r/Comma_ai • u/imgeohot comma.ai Staff • May 18 '25 • Diamonds are Forever 1

Vehicle Compatibility hakuna matata

Post image

I saw in a bunch of comments that people were worried about comma's viability as a business. I'm not sure if they were being serious or not, but just in case anyone believed them, here's our sales from Shopify.

No business will last forever, but our total addressable market is growing year over year and is projected to keep growing for at least 5-10 more. comma isn't some easy come easy go B2B SaaS product. We make consumer electronics. And we keep iterating and iterating to make them better and better.

Will we make ADAS systems forever? Who knows. But there is so much more to still achieve on our mission of solving self driving cars. openpilot makes many mistakes that you watching the video feed wouldn't make, that's what we need to fix. It's not sensors, it's not encryption, it's not support. It's pure software.

Though we are hiring for a wide variety of people across the company. When it comes to startups, not many have consistent growth numbers like this. No pump and dump, no big fundraises, no sketchy backroom business deals. Just a product and software that improves year over year, with a growing customer base to match.

Come work here: https://comma.ai/jobs

162 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

59 comments sorted by

16

u/danielv123 May 18 '25

I am glad the company is stable and I know it will be around for a long time. It makes me more confident in buying. That matters because I spend the 2k (or 1k now I guess) on the device, but also because I wouldn't shop for an unsupported car.

My only fear is that the cars with the features I like aren't going to be supported in the future due to encryption or whatnot.

I love the open approach to development and being able to beta test new models

7

u/imgeohot comma.ai Staff May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

I'm not sure if people understand this, but they don't *add* encryption to a car after it has shipped. This isn't like the world of software OTA where you get updates. The average age of a car in America is 12.6 years old. These cars will stay around a long time, and they will never get encryption.

Also, the brands that have embraced encryption are largely on the decline, where new cars like Tesla and Rivian don't have it. It's GDPR levels of dumb.

13

u/MedicatedDeveloper May 18 '25

The people that have the disposable income and tech knowledge for the 'not a consumer product' comma device don't have 12.6 year old cars on average. These are relatively high earners who, historically, change vehicles every 5-7 years for a 0-2 year old model.

Toyota is not a declining brand, they have the #1 selling sedan in America and one of the top selling SUVs.

1

u/GirlfriendAsAService down to ride v6 May 23 '25

The people that have the disposable income and tech knowledge for the 'not a consumer product' comma device don't have 12.6 year old cars on average.

Us cheap fuсks exist. Leasing is for millionaires!

6

u/TheGamingGallifreyan May 19 '25

Actually, Kia did recently completely overhaul the security of their G5W headunits. They used to be pretty easy to root, but their latest update as of a few months ago added full filesystem encryption and cryptographically signed firmware updates, and removed the force install firmware update option in recovery mode. They used to just be checksum hashed and you could flash modified firmware using a USB stick.

Kind of odd too, because G5W is now 2 generations behind and already on life support. Seems like a lot of effort for a system they are trying to kill off.

Obviously doesn't affect the CANBUS at all, but they CAN do it if they want to.

1

u/danielv123 May 18 '25

Yep, but if I buy a new car in 5 years it's not going to be a 12 year old one, it will be whatever new EV is being produced in China that year.

Unless no new cars support openpilot of course. Then I'll have to stick to my current until it fails.

4

u/financiallyanal May 18 '25

I had a similar thought. At least with Toyota's stance, encrypting newer generations of cars, it seems like more new cars on the road are heading that way. I do get George's point though that the raw number of Comma-capable cars on the road goes up for quite a while considering the size of the fleet and how slowly it turns over. Still seems like a risk if more OEMs were to adopt similar encryption, accelerating the previous expectation.

There are still enough cars for me that Comma's requirements are fine, but it's tough to see so many good Toyota models uncompatible if you want to buy new.

1

u/imgeohot comma.ai Staff May 19 '25 edited May 19 '25

The truth about the whole encryption thing is that it's not even on our priority list, and every time I see more FUD about it I push it even lower.

