> Tesla's with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware
Which makes sense, as they'll be pulling in all that new data from the sensors. I guess people won't be too disappointed owning a car that will eventually be able to be fully autonomous!
"including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency braking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control". They're shipping without features that are commonplace, probably even expected, on premium cars these days.
How sure are they that this hardware revision is going to be what is required? I feel like at any point in time you can make an assumption about the hardware requirements to only discover in future that you could have actually done it with just a software update if the CPU had one more core. They'd have to be pretty sure this HW rev would meet their future demands for self-driving right ?
I assume they're reasonably confident, since they've been doing this for a while, and have ploughed more money/time into this than most others.
That, and judging by Tesla's history - if there was indeed something lacking, they might just retro-fit it for free onto people's cars. So I assume they're keen on getting this right...haha.
Um, this is what we in the tech industry do ALL the time. We can only use _existing_ technology. We can't see into the future, so we do our best to choose HW/SW based on our _current_ understanding of the problems we are solving. If they weren't "sure" based on their current understanding of the problem, then they surely wouldn't be placing this in their vehicles.
Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency breaking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control
Right, so they are actually announcing that their new cars now have less automation capabilities. I can't keep track with all the "autopilot" hardware they have deployed to date, MobilEye, BOSCH Radar, own software hacks, then this completely new one..
Not to mention that they have sold thousands of cars with the same Autopilot brand and "fully autonomous soon" messaging that will now likely never get there.
>While this is occurring, Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency breaking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control.
But not software and they don't even have confidence in their current implementation?
It's not surprising considering the recent announcements by the regulators, but that's quite a step.
This means they don't have confidence in running the same tried and tested programs on a completely new platform they just launched. Which makes complete sense, wouldn't it be irresponsible otherwise?
It gives them time to confirm a new technology and update their maps of areas with information from the new wavelengths they're just now gathering.
So the difference is basically just a few extra cameras and updates to the sensors. It doesn't seem like a huge step or completely new platform - at least when looking at the components.
> But not software and they don't even have confidence in their current implementation.
I think it's quite forward thinking for them to include the hardware when it's ready, knowing they can update the software in the future. And I'd prefer them to be conservative in rolling out the software for an automobile. Not something I'd want to see beta tested on the highway.
>Not something I'd want to see beta tested on the highway.
It's not like the previous-gen cars aren't on the highway at the moment. Or has "autopilot" been deactivated in the meanwhile?
I understand their step to add better sensors for the future (even though it seems difficult without LIDAR). But disabling autopilot for new cars with better sensors and keeping it enabled for older ones seems like a strange step.
i'm guessing that the data is just plain too different (probably no more mobileye sensors, for example) and not worth adapting to the older ML models (which itself would require extensive testing) when the new system is going to end up with different ML models anyways.
[edit] Tesla previously hired Jim Keller (chip designer) into the autopilot team. considering the kinds of things he may be working on, i'd be surprised if the differences in either the sensors or GPUs aren't significant.
i don't think they ever believed the previous sensors were capable of "full autonomy". the reason they didn't throw in all these sensors sooner is that it would have been a premature optimization considering their lack of experience and also pretty expensive in terms of the hardware (which includes the GPUs necessary to make use of the sensors).
So self-driving will be a standard feature of Model 3, not an option? Pretty cool if they can make it work. I'm skeptical that the computer (NVIDIA Drive PX 2 perhaps?) will have enough power to do it all without LIDAR.
Self-driving hardware will be standard on Model 3, but you'll likely still have to pay a premium for the software to activate it. This is akin to Tesla including the 75 kWh battery on the 60 kWh Model S, and then charging you extra to "activate" the battery's full capacity.
The hardware will be standard, but almost certainly you'll pay extra to enable it. (If they do it the same as similar features in the past, there will be a discount to enable it at order, or you can do it later at a slight premium.)
That'll be an interesting court case: the first time a fatality is the result of unactivated safety features on a car that's fully capable of preventing a collision.
Tesla has already said that the Model 3's safety features will come standard, though it wouldn't preclude such a lawsuit against the owner if the features weren't activated.
> Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency breaking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control.
Not sure what to make of this. New buyers are getting less than current owners now, but expected to get much more later?
I can't think of a precedent for this as a marketing approach in modern consumer products.
Tesla is known for doing things without precedent. They also have the ability to push major updates OTA to their vehicles, which is what enables them to give "less" while promising more. Like the release said, they'll have the hardware, it just needs to be enabled.
I wonder how much it would cost to add hardware for both Autopilot v1.0 and v2.0 for the gap models, so new customers don't have to make the sacrifice. Lack of complete Autopilot for a while is fine, but lack of emergency braking increases your life risk.
>I can't think of a precedent for this as a marketing approach in modern consumer products.
Apple iOS ;) the iPhone 7 had (don't know if it has now) some camera features (autofocus and raw related) disabled that were present on the 6/6s because of software limitations.
This isn't that uncommon many times you can have a new product which comes with some features disabled/not working because the software did not catch up to the hardware yet for what ever reason.
Can you provide a source? I've followed the iPhone 7 pretty closely, own one, and haven't heard of any of these missing camera features that were present on the 6S (just the headphone jack).
You're mistaken. Yes, portrait mode on the 7+ was introduced in 10.1 on the 7+ rather than at launch. But this feature was never available on the 6. It requires the two cameras in the 7+ to create a depth map and then blur the distance. Nothing to do with autofocus. There's no feature that was removed other than the headphone jack.
Well IIRC the portrait mode was absent completely from the 7+ camera app.
This is analogous to the Tesla example, new hardware no software.
The fact that the 7+ has a different portrait mode doesn't matter, the app had none, and in this case the new Tesla comes with new hardware that provides a different and arguably better "autopilot" but the software would trail the release of the hardware.
