So the software is ready, it's just those damn regulators that are holding it back.
Come on.
The way this is phrased makes it sound like the features are just around the corner, not that the software is years from working, if it's even possible at all.
I know somebody who was told by a Tesla salesman that "Destination Based Autopilot is only months away". The advertising is absolutely deceptive, and I say this as a Tesla owner and fan of the company.
The owners who buy that are really donating a few thousand dollars to Tesla without getting anything in return. Its really strange.
A lot of people talk about the "Does it have enough sensors for Full Self Drive?" but my question would also be: Does it have the Compute?
As vehicles get closer and closer to full self drive the compute requirements have shot up, that's because a lot of the building blocks are just adding more machine learning models, pattern recognizers, and a more complete picture of the world. It is all well and good having a dozen sensors, if you can process their input.
A lot of the key cycles cannot be offloaded to The Cloud because of the tolerances (e.g. sub-second query/response for safety). One university project I happen to know of had $20K worth of compute sitting in the trunk. That will obviously come down as it is optimized but a vehicle sold in early 2018 isn't evergreen.
Outright lying is another matter entirely, and in some cases could even be criminal. If I have you on video telling me I can drive the car I'm buying at 90 mph toward a brick wall and the car will prevent a collision, and I then test that statement and die, the video will be used against you in court by my surviving family members.
Only where enforcement is weak. Two years ago, the government of Germany shut down Tesla's "autopilot" advertising for making false claims.
That second paragraph is a far worse thing. Intentionally leading people into believing that government regulators are why a technology doesn’t exist makes it sound like they’re venturing into Theranos territory.
The last sentences about selling rides sound like the sort of false concern someone would try to raise in a pitch to misdirect investors away from asking about software problems that they internally worry might be insurmountable.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/23/technology/elon-musk-media/i...
He liked being the media's golden boy when they were fawning over him for a decade, now things get tough because him and his company exaggerate and he wants to take his ball and go home.
(Whereas, SpaceX exiting the market would probably set back space travel considerably.)
January-March 2018: 304K EV sales, 25K Tesla sales
What the real threat is the damage to self driving that Tesla gives the public. After a series of very publicized crashes where Tesla handled their response poorly journalist are looking at every Tesla crash for involvement of their Autopilot software. Every crash is under suspicion. That alone is a hole that Tesla is going to have a hard time crawling out of and it combined with other companies missteps it will only keep setting back the field.
OTOH, that doesn't make some of his charges less accurate. The media does engage in a lot of hyperbole about Tesla crashes and always has. We don't get hyperbolic reports every time some other car has an AEB failure. We definitely don't get them about every other car's post-crash fire. And a lot of the financial opinion pieces are only marginally better.
On the other side of the coin, you have the company's misleading marketing materials. Some will say that is just as bad as the bad journalism, I guess.
> Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.
Why does Tesla get to tell me what to do with my car?
And, if you have a Tesla, you can verify this by disabling its ability to talk to Tesla. After some period of time, your car will no longer run.
Or you can crash it, get it fixed by a non-Tesla service provider, and watch it also fail to run. Not because of a mechanical failure or even a software failure, but because Tesla hasn't OKed it to run.
I'm curious about what happens if/when Tesla goes out of business. What happens to all those Model S and Model 3's out there - do they get OTA patched to no longer phone home, does the data coming out of the Tesla flip over to whoever purchases that capability from Tesla, or do they all just stop? It will be interesting to see.
The clause is probably there because Tesla wants to become the self-driving Uber, and it cannot (even if it wanted to) limit the restriction to corporations because, as we know, Uber does not have drivers or cars.
If you want to drive your car for Uber, you can. If you want Tesla’s software to drive it for Uber for you, that isn’t part of the end user license agreement.
At one time automakers tried to say if you used third party oil filters or other parts, or if anyone other than the dealer did work, then your warranty was void. That didn't hold up.
Publishers tried to say that you could not re-sell books and recordings and software media after you purchased them. That didn't hold up.
Not sure that this will hold up either.
You’re going to need a copyright law overhaul to change this status quo.
For example can my water heater's manufacturer ban me from washing my dog in the bath because they own copyright on the software in the thermostat micro-controller?
If Tesla were going to provide liability insurance, I could absolutely see them having the ability to limit usage (under that insurance). But software copyright is an unusual argument.
Existing law supports this, and I don’t foresee policy changing in this regard.
If there is an operator in the vehicle, they could just enter the destination the old fashioned way.
> Existing law supports this, and I don’t foresee policy changing in this regard.
It really doesn't. I'm not sure which "law" you're even referring to.
Well, probably not, because realistically Tesla's self-driving isn't going to be happening anytime soon.
https://electrek.co/2018/05/19/tesla-releases-softwar-open-s...
My guess:
Because they think it's their car, even after they sold it to you. And, because, more to the point, they expect that (contrary to their claims) that retaining that control and exploiting it is the only way they will be able to be profitable with the cars.
Where does it clearly say that? "may very widely by jurisdiction", "it is not possible to know" are anything but clear.