Why are they removing these features from a car with a promise of patching them back in later? Shouldn’t that be ready to go before committing to a hardware change?
I'd argue that navigating streets is significantly harder than landing a rocket. Space X can land a rocket for example, but fully autonomous cars are still a ways off.
It's a bit of an apples-and-oranges comparison regarding "as hard as," but the answer to your question is that the rocket uses a combination of GPS for gross aiming followed by radar for fine-grained approach. Vision might be possible but presents challenges radar may not (including that as the rocket gets close to the pad, the back-blast form the exhaust obscures the pad).
Humans are proof that's its possible to safely drive a car with pure vision. Pretty sure no human has ever propulsively landed a rocket on earth using nothing but vision.
Not in the short term for sure. I've been pretty impressed with the FSD beta videos circulating youtube though. It's better than you would expect for a non-geofenced, vision based self driving system.
Better than I would have expected? I guess we didn't watch the same videos. I expected to see the system repeatedly trying to kill people and that's exactly what I saw in those videos.
I guess we haven't seen the same videos. I've watched many hours of FSD beta footage and if anything its excessively cautious.
Not saying it never makes dangerous mistakes, but the mistakes I've seen it make seem solvable. For example it has trouble with unprotected left turns when there are trees or fences obscuring the view. That to me is understandable and could probably be fixed with an update to the vision stack, maybe train the object detector on cars partially obscured by trees.
> Humans are proof that's its possible to safely drive a car with pure vision.
Humans also have eyes with a lot more than 1.2 megapixels of equivalent resolution and vastly more dynamic range, attached to a brain with damn near infinite more compute power than any computer.
I mean what would you expect it to do with that data? When a person hears a siren it's a signal to check their mirrors for emergency vehicles. Auto pilot doesn't need to check mirrors, it always has a 360 view of its surroundings.
Of all the potential criticisms of fsd this is an odd one.
I don't know about that. Musk and Karpathy have always been pretty gung-ho about solving self driving with nothing but cameras.
We'll know for sure if they ever re-add radar to the Model 3/Y in the US. I think they won't. My main source of, "WTF are you doing, autopilot?" is phantom braking due to the radar incorrectly perceiving an overhead sign as an obstacle.
To me it's such a strange argument. Why wouldn't you want CV + additional sensors? CV has made all kinds of progress in current years, but it's certainly not fool-proof, doesn't do well in low-light or extremely high-light scenarios, can be slow, difficult to debounce between frames, subject to motion blur, difficult to get depth from, subject to optical illusions, etc. There are solutions that aren't full-blown LiDAR that can do a great job of depth estimation, collision detection, etc. Wouldn't you want more sensors in the mix? To me it's a really odd 'party line' to adhere to.
They test software changes with different beta fleets long before releasing them. So it could be that the feature is already there.
Also there’s a lag time between manufacturing and delivery, so that gives them time to do a software update if needed. And it’s possible the cars manufactured this way will have the software to support vision only from day one.
I'm having trouble figuring out if this is just another battle in Elon's War with Regulators, if this is NHTSA being too slow to keep up with evolving technology, or if Teslas without radar are actually worse, deserving the loss of these designations.
Or what the mix is of all three of those things, I guess.
There's all sorts of rumors for why Elon / Tesla is doing this. The most probable rumor IMO is that the chip-shortage has hit the Tesla radar especially hard.
Tesla has been pushing camera-only autonomous driving (ditching LIDAR) since well before the chip shortage. I would assume this is part of the same drive.
This might be for improving their camera-based vision system by collecting both camera inputs and accurate ground-truth data via LIDAR to train the system with.
They haven’t announced anything like that - they’re just using LiDAR rigs to validate data from their vision based approach, particularly distance. It actually even mentions something about it at the bottom of the article you referenced.
No public announcement. They merely have some lidar equipment for testing. I'd be shocked if they haven't already had lidar units for years. After all, you can't compare your approach to lidar if you don't have a lidar unit to compare to.
I'm pulling this from archive.org, because Tesla has removed this blogpost from their servers.
As recently as March, they kept this pro-Radar blogpost up. Only now are they purging this data from their archives. Fortunately, the Internet Archive remembers the history, so they won't find it so easy to rewrite history in their favor.
Do you really expect, or even want, companies to go back and purge all old engineering blogs which they now disagree with? By calling out an old post as evidence that they are "pro-lidar", you're the one forcing companies to try to curate the public history of their development process.
It’s radar, not lidar, and the point is that Tesla thought the post was contradictory enough to remove it, while all the other content from 2016 is still there.
Sometime between March 2021 and May 2021 (today), Tesla has deleted this blogpost. The above link is now a dead-link. I've included the original blogpost from archive.org in my earlier post, so that you can see the original content.
My expectation is for Tesla to be honest about their history, and not be ones who delete inconvenient blogposts years later. This selective picking-and-choosing of historical posts is immediately suspect, and extremely damaging to the reputation of the Tesla blog.
In any case, the _timing_ of this deletion event tells us everything. Tesla only recently began thinking about Tesla Vision seriously, which provides evidence that this is a temporary supply chain issue, as opposed to a forward looking technological innovation.
My read is it's just the NHTSA not granting a certification for things it hasn't tested. Ie, "forward collision warning, lane departure warning, crash imminent braking and dynamic brake support" without radar. Tesla will release the new versions (if they haven't already), the NHTSA will test the new models, and they'll grant the "check marks" again.
In other words, it's non-news (unless you happen to be planning to buy a Tesla this week).
Pretty sure it's not a requirement for vehicles to have these safety features to go to market. So from Tesla's perspective this is better that delaying their product that they think is equivalent (though in my mind they're taking a risk.)
NHTSA tested Tesla cars that had radar modules. Tesla has decided to remove the radar modules and use only vision systems. The new vision-only models are not NHTSA certified yet, so the NHTSA had to clarify that the safety certification only applies to vehicles shipped before the vision-only transition. That is, any vehicle with radar is still certified, but the new vehicles will apparently ship untested.
It sounds from reading the article like existing cars with the radar are also losing the features though, to be replaced by camera-based solutions? (I assume to keep consistent with newer models on the road without the radar).
I may be reading it wrong - happy to be corrected.
And it is possible to meet NHTSA certification requirements for recommended safety technology with vision-only systems. Subaru has done that for years.
Doesn’t Subaru use stereo vision though? Having depth cues and not having them seems like a pretty big distinction, and Tesla just removed their only source of depth.
Multiple cameras don’t equate to stereo though. As I understand it, the Tesla cameras have too little overlap and the distortion is too great to do proper stereo - it’s 100% monocular depth estimation.
