Tesla FSD vs GM Cruise Robotaxis - Lose contact with mothership, GM Robotaxis stop in middle of intersection or block fire truck

firsttruck

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 25, 2020
Threads
172
Messages
2,542
Reaction score
4,042
Location
mx
Vehicles
none
Country flag
another example of why GM Cruise Robotaxis will not be able to scale deployment

--------------


GM's Cruise so Far: A Crash, and 60 RoboTaxis 'Disabled' After Losing Server Contact (thedrive.com)
Posted by Editor David on Saturday July 09, 2022
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/...obotaxis-disabled-after-losing-server-contact

.....

Wired reports:
In response to that crash, Cruise temporarily reprogrammed its vehicles to make fewer unprotected left turns, according to internal messages seen by WIRED. At an internal meeting Jeff Bleich, Cruise's chief legal officer, said the company was investigating the incident, according to a recording reviewed by WIRED. He also warned employees not working on that investigation to try and tune out crashes or related news reports, saying they were unavoidable and would increase in frequency as the company scaled up its operations. "We just have to understand that at some point this is now going to be a part of the work that we do, and that means staying focused on the work ahead," he said.

Wikipedia's entry for Cruise notes a few other incidents:
In April 2022, the San Francisco Police Department stopped an empty (operating without any human safety attendants) Cruise AV for driving at night without its headlights on.... Also in April 2022, an empty Cruise AV blocked the path of a San Francisco Fire Department truck responding to a fire.

But Wired also reports on a more troubling incident that happened "around midnight" on June 28th: Internal messages seen by WIRED show that nearly 60 vehicles were disabled across the city over a 90-minute period after they lost touch with a Cruise server. As many as 20 cars, some of them halted in crosswalks, created a jam in the city's downtown in an incident first reported by the San Francisco Examiner and detailed in photos posted to Reddit....

The June 28 outage wasn't Cruise's first. On the evening of May 18, the company lost touch with its entire fleet for 20 minutes as its cars sat stopped in the street, according to internal documentation viewed by WIRED. Company staff were unable to see where the vehicles were located or communicate with riders inside. Worst of all, the company was unable to access its system which allows remote operators to safely steer stopped vehicles to the side of the road.

A letter sent anonymously by a Cruise employee to the California Public Utilities Commission that month, which was reviewed by WIRED, alleged that the company loses contact with its driverless vehicles "with regularity," blocking traffic and potentially hindering emergency vehicles. The vehicles can sometimes only be recovered by tow truck, the letter said. Images and video posted on social media in May and June show Cruise vehicles stopped in San Francisco traffic lanes seemingly inexplicably, as the city's pedestrians and motorists navigate around them.
Sponsored

 

Cybr on

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 10, 2020
Threads
5
Messages
433
Reaction score
483
Location
California
Vehicles
17 UncorkedMS75awd+Upgrade fsd,M3LRawd+fsd,CT3FSD
Country flag
another example of why GM Cruise Robotaxis will not be able to scale deployment

--------------


GM's Cruise so Far: A Crash, and 60 RoboTaxis 'Disabled' After Losing Server Contact (thedrive.com)
Posted by Editor David on Saturday July 09, 2022
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/...obotaxis-disabled-after-losing-server-contact

.....

Wired reports:
In response to that crash, Cruise temporarily reprogrammed its vehicles to make fewer unprotected left turns, according to internal messages seen by WIRED. At an internal meeting Jeff Bleich, Cruise's chief legal officer, said the company was investigating the incident, according to a recording reviewed by WIRED. He also warned employees not working on that investigation to try and tune out crashes or related news reports, saying they were unavoidable and would increase in frequency as the company scaled up its operations. "We just have to understand that at some point this is now going to be a part of the work that we do, and that means staying focused on the work ahead," he said.

Wikipedia's entry for Cruise notes a few other incidents:
In April 2022, the San Francisco Police Department stopped an empty (operating without any human safety attendants) Cruise AV for driving at night without its headlights on.... Also in April 2022, an empty Cruise AV blocked the path of a San Francisco Fire Department truck responding to a fire.

But Wired also reports on a more troubling incident that happened "around midnight" on June 28th: Internal messages seen by WIRED show that nearly 60 vehicles were disabled across the city over a 90-minute period after they lost touch with a Cruise server. As many as 20 cars, some of them halted in crosswalks, created a jam in the city's downtown in an incident first reported by the San Francisco Examiner and detailed in photos posted to Reddit....

The June 28 outage wasn't Cruise's first. On the evening of May 18, the company lost touch with its entire fleet for 20 minutes as its cars sat stopped in the street, according to internal documentation viewed by WIRED. Company staff were unable to see where the vehicles were located or communicate with riders inside. Worst of all, the company was unable to access its system which allows remote operators to safely steer stopped vehicles to the side of the road.

