> Currently, openpilot performs the functions of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Automated Lane Centering (ALC). openpilot can accelerate, brake automatically for other vehicles, and steer to follow the road/lane. [1]
[Some of the] Cars that are currently supported already have "smart cruise" and "lane follow". Why then use a third-party self-driving system?
[1] https://comma.ai/openpilot#:~:text=Currently%2C%20openpilot%...
Maybe this doesn't beep at you if you take your hands off the wheel?
And people think that is a good thing?
I have a car with smart cruise, but there's plenty of room for improvement. It isn't very smart at determining when it can avoid braking, such as when a car well ahead has slowed for a right turn. It also brakes too aggressively when someone cuts in front of me on the highway, in situations where just lifting off the gas would be better.
It also times out very quickly when traffic comes to a complete standstill, requiring manual intervention to get going again, and it doesn't give any indication to the driver when that occurs.
If these things bothered me much more than they do, I'd be interested in comma.ai as a possible solution. As it stands, the OEM radar cruise control is "Eh, good enough, I guess."
I read at least one thread per day criticizing Tesla self-driving (which has hundreds of highly-paid engineers working on it) as unreliable vaporware, meanwhile I'm supposed to hack my car with some code off a GitHub repo?
I'll be adding this to my list of 101 creative ways to die, behind basement apartment in Venice, Italy.
Creating an open source project makes a space for collaboration.
There is a future where every manufacturer shares the same self-driving software.
You already trust your privacy and financial security to open source projects. There is a future where you also trust it for a self driving car.
Nobody is making you do this, they're not even charging you for it. Comparing to a company worth billions is disingenious.
Those companies worth billions like GM and Tesla perform extensive testing to prove to regulators their software isn't going to kill people and do not pose an unacceptable risk to other drivers on the road.
Welcome to Hacker News, folks
Seeing things like, "<h2 id="new-driving-model">New driving model</h2>" on their list of latest releases does not inspire a lot of confidence. Yes, the HTML tags are displayed on the page. Some basic quality assurance on the website would help me trust the quality assurance applied to their product offering.
I noticed this issue and someone else mentioned it to them too. I think it's cheeky because it's been like that for a while
Yeah but... yeah.
I'm supposed to entrust my life and others' to this and they're bragging on their home page about GitHub stars?
Really impressive tech. I don't understand the insurance ramifications of installing and using this system.
Comma's website links to a 7 year old reddit thread: https://comma.ai/support#will-my-insurance-cover-my-car-with...
As a driver, if in an accident, could someone reasonably assert that you were not paying attention?
- InsureCo, how may I help you?
- Hey, I want to ask about installing a self driving module in my car...
- Sure, you mean Tesla upgrade?
- No, another one.
- Another one?
- Yeah, you remember that kid that hacked Playstation?At the moment in every jurisdiction I’m aware of the driver is always considered as “in charge” of the vehicle no matter what assistance functions are being used. It’s the driver’s responsibility to avoid collisions in all cases.
If you have a collision and your vehicle is judged at fault by whatever authority does it in your area the you are liable.
Mercedes Drive Pilot (“SAE Level 3”) is certified on some very specific stretches of insterstate in California to not require the driver to be responsible.
https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot
Requirements:
- Stop and go traffic (or less than 40mph?)
- On some specific sections of highway
- Driver doesn’t need to monitor but must be ready to take over with 15(?) seconds of the system requesting
> Mercedes-Benz is assuming liability for any crashes or incidents that occur while the autonomous system is active
What if there is no driver because the car is self driving?
I assume the same as if the car owner put a brick on the gas pedal and there was no driver when it had an accident
Found the Chief Legal Officer for Waymo
Well that will depend on your local laws, but to my knowledge except for certain authorised pilot programs all cars on the road must have a driver.
Where I live if you are in the driver’s seat no matter if you were actually actively driving you are considered to be the driver. This has been well established here in drink-driving cases, but you’d have to ask a lawyer for your area.
I mean, just like with a Tesla, the driver is responsible for the actions taken by the car, which means you do need to be paying attention, hands on the wheel, ready to take over at all times.
We don't yet have the legal framework to say 'Sue company x, it wasn't my fault!' You get sued, then you have a very uphill battle to turn around and try to sue the company that provided the 'self driving' functionality because companies put all sorts of 'I totally accept liability for using this' in the T&C of their products.
I guess it would be like open source cruise control. In that they could assert some probability of incorrect installation that caused the accident.
Comma is my favorite “AI” company. Really incredible piece of tech in a tiny package, and it truly improves your life to have it.
I wish it worked with my Mitsubishi Outlander, but just having it on my Corolla is enough. Their supported brand list will definitely factor into my next car buying decision.
How is the experience on the Corolla. How much can it do by itself?