Right but portrait mode didn't exist before iPhone 7+ iOS 10.1. They didn't take away anything and then give it back, they simply added that new feature after the iphone7+ was released. It wasn't just a standard optical focus feature that the iPhones had previously. It is using software to identify the subject and blur the background to give the effect of a dslr camera when shooting a portrait photo with a low aperature setting.
Happens quite often. Hardware is updated but software is not ready. Similar approach happens with digital cameras, graphics cards, electronics equipment.
I'm totally just guessing, but possibly they still need training data for the new hardware configuration which they will collect from the newly sold cars. They could pay testers to drive them around for a while to generate that data or just roll it out to the public and crowd source the problem. They deliver less functionality at launch but start generating revenue earlier. Most large car companies don't mind deferring the revenue a little after incurring the initial development costs if it means delivering a complete product, but Tesla is operating on tighter margins than big auto.
Perhaps the original iPhone falls in this category. It did less (games, apps) than the competition when it launched, but soon the same product overtook the competition when the app store and API was released.
When the original iPhone was released, there were no "current owners", because the thing wasn't available before it was released (that's kind of what 'released' means).
It seems that they expect to bring back the 1.0 features by December - it looks largely an approval for the system thing, and the enhanced features later over time.
Not sure why this is downvoted, Tesla won't have the MobileEye system for new models and they want to roll out their own machine vision system, which is even more important now due to the new suite of cameras. That will take some time.
This is one of the most insightful comments here. Too bad it gets drowned in all the rest. Also, if you read the WSJ or other articles they don't mention this either.
Good job by Tesla PR I suppose.
They been working on this before mobile eye dropped them. Around a year ago a car with this exact setup of cameras ( using webcams) was spotted charging.
It was probably just a typo that the couple of people who wrote and edited the announcement didn't catch. I am doubtful of the correlation you are implying between their spelling of braking and their braking system.
It was already announced before, that the hardware is included. And it was clear, that it is meant to be used for autonomous driving. And as they do not have autonomous driving yet, this is indeed just hot air... How would they know it is completed if there is no demonstration of it actually working?
Looking at what is not said, my interpretation is that previous Teslas will not be software-upgraded to full autonomy because the problem is harder than they previously thought.
And in actually announcing this commitment now, that this one would be the final hardware, could also be just forced, as they need to sell it to all the people getting cars now with temporary less functionality.
Their LIDAR provider pulled out and now they're switching to camera-based CV and ending development of the LIDAR branch. I think they're hoping that this approach matures enough to match the capability of LIDAR in time for them to meet their market goals.
Either you're confused or I'm confused as to what you're talking about. Tesla has never used LIDAR and they actually leaned more heavily on CV until recently when they started using radar more extensively.
Elon just tweeted that a video showing car navigating an urban environment is forth coming. Without actual footage and info the post is a bit light on the crucial implementation for sure.
I wonder how they balance their development process for the algorithms with the upgraded sensors vs the code that runs with older sensors as input. Do they maintain two different teams? Back port improvements?
Is this a formal model-year revision/refresh, or just a midyear 'minor revision' thing (despite being a major revision?) Are old models retrofittable? Will this hurt the resale value of existing Teslas that have the last generation hardware?
Is there an industry-standard (or governmental) safety test that these autonomous systems have to go through to evaluate their efficacy and performance in different scenarios?
The old models actually had pretty weak sensors which indirectly caused the death of that one guy who used autopilot and t-boned a trailer.
> Eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range.
Previously that was just one camera mounted in front of the rear view mirror
> Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system.
Same number as before except instead of 16' of range it will be 32' of range.
> A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.
same number and position of radar sensors as before but possibly a beefed up type for inclement weather. I don't know what the prior one was capable of.
> The old models actually had pretty weak sensors which indirectly caused the death of that one guy who used autopilot and t-boned a trailer.
Saying it was the sensors that caused the guys death is like saying it was the powerstation that generated the electricity that ran the car causing his death.
He was told, repeatedly, to keep his hands on the steering wheel and to watch the surrounding environment. He even apparently understood the limitations of the system, having recorded a number of scenarios (many of which are situations where AP shouldn't have been engaged anyway) where the car's ability to handle the situation was marginal at best.
So, him deciding to (apparently) watch a video on a tablet while driving down a public highway isn't really the fault of the AP system.
that's the indirectly part. he absolutely should have been paying attention and kept his hands on the wheel but it was in the uncanny valley of it really works pretty damn well 95% of the time until it doesn't. the sensor and the system failed there.
How interesting. So up-coming Tesla drivers temporarily won't get fancy features.
For a time, new Tesla buyers again become early adopters. But unlike traditional early adopters, who take a trade-off (on price, or features, or polish) for being first, these adopters are promised the features when they are ready.
The nay-saying around Tesla is immense, even in these early HN comments. Obviously there's some risk here, but man. Tesla is sowing the seeds of the future.
I think it's great that they're taking the big risks needed to move the industry forward, and not letting the lawyers run the company.
But some of the risks they're taking are just completely stupid and unnecessary, such as calling their assisted cruise control "Autopilot." That's like waving the proverbial cape at the proverbial bull.
I see where you're coming from, but think that's a calculated risk. From a PR perspective it generates buzz, sounds ambitious, and reflects their ambition.
If you ask anybody today, "what company is interested in self-driving cars?" Their answer is going to be Tesla. They're not gonna say Apple, or Ford or Volvo or Mercedes or Mobileye or Intel. They're gonna point straight to Tesla.
A big part of that is their "inaccurate" word choice. From a PR perspective, the name was a solid gold decision.
>From a PR perspective, the name was a solid gold decision.
I doubt it. It creates false hopes and probably hurted/hurts them when crashs happen. The Tesla autopilot death in June was a really big thing, yet other crashes where assistant systems of other manufacturers are never in the press. Maybe because of the name, maybe because the drivers use them better?