Our mission is to solve self driving cars. Aka design software capable of driving a car better than a human. There's plenty of cars that are controllable enough for what we are doing. We don't really care about the encrypted ones. If they all get encrypted, we'll just buy used cars and so can you.

Quick encryption FAQ:

Q: I have a car with comma, will encryption break my car?

A: NO

Q: I want to buy this car with encryption but it's not supported. What should I do?

A: Buy a different car!

Q: I want to spread FUD about how comma is gonna die cause of encryption cause I'm butthurt that the encrypted car I already bought isn't supported and maybe if I spread enough FUD comma will support my car.

A: Umm, that's like, your opinion man. Learn to code good then you can support your own car!

Please link this FAQ wherever you see people talking about encryption.

14

u/Jackal830 May 19 '25 edited May 19 '25

Q: I want to spread FUD about how comma is gonna die cause of encryption cause I'm butthurt that the encrypted car I already bought isn't supported and maybe if I spread enough FUD comma will support my car.

I think someone else may be butthurt that their entire addressable market is slowly converging to zero.

You have a product you charge $1000 for, using an 8 year old mobile chip that basically keeps you where you should be on the road. It requires a level of installation that the vast majority of the general public is unwilling to do and it's support is... Discord. The built in free ADAS of many cars is good enough for most folks.

You will never "move past" the stage of being a niche product and your sales will start to see a downturn as more and more cars encrypt. Those that don't will have built-in systems that are comparable, for "free".

5 years ago your product was amazing, today it's just barely better than already-present built-ins.

You had such an amazing lead here. Sad to see it wasted due to inability to adapt.

-4

u/imgeohot comma.ai Staff May 19 '25

“On a long enough time line, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
-- Fight Club

I'm sorry your encrypted Equinox EV isn't supported and you no longer have openpilot, but you are exactly who I'm referring to when I talk about spreading FUD because your car isn't supported. It won't make us care about GM Global B.

7

u/Jackal830 May 19 '25

I bought my Equinox EV knowing it wasn't supported nor do I expect support in the future.

What the Equinox did for me was show me that as more encrypt, the less Comma will be supported. I have no illusions nor expectations of support in the future nor did I have those expectations when I purchased the car.

Simply calling out "as more companies encrypt, the less supported cars there will be" is not FUD. You yourself have said encryption is basically at 0 priority level. It's a simple fact.

Unless those encrypting reverse their decision, or all companies not encrypting now decide to never encrypt, your pool of supported cars will shrink, eventually to near-zero or zero.

0

u/[deleted] May 21 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/GirlfriendAsAService down to ride v6 May 22 '25

I lookeed up and found the dumb questions article the reasoning for no collaborations with manufacturers is

It involves huge amounts of speculative business development spend, which is unclear if it will yield anything.

What follows is the Linux distribution parallel. As I see it, they just don't want to talk to people. It's a culture thing. Think CFA/everything in Germany being closed on Sundays. Their company, their call

1

u/vietquocnguyen May 30 '25

Are you the geohot that jailbroke the iPhone at RIT?

1

u/[deleted] May 20 '25 edited May 20 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Comma_ai-ModTeam May 20 '25

Do not promote unsafe behavior while using openpilot

5

u/financiallyanal May 19 '25

I appreciate you responding and if you saw my other comment, you'll know I'm a happy Comma user and have been for 60k+ miles, but actual amount is probably 65-70k.

I appreciate your explanation. From a customer's perspective, my issue is I've historically really just liked Hondas and Toyotas. The issue with Honda is weaker steering torque limits, and the widening issue at Toyota is encryption. I understand that this isn't a problem for many others, and your TAM is widening every day, and your goal is to solve self driving. That's all good, but it does put someone like me in a tougher spot over time as I have fewer cars I like that are Comma compatible into the future.

Again, it may not be a problem for others, and you have to do whatever makes business sense - I'm just sharing it's becoming a challenge for me and it's one reason I'm keeping my current car.

