> The automaker is using the all-electric Chevrolet Bolt as its autonomous mule
Wonderful.
Has anyone tried the Bolt yet? I think Bolt is turning out to be what Tesla Model 3 was intended to be... it's cheap, electric, rides excellently, and looks pretty slick. One of the best things about it is the top-view, which is a god-send when it comes to parallel parking: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5kei2BVFGb8/maxresdefault.jpg
It seems really innovative in lots of clever ways. For example the "one pedal driving" is neat (push the pedal to go.. and when you take your foot off the pedal, the car slows down, the point being that you basically stop using brakes and save energy that way).
While the tech and features are pretty great, I think many disagree with it looking slick. I'm in the market right now, but I could never see myself driving a Bolt. I'm stuck waiting several years for a model 3 to get an EV with actual aesthetics (that isn't 100k+).
Honestly I had a change to sit in one recently and found the interior materials, seats, etc. to be pretty bad for the price.
The big digital displays were nice, but the rest of the interior seemed about on par for a Honda Fit or Chevy Sonic type vehicle, and significantly worse than something like a 2017 CRV (my daily driver).
It felt like a sub $20k car with electric guts and some (admittedly nice) tech gadgets added on. It's also weird that there is no adaptive cruise control available, a feature that's present now on some cars that are $10k cheaper.
To be fair haven't seen what the interior of a $35k Model 3 looks like either, all of the photos and units that have shipped have had the more expensive 'Premium' interior option.
I had a lyft ride in one last weekend and chatted with the driver about it. I agree it looks nice. The interior was great and the ride was comfy. The driver was very enthusiastic about how much he loved the car. Plug it in over night, drive to SF and do lyft all day, then drive home. He didn't share my concerns over the range at all.
The Bolt is a wonderful car for the price, except for the looks. But the distinctive/garish appearance is deliberate--the Bolt is designed for people who want to be seen driving an electric car but can't afford a Tesla.
Luckily, it's only a matter of time before the electric motors start showing up in non-Bolt lines.
All Teslas use one pedal driving. I'm under the impression that all EVs operate that way.
Edit: Yes of course, one pedal driving only applies to regenerative braking, normal brake pads are still engaged with a separate pedal. The Bolt works the same way. Imagine if simply releasing the accelerator slammed the brakes as hard as possible. That's a bad idea.
I don't have the Bolt, but I do have a vehicle with top down view, which was not something I was interested in much when looking for cars, but it came with the package.
i agree, it's a god send, and has prevented my car from getting dinged or scratched in more than one occassion.
The Leaf has that with B-mode although I think this area is ripe for improvement.
In B-mode or one pedal driving, when you take the foot off the pedal, rather than slowing down with aerodynamic drag, regen is engaged and those electrons are pumped back into the battery. On the Leaf and just about any EV or hybrid, when you brake, regenerative braking is used down to about 5 mph. Brakes last forever.
One pedal driving takes a little getting used to. Not a lot, but a little.
I've driven both the Bolt and the Volt on electric power. The Volt is far more pleasant to drive, the Bolt's turning and acceleration feel weird. I also think the volt looks better (though not good). Other than that, Bolt seems great.
Have you actually used the top-down to parallel park?
I don't own a car with one of those rear-view cameras but am always fascinated to watch it. I worry I would trust it too much instead of what I'm used to.
And it's not available outside of US, which seems to be a huge mistake. At the moment in UK if you want an electric car with decent range the only option is a Nissan Leaf.
no adaptive cruise control makes it totally useless. PS: Leaf 2018 will have most Tesla 3 like auto-pilot features. Tesla has self driving vaporware they'll gladly sell you today.
We looked at a Bolt. We mostly liked it, except the seats are incredibly uncomfortable. I'm not even close to obese, and the seat bottoms were just too narrow to be comfortable. It is odd, as there is plenty of space to either side of the seat with the doors closed .. they could have made them wider, but chose not to.