Also look at what happened recently in Germany:
1. Basically the head of the DMVs sending a letter to all Tesla owners to RTFM that it is not in fact an autopilot.
2. Department of Transportation pushing Tesla to stop using the term "autopilot" in marketing as it is misleading.
The autopilot in an airplane cannot be used without a pilot paying attention, either, but it is still called an autopilot. (For example, autopilots do not avoid traffic on a collision course.)
And while the name is perhaps misleading to the xommon layperson, your comment of "it is not in fact an autopilot" is flat out wrong. Instead perhaps "it is in fact an autopilot, but you don't know what an autopilot is or how it should be used"
You're arguing semantics. The average person will see "autopilot" and experience a few "happy" drives where the car stays in its lane and has no problems. Then they will stop paying attention and die when they are asleep when it "hands over control" at 60 mph due to a failed sensor or something.
Except when they aren't - see Air France 447 for what happens when a driver has to step in after the autopilot can't cope with the situation.
Then enhance the frequency of it happening by three orders of magnitude given that Tesla drivers are generally not professional drivers, let alone trained in the quirks of an autopilot in the beta release stage...
To be fair planes aren't sold to relatively untrained individuals. Furthermore many accidents have happened when trained pilots stopped paying attention on the job and autopilot failed. I'm totally expecting a "Florida Man in Fatal Tesla Crash Was Masturbating to Internet Pornography" headline.
You know that; I know that; the average Joe on the street does not, and instead has a Hollywood interpretation of the term. Tesla knowingly and cynically exploits that.
This is the worst of both worlds--having people become complacent behind the wheel while a computer drives only to have to suddenly become engaged which you know isn't going to happen. A lot of people nod off while driving as it is. Take away the "you're going to die if you don't pay attention" part and then imagine what happens!
Of course it can be used without a pilot paying attention. But this rarely happens. If we trained drivers the way we train pilots, it wouldn't be a problem in cars, either.
Also, the comparison would be more relevant if you had as much time to correct problems that occur eight feet away from an oncoming lane of 70 MPH traffic, and as many degrees of freedom in which to do so, as you do when something goes wrong with nothing but 10,000 feet of air around you.
Air safety is an intimidating engineering problem, but it's utterly trivial compared to what it will take to build safe self-driving cars. Make no mistake, it's about time we tried... but we just need to not be stupid about it. Calling a glorified cruise control "Autopilot" is stupid.
That previously would have been my answer, but I've realised that Google is interested in working on them, whilst Tesla & Uber are interested in bringing them to market.
Pilot here. Airplanes have autopilot. While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party with the flight attendants.
Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator.
The problem is that most consumers, like parent poster, do not really understand what pilots do, or that an autopilot simply holds the course steady (in the simplest form, at least).
Combine ignorance with misguided self-righteousness, and we get...this mess.
Because your industry has coined a term to mean something different from the literal meaning doesn't assert its the proper use the term. Auto implies automatically, it doesn't give any average consumer the indication that there needs to be manual involvement. I get it that pilots monitor stuff when planes are on auto pilot. That doesn't mean its correct for other industries.
Curious, what is "take control at a moments notice" in seconds? From what I've read about aviation, situations where really fast, let's say <2 seconds, reaction to an unusual situation is necessary don't seem very common compared to car traffic? (Excluding starts and landings, even if a plane can do those on autopilot the pilots certainly are going to be fully attentive)
It seems like an airliner flying at altitude has quite large safety margins compared to a car on a highway.
Tell that to a pilot who's had an autopilot failure where a servo went crazy all of a sudden. You better act quick, especially in low visibility situations, to turn it off, or pull the circuit breaker.
It might happen a bit slower than in a car, but the consequences can be much more dramatic.
How are the consequences much more dramatic while flying? I can think of plenty of scenarios while driving where you go from perfect autopilot conditions with no visible risks to death of passengers or pedestrians in <5 seconds.
Even if the plane started falling down like a rock, you still have more time to react than a driver of a car where a tyre burst at 80mph and now the car is heading towards the incoming lane/rock face on the other side. You literally might have less than few seconds to impact and I imagine that if you weren't holding the steering wheel at the time, you won't be able to do anything.
Errm, I'm pretty sure the car equivalent of that would result in the vehicle swerving towards the side of a bridge at 70+ MPH, with very little chance of reacting quickly enough to turn it off. A car on the highway really doesn't have that much in the way of safety margins.
I wouldn't call it larger safety margins. Many if not most of the cases where car drivers should take action are survivable if they don't; that's different for pilots in airplanes.
Pilots typically have more time to react, though (astronauts lie even further away along this axis; in cases where astronauts can take action to save their lives, they typically have even more time, but also, in many cases, there's no action that will save them)
As to the "take control at a moments notice": that's where the problem lies.
The arguments in "Ironies of Automation" (https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/nsf_itr/794B/papers/Bainbridge_1983...) such as "By taking away the easy parts of his task, automation can make the difficult parts of the human operator's task more difficult" haven't lost any of their power in the 30+ years since it was published.
Because of that, I doubt the typical driver will be able to handle emergency situations, as it will require frequent training.
Pilot here as well, unfortunately, it's a fight that won't be easy to win. If in the mind of people, Autopilot means self driving. It's going to be hard to change the global perception.
When I'm using the Autopilot, I feel like I'm in my airplane, always on guard, and in a practice of recovery from unusual attitude in flight.
There are a few times also where being an engineer has helped a lot. You can pretty much predict the situations where the car will run into issues and conflicts ahead of time, just by looking at the scenario in front of you.
It's something that the majority of population is not trained to do.
Now having said that, I used to own a BMW X5 with Adaptive Cruise Control, and that car was also doing some pretty stupid things at times, especially when cars in front were moving out of the way. The car would suddenly think the way was clear and floor the accelerator...
Have a RAV4 2016 SE. Great car, sonars and cameras everywhere but still very stupid driving at times. I don't mind it, because it keeps me alert to take over at moments notice.
I really want to hack the can bus and give it more smarts. What is the legality of that?