They won't know that it meets the requirements until it has been tested, so putting this clarification out in the meantime covers the gap until vision-only testing has completed.
I wouldn't even consider this regulation. This is organisation A asking org B to review their product and put a sticker on it that it passed the tests. Then org A decides to make a different product, so org B clarifies that the new product is not the one they tested and certified.
This would still go the same way if org B wasn't a government org.
Despite the occasional media spin, Musk isn't waging a war with regulators (the way some well-known startups are). He had a spat with SEC over his dumb Twitter shenanigans, but other than that, AFAIK, both Tesla and SpaceX are mostly on friendly terms with regulators. In particular, NHTSA ratings were always a strong marketing angle for Tesla.
With a feature being pulled from already-sold vehicles, I wonder if this'll run into some Lemon Law issues. Because the vehicle no longer does what was sold, which is specifically protected by law in many states.
This only applies to new vehicles that ship without the radar module. Tesla is switching to vision-only but the vision-only system hasn't been tested by the NHTSA.
Nothing has changed for vehicles that have already shipped with radar modules.
Not true. If you made a reservation and signed the paperwork to take delivery in 4-11 weeks (more like 11 weeks as of now) the radar will be stripped from the car you're getting, it won't be the car you paid for. I think this is a good move by Tesla regardless and makes them focus on improving vision. No lidar and now no radar.
The radar was pulled from already ordered vehicles. The sale isn't finalized until pickup. I assume they would allow the order to be canceled at least.
They are actually improving features. This actually FIXES a major issue with the current system. Radar false positives have been the single most complained about problem with Autopilot.
If Tesla can get it working, vision is going to be superior to the radar experience, because it can sense both road geometry and the potential obstacle.
Talking about the industry in general (not only Tesla), so far radar has failed for either being too insensitive and failing to avoid collisions or being too sensitive and causing phantom braking.
You have to agree to it before you take delivery of the vehicle. You can cancel it if you don't like this issue. (I know because I am in this situation.)
This is correct. Tesla’s MO is implementing the “move fast and break things” methodology on real human beings in safety-critical situations. I don’t understand how anyone can support this. It should be illegal.
its a shame because its a solid car if they didnt focus on all the lies, bad business practices, killing people etc and instead just focused on making it cheaper and better.
Though radar is a powerful technology. Two camera's with the right depth sensing software behind it could do a lot. What about light source though? Camera's with great light sources provide a super powerful technology, but what are you going to do in the dark/rain? Then again, camera's are cheaper and can do better in some conditions with (semi)reflective surfaces. It's all up in the air, but making sense of the world in a moving object with constantly changing scenery and multiple other vehicles/cyclists/foot traffic moving around.
I think the argument they make is quite interesting, with vision (our eyes) we do anything and everything in the car. Therefore, camera's are like eyes so they should give comparable performance. The fact is that the dynamic range of the eye is insane and no commercial camera can currently even come close to it. Once that technology is there, (which is physically impossible with the current sensor tech) I'd agree with them.
TL;DR: Tesla is removing radar from vehicles to transition to a vision-only system. They will ship vision-only cars before NHTSA has tested them, so the NHTSA can't certify untested vehicles.
> Newer Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles will no longer be labeled as having some advanced safety features after the automaker said it was removing radar sensors to transition to a camera-based Autopilot system
They’re the same thing: NHTSA certified the safety features provided by the radar. The vision system isn’t certified because it wasn’t reviewed, and it hasn’t been reviewed in part because Tesla hasn’t finished developing feature parity.
So until they finish developing and releasing the features, they aren’t available. Once that’s happened, NHTSA can review them for certification.
It's cars produced since April 27-- Tesla has been holding a decent number of cars for delivery (see: FB & Reddit complaints from people about their delivery dates being pushed back), so it's possible that the cars produced after the 27th were just not delivered before the software was ready for the bare minimum vision-only Autopilot.
They're disabling some functions due to the switch and promising to bring them back with an update. So that's really a fix for something that isn't working anymore.
If those features are important to you, it makes sense to wait for the update to be released before you buy.
Don't trust a Tesla promise, wait for the feature to be there in reality. It took them a very long time to make the promised automatic wipers work last time...
"Autosteer will be limited to a maximum speed of 75 mph and a longer minimum following distance.
Smart Summon (if equipped) and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance may be disabled at delivery."
Are these really important features that you would postpone a purchase of the car? With the exception of the "Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance", no other car in the industry has these features anyways.
Many states have highway speed limits that _begin_ at 75mph. So yes this would mean autopilot (a huge selling point of these vehicles) is useless for highway driving, which is what autopilot in its current incarnation is meant for.
You can still drive the car and this is temporary. To hold on to the purchase because of this is idiotic.
And I am going to call out on your BS. No state begins at 75. Max speed in most states is 70 and 4 or 5 have a max speed of 80, which is the max across the country. So go lie somewhere else.
From what I understand they are transitioning from radar do vision only. The problem was that software engineers missed the deadline.
They will provide that in a software update, it will be just a period of time for new Teslas where the feature is not available. There's no point to wait, since you will eventually get it in update, and if you want the radar you will have to buy used model.
Personally I don't believe vision can replace radar in 100%. In a bad weather vision will be inferior. The argument could be that drivers also only use vision, but other cars do come with radars to supplement driver's vision.
I've been wondering about this myself. I drive in bad weather all the time. Sometimes its blowing snow, sometimes its because the DOT can't keep the road clear. I often can't see the white strip - or even the yellow strip on the road and have to gauge where I'm at by finding reflector poles.
Two lanes will turn down to one, and back to two really quickly (snow removal). Toss in 60-80MPH wind gusts, and it really is a test.
Add in wild critters, inexperienced drivers, impatient drivers, and it can be a bit insane.
You've been drinking kool aid, because right now self driving cars are much worse than humans. Maybe in future, but we are not there yet.
We are discussing about he change happening right now.
But these cars aren't disposable, the whole point is that they are upgradable via software, is it not? These self driving cars will hopefully improve, but limiting them because 'humans don't use radar' seems short sighted. Perhaps we would be better drivers if we'd evolved with some sort of radar.
Also I'm not sure to which koolaid you refer, but if its the Tesla one you should probably know I'm extremely sceptical of their claims and have no intention of owning one.
It also doesn't see in front of the car ahead of it. Which the radar can, and for me specifically has prevented accidents on rush hour highway traffic.
