Keith Tanner said:How do you demonstrate "foolproof"? How do you determine the tech is mature?
That's my question. It's easy to just say "oh, when it's ready it'll be accepted". But how does it get ready? How do we prove that it's ready so that a majority of people will accept it?
You start with small scale testing, and in controlled or near ideal environments like Waymo or GM's Cruise. Waymo has something like 10 million test miles driven on public roads and over 7 Billion miles on simulators. With a fleet of 'around 600' vehicles, none in private hands.
Then you analyze the data from your small test for how frequently your safety driver had to intervene/mile driven. California requires companies that test there To make that information public. Waymo is comfortably ahead, but Tesla doesn't report. Then, you slowly expand your test region, while opening access to the public in your original test location.
Full autonomy is the prize here. Waymo is leading the pack, but Tesla really doesn't share any of their data. Waymo has slowly tested and developed their tech in gradually larger areas. While they've been testing in public, they've done it with a small fleet of vehicles entirely owned/controlled by the company. Tesla has sold hundreds of thousands of vehicles with Autopilot to private individuals, and is using their experiences literally anywhere to build their data set. They've got people paying to beta test their product for them. It's amazing really.
I think that's a risky (perhaps reckless) shortcut, just like their insistence that LiDAR isn't needed in hopes that through sheer number of miles driven and processing power they'll be the first to get to full autonomy. They're gambling far more than anybody else (besides maybe desperate Uber) with public safety to try and be the first. It's all about money.