You are freed from continually making stupid rote inputs to match the speed of the driver in front, allowing you to apportion a bit more focus to the road further ahead.
Further, it makes the bulk of motorway driving less fatiguing. When you're not having to personally intervene to slow down when the driver in front chooses to go a few kays slower than you, it's nowhere near as irritating.
Agree with parent. Unfortunately for your profession "Airplane!" the movie ruined the perception. When I read "autopilot" I think robot guy driving airplane without any intervention meaning I can sleep from takeoff to landing.
Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Ask 99 out of 100 people who aren't pilots, but who might be Tesla customers, and see if they can recite what you wrote below:
While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party with the flight attendants.
And how do you know all that? Because you were trained accordingly.
I'm not saying Tesla shouldn't offer the feature in their cars. I'm saying they shouldn't have named it after a feature that people think allows pilots to party with the flight attendants.
Shouldn't what matters be how many people become actual Tesla owners using autopilot without realising this? For that metric, I suspect the answer is much closer to 0.
It's not clear that the crashes have been people who misunderstood the capability of the system. To me, it seems more likely that they got lazy and put a bit too much faith into it.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, just that it's a lot more complicated than what Tesla decided to name the feature. I think the accidents that have occurred would have occurred regardless of what they named it.
You can solo fly at age 16 after ~30 hours in an aircraft, so about the same. Also, many students take drivers ed. Now commercial flying is far more involved, but so is driving big rigs.
Same in the UK. There's no mandatory number of hours lessons you need to accumulate before taking your test; if you (somehow) pass having had no lessons at all you're good to go.
I have no involvement with aviation and I thought autopilot was a perfectly good word for it. I thought it communicated well that it basically just tries to maintain what it's doing but can't stop on its own.
>>Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Your argument fails as the analogy of car drivers with airplane pilots fails on various grounds.
a. The airplanes, which provides autopilot facility, their pilots have to undergo more rigorous and stringent training than what a ordinary car driver has to undergo
b. for different types of airplane autopilot systems the pilots have to undergo different types of trainings (you have not mentioned what kind of autopilot you have used, but I'd doubt if your autopilot training on one type of plane will automatically certify you to drive all kinds of auto-pilot planes out there, even within the same airplane category)
c. what Tesla is doing is on one hand it is saying (in fact, screaming in its adverts) that "we are bringing autopilot in cars", "we are bringing autopilot in cars" but when it actually is bringing just a driver assistance system and when that causes accidents, Tesla is putting blame on the customers for not understanding what is autopilot. This is not fair, as Tesla does NOT put any requirement for more rigorous and stringent training for its drivers the way airplane manufacturers/airliners put. So, Tesla is playing with the lives of not only its drivers but also of the other road users.
You are welcome to counter-argue my points. But this too much hoohaa about auto-pilot by Tesla and the subsequent bad publicity it is going to bring them is not good for them. People will not be subtle then because Tesla is not being subtle in their adverts now.
There are no specific requirements on avionics training. As long as you have been endorsed for a specific class and type of aircraft, you can fly one, even if the aircraft used for checkout had a different type of autopilot (or none at all).
Things obviously converge with more complex aircrafts, as it would be quite difficult to find, let's say, two Airbus A320 with drastically different stacks, but some of them, like Cessna 172 Skyhawk, have been in production since 1956, with aircraft technology making quite a progress in those 60 years.
If all your training has been done on a 1956 Cessna 172, is it wise to operate a 2016 model without sufficient training? No. Legal? Yes.
> Tesla does NOT put any requirement for more rigorous and stringent training for its drivers
Beyond saying "Don't take tour hands off the wheel and be prepared to take over any moment" what kind of training would you envision them offering outside of [insert state name] Driver's Handbook? Most states already offer free defensive driving courses as well.
I agree that Tesla is using the term "autopilot" opportunistically to say the least. Whether the term accurately represents the feature they want to promote (imho technically it does, but more on that later) is becoming less relevant.
But I'd like to bring counter-argument to your points (a) and (b): taking away the autopilot feature from both airplanes and cars, an airplane pilot still has to undergo substantially more training than a car driver does, so imho the increased training for pilots compared to vehicle drivers is largely coming from the difficulty in controlling the machine and the more deadly consequence of control-loss to the driver / pilot and to the others.
That being said, the term autopilot is being used opportunistically. There's no way Tesla will back away from the term now, so the next best thing is to warn the user, in every step of the way, that "YOU HAVE TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD IDIOT", to the point that if they can detect your hands not on the wheel a warning sounds.
I do believe the Tesla Autopilot and the autonomous mode in the future will save lives, what we're experiencing is the growing pain till we get there.
>>(a) and (b): taking away the autopilot feature from both airplanes and cars, an airplane pilot still has to undergo substantially more training than a car driver does, so imho the increased training for pilots compared to vehicle drivers is largely coming from the difficulty in controlling the machine and the more deadly consequence of control-loss to the driver / pilot and to the others.
But part of the training that a pilot of an "airplane with autopilot" has to undergo has to do with understanding what the autopilot can and cannot do and what the pilot has to do.
Tesla is not making this mandatory for their drivers to undergo rigorous training regarding this very feature that they taut so much. Then as you have pointed out they are opportunistically advertising that very feature and then when the unsuspecting user is caught off-guard, the Tesla is shouting "Gotcha, you didn't read the fine print. See, it is clearly mentioned here". If then the customer says that but that thing was mentioned amongst thousand other things and that too in font so small, Tesla will counter him/her "see, that's your problem not ours."
If that's what they want then be it so. If that's what is making them happy then be it so.
It may help Tesla win some law-suit. But they will clearly and surely lose big on the customer trust.
>>"YOU HAVE TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD IDIOT"
Btw, It's not fair to say the user an "idiot" when the larger idiocy (and not just idiocy but a cruel practical joke on the customers bordering on criminal activity as it may be at the cost of customer's life) is committed by Tesla manufacturers.
