Tesla Shifts the Goalposts For 'Full Self-Driving' Technology (arstechnica.com) 236
AmiMoJo writes: Tesla has been selling "full self-driving" capability since 2016, promising that "you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere," and that "once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else en route [sic] to your destination." Last week Tesla shifted the goalposts, redefining "full self-driving" as a number of Level 2 driver assistance features that were already available, and a few new tricks to be delivered later. All will require a qualified driver behind the wheel, paying attention at all times and ready to take over if the car can't handle the situation. Worse, owners who bought the previous full self-driving feature paid $8,000 for it. Tesla is now offering owners who bought their cars prior to the change the same package for $5,000. Owners who paid the $3,000 higher price are unsure if the previously promised technology has been abandoned and Level 2 is now the most they can expect.
Shit happens, things change. (Score:5, Interesting)
So it's harder than Tesla expected. Big whoop.
Now go ahead and reimburse your loyal customers for the functionality you cannot deliver and I see no issue.
Don't do that, however, and I feel Tesla is just a bunch of lying scumbags...
Being a good person is simple... just take responsibility for your fuckups. Oh, wait... that's hard, isn't it? Well, let's see whether Tesla rises to that challenge.
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It was not "harder than expected", it was impossible to begin with. If any other company would do it, they'd be in trouble for false advertising.
Not fElon Musk's outfit.
Re:Shit happens, things change. (Score:5, Interesting)
Aye, it may be impossible the way Tesla is trying to do it. Their original plan was for a coast-to-coast demo in 2017, which obviously failed.
Other self driving systems like Google/Waymo's one use lidar, cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors. They are anticipating the cost/size of lidar systems to reduce rapidly in the next few years.
If Tesla had managed to use just cameras, radar and ultrasonics. It would have been a huge coup if it had worked.
Their problem is twofold. First they underestimated the processing power needed to do handle images from the cameras. They use neural nets to process them and on the original hardware they shipped (known as AP2) it just wasn't powerful enough, they couldn't even get it to compare consecutive images (which helps when you don't have stereo vision). They went to AP2.5 and now AP3, but it's not clear if even that is fast enough for what they want to do.
The second problem is that it's just really, really hard to use neural nets to do everything they need. Not just recognizing objects like cars, signs and traffic lights. It has to see road markings, it has to see traffic police and understand their gestures, it has to understand complex 3D spaces with no/poor road markings like car parks and private driveways. It has to be able to recognize small objects that the radar/ultrasonics close to the ground won't pick up, like toll barriers and the over-hanging rear ends of trucks.
To give you some idea of how far away they are, even the current driver assist parking isn't good enough for full self driving. Sometimes it ends up a metre away from the kerb. The human driver can fix that, but for full self driving they have to get the camera to recognize the kerb, indistinct as it may be, and get close to it. Worse still, the current side facing cameras don't point far enough down to actually see it close to the car, so it has to see it from a distance, make a 3D model of the parking spot and navigate into it from memory.
Re:Shit happens, things change. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if the Tesla engineers were tearing their hair out at the idiotic claims made by Musk and his BS ... sorry - marketing dept. Unfortunately Musk doesn't understand the difference between optimistic projections and downright lies. Mind you, he's not alone in the Billionaire Bullshitter club, Richard Branson and his going nowhere for a decade space venture runs a close 2nd.
Re:Shit happens, things change. (Score:5, Interesting)
They had a lot of engineering staff turnover in the first couple of years after he made the promise. Then it seemed to settle down a bit, I guess someone came in who was able to manage expectations.
Re:Shit happens, things change. (Score:5, Interesting)
I've posted this a few times: I never understood why Tesla pursued self driving so vigorously. In my mind, a really nice electric car was groundbreaking enough that I didn't see the need, and I saw a lot of downsides.
One downside is certainly that I didn't think they could pull off FSD ever. When I got my Model 3 last October and saw how poorly Autopilot worked, I couldn't believe Tesla ever believed they could improve it enough to FSD. They need many orders of magnitude improvement before they'll be able to turn it loose on city streets by itself. Waymo seems to have the strongest story, and I think they're still 15-20 years away from a coast to coast drive without intervention.
