> The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.
That very same embedded video from Tesla has the title "Autopilot Full Self-Driving Hardware"[2], as well, further confusing the two.
[1] https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...
[2] https://vimeo.com/192179727?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&...
If Musks moonshot had been successfull, we would not be having this discussion now.
But it was not, and now Tesla is in trouble because they can’t deliver what people think they were promised.
When so many people "think" they were promised something then the more likely explanation is that the promises were misleading.
I think this was Tesla's strategy and it was a winning one too. Tesla got a lot of cash from that promise, helping it be the company it is now. But the strategy is also a victim of its own success because there comes a point to deliver on the promise and you can only delay that by doubling up on the promise for so long. Then so many people start asking questions at the same time it's like a bank run. The strategy goes bankrupt unless it can actually deliver.
Tesla isn't delivering what people not only were promised, but were actually sold for real money.
Musk very explicitly claimed in consumer shows that FSD would allow your Tesla not just to safely drive you around, but allow you to use it as a robotaxi, making money for you while you're at your own job.
I would find this very rewarding and lucrative.
I tried that in a Hyundai Sonata traveling at highway speeds. The car stayed in the lane, turning the wheel on its own as it was supposed to. My hands were off the wheel, but at no point did I feel comfortable enough to look elsewhere, or move my hands further than a couple of inches away from the wheel. It's completely pointless to me, and actually worse than that, it gives me one more thing to worry about. I suppose if all of the vehicles were 100% autonomous, and the entire highway infrastructure was set up with that expectation, I could go ahead and fully relax while the car drives itself completely. But this 10% automation is like an uncanny valley. Well, valley of terror is more like it.
Cruise control on the other hand seems fine, because my foot is basically in the same position with or without it. The automation just saves me from having to modulate the thing with my foot, and it's not making changes that have very fast, significant consequences.
I’ll add it makes the drive much safer, on occasion it’s slammed the brakes before I can react. Both of us together is much better than just one of us.
Do you think that's true in general? I've never left my foot hovering over the pedals, back to when cruise control first became popular. I rest my foot fully on the floor, which is much more comfortable, but requires that I move my foot to apply either the brake or the accelerator.
Maybe I am just living in the past with my 2007 Toyota Camry but cars have come a long way in just fifteen years. Just look at adaptive cruise control or lane assist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smf1uop7HoY
Maybe I am just in awe because I don't own a new car and don't feel the pain of things like replacing a broken windshield (holy smokes these new things are expensive to calibrate) but it is nice when these things work. However, when I drive someone else's new car I can totally see myself going fora new car if I could somehow justify it financially.
I’m having my Land Rovers windshield (with heated filaments and collision avoidance) replaced in a week. It’s a $50 deductible and they said a $50 calibration charge, but that wasn’t on the final bill. Given that these windshields are $500-$1500, I’m pretty happy with the cost.
Just a word of warning about how this can go.
Personally, I think if we had better laws Musk would be looking at charges of criminal negligence for encouraging people to think they have things like actual "autopilot" and "full self driving". But as it is, he lied his way to the top of the world's richest list. So Tesla's problems here are just the consequences of his actions.
I do it myself sometimes, but at least I recognize how annoying and inaccurate it is. It is kind of nice to have someone arguing these positions and even better to act on them, and I for one wish that these analyses held (the world would be a better place if they did). But the real world just doesn't care about your first principles, and even simple ideas present obstacles you never imagined. Musk knows this, but willfully leaves it out during his pep talks, which is dishonest. But sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself, which is quite chilling considering the amount of real power he's amassed (being able to launch large things into space is about as real as real power gets.)
This argument proves a little too much. Even if we assume that the sensors are equivalent to whatever input stream humans are working with, reduction of the problem to ”software eng” doesn’t mean it is tractable in our lifetime. Compare: ”Once you remove the requirement that employees work from the office, building a software engineer is a pure software problem.”
Hey, that's a good point!
This is correct, but only if you have the right drive-by-wire and sensor array tech. Essentially what you're saying is "Once you solve the hardware problem the rest is just software" which isn't particularly insightful.
What happens if Tesla can't solve the software problem because the sensors aren't providing the necessary data?
Which was my point. I'm intentionally making silly arguments that are valid from first principles, but clearly wrong in the real world. I'm sorry that wasn't obvious because I endeavored to make it so.
The point here is that Tesla have already sold the $10k FSD sensor pack to people and told them that one day in the future a software update will provide FSD, with no additional sensors necessary. Adding more sensors is not an option (well, maybe Tesla will do that for people who bought the upgrade, but it seems unlikely they'd do that for free.)
