Apple expresses interest in autonomous vehicle testing in letter to NHTSA

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  • Reply 41 of 57
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Please, AI management, pretty please. Stop with that dumbass concept graphic of the rumored Apple Car. Every time you publish an article about Apple’s ambitions in the automobile industry you use that same stupid picture that was dreamed up by some no-name cretin using Photoshop.
    HermeyTheElfireland
  • Reply 42 of 57
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    lkrupp said:
    Please, AI management, pretty please. Stop with that dumbass concept graphic of the rumored Apple Car. Every time you publish an article about Apple’s ambitions in the automobile industry you use that same stupid picture that was dreamed up by some no-name cretin using Photoshop.

    Every time they do it, half a dozen people comment on it, they get more hits. That's why they keep using it. 
  • Reply 43 of 57
    volcanvolcan Posts: 1,799member
    Soli said

    Speaking of Hyundai, they finally decided to follow the other major automobile companies by creating a subsidiary called Genesis that will sell higher-end vehicles.
    The Kia is basically brand new only 25K km. They just make them with less quality for other countries. In my rental house in the US  I have some very expensive kitchen appliances from Samsung. Not my first choice but they were already there. I saw the same appliances here in the Caribe for almost half the price. I think they make cheap exports for foreign markets. Same with cars.
  • Reply 44 of 57
    Apple is not making a car. That was decided months ago at the time of layoffs in the division, and its reorganization. Apple cannot add significant value to the entire vehicle, but only to those parts of the vehicle where data is collected, analyzed and presented to the user/passenger.
  • Reply 45 of 57
    To those of us who have followed this over the years – including hirings, firings, reshuffles, patents, and more – it is clear that Apple is not going to become an automobile manufacturer. 

    Rather, their focus will be on connectivity and automation. The self-driving car technology is not about upholstery, carpeting and glass but about factory-added technology – Apple eventually working with a number of automakers to include Apple technology packages. The first stage of this is CarPlay, which is now being deployed as an option with various automobiles.

    Would I ever drive an Apple-branded car? Hardly likely. I know my price range, which is similar to that of 80% of Americans, and an Apple car would not be in my budget. Apple tech in a car? You bet.
  • Reply 46 of 57
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    Each of us have successfully convinced ourselves we know about which we talk. We are all Bozos on this bus. But, stimulating talk sometimes hits on solutions or on common agreement on a likely way forward.  That can be enjoyable and expanding. I stipulate my membership in the clown community. Honk Honk!
    lol.

    But he talks so unnecessarily slow and repeats himself incessantly on each podcast. Not Fred Rogers-thoughtfully-methodically-slow, but ramble-y-broken-vacuum-cleaner-slow. The tone of his voice sounds like he's convinced he's uncovering Divinci, like he's surprised by how clever he is, but as a listener I feel I'm in bewilderment prison.

    His shows need to be chopped in half. At the very least he needs an editor.
    edited December 2016
  • Reply 47 of 57
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    ireland said:
    ireland said:
    ireland said:
    Just as I suspected. Apple Car was never on hold.
    I'm not following your reasoning. How are you deducing this from the AI article? The way interpret the article is they are working on machine learning and autonomous software for vehicles, not a physical vehicle such as an Apple Car.
    You can't have one without the other. Name the car company who's going to let Apple install the brains and self-drive capabilities into its car? None, car companies wouldn't allow this. Name the company Apple would do this for? They wouldn't. Rest assured if they are working on operating system and autonomy for a car they are certainly working on the car itself. They literally have many hundreds of car engineers involved on this product, and most Apple VP's are into cars in a big way and several I've Jony Ive's design team are car designers from lambo and Porsche etc. The conclusion is intuitive as much as it is obvious. There's a bonfire of smoke here. Apple are vertical. Green angle. Engineers. Etc. 
    Wasn't there a report recently that Apple had Apple had let go a bunch of their car engineers when they reset Project Titan's strategy to focus on Software & Autonomous Systems?