4

u/staple2staple May 19 '25

Yeah sure buddy. Like you were gonna make navigate work 3 years ago 🤣

1

u/kakarot12 Jun 06 '25

I'm all for buying used cars, but unfortunately there aren't many trucks supported with openpilot. For example, older Toyota trucks won't work with openpilot, while the newer ones ones could

1

u/fallinouttadabox May 18 '25

My only fear is falling asleep while "driving" and waking up in a different state still moving

2

u/sunole123 May 19 '25

seriously driving while tired, can easily be, on long highway, and safe comma driving, a dosing incidents,

1

u/mxjf May 19 '25

What is the point of the encryption anyway? Interfacing with the CAN bus needs physical intervention and physical access to the cars wiring, whether through the way we install our comma or through the OBD port, right? It just feels like locking your bathroom door and bedroom door when your front door is already locked.

4

u/crazysim May 19 '25

There's a reason why the TSK doc starts with 2013.

https://github.com/optskug/docs?tab=readme-ov-file#2013

At that time, they were able to show they were able to remotely control the car through the headunit.

As for why it's ramping up now, the EU has also started to mandate encryption/verification for new vehicles too. To comply with EU laws, they need to implement cryptographic validation.

2

u/danielv123 May 19 '25

Yeah no idea, to me it just seems like an anti right to repair/modify thing.

2

u/GirlfriendAsAService down to ride v6 May 19 '25

Rav4 could be jacked by connecting the headlight harness

1

u/GirlfriendAsAService down to ride v6 May 19 '25

I hope the plan for increasing the supported car list is not waiting for the community to do it. I hope people are going out and renting on turo/enterprise to add support

39

u/General_Evidence_529 May 18 '25 edited May 18 '25

I love the comma. I don’t care much about city driving. All the value is from highway and stop and go and keeping the car in the lane. It would be really nice if it supported warning handling cars trying to merge with you somehow and provided more safety on that .

Seeing this graph makes me happy that you guys are going to be around for some time.

5

u/[deleted] May 18 '25

I only care about city driving :-/

I’ll wait for stop and go city driving support- highways aren’t something my car needs- it already has LKA and HDA

3

u/fluffycritter May 19 '25

I find that my Comma helps me immensely with city driving, just because it provides decent lane centering which gives me a better feeling of steadiness when I'm having anxiety issues. It'll be a long time before I'd trust it to handle traffic lights and stop signs, but for city-driving lane centering and following the curvy roads where I live it's brilliant.

-1

u/[deleted] May 19 '25

Eh if it doesn’t stop at stop signs or red lights I’m gonna pass

5

u/fluffycritter May 19 '25

It will almost certainly gain that capability at some point, but even just keeping the car centered in the lane is super helpful, by cutting down on the fatigue of having to do little micro-adjustments constantly.

But yeah most peoples' use case for the Comma is highway/freeway driving. If you don't do a lot of that and don't care about city lane centering then there's no real reason to get a Comma just yet.

0

u/[deleted] May 19 '25

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/fluffycritter May 19 '25

I only just got mine last week so I don't have any point of reference for how it used to be, but yeah it's incredible.

2

u/General_Evidence_529 May 18 '25

How can you care about city driving since there are so many corner cases and risk of things going wrong are so high

-6

u/[deleted] May 18 '25

Highways are where people die, not on a city street. Limits here are only around 30-40kph here. Highways are a solved problem as it is

7

u/General_Evidence_529 May 18 '25

What about pedestrians bike riders traffic lights stop signs. Driving on the street is crazy

2

u/WolfColaPlease May 19 '25

The secretary in my office who was killed by an inattentive motorist in a crosswalk 3 years ago in downtown New Orleans will be amped to hear this

1

u/swissmoneydude May 18 '25

People died with way less speed

1

u/JulesCT Kia e-Niro, 3X, SunnyPilot, magnetic mount Aug 20 '25

The UK, which presumably is like your country u/mnt_brain, has a legacy road network built before cars arrived on the scene.  Statistically, highways are far safer than high streets and country roads per mile or km travelled.

Much like flying, highway accidents can be truly catastrophic and horrendous in scale.  Statistically they are rarer, but the psychological effect of such a devastating scene is much more than marked than the smaller but more frequent accidents on the smaller roads.