Another huge downside is that FSD is a bet your company proposal. First there are all the lawsuits if you can't make it work... But even worse is the liability. And the more cars on the road, the worse the liability gets. Every time a pedestrian gets hit, there goes millions of dollars. Every time the car runs itself into a truck and kills the occupants, more millions of dollars. Aviation went through a phase where half the cost of a GA aircraft was for the liability insurance. I could see that happening for automobiles as well.
I don't see that they have any choice but to immediately refund everybody who paid for FSD. It'll cost them a lot more if they have to be sued for it. And they'll still get sued... they might end up having to buy back some cars from people who claim they wouldn't have bought the car if it wasn't for the FSD promises. Cheaper to buy the car than go to court.
Right now seems to be one of the more difficult times for Tesla. Certainly their announcement of closing all their stores worries me. And I really like Elon (being an engineer myself I appreciate his humor and way of looking at things). But I have to say, I think it was a huge mistake for him to have gone down the FSD pathway. He should have partnered with Waymo with no promises of the technology ever making it into a Tesla... It's one thing to overpromise a bit on schedules to push the workforce... that's pretty common in high tech. But overpromising stuff like FSD just gets you sued. I hope Tesla survives.
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I suspect that the re-branding of "Full Self Driving" is an attempt to stave off the lawsuits by claiming that they delivered on it, but people aren't going to ignore that it isn't what they were sold.
Since the first sales started in 2016 people are now reaching the end of their leases without receiving it, so there is time pressure too.
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People should already be demanding refunds as Tesla has admitted that they will never deliver what is promised.
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Waymo seems to have the strongest story, and I think they're still 15-20 years away from a coast to coast drive without intervention.
Well a trip coast-to-coast is 2500-3000 miles and for last year Waymo reported one disengagement per 11017 [9to5google.com] miles driven. Granted, that might not be the same roads but considering that coast-to-coast highway trips have been done 95-99% autonomous by much simpler systems and done entirely [telegraph.co.uk] by moderately advanced systems statistically my money would be on the Waymo getting there by itself way more often than not. Basically there's three situations:
1) It's driving okay
2) It's confused and knows it's confused
3) I
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As the cash position improves, it will return the money, may be with interest, and scale back the FSD rhetoric.
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Musk likes to be an optimist, for sure.... But he hasn't really sold anyone anything that was a lie either. These promised future upgrades were all clearly marketed as a "Pay now to lock in your place to get them whenever they may be ready." arrangement.
Like I told one guy ... I never even pre-order new video games titles that are "coming soon". If you pay for anything that's not delivered immediately upon the payment, you're essentially just agreeing to loan them some of your money.
Tesla might as well ha
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If it's only sometimes that the car parks a meter away from the curb it'd be a marked improvement over the drivers I see everyday. If I was a police officer I swear I could fund the entire municipal budget from issuing parking citations to jackass drivers.
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Aye, it may be impossible the way Tesla is trying to do it. Their original plan was for a coast-to-coast demo in 2017, which obviously failed.
What "failed" is that they had to start over from scratch because MobileEye felt that it should own all of the self driving data, and Tesla disagreed. So it took a few years to get back to their 2016 status.
They actually could do a coast to coast demo now and have had that capability for about a year. Their current difficulties are the same that Waymo is having - you have to trust that other drivers will actually obey red lights and stop signs - thus ignoring that the other drivers current velocity will c
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Full self driving was advertised as being able to come out of your garage, pick you up by the front door, take you to work and then go off and find its own parking space. It needs to handle every situation, including unmarked private roads that are narrow and do not conform to the normal standards.
If Tesla could do coast to coast they would. They can't. They did zero autonomous miles in 2018 according to the report they filed.
Re: Shit happens, things change. (Score:3)
It's not quite *that* easy... you STILL have to account for the very real possibility that another vehicle might LIE about its current state or intentions... possibly to try and get an advantage for its driver & allow it to save 30 seconds merging into traffic, get a better parking spot, etc... possibly to cause mayhem, death, and destruction.
Simply put, trusting untrustworthy input is dangerous. At best, you can treat it like, "Trust, but Verify".
