Other car makers call their systems CoPilot, ProPilot, SuperCruise, whatever and I think the name matters less than the communication and details of using the system.
The main Autopilot marketing page shows a video of a Tesla driving itself, says the Driver is there for legal purposes only, and provides no other disclaimers about the limitations, or that the demonstration is of internal test software and not reproducible with consumer vehicles.
https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
Actually using the car, the system is fairly clear about the need to pay attention and keep your hands on the wheel, but it allows you to engage Autosteer in areas the manual says you should not (ie city streets) and does not clearly indicate what areas are good or not good for using Autosteer. SuperCruise only works on specifically listed highway segments, which limits its usefulness but also prevents these issues.
Also Tesla relies on the steering wheel torque sensor to determine driver presence. This leads to false negatives (my hands are on the wheel but not providing a turning force so the car gives an alert) and is easily bypassed (there are third party products that clip on to the steering wheel and provide enough weight to fool the system).
Competing systems (SuperCruise, BMW) use driver monitor cameras or capacitive wheel sensors to provide a better indication of driver attentiveness.
This alone feels like lawsuit-bait.
I'm surprised it took this long for the courts to get involved.
Yeah, right. Tesla has only Level 2 self-driving. They've never demonstrated Level 3 outside a video of a demo in Palo Alto. They wouldn't even let the press take a ride. Google/Waymo has hundreds of self-driving vehicles running around in test. Go to Mountain View and you'll probably see some. If Tesla had anything that really worked, they'd have enough test vehicles running around that it would be visible to the industry.
Waymo One is offering driverless rides in Phoenix AZ. Interestingly, they are now offering only autonomous rides - the "safety driver" is out, to prevent epidemic spread.
> "You'll be able to FSD, coast to coast, by the end of this year".
Meanwhile Teslas are still having a multitude of autopilot accidents that, had a human been paying attention (their fault, I understand), would not have happened - plowing at speed into fire engines with emergency lighting on, plowing into overturned semi trailers blocking multiple freeway lanes, aiming at barriers.
Humans are horrendous at maintaining constant attention to a task that only requires sporadic attention. If there is a human in the control loop, then it needs to take into account human limitations. Therefore, I'd be very hesitant to assign these as being the fault of the passenger who happens to be sitting in a driver seat.
If Wells Fargo or Comcast did the same pitchforks would be out. But Comcast can only hurt you, misusing AP can hurt others too. So having the government intervene is a matter of public safety and doing what a government should do: look out for people's interests, not the corporations'.
When you build a system you have to compensate for inherent weaknesses. Tesla does the opposite and exploits them for profit (as many other companies do) by capitalizing on these well known human weaknesses (lack of attention, gullibility especially with complex topics). They use easy to fool systems that assume drivers are always engaged because they allow the AP to disconnect less and look more capable. And they capitalize on the gullibility by branding the AP as something it's clearly not:
> full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat
> All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go.
> manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed.
> use of these features without supervision is dependent [...] regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions.
In any case the fault is most certainly not merely marketing, it's a fundamental design flaw. You cannot expect people to maintain constant attention when that attention almost never leads to anything; people simply aren't capable of that. That's also why similarly "boring" tasks are so failure prone (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa...) and why all kinds of creative measures are needed if you really need people to stare at stuff looking for black swans until their eyes glaze over.
Better marketing is not a solution to that problem. That's merely a solution to the fraudulent advertising (also worth solving - sure!)
I was actually referring to the ruling. The court did not take issue with the autopilot system, just with the way it's marketed.
For the rest of your comment I agree and I implied something along the same lines. Tesla should have built a system that works to compensate for human failings, not take advantage of them to sell more.
New roads are built to be more wavy to keep the drivers more engaged, some traffic light systems that are synchronized as a "green wave" are sometimes stunted to not create this automation of running through lights (especially true of public transport vehicles where lights sync to the vehicle, except when an emergency vehicle is coming), etc.
Tesla should have installed an advanced driver attention monitoring system even before turning on the AP and they should have set very, very clear expectations from the system. In reality they did the opposite with people ending up believing that the AP can handle driving by itself so they can "disconnect", but the attention monitoring being completely unfit for the purpose of making sure the human is "connected".
> I was actually referring to the ruling. The court did not take issue with the autopilot system, just with the way it's marketed.
I meant the parent post you were replying to, i.e. what I think MereInterest meant when he said "If there is a human in the control loop, then it needs to take into account human limitations", to which you replied "I am honestly not sure how to interpret your comment but I'll try to respond. The fault is not with the AP."
I did not mean to imply you thought it was a fundamental design flaw - sorry!
This is a common rumour, but is there anywhere which actually implements this?
This makes sense, the light sync system is already in place and they carry dozens or more passengers at once. This kind of advantage over a car carrying one person gives people more incentive to use public transport.
(And I can also confirm the effect that at intersections where full public transport priority usually guarantees a green some drivers do react a bit... surprised on the rare occasion when it doesn't work for whatever reasons)
That's actually intentional (or at least I know for a fact that in some places it's by design). It keeps drivers alert and break the habit of just going ahead. Sometime for whatever reason the light has to be red and in some cases the public transport drivers were so used to just going through the intersection that they completely miss the lights. Also many of them get in their personal cars at the end of the day to the same effect. It's a known, studied effect and the solution is to "mix it up" a bit.
Expecting a human to remain attentive all the time is like using a sensor outside it’s linearity range to detect and mitigate a hazard. Good initiative but bad implementation and possibly a gap in the design culture
>the fraudulent advertising
purported / alleged. The claims of this have been debunked.
Isn't this entire article about how the courts in Germany determined that it is, in fact, false advertising?
Having read the Tesla website myself and understood its claims, they are not false.
I believe the court was concerned that it was theoretically possible that some people might get confused.
Or to put it in a harsh (to Tesla) way, the court feared some consumers could be misled (I would add, misled only due to the consumer’s own failure to read and listen to the information offered by Tesla with several different opportunities in varied and timely settings).
So with this in mind, the court took action based on those fears.
Conclusions beyond that are not warranted.
"The driver is only present for legal reasons".
Really? That's a direct quote from Tesla, a claim. I don't think it at all stands on itself.
But the numbers we do have make Tesla's look pretty dangerous. Tesla's overall fatality rate may be low, but that's true in general of luxury cars (perhaps because they're driven in safer areas, by safer drivers, have fewer safety related faults, or protect their occupants better). Compared to similarly priced cars, tesla does poorly (https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...).
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=no&tl=en&u=htt... - norwegian safety authority also concluding Tesla's are more dangerous.
Finally, specifically the autopilot is often compared incorrectly - autopilot isn't used on busy city streets or chaotic traffic situations (it's not capable of that yet) - but those are where most traffic fatalities occur. On the highway, fatalities are comparitively rare, even in "normal" cars. On interstates, in 2012 (I can't find more recent numbers), the fatality rate was 3.38 per billion miles travelled (source: http://www.bast.de/EN/Publications/Media/Unfallkarten-intern...) - and in some countries, much lower even than that (e.g. 0.72 in denmark). Since that includes old & cheap cars, you'd expect luxury cars to do better than that - that's the baseline autopilot should be compared against.
Comparing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatal... with https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/14/lex-fridmans-tesla-auto... I'd say a lower bound on autopilot's record is around 2 per billion miles - that's OK, but not very good. We may be missing autopilot related fatalities; if we missed even a single one, that would make these numbers look outright poor. That's a very rough estimate; but if we want any kind of reliable estimate on autopilot safety, you'd need much more data that we have (also more data on competitors!) Of course the very fact that we can't tell because data is so sparse is good! It means there are few deaths in this category; while driving in general may be dangerous, driving a luxury sedan on an interstate is fairly safe - exactly how safe doesn't really matter.
----
All in all - Tesla's safety record looks good compared to the average car, but not very convincing compared to similarly aged similarly priced cars - i.e. Tesla's competition. If you were to base your buying choice on safety, you probably should not buy a Tesla; but definitely should not buy the marketing nonsense. On the upside; it simply doesn't matter much, driving on autopilot-enabled roads is fairly safe anyhow, regardless of whether autopilot helps or harms safety.
