. (Or maybe it was Miami?) But its on a one way loop so maybe that doesn’t count?

  12. I stopped worrying about AI when ChatGPT couldn’t accurately tell me how many genders there are biologically.

    1. unDork, alla S
      Still as stupid as ever I see. Flying cars are novelty that will NEVER gel,and any one who has seen some of the drivers we have now will understand why.
      Hell, my one ton F-150 4X4 intimidate drivers from 150feet back, to the point they pulled over and let my pass. That was at the start of this covid crap!

      1. Just curious. When did Ford start making 1-ton F-150s? You may have a unique vehicle there. I’d hold on to it.

      2. Imagine going online and bragging about how scary your F150 is. F150: the choice vehicle of inadequate suburban men everywhere.

  16. Imagine if people of today’s caliber were the norm in 1940:

    Well we thought there was promise in this new “Spitfire” project, but two test pilots have been killed now so we’ll shut the entire program down.

    By the way, how’s your German?

  17. A long time ago, I pretty well decided that given the foibles of typical humans (as a population), there was no way that autonomous vehicles would ever be a sustainable transit model. Certainly, the AV’s have promise, but the only way to make them work effectively is to create dedicated transportation lanes for them, without them having to mix with humans or human-guided vehicles. The infrastructure to accomplish that, however, would dwarf what was created through the Interstate Highway System, possibly by a couple orders of magnitude, and that’s without taking inflation into account. It’s undoable.

    Then again, China just might be able to pull it off if they can keep their economy from collapse.

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