More likely is that someday, government road departments
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You use stereo vision, stereo hearing, IMUs, touch/pressure sensing when driving, and knowledge/memories, including basic understandings and predictive knowledge of newtonian mechanics at our speeds and life experiences.
Obviously, the "just cameras" omitted information processing. I don't think it implied that you can remove the computer (or your brain).
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So it's harder than Tesla expected. Big whoop.
Now go ahead and reimburse your loyal customers for the functionality you cannot deliver and I see no issue.
Don't do that, however, and I feel Tesla is just a bunch of lying scumbags...
Truth be told, they are scumbags just by having the nerve to sell a product they didn't have in working condition even on their labs.
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"What company doesn't oversell?"
Any company I've run. Pretty hard to lie when raw numbers/specs are what the customer is interested in and you have to deliver verifiable digits.
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Or, you know, don't charge for a feature until you can actually deliver it. That seems a good way to avoid fuckup cleanup.
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Have you seen what goes on in the current market? What you are proposing is integrity on a level never before encountered in an MBA... you should set realistic expectations, my friend :D.
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I'm aware of this shit happening all the time, but haven't lost all hope for mankind yet.
In the meantime, please get off my self-driving unicorn. :)
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The article is full of shit. Here is the actual new language:
All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for 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 driverâ(TM)s seat.
All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you donâ(TM)t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination or just home if nothing is on the calendar. Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed. When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you.
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. As these self-driving capabilities are introduced, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.
The only thing they changed was to put the imminently releasing features up front on the order page and to be more honest on the largest obstacles to release. They used to say "dependent on government approval" which was bullshit. Now they correctly say dependent on actually working. But the Summary claiming that they are only going to do L2 driver assist features is bullshit. Especially since Navigate on Autopilot will be L3 and Advanced Sum
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What has changed is that they started calling level 2 features "full self driving", and removed the specific descriptions of what the real full self driving would eventually do. At best it confuses matters, at worst it looks like they are backtracking and have no intention of delivering what they already sold people.
Also remember that this system has been sold since 2016 and was supposed to have a fully functional demo in 2017. Now even Musk is saying 2022.
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Ah, but here is the problem, what should the refund be? If I bought a Tesla with the intent for it to drive my kids to school, or to drive my old parents around using Full Self Driving, should I be able to return the car and get 100% refund? Or should Tesla take responsibility for that by paying for a full time driver for the reminder of my ownership of my car?
Of course, they are offering no refunds whatsoever, but if they were, the problem is in assessing the liability for their screwup.
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I know quite a few people who really, honestly and stupidly thought Musk can do anything at all in general, and that full self-driving isn't all that difficult for him, specifically. A few even dropped money into the money pit that is Tesla, and even refused to listen when they were told Tesla marketing is mostly bullshit. All of them lost money, one or two - a lot.
Now, I don't really feel pity for any one of them, but if Tesla had been responsible with their claims about Tesla cars, these people would not
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Go look at the "D" event video, not a single thing that Elon promises for the first generation of autopilot has been delivered.
I've always said that the best case scenario for "full self driving" was that it would fulfil the stated functionality for AP1. Seems even that part may turn out to be optimistic.
Why the [sic]? (Score:5, Informative)
What's wrong with "en route"? Don't tell me - a cretinous AMERICAN didn't understand the language. What's new?
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The Slashdot editor actually fixed it. In the original quote it was spelt as one word, "enroute". Kind of like how some people write "alot" I guess.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to be clear it's actually worse than that.
Tesla sold "full self driving" that really would drive itself while you took a nap for $8000. People pre-ordered it with the promise of it being ready by 2017.
Now they have changed the definition and started selling the reduced functionality for a lower price.
People who pre-ordered both paid more and have no idea if what they were promised is now cancelled and this Level 2 stuff is all they are going to get. To add insult to injury, if they had not pre-ordered they could now buy the same thing for $3000 less.
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Of course..... (Score:2)
You could ALSO say that any Tesla owners who paid the $8000 for that before 2017 are much MORE financially damaged by the Model 3's release and subsequent huge depreciation on used Model S's!
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People who bought a top spec Model X recently lost over $20,000 the moment Tesla announced the price cut.