- Tesla is lacking radar modules due to chip shortage
- As a result, Tesla can’t make vehicles
- Tesla (as always) is cutting it close to making a profit
- Therefore, sell cars without radar
- This “profit squeeze” is corroborated by this week’s (May 27) increase in vehicle prices by $500-$2,000, the reintroduction of enhanced autopilot for $4,000 and Elon trying to pump n dump crypto again with his “crypto eco-oversight committee”
I hate this guy now. I am hoping Bezos LEO starlink competitor will be better and cheaper. Amazon usually pretty good at middle-class price points. Also I sold all my TSLA for SPCE today
>Tesla is lacking radar modules due to the chip shortage
Is there evidence this is the motivation for the decision? I’m not skeptical, just couldn’t find it in the article.
When I first read it, I assumed it a was a technology choice as there seems to be competing camps between cameras and radar. Musk has previously stated he was in the camera camp because they provide more information and I figured this was just a another step in solidifying that position.
The radar chip shortage is pure speculation, no official word from Tesla on it. Seems to fit though as we know some M3 and MY were waiting on a part to ship. It's likely that Tesla was close to removing radar anyway and decided to accelerate the switch to pure vision.
I'm not saying that FSD was done in 2017. But, How long are you going to hold on to that one? In 2024 when FSD is working really well are you still going to say,
"Yeah I mean it work now, but what about that tweet from 2016"
I think Tesla is very close to a do-or-die situation. They are in severe danger of being disrupted by the very automakers they took on. If they can't make a profit with the current market conditions (and they haven't, right? their profit is entirely due to credits?), I just don't think it's necessarily going to get any easier as time goes on. EVs are commodities.
> They are in severe danger of being disrupted by the very automakers they took on.
The worst part is they’re nowhere near: the effective strength of Tesla is that they built a large and reliable network of fast chargers. I don’t know how non-Tesla charging is in the US, but in Europe it’s still a complete mess of half-assed crap, meaning if you don’t have a Tesla you either simply can’t make trips beyond a single-charge round-trips, or you have to plan the trip for days in advance poring over maps and fallback chargers like it’s the 60s and you have to account for 50% odds of needing to rebuild the engine on the roadside.
Not “green book” bad, but absolutely “get close to hurling from the stress and triple travel time because you had to hypermile to reach the charger then it was worse than a home socket”.
Forbes [0] claims 11% have never left their state, but it doesn't cite a number for people who have never left their town. It has to be smaller, of course.
Meaning 89% have left their state, to say nothing of their hometown. So GP is totally wrong.
Not to mention there are many states you might not get out of in 200 miles. 200 miles from the Californian coast is still Cali unless you’re at the northern or southern edges.
Yeah, 200 miles is under a 4hr drive. That's just not considered very far in the US. Most people don't make a trip like that every day, but not even once?
I've been following the situation via a few Youtube folks with non-Tesla charging, and I think your description is a bit exaggerated for the US, but not entirely.
It seems like many routes (not all though) along interstates have enough Electrify America fast chargers that the mere existence is adequate. However, the charging experience is very buggy and unreliable. Cars randomly refuse to charge, charge much slower than they should, etc. And it's not rare, it's likely that this will happen multiple times on a trip, from what I've seen. The videos posted were with the Mach-E and ID.4, so very recent cars.
However, I think as long as these cars sell (and the F-150 lightning does too), this will all get better very quickly. Most of it looks like it should be fixable with software updates, and these companies are all doing OTA updates now.
> Cars randomly refuse to charge, charge much slower than they should, etc. And it's not rare, it's likely that this will happen multiple times on a trip, from what I've seen.
Indeed that seems to be very common around here hence my mentioning fallback chargers: you can’t currently rely on a specific charger working, so you must plan for an alternative or two at every charging stop.
I've had a Tesla, and I still have a Bolt, so I have experienced both. The supercharging experience is smoother. But the standardized infrastructure generally works fine, even if it is more expensive.
What I think a lot of people are starting to realize is that the road trip angle is small. It needs to work, but it doesn't make or break the experience. In both cases I found that I did 99% of my charging at home, and so the experience has been the same.
The third-party networks are also collectively growing at a rate much faster than Tesla is growing the supercharger network. At some point in the foreseeable future it will be a disadvantage that you can only DC fast charge a Tesla at a proprietary supercharger.
Between where I live now and where my parents live, there is a distinct lack of dc fast chargers (most are in dealers where you need to be there during business hours to use as they regularly park cars in those spots), while there are plenty of superchargers.
I really want to buy a used i3 for my daily driver, but there is no way I'd be able drive it to my parents without borrowing my wife's car.
Yes, European regulators demanded that Tesla support CCS2. I think Tesla still prevents non-Tesla cars from charging at their superchargers, but they can at least use standardized chargers.
I think you're probably right, and I came to believe this strongly when I heard about the electric F-150 a few days ago. If Ford can make a electric truck that works properly and has all the spare parts availability / 3rd party repairability of a normal truck, then cybertruck seems DOA. Some fanboys might buy it for the memes, but if I intended to buy a truck to actually use as a truck, the choice between these two manufacturers would be clear for me.
Even if you assume a conversion ratio of 20% for Cybertruck and F-150 reservation, Ford couldn't build that many EV trucks in 3 years.
The idea that the Cybertruck who has 100ks of reservations and beats the F-150 on pretty much every technical metric will not sell well is just nonsense.
> actually use as a truck
So people who 'actually use' a truck don't want to drive long distance or transport a lot of cargo? Or charge fast if they do want to go long distances?
People who want to go off-road don't want significant better clearing.
People who have expensive tools or carry a lot of luggage don't want to make sure its not stolen?
What's your objective measure other then the look of the Cybertruck are you applying here.
> What's your objective measure other then the look of the Cybertruck are you applying here.
What is your objective basis for believing I have said anything about the appearance of cybertruck? My comment talks about availability of spare parts and third party repair. Tesla vehicles are notoriously poor in these regards. You seem to have read quite a lot that I did not write (Tesla fanboys seem to do this a lot.)
I didn't imply that you said anything about the look, I mentioned it as any example of something that is objectively different.
So you mentioned actual argument, repair parts availability. So you mention one thing and the declare the CB to be DOA. You must release how incredibly dumb that is right? How would you react if a Tesla fan said 'Cybertruck is faster to 60mph therefore the F-150 is DOA'. Its just disingenuous analysis purely driven by, I don't know, I assume you have some sort of dislike for Tesla.
Tesla service is a actually a great experience for many people. The mobile service is amazing for anything that isn't a full crash. The Cybertruck design makes many typical repairs unnecessary. There are just fewer things that can break overall.
In terms of battery and EV motor Tesla has 1000x more experience and have known high reliability and Ford just had to recall their last EV and had to delay another EV for 8 months.
