Tesla usually goes for most technically advanced solution.
But when it comes to driver alertness monitoring they pick the easiest to fool solution. I suspect it's intentional. Eye tracking would prevent their users from misusing autopilot. It would kill the hype.
The latest FSD beta is now confirmed to be using the internal camera to monitor for alertness and Elon has just announced via twitter that they kicked people out of the Beta for misuse.
> Under then-President Donald Trump, NHTSA largely let automakers do what they liked when it came to advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and prototype driverless vehicles.
I have questions. Were the NHTSA's policies regarding ADAS different under Obama than Trump? Are they different under Biden than Trump? If so, what changed? If not, why mention it?
Written policies don't change that quickly. Policing, aka the execution of those policies, can be swayed by firings, appointments, executive order, and political pressure. Trump used these avenues more than most.
I don’t think the NTSB is properly weighing the safety benefits of these systems. They seem to be myopically focused on a few crashes/incidents. Cars are not planes. For better or worse we as the public have a lot more tolerance for car crashes than plane crashes.
I don’t think there is enough evidence that the current ADAS systems are better or worse than human drivers at this point. I’d say the best way to improve the situation is not to have heavy handed regulation at this stage and let the technology play out.
That’s an interesting take. So you think we shouldn’t have regulations on this new unproven technology where the government poured billions upon billions to help develop. And that’s fine. Just don’t take gov’t money then.
Not that there shouldn't be any regulations, but that the direction regulations are going in are pretty heavy-handed when you consider how accepting as a society we are to have thousands of car accidents every single day, and thousands of car-related deaths every year (in the USA at least). Self-driving cars are already much safer than human-driven cars.
No they’re not safer than human-driven cars. Not enough data to claim that. And how can you even collect that data when we don’t even have fully automated cars in the wild?
You might not like the data, but it exists. Tesla cars are 2x more likely to get into an accident when not in Autopilot mode.
Tesla cars in Autopilot mode are roughly 8x less likely to get into an accident compared with the average number of reported accidents in the US.
Note: There is a bias about when Autopilot is enabled (i.e. on highways). There is a bias in the type of person that can buy a Tesla car.
That said: Tesla is legally obligated to report all Autopilot accidents. Most accidents are not reported, only the major accidents are reported. So it’s likely that Tesla car’s accident rate are even better than the data suggests.
> There is a bias about when Autopilot is enabled (i.e. on highways). There is a bias in the type of person that can buy a Tesla car.
Yes. This makes any extrapolation to the population as a whole impossible without a lot of assumptions. In particular, things like this are meaningless because of sampling bias:
> Tesla cars in Autopilot mode are roughly 8x less likely to get into an accident compared with the average number of reported accidents in the US.
It's almost as if we need a society that doesn't revolve around owning high speed vehicles. But we've missed that boat, so automation is our next goal to drastically reduce the thousands of yearly deaths.
I don't understand how this is a controversial opinion. The moment self-driving cars is mentioned, safety is the first thing that comes to mind. As a parent comment stated, Tesla is legally obligated to report every accident. And if a huge accident occurs, it will be in the news. Meanwhile it takes a 100 car pileup for any other vehicular accident to make it into a tiny sliver of the news cycle.
I don't own a Tesla or any of their stock, but the crux of the argument is that companies developing driving automation are already heavily regulated and will be put to the fire if mishaps do occur. We desperately need this automation if we do claim to not accept thousands of vehicle-related fatalities per year in our society, since better machine vision is always possible while better human judgement and reaction times are not.
There is a massive stats issue in this. It’s not that there isn’t enough data. Is that there isn’t the right kind of data. Properly controlled apples to apples data is what we need, not just a gazillion miles.
Society does not accept any level of car accidents. That’s why there are safety regulations, that’s why there are safety investigators, that’s why there is a ton of safety-related R&D and testing, heck that’s why there are stoplights and traffic laws and rules about using your mobile phone.
Individually, no one ever wants to get into a car accident. Collectively, the desired number of accidents each year is zero. We’re not there yet because it’s hard to do, not because of acceptance.
So any new mechanism for accidents is going to come in for very heavy scrutiny. And by mechanism I don’t mean solely technology, but also human factors, which are huge issues when it comes to the current state of “self driving” cars.
“Self-driving cars are already much safer than human-driven cars.”
Citation sorely needed. The few self driving cars currently on the road either require active human supervision or only operate in the absolute best circumstances so can’t be compared to human drivers who operate in all conditions and all types of vehicles.
Yeah, the problem is the "high profile crashes" aspect.
It's not that crashes with only humans behind the wheel are uncommon. They're common as dirt! But they're not "high profile." So arguably NTSB's perspective (since they only do "high profile" crashes) is heavily skewed toward dramatic anecdotes compared to NHTSA who have to take into account all the crashes, high profile or not.
I think NTSB is using data in the aggregate. What they seem to be focusing on is manufacturers, specifically Tesla, broadly allowing use of these systems in circumstances where it's possibly dangerous and also allowing advanced features, which can be more dangerous, for smaller groups. Their POV is that if manufacturers were more restrictive about where the comfort features could be used, there would be fewer deaths. I've never read about them criticizing the active safety components to these systems.
Tesla isn't selling exclusively in the luxury market. If you want a high performance or road-trip capable electric car, you basically have just one option.
So you should compare against overall cars, not just "high end" luxury cars. Being electric has made them more expensive, but they're not really true luxury cars for the most part and are not driven by the same people or under the same conditions or under the same driving style as luxury cars.
I would certainly take a taycan over any tesla, but to be fair, the taycan has a significantly worse range. I might be wrong now, but tesla was the leader in that category last I checked.
Paper miles don't count for much. Real world miles are a more useful comparison. The Taycan does poorly in the EPA's test but does a lot better on the road:
To be fair, bringing the Lucid Air into this is like bringing the Tesla Roadster or Tri-Motor Cybertruck into it. They don't exist yet except as prototypes.
Ha, I actually watched that video earlier today. I'm definitely hoping that they get this into full production, as it really does look like an exciting vehicle.
We had gone a long time without any new successful car companies, and now maybe we can have two launched this century? Maybe even a few little boutique makers can make a go of it too... I really what Aptera is doing right now.
"Tesla’s mortality rate (41 deaths per million vehicle years) is so much higher than the average luxury car (13 deaths per million vehicle years) that when comparing the two, the difference is hugely statistically significant."
> Tesla’s mortality rate (41 deaths per million vehicle years) is so much higher
164 deaths, but only 6 on autopilot. While it might be safe to make statistical inference with 164 observations, no good statistician would make strong claims based on just 6. There is no evidence one way or the other for the impact of autopilot on fatalities.
"...[Tesla's] 41 deaths per million vehicle years...overall driver death rate for all 2017 and equivalent models...36 deaths per million registered vehicle years..."
If the system requires driver attention for the best safety outcomes, it seems a bit over the top to describe regulation requiring functional driver attention monitoring 'heavy handed'.
Putting it another way, is there evidence that some ADAS are better than others? Because that's another way to choose regulations.
A self entitled rich man can afford to take chances.
The guy he plows into can’t.
Tesla’s driving technology seems good enough, so I can picture guys whom are tired, or have been drinking, thinking I’ll take a calculated risk tonight.
Once a week I think about that tech guy whom plowed into a bollard on 101, or the guy sleeping coming home from Vegas.
I’m glad the NTSB is being very prudent. This is coming from a guy whom hates most laws, and believe society would be better off without so many regulations.
It's a theme I notice across society. We no longer are consequentialists. We value the means over then ends. I believe this switch in ethics will hurt our society in the long run.
Isn't 'The ends justify the means' the argument of every villain ever? Unrelated to this Tesla stuff, it seems reasonable to observe that the means do actually matter.
But it shouldn't be just a villain argument. Sometimes the ends justify the means and sometimes they don't. Depends--entirety--on what the ends and the means are and the relationship between the two.
But the end to Telsa throwing out unreliable Not-Even-Close-to-FULL-SELF-DRIVING is to sell cars--not to usher in a glorious era without traffic collisions.
Villains are those the media makers want you to dislike. Try sometimes noticing how many "villains" only want to disrupt the status quo, with some murder superficially tacked on for easy moral superiority.
I find this hard to square with a large segment of society just matter-of-factly espousing "equity", which is a less obvious way of saying what was expressed in the past as "equality of outcome".
Of course, through societies of the past experimenting, it was largely recognized as only possible through systems that end up being miserable and authoritarian.
So it's easier to push it again to a new generation under a vague, benign-sounding new term.
Equity does not mean “equality of outcome,” it means that unequal outcomes are proportional to relevant factors only.
For example an equitable approach to criminal prosecution is that people are exonerated or convicted based on the best available evidence, with no variance attributable to their ability to afford a lawyer (an equitable approach enshrined in our Constitution but still a challenge for society).
And an equitable approach of salary is that people are paid in proportion to their contributions to the business, with no variance attributable to the color of their skin (for example).
We have to measure inputs and outcomes to infer the state of equity because we don’t have a reliable deterministic model of society.
If one team wins the Super Bowl, and one team loses the Super Bowl, then those teams are not equal; that is not equality. But if the game was contested fairly, with no cheating or corruption, then the outcome is equitable, even though it’s not equal.