What a coincidence, LTT tested it a few months ago in a Corolla. Here’s the video:
I like Comma. I like geohot (I wouldn't want to work for him I imagine it is intense) but I like the contrary attitude and also the product as seen as demoed on youtube.
He hasn't been running comma.ai since '22, and even left the board just in November.
sorry not been keeping up. thanks for the info
He (geohot) is still the President of Comma.ai and still owns the majority of the company.
His LinkedIn says he stopped being president in November. https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-hotz-b3866476 I haven't seen any other news about it.
Can someone with technical knowledge explain the key differences between the assisted driving technologies used by Waymo, Tesla, and comma.ai?
there is also sunnypilot, which is a fork of openpilot, and supports more behaviors and cars: https://github.com/sunnypilot/sunnypilot
There's a few Lex Fridman podcasts with George Hotz, the founder. Highly recommend them:
#31 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwcYp-XT7UI
When one of my coworkers bought a used car, he went out of his way to buy a model year that was compatible with Comma. He has lots of praise for it.
8 years later, comma.ai is still standing and operational despite several VC backed competitors raising significantly more than Comma and those competitors (except for Tesla) are now no longer in business.
People here have no idea they are looking at a robotics and AI company which that is Comma.ai
This is awesome. I hope this technology continues to advance and decrease in price - but it's already a great value at this one.
Ran into this a few days ago while looking for a way out of the subscription hell of self driving offerings. Very excited to watch this space!
Wonder if it will be able to work with the Slate pickup when that comes out. Seems like it would be a perfect pairing if the Slate has enough control exposed to it.
This runs with just a single front-facing camera?
Are they still being extra and only asking about Putnam scores during interviews?
Damn, well, that's me and Terence Tao out of luck.
Still hoping Opel will be covered
I was in the market for this for my Pacifica but I couldn't figure out what this does exactly.
Is it FSD basically?
Is it just lane assist?
Can I put an address in a map and it takes me there?
Very hard to just get these concrete answers, maybe they just take the newbie experience for granted and assume people know these answers. Anyone who owns one of these can answer? Thank you!
Generic Openpilot out of the box is just super nice cruise control right now. So it can do longitudinal and latitudinal control. So it lane keeps, stays behind the car in front of you, etc.
If you use Sunnypilot or one of the other friendly forks, you can do more, but it's not (currently) to the state of Tesla's FSD.
Personally, I recommend buying it if you do a lot of road trips. It's amazing for that. In/around town it's only useful if you have a lot of stop and go traffic, like if you live in LA or other large car-centric city with a big commute.
FAQs including - What is openpilot? - How does openpilot work?
I have one of these and I really enjoy it.
No it’s not FSD. There is no navigation at all, you’re correct that it’s “just lane assist”. But the lane assist is next level.
I take a few 1,000 mile plus road trips every year and the comma pays for itself every time. Using the stock lane assist, I’m constantly correcting it. The stock assist tries to take an exit, doesn’t handle curves well at all, and any construction or unusual road conditions it won’t work at all.
With the Comma, on the highway it’s basically FSD. On my last 1000 mile trip I never had to disengage, only to pass and make turns.
The biggest advantage is Comma allows you to be completely hands off the wheel. Where lane assist forces you to hold the wheel at all times.
I still use old comma branch running with OnePlus phone on Subaru. It works really really well, even on snowy northern roads. The code, from firmware C to python is very well written as well, makes it easy to tune it to your driving habits.
The CEO of comma.ai is an absolute class act and is basically the anti-elon musk.
Comma is awesome, and more companies should be like them.
I assumed he was a Musk disciple after he took a sabbatical to help with the twitter transition
I assumed that too and wrote him off. I’ve since changed my opinion, especially in light of this blog post: https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/01/18/how-...
I would write him off less if he had shipped even one thing during those 5 weeks he spent at Twitter when he promised to "fix search".
He has commended Tesla Autopilot many times and has stated that their technology is much more similar to Tesla's rather than Waymo's.
I know george hotz was the CEO. Who is it now?
They don't have a single person listed as CEO. It was Ricardo Biasini for a while. https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/02/george-hotz-aka-geohot-is-... More recently he was part of DOGE. https://therevolvingdoorproject.org/riccardo-biasini-doge-ag...
Maybe they meant Harald Schäfer (CTO), Alex Matzner (COO), or Adeeb Shihadeh (CPO).
geohotz, the infamous person who cracked the PS3 at the time. Been following him since that time and this project since he started it. His blogs have always teetered on the edge of unprofessional while remaining incredibly knowledgeable and insightful. Truly enjoy all his work.
Minor correction. Geohot never cracked the PS3. Fail0verflow did.
Geohot watched their talk. Rushed out a "hello world!" jailbroken firmware based on their talk and got the team in massive legal trouble for doing so
ah that's right, thanks for correcting.
still, I think my other remark about his writings stand.