[bavarianride]

OK BMW says this about its ACC:

"The ACC sensor is integrated in the ACC control unit. The ACC sensor is a radar sensor, which is capable of both long-range detection (up to 200 metres) and short-range detection (up to 60 metres) in front of the vehicle. The ACC sensor detects the distance, angle and speed of moving objects in front of the vehicle."

I can't find documentation that the sensor is triple redundant.

@130mph, the car clears 191 feet/second, so 650 feet gives the system 3.4 seconds to react.

BMW also has KAFAS camera(left and right lens) for lane change warning, front collision warning and city stop, etc, etc.

Tesla says its narrow forward camera can see 250m, while claiming radar can only go 160m. Tesla has 3 forward cameras of narrow(250m), main(150m), wide(60m), but they appear not be triple redundant(each should have 3 units, or 9 total cameras).

(a consultant's analysis of Tesla's 3 cameras)
https://www.systemplus.fr/wp-content...-3-Flyer-1.pdf

[4monks]

Originally Posted by stein_325i

I believe the electric G20 i3 will be a China only vehicle.

That's interesting - any intel of why or just a gut feeling?

[stein_325i]

Originally Posted by 4monks

That's interesting - any intel of why or just a gut feeling?

I remember reading that the i3 G20 will only be a long-wheelbase variant.

Most articles mention the vehicle only being sold in China, with the i4 being BMW's main EV for the U.S.

https://www.electrive.com/2020/11/23...unch-in-china/

[pikcachu]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

I think redundant cameras would require each of the 8-10 cameras to have 2-3 units to support switchovers upon failures, and Tesla does not have that.

Human eyes are very good at resolving contrast while capturing fine details, and the ocular nerves at the back of the eyes are basically extension of brain stem, and 30-40% of brain cells are for vision.

What humans lack are reaction times that computers are good at.

I see you mean each camera to have redundancy. But wonder if having multiple cameras although not in the same position would act as redundancy also, of course if half the cameras fails it gets more complicated but at some point the system should disengage if not enough cameras I would think

[techwhiz1]

Originally Posted by pikcachu

But Tesla used to have radars not so long ago, they wouldn't remove them if they hadn't verified that their vision system is good to the point radar makes no difference.

Seems to me like Cruise an other systems might not be maybe good enough vision wise that they need to really on other sensors for accuracy

I believe teslas have several cameras so not sure what you mean with redundant cameras, there are probably like 8-10 cameras

Humans have no radars and only 2 eyes, so not sure how 10 cameras processed concurrently can't eventually be as effective

Elon thinks that vision only is.okay. I say no. I've been doing ADAS and ASIL (ISO26262) processors for a while. But he also he sells a L2 product and calls it FSD and Auto Pilot.

Redundancy would require no gaps in the data captured. Depending on what you are doing a camera could be backed up by Lidar, etc. TM3 does not have enough camera positions for them to claim redundancy in image information. They do claim redundancy in processing.

Vision only makes speed and distance calculation challenging at best. You can use multiple front facing cameras and use parallax for some calculation, but if you are doing that you might as well use radar/Lidar for absolute speed/distance capture.

GM Super Cruise is hands free on the highway. Tesla is not. That makes it simple. Cruise is ahead.

Cruise and Waymo have fully autonomous driving and permits to operate a commercial taxi service in California.

[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

E.g. their next gen battery pack does not even have skateboard, and front/rear subframes are bolted directly to the battery pack. So one (even small) hit to the side may total the car.

Originally Posted by pikcachu

I would wait for some data before making speculations about if skateboard design is more / less safe

I don't take his comment about "total" as referring to safety but rather to the economics of the repair versus the value of the vehicle. The passengers may step out and walk away intact, but the cost of replacing a more exposed battery may cause insurance companies to "total" the car in an impact that might have been economically repairable otherwise.

[techwhiz1]

Originally Posted by Sportstick

I don't take his comment about "total" as referring to safety but rather to the economics of the repair versus the value of the vehicle. The passengers may step out and walk away intact, but the cost of replacing a more exposed battery may cause insurance companies to "total" the car in an impact that might have been economically repairable otherwise.

Same with the mega casting.

Repair becomes difficult. But Tesla has their own insurance where rates are only based on your "driving" score.

[bavarianride]

Originally Posted by Sportstick

I don't take his comment about "total" as referring to safety but rather to the economics of the repair versus the value of the vehicle. The passengers may step out and walk away intact, but the cost of replacing a more exposed battery may cause insurance companies to "total" the car in an impact that might have been economically repairable otherwise.

Yes "total the car" as in insurance won't pay to fix the car due to expensive battery pack damage even for small hits.

And on big hits, the more exposed battery also has higher probability of thermal runaway.

[bavarianride]

Originally Posted by techwhiz1

Elon thinks that vision only is.okay. I say no. I've been doing ADAS and ASIL (ISO26262) processors for a while. But he also he sells a L2 product and calls it FSD and Auto Pilot.

