cross-posted from: https://lazysoci.al/post/16981536

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/40804688

Tesla uberbulls often like to say that Tesla is the leader in self-driving because while it doesn’t have a commercially available autonomous ride-hailing service like Waymo, it doesn’t rely on geo-fencing and mapping like Waymo.

They argue that if Tesla wanted to do that it could, but it prefers to focus on an autonomous system that could drive anywhere, anytime, without mapping.

However, it is questionable that they could do it if they wanted to because they still haven’t done it on a project much simpler than Waymo’s operations in Pheonix and other cities: the tunnels under Las Vegas.

The Las Vegas Convention Center Loop is The Boring Company’s first full-scale loop project currently in commercial use.

Elon Musk’s tunneling start-up completed the $50 million project in just over a year.

A Boring Company Loop system consists of tunnels in which Tesla electric vehicles travel at high speeds between stations to transport people within a city. The Boring Company said that it was working with Tesla to use its self-driving system inside those tunnels, which would enables to get rid of the current drivers and lower the cost of operation.

However, 2 years and several more tunnels connected to the Loop later, The Boring Company is still using drivers in the tunnels.

  • Mossy Feathers (She/They)
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    3 months ago

    How? It’s one lane, one way, right? How the fuck are you unable to get your current systems to reliably navigate a closed, controlled loop?

    • takeda@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The most ironic thing is the tunnel is fully controlled by him, so he could easily install emitters that could guide the car.

      The main reason self driving is hard is the lack of such devices and unpredictability in the wild.

      Both of those issues wouldn’t be a problem in those tunnels.

      But let’s be honest, even with that, he essentially built a much less efficient metro.

      Also his original promise of “hyperloop” wasn’t a tunnel but a travel medium which supposed to be sending capsules in low air pressure.

      • maniii@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        “It is not that hard. Its not complicated. Install an air-hockey table inside a vacuum tube!”

        :smh:

        The brain-rot and copium needed to support a wage-thief conman.

        Truly all the workers and employees need to be owners of Tesla and SpaceX. Management and C-suite should be relegated as worthless lower than janitors. Grifters are what these leeches are that managed to drive shit through a tunnel.

        FSD and the Boring Tunnel was Tesla successfully subverting and destroying Public Transit funding and projects going forward in California.

        Take a look at Italy ( a very corrupt but advanced European country with hilly terrain ). They’ve completed I dunno how many High-Speed Rail links with their Frecciarossa and Trenitalia plans.

        California could have had this infrastructure NOW! If they had ignored Elongated Molluskrat and Tesla. Just imagine the grift and corruption to have abandoned the High-speed rail and Public Transit links !!!

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      Because Tesla uses cameras instead of radar for self driving. I bet a Mercedes wouldn’t have any issue driving in those tunnels

    • Clasm@ttrpg.network
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      3 months ago

      It should literally be auto-correcting on a physical level by design. The only thing that autopilot should be doing is controlling the speed and brakes!

      • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        There have literally been a few systems like that since the 1970s at airports and university campuses.

    • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksOPM
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      3 months ago

      How?

      ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

      My best guess is that optimizing FSD beta for use in The Boring Company’s Loop project is just not a priority for Tesla at the moment. If TBC scales up quickly, these priorities could change, but I currently think that the Loop project will go driverless only once the above ground Tesla fleet also goes driverless.

        • threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.worksOPM
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          3 months ago

          I’m not fully convinced that the hyperloop and Loop projects were always a scam. I think they were likely started out of frustration with existing systems, with a dash of over-optimism. The systems TBC have implemented so far do work, they’ve just been slower to scale than the early estimates.

          As for discouraging investment in public transit, the Loop is a form of public transit, like a bus or subway. There’s a detailed writeup here (apologies for the Reddit link) highlighting some of the potential advantages of the Loop over conventional trains in sparser cities. Many of these advantages have not (yet?) come to fruition, largely because TBC have been so slow to scale.

          • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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            3 months ago

            From Musk’s hagiobiography, by Ashlee Vance:

            Musk told me that the idea originated out of his hatred for California’s proposed high-speed rail system. … He insisted the Hyperloop would cost about $6 billion to $10 billion, go faster than a plane, and let people drive their cars onto a pod and drive out into a new city. At the time, it seemed that Musk had dished out the Hyperloop proposal just to make the public and legislators rethink the high-speed train. He didn’t actually intend to build the thing. … With any luck, the high-speed rail would be canceled. Musk said as much to me during a series of e-mails and phone calls leading up to the announcement.

  • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Now I have a radical idea.

    Stop using cars. Not enough space for lots of people. You need something the size of a bus or shuttle. So you’ll want to increase the tunnel size considerably. And then if you lay down like, a track you can basically guarantee the path it takes. Then with that, you could like, link a bunch of these… cabines(?) together since you’d only need one section to have an engine, the rest could be for passengers or even could move goods. And since it wouldn’t be in a road and it’s on a rail… Maybe we call it a railway? I mean I’m no Elon Musk, but I think it’s a solid idea.

  • over_clox@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Thank you great spirits of Lemmy, subscribed!

    I was perma-banned from Reddit for mentioning facts about the Boring Company and Elon, with links…

      • over_clox@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Spez or one of the other admins got mad at me for mentioning the Boring Company’s “Not A Flamethrower” contraption, that looks like a toy gun no less…

        • Saledovil@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          It’s a firet hrower. A flame thrower throws the chemical reaction, as in, it throws burning napalm or something similar. Fire, on the other hand, is the glowing air. Hence the Boring Company’s thing is a fire thrower. And using my definition, a catapult throwing a pot filled with burning naphtha would also be a flame thrower.

    • maniii@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Censorship is still a thing even on Lemmy. Exercise self-restraint and have a thicker skin than on Reddit. I personally found out that LoTR Tolkien sub-community is all for censorship and not at all for preserving Tolkien’s legacy.

      I block and unsubscribe from any Lemmy forum that censors people who have valid points expressed. I hope that Lemmy doesn’t become a “mini-Reddit” but so far Lemmy isn’t there yet. At least the censorship seems to be limited but Im not holding my breath.

      Here is to hoping your Lemmy experience is better.

  • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Frankly at this point there is no excuse for this not to work. My only explanation is that they don’t want it to work. A loop system with autonomous cars would make a lot of sense and be much cheaper to build than a metro system. So much so that it might challenge the dominance of cars in cities.

    • fibojoly@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      A loop with buses. Why would you use small individual cars? Seems very inefficient if the goal is to drive people on glorified rails.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        3 months ago

        Even with buses, just build a fucking metro and be done with it instead of doing everything to not build the thing that actually works.

        • Batbro@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          Cost honestly, easier to add a protected self driving road or reuse an existing one and exit it to provide local stops.

          I almost like the idea but I like trains lol

      • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Of course. Using passenger cars makes no sense. But the advantage of using smaller vehicles is that you can offer point to point connections, i.e. you don’t need to stop at every station.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Would have to wait for the car infront stopping though. Or not have stations on the actual line, which they haven’t done?

          • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            In the Vegas loop there is a separate area for getting in and out of the vehicle, before it enters the tunnel. Therefore the only limit is the capacity of the tunnel. That’s how it would have to work for other such systems too.

          • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Have you been to a city? The whole point is to move traffic underground. And having tunnels where traffic flows in just one direction and where people can get in and off in dedicated locations will make this far more efficient than regular traffic. But yeah, let’s just never change anything and never try anything new. Our world is perfect as it is, right?

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              3 months ago

              Yeah, we do that with metros, not individual cars that just create underground traffic. Having individual cars dropping people off at the specific location they want to go just stops all incoming cars from moving forward.

              https://youtu.be/p8NiM_p8n5A

              Hell, I would know about it, I used to be the one welcoming people at the drop off point for a casino, we had a four lanes roundabout and two people taking their sweet time could prevent twenty cars from moving. Metros are on a timer, that solves the issue completely.

    • taladar@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      much cheaper to build than a metro system.

      Maybe in absolute terms but certainly not per passenger transported.

      • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        I don’t think there is sufficient data to make such a sweeping generalisation. Also we’re talking about a hypothetical system here.