What self driving product do they have? Elon's "Oh yeah, we will have full self driving coast to coast in [8 months]" is horseshit to the point of "How is he allowed to say this on an earnings call?"

Other competitors, widely recognized to be ahead of Tesla estimate 5, more likely 10 YEARS. Coast to coast? Your Tesla will navigate a Pittsburgh winter storm on poor roads in Level 5 autonomy... this year? No.

So then we're with "sophisticated driver assist". Actual products you can buy with sophisticated driver assist are sold by: Toyota, Honda, BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Chrysler...

My Jaguar has: adaptive cruise, four way sensors, lane assist, including ability to prevent you from changing lanes if a blind spot obstruction is noted, adaptive front lighting and high beam assist, driver condition monitoring (detects multiple 'drift', lane departure events or sub-optimal braking), traffic sign recognition and adaptive speed limiting, rear traffic monitoring including the ability to avoid, if possible, full auto parking, and so on.

Those cars do not steer themselves. The difference between having to steer the car and not having to steer the car is extreme.

It totally changes the way you drive. Instead of looking down your lane and keeping the car centered, you scan all around you and keep situational awareness of the drivers around you while the car keeps itself in lane. It’s a totally different experience.

Assuming you keep your hands on the wheel as required what exactly is the difference? I only found it to be a distraction as it takes me considerably longer to reengage (in less than expected situations) as the human driver after a period where I just let go a little.

I don’t have any “reengagement lag” as you might say. When I want to start steering the car again I just start steering. There is a slight resistance felt in the wheel if you turn past the autopilot without flipping the right stick up to explicitly disengage AP first.

It’s significantly nicer to drive long stretches with this system, but I can’t imagine doing it without your hands on the wheel. When the sensors fail (weather or poor lane markings), you need to be able to take over immediately. Granting too much autonomy to the system is just too risky (and the point of the article).

Not trying to be rude, but that is nothing at all like driving with AutoPilot.

[1] - https://youtu.be/iKWBdySgssE

Tesla has effectively incorporated Lane Keep Assist/Automatic Cruise Control into a single product called Autopilot that has vastly better software than other similar products.

Simply put, if other companies had a product that would have allowed for billions of miles to be driven hands free feet free, they would have it, but they do not, not even close. Tesla does.

I'm not sure the last time (actually I am - it has not) my car treated a roundabout with a shallow center median as "entirely optional, follow the circle or go straight over", but I can find multiple videos of Teslas doing that.

The two cars I've driven that are modern (2017 and 2018 Audi and Jaguars) also didn't hit a big white pickup truck in broad daylight in parking mode, but I've seen Teslas doing that, too.

So, how are we defining "bunch of worse products"? "Less advanced, but better tested"? If that's the case, I think I'll take that.

Do you actually drive your car hands free and feet free for more than 30 seconds ever?

Fairly certain in many cases that's illegal. And apropos of anything else, doesn't Tesla itself require steering wheel contact/torque every 15 seconds?

Is it? This[1] implies that, contrary to what you say, most other manufacturers do offer equivalent features in equivalent luxury vehicles. Tesla might have gotten beaten many of them by a year or so, and might sell more Xs than Toyota sells high-trim Lexus's, but neither of those things really say anything about the quality of the driving technology. And from what I've seen, Tesla's isn't particularly spectacular.

[1]: https://www.cars.com/articles/which-cars-have-self-driving-f...

I have a self-driving automotive product you can buy. It doesn't work as advertised, either.

Calling a lamb's tail a leg doesn't make for a five-legged farm animal. This reminds me of the conversations about, say, phone authentication using facial identification. "Samsung had it before FaceID!" Yeah, I had one of those Samsung phones. It did not do what it said on the tin. So, yeah, Tesla has a product you can buy, but it is not a self-driving vehicle despite what they might tell you.

It's not full self driving but it definitely is driving it self and providing value.

Stop coming at me with Waymo is 10 years ahead of Tesla... Ok great, are they shipping & delivering any value to paying customers? Waiting.......

In 5 years time, do you really think Waymo will have paying customers and have gained regulatory approval? Hell no...

Tesla at least realizes they can't get passed the regulatory hurdle. Keep driver at the wheel, provide a value, automate and refine.

The best thing is that as much as people want to argue on the internet about "which is better", it is somewhat inevitable they'll both succeed in their own way. Waymo will eventually crack the nut for Level 5 autonomous driving with Lidar just like Tesla will crack the nut for their full self driving (defined as driving from the east to west coast without any involuntary disengagements) with machine vision. I actually (potentially incorrectly) suspect Tesla will win this war first as they simply have a multiple of any competition when it comes to amount of driving data. How many more hundreds of millions of miles has Tesla autopilot logged compared to Waymo? Reminder: Tesla is building ~5,000-6,000 cars per week and tends to sell them pretty well. Their data moat only continues to widen. Once they figure out the right models for really pulling it off, they'll make HUGE leaps with the data they have. Some nights, my Model 3 will upload 10G of data up to Tesla. Hopefully, it is from Shadow Pilot to train the fleet.

TL;DNR: There is nothing stopping both Tesla AND Waymo from solving full self driving using competing technology and different approaches. It is an exciting time to be alive!~

I call the same thing you call it, apparently.

And if you don't mind me asking, how would you quantify in real money the value added by the system?

I wouldn't quantify the value in real money. I would say the main benefit provides is that I have much less decision fatigue and am less stressed after my commute. I also don't care how fast I really get there anymore since I just optimize for less stress, and my trip is enjoyable.

The other main value I commonly see overlooked is safety from distracted people. If we can assume people are going to keep texting and driving ( they are ), would you want them to do it while actually driving or with this system engaged?

Then you're not engaged. It's scientifically proven that your brain is no longer alert if you are not constantly engaged. And you can't be magically less stressed by decisions while being fully engaged and alert in order to verify each of those decisions. It's like saying a calculator makes you life easier because you no longer have to calculate yourself to get the result, you only have to calculate yourself to verify the result.

You're either less stressed because your mind simply offloaded tome tasks to the car contrary to the law and common sense, or you're actually engaged and your brain is doing what any driver would normally do so the whole effect is placebo. Which is cool I guess but this last one can be had for a lot less.

Driver assists are there as a backup, not to rely on them to do what you no longer feel like doing because it's too stressful. And if you feel less stressed letting a pretty dumb AI (compared to a human driver) with poorer eyesight than yours to drive you around you must be a pretty laid back person anyway.

...Then what is the point of that system?

Tesla's 'self driving' is incredibly dangerous because it puts the driver in a set of conditions that make it very difficult to maintain attention on the road. And yet the driver must be able to take over from the 'self driving' system with subsecond warning if things go awry.

That's not value adding, that's a huge risk. I would not use that system even if someone offered to install it for free in my car.

Tesla's autopilot is a marketing twist on lane keeping adaptive cruise control - a technology available in almost every car at a similar price point. It is not a step towards actual autonomy.