A letter sent anonymously by a Cruise employee to the California Public Utilities Commission that month, which was reviewed by WIRED, alleged that the company loses contact with its driverless vehicles "with regularity," blocking traffic and potentially hindering emergency vehicles. The vehicles can sometimes only be recovered by tow truck, the letter said. Images and video posted on social media in May and June show Cruise vehicles stopped in San Francisco traffic lanes seemingly inexplicably, as the city's pedestrians and motorists navigate around them.
Thanks for sharing firsttruck šŸ˜Š
I enjoyed reading on the reports. Itā€™s very interesting read and a look further into the struggles in autonomous driving along with its successes too.
 

nmeabrian

Active member
First Name
Brian
Joined
Jul 8, 2021
Threads
4
Messages
36
Reaction score
56
Location
Australia
Vehicles
Cybertruck
Occupation
Director
Country flag
After the latest incident, the journalists are unpacking Cruise operations. What struck me in this article is this quote:

ā€œThose vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per vehicle. The workers intervened to assist the companyā€™s vehicles every 2.5 to five miles, according to two people familiar with is operations. In other words, they frequently had to do something to remotely control a car after receiving a cellular signal that it was having problems.ā€

This begs the question of how white papers like this one are constructed. If the car came to a complete stop and asked an operator how to proceed, is the car still doing autonomous miles because the human is not directly driving it? see the article here

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/...e_code=1.7kw.kQc8.i1cRa_g01xoa&smid=url-share

 

PilotPete

Well-known member
First Name
Pete
Joined
May 8, 2023
Threads
12
Messages
1,577
Reaction score
3,951
Vehicles
Porsche, BMW, M3LR on order
Occupation
Chief Pilot
Country flag
After the latest incident, the journalists are unpacking Cruise operations. What struck me in this article is this quote:

ā€œThose vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per vehicle. The workers intervened to assist the companyā€™s vehicles every 2.5 to five miles, according to two people familiar with is operations. In other words, they frequently had to do something to remotely control a car after receiving a cellular signal that it was having problems.ā€

This begs the question of how white papers like this one are constructed. If the car came to a complete stop and asked an operator how to proceed, is the car still doing autonomous miles because the human is not directly driving it? see the article here

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/...e_code=1.7kw.kQc8.i1cRa_g01xoa&smid=url-share


So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, a stinkinā€™ minute.
A regular Uber takes 1 person to operate it, but a supposedly ā€œautonomousā€ vehicle takes 1.5 people to operate it? And they STILL canā€™t get it right?

In all honesty, why is it that a GM company operating like this does NOT surprise in the least? But rather, it seems completely in step with something a US OEM would try to do. Just when I donā€™t think my opinion of the big 3 could get any lowerā€¦

Oh yeah, WAY ahead of FSDā€¦
 

CyberGus

Well-known member
First Name
Gus
Joined
May 22, 2021
Threads
67
Messages
5,817
Reaction score
19,093
Location
Austin, TX
Website
www.timeanddate.com
Vehicles
1981 DeLorean, 2024 Cybertruck
Occupation
IT Specialist
Country flag
I assume that any commerical robotaxi fleet will require remote operators to handle outliers (stuck in a corner-case, involved in an accident, etc.) but was thinking that should take maybe 1 operator for every 100 cars...?
 


PilotPete

Well-known member
First Name
Pete
Joined
May 8, 2023
Threads
12
Messages
1,577
Reaction score
3,951
Vehicles
Porsche, BMW, M3LR on order
Occupation
Chief Pilot
Country flag
I assume that any commerical robotaxi fleet will require remote operators to handle outliers (stuck in a corner-case, involved in an accident, etc.) but was thinking that should take maybe 1 operator for every 100 cars...?
Well, certainly 1.5:1 is a bad ratio for a business plan!
 

swengl

Well-known member
First Name
Steve
Joined
Sep 9, 2021
Threads
13
Messages
470
Reaction score
897
Location
United States
Vehicles
Model S, Model Y
Country flag
I assume that any commerical robotaxi fleet will require remote operators to handle outliers (stuck in a corner-case, involved in an accident, etc.) but was thinking that should take maybe 1 operator for every 100 cars...?
I agree...the outliers should really be just that and the ratio of operators:vehicles can drop significantly as a result.
 

Crissa

Well-known member
First Name
Crissa
Joined
Jul 8, 2020
Threads
126
Messages
16,227
Reaction score
27,092
Location
Santa Cruz
Vehicles
2014 Zero S, 2013 Mazda 3
Country flag
So wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, a stinkinā€™ minute.
A regular Uber takes 1 person to operate it, but...
Even Ubers operate at more than 1 per car.

There's the driver.
There's the entire staff of Uber, from execs to IT.
There's the people who repair and details cars.
Etc.

Cruise doesn't have alot of cars, so their denominator is kinda low while their numerator still has most of those. They might not have a *driver* per car, but they're going to have many more full time engineers and then the same number of execs and then fewer IT people.

Not saying it looks good for them, but them's the truths. Even Waymo looks worse, as they only have a hundred or so cars per city and then 2500 employees full time. Even as their cars have even fewer interventions and hand-coding.

Until they scale out of a few cities, that exec load is going to make them look terrible.

-Crissa
Sponsored

 
 




Top