As of a recent update a month or two back, it is now. It is ever improving as they roll out new features.
Some of which are safety features. It’s a moving target. Whatever stats or safety records or flaws or concerns you think you know about today can be invalidated tomorrow.
In fact we just got an update tonight. I can’t tell you what’s in it since I haven’t gone downstairs to the car to read the release notes yet.
No car manufacturer today offers anything resembling true self driving. Not even close. But Tesla is the only manufacturer who insists they do and that any issues are of legal and regulatory nature. Wink wink nudge nudge. That is simply not true and if it weren't for drivers repeatedly intervening the AP would cause far more than single-digit number of accidents or deaths.
And this is not an effort against Tesla, it's an effort for consumers and safety. And the right to be informed about what you;re actually buying.
That's really not true. Those are people who consciously chose to ignore numerous warnings presented, both in the marketing (where the exact phrase "requires conscious human attention" is used), and also the warnings of the car itself where it says all the time things like "keep the eyes on the road", "need to stay alert", warnings every 10 seconds, audio signals, turning off in case the car knows the human is non-attentive etc.
It is very unfortunate when people die, but you have to take into account how many people die in other cars in general. If we want to get 0 traffic deaths, we need to ban all cars, period. As a society, we do not want this.
> But Tesla is the only manufacturer who insists they do
This is just blatantly false. No they don't. Show me any marketing material where tesla claims to have operational Level 5 self-driving in currently available to consumers cars. Show me where it says that. Not some article in some mainstream media where a journalist tries to get attention, but in Tesla-distributed materials, marketing or otherwise, where they claim to have Level 5. Where is it? Why would you even make such a claim that is so easy to check...
Visit https://www.tesla.com/autopilot and see for yourself how the message changes within a single page.
Yes: "All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today..."
No: "...and full self-driving capabilities in the future—through software updates designed to improve functionality over time."
Yes: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself."
Yes: Video showing self driving car on real roads with no hands on wheel or feet on pedals.
No "Autopilot advanced safety and convenience features are designed to assist you with the most burdensome parts of driving."
Yes: "The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat."
Yes: "All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go."
No: "The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions."
This is not what I would describe as clear. It's a contrived dance around the truth, designed to help you arrive at a conclusion without ever quite saying it outright - a deliberate marketing strategy. To be honest, combining this with the use of Autopilot with a capital A, we're not that far off subliminal messaging at this point.
A more honest marketing message would improve safety.
> No: "...and full self-driving capabilities in the future—through software updates designed to improve functionality over time."
"Autopilot" is not the same thing as full self-driving. What don't you understand? Those statements make perfect sense.
> Yes: "All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go."
"WILL NEED". What is not clear? "Will" implies future tense.
"will need" also implies certainty. This feature may never be available within the lifetime of the product being sold today, or indeed the lifetime of the customer or the company. This is misleading.
Tesla is making unverifiable claims about the future of a product which is on sale now.
It is a fact of the digital distribution age that traditional marketing doesn't fit the model of products which can change post-purchase. They are certainly not alone in this, with some very famous cases like No Man's Sky launching with less features than advertised or iPhone performance degrading after an iOS update.
However, this is a machine which can kill people, not a computer game missing content. Let's err on the side of caution with the marketing and not allow companies to talk about what their products can't do.
I do and I see a completely different topic. What's your point? That people die in accidents? Sure. That companies should be allowed to mislead even if this leads to deaths? Those deaths in "other cars" are not because the manufacturer mislead the consumer. And if they do they'll probably get the same treatment since there are laws against false advertising. It's done all the time [0]. The end result of all those practices is that the consumer is deliberately mislead into getting the wrong impression even without explicitly lying. There's nothing special about Tesla's case in this context.
> This is just blatantly false. No they don't.
> Why would you even make such a claim that is so easy to check
I checked and quoted from the Tesla website literally 5 cm above on your screen [1]. Feel free to point me to any other manufacturer who describes their technology like that. Or to any other 150.000 E car with advanced self driving tech whose driver attention detector can be tricked with an orange because the manufacturer refuses to implement proper systems based on cameras or capacitive sensors. Or to any manufacturer whose driver assists caused deaths.
This isn't about technology failing. It's about intentionally proliferating an image of that technology that makes it look more capable than it actually is. Tesla's marketing material consistently makes people paint a false impression of the system. That in itself is a good enough reason to label it deceptive.
Now what’s less clear is how many Tesla owners have re-upped their lease, and how many bought the car they leased. Typically luxury owners lease their cars so they can get the latest features in 3 years, but Tesla hasn’t offered many physical changes to the 3 since it was introduced, with a lot of the changes being done in software.
No idea if that's the case, remote-piloted drone cars just seem like a bad idea -- lag, loss of signal, hijacking, etc.
(Although if it is technologically feasible and we're willing to go that route, it seems like you could make eg long distance truck driving safer that way -- if you have truck pilots working from an office complex in suburbia, you could change drivers without stopping the vehicle, allowing drivers to take frequent breaks and work ~8 hour shifts before going home to sleep in their own beds, while the trucks drive non-stop. If most big-rig accidents are caused by drivers driving too long without enough sleep and rest, you should be able to get substantial decreases without the overhead of sending multiple drivers with each truck.)
ADDED: Google has been pretty clear that they're only interested in door-to-door self-driving and not in incremental driver assistance or freeway-only hands-off. If that goal turns out to be something for an indefinite future--as seems entirely possible--I'm not sure why Google (of all companies) would continue to invest for decades towards an uncertain eventual goal.
My objection to this statement is that it is one side of a deeply inconsistent, two-faced message from Tesla. Specifically, the two faces are "it can drive itself - the driver is only there for legal reasons" and "the driver must be attentive and ready to respond to any errors immediately, and is responsible for whatever happens if he does not respond in time."
The confusing thing is Elon and Tesla both share a lot of information about timelines for prototype technology. "In six months it will do x" kind of statements.
The two faces you are confused by have names. The first face is prototype technology. The second face is shipping cars that we regular consumers can drive.
All the confusion can be cleared up by simply asking yourself, for each statement, which of these are they talking about in the current context?
Keeping in mind that both prototypes and current shipping cars can appear sometimes in the same context, such as that web page. It takes a bit of discernment and careful reading.
If you (general you, not you in particular) are predisposed to assume Elon is a massively deceptive fraudster who is constantly lying and hyping, then it's convenient to overlook that these two faces have a perfectly logical division that fits reality and makes everything consistent.
That is what a lot of people do. They overlook the fact that both Elon and Tesla need to lay out their vision for what is coming in the future. When Elon and Tesla talk about this stuff, they often need to talk about prototype technology. They often make it clear when they are doing this. I mean, look at the web page. The words are there. It does say "future" and "current cars don't have this blah blah" (although Elon in his interviews doesn't do as good of a job, it's often obvious with a moment's thought that he's talking about prototypes, to those of us who are familiar with the fact that there will be a multi-year regulatory process before whatever feature he mentions will come out).
I guess the problem is that technology is complex. Self driving cars are another level of complex because of the context in which they are situated, amongst other cars and drivers who need to learn to deal with the new robo drivers. Socially complex. Legally complex. Complex environments. Complex timelines. Complex rollouts. Complex technology evolution. You don't just flip a switch with this stuff and turn it on one day, because of the education aspects where other drivers are going to be in the picture. People aren't used to this level of complexity. Elon can't spell all this stuff out in every answer to every interview question. It's up to you to understand this.
Average drivers of a Tesla don't need to understand all the complexity. They just need to understand that the current system requires them to be attentive and ready to take over at any time. Tesla makes this abundantly clear in many ways, including on the web site, during the sales process, during delivery, and with active messaging and interventions while driving if the driver does not get it.
No other disclaimers? Are we reading the same page you linked?