The truck market is 2.5 million in the US alone. EV trucks have significant advantages (including life cycle cost) and they will be production limited for years. To believe that in that environment the Cybertruck is DOA is just incredibly dumb.
> I assume you have some sort of dislike for Tesla.
This is a theme in your posts. You assume that everyone critical of Tesla's choices must be a hater. Just because you see Tesla as some sort of personal reflection doesn't mean the rest of us do.
I assume that because he makes a single not very good argument and then draws wide ranging conclusions from it that simply do not follow from his argument.
I only have anecdata. Brand loyalty is strong amongst truck drivers. Those who want the Lightning will either use their current F-150s a little longer or get another ICE/PHEV. Jumping ship for Tesla, even with the better specs, might not even be a consideration for some.
It might not be consider by some but its 800k sales a year and that includes far more non hardcore Ford fans. Just like tons of people who are not hardcore Tesla fans drive Teslas.
I'm not saying F-150 will not sell, I'm saying the people in this thread who use the unveil of the F-150 to shit on Tesla and the CB don't know what they are talking about.
Ford's EV factory will have the capacity to make at least 1200 trucks/day, or more than 400k/year, with space to double the size of the facility. Once the factory begins production activities, demand will be the constraint on how fast they build Lightnings.
People who go off-road absolutely want better clearance; it's one of the most popular aftermarket modifications made to off-road vehicles. On that front, the Cybertruck has relatively poor experience for a truck (but would for right in with a Subaru wagon).
Unlike Tesla, Ford designed the Lightning with the actual input of the people who would use it, and it shows in all the small features that the Cybertruck is missing.
Go calculated the battery need for these 400k/year and try to understand that industry.
And Tesla is building a factory that is equally designed to build that many trucks and the vertically integrate it with a huge battery factory likely even cathode manufacturing and lithium hydroxide production.
The last Ford CEO (not that long ago) still believed Ford didn't even need a battery partnership. And the new CEO has been scrambling like crazy to get a partnership and they want to build a plant but that is still quite far away.
> Unlike Tesla, Ford designed the Lightning with the actual input of the people who would use it
And you know that how?
> People who go off-road absolutely want better clearance; it's one of the most popular aftermarket modifications made to off-road vehicles. On that front, the Cybertruck has relatively poor experience for a truck (but would for right in with a Subaru wagon).
And that modification costs fair amount of money I would bet. The fact is the experience you get for the money is better. And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
Ford has quite wisely chosen to let the battery experts make the batteries for them, and is using scale to drive down the costs of their batteries below what Tesla can achieve through vertical integration. Moreover, by not competing with the battery makers, Ford can always choose the best battery available when it comes time to sign new contracts, and isn't stuck with whatever technology their CEO is promoting on Twitter.
And the new CEO has been scrambling like crazy to get a partnership and they want to build a plant but that is still quite far away.
Ford's EV truck facility is already complete and is in pre-production trials to iron out kinks in the manufacturing lines. It is scheduled to begin mass production by the end of the summer. And unlike Tesla, Ford hits its timelines.
And you know that how?
I'm part of the crowd of people who would use it. And I talk to people, online and off, in the hiking, trail running, mountain biking, and aquatics, and off-roading communities. The interest in the Lightning in these groups is huge. People even cancelled their orders for Subarus when the Lightning dropped. In contrast, the Cybertruck is viewed as a joke: a truck that can't be used for hauling, can't be used for work, and can't be used for any outdoor activities; in short, a truck that can't be used as a truck unless you think a truck just sits in a driveway or a parking spot.
And that modification costs fair amount of money I would bet. The fact is the experience you get for the money is better. And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
No, lifting a car is generally less than $1000.
The fact is the experience you get for the money is better.
A Tesla interior is about the same quality as a 90's era KIA. Or in other words, it's the worst in the industry at almost any price level. And yes, I have ridden in every model of Tesla, including the original hand-made Tesla Roadsters.
And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
You're right, I was being very unfair to Subaru. Their wagons (the Outback and Crosstrek) have superior off-road capabilities compared to the Model Y or the expected capabilities of the Cybertruck. And the Subarus have nicer interiors. And better range. And better warranties. And are easier to get repaired. And are way cheaper.
> Ford has quite wisely chosen to let the battery experts make the batteries for them, and is using scale to drive down the costs of their batteries below what Tesla can achieve through vertical integration.
So did Tesla for 15 years and in that time they build a huge amount of knowledge and worked together with Panasonic on improving their cells. They learned a huge amount, hired many experts, bought a number of technology companies and are bringing things to production that literally nobody else has managed yet. They actually did the hard work of bringing university ideas into mass production.
Your claim that Tesla simply can not achieve the lower prices is your assumption that is based on nothing. Not having to pay for the profit of the cell maker alone is a huge part of the cost.
Ford has to buy on the very contested open market because their former CEO failed to set up a partnership. So in fact its very likely that they pay some of the highest amount by any of the major car manufactures. And of course so far they are a tiny part of the market while Tesla is by far the market leader.
Tesla simply buys far, far higher volume then Ford and will continue to do so.
> Moreover, by not competing with the battery makers, Ford can always choose the best battery available when it comes time to sign new contracts, and isn't stuck with whatever technology their CEO is promoting on Twitter.
Tesla is continuing to buy lots of cells from battery makers and they will continue to increase that. Tesla is the largest costumers of 2 of the 3 largest battery makers in the world.
The idea that Ford who has tiny volume will somehow get better prices then Tesla is nonsense. Tesla also has long term supply contracts for the raw materials that they locked in years ago while Ford is fully exposed to the raising market in raw materials.
> I'm part of the crowd of people who would use it. And I talk to people, online and off, in the hiking, trail running, mountain biking, and aquatics, and off-roading communities. The interest in the Lightning in these groups is huge. People even cancelled their orders for Subarus when the Lightning dropped. In contrast, the Cybertruck is viewed as a joke: a truck that can't be used for hauling, can't be used for work, and can't be used for any outdoor activities; in short, a truck that can't be used as a truck unless you think a truck just sits in a driveway or a parking spot.
So here is my problem with your argument. You simply say thing, based on literally wrong facts. Tesla Cybertruck has significantly better performance for hauling, loading and range at the same price. And a far, far higher top level specs. If you seriously want to haul something long distance the top range CB is far beyond anything the F-150 can do.
Its absolutely simply wrong to claim the CB can be used for outdoor activities or work. Like, this is just an opinion that you have that you have absolutely no factual bases for.
Talking to people who are not equally not informed and have formed their opinion on pictures and maybe a few confused news articles is simply not a valid source of information.