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Yeah, she is a little late to this party... Maybe she is busy today.
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Hey, we did that at our university courses (Score:5, Insightful)
First we wrote the software, then we wrote the specs. It was way easier to meet the target that way.
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Tesla-starter (Score:5, Insightful)
Musk has been very successful in getting Tesla treated like Kickstarter - people paying money, $8,000 for this software, thousands to reserve a car, for things that did not exist at the time. Usually using similar motivations as kickstarter - preordering because they like the company and want it to exist even more than because they want the product. Man, I wish I had that salesmanship.
Comic (Score:2)
Reminds me of this recent Ctrl+Alt+Del comic:
https://cad-comic.com/comic/ro... [cad-comic.com]
(For the visually impaired readers: comic shows an exciting roller coaster that turns out to be half finished)
Don't the laws have to change first? (Score:3)
Not that I'm trying to defend anything here, but the statements about requiring a fully alert driver behind the wheel... isn't that the law? I know he's made some very large claims about the self driving technology, but until the laws change to allow people to not pay attention to the road, they need to put that statement in everywhere, don't they?
I mean, I think the self driving feature as it is now, can work... but you need a place where there are no human drivers. Until that "random" factor of human error is removed from the equation, I think it will be a very, very long time before we see fully (legally allowed on the road) self driving cars.
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Waymo is starting their driverless taxi service in a few months, with no-one behind the wheel. They have already demonstrated it on public roads to journalists.
goal posts (Score:2, Troll)
Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes. (Score:3, Informative)
[*] While the critics and PR were talking about net profits, Musk had internal numbers showing a healthy 20% gross margin in S and X. Once gross margin is positive, getting net margin is simply a matter of scaling up.
So Musk has come to believe ALL the critics are wrong ALL the time. That is again not true. But from Musk point of view, everything he did starting from writing a shoot them up arcade game as a teenager, to making money in the dot com irrational days were deemed "impossible" by most people. So he has come to distrust everyone.
But once in a while I see reports of him being very realistic and candid. With Monroe agreeing the bad designs that was costing too much money in making model3 for one. His praise for the little known "pump team" in the cave rescue. There is a lot to like the engineer in Musk, and the dedication to chase the impossible.
But he would have benefited from a few honest critics who could have earned credibility by saying, "This is possible, That is hard, that one is impossible, this one is a question of money, that one is a question of time, but that one is really really impossible". Hope there are a few in his trusted circle. There must be a few, else Space X would not be this successful.
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All the critics have been saying "impossible" to all the things Tesla is attempting. Clearly many things the critics said impossible, turned out to be possible after all. You can see a long list in tesla fan sites, Tesla death watch in 2012, cant make a sports car, cant make S, cant make S in volume, cant sell enough X, cant make gull wing door, cant make profit [*], cant make model 3, cant ramp up model 3, cant sell enough ...
This won't help you. Tesla promised a fully self-driving car that customers paid money for. It hasn't been delivered, never will be and isn't possible.
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This won't help you. Tesla promised a fully self-driving car that customers paid money for. It hasn't been delivered, never will be and isn't possible.
I am not disputing this. All I am saying is, "if the critics had been more accurate and more discriminating, instead of saying 'impossible' to everything, he might have listened to them more".
He things all his critics are wrong all the time. Definitely not correct. Some of his critics are right some of the time. If you give the critics the same level of scrutiny and same level of strictness you would see that lots of his critics were wrong and unfair at least a few times.
Re: Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes. (Score:2)
How can "critics" be more accurate , when the word, in plural and non-specific like you have put it, is extremely inaccurate ?
By definition, it includes the ACs on /. , the trolls on YouTube comment section, the "short sellers" that regularly frequent Musk's nightmares, and also somewhat technically qualified people. The latter, in my experience, have largely restricted themselves to mentioning the unlikelihood or unprecedentedness of some of Tesla's achievements. Or contradicted timelines of Tesla's profit
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Electric cars are 100 year old, and no gas car maker successfully made a no compromise electric car, BEV that can compete with ICEV in at least a few significant performance parameters like, speed, range, capacity and price. Every industry analyst was saying it is impossible, till 2017. The industry started saying, "we can build them BEV anytime we wan
Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes. (Score:4, Insightful)
We can even mandate all Teslas should carry a warning sticker, "this car is not suitable for Mojave desert driving and BLM maintained roads". The market of people who would knowingly buy a car that can not survive deserts and back roads is big enough for Tesla to survive and thrive.