The title of the page clearly says “Future of Driving”
“Autopilot today and full self-driving capabilities in the future...“
The page then goes on to define what Autopilot is and concludes with this:
“Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.”
Then the filter does its job and makes them blind to the kind of things you've pointed out. The only way for this to change is people to get skin in the game so that it hurts when their theses are proven wrong. I wonder how many of the people alleging fraud are actually short TSLA.
Yes, there are disclaimers on that page. I just think that being up-front with the current state of the system (driver assistance) would be clearer than starting with autonomous driving and then adding a bunch of qualifiers to it. And it seems the German court agrees.
I think the good think that Tesla does though, is having a simpler package for all of that. German makers can't keep but making 5 different systems that you can (or not) combine so they can charge more $$$.
this year https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/07/09/elon-mu...
Instead they provide links to articles where Elon said he "expects" or "thinks" or "predicts" (or, the most utterly damning case which I saw just once, "is certain") of something.
Where generally the something is either:
A) not even full self driving
B) or not on production cars, but only on prototype cars, and rightly so, because a regulatory approval will be needed.
I don't think these mythical "promises" really exist, except in the minds of people who have not understood what has been presented.
Of course you left yourself an out with the word "soon." OK, I think they can get away with saying that, but you have to be discerning as a reader and understand that the time scale is not going to be weeks or months.
2015: in two years https://fortune.com/2015/12/21/elon-musk-interview/
2016: in a year https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-autonomous-tesla-d...
2017: in two years https://electrek.co/2017/12/08/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-...
2018: in a year https://electrek.co/2018/03/11/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-self-driv...
2019: in a year https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-drivin...
Link 1: "will probably"
Link 2: "I think"
Link 3: "He said he expected…" and "It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available"
Link 4: "He predicts"
Link 5: "He thinks"
Link 6: "I think"
And in some of these he's not talking about production cars, but is talking about prototype vehicles in Tesla's development fleet.
Keep in mind the word "promise" is being used repeatedly and emphatically on forums like this one.
It should be called 'Cruise Control Plus'.
Or 'Cruise Control Augmentation'.
It shouldn't really even hint at autonomy.
I am not accusing you specifically of using weak language, but let's call a spade a spade: it's not a "goof," it's a dangerous and deceptive business practice. It's one that Elon Musk is directly responsible for and directly encouraged with misleading statements where he deliberately exaggerated the capabilities of Autopilot. It's a disgrace and one of many many many reasons why Tesla needs to outright fire Musk. There are too many good people at Tesla, who don't deserve his selfish and irresponsible leadership.
To the people pointing out that airplane autopilots work similarly to Tesla Autopilot: the problem is not the foolish Tesla owners have never flows a plane before. The problem is that in the public mind, they "know" that "autopilot" means "totally autonomous" and they "know" that the computer-car-spaceship supergenius Elon Musk has been hyping his self-driving tech.
It is true that highly knowledgeable people know that Musk is an idiot conman, that "autopilot" is a very limited set of features, and so on - and that none of these things detract from the fact that Tesla makes a good car. But Tesla fans shouldn't invent ridiculous exonerations. Tesla has a responsibility for the safety of its users and they failed. Fans (along with the EU and US) need to hold the company accountable.
I drove a co-worker's Tesla and I loved it--and I will never buy one for the reasons you mentioned. I'm glad Tesla exists to force other automakers to compete on the electric front, but that's the extent of my admiration for them.
However I think that only does Musk misrepresent what the technology is capable of and the timeline I think that many quality of life features are missing simply because if he does not want it no one wants it; my bugaboo has been the poor support for bluetooth music from phones. It was only recently that a Tesla owner could select what track within a play list to play; they still cannot select the playlist, artist, and more, which are features common in every day cars and for many years.
I have no plans on giving up my Tesla soon, I am looking forward to the Audi BEV TT so I can put convertible and EV together. That is 2023 at the earliest. At least Tesla is forcing the hands of other automakers
PS: I would go so far as to state I believe the 8k cost they apply to full self driving is to convince people it really does what he claims. As in, it can only be so expensive because it must work. That 8k is also why I won't consider a new Telsa, originally I figured a Y would be nice
PPS: I am sure besides myself many of us have posted here and elsewhere that the name "Autopilot" implied far too much. Glad some court stepped in and said stop it
PPPS: Kind of fun a German court upheld this, considering all the years their own auto industry was committing outright fraud
I think you dropped a 'not' in there.
https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/30/20891314/elon-musk-... https://www.elonmusk.today
() Feynman excepted.
I'd prefer people are called out for the bad things they do rather than get called by this or that psychiatric diagnostic term.
Being diagnozed a sociopath is not a bad thing. Doing bad things is a bad thing, any psychiatric diagnosis or not.
In other words, there is no Tesla without Elon's meme machine. The graveyard of failed EV startups was chockful of more well meaning participants before Tesla came along. I'd go as far as to argue that the Elon's bullshit was the only thing that could stand up to big oil.
Is this supposed to be ironic or do you actually believe this drivel?
Drive a modern EV and try again. Most Tesla owners will never go back to a noisy, smelly, crappy, slow ICE.
And, then I had a conversation with a friend who has a Model X and driven from SJ to LA, and he mentioned that it needed 3 charges each way. Each Way... Yes, it can be argued that how often do people drive from SJ to LA, but still...
On top of that Musk acting like a dude who's permanently high on coke, quality issues with Tesla, the pedo affair, his fights with SEC, the drama he did regarding opening the Fremont plant during Covid-19 and so on and on ......
Anyway, long story short, I'm really not looking to buy a Tesla anymore..
When we caravan, the Tesla is never holding us up.
Edit: Now self-doubt is creeping in and I wonder if they had gone to Palm Springs and not just LA. The conversation was over a year ago.. Will that result in 3 charges each way? I've never driven to Palm Springs, so not sure if there is another mountain pass in that direction or not.
In my Model 3, it takes 1 stop, for 25-30 minutes, at the Kettleman City Supercharger. Good time to grab a snack, use the restroom, and pretty much get back on the road.
Except noise, pollution, complexity/maintenance cost, OTA updates, large touchscreen navigation that gets updated continuously, having to visit gas stations etc. etc.
ICE is just obsolete technology. Half the performance at 10 times the noise and infinitely more pollution.
Even in spite of all the good things about Tesla's, the list of reasons people could have to not want buy a Tesla is endless.
This is not even considering the fact that some people (myself included) won't even consider a Tesla just for Musk's antics alone.
The quality control within Tesla is quite poor though, especially considering the price of such cars. I've watched various Tesla videos after seeing some "tear down" videos of a Tesla Y. After that I regularly get various electric car video suggestions. There's a lot of channels/people covering and liking Tesla, while saying things like "ah yeah, they just restarted production so obviously quality is bad and you should not have ordered a car at that time". Then another person talks about the crazy amount of times he had to bring back his car because of issues that it had from once he got it. But instead of being angry, he's happy it's a "free fix", completely forgetting how much he paid for something which apparently wasn't checked that much. Also noticed loads of people mentioning that the Tesla paint department is known to be quite poor. That goes back many years.
I'm very happy people are buying electric cars. For Tesla the increase in experience and expanded production should bring down costs (learned this from an article about solar power costs; costs doesn't just go down because you build bigger, it's mostly the increased experience which brings down costs). I like that people more drive electric. Tesla is building a factory in Germany, hopefully a with a better paint department. Various EU countries are pushing for more electric, so really hope the price goes down and the quality goes way up. Meanwhile, I'm happy with my bicycle.
Excluding cars that are purposely build/modified to be annoyingly loud.
This has been claimed over and over and is possibly true in some test scenarios but not in any real situation. Noise is additive, the engine noise may not be clearly audible, but tire+engine noise is always louder than just tire noise. And any time an ICE actually revs up, it's clearly audible at any high speed.
I drove (passenger) in a friends electric car once. That car is significantly more quiet than a lot of cars I've been in. Some other people mention that noise dampening takes care of the noise, but that just proves above: an (ICE) engine is very noisy!
