SAE Level 4 driving is several orders of magnitude harder than SAE Level 2. You are either good enough to drive without requiring a driver or you are not. There is a reason developing L4 systems cost billions of dollars.
George Hotz thinks Comma does the job with only a fraction of the spending compared to the likes of Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, but fails to realize his product also does only a fraction of what the others are trying to do.
How is that different from L2? SAE Levels 0-2 demand constant supervision and the ability to take over at any moment. Level 3 is actually better, as it only requires you to be able to take over after a short (e.g. 10 second) notice. Levels 4 and 5 do not require the driver to be able to take over (e.g. drunk, sleeping, no license).
At the risk of sounding pedantic this is not a Level 4 demo. It is a Level 2 demo where the driver didn't have to intervene during the demonstrated route.
What's the difference? Apart from the legal requirement to have a diver ready to take over in test vehicles (which necessarily makes it Level 2), the fundamental difference is that you'd have to show a lot more than one demo to establish that you've achieved Level 4. Level 4s are supposed to be able to operate without human intervention at all within prescribed domains (e.g. downtown cities). That doesn't mean operate one trip or one day or one month without a disengagement -- that's still Level 2.
I'm super impressed by the demo but Cruise will have to show more data to back up a Level 4 claim.
I get that it's defined that way, but it's not, practically speaking, the same. The article is about a driver having L3/L4 tech. Waymo/Cruise are not allowing that. So you truly can relax/nap/do work email... because what else would you do?
I thought this was an interesting perspective - Alex Roy is famous in car enthusiast circles for his driving records over the past 30 years. He's set speed records with drives across the US and around Manhattan, and has set electric/semi-autonomous records in a Tesla Model S in August 2016.
The point being that Alex Roy has probably spent more time thinking about driving, planning trips, and understanding traffic rules than most other people alive today. His perspective is just a single perspective, but given his massive experience with car-driver systems I think it's an interesting perspective.
George Hotz thinks Comma does the job with only a fraction of the spending compared to the likes of Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, but fails to realize his product also does only a fraction of what the others are trying to do.
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