General > General Technical Chat
Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW
<< < (6/14) > >>
jeremy:
Yes, I agree with your assessment of the article. I guess my confusion is better stated as: if the German way (or Japanese way) produces a more reliable system, then why shouldn’t we stick with that? I think the author was hoping that people would just assume that having more people involved is a less efficient way to produce an ECU, but unless you actually compare the new ECUs against the existing ones, how can we actually know this is the case?
BU508A:
I think, since these ECUs are very complex systems, there is only one way to find out: it must be done and see what happens. Not sure, if I'm very happy with this way.
nctnico:

--- Quote from: BU508A on February 19, 2020, 11:18:02 am ---
--- Quote from: jeremy on February 19, 2020, 11:00:13 am ---I have no experience with Tesla cars, but what is wrong with old designs? Just because a design is newer, doesn’t make it better. Look at the 3458A for example; if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

I would have liked to see actual criticism of specifically what makes the Tesla system better, not just “Tesla future, Toyota old and smelly”. I still have no idea which is better after reading that article  :-//

--- End quote ---

My understanding of the article is not, which is better, Tesla or Toyota / VW.
My understanding is: what makes this to the supply chain for the companies which produces automobiles and their suppliers. In Germany, lots of jobs are in the supplier sector for the automobile branch. If those suppliers aren't needed any more, this would have a huge impact to the economy, not alone in Germany.

--- End quote ---
I think you have to look at the supply chain differently. In the end the supply chain has to deliver what the car manufacturers require. You also have to ask yourself: how much development needs a car manufacturer do themselves and what can they outsource? If they outsource they can spread the development costs of common components which don't add any value to the brand (like ABS pumps, windshield motors, radiators, etc) over much more cars than the manufacturer makes themselve. And it is not like the suppliers are sitting on their asses. They are actively developing new technologies too.
Siwastaja:

--- Quote from: ataradov on February 19, 2020, 08:19:50 am ---
--- Quote from: tom66 on February 19, 2020, 08:15:57 am ---Comma.ai is not a redundant setup.

--- End quote ---
Yes, sure. But it shows just how much is possible using a single processor and a simple camera. Putting 5 of those processors in a car is cheaper and probably better than designing a crazy AI ASIC.

--- End quote ---

I'm 100.00% sure whatever "ai" self-driving system with a single camera and mobile phone CPU will fail miserably to provide anything else than technological demonstrations.

There is a long, long way from a demo or even test drives, to a reliable and safe self-driving car. The difference between good conditions and bad conditions is easily 3-4 orders of magnitude in complexity, it's a massive showstopper for most startups on this field.

In more demanding conditions, even human brain with 90 billion neurons and 1000 megapixel stereo vision sometimes have severe difficulties processing where the road actually is. It needs a combination of very sophisticated sensing and very complex processing, including "AI-like" parts like neural networks, but also static algorithms.

I strongly suspect even Tesla, with their custom processing core and a dozen of cameras, will still be a long way from reaching reliable fully self-driving system. They are far from having "too much" processing power, likely still the opposite! I think going custom ASIC for processing is likely exactly the right direction. There will be practical limits in power consumption and parallelization, no one's going to put 5kW worth of server PCs or graphics cards in their cars then spend time synchronizing parallel processing. If Tesla can achieve the same processing power in a few hundred watts, they are years ahead on the processing hardware side. This "version 1" likely isn't what actually brings us fully autonomous cars, it could be version 2 or version 3; maybe it's in 2030's; but if no one else is solving the processing problem, then Tesla is likely the one who gets the fully working system first.

This said, processing hardware isn't everything. I also strongly suspect Tesla, at some point, will admit they need to throw some actual distance-measurement hardware, lidar, even radar, at the problem, even if they currently seem to give the impression they are only working with standard 2D multicameras. Stereo cameras can go a long way, but augmenting it with actual distance measurements will provide a lot of confidence in difficult corner case conditions, and for Tesla, developing a low-cost solid-state LIDAR in co-operation with some innovative player in photonics field is not unlikely at all, even though if they don't publicly talk about it now.

For example, a stereo camera vision will fail miserably to provide any sense of 3D shape with fresh, smooth snow, in uniformly lit cloudy day. I have actually witnessed a human drive directly in a 1.5 meter deep ditch, nearly at walking speed, simply because everything in our 2D vision is pure smooth white with no texture; human brain has hard time figuring out how to stereo image it, I'm sure Tesla will have hard time as well. OTOH, in similar conditions, a 3DTOF camera worth of $20 components does great job producing an accurate (within 10cm) point cloud from the whole site.

Of course, even a LIDAR wouldn't see what's inside/below the snow... Which is again why processing/AI is so important. And you can't do it with a few hundred neurons. An ant cannot drive a car, nor can your dog. We need some human-level intelligence here, in worst cases.
coppice:

--- Quote from: Dr. Frank on February 19, 2020, 08:03:01 am ---That's a very incompetent article.

--- End quote ---
Its what passes for journalism in 2020.

--- Quote from: Dr. Frank on February 19, 2020, 08:03:01 am ---The traditional Carmakers usually never design electronics by themselves (any more), they define the architecture in the car, and order the electronics from big suppliers, like Denso, Bosch, Valeo, Continental, and so on.

--- End quote ---
That's not really true. Some of the biggest car makers are more integrated than appears at first sight. Does Toyota make its own gearboxes? Kinda, because they are the majority shareholder in Aisin. Does Toyota make its own electronics? Kinda, because they own a big chunk of Denso.

--- Quote from: Dr. Frank on February 19, 2020, 08:03:01 am ---Their processing units (µP) in the different modules are of course automotive specific designs to fulfill AEC Q100, for example, and are tailored to the required features, performance and price. Very rarely commercial off-the-shelf processors are used.

--- End quote ---
Most car makers partition their electronics so the most difficult things to get AEC Q100 qualification for are outside the safety related areas, and don't need it. AEC Q100 is a difficult market to be in. It demands a lot from the vendor, yet prices are very low. Excessive integration works against the car makers.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod