Germany doesn't get life in #Neuland. VW and most of the German industry are respective leaders in some niche by being good at through mechanical engineering IP. Electrical cars are simple. Innovation is in software, DRM business models and battery tech which is all completely foreign to the German industry. People here get Teslas for the charging infrastructure alone, as the alternative is a huge mess. Don't forget, VW is still trying hard to lobby for their known turf, pushing for hybrids and hydrogen combustion mechanical marvels...
Germany doesn't get it. The pandemic has shown, the era of old white me... industrialist has forced the country between a rock and a hard place.
While Musk is shooting consumer internet into space, our leaders had long, exhausting talks, recognizing Germany's need to modernize and embrace technical progression and they fearlessly concluded: It's time to let go of fax by 2030.
One thing to point out about VW is that their CEO, Herbert Diess, seems to get it. To name two anecdotal pieces of evidence, Elon had asked him to become CEO of Tesla back in 2015 [1] and he had conversations with Chinese battery supplier CATL about car batteries as far back as ten years ago [2].
[1] https://electrek.co/2021/04/13/ceo-elon-musk-reportedly-hire...
[2] https://www.teslarati.com/volkswagen-herbert-diess-ev-cell-p...
On the bright side, two of the leading companies in the mRNA vaccine space are based in Germany (BioNTech and CureVac), so there is still some ability to innovate.
Why can’t you use a Tesla for a family car? Most of them have four seats. What else do you need for most families?
There isn't really a great EV in that category yet, but I hope it's just a question of time.
Obviously you can use any car as a family car, but my impression is that Teslas are more targeted at commuters (except maybe the Model X, but that's so expensive that it's not really an option for any family I know).
A new Model S was too rich for my blood, so I picked one up used. Great family car. Massive amounts of storage. We're out of the stroller years but it would be great with a stroller.
Even the smaller Model 3 is plenty for a 4-person family, while it doesn’t beat in liters because of ceiling height the trunk is very spacious.
So I searched Wikipedia and the types of car I was thinking about are apparently called "Compact MPV" [1]. My thinking was that these cars are mostly targeted at families, so I called them "family cars", but apparently people have different ideas what a family car is.
My point was that VW is going to end up building a large number of different EVs in the next couple of years, and Tesla will face the problem that each of their models will have to compete with 3 models from VW.
No matter what model Tesla your interested in, there will be a car from the VW group with slightly more space, and one that's cheaper, and maybe one that's a bit sportier. It's going to be very different from now, where there's very little competition to Tesla (if you want an EV)
I like Teslas in general, but their decision to remove things like buttons and stalks from their vehicles is both dangerous and stupid, and people have already died because of it.
Looking forward for that link of a death caused by operating the wipers. I haven’t touched mine (not Tesla) for years since they work automatically, maybe other families have special windshield wiper adjustment needs?
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/26/21154502/tesla-autopilo...
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/01/waymo-ceo-tesla-is-not-...
Tesla resists efforts to prevent distracted driving, and also resists the consistent call from regulators properly set expectations for the capabilities of its autopilot feature. People are dying as a result. You'll notice that you won't find the same articles about GM's SuperCruise feature, because they don't oversell the feature and have more safety measures in place to make sure drivers aren't distracted.
Waymo's CEO even claims that Tesla isn't a competitor. There is an obvious conflict here, but he's not the only one saying that 1) Tesla will never have a fully autonomous driving system and 2) their existing autopilot feature is falsely advertised and dangerous.
You’re just pushing your agenda here. By the way, a tip on that: that first site completely discredits any kind of safety discussion as soon as it’s mentioned. It scares you with a long list of accidents when only 6 are potentially related to autopilot in a decade of its existence, vs 1.3 million deaths happening every year for all car brands.
> Remember that BMW and Audi combined had 9 driver fatalities in nearly 900,000 vehicle years? Clearly, 11 Tesla driver fatalities in 265,000 vehicle years is not a good start. But even those numbers likely understate the danger of driving a Tesla...
> Even without making any adjustment whatsoever for missing fatality data, Tesla drivers are much more likely to die than their peers driving other luxury cars. Eleven deaths in 265,290 vehicle-years is a stunningly high driver fatality rate of 41.46. That’s quadruple the rate of Audi and BMW, and more than triple the rate of all luxury cars combined.
The issue is whether design decisions by Tesla are leading to fatalities. They are, if you compare them to the luxury segment they are in. Advertising an autopilot feature which does not work, and moving standard controls to a distracting, inconsistent touch screen interface is leading to more crashes and more deaths.
Tip of the hat: don't discredit information because you don't like it.
This is why I don't think a Tesla is a feature complete car -- it simply lacks the common set of safety features found in every other modern vehicle.
Not exactly. It’s on the stalk as a physical button.
> On Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, Tesla didn’t install normal windshield wiper settings through a steering wheel stalk.
> Instead, the automaker is detecting the rain through its Autopilot cameras and automatically adjusting the speed based on the strength of the rainfall.
> If the driver wants to adjust the speed, they need to do it through the center touchscreen.
> The driver in Germany was adjusting those settings when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed.
> The driver in Germany was adjusting those settings when he lost control of the vehicle and crashed.
Yes, user error. He should have used the physical button or voice controls instead. I mean, when driving, the first rule is pay attention to the road.
Anyone can snipe and nitpick, but in actual use with responsible drivers the system works great. With irresponsible drivers, all bets are off, as with any car.
As well as automatic and voice controls.
As with any car, if the driver chooses to look away from the road for any reason, they have to be responsible about it, and they did have other options here.
Sure there are people who also hit cruise control on a 96 Accord and expect it to drive itself, but Honda never told them that would work. These are the kind of realities Tesla should responsibly deal with as a mass market manufacturer, but they don't want to take the PR hit to accept accountability and potentially have to refund millions of dollars for a feature that doesn't work as advertised. They'd rather blame the drivers for as long as they can get away with it.
This is a common misconception, easily avoided by getting some firsthand experience owning a Tesla.
We literally do not use the touchscreen for driving. And for that matter, almost not at all while driving.
As with any tool there will be those who misuse it and put others at risk. I look forward to hearing you give even a single example where a human driver was not to blame. And, preemptively so you won’t waste your own time, I don’t mean citing links where if you dig in you find that the link does not support your case.
It’s true that over time people will learn to rely on controls less and less. The world has been through similar transitions with horse and buggy -> car for example. There will be accidents along the way but the end result will be a world with far fewer accidents.
Its possible there is a better way to get to that world, but I haven’t thought of one. Perfect systems do not just spring up out of nowhere.
So a software update has never changed the order or location of user interface elements?
> I look forward to hearing you give even a single example where a human driver was not to blame
There are at least 3 known cases where autopilot failed and someone died. (Also note that no one has died from the failure of Waymo or SuperCruise driver assist tech.) Here are a few articles in the past few days on the same subject.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/23/business/teslas-autopilot...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2021/04/20/tesla-a...
https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/fatal-driverless-...
The NTSB has also outlined the many issues with Tesla's autopilot feature.
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Documents/2020-HWY18FH011-B...
> The investigation identified the following safety issues:
> - Driver Distraction.
> - Risk Mitigation Pertaining to Monitoring Driver Engagement.
> - Risk Assessment Pertaining to Operational Design Domain.
> - Limitations of Collision Avoidance Systems.
> - Insufficient Federal Oversight of Partial Driving Automation Systems.
> - Need for Event Data Recording Requirements for Driving Automation Systems.
As far as I know, Tesla has not even responded to this report. A good place to start heading towards that better world is for Tesla to demonstrate some accountability.
Depending how you falsely define "failure," Autopilot can be falsely said to fail all the time.
If you set an unrealistic bar, it can fail each and every second of every drive, according to some fallacious definitions.
Fully replacing the driver is not a claimed feature of the current system.
Future systems, sure. But current systems? Nope.
Therefore, as has been clearly stated in many places, the human driver is responsible for maintaining safe operation of the vehicle.
So, the human is to blame in these cases, not Autopilot.
> The Tesla Autopilot system did not provide an effective means of monitoring the driver’s level of engagement with the driving task, and the timing of alerts and warnings was insufficient to elicit the driver’s response to prevent the crash or mitigate its severity. Requirements are needed for driver monitoring systems for advanced driver assistance systems that provide partial driving automation (SAE Level 2 systems), and Tesla needs to develop applications that more effectively sense the driver’s level of engagement and that alert drivers who are not engaged...
> Despite the system’s known limitations, Tesla does not restrict where Autopilot can be used. Tesla should incorporate system safeguards that limit the use of partial driving automation systems (Autopilot) to those conditions for which they were designed...