They could make lots of profits if they weren't growing 30-50% a year reinvesting massively, paying massive bonus to Musk that he only gets based on massive growth.
They have 18+ billion of cash on balance and could easily raise much more if they needed too.
They have upper tier operational margin and extremely good per unit margin.
> EVs are commodities.
EV are only 2% of global vehicle sales and Tesla is clearly the leader and is growing very fast still.
Go actually read about the limited availability of lithium, nickel and chemical processing. Not that there is not enough in the ground but scaling the supply chain to 100% EV will be massively challenging and that is before you even get into cell manufacturing.
> their profit is entirely due to credits?
I really don't understand why people are so utterly obsessed with this one part of Tesla income stream. Their margin are all clearly still fine and their growth is amazing even if you subtract profits.
Sure in the last couple quarter if you assume no credits at all then Tesla would just be an amazing growth company that doesn't make a profit but it wouldn't actually fundamentally change the bull case for Tesla all that much.
Tesla is by a huge margin the dominate EV player in US, EU and China by revenue generated while they have good margin (other car makers don't break out their margin for their EV business btw) and there is no evidence what so ever that their growth will stop, there is actually a huge amount of evidence that the opposite is the case.
I know some people don't like Tesla, that fine but people who still treat Tesla like this tiny startup that is just about to go bust unless they deliver on some feature X is simply not the case.
I'm surprised more folks haven't made the connection that the chip shortage is causing drastic changes to manufacturing like this. Some new trucks have gotten rid of their navigation systems, backup cameras, etc. because they can't source the chips: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-06/chip-shor... Things are getting somewhat dire for manufacturing.
This decision from Tesla is going to get people killed.
Tesla owners, we should sue Tesla for this. They're going to take away features that influenced our purchasing decision with an OTA update. This should not be allowed.
AFAIK, If you have a Tesla already, it will still use Radar. Model S/X also keep Radar. It's being removed from Model 3/Y. I placed an order in early April and I'm kind of miffed that
(1) my delivery was delayed (my original order was supposed to be 4-8 weeks, I'm currently slated for ~10 weeks)
(2) there seems to be supply chain issues, but the company denies it
(3) after not shipping in cars for 2 months, they announce that radar is deprecated, and then suddenly people start taking deliveries.
My biggest fear is that Autopilot won't work as well as the Radar equipped cars and I won't know until 2-3 months down the line which will both affect the value of the car and part of the reason I bought it.
Musk has been saying they were going to transition to all-vision for a couple years now. It's not a question of if they are going to stop, it's first, is the vision system ready or on par with radar? If it's not, then current vehicles (and, also _new_ S/X models) still get the current experience.
I personally don't care if its vision, radar, or if Elon himself remote controls the car from his house. I'm well aware of the current limitations of the software and I'd like to purchase the car knowing what I know. Having the radar come out is like buying the FSD promise; it might work next month, or it might be next year; and seeing how Autopilot was one of the features I was looking forward to, that sucks.
At the same time, there's little recourse if you want to buy an Electric car other than moving up to an S/X (which are currently 3-6 months out and 40-50k more).
I really hope the radar is still going to be active if you have the hardware. If they don't, I'd expect lawyers to be involved sooner rather than later.
I know they revamped the production of Model 3's just after Q1. In late March, the wait times were 2-12 weeks. However, this was a big overestimate. If you had an order in then, you could have gotten in within 3-4 weeks (late April/early May). But this production change was for a change in the interior trim. It looks like the radar change is different. Given the fact that they already had a production change at the end of Q1, I highly suspect that dropping radar was a supply chain issue. This was probably planned for a while, but the supply issues may have forced the timeline.
I'll be very curious to know they will support the two systems going forward. Hopefully the radar-less system is just as accurate, but I'd be happier if there were multiple systems to make these decisions.
One reason I sold my P3D was after watching Tesla hose Model S owners I couldn't shake the idea that it was just a matter of time before they decided to take something I care about.
It did not help that I started getting phantom braking at overpasses with some regularity, and the auto wipers were just not ever getting any better.
I've decided I like the old style of car manufacturing better. Turns out I want an appliance, not an experiment.
Seems like Teslas current advantage is the extensive fast charge network. Everything else seems to be quickly on the way to be matched or surpassed by traditional car manufacturers. I don't see a basis for their continued stock price rise. When competition will eat their lunch. Honestly, if this was a true free market. China will dominate car manufacturing.
Elon have a cult like following, he can manipulates stock prices and crypto prices with a single tweet, also Tesla was first, and its brand recognition is amazing. Most people think of Tesla when they hear "electric car". I also doubt that Chinese electric cars will ever make it to the US. You cant get Vivo, xiaomi, huawei phones in the US anymore in traditional ways.
The irritating thing is it's all so unnecessary. My Tesla is a great car. But I paid an extra $10,000 for a feature that was promised but still hasn't been fully delivered, FSD. It feels like I paid extra for my awesome car to be sabotaged. What was promised by FSD was never going to be possible, and yet they are doubling down. They need to stop this idiocy. The vision system is horrible. The car stops at green lights. It swerves around phantoms at speed. It fails to brake when it ought to, and brakes way too late after it should have decelerated. When it encounters a car parked on the side of the road it stops instead of going around.
Okay I'm glad we get over-the-air updates, but it just makes me sad that the updates improve things so slowly in a two steps forward one step back sort of way. I thought it would be further along by now.
FYI Tesla has already told regulators that it won't be able to deliver FSD by the end of 2021, which it had earlier committed to. If you are still holding your breath on it, it's probably time to give it up.
It's a cash payment to Tesla for a feature that doesn't yet exist, so technically they owe you something until they deliver FSD. If you bought this, you would have been owed $10k but in the form of a self-driving feature. So until they deliver that they technically owe you money, but they owe it to you in the form of FSD.
>But I paid an extra $10,000 for a feature that was promised but still hasn't been fully delivered
As far as I'm concerned, that $10k is basically an interest free loan to Tesla. FSD as promised by Elon is going to take decades, and the worst part is that it's not even transferable from one car to another.
IIRC it depends on if it was ordered with FSD or bought it as an upgrade. My understanding is if it wasn't originally ordered with it, the new owner has to upgrade again to get it.
(Since its on the monroney label they have to keep it for cars that are ordered with it originally)
It follows the car if you sell directly to another person or through a third party dealership. If Tesla gets the car back, they'll wipe the upgrade and charge for it again.
Full Self Driving actually counts as deferred revenue to Tesla, and is reported as a liability on the balance sheet. They cant realize that income until the feature is delivered.
