George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by Animats on Friday October 28, 2016 @03:09PM (#12819605)

Holtz's Twitter rant is at [1].

Cruise Automation was very lucky to be acquired by GM before they got a similar letter. Similarly, Otto being acquired by Uber. They were both proposing to sell similar add-on systems. Their valuations would have been much lower after receiving such letters.

NHTSA has it right. "It is insufficient to assert, as you do, that 'your product does not remove any of the driver responsibilities from the task of driving'. As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a high likelihood that some drivers will use your product in a manner that exceeds its intended purpose."

Did Tesla got a similar letter? They have exactly that problem and exactly the same excuse. Tesla claims “Autopilot is an assist feature. You need to maintain control and responsibility of your vehicle.”

Here are three dashcam videos of Teslas crashing on autopilot. These are the three where there was a stopped vehicle partially blocking the left edge of the lane, and the Tesla plowed right into it. Tesla blames the driver. Looks like the NHTSA isn't buying that.

[1] https://twitter.com/comma_ai [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ7vqAUJdbE [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoSNw_n1Xgk [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by tdb7893 on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:41PM (#12820466)

Are you sure that they didn't get similar letters? If Tesla or others got a letter like this they wouldn't have publicized it, they would've just actually answered it. There's no way in my mind that Tesla didn't talk to regulators about their stuff at all.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by pixie_ on Friday October 28, 2016 @03:49PM (#12819991)

Tesla probably has a dozen people whose sole job is to interact with NHTSA.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by avs733 on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:52PM (#12820575)

Tesla does, and there has been some back and forth of personnel employment between NHTSA and Tesla as well as both have seemingly intentionally poached from each other.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by Kadin on Friday October 28, 2016 @05:07PM (#12820725)

Doesn't really surprise me. I mean, where else do we expect NHTSA to get people qualified to regulate self-driving cars from? I'd rather they came from industry than just not have any background at all.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by avs733 on Saturday October 29, 2016 @12:01AM (#12822586)

Academia? where they have for many years gotten a lot of the expertise to write regulations (in all parts of government). There are tons of industry experts invovlved in these processes...but don't assume that NHTSA has no experts in this, Tesla didn't invent the self driving car, they just sold it. Research on it has been going on since the 80s and much of the delay came down to legal rather than technical issue in years past.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by tedmiston on Friday October 28, 2016 @03:41PM (#12819914)

> Did Tesla got a similar letter? They have exactly that problem and exactly the same excuse.

Is it the same problem? One is an aftermarket kit vs being built-in to the car.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by im_down_w_otp on Friday October 28, 2016 @05:33PM (#12820932)

Also, Tesla likely has many dozens of millions of drive miles into validating their perception and control models. Comma.ai does not.

The level of rigor Tesla has applied to this problem, as cavalier as it may seem at times in the news, is many, many times that which was applied to what Comma.ai is building.

Tesla's mode == aggressive, but diligent.

Comma's mode == aggressive, and flippant.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by maratd on Friday October 28, 2016 @03:18PM (#12819699)

> Did Tesla got a similar letter?

Did Mercedes? Did Volvo? They have the same systems in place in production vehicles.

Mercedes even advertised their vehicles as autonomous.

http://blog.caranddriver.com/mercedes-benz-pulls-e-class-ad-...

> Here are three dashcam videos of Teslas crashing on autopilot.

Glad you had the opportunity to bash Tesla.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by makmanalp on Friday October 28, 2016 @03:28PM (#12819789)

Yeah, they probably didn't - because large auto companies have time and resources devoted to safety and compliance.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by dexterdog on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:15PM (#12820204)

And bribery

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by makmanalp on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:26PM (#12820305)

Bribery to overlook certain numbers and results perhaps, but I think it'd be a unlikely to hear that the NHTSA just completely skipped on all regulatory checks entirely, which is what geohot wants.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by dexterdog on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:43PM (#12820492)

I meant it more in the sense of bribery to get the regulators to squeeze the little guys as they always do. Big companies love regulation because it kills their competition and lets them progress at their glacial and expensive pace.

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Re:George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’ by celticninja on Friday October 28, 2016 @04:49PM (#12820545)

If bribery was an option would VW have gone to such lengths to hide true emissions rather than slipping someone a backhander?

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