Battery Electric Vehicle News / Enjoying the Transportation Revolution

joefizz

Solarchaser said:

Haha I see why you have linked the cash for ash as an green issue, but really it's just straight forward corruption,  which has always been a problem in ... i was gonna say British politics, but realistically,  just politics worldwide.

Im not linking it as a green issue exclusively, and without libelling anyone it was stretching the rules to exploit obvious weaknesses... ;-)
However, I use it to link to other 'schemes' and how they can be changed post operation.
For example, every year the ROC payment is set using a variety of measures, theres nothing to stop a government saying that home solar for instance is pretty much worthless in the current environment so will only pay 2p per unit generated or something like that. Well within the rules of the scheme. As Ive mentioned before they dont need to suspend or cancel the scheme, just keep the original 20 or 25 year contract but make it pretty much worthless. There will be some outcry but the majority of people wont lose any sleep over it, 'you are getting free electricity and also want to profit?' etc etc.

IIRC the scheme allows for a fixed rate to be set for the last 10 years of operation anyway, so again they could use that to set a really low value and/or like other countries just say that anything exported is now not going to be paid for or nominal value of 1p per unit or something.

Thats my point, just using the RHI scheme here as something that has already been changed and the majority of us shed crocodile tears over.

I would expect the majority of future green subsidies to go to industry rather than the individual.

joefizz

Solarchaser said:

I think.. and I may be wrong, that Joe is looking at Hydrogen as a replacement for natural gas rather than leccy, and so his view is gas may be needed when leccy isn't.

And so i guess if you had 75% leccy storage full, but only 5% gas, then from a customer comfort point of view, you would divert leccy to making Hydrogen rather than fill the last 25% of leccy.

But that's just my guess.
I'd certainly never view them on parity personally 

This.

Have only skimmed through some posts but havent seen the green news about the application for hydrogen heating in Fife getting mentioned.
So if you are producing all this extra hydrogen for busses, freight, home heating, industrial replacement/addition to gas, use in converted gas turbine electricity plants etc etc then car usage is a given.

NigeWick

Tesla presumably are limited to data from their own vehicles but if the car market chooses to team up with an outside player such as Google’s Waymo then the quantity of data Tesla have taken a decade to collect may be available in months. Nvidia’s and will it keep pace? 

How many autonomous vehicles does Waymo have access to?

Solarchaser

NigeWick said:

Tesla presumably are limited to data from their own vehicles but if the car market chooses to team up with an outside player such as Google’s Waymo then the quantity of data Tesla have taken a decade to collect may be available in months. Nvidia’s and will it keep pace? 

How many autonomous vehicles does Waymo have access to?

Yeah I was wondering the same.
Google and apple are huge companies with decent tech sure, but GPS data is not the same as autonomous vehicle data, its about what the sensors/cameras are picking up,  their inclination angles and the relevance that makes to the data etc etc.

Joe its been a while since I looked at the fit contract but I think it was something like a guaranteed income of x plus rpi, and so i don't think they could just stop it.
They could move from deemed export to metered, but for most people the change in income (and so government expenditure) would be negligible, and so there would be little gain, and possibly some loss for government. 

JKenH

NigeWick said:

Tesla presumably are limited to data from their own vehicles but if the car market chooses to team up with an outside player such as Google’s Waymo then the quantity of data Tesla have taken a decade to collect may be available in months. Nvidia’s and will it keep pace? 

How many autonomous vehicles does Waymo have access to?

600 as at November 2019 but Waymo are adopting a simulation based approach. Below is an article comparing the different approaches. I’ve no idea which system will come out on top but just wanted to make the point that Tesla isn’t the only game in town. 

https://www.theverge.com/transportation/2018/4/19/17204044/tesla-waymo-self-driving-car-data-simulation

Martyn1981

NigeWick said:

Tesla presumably are limited to data from their own vehicles but if the car market chooses to team up with an outside player such as Google’s Waymo then the quantity of data Tesla have taken a decade to collect may be available in months. Nvidia’s and will it keep pace? 

How many autonomous vehicles does Waymo have access to?

Tesla have about three orders of magnitude more cars recording data than Waymo, and whilst they started later, Tesla have around 200x more self driving miles already, and the difference is growing fast (faster as more cars are sold each). A recent example is the roll out (by Tesla) of stop at red lights or stop signs. When the driver overrides the car (be it to stop or not stop) Tesla get this information and it helps with the machine learning.
To put it simply, they are leagues ahead, so if this is the deciding factor for autonomous cars, then they can't really be caught as machine learning from real life experiences, and real road learning is essential to cope with the problem facing autonomous cars ......... human drivers. 

Martyn1981

joefizz said:

Solarchaser said:

Haha I see why you have linked the cash for ash as an green issue, but really it's just straight forward corruption,  which has always been a problem in ... i was gonna say British politics, but realistically,  just politics worldwide.

Thats my point, just using the RHI scheme here as something that has already been changed and the majority of us shed crocodile tears over.

I would expect the majority of future green subsidies to go to industry rather than the individual.