In the U.S. what we generally strive for is equality as an input and equity as an output. If you hire two people, each should have an equal chance of contributing to the business, i.e. neither should be inhibited by irrelevant factors. But it’s expected and ok if one contributes more and advances farther. If it’s based on a fair measurement of their performance, that unequal outcome will still be equitable.
That’s why you’ll often see folks talk about “equality of opportunity.” Not equality in general; equality as an input.
No I think you're loading the meaning of equal. No one would say "you and I are equal" and expect that we're clones.
> That’s why you’ll often see folks talk about “equality of opportunity.” Not equality in general; equality as an input.
People talk about equality of opportunity because that's the circumstances that people concluded recognize human dignity and autonomy.
As soon as you begin the path of equal outcomes, you're talking an expansive micro-managing state optimizing for variables they scarcely understand.
And fundamentally there's a lack of faith in people as capable human beings that can manage the affairs of their own life and work to lead the life they want by their own endeavor. It's paternalism.
Why is tesla the only company that has to exhibit this behavior to progress? GM for instance has two different programs for "self driving", their supercruise ADAS and cruise, the Waymo competitor. Are they farther away from superhuman self driving because they've never promised "FSD" in their ADAS?
Is there evidence that we can expect a benefit? Could we put a probability distribution over that?
In other life and death fields, like medicine, the promise of saving lives is made all the time, but even for great benefit we do not cut corners to prove benefit more quickly.
Given the way that automobiles have little regard for life, I would rather that we take our queue from fields like medicine that have bothered to deal with the ethics and the cost benefit analysis.
Similarly, your claims about COVID reactions not weighing the cost benefit analysis are unfounded, at least that I have seen. I have seen many self-motivated parties making ridiculous, absurd, and harmful suggestions, but nothing that could be taken intellectually seriously. It's just people scamming for their own personal gain at the expense of others' lives.
your claims about COVID reactions not weighing the cost benefit analysis are unfounded
Can you give one example of a government or government agency that has justified whether to shut down based on expected value of quality adjusted life years?
I have some snake oil to sell you. I promise it’ll save lives and if it doesn’t, then it’ll at least enable me learn to make better snake oil, saving lives in the long run. I promise. It’ll also help me built faster-than-light travel, because I’m certain I’m in the right track for that, I just need to go faster with less red tape.
As if there’s a simple “spend lives now to save more lives later” knob.
On the one hand: caveat emptor, you should study the manual and docs before you engage the limited automatic driving system on your car.
On the other hand: calling something “Full Self-Driving”, when it is in fact definitely not fully self-driving, kind of flies in the face of the obvious plain text reading of the phrase “Full Self-Driving”.
What is really important in the world of doublespeak [that is, marketing] is the ability to lie, whether knowingly or unconsciously, and to get away with it; and the ability to use lies and choose and shape facts selectively, blocking out those that don’t fit an agenda or program.
"You should study the manual before you use this potentially deadly system" is about the dumbest way to design a potentially deadly system ever.
Decades of experience has repeatedly taught that people are not perfect robots that always read manuals, and if you design your system under the assumption that they are then it is you that is at fault, not them.
There's a reason we have safety interlocks and dead man switches and seat belts and helmets and ... It's no use having a manual that says "do not open the microwave door while it is running".
Maybe I wasn't clear - obviously sometimes you need to resort to training. But "they should have read the manual" doesn't excuse you from any attempt to make something safe and easy to use without reading the manual. That should always be done if possible.
You might be surprised at how many machines work that way, though.
There's the classic aphorism about tools like lathes: "This machine has no brain, please use your own." But that's usually in an industrial setting with OSHA, mandated safety trainings, inspections, a culture of reporting unsafe practices without judgement, etc.
As CNC machines get cheaper and smaller, we are starting to see things like laser cutters sold to consumers with a pair of glasses and a manual rather than an enclosure. Hope you remember to lock the door if you have kids or pets...
It is a worrying trend which seems to be accelerating in the US due to crumbling and senescent regulatory institutions.
More like they are a lawsuit away from shutting down. It’s far easier to kill the product and then cry about how unfair lawsuits add no regulation are than to just fix the problems.
Lathes are a good example of exactly what I'm talking about! The manual might say "don't start the lathe with the chuck key still in place" but that doesn't stop people from doing it.
A much better solution is to add a physical safety interlock which prevents you from starting the lathe without removing the chuck key, which is exactly what some lathes do!
I agree the safety level of a lot of Chinese machines is very poor.
I mean, that's like saying if you design a plane under the assumption that the pilot will be trained then the plane manufacturer is at fault. There's definitely a level of expected responsibility on the user. If somebody starts a chainsaw grabbing the blade instead of the handle does that mean the chainsaw manufacturer should be at fault?
I'm pretty sure safety has a list of how to deal with safety based on practicality - the top of the list is to design the equipment so the safety risk isn't possible in the first place (e.g. design the device so touching it doesn't electrocute you), then various levels of mitigation (put a barrier around it, put clearly marked concrete and physical distance around it), then only if all that is horribly impractical comes the "solution" of training the user not to do the dangerous thing.
Also, aren't chainsaws nowadays designed so that if the user doesn't have two hands on the chainsaw grabbing the triggers, the chainsaw automatically cuts off? IIRC that's a thing.
Edit:there's the grip-safety ("safety throttle") for the trigger finger and there's the chain break for the forward hand, which will push forward and activate the brakes if the hand let's go or if recoil pulls the hand forward.
The user also needs training as there's still no way to guard the exposed blade when in use nor to keep it out of proximity of humans.
We need an infrastructure architect here in the us. The bus I commute on went under, and I can’t be trusted to drive 120 miles a day and keep my speed in check. I started looking at the most automated rides I could find (Tesla is leagues ahead if I’m not mistaken), and I’m still... driving.
I for one, would be more than happy to prolong my commute, on a dedicated, reduced speed lane, if it meant I could sit in the back seat and work. The belief that we’ll incrementally get to level 5 besides human drivers on the extant infrastructure (lanes) is very misplaced.
Fingers crossed that the feds can develop a roadmap (sorry!) to support the transition from level 2 to level 5. It will not happen on open roadways—lidar or not!
I've thought this would be great for longer runs. Put a wire in the road or something for the vehicles to follow. Once you are on the wire some protocol for merge points (also marked on the wire) etc.
You’re in luck. The Democratic majority in US congress has just announced yesterday that their next priority after passing the American Rescue Act will be a national infrastructure plan.
Whoever come up with a this levels in autonomous driving (L1-L5) must be marketing genius. Ideally it should have been Yes or No answer to "does your car support autonomous driving ?", just like alive or dead. Right now, it is just another reason in list of Road accident deaths, till it perfected.
It seems a fairly reasonable set of levels. For example, L4 seems like something that may be achievable in the foreseeable future if it means something like full autonomy on designated interstates in some weather conditions. That actually sounds like something that would be very useful for a lot of people (and probably a big safety benefit). It just doesn't do anything about eliminating private car ownership or the need to be able to drive at all. But, personally, those are of less interest to me anyway.
Quite the opposite. It was defined by engineers, not marketing people, and it’s based on clear descriptions of the capabilities of the system, as well as who is in control.
The binary statement youre looking for comes between L2 and L3. A L2 system is a driver assist system, the driver is in command at all times. An L3 system can drive itself (driver napping or otherwise occupied) under specific well-defined conditions.
You are. Pretty much every other manufacturer offers adaptive cruise control, lane keeping, and the like. They're just honest about their capabilities.
Comparing Tesla's "full self driving" features to adaptive cruise control or lanekeeping is a very dishonest representation of the capabilities.
edit: I'm pretty anti-Tesla (strongly dislike the focus on the central screen and other driver-hostile 'features', don't think "full self driving" should be advertised as such, etc). But I still think their capabilities are significantly above the other car manufacturers enough that they shouldn't be directly compared in that way. But I guess readers like the fact that calling them "adaptive cruise control" and "active lanekeeping" is more accurate and much less bullshitty than Tesla.
Tesla doesn’t have full self driving yet. For the core autopilot features, reviews I’ve seen of GM SuperCruise rate it ahead of Tesla for lane-keeping and adaptive cruise control. The other advanced features that Tesla offers - navigation on AP and summon - are not much more than parlor tricks. I say this as a Tesla driver with access to those features on my car ...
> I can’t be trusted to drive 120 miles a day and keep my speed in check
If it's a matter of occasionally going over or under the speed limit (or if the speed limit on your route has sudden changes), you may want to look into getting a vehicle with a manual speed limiter. That, along with something like Waze, can be a big help.
I believe Jag and Land Rover (same company) both have this, and it's immensely helpful. It's basically the inverse of cruise: rather than setting a speed floor that the car cruises at, it sets a speed ceiling that you can't exceed (unless you push through the kickdown on the throttle in some cars with a limiter, in which case the car assumes an emergent circumstance and bypasses the limiter for that circumstance)
My wife’s bmw has it too—but that’s too easy to disengage. Needing to pull over and get out to change the limiter would cool any road rage. I should have said: I’m willing to accept a longer commute and up to twice as costly autonomous vehicle over the alternative which is me having to pay attention and frustrated for 60 minutes twice a day—-even once a week!
it's hard for me to see how this would be more safe. sometimes safety is best served by exceeding the speed limit. this is actually not uncommon. for example, a semi has pulled up next to me on the interstate and a turn is coming up. there is a car right behind me so I can't just hit the brakes and let the truck pull ahead. I really don't want to be right next to a semi during the turn, so I quickly accelerate past it.