The technology to realize an autopilot in a car and in a plane is very different though, they might provide similar functionality to the pilot/driver but in a car it's a much more complex and much less reliable system, involving machine learning etc.. On this layer the systems are not really comparable.
Even in this extremely professional environment that is an airplane cabin, where people are trained to keep watch over the autopilot, people still don't follow procedure:
Over half of pilots admit to sleeping while on autopilot.
These are people who had to take months and years of training to fly.
Meanwhile,to be a driver you need to drive for 15 minutes and do some basic manouvers. In some places of the world, not even that. And we hope that those people will "keep an eye on the road" while the autopilot feature is running? It sounds great in theory, but it's not going to happen. We need a system that can operate completely without human supervision - but that ain't happening any time soon either.
They've been clearly working on AP 2.0 for a long time - this sort of hardware upgrade isn't something you roll out in a few weeks.
This capability was even pretty strongly hinted at for the Model 3.
Improving the self-driving capabilities has "almost certainly very little" to do with the high profile death caused by the use of the self-driving capabilities? Come on.
this really comes off as "look over there" move to distract from the recent negative press as various government bodies take Tesla to task for not only the lack of performance with the current system but also its ridiculous name.
Sorry, but I seriously doubt they will have sufficient hardware installed to take it to level 4 or 5. It might be a stretch to get to 3 with anything they can deploy today simply because no one has demonstrated a real world working solution for these tiers. Oh you might be able to track demo one or controlled loop it.
>this really comes off as "look over there" move to distract from the recent negative press as various government bodies take Tesla to task for not only the lack of performance with the current system but also its ridiculous name.
So you mean there is no advanced hardware in the new cars?
> But unlike traditional early adopters, who take a trade-off (on price, or features, or polish) for being first
Actually, in regards to Tesla, they always stated (and were very open about it) that early-adopters pay premium to support research/growth/etc. First with Roadster, now with S (not sure about X). It can be expected that the same extra features (same hardware) on model will cost less. So the trade-off here is just that, being "first".
You have to be kidding. The Tesla cheer-leading is immense. This is a competitive space within which Tesla might be a leader, but you make it sound as if everyone else around them is stagnant.
The majors are building this stuff, the large tech companies are building this stuff, and even big component providers are building this stuff. This is obvious if you look outside of the SV echo chamber.
So you buy a "regular" car today which will be automagically converted to a self driving car when all the regulations and software catch up. That's pretty cool. You can buy into the future today :D
I though it would be funny to edit my comment to me it look like I was right all along. On reflection, this was petty. My original comment was mistaken in just the manner described.
Commented above too but it looks like making a video took the extra few days:
"Will post video of a Tesla navigating a complex urban environment shortly. That was what took the extra couple of days."
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/788902908175618049
Who's providing all this hardware? EIGHT surround cameras and TWELVE ultrasonic sensors: Are they building this in house too? If not, that's a lot of business to a supplier... all I could find about camera suppliers for Tesla was their former camera (tech?) supplier Mobileye.
EDIT: Ignore the first paragraph below; @dyarosia mentioned correctly they're working on their own vision system, so they probably buy generic camera units.
(IGNORE THIS: The surround cameras are likely still in collaboration with Mobileye, since in their case, Mobileye doesn't just give the camera hardware but also has a fair bit of software that makes all the cameras come together. It's not too likely Tesla's duplicated this so quickly.)
Ultrasonic sensors though are dirt cheap (in the few dollars range), and they probably come from one of the many tier 1 suppliers (Bosch, Delphi, etc) that makes them. These are the technology that powered those beeping back distance sensors for 10+ years.
The real news here is that again, LiDAR is absent. It seems like Tesla's pretty confident they can get to full autonomous self driving without the point cloud data that LiDAR provides. Now THAT'D be impressive!
But I thought that they had gone separate ways?
""When Tesla refused to cancel its own vision development activities and plans for deployment, Mobileye discontinued hardware support for future platforms and released public statements implying that this discontinuance was motivated by safety concerns"
Good catch! I think you're right; Tesla probably now buys pretty generic cameras (from various suppliers) and then integrates them, so the cost is definitely not that much.
This company's self driving cars are gonna have serious problems because their business roadmap is all over the place. This is not just wordplay, I'm serious.
> To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software.
40 times the performance of a Tegra 3 is not particularly impressive.
Also, I sincerely hope that this new faster computer doesn't also run a web browser.
A separation between the running gear of the car, and its entertainment center / user interface, is absolutely vital if we don't want to see an endless stream of "hackers offed Public Figure X by driving their car into a bridge" in the news.
It boggles me that anyone even considers running things like antilock brakes, car security, and especially self-driving capability from an internet-connected device, no matter how nice and convenient it may be.
It needs to be connected to the Internet at some point to download updates. What could happen is having a second computer that all the controls are routed through, and that one does some sanity checks before executing the self driver's actions
Are the cars going to look like Google's and Uber's self driving cars, then?
I never cared that much about self driving capabilities - I like to drive myself - and I certainly don't want to shell out $35,000 for a car with what looks like a food processor or a police emergency light mounted on the rooftop.
IMHO, one of the best features of Tesla has been that they actually made EVs look like traditional cars. It might seem trivial, but many of the budding competitors still fail to do just that:
I think the fact that it needs to have Wheels and be aerodynamic as possible while having a decent amount of interior space has more to do with it. And even without a motor you still need a crumple zone for safety.
I think the Volt looks pretty good. Better than a Tesla, which is just a generic black sedan, not remarkably different from the look of a Honda, Lexus, Audi, etc.
Have you seen the e-Golf? I'm pretty sure they stole that design from somewhere. Hard to believe but it happens to look like a regular... golf. I'm sure they will get in trouble with VW. /s
There is also the Kia Soul EV and Skoda Octavia Green E Line which basically are just their regular line up with the major difference being that they are EVs.