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Tesla had no ground clearance and got its ass bottomed out on a fucking BLM MAINTAINED ROAD (there's no excuse for that,
I've been on BLM maintained roads that had ruts in them deep enough to get a 4x4 stuck in. That I didn't get my 1982 300SD stuck there is a testament to my ability to put the wheels in the right place, not to BLM road maintenance. There are lots of cars that would be helpless on BLM roads.
and the Volt simply died due to the colder weather fucking over their expected driving range by about 80 miles
Now that's a real problem.
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Volt has an gasoline engine. Volt plugin range is 40 miles. It can not fall short by 80 miles. Unless a full tank of gasoline was not enough. By then we cant blame the battery range estimate
It wouldn't be just the cold, it would also be the terrain. That estimate won't hold true on rutted dirt roads. Just driving over a lot of bumps consumes a whole bunch of energy.
Let us be charitable about the OP. Why blame malice when mere incompetence provides adequate explanation?
Agreed. But bad range estimates are a real problem which will persist as long as batteries remain temperature-sensitive.
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and the Volt simply died due to the colder weather fucking over their expected driving range by about 80 miles
Wow, considering the Volt had an electric range of about 50 miles, that's impressive! Negative 30 mile range!!
Or, alternatively, you're full of shit and don't know what you're talking about. Which is quite likely since you don't seem to know the Volt has a gas engine too, and gets the vast majority of it's 300mi range from the 250 miles of gas in its tank.
Charlatans (Score:4)
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It's more about the lawyers than the tech (Score:3, Interesting)
The lawsuits that follow their first catastrophic crash will likely kill development in self-driving cars for the next decade or more.
Academia saw this coming in the 80s (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find most troubling about this is how it shows Musk does not get enough push back and/or there are not enough critically thinking people from academia allied with Tesla to even raise the issue.
Because this was completely predictable.
We've known about the complexity or reality since the 80's, with people like Lucy Suchman pointing out how we underestimate the complexity of the world (in books like Situated Actions). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
We've know about the limits to AI since then too. The famous quote is "the hard things turned out to be easy, and the easy things turned out to be hard".
Machine learning, as one Slashdot commenter once said, is basically "statistics on steroids". It you say "we're going to build self-driving cars that can handle the complexity of the life world with statistics", well... then you will fall into the same trap that technologists have been falling into for the past 30 years.
The problem with Silicon Valley is that it started to believe the stories that were originally designed to separate investors from their money. The Californian Ideology slowly became an unspoken faith, and anyone who questioned it was branded a 'pessimist'.
Musk is a clever man, but he is clearly from Silicon Valley. His fear of AI taking over is another example of this, as anyone who has studied the digital humanities can explain. It's only a valid fear if you have a simplified view on the world, a view where everything can, in the end, be modeled in a system.
The truth is it can't. Society is amazing at producing never before seen situations. The long tail of edge cases is unending, and the degree to which society demands that you cover them is greater than any non-intelligent/non-sentient system ever can.
Don't get me wrong - having a simplified view of the world is what makes people like Musk such powerful forces. But as we've seen here it has its limitations too.
Self-driving folks (including Tesla) always knew.. (Score:2)
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Nobody with half a clue ever believed them because it didn't matter how good their software was, there was just no way that hardware suite could do what they claimed. (Not that this is new for Tesla, their original autopilot suite still doesn't do even a single thing that was claimed in t
Overly Negative? (Score:2)
While Musk does have his own Reality Distortion Field, I'm not entirely sure this is as bad as most of the comments make it out to be.
The radar, ultrasonic, and cameras that Tesla uses are likely to be able to solve "full self driving" in a comparable time to LIDAR. They have a penalty in terms of processing time and power required vs LIDAR, but it shouldn't be a deal-killer.
But. the overly negative tone really seems to be more manipulation.