Hyperloop was a great example of a project that made no sence from first principles, yet he pushed it anyway. It makes no sence because it's capacity, passengers it can move per hour, is like 2% of a high-speed train line. Additionally he came up with some pure fantasy cost estimates where the whole things cost less to build than a cycle path would, budgeted $0 for land aquisition, compacting or earth-works.
Re software problem:
Human genome is now digital too now, so figuring out immortality is a pure software problem.
Making money on the stock market is a pure software problem.
Simulating a concious mind is a software problem.
> I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself
Maybe tha's what happens when you fire agressively anyone who disagrees and end up surrounded by yes-men
I can say this about a lot of things, but man, it scares me that there’s people in the world who are crazy enough to think that’s true. Even Elon Musk isn’t that delusional.
That is one of the best ways to lie. If you stop caring whether things are true, it can be much easier to sound like you believe whatever thing is most useful in the moment. And think of all the brain cycles you can save by not checking in with thinks like external reality or consistency with one's past statements.
Rather a missing algorithm.
Software can no doubt be capable of being written to implement the alg... but no one has a good enough alg or even knows if one can exist or can exist with tesla's limited sensors.
I'm not saying lying is all he did. But his major skill is hype. E.g., you cite his fintech history as something apparently good. But he got rich on that because after a merger he ended up as PayPal's CEO for like 6 months, after which he was fired. His major focus, apparently, was shifting away from Unix to Windows. Which even if it were a good idea at the time (it wasn't), it was a terrible priority for a fast-growing company.
People treating that as some sort of sign of business acumen, as opposed to a golden parachute for an arrogant chump correctly getting fired, is a great example of how good a hype man Musk is.
Because lying is hard work! Ask any politician, clergyman, lawyer, or nearest big corp C-suite leader. Noone said it was easy.
> tell a main paint is wet, and he has to touch it to be sure. But tell him there's an invisible man in the sky that created the universe, and the will believe you
Did you mean "start" as in founding a company or "start" as in purchase established existing companies?
> why work 100 hr weeks when you can just "lie"
Well 60 of those hours are playing wario on SNL then playing wario on twitter then strategizing with your PR firm on how to convince people that buying Twitter means you invented social media.
>blow up VC mna pipline for all the lidar based startup's
Better to blow up lidar pipeline VCs than autopiloting battery fires straight into pedestrians
> why do midwits always
Peak Dunning–Kruger effect I suppose.
Alright I'll go find some wealthy South African emerald mine owners and ask them to give birth to me.
Even worse, some people are falling for this scam.
Your idea of better laws would mean no Tesla and no SpaceX.
Tesla has replaced two million gasoline cars with electric cars, and given its current growth rate, and Musk's long standing plan to release progressively more affordable cars, this number will likely be massively larger in a few years.
Beyond Tesla's own sales, its success has sparked massive investment by other carmakers to push their electric vehicle manufacturing timetables forward. All told, Tesla has had a massive impact in pushing the world to replace gasoline vehicles with electric ones.
SpaceX, for its part, is responsible for reducing the cost of launching material to orbit ten fold, with another 100 fold reduction possible with StarShip. The spike at the end of this graph is almost solely due to SpaceX:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...
I see laws that prevent the emergence and flourishing of Tesla and SpaceX as far worse than current laws.
Put simply, if Musk only made one controversial call, this comment thread wouldn't exist. The many controversial calls cannot be easily disentangled.
Personally, I think that Tesla is not particularly healthy, and that its future is grim as mainstream car manufacturers get in on the EV action. Tesla is not particularly well regarded by Consumer Reports. Of the 16 EV cars with current rankings, Tesla's models are at spots 4, 10, 11, and 16, with low reliability scores. [1]
Tesla does have a big slice of the US EV market, but that's only 3% of the total market. It's perfectly plausible that Tesla's lead among tech enthusiasts, always a small fraction of a market [2], won't translate into mainstream acceptance, and that Tesla will enter a death spiral where their relatively low volumes mean they won't be able to keep up with the major car manufacturers. Their eventual fate could be what happened to so many promising early manufacturers of internal combustion cars: they become brands owned by bigger car companies. [3]
So personally, I think Musk lies did create a window of opportunity for him, but that as with so many liars, he sowed the seeds of Tesla's destruction with the same lies that enabled initial success.
[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/types/new/hybrids-evs/r...
[2] see the first graph here: https://thinkinsights.net/strategy/crossing-the-chasm/
[3] https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/planes-trains-and-...
What I see in Tesla: - extremely profitable car manufacturing. industry beating profits per car driven by cheaper BOM than legacy manufacturers, in large part due to innovation. margin of 30.5%. - Manufacturing limited - huge wait list despite accelerating production (Q1 2022 best quarter ever, 68% increase yoy). - huge investments in manufacturing across the supply chain starting to pay off. - for the first time, manufacturing investments that can rival premium legacies. With the factories in Berlin and Texas coming online, it’s believable that Tesla has capacity to produce in excess of a manufacturer like BMW. - very high purchaser satisfaction (the product is good). - large overall profit - already beating most in the industry.
We'll see how Telsa's finances go once competition heats up. A major source of profit for them is selling emissions credits to other companies. Which a) undercuts Tesla's claims to eco-goodness, and b) will surely decline as others EV sales pick up. We'll also see how much that profit is affected by recalls and lawsuits.
In many cases, high customer satisfaction is indicative of a good future, but I'm not sure that's the case here. One, their satisfaction is in the same range as a lot of car companies, including BMW and Honda [1], so it's not a competitive advantage. And two, their current user base is a technophile, early-adopter niche. It's not clear that Tesla can cross Moore's Chasm and serve a mass audience that doesn't care who Musk is.
I look forward to seeing how it turns out. But given the way Musk is flaming out in his attempts to buy Twitter, his success is clearly not guaranteed. And that's before we account for him being distracted by trying to run 3 big companies at once.
[1] https://www.theacsi.org/news-and-resources/press-releases/20...
Elon is not the only one that needs to be held accountable -> big oil has literally prosecuted and killed people, just look at what they've done to Steven Donziger.
If we actually enforced these laws, maybe we would have electric cars even earlier, and indeed, there maybe wouldn't be Tesla.
> Tesla has replaced two million gasoline cars with electric cars
Laws don't work this way - If I save someone's life today that does not give me a voucher to murder someone tomorrow.
This is just utopianism.
>>Laws don't work this way
I wasn't saying they do. I was explaining the consequences of those "better laws" existing. In truth, the laws being sought by the OP would further undermine the very foundations of a liberal society, with contract liberty, to replace it with social control by an officialdom made up of unionized government bureaucrats with next to zero accountability, micromanaging the actions of others based on an elitist "government knows best" philosophy.
What does the power method to the wheels have to do with self-driving? Tesla fan bois.
Tesla, SpaceX, and Elon Musk are not cool/impressive any more.
And with every tweet, Elon becomes less respected by the public.
It’s telling when you see this sentiment on Tesla Motors Club, r/SpaceX and r/TeslaMotors.
Elon was on a roll. But he royally fucked up the past 2 years.
Honestly, I think the causal arrow goes the other way. Musk has beclowned himself with the way he handled the Twitter deal, and Tesla's stock price has dropped accordingly. So a lot of the noise he has made since then can be seen as attempts to distract people with politics so they don't notice how his impressiveness is declining. This article makes a good case for that: https://twitter.com/BITech/status/1534939630809800706
Musk doesn't have any good alternatives, unfortunately. He's supposed to back the Democratic Party, that relies on a long-tradition of union-backed left-wing violence to intimidate the opposition? [1] The party that fanned the flames of 500+ riots in the summer of 2020, leading to dozens being killed and billions of dollars worth of people's livelihoods going up in flames?
The party that is aggressively moving toward authoritarianism, and trying to silence/cancel any one who speaks out about it, like Glenn Greenwald? [2]
The party of lawyers [3], who early on pushed aggressively for CCP-style lockdowns and vaccine mandates [4]?
The party fully backed by elite anti-Free-Speech movements? [5]
Even when the GOP were under Trump, the Democrats weren't clearly the more moral choice.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
[2] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1450487818766143492
[3] https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/industries
> Many of our Autopilot features, like Autosteer, Navigate on Autopilot and Summon, are disabled by default.
So I don’t think it’s fair to say that Autopilot just refers to cruise control - that’s certainly not how Tesla use the word.
as a name, it's a pretty good descriptor for what the system actually does. the misleading part is all the other marketing telsa does around it, and the muddying of the line between autopilot and full self-driving.
The fact you think this is exactly why Tesla’s naming choice is so dangerous.
Even antiquated general aviation autopilots can intercept headings and change elevation. This is capability that has existed for decades. GA planes are getting the capability to land now. Airliners have been able to land themselves for decades.
Airplanes operate in a completely different environment than cars. Airplanes have radar and radios onboard and rely on ground based information and pre-planning for traffic avoidance. It’s a completely different system.
GM’s vision of self driving cars looked a lot more like the air traffic control system than Tesla’s autopilot.
Not even close. Even light aircraft autopilots can fly a full route from just after takeoff all the way to 200' AGL on final approach. Autopilots in transport category aircraft have full autoland including rollout.
The Autopilot moniker is also used by Tesla to describe automatic lane changing, automatic start/stop at stop lights and 'summon' - so it's not quite just lane keeping assistance and adaptive cruise control.
Multiple manufacturers have that feature too as part of their “lane keeping assistance” offering
No way are you for real? Autopilot is incredible, for me it substantially reduces fatigue on long highway drives and decreases my stress when commuting in stop and go traffic. The difference between autopilot and simple cruise control is substantial. I wouldn’t buy a car that didn’t have Autopilot at this point.
I've never used Autopilot without it doing something clearly stupid. That is not a recipe for "stress free."
Are you sure we're talking about the same thing here?
Interesting, I would have thought that when (if) the autopilot intervenes it would be way faster than human reaction.
I have no car with similar features but I remember renting a VW golf that had some adaptive cruise control, the simple "keep the speed constant" worked just fine (like in older, simpler cruise controls) but the "adaptive" part was (IMHO, and it may well be a specific/single issue of the car or some settings that I knew not how to regulate) very, very cautious.
On the highway, driving in the left lane at a speed of 120 km/h, every time a car a long distance ahead (100 metres or more) merged from right lane to left lane the car would suddenly slow down/brake long before I would have normally done manually (and often without need as the car was travelling at my same speed or nearly so), it was, if not uncomfortable, "strange".
In strict, it very closely keeps in the middle of the lane. That's not how I normally drives, so it feels scary. I usually bias away from oncoming traffic. It's probably fine on a wide highway, so this is more about me not feeling in control.
However, in relaxed mode, it seems to have the issue you're describing where there's too much slack, and it looks like it's playing pong between the lane dividers. Have the exact same worry about what this looks like to others...
I've only ridden in Teslas, not driven one, but it seems like it's probably got the best following/lane-keep system on the market, although the last time I rode in one -- admittedly about two years ago -- it was markedly jankier when the driver engaged more "self-driving" features, e.g., have it change lanes, take exits based on its own GPS guidance, etc. It was impressive that it could do it, to be sure, but it was the self-driving version of your reckless friend in high school you do your best never to ride with.
No. It can't.
There are no aircraft autopilots which are permitted to be used for takeoff. None. Zero. Nada. Full stop.
There are no aircraft autopilots which can be used for a fully hands-off landing. Doing that would require a "Category IIIc" certified autopilot and IIIc precision approach. The FAA recently (a few months ago) removed the definition of IIIc. Why? Because, 30 years after being defined, there are ZERO autopilots certified to do that and ZERO IIIc approaches for them to use.
Among those autopilots with a low decision height (when the pilot takes over), all require a so-called "precision approach". That, in turn, requires a specialized radio beacon at the end of the runway (GPS is not sufficient).
Additionally, there is exactly one type of airplane in the world, no longer in production, (the Airbus A380) that can automatically take evasive action if it detects another airplane on a collision course.
It's well beyond time to admit that, whatever you feel about Tesla, their "autopilot" is no less sophisticated than an aircraft autopilot.
I don't know what you are talking about with the A380. I have never heard about it being able to fly a TCAS RA maneuver (collision avoidance) on autopilot.
The A350 can handle TCAS RA maneuvers on autopilot. It can also fly windshear escape maneuvers on autopilot.
Bill Palmer (A350 check captain) talks about it: http://www.airplanegeeks.com/2018/02/14/490-airbus-a350/
There's no certificated 3C approaches or equipment, but category 3B autopilots will arm at DH, and then continue all the way down and flare and land.
For that matter, there's all the emergency landing autopilots showing up in turboprops now. Push a button and wait to be on the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ruFmgTpqA&t=219s
Yes. It can.
You’re intentionally misrepresenting reality for what I suspect is some ideological fondness of Tesla.
Sure, no _commercial_ plane can take off with autopilot, but such planes exist[1].
But, saying Cat IIIc is required for hands off landing is silly. It’s required for hands off landing in the absolute worst conditions. It’s needed only when conditions are so bad that you can’t safely taxi and you’ll be stuck on the runway. That’s why it’s not used.
If I make a chocolate bar and tell everyone it cures cancer, I shouldn't be able to wriggle out of lawsuits by saying "cures" doesn't actually mean "stops a disease" with some complex medical jargon.
I would think auto take off would be easier to automate
https://www.nytimes.com/1947/09/23/archives/robotpiloted-pla...