It's also very apparent in some hiking trips: any ICE is terribly noisy. You can easily determine which cars are electric though. Everyone driving electric would hugely cut down on road noise. I cannot wait until everyone can afford and uses one.
#TwentyIsPlenty
They are absolutely everywhere and barely add time to any long trip that isn't completely cross country.
The 50+- electric range is plenty for my commute or running a few errands; it's weird to think that when you have hundreds of miles of range, you're mostly lugging around 3+x the amount of batteries you need on average, "just in case", like that XKCD comic. Instead, I lug around a generator and 8 gallons of unleaded, "just in case".
Specifically with the model 3 I think the central touchscreen is awfully placed and dangerous as the driver
Once in a while something goes wrong and is expensive. But I've had electric motors (ie a drill) fail too.
ICE is rapidly going obsolete, and Tesla is making money digging the grave.
For decades ICE cars have been designed to drop off the mounts and go under the cabin while absorbing energy in a frontal crass. There's not some dramatically higher risk of the engine crushing your legs vs a BEV.
There are many reasons to prefer the BEV, but please don't spread FUD.
Every car I've ever owned had no problem reaching freeway speeds. Even my geo metro which is rightly considered underpowered at best (and mine had a misfire problem). I'm not going to a track so I don't need more speed than is legal.
It's actually a big deal.
So eventually we will get the data; after all, in some places Teslas were the #1 selling car in the second quarter of 2020. It's hard to ignore the #1 selling car. For now, engineering principles and crash test results are all we have to go on.
I can't stand meat. I've asked McDonalds to give me their best BigMac and it was horrible.
I think it's important to point out that the success of the company is largely built on the mythos of the man rather than the objective success of the cars. Tesla, earlier this week reached a market cap exceeding Toyota, and is larger than every other American auto manufacturer combined, despite having a fraction of the revenue. A lot of that is predicated on the "fibs" that
* All the "data" being collected by Tesla cars will be used to create full autonomous driving
* The battery technology will be so desirable that Tesla will sell batteries to everyone
* SpaceX will put a colony on mars, and they will only drive Teslas on mars
You remove Musk from the equation, and its doubtful that any other person could convince investors, fans, and potential customers that Tesla will ever accomplish of these things and tank the value of the company. If that happens it's clear that Musk will not only lose a ton of money, but ,depending on how profitable they are, they will lose their cash cow that allows Tesla to aggressively grow.
Tesla produces about 300k vehicles a year. Toyota produces 30x that. However, the demand over Teslas meant they almost did not feel any demand impact because of Covid, while Toyota saw a 30% demand drop. There is a huge room for growth on EVs, and EV today means Tesla.
If Tesla has a 5 year lead, and if Toyota continues to fumble the technology transition, an actual revenue overtake in 10 years is imaginable. Hugely optimistic, but within the realm of possibility, with no need for Mars dreams.
Tesla doesn't even define what a "delivery" is (remember factory-gated?), nor do I believe any numbers that come out of China, so I'm skeptical that they weren't affected by Covid-19. Personally, I think they "delivered" a number to ensure the stock analysts are appeased.
If demand is through the roof, and profits are negligent, what have they cut Model Y prices already?
>if Toyota continues to fumble the technology transition
Toyota pioneered, and continues to sell, hybrid electric vehicles (fuel cell, too). Pure BEVs have many issues (including cost), so it isn't like the market has 100% decided on the technology yet.
You can also drive Toyota's cars through puddles, whereas Tesla's may encounter issues that are "acts of God", which are not covered by warranty:
https://insideevs.com/news/433643/video-tesla-model-3-rear-b...
I mentioned "factory-gated" in the OP because back when the metric of choice was cars "produced", Tesla had a quarter in which it claimed to have "produced" a certain number of "factory-gated" cars, and touted that number. It turned out, some of these cars were not complete. Some didn't even have seats. So exaggerating relevant metrics isn't new for Tesla (or other companies for that matter).
Both are product minded people who were interested in going into the weeds of the product but Jobs was focused on the UX but Musk is incredibly focused on being impressed by technical details for either the cool factor or some other detail.
These two both were micromanagers and outspoken leaders but thats where the similarities end. Musk is about his own interests of humor, cool factor, or impression. Jobs was focused on 'best' to a fault. I think the biggest difference between the two is that Jobs had a lot of time to get beat down by failure so he could become humble and learn how to lead people and care. (Not to say he is an insane example of it, I simply mean that early Jobs acted closer to Elon and leadership risk factor. Next changed that.)
A Quora answer says Jobs didn't make any social media accounts at all, using only phone and email for communication (although it doesn't cite sources), and another article supports the idea that he never made a Twitter account. So that's a point against that theory. Though not against the underlying theory: "If you're a CEO with a certain kind of personality, you should stay the hell away from Twitter".
"Elon Musk is right, it seems: in the 1980s the phrase "pedo guy" was used as an insult in Pretoria, where he grew up – and it was a generic reference that did not necessarily mean someone was a pedophile. But telling a court in the United States that the slang was "common" in South Africa may be stretching the truth, according to other people's recollections."
https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-pedo-guy-really-...
He did then hire a private investigator, who apparently produced some suggestive reports: "that Unsworth had met his wife when she was eleven or twelve, and that he had been unpopular in the cave rescue team because he was "creepy"". Apparently on the basis of this, Musk made further accustions in a later email to a third party—one prefaced "off the record", but that wasn't legally binding:
"“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk wrote in the email, according to BuzzFeed News. “He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time," the email continued." http://web.archive.org/web/20200605035828/https://www.busine...
Clearly impulsive, and he seems to have leapt to conclusions from the PI's report (I don't know exactly what was in it and how much was Musk reading between the lines) that seem to be false. But at that time, the accusation didn't seem baseless to him.
I’m still glad these people exist.
Trump=Elon=Jobs They are all successful bullies and liars. If these are our role models...
What I really have to give Tesla is: they have cars; they actually make them in factories they built; they built their own battery factory; they also invest into software side of things. And lastly they invested a ton into the charger network, which initially helped them get off the ground.
Other companies may have EVs but I feel they are not as invested / well matched to IC car manufacturer culture. But again, time and numbers will tell - who is actually making them, how many, and how well do they work.
Couple things that come to mind:
1) SV software culture, kinda coming from Musk. This helps with battery pack management (important), electric motor control (important) and fancy car UI (less important perhaps but a "cool" factor. I think I count autopilot here)
2) Skin in the game. This is a bit meta, but some of the things they've done take some real guts and leadership. In their case it was do-or-die. Things like charger network, or getting the cars sold without dealerships, or building their own battery factory, or maybe the very idea of a production EV. I don't see this with incumbents - even if they have EV lines they could probably shut them down without much impact. Maybe this will not last long, I guess VW promised to switch to all electric new platforms? At that point they are kinda committed.
I think it partly is the car design. They were the first manufacturer trying to make a mainstream car which was designed from the ground up to take advantage of being a BEV (for example with batteries flat under the floor). Others always based their electric car upon an existing ICE design despite the ensuing compromises.
Are you sure that's part of the hype? I've never heard that one. People definitely have positive associations because of SpaceX, but associations don't need a weird justification like that.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1197627433970589696
Anecdotally, it's been a meme for years that everything Elon Musk does is about getting to Mars. Solar City? Mars needs solar. Tesla? ICE cars don't work on Mars. Hyperloop? Big vacuum chambers like that don't make sense on earth, but on Mars they might. Personally I'm highly skeptical of this narrative, but I've seen it expressed many times by different people going back years. I think a tweet like the above is Elon Musk playing into it, throwing some red meat to his most ardent fans.
Example comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044584
You keep saying some interesting things and then you say something ridiculous that makes the rest of what you say seems pretty questionable.
The reason people think Elon may do level 5 autonomy is because his companies have accomplished several things that industry experts said were either infeasible or impossible. Fast charging, large-battery electric cars that are faster than almost all conventional cars.
Remember, pre-Tesla, electric cars were looked at as pathetic toys, like golf carts or, AT BEST, green bling like Priuses which are pretty slow and kinda ugly.
