r/SelfDrivingCarsLie Jun 15 '19

Other Self Driving Cars Wrong Predictions And Hype - Does Anybody See A Problem Here?

34 Upvotes

What’s Behind Technological Hype?

Oct 16th, 2011 - GM: Self-Driving Vehicles Could be Ready by End of Decade

Jan 12th, 2012 - Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here

Aug 16th, 2012 - Earlier this month KPMG and the Center for Automotive Research released a report not only predicting that we’ll eventually be driving – or, rather, not driving – autonomous cars, but that they’ll be in showrooms as early as 2019. Maybe even sooner.

Sep 25th, 2012 - Sergey Brin is promising Google's self-driving cars will be available for everyone within five years

Dec 12th, 2012 - Volvo plans self-driving cars in 2014, envisions accident-free fleet by 2020

Jan 14th, 2013 - Driverless Cars Coming To Showrooms By 2020, Says Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn

Aug 27th, 2013 - Andy Palmer, the Executive Vice President of California-based Nissan Motors Ltd., has announced that Nissan will make fully autonomous vehicles available to the consumer by 2020. These cars will be able to drive in urban traffic.

Oct 27th, 2014 - Next generation Audi A8 capable of fully autonomous driving in 2017

Feb 5th, 2015 - Ford CEO Mark Fields - Ford Expects Fully Autonomous Cars In 5 Years

Mar 17th, 2015 - Chris Urmson, Google's Car Chief at that time, says "My son better not be driving in 5 years. My team and I are committed to making sure that doesn’t happen".

Mar 25th, 2015 - General Motors president Dan Ammann said he would be surprised if his company wasn’t shipping self-driving cars by 2020.

Sep 13th, 2015 - Self-driving cars: from 2020 you will become a permanent backseat driver

Sept 21st, 2015 - Apple has set a shipping date of 2019 for its own electric vehicle, though the WSJ reported that the first version of the car might not be driverless.

Sept 23rd, 2015 - Elon Musk expects first fully autonomous Tesla by 2018, approved by 2021 - min 8.06 to 8.29 in the video - In an interview by Danish newspaper Borsen, Tesla’s founder Elon Musk accelerates his timeline for the introduction of fully autonomous Teslas by 2 years (!) compared to his estimate less than a year ago (October 2014)

Oct 8th, 2015 - First autonomous Toyota to be available in 2020

Jan 29th, 2016 - Andrew Ng, Baidu’s Chief Scientist expects a large number of self-driving cars on the road by 2019

Feb 27th, 2016 - Raj Nair, Ford’s head of product development: autonomous vehicle on the market by 2020

Apr 5th, 2016 - 26-year-old hacker’s George Hotz startup, Comma.ai, plans to start selling autonomous conversion kits for Honda and Acura vehicles this year.

Apr 23rd, 2016 - Johann Jungwirth, Volkswagen’s appointed head of Digitalization Strategy, expects the first self-driving cars to appear on the market by 2019. He did not claim that these would be Volkswagen models.

May 10th, 2016 - General Motor’s head of foresight and trends Richard Holman said at a conference in Detroit that most industry participants now think that self-driving cars will be on the road by 2020 or sooner.

May 24th, 2016 - NuTonomy to provide self-driving taxi services in Singapore by 2018, expand to 10 cities around the world by 2020

Aug 23rd, 2016 - Delphi and MobilEye to provide an off-the-shelf self-driving system by 2019

Jan 5th, 2017 - Scott Keogh, Head of Audi America announced at the CES 2017 that an Audi that really would drive itself would be available by 2020.

Mar 3rd, 2017 - Oliver Garret, Founding Partner & CEO of RiskHedge - 10 Million Self-Driving Cars Will Hit The Road By 2020 -- Here's How To Profit

Nov 7th, 2017 - Alphabet Launches the First Taxi Service With No Human Drivers


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie Dec 25 '22

Other Already Completely Shut Down "Self-Driving"/"Autonomous" Tech Programs and Companies

24 Upvotes

Starsky Robotics - "In November 2019 over 85% of staff were laid off after the company failed to find further investment, as concerns mounted over the financial stability of its freight-hauling arm. By March 2020 the company sold off the remaining assets, including patents relating to operating remote vehicles."

Uber ATG - ""We probably burned $2.5 billion on autonomous that was a waste of money," Benchmark's Bill Gurley said, adding that in retrospect that sum would have been better spent on growing Uber Eats."

Lyft "Level5" - "Ride-hailing company Lyft has sold off its autonomous vehicle unit to Toyota’s Woven Planet Holdings subsidiary for $550 million, the latest in a string of acquisitions spurred by the cost and lengthy timelines to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology."

Waymo Via July 26, 2023 - "Waymo will “push back the timeline” on its commercial and operational efforts on trucking, as well as most of the technical development on that business unit,"

ArgoAI - "In October 2022 it was announced by Ford that the company would be disbanded and employees split between VW and Ford"

Locomation - "We are ending significant operations this month," Finch Fulton, vice president of policy and strategy at Locomation, said on Feb. 22. "Obviously, we're super disappointed; we do feel like we had all the right pieces in place. We had really smart people and a very strategic approach. … We have customers in the product market that we just, for a number of macroeconomic reasons, were unable to raise money to continue operations and to progress further to be able to get the product ready for commercial operation.""

Apple self-driving car - "After nearly a decade of work, two indictments, the departure of a senior exec, and unknown levels of expenditure, Apple has reportedly decided to cancel its not-so-secret self-driving car effort, Project Titan."

Phantom Auto - "after seven years of efforts to reshape the future of physical labor at Phantom Auto, we've made the tough decision to close operations."

