Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

Quite the qualification for self-driving: "as long as there are clearly painted lane lines."

+3.5 million miles out of ~4.x million miles of existing roads -- not too shabby.

Seems like a good start to me, and I'd rather they approach as cautiously as possible.

I notice that tesla seems to choose (highlight in blue) the left and/or right lane lines or the car in front of you. But it still seems to work without lines.

Fully autonomous driving in all conditions in all locations is clearly a hard problem that's still not solved.

I'm very happy with any company that clearly spells out the situations where their tech works, and the situations where it doesn't yet work.

I've been saying that it's semi-solved, in the sense that we have a decent idea of how to get there without requiring major breakthroughs. (By "we" I mean Waymo.)

The endless list of "exception" cases is why I'm continuous skeptical about any sort of full-self-driving claims.

Sure, you can cover everything they can think of. But there are so many cases you can't predict, or which don't have an obvious solution, and it often comes down to a human judgement call that doesn't always have a programmatically-clear right answer.

I can't find how it will operate. Will it detect a situation where lines are not painted sufficiently clearly, warn you, and disengage? Or will you need to detect where it begins to operate wonky because lines aren't painted sufficiently clearly and to take over? I guess it's the second. It's hands-off, not eyes-off.

Also, I would like to see a car company that is further down the road of full autonomy clearly describing all the long tail scenarios. It's just impossible.

That was specifically for their existing Gen2 highway assist expansion. Not the Gen3 custom silicon full autonomy that they were discussing for the rest of the presentation.

The current Gen 1s will start beeping at you if they can’t see the lines. If you don’t take over quickly it will start slowing down and beeping very insistently.