Is GM about to drive itself out of the car-selling business?
Arguably, it is doing that by offering what it styles Eyes Off/Hands Off driving, which is an odd way to put it when you stop to think about it. It sounds a lot like sleeping wakefulness, but hold onto that for a minute.
Eyes Off/Hands Off refers to what actually is a self-driving car, in that the “driver” won’t be expected to keep his eyes on the road or his hands ready to grab the steering wheel (and presumably, his feet ready to apply the brakes). Other so-called “self-driving” systems do require this by cautioning the driver that he must be ready to intervene if he sees that the “self-driving” car is about to drive into something, like the rear end of another car. Or off the road. Or over a pedestrian walking across the road.
Of course, the person sitting behind the wheel is also encouraged to not be ready to intervene, by dint of the purportedly “self-driving” ability of the car. I have previously mentioned the catalytic converter “test pipe” by way of analogy. Some may recall. Back in the ’80s, auto parts stores sold these “test pipes,” which were just sections of pipe that fit in place of the catalytic converter. The obvious purpose was to replace the catalytic converter with a section of open pipe. Not to “test” the converter. Everyone knew what it was for. Everyone just pretended they didn’t know what it was for.
Very quickly, the EPA put the ol’ Hut! Hut! Hut! on the “test pipe” and that was the end of them. They disappeared from stores.
No such action has been taken with regard to “self driving” tech that – wink, wink – cautions that the person sitting behind the wheel must be ready to intervene at all time. Probably because the government and the corporations love the idea of cars driving us rather than the other way around and want the tech to get out there and wants people to become enraptured by the idea of becoming passengers rather than drivers.
Well, GM’s Eyes Off/Hands Off system does the trick, apparently.
The person behind the wheel – let’s not call him a driver – will be able to take a nap, watch a movie or whatever else seems fun while the car drives itself. More finely, without the person behind the wheel being expected to be ready to take over the driving of the car, which will actually be an SUV (the Cadillac IQ, which is the battery-powered version of the Escalade).
Several interesting things come to mind. The first being the question of liability – if the Eyes Off/Hands Off system does run into something. Or runs someone over. This will inevitably happen, too – because tech isn’t infallible. It might be (as Elon Musk has argued) less fallible than a human driver and that may be so. But it does not mean infallible. Accidents will happen. What happens when they do – in terms of who is held responsible? Can the person behind the wheel who engaged the system be fairly held responsible, if all he did was use the system as designed and with overt assurances that he could take his eyes off the road and do other things with his hands than be ready to grab the steering wheel?
That seems fairly unfair.
Well, how about GM – or whichever company it happens to be that made and sold the vehicle that it claims literally drives itself, with no need for the person behind the wheel to keep his eyes on the road or his hands ready to grab the wheel? That seems more fair. But then who will pay the insurance? It does not seem fair to make the vehicle’s owner pay for a liability over which he has no control. That wold be like hitting the dude who rides an elevator up to his floor with a surcharge to cover the cost of potential damages arising from the elevator crashing to the floor.
But GM isn’t going to want to pay to indemnify potential victims of its truly self-driving cars – unless GM actually owns these vehicles that it effectively has full control over.
Is it possible that GM foresees this? More finely, that it’s the plan, Stan?
Several automakers (GM is one) have been openly talking about selling “transportation as a service,” by which they mean selling rides rather than vehicles. Probably, because there’s more money in it. After all, you only buy a vehicle once and once it’s paid for, you’re no longer paying. Paying for rides, on the other hand, is something that never ends unless you stop needing rides, which isn’t likely to because you can realistically only walk (or pedal) so far. It’s kind of an inverse iteration of what Jesus said about teaching a man to fish vs. giving a man a fish.
Well, what better way to take away a man’s ability to “fish” than by making him dependent on the “fish” – i.e., the ride – you sell him every time he needs to go somewhere? Isn’t transforming the person behind the wheel into a passenger pretty much exactly like that man, who has come to depend on the fish that’s given him every day rather than knowing how to fish for himself?
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Seeking to make us all unskilled and dependent as a performing arts degree holder.
Interesting premise, goes right along with “you will own nothing and you will like it.” I bought a 2025 lexus and it is very difficult to play my own music in it, streaming services are front and center, no CD player, no plug for an iPod type device. ( I finally figured out how to play a jump drive on the usb input.) I just bought a new “smart” tv and I am finding it very difficult to hook up my DVD and blu ray player, but streaming services are front and center. Transportation as a service may be coming but not for me.
Get yourself a FM transmitter with either a 1/8″ jack or blue tooth pairing and you can play it straight through the car’s stereo.
I hereby solemnly swear I, (Philo Beddoe), will NEVER own or willingly make use of, in any capacity, a vehicle that is not piloted by a human driver, on public roadways with other traffic.
Also, let it be known, that if I ever become involved in an accident resulting in physical harm to myself or loved ones due to a 3rd party ceding control of his or her vehicle to what is styled “self driving” functionality, I henceforth have the right to engage in a very public and humiliating beating of said 3rd party.
Recently took a flight out of Sky Harbor. The shuttle service named Groom had a driver that was enthralled with the self driving Wamos, or, WTF they are called. Seems Az is a test market, and the airport is the perfect place. I counted eight times they were called out. It was creepy driving alongside it with no one in the front. Our driver, [an old guy, who should have known better] had to make a big point of calling them out everysingletime he saw one. It was almost like he would cream his jeans, given the chance. I normally tip the drivers pretty well, on this day however I grabbed my bag out of the back myself and was not forthcoming with a gratuity. Service people really ought to keep their mental illness to themselves while working.