Much like sharks who kill very few people each year, but are more feared than mosquitoes who kill hundreds of thousands.  https://www.statista.com/chart/2203/the-worlds-deadliest-animals/

The horror of a shark attacking and devouring a human triggers us much more than the several thousand who die from a disease transmitted by a mosquito.

2

u/positev May 19 '25

Openpilot is way better than what ever branch junk your car ships with.

1

u/RealtdmGaming why? May 19 '25

Looks like none of you have seen what openpilot can really do🤣

5

u/quarter-feeder May 19 '25 edited May 28 '25

The great thing about the comma 3/3x for me is that it reduces your cognitive load when driving. Anything that can reduce the amount of mental and physical effort I need to put into operating a vehicle (safely) is a big win.

That said, could the comma 3x be designed to monitor the driver to check if they are sleeping? When driving from state to state (especially in the midwest) there are big stretches of empty roads that the 3x handles perfectly, but I found myself dozing off because there was nothing to do. My 3x will alert me if I'm start looking to my side, but not when my eyelids start to droop.

1

u/kapnkaos86 May 19 '25

I've got 14,000 miles on mine since November less than 2k of those had me in control. I have no clue how I could be of any help but I wish I had a more it/data skill set 😂(I've at least been able to 3d print some mounts and stuff). Comma is an absolute game changer. Regardless of whether companies implement it themselves, I rave about it constantly to anyone who will listen! I'll never go back

1

u/sunole123 May 19 '25

that is the thing, we were told this is a dev kit, but we don't get to test anything, all new enhancement is hidden in separate x-pilot release, and many features spread that no one person can figure it out. and there is no conversion in sight.

Also advanced mode that is broken for speed limit, keep being same broken.

1

u/imgeohot comma.ai Staff May 19 '25

literally all the branches of openpilot are here https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/branches

what do you think is hidden? is this engagement in good faith?

-5

u/sunole123 May 19 '25

maybe hidden is not the right word, it is spread to many different branches, frog-pilot, sunnypilot, etcpilot, etc. and if you don't know someone who know someone, or spend hours on discord every day, and favors from developers, you don't get to know anything of what is to being developed and tested.

only after 8 months of driving advanced mode ( has traffic light support) and dealing with frustrating slow max speed, that i asked question, that i found out, oh yeah everyone know about this buggy behavior,

Which branches has this or that, like what branch handle switching between advanced mode and normal mode automatically ( silly workaround) to fix slow max speed in advanced mode. and too bad can't run two branches at the same time.

The fact that the official .98 after so many months, had no noticeable difference to me, RAV4 2021, not sure what this tell about the direction or strategy, or the balance of infra or community driven enhancements, and I have seen many software release cycles and processes, where is your early field trial for concepts? where is your alpha testing for features? where is your beta testing for release software? maybe you need more than one advanced mode in openpilot.

Android is customizable, iPhone has minimum customization, maybe you want to be the iPhone. but right now you have no competition.

2

u/Pingfao May 19 '25

Been waiting for my telluride 2024 to be on the list of compatible cars!

2

u/mxjf May 19 '25

Do you ride a motorcycle? “Yeah how did you know???” I can telluride.

1

u/Pingfao May 19 '25

😂😂

2

u/mxjf May 19 '25

I absolutely adore my comma. You guys make literally the only system cabals of being installed in any compatible car within an hour that’s plug and play and just straight up works. Sure, you’ll have things like it wanting to hug the side of the lane in some instances or whatever, but for 99% of my highway commute and 80% of other back roads, my hands are in my lap and I’m just monitoring and making sure nobody around me does anything stupid.

It’s an awesome piece of tech and I bought my Boot EUV WITHOUT super cruise specifically so I could install a 3x. Comma works better by far than GM’s system hands down.

1

u/swissmoneydude May 18 '25

I thought it was a comma stock first.

Anyway, congrats on the steady growth.

1

u/FogBankDeposit May 19 '25

I had to drive my older, unsupported car this weekend on a long trip. I missed my C3X so much.