    This is the best analysis I've seen so far on Project Titan:

    https://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2016/11/17/skating-to-the-apple-car-puck
    Christ don't link to that clown. Have ever listened to his tedious podcast? He's tries to sound wise but he just rambles incessantly. It's like being caught in a podcast prison. He's successfully convinced himself he knows what he's talking about. He has a very limited quantity of perspective. They apparently got rid of dozens, they have over 1,000 on the project. It's just someone reading into sensationalist tech journalism. Producing any product this big will have bumps along the way. That's the nature of product development. 
    If you think he's bad, then I suggest you NOT listen to Leo Laporte. He's 100X worse
    lol....
  • Reply 48 of 57
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,077member
    imispgh said:
     Lockheed Engineer/Whistleblower- Driverless vehicles are not being properly designed or tested

    NHTSA should shut down all auto piloted and self-driving cars until proper exception handling testing is conducted.

    While I support this technology it has to be done right. I believe we are nowhere close to that at this time and putting people's lives at risk. NHTSA should shut down all auto-piloted and self-driving cars until proper exception handling testing is done. Especially when the companies who make them come from Commercial IT. This is because those companies, the Google’s, the Tesla’s, the Uber’s have little actual best practice experience in designing large and complex systems. Especially when massive exception handling is needed. The perturbations of environmental and automobile system error conditions are immense. Commercial IT is not even remotely capable of doing this relying on themselves and their incredibly poor practices. Thinking that one can make a cool app or website is NOT like what is being done here. To work through the requirements and scenario perturbations, design integrated systems to deal with it and test this takes folks with experience in doing that. And they need the proper tools. Most of this is non-existent in Commercial IT. Far more engineering, code and testing should be going in to these systems than that of the “happy” or normal path. The places to find these folks, methods and tools would be NASA, DoD and the airlines industry. Couple them with people with automobile system and traffic engineering and you would be on the way to something that will work. Using real people, cars and the public to gather most of the exception or accident data is reckless, will result in needless deaths and take decades for information to be gathered. There are far safer and faster ways to do this. The public is being used as Guinea Pigs based on a massive sense of false confidence. They are being used to help create exception handling or accident scenarios becasue these companies are to ignorant, inexperienced or cheap to do it right. The first company who gets this and has the patience to do it right will win out. The others will eventually face so much litigation and potentially criminal charges and will have wasted so much time in ignoring this path they will no longer be players in the space.
    1) Using text based scope docs that do not build into a full system view. Use Cases and Stories are extremely poor ways to illicit and explain scope. What is needed is Diagrams.  These facilitate visual flow where exception handling points would exist. This step is the most important. If you cannot see all of the combinations you cannot design or test for them.
    2) Using BAs for scope and QA for testing. DoD uses a systems engineer for both. That way there is continuity. To make sure they don't have a fox in the hen house QC is also performed. (BTW testing is QC. Auditing and improving process is QA. Commercial IT can't even get the titles right). This will result in missing and incomplete scope and testing.
    3) There is very little system design going on. Too much serial discovery Agile going on. Little object oriented or UML design going on. Most of it is web based. Much of this comes Agilists who ignore what they can know up front and use of Use Cases and Stories and not diagrams. Most of Commercial IT's design process is not based on a full systems design approach. They build one step a ta time purposefully ignoring systems. For complex systems especially with massive exception handling this alone would keep the product from either every working correctly or the project ever finishing.
    4) They lack proper tools that facilitate scope decomposition through design, code and testing. Something like DOORs. Commercial IT rarely has separate tools let alone an integrated one. Most won't even use a proper RTVM in Excel. This will result in missing and incomplete scope and testing.
    5) They rarely have chief architects that look across the whole system. They have the same stove piped little kingdoms I just mentioned above for software. This will result is missing and incomplete scope and testing.
    6) Full system testing is rarely done. Especially when there are third party interfaces. Simulators are rarely built to replace those parties if they are not connected in the test environment. Exception handling testing is rarely done.
    7) There are rarely any coding standards. Especially built from in depth testing and exception handling. Examples - http://caxapa.ru/thumbs/468328/misra-c-2004.pdf, http://lars-lab.jpl.nasa.gov/JPL_Coding_Standard_C.pdf, http://www.stroustrup.com/JSF-AV-rules.pdf
    8) Software configuration management - Commercial IT rarely creates a product wide integrated SWCM system. They have dozens or even hundreds of little teams who have their own CM. And they use tools that relay on best practice use. Something that doesn't exist. Having Jira and Git isn't nearly enough. There is a reason IBMs Clearcase is not free. This will result in the wrong software versions being used. Which will lead to defects. It will also lead to laying patches on top of patches which will result in defects.
    9) There is no Earned Value Management (EVM) or proper estimation tools or productivity data. (Like rework, defect density and proper root cause data). This means they will have major schedule and budget issues. (Given the deep pockets of Google, Uber and Tesla this one might not matter)
    (A clear example. The gentleman in charge of Uber autopilot here in Pittsburgh, the hub city, has 8 years Twitter experience. I am telling you these guys are in way over their heads. Raffi Krikorian look him up on LinkedIn. Based on what I see he is not remotely qualified. When Elon Musk took the first set of code for Space X to NASA it was rejected because they didn't come close to handling exceptions. Additionally Elon's stubbornness about using the term "autopilot" is shortsighted and reckless. Elon has gone from amazing to his own worse enemy.)
    In addition to being a systems engineer, engineering manager and program manager at Lockheed Martin on NORAD, the Aegis Weapon System and Aircraft Simulation programs I was a whistle-blower who stopped Lockheed and Northrop from doing things they should not have post 9/11 - http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=4468728

