Comment by Gracana
10 hours ago
I'm surprised that it's pretty much the same as the adapters you can get on aliexpress. Not even a case to protect it from feet in the passenger footwell. Especially compared to the windshield-mount unit, which looks like a very slick product. I suppose they can always improve it if there is interest in this first version.
Very much my own opinion, but this continues comma’s extremely cavalier attitude towards safety. PCIe connectors and GPUs are not vibration rated. What happens when you hit a bad pothole?
Soft disengage -- if the GPU fails it continues to drive via on-device model, alerts the user, and then disengages.
More generally, Comma's safety is handled by a microcontroller. The microcontroller limits steering torque commanded to a safe range for level 2 driver assistance and acts as a watchdog for the rest of the stack. Failure of openpilot causes it to disengage and sound an audible alarm.
I had a similar thought, but I suppose they decided to prioritize price on the assumption that initial adopters are handy enough to fashion an enclosure if they’d like one. Not a terrible assumption.
Yeah, of all the parts to leave a out, sorting out a little enclosure is certainly the easiest and most likely to require customization.
It’s an incredibly dumb implementation and it feels like yet another case of “AI startup gettin’ while the gettin’s good”. It’s the dotcom bubble all over again. Do anything with AI and people will buy what you’re selling.
The RX 9060 has a TDP of 160W, but that’s the high end of what you can continuously draw from the 12v DC plug in a car, so it looks like they cap it at 100W. It has to be on the floor or under the passenger seat because it has to plug into that 12v outlet that’s usually in the front.
Things will get caught by the fan blades, and passengers will inadvertently kick it. Hopefully suddenly losing connection to the GPU won’t cause the car to hit a pedestrian or anything like that.
wouldn't you also need to worry about the voltage spikes when you're running on battery vs starting the car if you're running an ICE? and would you need to unplug it if you, say, need a jump? feels like you'd also need to install a whole UPS on the other side too if you care about the hardware longevity (not factoring in the sheer amount of dirt/leaves/etc that'll just get caught up in the card itself)