IME BMWs have a rather ambiguous hair-trigger to disengage the speed limiter, unlike some other makes where you would need to push the gas pedal to kickdown (with the obvious tactile bump) for the same. I think that might be skewing GP's view.
Losing the ability to change the limit or (dis)engage at will makes the feature practically useless too, considering the various speed limit zones one goes through in one drive -- not to mention dynamic speed limits based on weather and other conditions.
Yup. Especially in my Jaguar, which has a lot of HP (~500), and active cabin noise-canceling and air ride suspension, and it is very easy to find yourself at quite high speeds.
Totally agree but I serve two masters; both of which treat me very well—so not only is the commute the worst part of my day, it’s also the only negative part of the day.
That analysis is pretty fatally flawed (at least for software jobs). When I was at google you could easily get by on working 6 hours in the office and commuting an hour each way. The housing cost difference was obscene and would easily offset the cost of a new car every other year.
Like most Money Mustache article’s the analysis looks sound because “numbers” but the numbers have a bunch of fucked assumptions to reach them.
> That analysis is pretty fatally flawed (at least for software jobs)
> When I was at google
So it's fatally flawed if you work at Google (or another high-paying tech company) as a SWE in Silicon Valley - which is a minuscule fraction of the working population of software engineers. It may not be the assumptions in the article that are "fucked". You might just be an edge case.
> The housing cost difference was obscene and would easily offset the cost of a new car every other year.
It's not just the cost of a new car. It's also the time and energy lost to the commute, the increased risk of a serious accident, the opportunity cost of all that time spent in traffic.
As a SWE working at a big tech company in Silicon Valley, I've done pretty well financially by avoiding long commutes - and had lots more spare time. There's more than one way to skin a cat.
Yeah, aka the assumption is fucked. This dude cranks out shit on his blog as if it’s based on some objective stuff but realistically it’s a bunch of evidence based on his lifestyle.
> It's not just the cost of a new car. It's also the time and energy lost to the commute, the increased risk of a serious accident, the opportunity cost of all that time spent in traffic.
That’s the flaw again. “Time and energy” is not lost in a commute unless you waste it. If you are a competent SWE, you should be able to spend that time thinking about architecture, design plans, algorithms, data flows, UX, and on and on. Not to mention you can keep up on industry podcasts, industry news, and a bunch of other audio only shit.
BTW, “increased risk of a serious accident” is yet another misunderstanding of a stat. “Deaths per million miles” in the US is a general stat averaged across commuters, drunk drivers, poor driving conditions, old cars, and bad roads.
I’d posit that my chance of death putting along on the 101 at 20-30 mph during rush hour in a car with modern safety features for an entire year was lower than on a single night on a two lane road up in Sonoma on the weekend.
All driving is not equal, and that’s just one of the many mistakes the money mustache blog makes. I’m all for promoting objective analysis of costs, but it needs to be done on a case-by-case basis. Trying to make general financial advice based on averages is as much folly as trying to make a shirt that fits everyone by sizing it to the average.
> If you are a competent SWE, you should be able to spend that time thinking about architecture, design plans, algorithms, data flows, UX, and on and on. Not to mention you can keep up on industry podcasts, industry news, and a bunch of other audio only shit.
I do all of that during my workouts and walks, or while cooking my family a healthy dinner. All of which I have time to do because I'm not spending 2 hours/day "putting along on the 101 at 20-30mph". On top of saving a ton of money and helping the environment, it's better for my health and my stress levels, because I'm not swearing at the 10th person to jump the queue at the exit. Before WFH started I was in far better shape than my colleagues who commuted from 1.5 hours away because they could get more house for less money.
Long commutes are a destroyer of health, wealth, happiness, and the environment. They steal time from our lives, with our children and families and friends - the only non-renewable asset we have.
Way to miss the point. You’ve incorrectly assumed that you can work close to home or at home for similar compensation per hour (even including commute as a complete loss).
The differences for FAANG incomes make this simpler for you to understand. At Google you can clear $500k/year pretty easily (this was common L5 TC when I left) spending about 6 hours in the office. Let’s assume you spend 2 hours each way and it additionally costs $25/hour in driving.
235 working days in 2020 (assuming you do 0 WFH days and take all PTO).
2354$25=$23,500 in cost
($500k-23,500)/235=$2027 per 10 hours of work (6 in office, 4 commuting).
You work from home for 6 hours a day for a non-FAANG and clear... maybe $150k?
$150k/235=$638 per 6 hours of work.
Commuter hourly after commute dilution: $202
At home hourly: $106
If you’re rich enough to get a house for a big family close to your office, good for you. That shit just doesn’t apply for people that make these trade-offs.
> They steal time from our lives, with our children and families and friends - the only non-renewable asset we have.
Truly spoken with the privilege of being rich enough with a non-commuting job to not have money struggles. Everyone I know putting up with these commutes has to give up a huge chunk of income that will make finances a burden or abandon their community for a worse quality of life near the job.
> You’ve incorrectly assumed that you can work close to home or at home for similar compensation per hour
Having worked for a FAANG myself, that assumption is not incorrect at all. I know what I'm talking about.
You may not find a house with a yard or two car garage within an appropriate commute distance of the FAANG campuses in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Redwood City, or Los Gatos. You may have to settle for a townhouse, or a condo, or even gasp, shudder an apartment. But there are ways to make it work.
Everyone has to decide what they value more. Big house for their family, but you give up 2 hours/day that you could spend with that family. Or lots more time with the family, good health, and less stress, but you give up some space and/or comfort. For me it's a no-brainer.
Trains solved this ages ago. More US cities should be investing in mass transit. Self-driving is a long tail problem because the number of things that can go wrong is infinite. Keeping the cars on tracks reduces the complexity substantially.
trains are a great solution for point-to-point links between two dense areas (eg, city center to city center or intra-city transit). given that GP has a 120 mi commute, it's a fairly safe bet that they either live or work in a sparse area that would not be well served by a train. the appeal of a train drops off pretty fast if you have to drive to the station.
Trains didn’t solve this, they just made different problems. With trains you’re beholden to the schedules and the routes. They require dense living and comfort being packed in train cars with strangers.
FWIW, while this is a representative description of trains in the US, it’s now how they work everywhere. When I lived in Italy there was very regular service from my little town to the nearby major cities, and while the trains were well-used they weren’t ever “packed.”
We could have a similar train network if we wanted one, we just don’t want one enough to pay for it.
Always nice to see people that still believe in the government to act competently. I mean really, we can't even maintain the roads. There's no way we'll be able to pull off some next level plan, let alone execute it in a reasonable timeframe. There's a fundamental breakdown that's happened somewhere in the past 50 years that's lead to the inability to properly manage the country's infrastructure and this doesn't just apply to roads. Is it a leadership issue? Self-serving corruption? I don't know, but what we have now is certainly broken.
Not in the last five years, but gradually over the last 40 or so. The reason is essentially that we’ve been building road networks that cost more to maintain than they generate in tax revenue, and thus our infrastructure balance sheet is running more and more negative. We’re very poor compared to the balance sheets governments in the US operated on as recently as the 1950s.
Something strange I have noticed in the last couple years on leftist social media is the contempt harbored by some for Musk. I can’t quite place it but it feels like a mix of envy and a hatred of success, in part because he seems like proof that capitalism works. I think the emphasis on his character flaws - which we all have - is disproportionate and frankly totally irrelevant considering the scale of his achievements. But he is a centrist not a progressive, he solves problems within the framework of capitalism, and he has an aggressive disregard for the norms of society. That makes him a target for those who are ideologically committed, dislike market driven economies, and favor big government/centralized restrictions. Those sentiments have increasingly bled into the Democratic Party as it has lurched leftward.
I’m not sure if this is it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see this administration try to reign him in. And when it happens, I wonder how news media and society will perceive it. Will they compare it to the relationship between China and Jack Ma? Or will they view these actions as virtuous, moral, and therefore justified?
No. It is distrust of such a erratic self loving obsessive fool.
Yes he is very smart, and is capable of assembling teams of fantastic engineers. But he cannot shut up. If it is tweeting jokes about taking Tesla private, slandering peopel who are doing the dangerous work and do not want his foolish interference (pedo guy), advocating (Dog help us!) Bitcoin. The lawsuits against whistle blowers. And here: his tolerance of fatal failures in his technology in favour of marketing and cash flow.
"aggressive disregard for the norms of society": If it were thought through and considered it would not be such a problem. If he were less intelligent, less driven, it would be less of a problem.
He is a fool. But a fool with a big stick. And that is a very dangerous thing
You’re exaggerating the impact or importance of a few minor negative incidents against world changing achievements. He’s far from a fool and saying these incidents make him a “very dangerous thing” just seems silly.
If you pay attention it's been created by a carefully constructed narrative by certain media outlets. The switch to anti-tech and anti-billionaire biases was surprisingly swift, and few seemed to even notice. Add to that the complete removal of nuance from news reports, and any platforms (eg, Clubhouse / Podcasts) that attempt to add in nuance are either ignored/treated as fringe, or out-right demonized.
You don't need a media conspiracy to tarnish Elon Musk's reputation, because Musk is the same man who used his platform to reach millions of people and call a literal hero who helped save children's lives a pedophile several times[1].
Yea those insults did seem unfounded and unnecessary. But considering his genius, economic success, and positive impact on the world, it just doesn’t seem anywhere near enough to color his overall reputation negatively. Everyone has incidents like this in their life where they got mad at someone, said things they shouldn’t have, etc. To pretend otherwise would not just be everyday hubris, but a bold faced lie. So is it that every human is irredeemable and has a tarnished reputation or can we consider the whole of people like Musk and acknowledge that yes, they are extraordinary?
pedophilia is a very serious accusation to make. everyone makes mistakes, but most of us don't make mistakes like that. musk has done some really great things, but it's gonna take a bit more to make me forget that he attempted to ruin a heroic man's life because he saved the children before musk had a chance to deploy his inflatable tube.
My take is that he's extremely good at some things, but overall just a mean, vindictive person.
I think we can acknowledge that people are complex animals and that someone can be amazing at some things and terrible at others.
I think Elon regularly fails to meet my expectations of how we should treat other people. He regularly exceeds my expectations as the CEO of a launch services company.
I said Elon was "just a mean, vindictive person", but I think that's far broader than I should have said. I think that sentence would more fairly read "capable of being a mean, vindictive person".
> Everyone has incidents like this in their life where they got mad at someone, said things they shouldn’t have, etc.
It wasn't an isolated incident. Musk called the man a pedophile several times over the course of weeks and months. Millions of people's only exposure to the person who helped save kids' lives was seeing Musk call them a pedophile, over and over again, reinforcing the accusation.
Also, I have never smeared someone like that, and would never consider doing so at all, let alone just because they hurt my ego.
You must be talking about Vern Unsworth? He's NOT a diver and did not rescue anybody. He was a "cave expert".
He was enjoying the limelight and was pretty hostile to anyone/anything that was taking the attention away from him. He also wanted to make money from it.
Most shockingly. He said "I will make the divers sugger [sic] for leaving us out of the loop "
When he heard that Elon was offering SpaceX engineering resources to the cause. He said on a video interview to take the submarine and shove it where the "sun doesn't shine" while maniacally laughing.
These are all facts that came to light from his lawsuit. Which by the way he lost:
> You must be talking about Vern Unsworth? He's NOT a diver and did not rescue anybody. He was a "cave expert".
You must be responding to a strawman argument that I never made. Please show me where I claimed anything other than "he helped save children's lives".
> He was enjoying the limelight and was pretty hostile to anyone/anything that was taking the attention away from him. He also wanted to make money from the fame.
Considering that this is exactly what Musk did, I find it pretty ironic that his fans have no problem projecting that upon people that Musk smears.
> He said on a video interview to take the submarine and shove it where the "sun doesn't shine" while maniacally laughing.
Musk forced himself into a high stakes situation where literal children's lives were at risk. Instead of listening to the experts and officials executing the rescue effort, Musk turned the tragedy into a PR event and injected himself and his companies into a situation that he both wasn't wanted in and was asked not to participate in.
When celebrities get involved with disaster scenarios, especially when they are not experts in themselves, they interfere with rescue efforts because officials often trust celebrity advice and interference over that of experts[1].
Had officials delegated to Musk's celebrity and his impractical "submarine", the children would have died. Why? Because the submarine was physically unable to navigate the sharp turns[2] that were required to reach the children and get them out.
Unsworth, an expert and participant in the effort, used much kinder words than I would have had Musk tried to make a disaster that affected me into a PR spectacle.
> Considering that this is exactly what Musk did, I find it pretty ironic that his fans have no problem projecting that upon people that Musk smears.
A bit ad hominem isn't it? How do you know I am a fan? Everything I said are facts from court documents. Unsworth was even hostile to actual rescuers/divers... Are they fans of Musk too?
How do you address this statement by Unsworth: "I will make the divers sugger [sic] for leaving us out of the loop"
I think it speaks volumes about what kind of person he is and his moral values. Trying to capitalize on a "high stakes situation" per your own words. He is not exactly the saint/hero you're claiming. Based on court documents. Not my own opinion.
Care to address any of my post? Because I don't intend to participate in furthering Musk's infantile smear campaign even if you want to.
edit: It would be nice if you indicated that you edited your above post after I had replied to it. Thanks.
edit: edit: Given that you edited your post, I will have to reply via edit.
> A bit ad hominem isn't it? How do you know I am a fan
You're aware that HN posts aren't deleted, right? I know because of your own posts[1]. Of 338 total comments, 140 of them are defending Tesla, which is what 41.42% of your total posts are about.
For someone who claims they aren't a fan, you sure have a strange fixation with defending the company, even making it a significant chunk of your HN career.
I implore anyone who thinks that's an "ad hominem" to point this out to click on this link[1].
I provided you with a collection of facts from the court case and ruling. Make of it what you will. But painting Unsworth as a saint that did nothing wrong and calling it a smear campaign is baseless.
You are essentially discounting the judge/jury decision on this matter. If the facts were on Unsworth side. It would have been an ironclad case. I am operating from a factual standpoint. You seem to be on the emotional side because you keep going on this tirade.
> For someone who claims they aren't a fan, you sure have a strange fixation with defending the company, even making it a significant chunk of your HN career.
I love how you keep steering the conversation away from facts and directing it towards me. How exactly are you providing value on this discussion? Also, hang on... There are people who actually consider HN as a "career"? How do I get compensated?
I don't matter. Facts do. If you can correct me where I said something that is not factual on this thread. Please feel free to do so.
> You're aware that HN posts aren't deleted, right?
Of course! This is the internet after all. You're digging through my profile to make a point? Now that's what you call infantile. Why don't you address what I wrote with your counterarguments? You yourself seem to be on an emotional Tesla tirade [1]. Don't act all holier than thou.
> I implore anyone who thinks that's an "ad hominem" to point this out to click on this link[1].
You just proved my point! What your doing is a sad attempt to rally the mob towards me. If people disagree, they can just downvote my comments. But I do try to be factual as best that I can.
Everyone has some character flaws, some gaffes, some negative anecdotes. Focusing on those and calling him a “twat” is just a ridiculous characterization when you consider what’s he’s achieved and how positive those achievements are for the world. So yes it remains mysterious why there are so many people ready to show their hate for him. And the only feasible explanations are envy or political/ideological motivation.
What exactly has Hyperloop "achieved"? It offers the same benefit as Maglev with massively inflated costs and far less comfortable passenger experience.
I didn't ask which companies he has/had a stake in, I'm asking what the supposed positive achievements for humanity are? Don't bother, there really aren't any.
Musk is not your real-life Tony Stark, he's a real life Hugo Drax.
> I'm asking what the supposed positive achievements for humanity are? Don't bother, there really aren't any.
Why such contempt? To infer that Starlink, Tesla and SpaceX are not positive achievements for humanity is a bit cretinous.
More importantly. What positive achievements have you done? The likely answer is that Musk or any founder which company is publicly traded (not including social media ones for obv reasons) are a net positive for the world compared to you.
I find it fascinating how people watching from the sidelines love to dunk on entrepreneurs. They also seem to be always angry at the world.
The quote "Comparison is the thief of joy" by FDR has never ringed more true.
Everyone has character flaws. Not everyone has musk level character flaws. People who think he’s a dick (people like me) are louder about it that about other things in reaction to people who want to overlook those flaws and worship the guy as Mars Jesus.
If you think the only motivations are envy/political/ideological, you are just underestimating the number of people who don’t think like you.
His companies do not change his character, though. For example, one can acknowledge the usefulness of Amazon and still think Bezos is a creep. Musk is a born-rich libertarian with an insecure, massive ego and too clever for his own good. His stupid behaviour on Twitter and in person is well documented. The fact that he established a cult of personality does not change this, either.
Didn't Musk grow up in a wealthy family? If so, his success isn't much proof that capitalism works meritocratically, although it's still evidence that capitalism works. Not that I need to be convinced of that, I'm pretty sure already that capitalism works better than the known alternatives.
Yeah I definitely agree, some of the hate for Musk comes from hate of capitalism and of the wealthy. I think that some of it also probably comes from his flirting with 4chan-esque trolling, like his talking about the red pill, etc. I think it's funny and refreshing but some cultural leftists get triggered by it.
I think you can tell I'm not exactly an Elon Musk hater, but that said... let's get real, the guy is a con artist. He has accomplished a lot of genuine things but he is also a con artist.
>I think the emphasis on his character flaws - which we all have - is disproportionate and frankly totally irrelevant considering the scale of his achievements.
He sells driving assistance technology as "Full Self-Driving". I give him full credit for his genuine achievements but I'm not going to ignore that he is also a con artist.
No. That's a false narrative. He arrived in North America with $2,000 worth of savings a backpack and a suitcase full of books. He also paid his way through college.
According to Ashlee Vance's book: "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future"
His father was a pretty wealthy engineer and they certainty were among the richer people in South Africa.
However, his father didn't like him wanting to go to the US so he didn't pay for it. Musk had to work threw university.
Later his father invested some money into Zip2.
> He sells driving assistance technology as "Full Self-Driving". I give him full credit for his genuine achievements but I'm not going to ignore that he is also a con artist.
If you actually buy the car you see an exact description of what the feature does currently, what they think it will do in a couple of months and that you will get updates in order to get full self driving.
The money is not counted as revenue for the company because they have not delivered the features.
See from the website:
Full Self-Driving Capability
$10,000
Navigate on Autopilot
Auto Lane Change
Autopark
Summon
Full Self-Driving Computer
Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control
Coming later this year
Autosteer on city streets
The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features are 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 features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.
This feels like the same flawed catastrophizing logic I see with anti-car movements like Vision Zero or discussions about coronavirus lockdowns - emphasis on negative outcomes and fear mongering without consideration of the positives or benefits that we are trading off against. Driving is a great convenience that saves us time by getting us directly from point A to point B quickly. It has a low rate of serious injuries and fatalities. The unregulated driver assistance tech from Tesla may have flaws and drawbacks that result in some rate of injuries and fatalities, but overall it reduces the rate of negative outcomes tremendously. Isn’t that proof enough that it’s a net positive? Why is regulation here a good thing when it may increase costs and inhibit the fast path to innovation we get otherwise?
To me this sounds like an unproven and spurious claim that regulation will offer more benefit relative to letting a company like Tesla innovate freely. I don’t buy it, and it feels like they’re trying to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.
You can have self-driving progress without lax safety practices; look at Waymo, which is way ahead of Tesla. Tesla chooses not to behave ethically for marketing and cash flow reasons.
I like Tesla, but... good. Having worked in the autonomous industry and seeing "how the sausage is really made" is scary as fuck.
One thing to keep in mind, is thats its not just the feds, as you will notice testing is done in certain states that have less regulation (read: governors hands got greased)
Ill leave you with one insight into the sausage factory to contemplate. I told a c-level we needed a code review, and he balked, saying something to the effect of "Do you know how much that costs, how long it takes, and how hard it is?! No" This company has vehicles on public roads already!...
You statists are so silly. Obviously, we simply need to wait until the vehicles have killed several thousand people. Demand will decrease until it's no longer profitable for the manufacturer to operate. Another public health crisis solved by the invisible hand.
Well as an owner (model 3) the general understanding is that you watch over the car when it is driving. Basically you back seat driver your high school kid.
The car is decidedly paranoid when on full autopilot to the point of overly cautious at times. It certainly won't let you have your hands off the wheel nor with a light touch suffice. I tried timing the systems "apply light pressure" warnings interval but its very random and definitely more aggressive when on a curve as its very easy then for it to recognize you aren't holding the wheel.
There are warnings when you use autopilot that flat out say you have to pay attention and demands are constant that you show you are by causing real resistance on the steering wheel.
On anything but freeways it won't even go over five miles over the speed limit. Straight cruise control does not have that limit but once AP is engaged you are restricted to +5. It will slow down automatically for detected speed limit signs with a lower speed but not auto increase for higher limits. It will not go through a green light unless car in front does first without you indicating its safe.
Now interestingly enough Tesla has kicked people out of beta of the newest software for not paying enough attention to the car either through use of the inside camera; the beta uses it; and steering wheel resistance.
So perhaps if you fail enough maybe the car should say you don't pay enough attention to use the feature and must wait 24 to 48 hours before you try again and then be overly strict on driver detection?
It certainly is not perfect, current general availability version, but it is amazing for what it can do especially at night or poor weather.
I don't understand why Tesla has been and still is allowed to use the term Full Self Driving (FSD) to imply, that is advertise, something that clearly is not and will not be in the near(est) future. Where is FTC, which is supposed to protect and enforce truth in advertising in the U.S. (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/truth-advert...)? Especially considering that relevant false advertising (in terms of the naming / use of the FSD term, not the actual feature set) clearly can negatively affect the driver's judgement on manually controlling a car in various situations and, thus, ultimately, the safety of the driver and passengers.
The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features are 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 features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.
I understand it. That is why I have emphasized above ("in terms of the naming / use of the FSD term, not the actual feature set") that, regardless of the small print / legalese / disclaimers / clarifications etc., I believe that using confusing and not matching current capabilities terms should not be allowed. I might be wrong (as I'm not a lawyer), but I think that it is well within FTC's jurisdiction and power to enforce both truthfulness and clarity of advertising in the U.S.
I wonder if they could try to switch to something like "Fully-assisted Self Driving" to keep the original FSD accronym, if the term ends up being regulated.
Use of an acronym requires a prior use of a relevant definition (spell out), which is the term. The expression "Fully-assisted Self Driving" is no less incorrect / ambiguous than the original one. Therefore, Tesla would continue violating the same principle of truth and clarity in advertising as well as, perhaps, some policies and/or laws.
Not to mention the Term “Full Self Driving” was originally created to disambiguate “self driving”, which may still require driver assistance. FSD was sold as a robotaxi software that could make you money while you sleep, while it has always been nothing more than a level 2 system, as Tesla admits in the fine print and to regulators. Musk on Twitter contradicts this consistently.
FSD also mentioned/implied that driver assistance could be required, but did mention/omply that it should be good enough for someone to take a trip without intervention. Practically speaking it's just a larger feature set than EAP/AP.
Edit - Here's a link to the old FSD fine print. They say the system is designed to take trips with no input from the driver, but they don't guarantee that, which to implies FSD is just meant to be good level 2 driver assistance.
To be fair, Tesla could consider stuff like TACC to be level 3+ (no beta status, no disclaimer about always paying attention, etc), but it's definitely not level 4 because they require driver input and nag then disable without it.
The robotaxi/Tesla network idea was separate from EAP/AP and FSD and was only mentioned on the Tesla website for a short period of time with even more fine print/legalese (it was pie in the sky, which I imagine is why they took it down).
That doesn't matter. You don't get claim something which is clearly false in commonsensical interpretation, but get away with it because the fine print.
You can't say "the sky is green[1]" and then in footnote [1] say "by green, we mean blue." That's not allowed, and the FTC is supposed to prosecute this. You can say "the sky is cerulean[1]" and then note that although cerulean can be categorized as either green or blue, in this context you mean blue. But calling the feature "full self driving" when it is not full self driving is more akin to outright calling the sky green.
Someone can successfully sue Subway for advertising a footlong sub that isn't always 12"...but Tesla and FSD...slapping fine print lets them off the hook...
I’m shocked they even settled. Probably they felt it was the cheapest action, but such a lawsuit feels quite predatory. An important legal concept is harms done, and as this Forbes article points out, there really weren’t any material harms done.
Now Tesla on the other hand, absolutely falls into the realm of material harms done…
And that was immediately followed up by a sentence talking very reasonably about slight loaf-to-loaf variation, which is the real argument being made there and elsewhere and in court.
The actual lawsuit never went to court, they settled and then the settlement was overturned, and my claim was just that this definition was part of the reason the suit didn't work. What more are you expecting out of this?
>judge ruled on it, so there were definitely things being said in court
The judge ruled on the settlement, nor the actual merits of the case.
I only called it their legal argument as you did not understand what I was saying, I probably could have worded that better. It was their stated position on the issue, and is very similar to the "fully self driving" being discussed.
I am done with this, if you want to think I oversold Subway's claim, I disagree but fine.
> It was their stated position on the issue, and is very similar to the "fully self driving" being discussed.
I think if people were pulling "fully self driving" out of some random facebook post that discusses the capabilities in the next sentence, then the complaint would be something to sigh at and ignore.
Indeed wasn't Germany the first to stop them from pulling this shit? We in the US allow our advertisers to lie to us about any- and everything, and they wonder why we hate advertising in general.
Maybe we need to stop getting mad at the method and start getting mad at the companies doing the lying.
I've said repeatedly I was ready to leave this country, but only in the last 2 years have I begun actually making plans to leave.
I'm voting with my feet, but where to go? Shouldn't take years of careful planning to just up and go somewhere else.
Tesla is not allowed to do that in Europe.[1] In the US, they got away with a lot during the Trump administration. That seems to be changing.
From the NTSB statement:
"The success of these AVs depends on the driver completing a monitoring task that requires sustained attention; however, humans generally perform poorly in the role of monitor. Also, if the automated control system behaves consistently and reliably for prolonged periods, the user of that system can become complacent about its operation and may not respond appropriately when a situation requires him or her to act."
The NTSB people see this clearly because they investigate aviation accidents. Over reliance on automation is a known problem in aviation. The aviation systems are pretty good, but they are not yet good enough to be the pilot in command. Pilot training covers this in detail. Drivers are not trained that way.
That creates a strange situation where a monitor would need more training vs a driving license? Or would that require an overhaul of the training itself?
I think that's not especially strange when these partially automated systems aren't fully autonomous yet.
I would have a hard time arguing against requiring a few hours of class time learning about exactly what the systems do and what pitfalls there are because those things are not at all like what anyone has ever been taught in drivers ed before.
Yes. Again, "If the automated control system behaves consistently and reliably for prolonged periods, the user of that system can become complacent about its operation and may not respond appropriately when a situation requires him or her to act." That's what led to the accidents where a Tesla plowed into a freeway divide barrier (California), a street sweeper (China), a parked van (Germany), a fire truck (California), a semitrailer (Florida), an overturned truck (Taiwan) ...
There's a certain similarity to Tesla autopilot crashes. Everything was going just great until Tesla's automated system failed to detect a big solid obstacle. Tesla drivers need to be very aware of that failure mode.
It's amazing that Tesla is allowed to ship that. It's Musk's "we don't need LIDAR, we'll just kill people instead".
Their video is from 2016, yours is from the last six months.
"FSD Beta," which incidentally they told CA DMV was emphatically not full self-driving[0], hasn't been around for the vast majority of time that that video has been online so using it as an excuse is disingenuous. Plus Tesla's own words in their emails disprove this anyway.
> I suggest you research who is behind the site you just linked and what their agenda is.
I linked to a raw PDF inside a viewer containing Tesla/CA DMV's emails directly from a FOIA request-response. Are you claiming the site forged these emails?
> The videos that I linked are also from Dec 2020 and Feb 2021 respectively. Not from "from the last six months".
That's literally within the last six months..? Pointing out that they're even newer only strengthens my case that comparing them to a 2016 video is disingenuous.
You should re-read the comment you are responding to. Dec 2020 and Feb 2021 and March 2021 are all “from [within] the last six months”. I added a word to make it more clear, but it was obvious the intent GP had.
> FSD Beta," which incidentally they told CA DMV was emphatically not full self-driving[0]
Have you read the actual definition of what constitutes as an autonomous mode/autonomous vehicles. As defined by California law?
From CA SB-1298 [1]:
38750. (a) For purposes of this division, the following definitions apply:
(1) “Autonomous technology” means technology that has the capability to drive a vehicle without the active physical control or monitoring by a human operator.
Autopilot and FSD Beta requires a human to supervise it. In fact, it requires you to respond to the prompts and will actually disable itself for the rest of the drive if you keep ignoring it.
Here is Tesla's response to the CA DMV's query:
"Currently neither Autopilot nor FSD Capability is an autonomous system, and currently no comprising feature, whether singularly or collectively, is autonomous or makes our vehicles autonomous."
From what I can interpret. It doesn't fit CA DMV's own definition. Making Tesla's statement factually correct.
If you don't think that's the case. How so? I'm curious how you see it differently.
I don't understand why they even attempt to push beyond even basic driver assistance. I'd buy a well built car with good battery tech and a decent cruise control and never look back. I don't mind driving for another 20 years if the car is reliable and has good enough range. Making my car clever is so far down on my car wishlist it's not even visible. The elephant in the room is that even if there are technological breakthroughs shortenig "FSD" from perhaps my pessismistic guess of 50 years to an almost laghably optimistic 20 years, the legal mess it will be stuck in will be at least as long as the technical one was. Tesla seem to make very competitive cars even without wasting money on self-driving ones. I'd try to keep that spot instead of risking it by going down the FSD rabbit hole.
I’m thinking they must be using a nontrivial fraction of their budget to develop self-driving tech. Money that could be used for advancing the advantage they already have. I think the fruitless pursuit of self driving will be what makes boring cars from traditional manufacturers catch up. Assuming no manufacturer reaches true full FSD within say 25-50 years, and the usable returns of such research diminishes, then the winning play would be spending as little as possible on it.
It's not obvious that Tesla's FSD program will fail. If it succeeds, the investment will have done exactly what you describe - advancing the advantage Tesla already has.
There's a strong tendency in the tech world - and elsewhere but less so - to point to failures as an absolute proof something won't work, and to similarly use early successes as overly strong signals of viability.
An example of this would be the "obvious" superiority of micro-kernel OS designs compared to monoliths. Which is not at all how things actually panned out with Linux - but the problem was never about the architectural choice, it was about the fact that OS designs are hard - and you need to do the work to solve all the little problems which crop up with your big idea.
FSD is essentially going through the same thing, but the stakes are higher - FSD can kill people as a basic part of its function. We were always in a countdown till we started getting the first self-driving casualties.
This is not of course to suggest that what Tesla is doing right now is okay, but I'd sure be cautious trying to read the winner of the next 20 years into it.
Tesla and SpaceX both take huge gambles on innovation. Thats kindof the point of both companies existence. Yes the FSD initiative could fail in many ways. Starship might be a dead end. Innovation is a gamble.
Tesla doesn’t care what you (the individual) want. They care about increasing the size of their addressable market (elderly folks who can’t drive don’t buy cars - but they might if the cars could drive themselves). They care about driving up the average transaction price (not everyone spends every penny they can on their car - but they might if they could sleep in it while commuting/roadtripping). They care about creating recurring revenue sources. Once you buy a traditional car that’s that. But if your car gets rented out as a robotaxi on Tesla’s network, then Tesla gets a cut.
I agree though. At the moment I’d rather just have a solid car with good adaptive cruise control.
> They care about increasing the size of their addressable market (elderly folks who can’t drive don’t buy cars - but they might if the cars could drive themselves).
How many elderly folks care about sub 4 second 0-60s times?
> I don't understand why they even attempt to push beyond even basic driver assistance.
Well, this is, actually, quite understandable. Tesla and many investors in the company, especially Cathy Wood and her ARK Invest, assume high correlation between Tesla's future success or even survival with the success of the company's autonomous driving strategy, which, they argue, could win the lion's share of the global robo-taxi, robo-delivery and ride-hailing markets (with selling a relevant subscription service to future owners of FSD-enabled Tesla vehicles being IMO a secondary and insignificant revenue stream). This can be easily illustrated by reviewing some of the relevant ARK's open research materials[1-4]. Elsewhere on the Internet, a notable coverage of FSD that I'm aware of (though I haven't yet had a chance to review) is provided by Tesla investor and popular YouTube blogger Dave Lee, who offers multiple - as of today, I've counted five of them - detailed video interviews on Tesla's FSD on his YouTube channel "Dave Lee on Investing"[5].
> assume high correlation between Tesla's future success or even survival with the success of the company's autonomous driving strategy, which, they argue, could win the lion's share of the global robo-taxi, robo-delivery and ride-hailing markets
Except Waymo has better tech, is working toward a similar goal, and has a stronger balance sheet. Google has a history of dropping the ball on opportunities, but unlike cloud computing, they're already a leader in this space.
People want Tesla to succeed and like the company's story, but it basically requires every other automaker to fail in order to justify its valuation. Or Bitcoin to hit $500k.
I agree with you on major points. Tesla proponents' ignorance of competition (both technical and general / market share) is difficult to comprehend. Re: Bitcoin - I disagree, it is a totally different story, but it's off-topic / outside of the scope here.
I believe the comment refers to the fact that Tesla bought a lot of bitcoins. So for their current valuation to make sense, either they have to succeed in monopolizing the auto market, or their bitcoins have to go up a lot in value.
You're right. I somehow misinterpreted that part of the comment. Having said that, I doubt that Tesla's Bitcoin investment could be a foundation for its current valuation (as of today, > $660B). The $500K BTC price implies ~10x growth, so the value of that $1.5B investment would equal to ~$15B, which is still far less than the target number.
Another alternative is that they use success in ramping up the car business to raise capital for investment in other on shore advanced manufacturing. The market they go for may not just be cars.
Oof yeah. I really like what’s Tesla is doing. I love my model y, but I definitely skipped out on “$10k more for FSD.” It’s just not there yet.
Do I think people need to step in and force Tesla to dial back their advertisement, eh... idk, maybe, maybe yes?
To me, it’s pretty clear what “FSD” gets you these days (spoilers: not a lot). I suspect the average Tesla customer can also read. I also think reckless drivers will be reckless regardless of law or guidelines.
I think the increasing price for “FSD” and calling it fsd is all marketing designed to get people to FOMO into it (knowing that it might take a while).
What I would like to know is, if I pay “10k for FSD Someday” will this be applied to a future Tesla I buy that will actually be capable of FSD?
It’s not transferable to a new car, FYI. Also, the FSD beta is supposedly opening imminently to almost everyone who’s bought the package and wants to try it.
> I don't understand why Tesla has been and still is allowed to use the term Full Self Driving (FSD) to imply, that is advertise, something that clearly is not and will not be in the near(est) future.
Peter Thiel's support for Donald Trump, alongside the army of Musketeers, continues to pay dividends, I guess.
Having driven a Model Y and a Model 3 I can say that until Tesla removes that huge ass distraction magnet touchscreen from their vehicles I won't buy one. In order to determine anything about the status of the vehicle or change a setting you have to train all of your attention off of the road and onto an overly complicated cellphone interface. Autopliot is an optional feature, that damn tablet is not. Adding a simple HUD that comes standard on most Mazda's would be a huge improvement in safety.
Never going to happen. Some of us are the opposite, I can't stand cars with a thousand nobs and dials that take a 100 page manual to understand. I find the clutter 100x more distracting.
Can you explain how buttons are a distraction? Also, by “distracting”, do you mean that the present of physical knobs prevent you from paying attention to the road?
He can't explain that any more than the OP can explain why having the speedometer slightly to the right is more distracting than hidden behind the steering wheel.
If you reach for a button and it's not exactly where your finger lands, you're now distracted by figuring out where it is and/or why something unexpected happened. Doesn't help that some buttons physically stick and reluctantly disengage. Half the buttons allegedly do something, but they're useless or pointless. Some have indicator lights one must have reason to look at before noticing (oh, the "dual heat mode" got enabled? is that why the HVAC has been fighting itself and can't decide whether to heat or cool? defrost is stuck on, and wife is freaking out that it's too hot/cold/something in here and doesn't understand how to stop it?)