And not only has Tesla ramped up to mass production of these desirable vehicles, but they’ve also done it during the ending of EV credits (which almost all their competitors still have access to!) AND crazy low gas prices. And every time, the media plays up this or that “Tesla killer” that never ends up living up to the name and often completely tanks. Every time media or experts say Tesla will fail and they don’t reinforces the view in many that Tesla is somehow special.
And even SpaceX’s early successes like Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Dragon Cargo were unprecedented for a private company and at those extremely low costs (at the time, Aerospace was a money pit for cost-inflating defense contractors, not nimble rocket startups). Then when they proposed propulsive landing, some NASA experts in the field thought it’d fail. I know one NASA GNC guy who said droneship landing is impossible. Clearly not, as we see now that it’s routine! Then Falcon Heavy, And now Dragon Crew... beating out Boeing, who had long been favored by old guard experts to beat SpaceX to ISS. Similar experts were certain SpaceX would be beat by OneWeb to launching the initial constellation... and we know how that has turns out (OneWeb went bankrupt). Then experts said that SpaceX had no Starlink terminals... until of course pictures emerged of sites they’ve had user terminals testing for months already.
So while I share the skepticism for level 5 autonomy, you should keep in mind That Musk’s companies keep accomplishing what many folks (who should know what they’re talking about) said couldn’t be done. And the more those experts say it’s impossible, the greater that Musk’s reputation soars after the task is completed nonetheless.
Not feasible is a different thing. A lot of people said that about EVs and reusable rockets. With EVs he pushed the industry in zzhe right direction, at enormous costs. Funding seems to be directly linked to Elon, so. And whether or not reusable rockets are feasible is hard to tell, since SpaceX isn't publishing any results.
I think that the moment Elon runs out of stuff to hype and sell to investors, or just fails to sell, is the moment his companies go down. Which would be a pity.
No one was talking about technically possible. We're not discussing space elevators.
The key point is combining economic feasibility with the prevailing cultural will.
Of course electric cars exist. GM made a bunch of them in the 90s and literally forcibly recalled them and crushed them into tiny cubes in front of their owners. They held a candle light vigil. The documentary about this is what inspired Musk to get involved with Tesla in the first place. There was clearly passionate market demand that was being suffocated and purposefully ignored by bloated incumbents who couldn't see anything past their bottom line and they lost track of the market.
Americans are sick of excuses for space travel. The USA is made entirely out of a culture of optimism and all the aerospace companies have nothing to show for meaningful progress as they collect their massive government checks. SpaceX is the first group to ever over promise and then also over deliver. They don't give excuses, they get results.
There is hype because these are the first companies since the post war utopia that are actually making things again that are fundamentally changing our transportation reality with technology.
Before SpaceX, humanity travelled to the moon, shot probes out of the solar system, landed on other planets and moons. We got multiple space stations into orbit. We didn't have reusable rockets so.
And aerospace companies did, in fact, change transportation fundamentally post WWII. Jet engines, passenger jets, the 747, ever decreasing fuel consumption per passenger, ever quieter aircraft.
And the parent was talking about technical impossible. Which clearly it isn't. Never argued against incumbents being unwilling to do certain things. But please stop putting Musk, and people in general, on podests like that.
Landing the Falcon 9 booster on a droneship. As a physicist, I never believed it was impossible (the bar for “impossible” is rather high in physics) and yet an expert in the field told me it was!
The phrase "hindsight is 2020" applies to Elon's accomplishments in spades... anything he hasn't achieved yet is an "obvious con" and "impossible" while past achievements were "merely a matter of throwing engineers at the problem"...
Musk's whole point is this: much more things are technologically feasible, but most people / companies limit themselves within apparent constraints.
As mentioned: he's a physicist. From a physics standpoint, only a small amount of things are actually impossible. Only the deepest fundamentals give rise to constraints, and only those are the constraints he accepts. Everything else is debatable. At least. Sure, money so that he can throw army of talented engineers at problems helps. But it's his whole point! If it's your goal and it's possible in principle, reach for it.
Be it batteries, reusable rockets, autopilot.
That's why he says that it's possible in principle to achieve level 5 autonomy without lidar (having worked with lidar as chief engineer at SpaceX) and that it's possible in principle to do brain-machine-brain communication of language or complex ideas within a decade.
It might not work eventually. If so, it might be very well delayed for years.
But there is a reason that ppl like Thiel or Palihapitiya say: never bet against Elon.
Imagine Tesla actually rolling out level 5 autonomy within a year or two...
Musk is constantly moving the goal post, so when he ultimately delivers something one day, people tend to forget how often he didn't deliver in the past. He seems to be the only one to get away with that.
Propulsive landing was not a spacex innovation. They simply picked back up the research agenda of Delta Clipper.
Not saying SpaceX isn't impressive, but without published results it is impossible to tell how economic their tech is, how expensive development and so on.
That is all well and good, but what is at issue here and in many of these comments is the deceptive/dangerous marketing around Tesla's current offerings and, implicitly, the potential dangers it presents to the public roadways.
There is no progress if said "progress" is achieved unethically at any stage of its development.
I think we all, deep down, know this to be true.
I think Musk does not believe in that or marginalizes it (to cynically achieve business objectives) given some of his public statements and actions (snubbing the NTSB during the Mountain View investigation, taking his own hands off the wheel for a considerable period of time during an early 60 Minutes interview, several questionable statements on Twitter, glossing over the hundreds of abuses on YouTube and other social media platforms) with respect to Tesla - particularly in the past year or so.
Furthermore, let us consider that developing a highly desirable electric vehicle and the technical bar to clear to achieve that pales in comparison technologically to what Musk and Tesla are promising in Level 5 autonomous driving several times (wrongly) in the past and in the near future. Level 5 Autonomy presents several unpredictable engineering unknowns that may require similarly unpredictable breakthroughs while the development of say, the Model 3, was an iterative improvement upon what was already available in the market at the time - impressive improvement though it may be.
Well, maybe not fully believe, but certainly believe that Elon will move the needle materially in the right direction. I'd much rather spend my money on a product that supports a billionaire who is determined to save the world (Elon) than I would spend my money on a product that supports a billionaire who seems determined to take it over at any cost (Page, Brin, etc)
Don't disagree on the autopilot, the killer app has always been for me stop-and-go traffic where the speeds are lower and the sensors need to do less vision and more radar based.
If you said "misdirection" or something, I would fully understand. But what's untrue about saying that plane autopilot is pretty limited?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_man_on_the_Clapham_omnibus
It's lying by omission.
In the context of someone using airplane autopilot as a defense of Tesla, they're not omitting anything. So I don't think that's a full answer to my question.
On balance, having a hype man for [PayPal Mafia voice] innovation in the world of atoms seems like a good thing. Musk may not be the best person for the role, but you probably have to be a little crazy to want to be a celebrity in the first place.
In actual fact though, heroes are both better and worse than regular people. The ancient Greeks understood this, which is why their myths are still compelling today.
We should be able to make our Teslas to be fully automated robo-taxis by now... and earn cash on the side....
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-robo-taxis-elon-musk-p...
I wouldn't trust my family's life, on his (often) delusional claims.
How can you even say that? I've heard more scientific discussions out of him compared to all the other CEO's I've ever heard speak combined. Musk has a head for physics and numbers and can easily come up with calculations for classical mechanics, material technology, information theory off the top of your head. For you to say the contrary is doublespeak.
>He's a businessman, not a scientist
This is the point that my comment refuted.
When he took over in 2008, Tesla had just started producing the first roadster, which was really just a conversion kit for a lotus. After musk became CEO, Tesla became the world's most valuable car company...
I've never seen anyone claim Musk did that. What are you on about?
> Most of the achievements people ascribe to him aren't even his. Musk bought the company then gave himself the title of 'founder
They are not the same person by any means, but they do share similarities
The bending over backwards is being done by the haters, not by his supporters. If anything his supporters are pretty quiet and just vote with their money.