    Update 11/28/2016
    "Here’s how Tesla describe the improvement in Autopilot features:
    “Enhanced Autopilot adds these new capabilities to the Tesla Autopilot driving experience. Your Tesla will match speed to traffic conditions, keep within a lane, automatically change lanes without requiring driver input, transition from one freeway to another, exit the freeway when your destination is near, self-park when near a parking spot and be summoned to and from your garage.”
    This software should NOT be on the road. It should not be called "Autopilot". Drivers should not be Guinea pigs and misled into a false sense of confidence. It is just now getting to be able to maintain lanes, keep up with traffic and transition from one freeway to another? If it cannot do this now it is nowhere near ready to be on the road. This means that massive amounts of primary or happy path engineering is not done let alone the even larger work needed for exception handling or accident scenarios that augment the associated happy path. And they say they will have full autonomy in a year??? There is NO WAY that is possible - let alone 5 more years. NHTSA etc have GOT to make a list of detailed scenarios these cars have to prove they can handle and the variation of them. Possibly thousands of scenarios.

    Update 12/3/2016
    It appears that comma.ai has released a driver's aid solution that only costs $999. It appears to get around NHTSA rules by offering the code for free and it's open source. There is no way a group of talented hackers can make a safe system in such a short time period. And then charge so little to recoup the money spent of the effort. These folks who do not have nearly the engineering experience or domain experience to do this just gave folks with even less experience the code. This reckless approach will result in catastrophe. And that catastrophe is going to make it harder for the Tesla etc to move forward in the space.

    SpaceX has disrupted the rocket industry and so will Tesla disrupt the automobile industry.  Tesla is collecting real world data with Billions of driving scenarios for their software.
  • Reply 49 of 57
    k2kwk2kw Posts: 2,077member
    ireland said:
    Just as I suspected. Apple Car was never on hold.
    Still, doing software only makes no sense to me. What advantage would Apple have? There's a lot more to autonomous and self driving vehicles than what the UI of the dashboard looks like. Plus there's no evidence existing auto makers are looking to give that up to companies like Apple. Of course I would never want Apple to develop a car just for the sake of it but Apple's success has come from doing the entire stack, the whole widget. When have they ever successfully partnered with anyone on hardware? 
    Building an Apple car is a big mistake.   Tesla is way ahead.   They will have a million cars on the road before Apple has one.  Titan is a giant waste of resources.
  • Reply 50 of 57
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,038member
    k2kw said:
    ireland said:
    Just as I suspected. Apple Car was never on hold.
    Still, doing software only makes no sense to me. What advantage would Apple have? There's a lot more to autonomous and self driving vehicles than what the UI of the dashboard looks like. Plus there's no evidence existing auto makers are looking to give that up to companies like Apple. Of course I would never want Apple to develop a car just for the sake of it but Apple's success has come from doing the entire stack, the whole widget. When have they ever successfully partnered with anyone on hardware? 
    Building an Apple car is a big mistake.   Tesla is way ahead.   They will have a million cars on the road before Apple has one.  Titan is a giant waste of resources.
    Less than a decade ago: Building [a Tesla] car is a big mistake.  [The big automakers are] way ahead.   They will have a million cars on the road before [Tesla] has one.  [The Tesla Roadster] is a giant waste of resources.