And, I’m with you, Philo, on what would happen if any of my love ones were harmed by one of these abominations.
40 years ago, the general premise seemed to be how to fleece the public, from the government’s point of view; taxes, from private the enterprise point of view; selling and reselling their products by cutting costs on the cheap.
Today it all about *control*. The government (likely next Marxist-Democrat regime which will eventually get elected) is going to pick (1-2) *winners* of auto manufacturing to allow this type of TAAS providers with no liability responsibility. Because they want to control and thereby have leverage over the general public. Like Obamacare, it will start out with gaslighting on how much you will save, and finish by emptying your bank account.
BTW: the government picking winners in the marketplace and the companies doing the bidding of the government is *fascism*. (See Germany 1938)
Theoretically if I could keep my stuff in my car and have it sitting in the garage but I could send it out to pick up stuff and drive us to our destination while we work or nap. That would be nice.
I do not see that ever being a possibility.
It could be very convenient, but the powers that be will never allow that…….
I’m so very tired of this crap. We reached a pinnacle as a society when I was a little kid, and every thing has gone downhill and backwards since. Driving is not a privilege and a luxury, it’s a right and a necessity. And the system we had developed by about 1965 worked damned well, and was very safe. As safe as anything should ever be. All the crazies have been after our cars and our guns because of all the “carnage” when in fact the medical/pharmaceutical industry kills more people than both by far. And government is the biggest and most sadistic killer of all.
I agree- by the mid90s all i wanted was to be able to afford nicer cars not to have the way the car operates totally revamped.
I agree Ernie,
I think we grew up in the peak years of the US, before it became the USSA. I was born in 1947, so leading edge boomer here; I think the tipping point came in the late eighties when all the jobs started going to China and the internet started to become an electronic Stasi.
Mike, I’m leading edge gen X and tend to agree. The 80s were a great time for me but by then the country was pretty much over the falls and past the point of no return.
I could get behind “transportation as a service” if it were better and cheaper than the existing model. Or it was coming out of France or someplace where they have taste and aren’t as interested in licking every last drop of margin out of a transaction.
Imagine you’re going on vacation. You come home from work on Friday and there’s a camper van or RV sitting in the driveway, waiting for you to load it with your clothes and food for the trip. It might not have a full kitchen and bath but it could easily have a small bar sink, microwave, refrigerator and toilet. After it’s loaded up you and the family load up in the living room like passenger area and it takes off. You have a pleasant evening with your family, then turn in for bed. All the while the vehicle drives along toward your first destination. When you get there, shore power water and waste lines are connected and it becomes your hotel room. You travel around in a car or maybe a minivan until you head to the next destination. Again your RV sets out for the next location, traveling overnight. When the trip is over just unload and it drives off to the service center for cleaning and restocking for the next traveler.
Of course that’s not at all how it will work. There’s no way anyone will be able to afford that sort of accommodation. So we’ll get identical cars, like the Yellow Cabs of yore, designed for production, not people. The demos and tests are in Jaguars, the rollout will be in something like police interceptors (borrowing the hard plastic back seats) because the reason why the cop cars look like that is because of the people they’re hauling -drunks and such- who tend to leave a lot of “bodily fluids” behind on their way to jail from the club. It’s just easier to clean out the back if there’s nothing to stain.
The marketing accountants will price it to be just barely cheaper than owning a car, at least at first. And they’ll calculate the TCO of cars in places like California or New York City, not the southern states. So if you’re living on Manhattan Island it will be a great deal. Not so much in Manhattan KS though (where there won’t be enough margin to ever be profitable, even if there were a critical mass of subscribers). Then they’ll wonder why no one outside of the big cities want the service.
Self driving cars are all well and good until someone whether they be terrorists or globalists decide to hack them; for example: at rush hour they all simultaneously make a 90 degree left turn at speed.
The exspurts say that would never happen but I’ll be damned if I trust those idiots after what they put us through for the last five years. What’s next? Self driving bicycles that you pedal and the AI decides where you go?
Doesn’t even need to be terrorists causing accidents. This week has been interesting for many businesses and other entities who rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Seems they had a major outage on Monday that’s been reverberating all over the Internet this week. They did such a great job at capturing market share that half the Internet had intermittent issues.
AWS confirmed that no cyberattack was involved, and early signs point to a configuration or propagation error inside the DNS layer for DynamoDB. The company is still preparing a full post-incident report. – Tom’s Hardware
These systems are always so brittle they tend to fail for the most simple stupid reasons. Word is that AWS laid off or gave early retirement packages to many of the admins who keep the lights on, and all that institutional knowledge went with them. Now there’s a bunch of woke and DEI hires running the shit show. Better keep a paper backup of your bank records, just in case.
‘Accidents will happen.’ — eric
One kind of accident happens in the West when it rains heavily. Normally dry washes overflow across roads. The water might be two inches deep — not a hazard — or two feet deep, which can easily float a vehicle and wash it away. The algorithm doesn’t know the depth. Will it stop? Will it push through regardless, because Google Maps says a road is there?
I don’t want to be the flood test dummy.
A trailhead where I parked yesterday has a quarter-mile, one-lane entrance road lined with bollards, with several turnouts along it. Human drivers can spot a vehicle approaching from the opposite direction and take anticipatory action by pulling into a turnout till the other vehicle passes. I’m willing to bet that Johnny Cab will just proceed until boxed in and then stop cold, in a head to head standoff. Maybe he’s got a loudspeaker to warn the other driver, ‘BACK UP … or prepare for annihilation!’
In other words, GM’s Eyes-Off, Hands-Off tech is bullshit. Prove me wrong, EeeVee Mary.