Can you describe what's so amazing about it? They're planning to put temporarily non-functional autonomous driving hardware on their new cars, with the intention to use it when the software is ready at some unknown point in the future.
This is a sign of the utter commodification of hardware and the possibility that a majority of innovation in the future (with the exception of low-power wearables) lies in the realm of software and algorithms.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 348 ms ] thread> Tesla's with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware
Which makes sense, as they'll be pulling in all that new data from the sensors. I guess people won't be too disappointed owning a car that will eventually be able to be fully autonomous!
That, and judging by Tesla's history - if there was indeed something lacking, they might just retro-fit it for free onto people's cars. So I assume they're keen on getting this right...haha.
Right, so they are actually announcing that their new cars now have less automation capabilities. I can't keep track with all the "autopilot" hardware they have deployed to date, MobilEye, BOSCH Radar, own software hacks, then this completely new one..
Not to mention that they have sold thousands of cars with the same Autopilot brand and "fully autonomous soon" messaging that will now likely never get there.
But not software and they don't even have confidence in their current implementation?
It's not surprising considering the recent announcements by the regulators, but that's quite a step.
It gives them time to confirm a new technology and update their maps of areas with information from the new wavelengths they're just now gathering.
Fair enough. I just tried to do a diff between the versions:
Current implementation [0]
* Camera module in the front
* Front-facing Radar
* 12 ultrasonic sensors
New implementation:
* 8 surround cameras
* Front-facing radar
* 12 ultrasonic sensors (updated)
[0]: https://www.quora.com/What-kind-of-sensors-does-the-Tesla-Mo...
So the difference is basically just a few extra cameras and updates to the sensors. It doesn't seem like a huge step or completely new platform - at least when looking at the components.
What techniques were they using to process the data before? Surely it was statistical learning. And if they weren't, their competitors certainly were.
I think it's quite forward thinking for them to include the hardware when it's ready, knowing they can update the software in the future. And I'd prefer them to be conservative in rolling out the software for an automobile. Not something I'd want to see beta tested on the highway.
It's not like the previous-gen cars aren't on the highway at the moment. Or has "autopilot" been deactivated in the meanwhile?
I understand their step to add better sensors for the future (even though it seems difficult without LIDAR). But disabling autopilot for new cars with better sensors and keeping it enabled for older ones seems like a strange step.
[edit] Tesla previously hired Jim Keller (chip designer) into the autopilot team. considering the kinds of things he may be working on, i'd be surprised if the differences in either the sensors or GPUs aren't significant.
Say Tesla's car could automatically brake if it sees a hazard in front of you. However, you opted out of that optional extra.
You aren't paying attention whilst driving, and hit somebody. Who's fault is it?
Yours for being cheap and an inattentive driver? Or Tesla's for not forcing you to give them money to pay for a feature you clearly didn't want?
You can unlock it at purchase as option for $X or after purchase for $X+$Y (currently X=5000 and Y=1000).
I suspect they'll do the same for Model 3.
What's even more interesting is that at times, since the feature is entirely in software, offered 30-day trials for users to try out autopilot.
Not sure what to make of this. New buyers are getting less than current owners now, but expected to get much more later?
I can't think of a precedent for this as a marketing approach in modern consumer products.
Features including performance related features have been pushed via software updates for years.
Anything from navigation to cruise control to sport packages have been deployed either OTA or via a manual update.
Tesla is just pushing it to a new limit (not necessarily a good thing) and is actually advertising every change and feature update.
Can you give any examples of other feature improvements in cars that have been pushed via OTA?
https://www.tesla.com/blog/tragic-loss
Apple iOS ;) the iPhone 7 had (don't know if it has now) some camera features (autofocus and raw related) disabled that were present on the 6/6s because of software limitations.
This isn't that uncommon many times you can have a new product which comes with some features disabled/not working because the software did not catch up to the hardware yet for what ever reason.
There were also another thing or 2 that came in 10.3 iirc.
This is analogous to the Tesla example, new hardware no software.
The fact that the 7+ has a different portrait mode doesn't matter, the app had none, and in this case the new Tesla comes with new hardware that provides a different and arguably better "autopilot" but the software would trail the release of the hardware.
Autopilot 1.0 was the precedent.
They announced that at the 'D' event that all cars shipping from then on would have AP hardware in.
The capabilities were progressively rolled out depending on the tech package you purchased over the next 12 months.
This is a clear "temporary" downgrade of capabilities in exchange for a later payoff.
Do you know if MobileEye dropped them, or they chose to go with something else? How do you know?
E.g. the one here: http://arstechnica.com/cars/2016/09/tesla-dropped-by-mobiley...
edit: fixed, never mind.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/788902908175618049
Is there an industry-standard (or governmental) safety test that these autonomous systems have to go through to evaluate their efficacy and performance in different scenarios?
(edit: clarified the first sentence)
> Eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range.
Previously that was just one camera mounted in front of the rear view mirror
> Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system.
Same number as before except instead of 16' of range it will be 32' of range.
> A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.
same number and position of radar sensors as before but possibly a beefed up type for inclement weather. I don't know what the prior one was capable of.
Saying it was the sensors that caused the guys death is like saying it was the powerstation that generated the electricity that ran the car causing his death.
He was told, repeatedly, to keep his hands on the steering wheel and to watch the surrounding environment. He even apparently understood the limitations of the system, having recorded a number of scenarios (many of which are situations where AP shouldn't have been engaged anyway) where the car's ability to handle the situation was marginal at best.
So, him deciding to (apparently) watch a video on a tablet while driving down a public highway isn't really the fault of the AP system.
For a time, new Tesla buyers again become early adopters. But unlike traditional early adopters, who take a trade-off (on price, or features, or polish) for being first, these adopters are promised the features when they are ready.
The nay-saying around Tesla is immense, even in these early HN comments. Obviously there's some risk here, but man. Tesla is sowing the seeds of the future.