There's a very odd tendency for people to engage with corporate PR packages in the same way they engage in interpersonal interactions. In the abstract, sure, they get that it's a crafted artifact meant to maximize profits, but in the immediate sense... they act as though the words have any intrinsic meaning at all rather than "white noise that maximizes likelihood of profit, while ideally not instigating litigation or regulation."
It's not unique to Tesla. It's every single time a major corp. issues a significant public statement, as though it's some sort of earnest missive from the founder rather than a PR-crafted artifact vetted by legal, compliance, and probably the COO and CMO, if not a board member or two.
Corps are profit-maximizing engines. They are not your buddies. They are not speaking from the heart. They're not even spinning something that started off as something from the heart. They are designing cognitive drone strikes meant to optimize public reception of current business practices.
I know of one case where the warning label on a lawnmower that rocks can be thrown conflicted with the advertising picture of a kid close to a lawnmower and therefore the company doesn't believe that warning lable. I'm not sure what came of it (probably settled out of court for big $$$). However many companies are careful what they say.
I'm saying that their words are very carefully crafted, and should be engaged with as the product of artifice, not genuine expression.
I mean, if THIS was vetted by legal and compliance, they’re, er, probably not very good.
The same "highly knowledgable people" who have been shorting TSLA and parroting that the company is going broke any moment now, surely.
I'm actually surprised people aren't ashamed to write such utter nonsense in a place like HN.
Being an idiot conman and being a technical genius are not mutually exclusive. And clearly being an idiot conman and being the CEO of a valuable company aren't mutually exclusive. Musk's idiotic conning has repeatedly gotten Tesla into serious legal trouble, including running a con - and it's a plain con job - about Tesla's autonomous vehicle capabilities. I know I am being mean to Elon by calling him an idiot and if I were trying to be neutral I might say "recklessly dishonest." But facts are facts.
You are not being mean, just silly. Elon clearly isn't an "idiot" however you stretch the meaning of the word, he's a highly capable and successful man and has demonstrated repeatedly his skill, both in engineering and entrepreneurship. And your opinion isn't a fact.
~~~
[...]I am not denying that he is talented and he probably has a > 105 IQ.
The Autopilot controversy is just a straight con job, and a very stupid one. The BS about the $420 stock price was a horrendously stupid con job. His disinformation mongering about coronavirus - when he is smart enough to know the truth - is also a con job, both for his fans and his workers. Deliberately under-counting workers injuries at Tesla plants is conning safety regulators - it's not as dumb as Elon's other cons, but it's a con. Removing safety markers because Elon doesn't like them aesthetically is maybe not a con job but it is remarkably idiotic. The PR-motivated stuff about Musk engineering a solution to those kids trapped in Thailand - straight-up con job, and one that blew up in his face due to his idiotic and narcissitic use of Twitter. Hyperloop (remember that?) was always a con job, and one that was so transparently stupid that nobody but Musk could have gotten away with it.
I could go on. The point is that I am calling Musk an "idiot conman" because of
a) his well-documented affinity for conning his customers, fans, investors, and government agencies
b) his well-documented acts of being a huge idiot, including in his planning and execution of most of the above con jobs
If Tesla acted like a normal responsible company, they should have been out of cash like all the nay-sayers said. Instead they frauded and scammed their way alive.
It also shows how VC money and hype can distort competition. Every EV company out there is not just competing with ICEs but also Tesla's inflated pockets. Which, IMHO, stifles innovation in that sector.
Sorry to nitpick but highly knowledgeable people will surely never claim Musk is an idiot anything. He is definitely a genius in several ways.
For something so technologically advanced as self-driving cars, his stuttering style seems to convey more sincerity to the general public than Steve Job's glib speech ever would
But Musk as a human isn't so great. He'd do better to keep his mouth shut sometimes, and lay off Twitter every now and again. Between falsely accusing people of being pedophiles, claiming to take Tesla private in a tweet, and various other "incidents", he's kind of an idiot when it comes to PR.
Sure, a $1 million dollar loan from family is pretty generous, and an amazing starting place - certainly not a "from nothing" tale. However, it's not outlandish money for a business loan to a top-rated business school graduate with extensive industry experience either.
I'd also wager if you gave most people $1 million dollars, they would not turn it into billions within their lifetime.
Donald Trump had already taken over the business in 1971.
Seriously disingenuous to call it "his father's real estate empire" 30 years later.
Even more disingenuous to claim he received $413 million in today's dollars through tax dodges - it's not like you get paid by paying less taxes; that was money earned regardless. Not to mention the framing of "tax dodging" vs "paying the minimum amount the government required by law". (Taxes are due tomorrow - did you decide to pay more than you were required just out of generosity? I'd bet not.) It's also unclear what "records" the article is citing, since Trump's tax returns famously have never been released. I'd like to think, by now, if something nefarious was up with the Trump tax returns, the IRS would have taken notice...
Clearly the NYT has an axe to grind. Their word choice, and decision to lump a decade into one monetary number, and represent earnings earned while serving as company president as some sort of fatherly gift is clearly a misrepresentation of reality.
> Trump started out with 100's of millions
Flatly, this is wrong. Ran the company for 30 years before earning that money. That's not "starting out" no matter what way you want to frame it.
So, in short, this myth is busted.
A few thoughts: there are other sources that say there were significant other inputs, up to and including someone going to a Trump casino and buying $3.5M in chips and not playing. And there's the inflation value - a $1M loan in the 1960s is a lot more than $1M now.
> business loan to a top-rated business school graduate
Numerous people (including the faculty at said business school) have said that Trump was the worst student they'd ever seen, and at least one has made the claim that if it weren't for significant donations, Trump would never have graduated.
> I'd also wager if you gave most people $1 million dollars, they would not turn it into billions within their lifetime.
Quite possibly true. But in Trump's case he could have done absolutely nothing with the money he inherited and relied on earned interest and be richer than he is now.
Also a myth that's been busted numerous times. You don't live an extravagant life, gold plated everything, private jets, numerous high-rise towers, restaurants, golf courses, hotels and more without spending a single penny - which is the premise of that assertion. That assertion also assumes Trump inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, which isn't true, and would have had to make near perfect stock market investments over 50+ years, which nobody can achieve. So, essentially, the premise is total garbage.
> Trump casino and buying $3.5M
The casino's came way after Trump took over the organization. So zero impact on his inheritance, which was the initial claim.
Look, I know a lot of people don't like Trump, and have a serious vested interest in seeing him fail or knocking him down several pegs... but this is just petty and an untrue representation of reality. There's plenty of real things to knock him with... but this isn't one of them.
I would be very hesitant to criticise someone who has arguably done/will do more for the continuation for humanity than anyone else who has ever lived.
Maybe it's your definition of "isn't great" that needs re-calibration.
Because he's building some electric cars? How low is your bar?
The idea that he's a "polymath"[1] completely whitewashes the actual scientists and engineers who did the actual work behind SpaceX and Tesla and SolarCity. I have seen literally zero evidence that Musk understands the physics and mathematics required to actually engineer a rocket or electronic car. For that matter, while SpaceX has made admirable technical contributions to economic spaceflight, they are not innovating new technologies in the way that government space agencies are (especially NASA).
He seems like a decent programmer and, when he's not high on Twitter, a very good tech CEO. It seems like he has a rare "spark of vision." But translating these admirable qualities into universal genius is just worshipping the Cult of the CEO. Musk is, first and foremost, a celebrity venture capitalist.
[1] Edit - I know you didn't say "polymath," I was responding to another rant from a few days ago. I do hear the term tossed around a lot and it drives me up a wall.
What many people don't realize is that these people are not genius engineers, they are all genius marketers. Their amazing talent is not in creating something useful, but in convincing other people (investors, buyers, voters) to give them money.
The man is no idiot, and while some of the things he has said have not come true, or not been true to begin with, i do not think it is not reasonable to describe him as a “conman.”