    You're basically just restating what Palm's CEO said about the iPhone. The reality is that Apple has dominated the profits and mindshare of every major field they've decided to enter: PC, PMP, handset (not just smartphone), tablet, smartwatch (and possible soon the wrist-wearable device market itself), and headphones (due to Beats acquistion). It would be foolish to think that Apple couldn't possibly compete in this field because a startup which only put out its first vehicle 8 years ago is now making 2,000 vehicles a week.
    edited December 2016 calitechprod1gy
  • Reply 51 of 57
    canukstormcanukstorm Posts: 2,732member
    k2kw said:
    ireland said:
    Just as I suspected. Apple Car was never on hold.
    Still, doing software only makes no sense to me. What advantage would Apple have? There's a lot more to autonomous and self driving vehicles than what the UI of the dashboard looks like. Plus there's no evidence existing auto makers are looking to give that up to companies like Apple. Of course I would never want Apple to develop a car just for the sake of it but Apple's success has come from doing the entire stack, the whole widget. When have they ever successfully partnered with anyone on hardware? 
    Building an Apple car is a big mistake.   Tesla is way ahead.   They will have a million cars on the road before Apple has one.  Titan is a giant waste of resources.
    MS was a decade ahead in tablets before Apple made the 1st iPad
    Blackberry, Nokia, & Palm were way ahead in the smartphone space before the first iPhone
    FitBit & Pebble were way ahead in the wearable space before Apple Watch
    There were MP3 players long before the 1st iPod came along.

    According to you, Apple shouldn't enter any business because they'll always be coming from "behind".

    The iPhone was a bet-the-company product given the amount of resources & R&D that went into it. It's gone on to become the best selling consumer product of all time. Project Titan, from the sounds of it, also seems like the a bet-the-company project. How successful it becomes, only time will tell but Apple tends to do their best work when they're thinking big and "betting the company".
    edited December 2016
  • Reply 52 of 57
    tshapitshapi Posts: 372member
    Honestly, this is all a real waste of time. Apple stands to make a fortune from entering this business. I Suspect the real reason Apple is entering this has nothing to do with the actual car. It's all about AR navigation.  Imagine having your navigation built directly into your windshield. 

    This is all really a waste of time since most likely none or us work for Apple. Most of this is theoretical and has no basis in reality. Apple will come out with a car. Probably priced above $75k  and will follow the iPhone model. Releasing new models and lowering the price of the last model to make it more affordable. 
  • Reply 53 of 57
    Soli said:
    k2kw said:
    ireland said:
    Just as I suspected. Apple Car was never on hold.
    Still, doing software only makes no sense to me. What advantage would Apple have? There's a lot more to autonomous and self driving vehicles than what the UI of the dashboard looks like. Plus there's no evidence existing auto makers are looking to give that up to companies like Apple. Of course I would never want Apple to develop a car just for the sake of it but Apple's success has come from doing the entire stack, the whole widget. When have they ever successfully partnered with anyone on hardware? 
    Building an Apple car is a big mistake.   Tesla is way ahead.   They will have a million cars on the road before Apple has one.  Titan is a giant waste of resources.
    Less than a decade ago: Building [a Tesla] car is a big mistake.  [The big automakers are] way ahead.   They will have a million cars on the road before [Tesla] has one.  [The Tesla Roadster] is a giant waste of resources.

    You're basically just restating what Palm's CEO said about the iPhone. The reality is that Apple has dominated the profits and mindshare of every major field they've decided to enter: PC, PMP, handset (not just smartphone), tablet, smartwatch (and possible soon the wrist-wearable device market itself), and headphones (due to Beats acquistion). It would be foolish to think that Apple couldn't possibly compete in this field because a startup which only put out its first vehicle 8 years ago is now making 2,000 vehicles a week.
    I don't think we can compare cars to phones BUT the way people treat Tesla as if no one could possibly do what they're doing is ridiculous.

    I am confused though why people think Apple making software for autonomous/self-driving vehicles is a good idea but making the car itself is not. One thing Apple has proven it knows how to do really well is manufacture physical things. I don't think they've proven yet that they have the chops for the kind of software needed to power these types of vehicles. When it comes to machine learning, cloud computing, AI etc. I think Apple has a long way to go.
  • Reply 54 of 57
    irelandireland Posts: 17,799member
    tshapi said:
    Honestly, this is all a real waste of time. Apple stands to make a fortune from entering this business. I Suspect the real reason Apple is entering this has nothing to do with the actual car. It's all about AR navigation.  Imagine having your navigation built directly into your windshield. 

