BYD says self-driving tech is more valuable in factories than cars

At least in town there were periods of time when huge quantities of people were on self-driving vehicles. We called them trains. In theory transit is the optimal solution for the vast majority of people, not cars. So from that perspective yeah it's probably more useful to have self-driving tech deployed in mapped areas you control, where the stakes are lower and you can do it really well with existing tech.

I haven&#x27;t used it myself, but haven&#x27;t Tesla&#x2F;Waymo&#x2F;Cruise all definitely validated it is not &quot;impossible&quot; (like BYD are claiming). They are all working on making it more reliable, not &quot;validating if it&#x27;s possible&quot;.<p>Also, Didn&#x27;t Tesla Autopilot originate from factory automation&#x2F;self QAing car in factory? (Maybe I misread that, and I can&#x27;t find reference now).<p>This feels like a very big &quot;We are giving up on that&quot; call from BYD.

Hard to reconcile with the driverless car that just rolled by me as I’m walking down the street in San Francisco.<p>I can’t imagine this is going to age well.

BYD has done amazing, growing more than 2x &#x2F; year its EV output even at Tesla&#x27;s scale, executing beautifully on Tesla&#x27;s mission. It&#x27;s the Android of EVs at this point (low margin cheap cars).<p>Tesla will probably double down on high margin features, like self driving, as I&#x27;m not sure it will be able to compete in price with BYD.

People who can&#x27;t do it will tell you that it can&#x27;t be done :-)

Yeah.<p>Driving data is culture specific. I have rarely, if ever seen this point hammered home.<p>Simply put, a vehicle trained on US driving data will not manage in many developing nations.<p>You do not control the variables on the road, driving data is by default contingent.<p>The only way to make level 5 to work is if data from road side sensors or a mesh constantly updates driving models.<p>For me this veers wayyy too close to central control.<p>Factories are perfect on the other hand, because you DO control the variables.

certainly much easier to control the variables in a factory...<p>you dont have to worry about kids on e-scooters or potholes or weather problems or drunk drivers etc etc

s&#x2F;more valuable&#x2F;maybe actually works