They already recognized large part of that revenue. That was the main reason for them to release half baked party tricks, like smart summon, or weird ones like traffic light control (that will stop your on green light). They used it to recognize more FSD revenue. In 2020 they booked over $250M of that revenue, to help them boost profits.
Don't underestimate power of accounting, mixed with loose ethics.
A "full self driving" car does not exist in this universe, from any company, let alone Tesla, so the fact that they've recognized any revenue against "full self driving" packages does "make the case". If you think the name was meant to mean something lesser, when this $10000 option was added, Elon Musk was publicly saying that there'd be a million Tesla Robotaxis on the road by the end of last year, earning money driving people around while the car owners are at work.
I would be really pissed if I were an FSD customer. Tesla needs to at least uncouple the license from the VIN and attach it to the account holder instead, so you can take it with you. As it is, I think it is entirely reasonable to expect that the current Model 3 might never actually get FSD, or that for all practical purposes it won't because people will have moved on to other cars as usually happens.
I am actually surprised they haven't been hit with a class action over FSD yet.
If you paid 10k, that means you bought your car in the past year or so. I've been following Tesla for a while now and FSD has been around the corner since 2016 or so. Maybe sooner. I love my model S but I'd recommend that you not delude yourself with FSD. It will bring nothing but frustration. On the other hand, regular AP does a fantastic job and I use it daily.
Yes, I can't imagine spending $10k on the promise of some half-baked FSD--especially when regular Autopilot is a reality today, and it's freaking fantastic. I, too, use it daily.
Yeah, I don't understand the allure of point a to point b self-driving. All I need autopilot to do is to keep me in the lanes on long tiribg drives or in traffic when it's mind numbing.
I feel for you, but I would not expect them to "stop this idiocy". Tesla has climbed the hype ladder to incredible heights. One can't just step off that ladder.
They're doubling down because their technoking can't admit he's wrong, and they keep getting away with it. Maybe a class-action lawsuit would be a good idea.
Have they delivered ANY of the features of FSD? Is even Summon out of Beta? I have a Model 3 but I refused to pay for basically a Kickstarter version of FSD. For the purposes of revenue recognition, they can't claim any of the revenues until the features they promised are delivered. But the fact that it has been years is still shocking to me. How have they avoided getting a class action lawsuit? And the fact that they admitted that their "FSD" is only Level 2 is mind blowing. Some of the statements by Elon are borderline fraudulent, if not fraudulent, like how he expects the price of FSD to be worth more than $100k.
And this seems to be par for the course for Tesla. If you look at what they've done with Solar Roof, they have increased prices by 50% for people who already have signed contracts. It's blatantly illegal and yet they are fearless in trying to trick people into cancelling their contracts. Hopefully the current class action lawsuit for Solar Roof gets traction because it's incredible to me that Tesla behaves like this and doesn't get their ass handed to them in court.
>removing radar sensors to transition to a camera-based Autopilot system
A few weeks back, I had a terrible experience while using auto pilot. I was driving on a highway (in CA) with autopilot engaged. For the most part, there was a concrete median on the highway. Suddenly, a section came with no concrete median and a new left only turn lane gets added. For whatever reasons, autopilot thought it is a great idea to suddenly move the steering wheel to left while there is oncoming traffic. I immediately took control of the navigation but the car did wobble a bit. My heart kept racing with an adrenaline rush for the next half an hour. I haven't engaged autopilot since then. I can't trust auto pilot anymore- it couldn't deal with a dead-simple scenario of a clearly marked lane getting added.
It wasn't a split, it was how sometimes you see there are protected turn lanes on highways. So if you need to turn left, you can take that lane and wait for the oncoming traffic to pass.
Anybody who uses Autopilot deserves to crash. If I am ever in a wreck with somebody who was autopilotting I will probably take out my concealed handgun and execute them on the spot.
EDIT: Downvoted, but I'm totally serious. If you're going to let your robot assault me, I'm going to execute you.
If you are in the Bay Area, I think I know exactly what intersection you are talking about and I'm surprised it hasn't been fix. Someone died in a Model X at that intersection a couple years ago.
See that lane on the right that has solid white lines on each side of it? Now pan around: https://goo.gl/maps/TunvNLGvX9sUTbXp9 It actually leads directly to a barrier. If instead of putting smooth pavement before that barrier, Caltrans had placed grass or dirt or rumble strips or pretty much anything else, this would be a non-issue. But they didn't, so people hit it all the time. You can look at the street view history:
Dec 2013, the barrier has been replaced. Note that this is now a reusable crash barrier. Most crashes won't be noticeable on street view history because the barrier is typically reset within a few days of a crash: https://goo.gl/maps/34oVqmDAJuTepUT76
Again, since late 2013 the barrier been reusable. Only particularly devastating crashes will damage it enough to require replacement. Usually Caltrans resets the barrier after a few days. Sometimes it takes them longer, such as when they didn't reset the barrier before the 2018 crash that killed an Apple engineer driving a Tesla with autopilot enabled.[1]
My confidence in semi-self driving cars was that crashes and mishaps would all get auto-updated to all the cars at once, leading to a greater library of exceptions to consider, which would be an upgrade from humans
But if that hasn't happened for that one spot in 3 years, I'm out.
Nope. I was going straight and had no intention of turning at all anywhere. Just because a lane is getting added doesn't mean I want to move to that lane.
I think what he's asking is, a new left-turn lane would have been to your left. So, in order to steer into oncoming traffic it would have had to change lanes at least twice, first into the new left lane, and then left again into traffic. There's something missing from your description.
More people need to see your comment because there seems to be a belief that full self driving is just around the corner. However, IMO, it will never happen because it needs a full artificial general intelligence.
In your case, the new lane was clearly marked, which just shows how weak the system really is. Imagine if there was snow covering the lane markings. Or sunlight reflecting off of the road confuses the vision.
People bought the self-driving hype because the first 80% was easy. They forgot that the next 20%, as usual, would be incredibly hard, if not impossible.
Personally, I will never be okay riding in a car that is on autopilot. Heck, I'm not even okay with the amount of automation in airplane cockpits. [1] [2]
> However, IMO, it will never happen because it needs a full artificial general intelligence.
I don’t think that’s true - but it certainly needs more than a couple of poor resolution cameras and some underpowered hardware powered by hype. You can see how poor the vision of these systems is by just watching a few Tesla autopilot videos and seeing cars flash into/out of recognition on the screen.
The first actual self driving car won’t be the one that does it with bargain basement hardware prioritising low cost over efficacy and safety.
> I don’t think that’s true - but it certainly needs more than a couple of poor resolution cameras
How would your imagined autopilot system handle traffic flaggers, construction workers with signs, or various people directing traffic with handsignals?