Redundancy would require no gaps in the data captured. Depending on what you are doing a camera could be backed up by Lidar, etc. TM3 does not have enough camera positions for them to claim redundancy in image information. They do claim redundancy in processing.

Vision only makes speed and distance calculation challenging at best. You can use multiple front facing cameras and use parallax for some calculation, but if you are doing that you might as well use radar/Lidar for absolute speed/distance capture.

GM Super Cruise is hands free on the highway. Tesla is not. That makes it simple. Cruise is ahead.

Cruise and Waymo have fully autonomous driving and permits to operate a commercial taxi service in California.

I read that camera-only system is more susceptible to bad weathers than radar ones.

Do u know if BMW's radar(e.g. ACC) is already triple redundant or not? Do u know of any link?

[bavarianride]

Originally Posted by pikcachu

I see you mean each camera to have redundancy. But wonder if having multiple cameras although not in the same position would act as redundancy also, of course if half the cameras fails it gets more complicated but at some point the system should disengage if not enough cameras I would think

Do note Tesla's 8-10 cameras are pointing in different directions/angles, if one camera goes down, that specific field of vision will be missed.

It is true the system can disengage due to camera malfunction, but just imagine the system disengage at 100+mph when someone pulls in front of you 200m ahead due to non-redundant system ....

From the previously attached article, Tesla has 3 forward cameras to cover different distances, but do note that they also cover different fields/angles of vision, so something will be missed if any of them malfunctions.

[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

Yes "total the car" as in insurance won't pay to fix the car due to expensive battery pack damage even for small hits.

And on big hits, the more exposed battery also has higher probability of thermal runaway.

Yes, "total" is sometimes interpreted to mean a large amount of injury-causing crush. It's just the cost of the repair as a percentage of the car's value. We know this personally from when my wife's beloved MB E350 had the full-width front fascia/lighting/grille, etc. sliced off in a 90 impact, leaving a perfectly intact car behind that, but being 8 years old, the math worked against us given the cost of repairing a Mercedes. That was when the dreaded A6 appeared (briefly) until we dumped that sorry mess at a loss. That "totalled" our wallets!

[bavarianride]

Originally Posted by Sportstick

Yes, "total" is sometimes interpreted to mean a large amount of injury-causing crush. It's just the cost of the repair as a percentage of the car's value. We know this personally from when my wife's beloved MB E350 had the full-width front fascia/lighting/grille, etc. sliced off in a 90 impact, leaving a perfectly intact car behind that, but being 8 years old, the math worked against us given the cost of repairing a Mercedes. That was when the dreaded A6 appeared (briefly) until we dumped that sorry mess at a loss. That "totalled" our wallets!

Yeah 8-year old premium brands still with lots of life can be deemed total losses even with minor impacts ....

How was your A6 experience? What issue(s) made you dump the car early?

[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

Yeah 8-year old premium brands still with lots of life can be deemed total losses even with minor impacts ....

How was your A6 experience? What issue(s) made you dump the car early?

2016 A6 Prestige 3.0T - first year of a renewal:
- poor, clunky, and unfixable trans shifting ("they all do that")
- variety of electronic features that worked/did not work randomly
- warped rotors on a new car in first 15k they refused to cover
- the tipping point was when the tech told us he was told to change the RO to help support denying warranty because of a supposed, but actually non-existent - from his own observation - "pad material transfer" to the rotor. This went up to corporate staff. Zero trust in the company, the first OEM to ever have their CEO in jail. VAG anything? NEVER AGAIN!

[techwhiz1]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

I read that camera-only system is more susceptible to bad weathers than radar ones.

Do u know if BMW's radar(e.g. ACC) is already triple redundant or not? Do u know of any link?

Camera only systems are affected by inclement weather. Tesla pushed an update for emergency vehicle recognition. This was to help recognize them in bad weather.

NHTSA opened an investigation into Tesla providing software OTA without notifying them. They said Tesla. has been doing things that affect safety and actually would constitute a recall. They are angry that Tesla didn't notify them of software changes that affect safety.

There is no need for triple redundancy. You only need to be able to fall over automatically and gracefully degrade the system. Processors are typically run in lockstep when you just have a checker. No need for a voting system (TMR - triple modular redundancy). There is typically a service.processor that monitors all the other processors and will take over when checking fails.

I'm not sure what BMW is doing for sensors.

[bavarianride]

Originally Posted by Sportstick

2016 A6 Prestige 3.0T - first year of a renewal:
- poor, clunky, and unfixable trans shifting ("they all do that")
- variety of electronic features that worked/did not work randomly
- warped rotors on a new car in first 15k they refused to cover
- the tipping point was when the tech told us he was told to change the RO to help support denying warranty because of a supposed, but actually non-existent - from his own observation - "pad material transfer" to the rotor. This went up to corporate staff. Zero trust in the company, the first OEM to ever have their CEO in jail. VAG anything? NEVER AGAIN!