But some of the risks they're taking are just completely stupid and unnecessary, such as calling their assisted cruise control "Autopilot." That's like waving the proverbial cape at the proverbial bull.
If you ask anybody today, "what company is interested in self-driving cars?" Their answer is going to be Tesla. They're not gonna say Apple, or Ford or Volvo or Mercedes or Mobileye or Intel. They're gonna point straight to Tesla.
A big part of that is their "inaccurate" word choice. From a PR perspective, the name was a solid gold decision.
I doubt it. It creates false hopes and probably hurted/hurts them when crashs happen. The Tesla autopilot death in June was a really big thing, yet other crashes where assistant systems of other manufacturers are never in the press. Maybe because of the name, maybe because the drivers use them better?
Also look at what happened recently in Germany:
1. Basically the head of the DMVs sending a letter to all Tesla owners to RTFM that it is not in fact an autopilot.
2. Department of Transportation pushing Tesla to stop using the term "autopilot" in marketing as it is misleading.
Then enhance the frequency of it happening by three orders of magnitude given that Tesla drivers are generally not professional drivers, let alone trained in the quirks of an autopilot in the beta release stage...
You're correct that most do not, but there's now one that does.
Also, the comparison would be more relevant if you had as much time to correct problems that occur eight feet away from an oncoming lane of 70 MPH traffic, and as many degrees of freedom in which to do so, as you do when something goes wrong with nothing but 10,000 feet of air around you.
Air safety is an intimidating engineering problem, but it's utterly trivial compared to what it will take to build safe self-driving cars. Make no mistake, it's about time we tried... but we just need to not be stupid about it. Calling a glorified cruise control "Autopilot" is stupid.
Autopilot is the correct term. I'm tired of always having to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Combine ignorance with misguided self-righteousness, and we get...this mess.
It seems like an airliner flying at altitude has quite large safety margins compared to a car on a highway.
There is just no excuse for using that particular term for this particular technology.
How are the consequences much more dramatic while flying? I can think of plenty of scenarios while driving where you go from perfect autopilot conditions with no visible risks to death of passengers or pedestrians in <5 seconds.
Pilots typically have more time to react, though (astronauts lie even further away along this axis; in cases where astronauts can take action to save their lives, they typically have even more time, but also, in many cases, there's no action that will save them)
As to the "take control at a moments notice": that's where the problem lies.
The arguments in "Ironies of Automation" (https://www.ise.ncsu.edu/nsf_itr/794B/papers/Bainbridge_1983...) such as "By taking away the easy parts of his task, automation can make the difficult parts of the human operator's task more difficult" haven't lost any of their power in the 30+ years since it was published.
Because of that, I doubt the typical driver will be able to handle emergency situations, as it will require frequent training.
When I'm using the Autopilot, I feel like I'm in my airplane, always on guard, and in a practice of recovery from unusual attitude in flight.
There are a few times also where being an engineer has helped a lot. You can pretty much predict the situations where the car will run into issues and conflicts ahead of time, just by looking at the scenario in front of you.
It's something that the majority of population is not trained to do.
Now having said that, I used to own a BMW X5 with Adaptive Cruise Control, and that car was also doing some pretty stupid things at times, especially when cars in front were moving out of the way. The car would suddenly think the way was clear and floor the accelerator...
I really want to hack the can bus and give it more smarts. What is the legality of that?
Further, it makes the bulk of motorway driving less fatiguing. When you're not having to personally intervene to slow down when the driver in front chooses to go a few kays slower than you, it's nowhere near as irritating.
Ask 99 out of 100 people who aren't pilots, but who might be Tesla customers, and see if they can recite what you wrote below:
While on autopilot you are still expected to be monitoring the flight and take control at a moments notice. Autopilot does not allow the pilot to take a nap or go in the back and party with the flight attendants.
And how do you know all that? Because you were trained accordingly.
I'm not saying Tesla shouldn't offer the feature in their cars. I'm saying they shouldn't have named it after a feature that people think allows pilots to party with the flight attendants.
Human factors are a thing. And it's a little scary that some guys who build rockets and plan Mars missions on the side don't seem to understand that.
I'm not saying it's not a problem, just that it's a lot more complicated than what Tesla decided to name the feature. I think the accidents that have occurred would have occurred regardless of what they named it.
Your argument fails as the analogy of car drivers with airplane pilots fails on various grounds.
a. The airplanes, which provides autopilot facility, their pilots have to undergo more rigorous and stringent training than what a ordinary car driver has to undergo
b. for different types of airplane autopilot systems the pilots have to undergo different types of trainings (you have not mentioned what kind of autopilot you have used, but I'd doubt if your autopilot training on one type of plane will automatically certify you to drive all kinds of auto-pilot planes out there, even within the same airplane category)
c. what Tesla is doing is on one hand it is saying (in fact, screaming in its adverts) that "we are bringing autopilot in cars", "we are bringing autopilot in cars" but when it actually is bringing just a driver assistance system and when that causes accidents, Tesla is putting blame on the customers for not understanding what is autopilot. This is not fair, as Tesla does NOT put any requirement for more rigorous and stringent training for its drivers the way airplane manufacturers/airliners put. So, Tesla is playing with the lives of not only its drivers but also of the other road users.
You are welcome to counter-argue my points. But this too much hoohaa about auto-pilot by Tesla and the subsequent bad publicity it is going to bring them is not good for them. People will not be subtle then because Tesla is not being subtle in their adverts now.
edit : typo
Things obviously converge with more complex aircrafts, as it would be quite difficult to find, let's say, two Airbus A320 with drastically different stacks, but some of them, like Cessna 172 Skyhawk, have been in production since 1956, with aircraft technology making quite a progress in those 60 years.
If all your training has been done on a 1956 Cessna 172, is it wise to operate a 2016 model without sufficient training? No. Legal? Yes.