My car's "infotainment" system is so bad I've given up on it. When working with a phone, the sound is good - but rattling thru menus via buttons on multiple surfaces, never quite knowing what some of the terms mean (because I'm focused on the road, not on sorting out "MEDIA SOURCE" vs "INPUT SOURCE" in context of connecting Bluetooth or whatever), and having to literally alternate between sound unit face and the "OK" button on the steering wheel, well just forget it we're using the phone's own speakers (relatively lousy but they work). There's a speech recognition system in there too, but that goes nowhere (first, memorize all the possible commands it recognizes; next, say the phrases just right in a noisy & distracting environment...).
Yeah, physical buttons/knobs are distracting too. At least a touchscreen system can better present/organize information, and likely comes with a viable speech recognition system. And can sanely interface to a phone via Bluetooth.
I’m not trying to be a smart ass, but none of this explains how a touchscreen is superior to physical buttons.
If you hand misses a physical button, you easily orient yourself by recognizing the shape of the and relative location of the button by touch, whereas a mistouch on screen might have activated some functionality, or at the very least is harder to orient without looking because there are no physical features.
While OEM infotainment systems universally suck, it’s a non sequitur to say that a touchscreen fixes any of these issues, in particular your Bluetooth and voice problems. My Acura has a touchscreen and voice and it sucks. The voice is slow to respond with constant boilerplate announcements, and the typing addresses into the gps is painful, even when using autocomplete (it animates the typing, and then forces you to reconfirm the completed text.)
The choice isn’t between a touchscreen and a thousand knobs.
My current car, a random 5 year old sedan has about 4-5 knobs on the console I use- volume, heated seats, ac mode, temperature, and nav knob that rotates, pushes in, and pushed in 4 directions.
I can do all this without taking my eyes off the road.
I also have an 8 inch touchscreen that I never use because it’s too hard while driving.
I realize most people don't actually do this, but imo it's pretty irresponsible to drive around in a 1.5+ ton vehicle without taking the time to RTFM, regardless of how complicated it is.
My comment was specifically about forcing a drivers eyes off the road. A touchscreen does this and buttons do not. However, I agree voice controls and a HUD does solve this problem better than button.
I took a test drive in an S a few years ago, and also found the interior ugly and the infotainment system lacking. The sales guy was pushing the car hard with misdirection and deceptions[0][1], even calling me days later. Eventually I had just tell them to stop calling and told them exactly why I’d never buy the car.
[0] “It has a streaming service like Pandora!”
“Is it Pandora?”
“It’s Sketcher. It’s like Pandora!”
“So it’s not Pandora.”
“No.”
[1] “This car has full self driving.”
“So is it going to turn here?”
“No. It has FSD capability, but it’s not on because of regulatory approval. It should be here in a year to two.”
(That was four years ago.)
Does this need to be in literally every thread about Tesla?
Is there any evidence at all that this is the impairment of safety opponents claim? Model 3s have been sold in large numbers since 2018. Are drivers crashing into other cars at higher rates? Or are we just going to keep beating this dead horse?
They might have slightly higher fatality rates than other "luxury sedans", but seem to be safer than the average car (which includes older models on the road that don't have active collision avoidance features or such).
Note that I say "they might" because tesladeaths.com is probably overcounting slightly. It's created by a group of short sellers, and the IIHS may count fewer incidents for other cars.
Until the IIHS releases properly comparable numbers themselves, it's hard to say for sure.
> Note that I say "they might" because tesladeaths.com is probably overcounting slightly.
More than slightly, and that includes far more than just the ones where the touchscreen replaced nearly all controls not on the steering pedestal (Model 3, Y).
I don't know how many years have to go by without supporting evidence before we can move on from these claims. More than three, apparently, and despite other manufacturers making the same shift toward touchscreens.
Yeah, my experience with the Model 3’s touch screen is that it’s really good at displaying the information you need at a glance and that, while driving, very little interaction with it is necessary: the sticks and steering wheel controls do nearly everything you need while driving.
Perhaps, but every thread needs the comments from someone who rode in one / test drove it once and just can’t wrap their head around how it can be driven without staring at the screen. Even to those of us who have driven them every day for years.
It was tired when the car first came out, but at least it was a valid concern. Now it just feels like an unwillingness to accept reality.
> Is there any evidence at all that this is the impairment of safety opponents claim?
This came out this week:
> A study measuring the affects of driver distraction suggests using a dashboard touchscreen is up to four times worse than being at the UK’s drink-drive alcohol limit.
If I’m reading that study correctly, it’s measuring when drivers actually operate the touchscreen while driving. That’s a bit different from driving a car that happens to have one.
Every Model 3 has one, and they’ve been made in large numbers since 2018. It seems like we’d have the numbers by now if it were the threat it’s claimed to be.
The UI on that touchscreen is very different from the average car touchscreen. Bigger and ridiculously more responsive. The wipers are accessible in two quick touches: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rr_XzzJ6gc
I’m pretty sure you can operate it with voice commands as well, and the click wheel in the 3?
That said, why would you not leave it on auto? I own a normal car and don’t touch the dashboard at all during 98% of drives, everything is set to auto (wipers, lights, AC).
Also, It’s not the click wheel, it’s the left stalk in the 3/Y. And touching the button on the stalk brings up the part of the UI that controls the wipers. I can reach it with my pinky while my hand is on the wheel.
To your point, I’ve never taken it off auto. I just hit the button on the stalk every now and again to get an extra wipe/clean.
The wipers engage automatically by default. If you disable that, you can push the button at the end of the stalk to wipe once, or adjust via voice commands. But yes, you can also use the touchscreen.
I just test drove a model 3 today. Fun car! I ended up ordering one.
But as a software developer myself..there is no WAY I'd let the car drive itself. I'm a pretty decent developer, and maybe Tesla's developers are better, but knowing how many mistakes I make in code...just hell no.
The fact that they’re talking about finishing QA weeks before releasing beta FSD software tells me everything I need to know. Watching any random YouTube video of the functionality fills in the gaps.
This. Friends sometimes don’t understand how one can be a nerd and still not want to AI all the things (or electronic voting, for that matter). We know how the sausage is made, and there’s no way I’m trusting developers at a car manufacturer to do things properly. Even in cases where there is a reasonable definition for “properly”.
Wait until you find out how much of society already runs based on code someone wrote.
Just don't be one of the free beta testers :) When a new version of anything gets released, I give it a year or two. By that time, stackoverflow answers get magically generated, bugs fixed, articles written and trade-offs articulated.
Saying any brand is safer than human driving is a huge lie.
If we exclude DUI and tired drivers but include difficult terrain(not well marked, heavy rain, covered in snow) or streets like in India or Egypt with very few traffic lights at junctions, then the self driving cars will need permanent human intervention or to be stopped period.
Under these circumstances, the human driver will be much less dangerous.
I will be less sceptical about fsd when I see elon musk taking a blind fold amd his kids on the rear seats of a fsd Tesla in snow covered new york heavy duty traffic or an unmarked, slippery and snow covered road in a storm with 20feet visibility taking a 5 hr ride.
Should not be a big deal for someone who announced a coast to coast trip without intervention. What happened to that anyway..?
Except humans do drink and drive. If everyone drove like school buss drivers then US would have 1/10th it’s current mother vehicle fatality rate. But, we don’t so if you’re talking about human drivers you need to look at everything people behind the wheel do from highly defensive driving to getting a BJ while doing 140mph at 2AM.
As someone not in a Tesla that’s what’s important to me.
I am not buying their self driving package so as a bystander in the other car it’s statistically safer for me.
As to the actual drivers/passengers that’s a more complex question. It’s likely going to continue killing some people who would otherwise survive, but nobody is forcing them to use the system while otherwise safe to drive. On the other hand others will only turn it on when tired etc which is likely where the net benefit comes from.
> Saying any brand is safer than human driving is a huge lie.
Can you substantiate this statement with discernible data? We recently did a road trip in Oregon. Even with an older version of autopilot (AP1) on our Model X which only has one front facing camera. The drive with having it engaged while closely supervising was safer.
There was really dense fog with long stretches of windy roads. I was having such a hard time that I had to slow down considerably. I was probably were pissing off local drivers behind me.
Meanwhile autopilot made quick work of the task without any disengagements. The latest version (AP3) is already considerably better and actually provides practical value.
There is only one salient question: per-mile is the danger of Tesla's FSD more or less than not using it?
All other questions are second order, and almost besides the point unless we have reason to suspect regulation of self-driving will be more efficacious than other safety regs.
Now, I've seen stats either way, but this article doesn't even address it. So what are people taking away from it?
Per highway mile or per sunshine mile or luxury sedan mile or per what kind of mile driven by whom when and where? You have to be incredibly careful to compare like miles. If you just compare per mile Tesla on autopilot to per mile everything else, it’s a dishonest comparison.
If the same amount of people die except it’s nuns and orphan busses instead of drunks and other unsafe drivers then the “good” drivers odds just went the wrong way.
I think self driving industry just doesn’t have enough real world data to prove or disprove that AI is better at driving cars than humans. The public doesn’t need to trust AI engineers any more so than it needs to trust airplane engineers. At the end of the day, data is what matters.
I think it is great that they are starting to think about this, but I find the approach profoundly disappointing. While it is a bit silly in form at the moment, this test is starting in a much more useful direction, IMO:
We all know that there are car accidents every year, and it is no secret that driver inattention is the root cause for a very large percentage of them.
But what can be done about them? The NTSB is focusing almost exclusively on driver monitoring while the driver assistance is turned on.