All of those characteristics are worse than Model 3, so I'm not sure what you mean by "what the Model 3 was supposed to be".
1) Bolt is $2500 more than Model 3 pre-credit.
2) How well it rides is debatable, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same performance as Model 3. For instance, it has a motor power of 150 kW vs 300 kW for Model 3, and its acceleration is significantly worse, too.
3) It looks like a typical boxy hatchback.
Finally, we already know GM loses $9,000 per Bolt and it seems to have been losing 10,000 euro for the Bolt-based Ampera-E in Europe. What this tells us is that it's more of a compliance car/EV mascot for GM than a model they actually intend to have everywhere.
GM has sold 3,000 Bolt units so far in 2017. Tesla will sell hundreds of thousands of Model 3s in 2018. I don't think GM will be in a hurry to catch up to them going by those losses.
First thing, cheap? The Bolt starts at $37,495. Straight from GM's website. That is pretty much the same as the Model 3.
Electric, check. But with the Bolt, you are maxed out at 238 miles EPA range. With the model 3, your base is higher and if needed you can get over 300+, I believe the EPA just rated it out somewhere in the 320's for the Long range version. Perfect.
I think you are one of the few who would call the Bolt "slick", especially in relation to Tesla, but to each their own.
Rides excellent.. yeah, the Model 3 does that well, see MotorTrend's review even.. [1]
Parallel parking manually... that's cute. Model 3 does it autonomously.
I'm pretty lost on where you think the Model 3 fell short of expectations and isn't what it was intended to be?
To top it off, I just checked 5 Chevy dealers around me locally (I'm in the third largest metro in the U.S.) and not one had a Bolt in inventory. I have actually never seen one on the roads either. So the "you can get it today" argument is very limited to only a few markets... and that is a maybe.
Don't forget that the Chevy Bolt is also a compliance car. I'm sure the quality and engineering time put into it was top-notch.
Cruise Automation's software is a sloppy collection of special cases, coded by hand. We write ad-hoc rules to handle each situation we observe.
We don't really develop any neural networks ourselves. We use what we can get off GitHub: freely available research and school projects that we paste together, often without understanding them.
We use ROS (http://www.ros.org). ROS is not reliable for a timing-critical automotive system. That's why our cars drive so slowly/cautiously and stop so abruptly/frequently. It's because we're always on the verge of reacting late and hitting something.
Our technology is not "real" in the way that Waymo's technology is real. We build demos and promote them in the media. That's the truth.
Am I proud of this? No. But GM is paying for my house in San Francisco, so...
You claim "I know a little about Waymo. They seem ok."
Then go on to explain:
"Waymo: Code written by professionals. A system using models trained on vast amounts of data. Written slowly, meticulously, exhaustively, heavily reviewed, and intended to be reliable."
What sort of structure would make more sense than the ad-hoc rules?
Do you have comprehensive profiling for the latency or logging so you can detect when there is a lag and then patch ROS or the TCP stack or whatever is causing it?
I can see how reliability is critical, but whether it is so important to be actually real-time is less obvious. If you can get latency variability down to within about 1 ms, is that not adequate to greatly exceed human capability?
I guess when it comes down to it there needs to be some certainty that there cant be a big hiccup that creates a big latency spike. So whatever underlying Linux or whatever needs to be real-time in that sense. And there needs to be a real-time backup system that cuts in if the other system takes too long to react (hits a hiccup which it is not supposed to be able to).
I mean, if your idea is to throw everything out and start over with a real-time OS and some bespoke NNs, is it quite certain that any team would actually be able to replicate the task integration and actual functionality of the system you have with that approach?
Assuming this isn't a shitpost, do you have any insight on the realness of other companies technologies? eg uber, drive.ai, tesla, etc or do you feel like your company is fairly uniquely shitty?
Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, in his part of the talk repeatedly emphasized the efficiency of their validation process that contributes to their high rate of improvement. Every outside indicator suggests Cruise really is moving faster toward their goal than anyone else.