The Autopilot controversy is just a straight con job, and a very stupid one. The BS about the $420 stock price was a horrendously stupid con job. His disinformation mongering about coronavirus - when he is smart enough to know the truth - is also a con job, both for his fans and his workers. Deliberately under-counting workers injuries at Tesla plants is conning safety regulators - it's not as dumb as Elon's other cons, but it's a con. Removing safety markers because Elon doesn't like them aesthetically is maybe not a con job but it is remarkably idiotic. The PR-motivated stuff about Musk engineering a solution to those kids trapped in Thailand - straight-up con job, and one that blew up in his face due to his idiotic and narcissitic use of Twitter. Hyperloop (remember that?) was always a con job, and one that was so transparently stupid that nobody but Musk could have gotten away with it.
I could go on. The point is that I am calling Musk an "idiot conman" because of
a) his well-documented affinity for conning his customers, fans, investors, and government agencies
b) his well-documented acts of being a huge idiot, including in his planning and execution of most of the above con jobs
When driving a car, if you take your hands off a car, you will crash within seconds. Either you will come to a corner, or the shape of the road will just cause you to drift off. You are always zooming past obstacles that are meters away from you. Often less.
Planes are different. Even without an autopilot, the pilots have trim wheels that allow them to adjust all the surfaces so the plane flys excatly level and stable when they aren't touching the controls.
So even without an autopilot, the plane is able to fly for minutes at a time without the pilot touching the controls. Eventually the balance will change, fuel is burns and the wind conditions might change, but these things happen slowly.
All the autopilot really does is extend the amount of time the pilots can avoid touching the controls from minutes to hours.
The other major difference with planes is the available recovery time from any issue is much longer, at least when not landing/taking off. When planes are near the ground the pilots are require to pay just as much attention as Tesla drivers are, actually far more attention.
But when planes are at high altitude, pilots have tens of seconds to detect something is going wrong, disengage the autopilot and correct the attitude. There are no obstacles. ATC keeps other planes far away.
But with cars, you are always seconds away from hitting an object. The driver needs to be able to take over from the autopilot instantly.
Plane autopilots work great for planes. They simply don't transfer over to cars. The operating environment is completely different.
Yes, there are absolutely misconceptions that may happen with the general public who think that "Autopilot" is completely autonomous but anyone who actually owns the vehicle and has the ability to drive with it would have to be willingly negligent in order to consider it "dangerous" or "deceptive". As an example, someone posted a link as a comment to the OP stating that Elon has been marketing Teslas as FSD when, in reality, the blog post in question just says that every Tesla has the hardware that makes it capable of it and that's absolutely true.
You're right that the general public auto-translates "Autopilot" to "Fully Self-Driving" but that's just as much a media and reporting problem as it is a Tesla or Elon problem.
Generally we ascribe meaning to words by how people use it, and I'm not sure I'd call marketers people.
This is describing cruise control.
“Meanwhile, in 1958, Chrysler’s new Auto-Pilot was of course just a cruise control.”
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/history/automotive-hist...
And whether you call it cruise control or not, the definition still matches a thing the car actually does. It has lane keep assist too.
At which point you would immediately veer off the highway and smash into an overpass, so no it doesn't.
It maintains speed without human involvement, which is the same thing lane keep assist does. It steers the car to keep it in the lane. Presumably even if the lane goes out to a pier and dumps the car in the sea.
On the other hand, lane assist is good, but it is not good enough to keep the lane without supervision. It can get confused by strange markings, obstacles, construction work, weather etc. It might fail to keep the car in its lane, although it is easily possible for a human.
Actually, that is an utter lie, as there isn't any hardware and/or software in the world right now that is capable of "Fully Self-Driving". Sure, in limited conditions, many of these cars can drive on their own and not immediately hit the first tree or child they can find. But the current track record, especially for Tesla, is not much greater than that. And there is no hardware that could drive a car in heavy rain or snow. Hell, the sensors we have would just not work in some of the real driving conditions that people care about.
In general, in driving, things happen too fast for any control assist system to allow hands off driving.
EDIT: Any existing control assist system
And I don't think we are that close, since "self driving cars" still seem to be limited to "driving at 25 MPH around Mountain View and Sunnyvale where the curbs and streets have been pre-mapped to within inches".
I see you've never skippered a boat.
I assume, just like with cars, things can happen quickly with a boat.
The autopilot for a aircraft does whatever it is supposed to do without human supervision. If you turn on keep heading, it will keep the heading (within physical limitations). I guess it is similar for a boat.
Lane assist, however, requires constant human supervision because it is just an assistant. I think this is the important difference that needs to be highlighted here.
Add a bunch of cool YouTube videos of people presumably sleeping on the wheel.
Add a CEO who claims "car can run nightly errands soon" and "level 5 very soon" (by redefining level 5) and you easily have the currenct perception.
Must have vision of vehicle at all times. Must maintain one finger on dead man's switch on phone. Vehicle owner must not be distracted.
(Oh, and it may well drive through your half-opened garage door because there's no sensors at that height, and nothing could ever go wrong with a garage door, right?)
Yes, but let us recognize the stark reality and known limitations of "the people" in the driving public - as Tesla should (and in my opinion did not or does not).
Not suggesting you are, but Tesla cannot hand-wave it.
While their may be an outsized amount of technical persons here on Hacker News that are perhaps aware of at least some of the technical risks and limitations of Autopilot and/or that state of autonomous driving systems in general, it is simply unrealistic and a fiction to expect that the broader driving public is going to be able to safely utilize an opaque, autonomous system with minimal safeguards and written instructions - particularly if they can be easily defeated.
We are talking here of newly minted drivers in their compulsive teen years all the way through older persons who may not familiar with technology nearly at all.
Take some time to visit TikTok and YouTube[1] where it is replete with fans and other owners are "showing off" Autopilot in dangerous and creatively dangerous ways that generate clicks and likes, pushing Autopilot to the limit and/or otherwise not paying attention to the roadway while Autopilot is engaged.
It is difficult for me to fathom that Tesla is not acutely aware of these issues given their focus on social media viral campaigns.
In fact, when my wife and I test drove a Model X in Chicago a few years back, one of the first things that the Tesla salesperson did was to encourage my wife to remove her hands from the steering wheel in Autopilot mode (which she did not). I cannot say for sure if this internal Tesla sales practice is alive and well today, but I would discount it.
In my view, this is and was always a core part of Tesla's sales model to move metal - and, thus, I think that Tesla tacitly approves of the social media abuses I noted above to draw attention to their vehicles (unless they are talking with a regulator or in a court of law). Case in point, other automakers are taking the strategy of installing in-cabin driver monitoring systems in their vehicles and/or limiting the use of autonomous features to certain roadways and roadway types which I think is at least safer in principle given the unsophistication of the driving public.
Tesla could employ the same in their vehicles, but then it would take away a key differentiator in their product from all others. Tesla knows this, so they resist.
My fiancee was told to do the same thing with her new Toyota Corolla when purchasing it with lane assist...not that it's totally related but sort of enforces your point more that the general public is where the issue really shines.
Musk may be many, many things - perhaps even a conman - but he is in no way an “idiot” in any sane definition of that word.
That and the richest man on the planet. What does this tell about us as a species? Some compare him to the late Jobs. I think this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
16-richest, from the last Forbes ranking that shows up on Google.
https://web.archive.org/web/20170201120106/https://www.tesla...
They wanted people to believe that this had more capabilities than it really does.
> All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.
The first time this lie might have been just sheer incompetence. But after three upgrades, I can only assume that the lie is malicious and negligent.
Musk has been claiming that his "fleet" of 10,000 robotaxis will arrive next year for a couple of years already. I mean, he is going to be right eventually.
But Tesla's competition, e.g., NVIDIA et al., are claiming that for full-self driving we'll at least need hardware with an order of magnitude more TOPs than what the current generation provides, and that we won't see that hardware before 2022-2023. They are also not promising that this hardware will suffice, only that they are pretty sure that it cannot be done without it.
I'm skeptical of Tesla's claims to say the least, but I guess we'll see. Statistically speaking, Musk predictions about when we are going to see full-self driving have been 100% wrong to date.