But what about when its turned off? And more generally, how do these systems compare against driving without such systems at all? Its clear that the current state is far from perfect, but an overly heavy focus only on failure cases will lead to misleading conclusions.
Their comment was specifically about when the autopilot is off, so it is apples to apples because bot situation can be treated equally - a person driving a car fully manually.
Stop the comparison to planes just because it's named autopilot in both cases.
There are always 2 highly trained professionals in a cockpit and both are familiar with emergency situations because they regularly train for it. They are in constant contact with ATC that keeps other planes far away from them. In case of a crash or even a deviation there are entire agencies all over it with sometimes international investigators present. All communication is recorded.
A driver is not only alone, they can have very poor skills in general which were last tested 40 years ago. They are on the road with dozens of vehicles around them, tightly packed and often separated by less than a vehicle width between them. If a crash occured there may be a few police officers present that pick up the pieces and fill out forms to satisfy the insurance.
And those are still far more regulated than drivers, and they would be regulated even stricter would they routinely kill others without being harmed themselves. Meanwhile, cars are advertised by how well they protect the driver in events that likely involve killing others.
Commerical flying should not be equated to amateur driving. Amatuer flying does not require a second person or many other safety requirements. Commerical driving does have higher standards on number of hours , certifications etc
Lack of adequate recurring certifications or poor standards does not absolve the driver of his responsibily towards himself and more importantly to others on and near the road, same as the pilot , inadequate oversight is not an excuse.
driving a 2+ton vehicle that at the typical speeds can be fatal or cause major injury you are responsible period. Same for any other equipment or a pet
Once you get to L3 self-driving, you delegate full responsibility to the car, even if only under limited circumstances. Many L4 cars will not even have steering wheels or pedals, and won’t have a pilot’s seat. A lot of prototypes turn the front seats around to face the back row.
Do you still believe that the driver is responsible under those circumstances?
Anything L2 or under is a “driver assistance system”, and the driver maintains control and responsibility at all times. All of the systems in recreational or commercial aircraft today (autopilot, auto-land) are L2 or less.
This is why it’s very critical that automakers not blur the lines to drivers. We are approaching an inflection point as to who is responsible behind the wheel, the car or the AI.
The last time a plane's flight system screwed up big time, the manufacturer was found to be at fault, all models of that plane were grounded, and it was a massive public scandal.
That’s mechanical / system failure, like Toyota’s “sudden acceleration” problem years ago. The question is about wrong decisions made by self driving, where there is no clear failure mode.
And this is what killed earlier attempts at self driving cars... liability (and merging problems but those were fixable)
Granted in the late 90s the self driving technology was mostly focused on closed roads and using modified systems (eg magnetic pins in the road) to help cars self locate
But it came down to: if there’s an accident who’s responsible? The driver? The car manufacturer? The road designer? The road builder? The government?
For this to all work, companies have to take responsibility (not legal, but much more ethical than Tesla has shown) for their technology and you probably need a government system like the vaccine adverse event reporting system with associated payouts.
I think there is still a question of who's responsible. If I have an accident in my non-automated Honda Accord, who's responsible? It could be the car manufacturer, if the front wheel falls off because of a manufacturing defect. Or it could be the government because of unmaintained safety features. Does that equation change if the car is "full self driving"?
The day is rapidly approaching where we'll have to choose between the desire to blame and the desire to save lives.
Fairly soon autopilot will be safer than new drivers and the elderly who are aging out of the ability to drive safely. I hope we have the political will to potentially save my parents' and child's life by allowing them to have an AI driver even if it's not 100% safe.
I’ve been reading “fairly soon” for so many years now. People laughed on HN when you said we wouldn’t have it by 2020. I hope technologists are willing to do the hard work to make sure it actually is safer before making assertions that it is based on shoddy as-honest-as-an-advertisement statistics.
My parents will be alive for probably another 20 years. That's the kind of time horizons I'm looking at things, not the current marketing speak. If we get there within a decade, that will seem very quick to me and I'll be very happy with our progress.
And I make the prediction that Tesla's "Autopilot" in its current form of camera-only navigation will not be able to be safer than new drivers and the elderly (below 80) within the next 20 years, maybe ever.
To be it must navigate any situation without any driver intervention:
- parking in tight spaces
- follow the assigned turn lanes in an intersection
- follow the local laws on turn on red
- navigating streets that are less than a meter wider than the vehicle and have vehicles parked alternating between right and left but are still both ways (very common in Europe)
- nighttime driving in heavier rain
- following diversions that are not published, badly signposted, and were set up quickly by the city due to sudden a hole or similar in the street
- follow streets without any or even wrong markings on them
Most importantly it must not drive people into dividers, well-lit emergency equipment, and/or crossing trailers.
The fun thing about this is: we both won't ever be able to prove our theories right because neither enough elderly nor enough new drivers will own a Tesla with "Autopilot". They are just too expensive.
I don’t see anything in this comment thread that was specifically referring to Tesla self driving cars. I think the sentiment is for self-driving cars in general, achieved however.
> Fairly soon autopilot will be safer than new drivers and the elderly
This assumes that our hill climbing hasn't hit the top of the hill in this area. I submit that there's almost no evidence of recent continuous growth in this technology.
I’m glad you have a magical belief without meaningful facts produced with meaningful oversight. Tesla’s representations are essentially “hold my beer while we provide not full self driving”.
This is easily solvable. Manufacturers will take out umbrella liability policies to immunize them from lawsuits relating to self-driving failures. In order to price these policies, insurers will perform their own due diligence of the self-driving packages. The armies of lawyers employed by the auto makers will develop a boilerplate legal defense that will make massive lawsuits impractical, and most victims will settle out of court.
Alternately, your own auto liability insurance will include coverage for your car’s automaton, and again it will be priced based on risk. For most people, the premium will be lower than if they drive themselves, as the risk will be lower.
VW is setup to do just that with their goliath bank: https://www.vwfs.pl/ - I would imagine this is where the larger brands may come into their own with larger legislation and legality issues. VW provides a whole range of financial offerings.
Nowhere do I mention anyone signing away their liability. This doesn’t require any kind of click-through license or arbitration clause. The manufacturers will be fully open to being sued, they’ll just have an insurance policy that pays out if they lose.
If autonomous vehicles are safer than human drivers, then ultimately they are going to be safer to ensure.
Well, humans tend to only face criminal charges if the problem was willful (which may include willful DWI).
The closest direct equivalent with driverless is that the vehicle may lose its right to operate until the problem has been corrected. I'd actually expect this to happen somewhat frequently in the early days.
This separation of responsibilities has contributed to a culture gap between the agencies. As the agency responsible for writing regulations, NHTSA has to trade safety off against other considerations like economic costs, the lobbying clout of automakers, and the risk of consumer backlash. In contrast, NTSB's rulings are purely advisory, which frees the agency to doggedly advocate strong safety measures.
(NTSB is the one “blasting” Tesla). It’s hard to be completely sympathetic to a system-safety-at-all-costs viewpoint, in that slowing down the development of actual full self driving with superhuman performance by even a year due to increased friction on making changes has severe hidden costs - 38,000 are killed every year in the US alone in car-related incidents, and many more are severely injured with long lasting repercussions. And many of those are in the prime of their lives, so it’s worse than an apples to apples comparison with death counts from many ailments would suggest.
I think the NHTSA letting things develop on their own for a bit is actually the smart move here, all things considered.
That said, Tesla’s marketing strategy is pretty borderline.
I didn’t get MB for self driving capability. I got Mercedes because when there’s a serious accident, I have a very low risk of death. With Tesla it may be low, but at the time there wasn’t enough data to be sure. Tesla could have been the safest or the car version of the 737 Max. For the sake of my family’s safety I made the conservative choice.
I wasn't referring to "self driving" capabilities. I was mainly referencing DISTRONIC PLUS®, Lane keeping assist(LKAS), Automatic emergency braking (AEB) and collision avoidance.
We owned 2 MB sedans and an SUV and all had the same issues.
> I got Mercedes because when there’s a serious accident, I have a very low risk of death
I definitely get where you're coming from. There just isn't enough data available for Tesla yet from the IIHS. At least from their latest report dated May 28, 2020. I hope it comes out soon.
What I do know is that the Tesla Model 3 scored high (if not the highest) marks as tested by multiple orgs such as NHTSA [1], Euro NCAP [2,3], IIHS [4].
Even if you completely write off the FSD, Tesla's safety scores are really good. The model 3 got 5 stars in every NHTSA category, and the lowest probability of injury of any vehicle they ever tested.
I’ve wondered if that is part of their autonomous strategy. Autopilot makes things less safe but other aspects make it more safe, so it becomes harder to point the finger at autopilot.
Having owned 3 different models now, I would disagree.
Regardless, even without autopilot. The Automatic emergency braking, Collision Avoidance, and Obstacle Aware Acceleration saved me countless times. Those are also all features that come standard with every car.
Meanwhile, other manufacturers will charge money for advanced safety features. Even basic autopilot made my drive along windy Oregon roads with dense fog much safer.
Autopilot also pretty much eliminates driver fatigue on long road trips.
Or you know, they just want to make safe cars. If you go back you will see that Musk talks about safety as a core feature in every car long before they even had their own Self-driving team.
But when it comes to driver alertness monitoring they pick the easiest to fool solution. I suspect it's intentional. Eye tracking would prevent their users from misusing autopilot. It would kill the hype.
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