But just to be clear, that isn't a problem with renewables, nor the GB RHI scheme, it's simply that for NI 'they' forgot to include an annual maximum for the kWh's of heat on which the subsidy could be claimed. That's an idiotic mistake with the scheme terms, and hence needed to be rectified (regardless of it being a green scheme or otherwise). To use it as an example for the removal of existing renewable schemes makes no sense, since they are operating fine, and the success of RE deployment, and the need for more is unquestionable. I would suggest you are pointing out what is theoretically possible, rather than what is likely.

Of course the majority of future green subsidies will go to industry, in the same way that the majority of past and present subsidies have through the ROC's and CfD mechanisms, and even some FiT's monies go via industry as it includes installs on company rooves, farms etc. too since the scheme is not necessarily for domestic/individuals, but was a scheme to support demand side generation as opposed to the supply side.

JKenH

Martyn1981 said:

NigeWick said:

Tesla presumably are limited to data from their own vehicles but if the car market chooses to team up with an outside player such as Google’s Waymo then the quantity of data Tesla have taken a decade to collect may be available in months. Nvidia’s and will it keep pace? 

How many autonomous vehicles does Waymo have access to?

Tesla have about three orders of magnitude more cars recording data than Waymo, and whilst they started later, Tesla have around 200x more self driving miles already, and the difference is growing fast (faster as more cars are sold each). A recent example is the roll out (by Tesla) of stop at red lights or stop signs. When the driver overrides the car (be it to stop or not stop) Tesla get this information and it helps with the machine learning.
To put it simply, they are leagues ahead, so if this is the deciding factor for autonomous cars, then they can't really be caught as machine learning from real life experiences, and real road learning is essential to cope with the problem facing autonomous cars ......... human drivers. 

I was hoping that this discussion would not become too polarised. I am a Tesla fan but try to be objective. If things are as simple as you suggest then there would seem to be little more to be said. 

However, are they leagues ahead? When it comes to autonomous driving probably not. 

In 2019 Tesla reported just 12 miles of Autonomous Driving to the California DMV having reported none in 2017 and 2018.

In 2019 Waymo completed 1.45 million Autonomous Driving miles under the same regulatory regime.

https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/26/california-dmv-releases-latest-batch-of-autonomous-vehicle-disengagement-reports/

Remember, Tesla is HQ’d in California so one would expect some development to take place there and if it is so far ahead why isn’t it doing more autonomous driving tests on public roads? Perhaps because things didn’t go so well in 2016 as Forbes reports:

Surprisingly, Tesla logged just 550 miles on public roads in its home state last year, mainly in October, and during which its system disengaged 182 times, according to its filing. By comparison, Waymo, formerly the Google Self-Driving Car project, logged 635,868 autonomous miles in California in 2016. It reported just 124 disengagements for the entire year. 

Adjusting those figures on a per-thousand mile rate, Tesla disengagements work out to 330.9 times for every 1,000 miles, compared with 0.2 times for Waymo. Tesla didn't comment on the DMV data.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/02/01/tesla-has-little-to-show-in-californias-tally-of-autonomous-car-test-data/

ABrass

Tesla Vs  others on self driving is just another demonstration of Big bang Vs Agile product development. Tesla are dropping regular updates and selling their product as soon as they think it's usable. Everyone else are doing occasional 'finished product' releases whenever they feel like it (every few years for cruise control systems), or are planning to do one eventually.

It's not that interesting really. Some people think Tesla are miles ahead, others miles behind. Too much detail and too little transparency to be able to guess.

Martyn1981

ABrass said:

Tesla Vs  others on self driving is just another demonstration of Big bang Vs Agile product development. Tesla are dropping regular updates and selling their product as soon as they think it's usable. Everyone else are doing occasional 'finished product' releases whenever they feel like it (every few years for cruise control systems), or are planning to do one eventually.

It's not that interesting really. Some people think Tesla are miles ahead, others miles behind. Too much detail and too little transparency to be able to guess.

Very true. We probably won't know who is close to the finishing line, till one crosses it. Will vehicles use cameras or LIDAR or both. Many possibilities.
Have to say my money would be on the machine learning side, given that humans are just too unpredictable, hence the benefit of Tesla clocking up billions of miles pa when driven on autopilot, with this mileage/data growing in line with the rapid expansion of their fleet v's the small fleets clocking up millions with 'hands off' cars* in approved locations. As I said, if this is the deciding factor then they are leagues ahead, but ....... if it's not, then they may be in trouble.
ARK invest have placed insane values on Tesla if they crack this and roll out the fleet of robo-taxis, but luckily (for me at least) their valuation based on Tesla being unsuccessful is still staggering. 

*Edit - bit of history, when autonomous cars and Tesla autopilot were in the early years, the US was the Wild West again, and drivers in Tesla's could drive hands off. But with vids quickly circulating of people climbing into the passenger seat (or even the back of the car), it quickly became obvious that was a litigious disaster waiting to happen, plus rules and regs logically started to roll out regarding such vehicles. So Tesla's on autopilot (and of course other cars with similar assist functions) now require hands on operations, as well as the mandatory 'driver aware at all times'.

Perhaps also worth noting that even when Autopilot is switched off, it's not, and still tries to help, studying the road and braking in emergencies.