Vogt also repeatedly emphasized that they have a mountain of engineering challenges still ahead of them before they're ready for an initial commercial deployment. They're rapidly scaling up testing, and hope to drive 1 million miles/month by the end of 2018. For Comparison, Waymo just announced they've done 4 million miles testing on public roads total, since 2009.
From Waymo's 4 million mile announcement[0], they did their most recent million miles in 6 months (May 2017 to Nov 2017). The announcement also has the timeline of when they hit each million mile mark.
Also, I'm not sure this stat says anything besides how many cars they have on the road. Disengagement rates are probably still the most useful to gauge how good any company is doing.
I fear that we are moving towards a future that is shaped by monopolies (or the "digitalisation" supports monoposlistic strategies). If you read the slides, you notice that GM understands that by controlling everything (manufacturing the car, supply chain, the app) it makes more profits. I think that there is a trend in many industries towards monopolies, if you for example look at amazon or google. I don't think it's healthy and I am convinced that there is not enough awareness to tame these giants.
I see this said frequently about self driving cars and I'm just baffled by the cynicism. Who cares if self driving cars can't drive in all conditions yet? A shit ton of people live in parts of America that are hardly ever subjected to poor weather/snow, perfect places for self driving cars to start in. And in these early stages, if I tried to get my car to self drive in terrible rain/wind/snow and it just said "can't do that sorry" I'd be fine with that.
Your attitude is like looking at the wright brother's plane and being upset it can't make a transatlantic flight yet.
I'd buy a self driving car that just doesn't work in bad conditions.
The bigger question is "has the self driving issue been solved in clear conditions." Is there any real evidence someone has a self driving car that is better than human drivers?
A recent study by University of British Columbia researchers found that rain and darkness like one would experience during Vancouver and Seattle winters would also be challenging for self driving cars.
Another chapter in the super interesting story of the GM vs Tesla battle. Part of me wants to compare Tesla to strategies of companies who needed more established companies to compete with to generate higher demand, yet still had the best product and came out ahead.
But wonder if GM could pull ahead since it has more of a history of mass producing things, and all the infrastructure around that all built. Time will tell.
The one thing that keeps me from believing this will happen is GMs history of shooting itself in the foot. They have amazing engineering and design capabilities but deliver low quality cars. Their lineup has had (and has) some exceptions, but generally I avoid them.
It's why I hope GM does not delivers on this statement. Their quality track record[1] doesnt inspire me confidence.
I'm happy that progress is being made. I'm not excited as a person who likes driving to be sharing the road with a bunch of computers. I'm not worried that they'll crash into me. I'm more concerned that they will be in my way.
[+] [-] pen2l|8 years ago|reply
Wonderful.
Has anyone tried the Bolt yet? I think Bolt is turning out to be what Tesla Model 3 was intended to be... it's cheap, electric, rides excellently, and looks pretty slick. One of the best things about it is the top-view, which is a god-send when it comes to parallel parking: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/5kei2BVFGb8/maxresdefault.jpg
It seems really innovative in lots of clever ways. For example the "one pedal driving" is neat (push the pedal to go.. and when you take your foot off the pedal, the car slows down, the point being that you basically stop using brakes and save energy that way).
[+] [-] CaveTech|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stetrain|8 years ago|reply
The big digital displays were nice, but the rest of the interior seemed about on par for a Honda Fit or Chevy Sonic type vehicle, and significantly worse than something like a 2017 CRV (my daily driver).
It felt like a sub $20k car with electric guts and some (admittedly nice) tech gadgets added on. It's also weird that there is no adaptive cruise control available, a feature that's present now on some cars that are $10k cheaper.
To be fair haven't seen what the interior of a $35k Model 3 looks like either, all of the photos and units that have shipped have had the more expensive 'Premium' interior option.
[+] [-] Spooky23|8 years ago|reply
It makes me worry about Tesla. Once GM, Ford and Toyota start churning these things out, how does Tesla support that valuation?