> The Tesla’s collision avoidance assist systems were not designed to, and did not, detect the crash attenuator. Because this object was not detected, (a) Autopilot accelerated the SUV to a higher speed, which the driver had previously set by using adaptive cruise control, (b) the forward collision warning did not provide an alert, and (c) the automatic emergency braking did not activate. For partial driving automation systems to be safely deployed in a high-speed operating environment, collision avoidance systems must be able to effectively detect potential hazards and warn of potential hazards to drivers
Autopilot 1) failed to detect a distracted driver and engage them, 2) is not limited by Tesla to areas where it actually works, and 3) depends on collision avoidance which does not work. Tesla is claiming they will solve these problems without LiDAR. Volvo, Waymo, GM, VW, and many more claim that even semi-autonomous driving isn't possible without it. We'll see how many more people have to die before Tesla changes their mind.
It’s likely that implementing the suggested solutions would add more problems than it solves. For one thing some of them would exacerbate one problem you seem to be concerned about, driver overconfidence and over reliance on the system.
So while these bureaucratic opinions are fascinating, like many such committee driven conclusions they should be taken with a grain of salt. Tesla has thought things through pretty well.
Ultimately the best solution for now imho is to keep full responsibility with the driver.
> So while these bureaucratic opinions are fascinating, like many such committee driven conclusions they should be taken with a grain of salt. Tesla has thought things through pretty well.
Every other driver assist technology limits its own scope to prevent over-reliance. That's because those companies (Subaru/Toyota/GM/Ford/Volvo/BMW/VW) are working with regulators across the world to develop and adhere to standards. If Tesla's solution was better, you'd have some numbers to back it up instead of a bizarre assertion that industry experts are suddenly clueless when they are part of a regulatory body.
Tesla has created an unreliable semi-autonomous system and made it available before it's ready against the advice of the NTSB and other regulators. That is irresponsible and people who would have otherwise been paying attention have died because they, like you, assumed that "Tesla has thought things through pretty well."
Much like an IT department that fights tooth and nail against a third party security audit, it should be obvious why Tesla is so dedicated to pretending that there isn't a problem. They don't want to admit autopilot isn't ready, and will likely never be dependable until they have proximity sensors in addition to cameras like every other solution does. They'd rather blame the drivers for relying on the technology they just paid for. It's a ridiculous defense that will ultimately fall apart.
BTW about FSD I don’t expect it anytime soon. I paid for it (yes twice!) to support the company at a time when it was in a fragile financial state. It does give me some small benefits for now but I do look forward to more in the future. I don’t know how it will turn out but I’m thrilled to help do a small part to enable awesome futuristic technology! And to support a company that is not brain-locked sticking to the playbook of a committee of fuddy duddy old world car thinkers.
Can you think of a better way?
Really. The obvious (bad) answer people come up with here is "just wait until it's perfect and release it then, and only then."
But I don't see how that's realistic. How, in your mind, could that possibly work?
Step 1 is to not sell something called Full Self-Driving/Autopilot when it can't do either of those things. Step 2 is to develop a reliable system (per NTSB advice) to make sure the driver is paying attention. Step 3 is to make sure it's only active in the domain where it can be trusted. Step 0 is to not do anything else until your collision avoidance works as well as your competitors.
Consider these differences:
"Subaru EyeSight Driver Assist Technology" -- with disclaimer about not being optimal in all conditions
"GM SuperCruise hands-free driving-assistance" -- with a similar disclaimer
"Tesla Full Self-Driving" -- and their disclaimer is "Full Self-Driving is in early limited access Beta and must be used with additional caution. It may do the wrong thing at the worst time, so you must always keep your hands on the wheel and pay extra attention to the road. Do not become complacent."
The marketing bait and switch is pretty common, but this is "Thanks for the $10,000 USD for Full Self Driving. It doesn't work. Don't trust it. In fact, pay extra attention while it's on."
I have never seen the tech community so excited about paying to be alpha testers for technology that is literally killing its users.
I don’t agree that the system is killing its users of course. That kind of inflammatory wording doesn’t help anything imho. The users are possibly contending for Darwin awards… they are doing it to themselves.
If that platform works out then Tesla is going to compete not against one or two new models, but they'll suddenly compete against two dozen models.
Unless VW fucks something up in the next year, I just don't know how Tesla expects to compete with them. Tesla only has a handful of high end cars; they have no family cars, no vans, no compact cars, no busses.
VW is great at building models for every niche and at every price point. No matter what kind of car you want, VW (or Skoda or Audi) has multiple options for you.
Tesla is currently still ahead, but I'm not sure they can match the breadth of VWs upcoming model palette (if VWs new platform works out).