Partial article text: https://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/623884
Many are looking at an autopilot capability to do the take off and land.
If anyone is confused, it's intentional.
I guess you're right. I've never read a more confusing comment on HN.
In contrast, something like Comma.ai is open-source and even the complete kit that's compatible with almost any car is like $2k and they don't claim to be "Full Self Driving", by any means. Funny enough, they perform with just a kit that goes where your rear mirror is almost as good as FSD beta that Tesla has.
Do you think Tesla's support page describing Autopilot and Autopilot with Full Self Driving is clear enough? https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot
For instance, there's this paragraph: "Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment. While these features are designed to become more capable over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous."
But "Autopilot" obviously sounds cooler. So you can pay 10k and feel good, while that feature costs 1.300 Euro in my Hyundai (where it also comes with heated seats and steering wheel in the package).
The more I read and see from Tesla, the more it look likes some kind of A/B test on how much money people are willing to spend on a beta software/car-test.
Which is an example of what I mean when I say "Tesla's biggest problems with any of their autonomous systems is the names they give those systems. They confuse regulators, reporters, and consumers."
Anyway... Confusion at its best. :-D
If FSD is anything like the many videos I’ve seen I don’t want it and don’t think it’s ready for general use.
FSD seems like one of those problems where getting 80% of the way there takes 20% of the effort and getting the remaining 20% takes 80% of the effort. There is a truly massive chasm between adaptive cruise with lane following and FSD.
Just curious as to word choice here, does engineering not include the design of technology?
What? You claim to own a Tesla but don't know that you must keep your hand on the wheel at all times?
Contrarily, I use autopilot responsibly and appreciate that statistically it is reducing my odds of death. As such I WOULD mind that a political decision like buttieg's appointment, is being made to endanger me.
I don't think it really does, does it? I thought that "Autopilot" basically only worked on highways in fairly unsurprising conditions?
National average crash statistics for that quarter were one crash per 484K miles driven.
Even if you consider that accidents are 3x less likely to occur on highways and boost that to 1.5M, that is still a multi-times safety factor.
A lot of accidents on highways occur because of aggressive or negligent driving. It's really not hard to beat humans so this shouldn't be a shocking find.
I'm not sure what you mean by "in unsurprising conditions" I turn on autopilot on the entry ramp, and disable it on the exit ramp. I would instead characterize that as "all highway conditions"
It's easy to avoid crashes if you're travelling on a perfectly straight road at the same speed as everyone around you with no changes in speed or lane, which is all that Autopilot does.
i've already explained that autopilot is capable of all highway conditions
not straight lines... curved roads that split with multiple lanes, getting around slow traffic and avoiding fast traffic... i'm really not sure what your argument really is. What you are really explaining here is that you don't have experience with autopilot, or you would know these things.. maybe you've used driver assists from other companies which are as limited as in your imagination? you believe that autopilot doesnt change lanes? lol that's the main benefit. I hate merging into traffic, finding gaps, etc. that's why i have autopilot engaged on the entrance ramp... to do it for me.
Average highway users aren't average highway users because "its easy"?
so lets just add 3 orders of magnitude??? what kind of logic even gets you to that point...
i've provided statistics to show my original argument, which was statistical safety... you are just using evidently ill-formed opinions and invented numbers
Maybe the standard of driving in the UK is several orders of magnitude better than it is in the US.
I've driven a Tesla with Autopilot, and it simply didn't feel safe to let it do its thing, and it gave up as soon as it saw anything it didn't like, like maybe a junction or a vehicle changing lanes.
Maybe the vintage accounts for our disparity of experience? I took a 2000km road trip to the Austin GP last year. Texas is known for agressive drivers. It never disengaged because of a vehicle changing lanes, or because of a road union.
Most reporters seem to confuse "autopilot" with "full self driving" or vice versa. It's not uncommon to see sentences like "Autopilot, a feature that costs $10k, is still in beta."
Autopilot is cruise control that keeps you within a lane when it can. That's it. Other cars have it, and they're equally effective or ineffective.
Full self driving, aside from being terrifying, does it all, and I suspect it's usually what regulators and reporters mean when they say "Autopilot."
I think if Tesla had used "lane aware cruise control" as the name for "Autopilot", it'd have helped reduce the number of times people confuse the two.
Frankly, as an owner of a Tesla that has both features, I wouldn't mind at all if both were pulled from the software. FSD is absolutely terrifying. I'd rather let my teenage son drive me than have FSD do it. Autopilot feels like a novelty. Given how frequently the car yells at you when you're not holding the wheel, it's hardly better than simple cruise control.