That's pretty cool, it's great to see GM not sucking at bleeding edge software. They're getting their money's worth out of that billion dollar acquisition last March. I think Kyle Vogt is GM's MVP.

Looking at the 2016 California DMV disengagement reports, Cruise is at 181 disengages in 9,776 miles of testing in California for 2016. This can be compared crudely to Waymo's 124 disengages in 635,868 miles for 2016.

Waymo's operation is 2 orders of magnitude more advanced than Cruise, but in terms of video demos, we haven't seen much of the environments Waymo's cars are capable of navigating. Waymo has only revealed their cars driving on suburban roads, it seems only Cruise is tackling hectic downtown driving head-on.

GM, with their Lyft partnership and Orion assembly plant is, I think, in a great position to deploy early fast with 1st gen robotaxis.

Very impressive, I'm wondering how it was able to get around the white truck that was double-parked? Does it have sensors on the mirrors and point straight out? I imagine it would have no information as to oncoming cars, with the truck blocking almost everything, so I wonder what the algorithm is for that.

At around 1:54 in the video, it comes to a stop light that is in front of a Shell station's gas price board. It actually took me a second to notice the stop light. There is another light on the left side of the screen, but it still made me think.

Is it likely just using some image recognition and a confidence level to determine when it is safe to go?

If so, could the system be fooled by a sign that is meant to always look like a red light? Or worse, a green light to trick the system to run a red?

Seeing a firetruck in this made me wonder, how do self driving vehicles deal with emergency services behind them? Detect the flashing lights?

I think GM is in a great position to compete with Uber and tesla if they capitalize on the tech.

As a customer I'll still be happy with multiple choices driving prices down and offering a better service than buses and taxis.

God I hate buses in the US. Public transport is very broken.

> The Cruise car makes a left turn and then gets stuck behind a delivery truck. It waits as a couple of other vehicles overtake it

I suppose I'd probably notice if I was a semi-engaged driver, but not as much if I considered myself "just a passenger" in an autonomous vehicle. It looks like barely more than 30s elapses there.

I wish they released a realtime cut of this. I feel like some of the quirks have been obscured with sped up footage.

That video was impressive. It shows great situational awareness.

Here's what I wonder about the future. Is there a point in which consolidation will take place in the auto industry as a result of superior self-driving performance and capabilities? Meaning -- can the value created by self-driving software be more of a factor than the other existing assets of a GM, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota, etc?

So, silly question - why are these technologies not being made broadly available as driver assist tools while we work our way up to L4 driving automation?

If we're really concerned about making driving safer, this seems like a good compromise until we get to broadly available (and affordable) L4.

At 1:04 [1], it stops for a few seconds before the intersection. Seems to be due to the white car that is parked in opposite direction as all other cars so it waited for ~20 seconds to confirm that the car is indeeded parked? Should a no-motion indicates it's not moving? Why wait for so long?

https://youtu.be/Vfgjemwc9NU?t=63

While certainly impressive, keep in mind that it's only one video showing one of possibly thousands of trials with possibly thousands of difficult corner-case situations where the car got stuck or acted improperly. One video doesn't prove anything, especially not one with a person ready to take over at any moment.

American roads look really unfamiliar to someone from the UK. You stop a lot! So many stop signs.

Looking at this space, I honestly expected more drive by wire and remote VR pilot type intermediary solutions than full autonomy. I wonder if remote control will be completely bypassed or if certain sectors will still benefit from this.

How does this compare to other players right now (ex. Waymo, Tesla, etc)?

As I was watching this video I thought about how much further along with self driving cars we could be if the data was open source. Sharing this type of information between companies would increase everyone's velocity and get us that much closer to real world driverless vehicles.

At some point the vehicles will have to talk to each other anyway (ie. car-to-car network), so we might as well formalize it.

This is still pretty simple stuff it has to deal with. If you really want to test Cruise, try driving in downtown SF on a weekday around 5pm.

Until I see autonomous vehicles testing in blizzard conditions, or even a moderate snowfall, it's relegated to the West coast. This eliminates nearly 2/3 of the US population (who live in areas where snowfall occurs).

We're at least 5-7 years away from them testing in these conditions.

As in the first video there is a ~30s delay when stuck behind a truck. Which I think is reasonable and most human drivers take far too many risks. Seems to be than humans will learn to drive better thanks to self driving cars :).

Given GM's partnership with Lyft, makes me wonder if Uber should be concerned.

Looks like the car cuts off another other driver here?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vfgjemwc9NU&t=0m42s

At 00:49, shouldn't the car have yielded to the car coming from the opposite side of the street?

Is this going to be Cadillac's "Supercruise"?

Anyone knows how those technologies work at night time ?

I think one of the more depressing things is that (potentially) many driver-less cars will be gas powered. Does anyone know if Waymo is going to be used on any electric cars?

There doesn't seem to be any reason driver-less cars have to be electric, but if big companies pushed the tech onto electric cars it'd be a nice way to speed up their adoption and infrastructure for them.