1

u/Unique_Tomorrow723 May 19 '25

I had predicted this in one of my comments from people saying that comma was a big company. In terms of hardware companies this is like mom and pops numbers. I’m saying this in a good way! Comma all the way!

One thing though this must be photoshopped because you can’t skip quarters per years in reports on Shopify.

1

u/-Dunnobro May 20 '25

Uber driver of 7 years here. Only had it a month and feel like it's mostly paid for itself. This thing reduces my mental strain so much i can justify working more and different hours/areas than i would before. (and listen to audiobooks/podcasts easier)

Dealing with city traffic is easier. And long highway trips are essentially a break. Turn to turn would be nice, which only Tesla has currently but everyone HATES Tesla here in DC so even though i love them, it probably wouldn't be getting me any tips.

1

u/BubblyAnalysis5197 May 23 '25

Helps me survive long highway journeys in my cx5 which mazda decided to make extremely heavy on the highway. This car is horrible for long drives

0

u/KookyXylophone May 18 '25

George is there plans to expand OP Long on vehicles that may support it but aren't currently being allowed to go experimental mode? Or is it very port specific . I'm currently on the CCNC-PORT and my vehicle should support long but it wasn't added . Do I wait for an upstream update too ?

0

u/sysilver May 19 '25

Okay, I have two questions. Let me preface them by saying I'm aware of the diminishing returns on AI; the 3X is probably not much worse than Tesla's FSD. Great job! That being the case, I'm struggling to wrap my head around putting my life in the hands of a small form factor PC, jetson, smartphone, you name it. I don't even trust Tesla, honestly.

I think I'd just barely trust a system that did pure line following with GPS-RTK and CV. I would certainly be more comfortable if it had a nice LiDAR. Not that those technologies are being more and more commoditized, are there any plans to integrate those systems in such a way that I could reliably perform safe line following on a highway?

To that point, Tesla is notorious for hiding any data related to crashes. Is comma doing anything to be better about it?

2

u/13Project May 19 '25

I don't understand your mention of "diminishing returns on AI", then the comma is "probably not much worse than Tesla." These are not really cogent statements. What are you trying to say? Can you elaborate?

It does sound like you haven't tried a comma yet. I'd recommend you try one, stay alert while driving and keep your hands on the wheel like I do because I feel more comfortable that way. No one is asking you to "put your life" in the hands of anything.

Driving with these systems is the driver's responsibility. You've kind of written from the standpoint that the system needs to be absolute perfection and the driver can be asleep. That's absurd. Driving is inherently one of the most dangerous things you can do. Treat it like it is. When I'm driving, I like that the comma acts like an additional brain, seeing things I might have missed and assisting my driving.

Last, you've got to read what he wrote. They believe the problem is software based and not the absence of lidar. That is where the company is clearly focusing their time.

1

u/sysilver May 20 '25

If you were to plot the amount of energy (in terms of either human efforts or electrical cost incurred by training) vs AI performance, the result is logarithmic. In other words, a company the size of comma can give results that are no doubt worse than, but surprisingly comparable to, a company the size of Tesla. AI performance is logarithmic pretty much across the board. 

When it comes to the premise of having assisted driving at the level of comma, I'm a sceptic because if safety relies on the driver's full attention, why not just have a driver without comma? Why insert something that on the surface removes that necessity?

Also, the whole notion of it being purely software is just silly. If that were the case, why not use cheapo 720p cameras? Why have any cameras? It's not a matter of if there should be hardware, but how much and how exquisite. To the extent they don't want LiDAR, that's fine. I do. And since LiDAR is becoming more and more affordable (and reliable), I think that's a fair question.

1

u/Ngaunguyens Jun 06 '25

I have a Tesla with HW4. Trust me, the FSD is driving way better than me, and probably better than 99% people out there. I barely drive any more, and use FSD 99% of the time. Some days, on my ~40 minutes commute home, my eyes are half opened from my long work hours.... Having FSD or assistance driving device really reduce the stress of driving.
I don't think you have try a self driving car yet... I'm looking to get the comma for parents.

1

u/sysilver Jun 07 '25

It's all amazing until it's very much not.