I had some savings during the pandemic and I needed to choose between down payment for a house or fund my patient monitoring venture. I had contact with few care home chains and very positive feedback and even agreement for a test run. I was pussy and went for a home. Couple years later no semiconductor parts were available anymore and I was super happy with my cautious decision. I heard of few hardware ventures, which died during part shortage. What an unfortunate time. There was a product, market opportunity, but simply no production material.
The original sensor got discontinued, I have some savings again and would love to try the same with radar approach. Anyone willing to analyze well being of old people from radar data together?
I am no Tesla fanboy. But let’s face the truth. Teslas leave factory with end of line check. Then they are driven more than average cars for 3 years without any maintenance. Then go for check. And surprise surprise, the first model Ys were not well made. I bet with 1000-1500€ maintenance cost over these 3 years the TUV result would be dramatically different.
Btw, my petrol car had ugly rusty rear brakes. No way to pass the check. The car had manual handbrake and I used in every highway exit to slow down and removed rust.
Absolutely the same with RAMs in Germany. Big toys for rich guys to compensate something small. Takes at least 2 parking spots and doesn’t fit anyway.
On other hand the RAMs are not relevant for the average citizen. Crazy fuel consumption is a showstopper. And the ones with some extra cash will continue to import with German „Individual Vehicle Approval“ equivalent. In my eyes it’s another useless European regulation. Let poor people import cheap Toyotas from overseas.
Would be the end different if it was another oversized car like X7, G-Klasse or Cayenne?
Edit: I am really curious why there is no real vehicle physical size tax in Germany. Let’s take reference as VW Golf. Smaller cars cost less, bigger more. I agree to pay more, but current insanity with RAMs and vans should be somehow regulated.
A lot could probably be done with a simple "a person 1.80m in length must be able to see a 50cm high object 1 metre in front of the car" or something like that. Just making up numbers here and don't know what would be reasonable, but it seems this doesn't need to be that hard?
Weight also matters of course. Hopefully this relatively simple ruling will fix some of that too.
EU Regulation 2019/2144 [1] covers field of vision requirements. This is exactly the kind of regulation the USA wants the EU to drop.
> there shall be no obstruction in the driver's 180° forward direct field of vision below a horizontal plane passing through V1, and above three planes through V2, one being perpendicular to the plane X-Z and declining forward 4° below the horizontal
> For vehicles with high driving positions (driver's eye points more than 1,650 mm above the ground), a 1,200 mm tall cylindrical object with a diameter of 300 mm must be visible when placed 2,000 mm in front of the vehicle
According to Claude a Dodge RAM fails both of these. At 80cm (2-year old, a dog, or someone crouching down), depending on driver position, an object might be obscured by the hood in a comically large 5-8 meter area ahead.
>A lot could probably be done with a simple "a person 1.80m in length must be able to see a 50cm high object 1 metre in front of the car" or something like that. Just making up numbers here and don't know what would be reasonable, but it seems this doesn't need to be that hard?
It's hard because the people pushing for new rules very transparently want rules far beyond what the public wants or considers sensible. If they were simply asking for that it'd probable be done already.
Tanks are famously dangerous to be anywhere other than directly in front of. The angular front blind spot isn't terrible, but from the front corners on back they're massive hazards to the point where infantry gets trained on it so they don't get run over.
Speaking or fun over, whoever made that illustration should be run over by a tank. Fix the size of the goddamn kid or fix the distance and change the size of the kid. Having both variables move serves to only add confusion and annoyance.
But or course you are correct this is not only about American cars. Europeans can build big cars as well.
Cars are taxed by engine displacement in Germany. It's rather low compared to insurance and gas cost though. Indirectly larger cars are taxed through high gas tax.
Yes, large heavy unibody SUVs like the Q7/Touareg/Cayenne with all of the safety tech of a high end German luxury car are likely the safest cars possible- for the passengers at least.
G-klasse W465 is shorter than the equivalent medium sized sedan (E-klasse W214, and even shorter than my W212), and the hood is nowhere near as high as those overseas pickup trucks.
The monstrously large (5.8 meters) G63 6x6 is considerably rarer (i have never seen one in person).
> The monstrously large (5.8 meters) G63 6x6 is considerably rarer (i have never seen one in person).
Those kinds of exotic variants are for the Dubais of the world, for rich Arabs to power up and down sand dunes, not for the Autobahn and narrow medieval streets. I’ve only seen it at a motorshow.
