Comma One cancelled after receiving information request from NHTSA - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 05:36:28 am
content: George Holz, famed hacker and CEO of 'comma.ai', was set to begin shipping his $999 car autopilot but shortly after receiving a letter from NHTSA he pulled the plug on the project. He didn't want to deal with the lawyers he said.http://money.cnn.com/2016/10/28/technology/comma-ai-nhtsa/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_tech_poolhttps://electrek.co/2016/10/28/george-hotz-cancels-his-tesla-autopilot-like-comma-one-after-request-from-nhtsa/I know a lot of folks are going to say this is the long arm of the government raining on an entrepreneurs parade, but we're not talking about something with relatively minor safety implications, a 4000 pound car travelling at 75mph has a crap ton of kinetic energy and the consequence of failure could easily be death and lots of it. It almost looks like he never bothered to research the regulatory aspect of this and acted as he might as a hacker by doing what he wanted with indifference to the consequences.Oddly, and at this point I do have some questions about the actions of the regulators, his efforts were not being hidden and his project was written about in Bloomberg almost a year ago. One would think that NHTSA might have pinged him back then instead of waiting until he was about to start shipping the product.Very strange...Brian

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 05:46:12 am
content: Quote from: raptor1956 on October 29, 2016, 05:36:28 amWhat did he expect? If you have brains to design a self driving system, then you should have brains to understand that there are going to be lawyers involved.Or did he look at Tesla with all the problems they are having, and decided that this is not going to apply to him?And Tesla stuff is sort of working, his thing - who knows?Also, what he will do when his autopilot kills someone? Wrap up the business because of lawyers?And NHTSA does not investigate vapor ware, they don't read bloomberg. You can't legally sell after market parts that affect car safety without certification, so he must have filed some paperwork with NHTSA, which triggered the investigation. That's exactly what they are supposed to do.

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 07:23:14 am
content: Quote from: ataradov on October 29, 2016, 05:46:12 amYeah, it just kind of looks like a guy that's made a name for himself as a 'hacker' and just assumed that that way of doing things would be OK for an autopilot system. Hey, I didn't ask anyone if it was OK to bust into this place or that so why should I care about highway safety issues.I'm sure that NHTSA doesn't open an investigation into everyone that posts a video or blog stating they plan to do XYZ but once it reached an international news organization like Bloomberg I would have expected a letter be sent asking about his plans. And, for all we know at this point they may have done so.Judging by his quick exit from the project after more than a years effort it's my guess the motoring public is better off this genius didn't get to display his genius on the open roads.I'm not someone that jumps with joy at regulations in general, but there are many areas that we simply can not tolerate folks winging it. I have been flying a drone (DJI Inspire 1 Pro) for about a year now and try to operate within the law as best I can and its annoying to see so many that don't give a sh1t about the rules and feel they should be able to do as they please. Hey, I paid good money for my drone and I want to do with it as I please.This mentality is everywhere...Brian

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 10:49:22 am
content: Are we supposed to believe that someone was seriously developing an autonomous vehicle system, and never bothered to find out what the regulatory requirements were?Quote from: raptor1956 on October 29, 2016, 05:36:28 amOne would think he would have contacted the NHTSA a long time ago, and they only sent out a letter when it started looking like the device would go on sale without certification. What's the protocol for road-testing a device like this? I would assume that requires some kind of permits which suggests that it either hasn't been tested, or the tests themselves have been illegal.

author: John Coloccia
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 12:19:40 pm
content: He's full of crap. He's got cold feet, no balls and probably has a buggy product he doesn't want exposed. This was a perfect opportunity to get out and save face. There's no way you get this far into a product, with experienced investors, and then get surprised at the last second that the NHTSA is going to want to see if you're magic f@&%ing car AUTOPILOT is safe. Absolutely, positively no way that could happen.

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 01:40:08 pm
content: It's probably not technically illegal to sell such a product?, after all, how could they stop such a device being sold to private individuals for use in unregistered cars driven on private property?

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 01:52:09 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on October 29, 2016, 01:40:08 pmMaybe he should have sent that as a response then, rather than cancelling the whole product? If this one letter requesting information is all it took to throw his development effort away, there can't have been much of it to begin with. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the real plan was to get Apple or Tesla to buy the tech for a gazillion bucks rather than turning it into an actual product.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 05:22:14 pm
content: Quote from: EEVblog on October 29, 2016, 01:40:08 pmThat's what they probably did until now, unless it is a total scam (which I kind of suspected from the beginning). But to sell this thing to mass market, you have to get approval from NHTSA. And NHTSA will obviously "investigate" before giving such approval.

author: ChristopherN
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: October 29, 2016, 05:46:44 pm
content: The certification process for anything safety critical for cars is quite expensive. I did certification for a product thats used in busses and commercial vehicles (not safety critical) and that did cost around 100k€ plus a lot of time. Certification was done for Germany, Australia, US and Mexico.But never count on investors to catch this kind of thing. I had a offer for a consulting job some days ago for a product thats already on the market but lacks certification. That product is sold for use on private roads only. The investor did not spot that while putting money in the company.However, that addition (for private roads only) limits sales quite a bit

author: raptor1956
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 30, 2016, 07:20:43 am
content: At some point you have to take the testing to the open road and I have to believe that Tesla and Google and everyone else that has self driving cars on the road at this point needed to go through NHTSA and every other regulatory body there is in order to be permitted to do such testing on the open road. In addition to NHTSA since many/most of these companies working on it are based in California, I'd surmise they'd need to get Caltrans on board as well.Again, even if you're a strong opponent of regulations and a lot of people are it would be hard to imagine folks not appreciating the need to go slow with something like this given the risks of failure. Uber appears to be pushing forward not only with self driving cars but they're also psuhing ahead with self driving trucks.https://www.wired.com/2016/10/ubers-self-driving-truck-makes-first-delivery-50000-beers/One can only imagine the harm a really bad failure with a truck might do not only to the poor people in its way but to the self driving industry. The truck that drove through a crowd in France killing 86 people and injuring 434, though clearly an intentional act, was not the largest truck around and here in the USA as elsewhere we have tandem trucks that can be more than 50m long.Yeah, not a fan of needless regulation, but only a fool would think the highways should be a free for all.Brian