[+] [-] imh|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gamblor956|8 years ago|reply
Luckily, it's only a matter of time before the electric motors start showing up in non-Bolt lines.
[+] [-] eggnet|8 years ago|reply
Edit: Yes of course, one pedal driving only applies to regenerative braking, normal brake pads are still engaged with a separate pedal. The Bolt works the same way. Imagine if simply releasing the accelerator slammed the brakes as hard as possible. That's a bad idea.
[+] [-] dr_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CalChris|8 years ago|reply
The Leaf has that with B-mode although I think this area is ripe for improvement.
In B-mode or one pedal driving, when you take the foot off the pedal, rather than slowing down with aerodynamic drag, regen is engaged and those electrons are pumped back into the battery. On the Leaf and just about any EV or hybrid, when you brake, regenerative braking is used down to about 5 mph. Brakes last forever.
One pedal driving takes a little getting used to. Not a lot, but a little.
[+] [-] joeframbach|8 years ago|reply
Would you call it a "velocitator" rather than an "accelerator" then?
[+] [-] ilyagr|8 years ago|reply
Hopefully, GM will fix it on the next version.
[+] [-] JBlue42|8 years ago|reply
I don't own a car with one of those rear-view cameras but am always fascinated to watch it. I worry I would trust it too much instead of what I'm used to.
[+] [-] gambiting|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shpx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thsowers|8 years ago|reply
Just a subjective opinion, but I find the look of the Bolt unimpressive. Seems way too busy. I much prefer the clean aesthetics of the Model 3
[+] [-] jijojv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] joeschmoecad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pseudometa|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drewg123|8 years ago|reply
At least one reviewer agrees: https://youtu.be/d2ogGZXmepY?t=626
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
1) Bolt is $2500 more than Model 3 pre-credit.
2) How well it rides is debatable, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same performance as Model 3. For instance, it has a motor power of 150 kW vs 300 kW for Model 3, and its acceleration is significantly worse, too.
3) It looks like a typical boxy hatchback.
Finally, we already know GM loses $9,000 per Bolt and it seems to have been losing 10,000 euro for the Bolt-based Ampera-E in Europe. What this tells us is that it's more of a compliance car/EV mascot for GM than a model they actually intend to have everywhere.
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/30/gm-stands-to-lose-9000-dolla...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-peugeot-gm-opel-exclusive...
GM has sold 3,000 Bolt units so far in 2017. Tesla will sell hundreds of thousands of Model 3s in 2018. I don't think GM will be in a hurry to catch up to them going by those losses.
[+] [-] Cshelton|8 years ago|reply
First thing, cheap? The Bolt starts at $37,495. Straight from GM's website. That is pretty much the same as the Model 3.
Electric, check. But with the Bolt, you are maxed out at 238 miles EPA range. With the model 3, your base is higher and if needed you can get over 300+, I believe the EPA just rated it out somewhere in the 320's for the Long range version. Perfect.
I think you are one of the few who would call the Bolt "slick", especially in relation to Tesla, but to each their own.
Rides excellent.. yeah, the Model 3 does that well, see MotorTrend's review even.. [1]
Parallel parking manually... that's cute. Model 3 does it autonomously.
I'm pretty lost on where you think the Model 3 fell short of expectations and isn't what it was intended to be?
To top it off, I just checked 5 Chevy dealers around me locally (I'm in the third largest metro in the U.S.) and not one had a Bolt in inventory. I have actually never seen one on the roads either. So the "you can get it today" argument is very limited to only a few markets... and that is a maybe.
Don't forget that the Chevy Bolt is also a compliance car. I'm sure the quality and engineering time put into it was top-notch.
[1] http://www.motortrend.com/cars/tesla/model-3/2018/exclusive-...
[+] [-] tmpnam1234567|8 years ago|reply
We don't really develop any neural networks ourselves. We use what we can get off GitHub: freely available research and school projects that we paste together, often without understanding them.