The thing is that office can be very different environment. I have my own office at current workplace. But I was sitting in 20 seat open office too. People were hiding in the toilets to do some coding…
It’s cool! But it would be nice AMD SoC project. Camera pre-processing pipeline and motion control in FPGA part for lowest possible delay and machine learning on ARM cores. Eventually with some acceleration in FPGA part too.
Being real good does not change the fact, that one is cost factor and at the end only a row in payroll spreadsheet. Junior with low salary and low compensation during layoff -> priority departure.
Having in couple hours unannounced meeting. My boss told me over private channel, that he just got fired. It’s very interesting and the home mortgage does not really help today. I was really good. Better than expected and accomplished few optional projects. Looks like it didn’t help again.
It makes no sense at all. You have measurable frequency range. But you have no idea how particular brain weights the specific frequencies in the range. Some people can live comfortable life hearing only 200 Hz to 6000 Hz from birth. The other people freak out hearing 8000 Hz coil whine sound. It’s not an universal thing.
But humans are operating under the conditions not feasible for those cars. There is winter start in Germany with rain turning to snow and blizzard with poor visibility plus ice on the road. Humans still drive, vision only system will fail in first minute.
And that changes what I said in what way? If cars aren't as safe as people (including in those conditions), they shouldn't drive. But once they match us, waiting for them to be perfect is a waste of time.
That means, that accidents of humans happen anytime and everywhere. While robotaxis cause accidents in less harsh conditions making statistics not really comparable. On the other hand statistics say that most accidents happen in summer: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/overview/crashes-b... My bad.
I really don’t envy the supervisor’s job. Sitting there bored to death for weeks and waiting accident to happen. And when it happens you’re too bored and too tired to engage in timely manner.
On the other hand… the not paid version of cruise control continuously fails in my two years old model Y. Realistically looking it’s to early to fantasize about robitaxis when simple phantom braking problem is not solved yet.
Phantom braking has been a huge issue since at least 2017, constant whack a mole release to release, really nuked my confidence in the product over time.
The unpaid version of cruise control/autopilot is actually a different software from the one that comes bundled with FSD. I actually think the semi-smart autopilot that comes bundled with FSD is better than FSD itself.
I tried to get into FSD but I felt that it made me an obnoxious driver. Chill is too slow and makes unnecessary lane changes. Hurry makes too many unnecessary lane changes while speeding beyond the flow of traffic. When you encounter a "mormon roadblock", e.g two cars going the speed limit on a two lane road, FSD goes into a loop changing lanes back and forth hoping for an overtake that never comes. If you're the type of driver who picks his exit lane early because you know they're prone to jamming and drivers blocking each other later, FSD will still try to get out of the merge lane to pass, ditto for busy intersection queues.
Removing the human driver makes one things SPECIFICALLY worse, and that is the ability to correct navigation errors and override sub-optimal routing. For example: there is one block on my commute where you can take either an uncontrolled left turn, or go up to a light. The difference is one block and the light is usually faster during rush hour because the uncontrolled turn takes forever to get a safe gap. Navigation always chooses the uncontrolled left to the point that you have to disengage. There's other quality of life issues too like wanting to approach your destination from the left or the right because you know the parking situation ahead of time. These can be communicated to a human driver. You can't explain that to Tesla FSD though. It's tapped into the car-machine-god hivemind and can't be bothered with instructions from mere mortals.
But I digress, I think the paid, semi-smart autopilot is their best product. I can set an objective speed limit. It stops at stop signs and red lights automatically. It stays in its lane until I tap the blinker so it changes lane. It can autopark. These things actually augment my driving and reduce cognitive strain while driving, while keeping me just alert enough. FSD is all or nothing while requiring full non-interactive attention like a sentinel.
There's an ft article today saying "According to Goldman Sachs, China’s nascent robotaxi market is expected to rise from $54mn this year to $47bn by 2035." which would be a lot (https://archive.ph/U7R9a)
As an hardware engineer I would trust the numbers. With radar, lidar and camera fusion more could be achieved. Or April tags on the main streets in the city. Ar magnetic markers in the streets.
The Baidu robotaxi seems pretty much a copy of the Waymo one. Interestingly both seem able to be remote controlled by a human at their office if they have problems so the autonomous driving may not be quite as good as made out.
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