> Tesla does NOT put any requirement for more rigorous and stringent training for its drivers
Beyond saying "Don't take tour hands off the wheel and be prepared to take over any moment" what kind of training would you envision them offering outside of [insert state name] Driver's Handbook? Most states already offer free defensive driving courses as well.
But I'd like to bring counter-argument to your points (a) and (b): taking away the autopilot feature from both airplanes and cars, an airplane pilot still has to undergo substantially more training than a car driver does, so imho the increased training for pilots compared to vehicle drivers is largely coming from the difficulty in controlling the machine and the more deadly consequence of control-loss to the driver / pilot and to the others.
That being said, the term autopilot is being used opportunistically. There's no way Tesla will back away from the term now, so the next best thing is to warn the user, in every step of the way, that "YOU HAVE TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD IDIOT", to the point that if they can detect your hands not on the wheel a warning sounds.
I do believe the Tesla Autopilot and the autonomous mode in the future will save lives, what we're experiencing is the growing pain till we get there.
But part of the training that a pilot of an "airplane with autopilot" has to undergo has to do with understanding what the autopilot can and cannot do and what the pilot has to do.
Tesla is not making this mandatory for their drivers to undergo rigorous training regarding this very feature that they taut so much. Then as you have pointed out they are opportunistically advertising that very feature and then when the unsuspecting user is caught off-guard, the Tesla is shouting "Gotcha, you didn't read the fine print. See, it is clearly mentioned here". If then the customer says that but that thing was mentioned amongst thousand other things and that too in font so small, Tesla will counter him/her "see, that's your problem not ours." If that's what they want then be it so. If that's what is making them happy then be it so.
It may help Tesla win some law-suit. But they will clearly and surely lose big on the customer trust.
>>"YOU HAVE TO KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD IDIOT"
Btw, It's not fair to say the user an "idiot" when the larger idiocy (and not just idiocy but a cruel practical joke on the customers bordering on criminal activity as it may be at the cost of customer's life) is committed by Tesla manufacturers.
Sad, I was a fan of Tesla but no more.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24296544
Over half of pilots admit to sleeping while on autopilot. These are people who had to take months and years of training to fly.
Meanwhile,to be a driver you need to drive for 15 minutes and do some basic manouvers. In some places of the world, not even that. And we hope that those people will "keep an eye on the road" while the autopilot feature is running? It sounds great in theory, but it's not going to happen. We need a system that can operate completely without human supervision - but that ain't happening any time soon either.
Unfortunately fighting how the words end up used is pretty hopeless.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/tragic-loss
EDIT: no idea why the downvotes, I'm all for self driving cars, but pretty obviously they could be scared of PR issues and lawsuits.
They've been clearly working on AP 2.0 for a long time - this sort of hardware upgrade isn't something you roll out in a few weeks. This capability was even pretty strongly hinted at for the Model 3.
Sorry, but I seriously doubt they will have sufficient hardware installed to take it to level 4 or 5. It might be a stretch to get to 3 with anything they can deploy today simply because no one has demonstrated a real world working solution for these tiers. Oh you might be able to track demo one or controlled loop it.
So you mean there is no advanced hardware in the new cars?
Actually, in regards to Tesla, they always stated (and were very open about it) that early-adopters pay premium to support research/growth/etc. First with Roadster, now with S (not sure about X). It can be expected that the same extra features (same hardware) on model will cost less. So the trade-off here is just that, being "first".
You have to be kidding. The Tesla cheer-leading is immense. This is a competitive space within which Tesla might be a leader, but you make it sound as if everyone else around them is stagnant.
The majors are building this stuff, the large tech companies are building this stuff, and even big component providers are building this stuff. This is obvious if you look outside of the SV echo chamber.
Always an amusing typo. I'll take the car without emergency breaking...
(IGNORE THIS: The surround cameras are likely still in collaboration with Mobileye, since in their case, Mobileye doesn't just give the camera hardware but also has a fair bit of software that makes all the cameras come together. It's not too likely Tesla's duplicated this so quickly.)
Ultrasonic sensors though are dirt cheap (in the few dollars range), and they probably come from one of the many tier 1 suppliers (Bosch, Delphi, etc) that makes them. These are the technology that powered those beeping back distance sensors for 10+ years.
The real news here is that again, LiDAR is absent. It seems like Tesla's pretty confident they can get to full autonomous self driving without the point cloud data that LiDAR provides. Now THAT'D be impressive!
from
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/16/tesla-says-mobileye-balked-af...
And yes ofc, the LiDAR absence is interesting; just not what I'm asking about here.
Not sure about the cameras, but perhaps the same.
40 times the performance of a Tegra 3 is not particularly impressive.
Also, I sincerely hope that this new faster computer doesn't also run a web browser.
It boggles me that anyone even considers running things like antilock brakes, car security, and especially self-driving capability from an internet-connected device, no matter how nice and convenient it may be.
I never cared that much about self driving capabilities - I like to drive myself - and I certainly don't want to shell out $35,000 for a car with what looks like a food processor or a police emergency light mounted on the rooftop.
IMHO, one of the best features of Tesla has been that they actually made EVs look like traditional cars. It might seem trivial, but many of the budding competitors still fail to do just that:
http://www.autoblog.com/2016/08/17/vw-300-mile-ev-paris-auto...
https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/design/commer...
Fashion does the same thing.
Volt, Leaf, i8, none of them look like regular cars like Teslas do.
http://i.auto-bild.de/ir_img/1/1/6/2/7/2/7/VW-E-Golf-1200x80...
There is also the Kia Soul EV and Skoda Octavia Green E Line which basically are just their regular line up with the major difference being that they are EVs.
Congrats Tesla! That's amazing.
Can you describe what's so amazing about it? They're planning to put temporarily non-functional autonomous driving hardware on their new cars, with the intention to use it when the software is ready at some unknown point in the future.
It's a small but useful step forward toward a very cool future
The real space age will again open up hardware, but make no mistake that software will play as important or more of an important role then to.