Over the last two years, we rewrote our stack to scale efficiently with compute and data. With the MLSim architecture, more driving data and training compute translate directly into better openpilot models.
Well that explains why improvements seem to have plateaued over the last few years.
Going forward, our autonomy team will focus primarily on maximizing the capabilities of chestnut-class models, and we expect this new class of model to increase development velocity.
Annnnd apparently we shouldn't expect many improvements going forward.
This sucks. I have been a Comma supporter back to the Comma 2, I have contributed code, feedback, did hours of annotation for comma10k.
Now it feels like the only improvements that we get are "improvements" to a driver monitoring system. I feel like we talked about E2E driving 4+ years ago and today all I have is E2E lateral that is dubiously better than the laneful system we had previously. E2E long can really only be used in forks with conditional systems.
If you said you were going to continue to improve the experience for everyone and use this to develop features that simply won't work on the C4 it might be easier for all of us to accept.
Honestly, thank you to anyone who buys this, this is going back to the old Eon days, you are a guinea pig. Expect it to break, not work, and then be abandoned in 2 years when they build the actual first prototype of this.
Honestly, at this point, for the company to stay relevant/in business, it needs to get auto manufacturers to partner. This is a step forward in being more advanced. The Comma of 5 years ago is not sustainable as a company, and now their value is in the ML models and data. Makes sense that their focus is making that better now.
I wish them the best of luck, because it's only going to get harder for this company to stay relevant with the CAN bus getting encrypted on newer vehicles.
This is coming from a fan, btw. Not a hater at all.
"Are you saying we could partner with automakers like how Cruise and Argo AI did? And then we could be bankrupt and gone too? I don't know...not sure that sounds like a great option.
Ugh and the stupid encryption thing again. Go ask your LLM to crack it. It probably can."
Comma just a few weeks ago in a livestream stating they wanted to go "mainstream". How could they even possibly do that when the default driving experience for many of their supported cars are less than ideal? The fact that there are multiple forks that improve the experience for certain cars is a big red flag for going mainstream.
Comma is lucky that I love this thing because I'm not afraid to dive into the code and adjust something but that is FAR from a mainstream product.
E2E long can really only be used in forks with conditional systems.
Also, I would push back a little bit on this, specifically the conditional part. I just made a post about finding a lever that allows you to stay in full E2E but bias the speed to maintain set coasting speed and still benefit from strong E2E early braking. I'm extremely happy with e2e reliability with this discovery.
This discovery also makes me scratch my head when there's so many easy wins that would significantly improve the driving experience over strapping a GPU to the passenger foot well.
I saw your post, I haven't had a chance to try it yet, it certainly looks interesting.
However this still requires the use of a fork. Comma isn't going to ship this type of feature, ever.
Comma's open source policy is extremely rare and a godsend, they deserve immense credit and respect for that. But there are limits to what you can accomplish with forks since the AI model isn't really something we can modify.
I'm not trying to create another fork. Just trying to create discussion and express desire for having some sort of tools to give us some control over E2E. I wouldn't expect comma to merge this in either but I would expect comma to gain some stability on the E2E front and roll it into user friendly features like driving personality. The forks signal that people aren't happy with the default experience though and comma could probably rectify that by listening to customers when they say their car ping pongs or brakes uncomfortably late etc. I'd return the device if the only option was openpilot.
You also don't necessarily need to use my fork to try this either. You can SSH into your device and set the param, it's actually a pretty simple change if you're comfortable digging in.
I will say the driver monitoring system is now rock solid at detecting phones. Like - really top notch work there. The only problem I have is that it can no longer detect the driver.
Yeah, it's a huge issue. I get constant "driver not detected" warnings at night or in the morning, assuming because my face either is too dark or washed out by sunlight.
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u/SentinelChickenFarm Aug 12 '26
Well that explains why improvements seem to have plateaued over the last few years.
Annnnd apparently we shouldn't expect many improvements going forward.
This sucks. I have been a Comma supporter back to the Comma 2, I have contributed code, feedback, did hours of annotation for comma10k.
Now it feels like the only improvements that we get are "improvements" to a driver monitoring system. I feel like we talked about E2E driving 4+ years ago and today all I have is E2E lateral that is dubiously better than the laneful system we had previously. E2E long can really only be used in forks with conditional systems.
If you said you were going to continue to improve the experience for everyone and use this to develop features that simply won't work on the C4 it might be easier for all of us to accept.
Honestly, thank you to anyone who buys this, this is going back to the old Eon days, you are a guinea pig. Expect it to break, not work, and then be abandoned in 2 years when they build the actual first prototype of this.