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The issue is that any little piece of dirt can completely block the only camera and without an active driver there's nothing you can do about it. the ultrasonic sensors are too short range to be useful at all on the highway let alone for this purpose, Tesla vehicles still don't even have the most basic working blind spot detection due to their lack of corner radar and reliance
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Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know as a techie that humans tend to be really bad at statistics and often over estimate the abilities of technology and underestimate the abilities of humans. Techies are especially bad about this.
You seem to forget that self driving cars "freak up" about once every 600 miles right now, humans "freak up" about once every 150,000. And that human number includes all the very worst drivers driving in all the very worst conditions. That self driving car number is them operating only in the best conditions. Fact is, the average human driver will only be in a handful of accidents in their life time and will never be in a severe injury or fatal accident.
Humans tend to be very bad about understanding rare occurrences in large populations. Yes, somebody dies in a car wreck every day. The chances of you dying in a car wreck ever are very small.
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The difference being that humans seem to ignore patches on their behavior.
Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars? (Score:5, Insightful)
I know that people "freak up" way more often.
[Citation needed]
People are pretty damned good at complex tasks like driving, and it will be quite a while before a machine can even do what an average driver behind the wheel does routinely while holding onto their smartphone for dear life.
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Thing is a self-driving car might get confused, swerve off the road, and cause some minor property damage. A human in the same situation might get confused, lock up the brakes, and either fail to steer entirely or steer into opposing traffic.
Often we see the severity of each incident lower than a likely comparable scenario with a human. Think more property damage, less severe property damage and loss of life and limb. Gives you a huge dilemma.
Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars? (Score:4, Interesting)
As a techie I know technology sometimes do freak up. No way I will let myself inside a self-driving car.
People make more mistakes than a well-written and tested application that is working within the scope it was designed for.
That's what worries me most about these "half-way-there" solutions. You do things enough for people to trust them and people's focus drifts. If you expect your car to do everything, you won't be prepared when it doesn't. I don't even like to use Cruise Control for that reason.
Very meaningful (Score:5, Informative)
These are referring to autonomy levels, not versions. They are defined by the federal government (at least in the US). Level 5 is what all non-tech people imagine. "Car, take me to work. I'm going to sleep now". Level 0 tops out at something like ABS. Level 1 is something like cruise control or lane assist (but not both). Level 2 is both, or Tesla's autopilot. The car can maintain speed and steer, but the driver must be ready to take control back at any time. Level 3 is the car drives itself and asks for help when it needs you to take over (if traffic is crazy or the rain is messing with LIDAR), so you can read a book til then and not pay attention. Level 4 is fully autonomous but it has limitations known at purchase time. And Level 5 drives as well as you.
So, yeah, it's meaningful.
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If you 50% of the cost of the car is made by LG (the batteries and motor). Tesla makes their own batteries and motors (the batteries are a partnership with Panasonic). Toyota makes their own batteries in partnership with Panasonic. Everyone else is basically just wrapping a car around LG batteries. Toyota seems to be about five to ten years before they get to solid-state batteries,
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You mean that EVs won't work for every single person's use case? Gee, that's an insightful statement.
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No, they don't work for MOST use cases. As in "a person buys a car for a lot of money and may go on a long trip once in awhile".
Ah, so it *does* work most use cases, then. ;)
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Tesla's work fine on long trips. (Score:2)
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So anything short of 80% is a failure. Got it. (Score:2)
One of them is that the new technology has to be superior to the thing it replaces in every single way, including cost: Automobiles aren't better than horses in *every* way, but somehow they still caught on.
Another is that the standard for success is that it has to completely supplant the previous technology. This is also stupid. "We still have paper books, so ebooks are a f
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No, the standard for success is that the new technology not necessarily be superior in *every* way, but unless the new technology can overcome at least most of the practical hurdles it faces in ubiquitous adoption, it cannot succeed.
In no particular order, these are the factors that keep most people away from EV's today.
Cost to buy: Fully electric vehicles currently typically cost at least $10k more than *comparable* gas-only models. That means a substantially bigger car payment each month.
Range: O
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EVs don't work. I grew up probably more north than you, with people that hunt with bows, and go ice fishing in the middle of nowhere.