Got it, so that is first MY issues then.

My F30 was also 7-8 months into F30 shipping to US, so I visited service 20+ times within new car warranty for various recalls/debug/rattles/staggered maintenance.

One nagging issue was false alarm triggers, they used my car as testbed for various HW/SW integrations.

It collected 50+ DAVID days but not on same issues so no lemon. I did put tons of miles on various loaners.

[Sportstick]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

Got it, so that is first MY issues then.

It was just a mild freshening. A friend with a 2015 could hardly see the difference. But, I think they did royally screw up the transmission adaptation to the engine that did not show itself on the test drive before ordering.

[bavarianride]

Originally Posted by techwhiz1

Camera only systems are affected by inclement weather. Tesla pushed an update for emergency vehicle recognition. This was to help recognize them in bad weather.

NHTSA opened an investigation into Tesla providing software OTA without notifying them. They said Tesla. has been doing things that affect safety and actually would constitute a recall. They are angry that Tesla didn't notify them of software changes that affect safety.

There is no need for triple redundancy. You only need to be able to fall over automatically and gracefully degrade the system. Processors are typically run in lockstep when you just have a checker. No need for a voting system (TMR - triple modular redundancy). There is typically a service.processor that monitors all the other processors and will take over when checking fails.

I'm not sure what BMW is doing for sensors.

Tesla forums have been quite euphoric about OTAs but no one pay attention to the safety-related ones. That was one big reason I waited 4+ yrs to consider Model 3(and yet Tesla still had no car for me).

Yeah non mission critical systems should be ok with active and standby supervisor engines/links for graceful switchover.

I would think real-time automobile safety systems like L2/L2+ and beyond do require TMR voting just like auto-pilot/flight control on airplanes, correct?

[bavarianride]

Ok a colleague said at lunch that L2/L2+ is still driver assist, so no redundancy is really needed yet.

In other words, L2/L2+(as driver assist) is redundant w.r.t. the driver.

[techwhiz1]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

Tesla forums have been quite euphoric about OTAs but no one pay attention to the safety-related ones. That was one big reason I waited 4+ yrs to consider Model 3(and yet Tesla still had no car for me).

Yeah non mission critical systems should be ok with active and standby supervisor engines/links for graceful switchover.

I would think real-time automobile safety systems like L2/L2+ and beyond do require TMR voting just like auto-pilot/flight control on airplanes, correct?

Nah no TMR voting is required.
L2/L2+ are supervised because they still require a driver sitting in the seat.

Even L5 does not require TMR.
Two processors executing in lockstep with checking is enough. When they fall out of lockstep another service processor can take over and either come to a graceful stop or notify the driver to take over.

I worked as a.consultant adding processor extensions for lockstep execution and added ECC (error checking and correcting) hardware for a processor cluster. Two execution processors in lockstep with service processors also running on lockstep monitoring everything.

The service processors cluster could take over and guide a car to safety. The service processor could also run diagnostics if there was a.fault to determine if it was transient and put the car back on the road. The faults would be collected and in the case of a persistent fault ldisable autonomous functionality but keep the car manually drivable.

Fun stuff.

[bavarianride]

Originally Posted by techwhiz1

Nah no TMR voting is required.
L2/L2+ are supervised because they still require a driver sitting in the seat.

Even L5 does not require TMR.
Two processors executing in lockstep with checking is enough. When they fall out of lockstep another service processor can take over and either come to a graceful stop or notify the driver to take over.

I worked as a.consultant adding processor extensions for lockstep execution and added ECC (error checking and correcting) hardware for a processor cluster. Two execution processors in lockstep with service processors also running on lockstep monitoring everything.

The service processors cluster could take over and guide a car to safety. The service processor could also run diagnostics if there was a.fault to determine if it was transient and put the car back on the road. The faults would be collected and in the case of a persistent fault ldisable autonomous functionality but keep the car manually drivable.

Fun stuff.

Consultants are good gigs.

My friends in the industry advice me to wait 10 years before subscribing to FSD and the likes, and I believe them.

[techwhiz1]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

Consultants are good gigs.

My friends in the industry advice me to wait 10 years before subscribing to FSD and the likes, and I believe them.

I don't know about 10 years but at least 5 years out.
The reason I say 5 is because we should be at a point where the compute power required doesn't consume so much power and the current integrated Lidar and digital Radar will be much better.

Consulting was fine, but I like a regular paycheck better.

[Accident]

Originally Posted by bavarianride

Do note Tesla's 8-10 cameras are pointing in different directions/angles, if one camera goes down, that specific field of vision will be missed.

It is true the system can disengage due to camera malfunction, but just imagine the system disengage at 100+mph when someone pulls in front of you 200m ahead due to non-redundant system ....

From the previously attached article, Tesla has 3 forward cameras to cover different distances, but do note that they also cover different fields/angles of vision, so something will be missed if any of them malfunctions.

Tesla Vision only autopilot is limited to 80 mph. So, there’s that.