    This is all really a waste of time since most likely none or us work for Apple. Most of this is theoretical and has no basis in reality. Apple will come out with a car. Probably priced above $75k  and will follow the iPhone model. Releasing new models and lowering the price of the last model to make it more affordable. 
    I doubt very much it'll be priced above $75K. First iPad was $499, I see them taking a similar route with car pricing. They want a mainstream car, not a niche vehicle. There's a reason why people like myself were able to guess the first Apple tablet would have 10" display without needing to work in Cupertino. And Apple won't have the same scaling barriers Tesla faced in the early days, due to the proven market and having a country's GDP in the bank. Some major problems Apple will need to solve are battery costs and mobile charging. These are the two main advantages Tesla have over the competition that will take a large investment and a long time to copy.
    edited December 2016
  • Reply 55 of 57
    So I am the proud owner of a 2017 GMC Denali XL. Yes very lucky in my world. But something I wanted to share is even though it has Car Play the interface for new vehicles is terrible. It really highlighted to me the need for an Apple intervention. Connecting multiple devices is clunky. Moving through settings is difficult. A modern interface for vehicles needs to be way better than what I have experienced. In a decade they have not been able to improve the syncing of garage doors with the vehicle system. I could spend hours listing the frustrations but I think you get the gist.
  • Reply 56 of 57
    cali said:
     Once again Apple paving the road for all the copycats to ride through. 

     Don't be surprised that in 15 years all cars look the same. 
    Really? What exactly are they copying as Apple has nothing on the market. If people think Apple is just going to swoop in here like they did with iPod and iPhone and show everyone how it's done I think they're in for a rude awakening.
    From my perspective there is a chance for Apple to do the exact same disruption. Sure vehicles have been on the road for some time now. Even electric cars and semi autonomous cars have some good miles logged. But what Apple has been so good at over the years is developing products that incorporate all the best and even making some thing significantly better, incorporating it into the Apple ecosystem and providing a product that the masses actually will use. That is there not so secret formula that they have done so well over the recent years.
  • Reply 57 of 57
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    Soli said:
    k2kw said:
    ireland said:
    Just as I suspected. Apple Car was never on hold.
    Still, doing software only makes no sense to me. What advantage would Apple have? There's a lot more to autonomous and self driving vehicles than what the UI of the dashboard looks like. Plus there's no evidence existing auto makers are looking to give that up to companies like Apple. Of course I would never want Apple to develop a car just for the sake of it but Apple's success has come from doing the entire stack, the whole widget. When have they ever successfully partnered with anyone on hardware? 
    Building an Apple car is a big mistake.   Tesla is way ahead.   They will have a million cars on the road before Apple has one.  Titan is a giant waste of resources.
    Less than a decade ago: Building [a Tesla] car is a big mistake.  [The big automakers are] way ahead.   They will have a million cars on the road before [Tesla] has one.  [The Tesla Roadster] is a giant waste of resources.

    You're basically just restating what Palm's CEO said about the iPhone. The reality is that Apple has dominated the profits and mindshare of every major field they've decided to enter: PC, PMP, handset (not just smartphone), tablet, smartwatch (and possible soon the wrist-wearable device market itself), and headphones (due to Beats acquistion). It would be foolish to think that Apple couldn't possibly compete in this field because a startup which only put out its first vehicle 8 years ago is now making 2,000 vehicles a week.
    I don't think we can compare cars to phones BUT the way people treat Tesla as if no one could possibly do what they're doing is ridiculous.

    I am confused though why people think Apple making software for autonomous/self-driving vehicles is a good idea but making the car itself is not. One thing Apple has proven it knows how to do really well is manufacture physical things. I don't think they've proven yet that they have the chops for the kind of software needed to power these types of vehicles. When it comes to machine learning, cloud computing, AI etc. I think Apple has a long way to go.
    I'd probably have to agree with this. Apple usually comes unstuck when it has to rely on partners to help drive its plans.  Look at what's happening with Intel. Look at the glacial pace that their TV plans are moving. If Apple has to rely on car companies to build cars around their tech then I'm not sure this project is going to fly. 
    palomine
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