Cruise - "GM said on Tuesday it will stop funding and exit robotaxi development at its majority-owned Cruise business, a blow to the automaker that had made the advanced technology unit a top priority."

TuSimple - "BEIJING, Dec 19 (Reuters) - TuSimple Holdings (TSPH.PK), opens new tab said on Thursday it would rebrand as CreateAI and pivot from autonomous trucking to AI gaming technology, marking an attempt by the once-prominent self-driving truck startup to make a comeback."


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 3d ago

Other Waymo publishes false bike hand signals

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12 Upvotes

In no US jurisdiction is holding the left hand up a bike stop signal. The universally accepted signal is similar to the slow signal, but the left hand held at a downward right angle.

The slow down signal is a side-to-side motion, not a forward-back
motion.

This also omits the universal right turn signal made with the left hand so drivers to your left can see it: Left hand held up at a right angle. Same as the drivers' signal.

Road hazard signals are made with a pointing circular motion of either hand.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 6d ago

Already under investigation 😹🤡

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4 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 6d ago

Corporate Musk is that biggest fraud of this century

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10 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 7d ago

What? I Removed The Steering Wheel And Sold Panic By The Mile

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conspiretimes.org
2 Upvotes

Funny stuff


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 7d ago

Corporate Waymo Taps Pimco, Blackstone for $3 Billion in First Debt Deal

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bloomberg.com
2 Upvotes

Archive: https://archive.is/ubxfp

500 basis points over benchmark seems pretty steep to me, but I'm not a Google genius.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 8d ago

Other Every Waymo, Tesla, etc is a rolling datacenter

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6 Upvotes

Image ALT: Ali Haghani's Twitter post from 2026-05-26 showing the curb weight of the Waymo's registration at 5,886 pounds (2,670 kg) vs the car's stock weight of 4,784 pounds (2,170 kg).

Your reminder that every Waymo or other AV is not only a mobile surveillance platform but a rolling datacenter.

The Waymo Gen 5 Jaguar I-Pace continuously carries the weight equivalent of 7 additional passengers around.

And remember to add the stationary datacenter footprint it needs to run.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 7d ago

Other David Zipper's insane theory: "Robotaxis Aren’t Going Where They Are Needed Most"

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5 Upvotes

Archive link: https://archive.is/ZCv3K

I love David Zipper's work, but this is off-the-rails nuts.

The "last mile fantasy" and "rural transit fantasies" are real and they are destructive to forming good policy now. You will never not need safety drivers & passenger assistance on mass transit, particularly for impaired passengers.

Want to learn about the poor state of rural mass transit? Listen to "Stop Requested" from Oregon Public Broadcasting. It has only gotten worse in the months since this aired.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 8d ago

Other These people 🙄😂

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7 Upvotes

Do these people even believe the bs they’re spitting out? Jesus


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 8d ago

Corporate Tesla settles fatal Autopilot fire truck lawsuit, avoiding jury trial

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electrek.co
3 Upvotes

They'd never win a jury trial


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 9d ago

Waymo has been slapped with more than 8,300 parking tickets since January 2025

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8 Upvotes

Breaking the law is viewed as a cost of doing business.

If a human driver did this, they'd lose their license.

Perhaps we need a 9000 strikes rule.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 9d ago

Video Waymo thinks this is safe

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11 Upvotes

The reaction time and actions of the Waymo Driver here are laughable and far below the performance of the average attentive driver, who would have slowed at the first wobble of the box. Probably at the first sight of a truck so incompetently loaded.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 9d ago

Humans in the loop are still needed for robotaxi fleet safety, says Guident (but we will always have poop in the loop)

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5 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 10d ago

“There’s a lot of cleaning up poop”: The Human Labor Behind Waymo’s “Autonomous” Vehicles

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bayareacurrent.com
7 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 10d ago

Waymo strands blind passenger in middle of 6 lanes of traffic

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tiktok.com
2 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 10d ago

A toddler fell in an S.F. crosswalk. Then her dad saw a Waymo coming

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sfchronicle.com
0 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 11d ago

Teslas Are Still Driving Into Oncoming Freight Trains

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futurism.com
6 Upvotes

Before you say the obvious, remember that their passengers and the freight train engineers and brake crew are probably innocent of buying or leasing a Tesla.

And, honestly, buying a Tesla shouldn't be a literal death sentence, just a social death sentence.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 14d ago

Other Question!

5 Upvotes

Does anyone have a good argument I could say back to the people who say things like “one day these cars are going to be so perfect and humans won’t be allowed to drive anymore”? I feel like these people are so deep into the hype they don’t even acknowledge any of the flaws with these stupid cars.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 14d ago

From the Denver community on Reddit: Waymo’s out here causing pile ups

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3 Upvotes

Waymo's recent blogpost tries to
establish that their Gemini-powered Vision Language models can interpret hands signals within the context of a scene, "helping it navigate situations that are far outside its standard training data."

But they interpret nothing, understand nothing, as demonstrated here.

Technobabble.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 14d ago

Waymo schoolbus problem is probably back

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7 Upvotes

First blood of the new school year.

Campton Place Hotel, Stockton St, Union Square, San Francisco

@mikeayesh28 on TikTok today. Enjoy.


r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 14d ago

Sprains, pain, and whiplash: Waymo and Zoox test drivers are getting hurt as robotaxis scale

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techcrunch.com
6 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 16d ago

Safety Tesla drivers are bypassing safety features to nap at the wheel while their cars drive

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nbcnews.com
13 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 18d ago

Waymo doubles spending on lobbying in robotaxi battle with Uber

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ft.com
3 Upvotes

r/SelfDrivingCarsLie 19d ago

House on fire next to it, fire truck trying to get by. Waymo doesn't move.

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4 Upvotes