How will your system see the difference between a police officer making hand signs that you have to obey, and some random person making hand signals?
How will it solve turn taking at stop signals, and how will it solve people waving you on, thereby changing the turn-taking order?
There are tons of driving scenarios that require you to look at other humans, figure out who they are, and figure out what they want. For humans, this is dead simple. For computers... Nope.
The answer is quite simple in all these cases - it doesn't. A self driving car shouldn't be operating on some mysterious black-box AI interpretation of the intention of (often ambiguous) hand signals from drivers and police officers.
Any situation with hand-waving should be passed back to a human driver until the hand-waving can be eliminated with future laws and road rules. We aren't going to have full level-5 autonomy that's reliant on cameras interpreting people waggling their hands around.
The solution is that you architect a full system to allow for self driving, which will inevitably include changing how people interact with cars.
Right, so you're saying that actual reality is too hard for self-driving systems to deal with, so we should change reality in order to coddle the self-driving cars so that they can handle it.
...which reinforces the point me and the grandparent post was making: You can't solve self-driving without AGI.
We change reality all the time to adapt to new technology - this is why we interacted with the first computers via punch cards rather than microphones and cameras. Were we coddling computers? Kind of, but solutions have to be a combination of what is possible.
I guess there is a sliding scale with self driving cars:
* Low technology, high societal or infrastructure change (for example we could build a totally different road network and dig cables into it, not practical but possible with technology 20 years ago!)
* Medium technology, medium societal or infrastructure change.
* High technology, low societal or infrastructure change.
* Very high technology, no/little societal or infrastructure change (eg AGI that can interpret hand signals).
All of these are possible versions of self driving cars - there is no “one” solution. Having AGI and going for the last bullet point isn’t the only option.
As an example, when the 1950s imagined robotic vacuum cleaning they pictured a standing robot that would use your existing appliances - so they might have said “we need to work out how to pick up and use a household vaccum cleaner in order to make a useful household robot, which requires AGI!”. We now know that a better solution is the roomba, and AGI isn’t required.
I personally think we will inevitably need some level of societal change, legislation change and possibly even infrastructure change to make self driving cars happen sooner.
It's not so hard. As human driver I ignore every hand waving if it's not from the guy in yellow vest who is standing on the middle of the road. I think computers can learn that too.
This assumes the only legitimate case of a person directing traffic are people who planned to be in that position (cop, crossing guard, etc.) You need to handle the impromptu cases as well
It also assumes people authorized to direct traffic always wears a yellow vest, and people not authorized to direct traffic would never...
Also, it doesn't account for the fact that police officers can make hand signals from inside their vehicle (with or without yellow vests) that you have to obey as a driver.
You touch on something very important in terms of confidence. People in this thread say there’s an unfair higher expectation for safety with autonomous cars. I think this is primarily because we can reasonably intuit what a human is thinking and will likely do. We can’t do that with AI so it’s reasonable to expect higher levels of starter before we fully trust them in the same way we’ve evolved to trust other humans.
> You can see how poor the vision of these systems is by just watching a few Tesla autopilot videos and seeing cars flash into/out of recognition on the screen.
Autopilot is not FSD. Autopilot is using the old system, FSD is using an architectural rewrite.
This problem is, this was never the marketed vision. The implicit and sometimes explicit message everyone seemed to swallow was "it's like human driving, but better!" when it's actually not. It's just another set of fundamentally-flawed algorithms running on binary computers that only know about zeroes and ones.
I think we still must be missing something very fundamental with the way we’re doing AI.
When you look at nature and see a tiny bee or fly navigating perfectly around all sorts of obstacles, including the newspaper I’m trying to swat it with, using just that teeny tiny brain running of mili-watts of power with just compound eyes to guide it. And in 3D space not a nice flat surface.
But we still can’t make a car not drive into a massive concrete barrier?
Something is off. But that gives me hope that there’s a discovery waiting to be made that can fix it.
We surely are missing a lot. But nature has picked easier problems with a fly. They are small enough to be very robust; flying into things is no problem. They're also cheap to build and incredibly numerous. Flies, well, drop like flies. If we had a similar tolerance for car crashes, existing levels of automation would be fine.
Even human brains, with all their capabilities, get the job done for 20 watts (or something in that order of magnitude.) Who even knows how much power we'd need for equivalent results from the best specialized silicon we have? I think you might burn a hundred gigawatts and still not get comparable results. Something is clearly wrong with our approach. It should be possible to do much more with much less, but there is some piece of the puzzle we're missing.
The brain has hyperspecialized and hyperoptimized single-purpose hardware. Human AI systems run on more general-purpose machines with a few decades spent improving the hardware. Blaming the software is silly.
I'm not talking about running general purpose CPUs. I'm talking about the most high end specialized silicon we have. Throw the best TPUs ever made at the problem and you still won't get anywhere even remotely close to what the squishy pink meat can do.
The power gap is so huge, our software simply must be inadequate. We're talking about a power gap wider than the gap between my toaster oven and the Saturn V.
I rechecked some random internet articles, and the brain contains about 10^15 synapses. They operate at about 10Hz (~10 PFLOPS). If we arbitrarily assume that each synapse operation is equivalent to 1 floating point operation on a computer, then this is about 3 orders of magnitude more than a good GPU (~10 TFLOPS). Which is actually a lot less than I thought. Still, the brain's basic structures have been optimized over ridiculous amounts of time, the training data those get while you exist is years of high-resolution images/sound/etc, and being a smaller in-skull device it has advantages of lower latency than, say, a cluster used to train ML models.
I picked flies as an extreme example but really any small animal is doing an immense amount of computing.
I just found this weird video of how a dragon flies brains act basically like a homing missile, using only a few dozen neurones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0vRupFPw90
I think your comment is interesting and generally agree, but to play devils advocate, there are certainly times when a fly might crash right into a window or something and then just gets up and keeps flying so there is also an aspect of resiliency built into a fly that we haven't (or maybe can't) built into cars.
As I mentioned in previous comment - flies crash into glass because they didn't evolve with it. They don't have the right sensors to see it. So it seems like an unfair thing to level at them!
[ Note: I'm a complete layperson in the AI field, so feel free to correct me. This is mostly based on my penchant for reading topics such as evolutionary biology, Hofstadter, and such. ]
If we used genetic algorithms to design the algorithm, it'd probably be able to get something as efficient as that. However, you're also not going to be able to "fix this one thing" because it's more likely to be the result of emergent behavior from interactions more complicated than anyone can understand. I believe one could get something that works like that, but you're also going to have other behaviors akin to moths flying into lamps because they navigate by the moon which is recognized as "the brightest thing at night".