All Tesla vehicles now have all the hardware needed for full self-driving capability
"Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars"
Chemistry kits with a sample of every element in the periodic table should advertise them as "have all the materials needed for COVID-19 vaccine."
Not that this invalidates your point at all, but doing that literally would actually be extremely expensive and difficult for some of the elements.
Huh but a co-pilot is much more capable than an auto-pilot system. An auto-pilot mostly keeps you level, going the right speed, and pointing in the right direction, and can do some limited landing and things.
That sounds to me exactly like what Tesla's system does?
A co-pilot is a human who can take complete control from you for the rest of the whole flight and deal with any emergency or unexpected situation. The co-pilot is much more advanced than the autopilot.
But thats just how I understood it before.
"No calories" (not true again)
There are a hundred ways to say that something won't cause you to gain weight. They chose the one that sounds like it means that even though it doesn't, because it also has a different meaning which is technically true.
In contrast, Telsa "autopilot" requires constant vigilance since you might have to take over without any warning.
That's a very broad statement. Autopilots can disengage at any time and you are supposed to take control pretty much immediately.
Neither version eliminates the need for the pilot/ driver to cease situational control. Pilots have absolutely flown into the side of mountains while on autopilot. (Ironically called "Controlled flight into terrain"). The big difference between the two is in an aircraft there is less to collide with when the pilot screws up.
The big problem isn't whether the two are actually similar or not, the problem is most people assume that autopilot on an aircraft does a lot more than what it actually does. In most cases, autopilot in an aircraft maintains heading and altitude, that's pretty much it.
Adding to all the confusion is the fact that "Autopilot" in aircraft can mean a giant pile of different things, but the term was originally coined quite a while ago to refer to basic altitude/ bearing hold.
Now. It used to only require you to touch the steering wheel for 1 second every 15 minutes.
Until regulators clamped down on that as grossly inadequate.
I read it a few years ago and again a few months ago; from what I recall in both cases the manual insisted that drivers keep their hands on the wheels. But this is at odds with how their cars are promoted and evidently programmed. It seems to me that Tesla has been coyly but deliberately encouraging and facilitating a usage pattern which, for legal/liability reasons, they forbid in the manual.
I'd agree with you there. Same with Summon. "Deal with a fussy child while your car comes to you" says the promotion. Legalese says "must not be distracted (like you might be by a fussy child)".
I'm sure that the manual probably says something exactly like that: "Driver is required to keep hands on the wheel. Your vehicle will warn you to put your hands on the wheel if they are not every fifteen minutes". Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, and don't mind our CEO blatantly not keeping his hands on the wheel in our videos.
No, the likelihood of incident is vastly lower in the air, but the required reaction time is not necessarily different and could easily be a lot lower, particularly if you are flying IFR. That's the whole point, much like in a car, a pilot must have eyes outside the cockpit.
Again, I'm not arguing that Tesla is right here about advertising, just that the two technologies are very similar in nature. The other big difference is the fact that pilots have to go through training and are tested on their understanding of the specific technology they control. Drivers, never have to be certified or trained on any specific vehicle.
If a pilot treats autopilot in a plane the way some people treat it in a Tesla, there would be a lot more fatalities in air travel, particularly in smaller aircraft with older technology.
That's the point, there is a vast difference in the publics perception of what autopilots do in aircraft versus what they actually do.
they even replaced - hardware to - capability to be even more ambiguous.
Well yeah... transposing terminology is how an analogy is supposed to work. And I didn't pick the analogies - Tesla did and then you proposed another flying analogy!
> In a car, the co-pilot is typically someone that sits in the passenger seat and functions only as an additional set of eyes.
Do you mean a co-driver? Like in a rally car? I've never seen that called a 'co-pilot' before.
If you don't want to confuse with aeroplanes, why didn't you suggest 'co-driver'?
Can you use that in a sentence?
Like 'will you be my co-pilot while I drive to the store?' I don't see it to be honest.
"I need you to be my co-pilot and watch out for cops."
In naming their system after a system the public has a poor understanding of, Tesla is being misleading.
Tesla knew this but they did it anyway because $$$.
I think they should avoid these sort of airplane analogies entirely and just describe features as they are. E.g. call lane assist "lane assist", call adaptive cruise control "adaptive cruise control." These are terms that reasonably convey what the systems do, without exploiting the public's general ignorance of how airplanes work.
"Autopilot" remains a very misleading term in the car context.
A co-pilot is equal to a pilot.
An autopilot automates just some functions of piloting.
What Autopilot offers is not "Full Self Driving", but don't pretend like the features on your Jeep are equivalent.
Adaptive Cruise Control typically works only above a given speed. Tesla’s does work at low speed too.
At least Tesla cars seem to do more than the German cars I have driven before.
I have had multiple people tell me about how revolutionary Tesla's blind spot warning system is, because it's adaptive to relative speeds, and not "just a dumb sensor like everyone else's".
Except even my entry level 2015 Audi has it. Car in your blind spot or just behind that's at your speed, or slower? Warning time is adjusted accordingly. Sit in traffic while cars whiz by you in the HOV lane? It accounts for the massive speed differential and alerts you far earlier.
But somehow at least some Tesla owners think that "no-one but Tesla does this".
I get a visual (and optional audio -- which I disabled) warning and a little steering wheel resistance to bring it back into the middle of the lane.
While I'm not sure what the minimum speed for adaptive cruise control is, but I use it in freeway stop & go traffic often.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autonomous/tesla-ve...
Elon became a master at low key commenting on features "soon to be released" and on the "verge of" but those comments are non binding. You know what those comments do? They become nudges for stonk buyers who want to get in on the deal early before the features are released & the stonk price goes higher. Yeah, Elon knows how to make potential investors go crazy with the "buy low and sell high" fomo; Just read his Twitter feed filled with carrots on the proverbial stick. Oh Elon, you cheeky, cheeky bastard :)
TTYl everybody, gotta go catch my robo taxi! opens Waymo on smartphone
PS: Never forget, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning were the original Tesla visionaries, Elon pretty much just bought his way into the vision...and pushed out Martin Eberhard.
"Autopilot" is deceptive. In aviation, it's hard to engage an autopilot until you have a desired altitude, heading, and speed. And that's in the sky, far from guard rails and hopefully far from other traffic.
Oh, and by the way, before you do any of that you have to go to school, pass a rigorous practical test, get your hands on an airplane with autopilot, put fuel in it, get cleared for taxi, takeoff, climbout and cruise. There are some hurdles to jump over.
I wish they had used some other word to brand this stuff.
And, they've been saying "Level 5 this year" for a few years now. This is the kind of hype that got us the "AI Winter" back in the 1970s. Let's not go there again.
You can't do this with an aircraft autopilot either, there must always be a human pilot ready to take over at a moment's notice.
I find it rather droll that the common use of the words completely inverted the original meaning.
Aviation autopilots can do even less than that and yet they are still called "autopilot". Altitude hold? That's autopilot.
Also, "copilots" are generally fully capable of flying the aircraft and have the exact same capabilities.
If you are irked about the 'autopilot' moniker, then ditch aviation terminology entirely.
Ask a normal person what they think autopilot does and they'll say "the plane flys by itself". Using that for cars becomes "the car drives itself". Same for copilot, most people probably think they're there to help the pilot.
1. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/history/automotive-hist...
It's wasn't a 'whoopsie daisies we goofed up'.
It was a cynical play for market share.
I agree with this fully, although the reality now is if Tesla used this name Ford might sue them.
An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilot does not replace human operators. Instead, autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems) [0]
Sterile cockpit does not seem to apply at cruising altitude though, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_Cockpit_Rule: "The Sterile Cockpit Rule is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulation stating that during critical phases of flight (normally below 10,000 feet (3,050 m)), only activities required for the safe operation of the aircraft may be carried out, and all non-essential activities in the cockpit are forbidden."
So... a bit like a Tesla parking itself in some conditions?
Yeah. That's almost completely unlike a Tesla parking.