Ah. That one again... There's a massive hole in your your argument. [datagraver.com]
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If citizens in sparsely populated areas get left behind then that is a national issue
Nah. It's a local issue. The nation is in no way required to fix it. Just like the nation does not require, say, all vehicles to be 4x4s or otherwise have sufficient off-road capability to work where you life. You just don't buy the gas cars that were designed for commuters in a city.
There is a sufficient market for vehicles that run in sufficiently rural areas that there will always be someone making them. But that does not mean all vehicles must be able to do it.
Also, you're forgetting one advantage
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So, yes, in cold areas up north, EVs are almost fucking useless.
Fortunately, almost nobody lives in cold areas up north, since EVs are not the only thing that hates cold. So saying that EVs don't work very much like saying that chemotherapy doesn't work. Just because something doesn't work for 100% of people doesn't mean that it "doesn't work".
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My point is that EVs should work for everyone and should be better.
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Sure... in the same way that "almost nobody" lives in North America when you compare it to populations like China and India.
My point is, saying that many millions of people are effectively "almost nobody" is going to come across as being very suggestive of the idea that their feelings or experiences do not matter. It is liable to be seen as both dismissive and possibly even a bit insulting.
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Also EVs are falsely made cheaper because the government raises taxes on ICEs.
Considering that the raised taxes seem to be comparable to what carbon pricing would do to the price of ICEs, PLUS the existing difference in energy prices for vehicles between $7/US gal. gasoline and $0.15/kWh electricity, what's the big deal here?
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Re: Why????? (Score:2)
A trailer containing a gasoline tanker and electricity generator can be designed in weeks. Next version of electric cars can contain a better inbuilt way of attaching such a trailer : though I think most of today's electric cars can attach a trailer, or can be modified in less than a few weeks to be able to attach a trailer.
Next, only the places which don't have super chargers need to have the gas pumps. It's a bit taxing on the economy of scale of the gas pumps : and gas prices might rise a bit, but may no
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The Tesla is the best car possible for my use case, there is nothing better on the market currently.
That said, Tesla as a company is the worst company I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with, and I will never again give them even a penny of my money. I just hope that I don't need to replace this car before some other
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re: car vs company (Score:2)
Clearly, you speak as someone who is NOT a Comcast customer!
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All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for 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.
When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you.
I'm not entirely sure why you've bolded these statements, but they are not the same thing.
Doesn't look any different from before, no shifting of the definition. AmiMoJo continues to write claims that are directly contradicted by the very link he provided. Hmmm
The only not-difference is that page still does not list a year when it will be ready. It never did, but it still does not.
Except people have paid for this feature. What they're now doing is trying to claim the entirely unrevolutionary system they have meets the needs of what they promised and what people paid for. Best of luck with that.
But with such a smear campaign being made..........
Whatever sweetheart. Hold on tight, it's turtles all the way down from here.
Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving" (Score:3, Informative)
As with anything new, they are pushing the boundaries on what is currently available and moving at a quick pace. Full Self Driving is supposably coming later this year (though I suspect more like later next year) and includes hardware changes. I read they are going to put a second forward-facing radar unit, changing the driving computer out for one with a 10X faster chip that sits behind the glove box, and enabling the technology slowly as reliability increases, regulations allow, and hardware developed. Th
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I don't own a Tesla ... but drive one. Just try it. Once. (WOW!)
As for your comment ... LOL. Because they know what they're doing?? Let's see -- off the top of my head: ...
AMC - Gremlin, Pacer
Cadillac - Fleetwood, Cimarron
Chrysler- Desoto, Imperial LeBaron
Chevy - Chevette, SSR
Ford - Edsel, Pinto
GM - EV1
Pontiac - Aztek
the list is LONG of "duds" from manufacturers that have made cars for decades.
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That said, the Model S is an amazing car, nothing better on the market today. Unfortunately it's sold by Tesla, no worse company in the marketplace today.
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Tesla makes the best vehicle on the market today. They also lie through their teeth about every aspect of it. If you expect a Tesla to be anything even remotely like what was promised, you'll be horribly disappointed. But if you try to find another car that can do what the Tesla can, you'll be equally disappointed.
I've always said that it's the best car ever made, by the worst company I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with.
I truly believe that once t