We use ROS (http://www.ros.org). ROS is not reliable for a timing-critical automotive system. That's why our cars drive so slowly/cautiously and stop so abruptly/frequently. It's because we're always on the verge of reacting late and hitting something.
Our technology is not "real" in the way that Waymo's technology is real. We build demos and promote them in the media. That's the truth.
Am I proud of this? No. But GM is paying for my house in San Francisco, so...
[+] [-] dthakur|8 years ago|reply
Then go on to explain:
"Waymo: Code written by professionals. A system using models trained on vast amounts of data. Written slowly, meticulously, exhaustively, heavily reviewed, and intended to be reliable."
Quality shitpost.
[+] [-] ilaksh|8 years ago|reply
What sort of structure would make more sense than the ad-hoc rules?
Do you have comprehensive profiling for the latency or logging so you can detect when there is a lag and then patch ROS or the TCP stack or whatever is causing it?
I can see how reliability is critical, but whether it is so important to be actually real-time is less obvious. If you can get latency variability down to within about 1 ms, is that not adequate to greatly exceed human capability?
I guess when it comes down to it there needs to be some certainty that there cant be a big hiccup that creates a big latency spike. So whatever underlying Linux or whatever needs to be real-time in that sense. And there needs to be a real-time backup system that cuts in if the other system takes too long to react (hits a hiccup which it is not supposed to be able to).
I mean, if your idea is to throw everything out and start over with a real-time OS and some bespoke NNs, is it quite certain that any team would actually be able to replicate the task integration and actual functionality of the system you have with that approach?
[+] [-] KaoruAoiShiho|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fricken|8 years ago|reply
https://www.gm.com/content/dam/gm/events/docs/5265893-685163...
Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt, in his part of the talk repeatedly emphasized the efficiency of their validation process that contributes to their high rate of improvement. Every outside indicator suggests Cruise really is moving faster toward their goal than anyone else.
Vogt also repeatedly emphasized that they have a mountain of engineering challenges still ahead of them before they're ready for an initial commercial deployment. They're rapidly scaling up testing, and hope to drive 1 million miles/month by the end of 2018. For Comparison, Waymo just announced they've done 4 million miles testing on public roads total, since 2009.
[+] [-] kyrra|8 years ago|reply
Also, I'm not sure this stat says anything besides how many cars they have on the road. Disengagement rates are probably still the most useful to gauge how good any company is doing.
[0] https://medium.com/waymo/waymos-fleet-reaches-4-million-self...
[+] [-] jekdoce|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] make3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeanderK|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lafar6502|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fred_is_fred|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dchuk|8 years ago|reply
Your attitude is like looking at the wright brother's plane and being upset it can't make a transatlantic flight yet.
Give it some time
[+] [-] rhino369|8 years ago|reply
The bigger question is "has the self driving issue been solved in clear conditions." Is there any real evidence someone has a self driving car that is better than human drivers?
I see a lot of promises.
[+] [-] Tiktaalik|8 years ago|reply
http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouvers-rainy-wea...
[+] [-] grantismo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jpm_sd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielblazevski|8 years ago|reply
But wonder if GM could pull ahead since it has more of a history of mass producing things, and all the infrastructure around that all built. Time will tell.
[+] [-] jumpkickhit|8 years ago|reply
If say a typical car/insurance payment was ~$500 a month, and an on-demand auto car service was $499 a month or less, it could work.
You never have to park. You can work/browse/call on the ride. Get dropped off right in front of wherever you're going. Could work out really awesome.
[+] [-] tatoalo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pryelluw|8 years ago|reply
It's why I hope GM does not delivers on this statement. Their quality track record[1] doesnt inspire me confidence.
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_swit...
[+] [-] tome|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wrsh07|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atmosx|8 years ago|reply
Hm, maybe I'm rushing it a bit.
[+] [-] Steeeve|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerostar07|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JCummings01|8 years ago|reply