We think we can make rules for everything and expect them to be followed without exception to perform these complicated tasks, but I think that's hubris. Anything that ends up doing it at that power scale is going to be as inscrutable as a brain. Asimov's robopsychology is then likely to be something real, but it's going to be dissecting neural networks because "fix this issue" on something that took multiple GW of energy to train in the first place will need fixing from that end versus "well, time to train it again".
As an anecdote for this thread, I remember there was some setup where physical circuits were designed via genetic algorithms to do some task. There were results with unconnected resistors that actually influenced the behavior of the circuit. You're generating behavior which is sensitive to that level. Wish I could find that again…
those are sensors. "safer than a human" is broad and not really applicable to talking about just sensors. but as an example, lidar has orders of magnitude faster detection of an object than human perception. so in that case, sure it is much safer.
Organisms tuned by years of evolution can fail when confronted by novel environments. Think of a bee that wanders indoors and keeps hitting itself on a window pane trying to escape. A moth attracted to a light bulb. A cat chasing a laser pointer. Deer paralyzed by headlights.
Yes indeed - but luckily driving is a fairly narrow task by human standards. An AI trained specifically do this should be more like an animal's well known behaviours.
If driverless cars were crashing because all of a sudden a giant sheet of glass appeared in the middle of the road, or a giant alien death ray shot up the tarmac, I think most people would have some sympathy.
The fly has a really efficient specialized "computer" for the neural network thing it's running, while human ones are more generalized and don't have the benefit of hundreds of millions of years of power consumption optimization. The human software also has not been iterated on for those hundreds of millions of years.
Yes. The fundamental assumptions about how brains work are wrong.
I see, far too often, the dismissive interpretation of brains as "A couple crappy cameras tied to a neural network" - which leads to the "Well, we have better cameras and we know how to do neural networks, so it can't be hard!" Throw in some dismissive statements about how awful humans are at driving and such, and you're set for the trap.
Human/animal vision systems are way more optimized than that sort of handwaving dismissal. The "cameras" are well optimized for what's needed, and have some pretty darned impressive scanning features to make a very small central cone of resolution do everything that's needed - without flooding the brain with HD video in places that don't matter. It's an optimized system for making a fairly narrow feed cover everything that's needed.
And, yes, there are some weird quirks of vision systems - optical illusions and such. But once you get past the eyes, the rest of the "Make sense of the 3D world around us" system is insanely optimized, and exceedingly power efficient. It works well enough and reliably enough to handle absolutely absurd changes in the operating environments. Humans did not come born with "supersonic low level flight" built into the system, yet... our brains can work with it. It just takes some learning and brain adjustments.
And the whole rest of the system following is similarly impressive.
There's a typically paired arrogance you also see: "We are like gods in the synthetic world of the internet, because we know code and manage 99.995% API success rates, therefore we can use code to solve reality." Reality is infinitely more creative at throwing wrenches into things than we are at solving them with code, and while it doesn't really matter on the internet, it very much does matter at 75mph.
When you dismiss all that as "crappy cameras and a neural network, we know code, we can do that!" - you end up failing in the predictable ways we see with the self driving cars.
Which is why I’m so pessimistic about the likelihood of this.
In the rich world it is not hard to find a potholed road with faded markings, so how can we expect our society to maintain and upkeep expensive infrastructure when we can barely manage paint and basic asphalt?
I agree that it could work. I'm not sure I'd want that because I expect that it would make those roads very hostile to pedestrians since you'd probably want to forbid them from crossing outside of designated areas and only when authorized. You'll probably need some dividing walls between the street and the sidewalk.
In many countries it would be a huge culture shift, and IMO a step in the wrong direction. We don't need more urban real-estate devoted to cars.
> More people need to see your comment because there seems to be a belief that full self driving is just around the corner. However, IMO, it will never happen because it needs a full artificial general intelligence.
People who were not convinced by autopilot shoving cars under trucks are not going to get convinced by one more anecdote.
I don't think we quite need AGI to make something like a commercial urban taxi service work. For any given place, we can substitute a very large amount of training data. And I think we can get there through an approach like Waymo, where the taxi's number one job is to ask for central human help if it's in the slightest confused or at risk of causing harm. But even that will be a very long slog.
And for the supposed goal of "full self-driving", I agree that is basically AGI, because it requires levels of judgment that even humans struggle with. The other day I came across some Covid-related road changes and I had to reason about human intent as expressed in roads while exchanging human social signals with the people around me.
Brooks suggests we instead may see people trying to simplify the problem by banning humans and/or human drivers from areas where we want automated driving. That's anthema to me, but given the history of building to favor cars vs other modes and given the vast amounts of money behind these efforts, it wouldn't shock me that it turns out that way.
We've already seen several instances of Waymo's approach not working.
I agree that ultimately they need a significant amount of local training data. But I believe they would be better off having a human drive a car around to map things out, run their 'AI' on the results, and then manually review/correct lower confidence results. Or, better yet, make a database and have cities provide feeds of changes/permits/closures.
Doesn't seem several or approach not working to me. The YouTuber who recorded that video has taken over 50 rides. One of them didn't go as intended (didn't cause an accident) but I won't call that as Waymo's approach not working.
These rides are in ideal conditions: perfect visibility, excellent roads, a city designed for cars, and well-behaved drivers. Waymo has worked on self-driving for 12 years now, and threw smartest people in the world and billions of dollars at the problem. Yet they still having problems with simple situations like going around orange cones on the road.
Self-driving will arrive eventually, but don't hold your breath.
Depending on what "not working" means to you, I'm ok with that. I think the point of the Waymo approach is to not work very frequently so they can flush out the issues.
> Or, better yet, make a database and have cities provide feeds of changes/permits/closures.
"Sorry, I know you crashed, your car's on fire, and you're bleeding out. But I need to get this road closure form submitted before I can help, or a self driving car might ignore the stationary accident and make things worse. Ugh, 5G's not working today... hold on..."
The cars must be able to handle random, unexpected events happening without maps, and without external guidance. A wheel falls off a truck in front of you for metal fatigue reasons and is bounding down the road - that's a thing that happens, and a thing that in no way will be reported before it becomes relevant.
If a self driving car can't handle this sort of thing (or an accident and coming on a flagger) autonomously, it has no business being allowed on the road.
And if it can - then there's no need to have a centralized database of weird things, because it can deal with the range of events autonomously.
On an annual basis, you "self drive" a staggeringly large number of cars into accident scenes, road construction, traffic jams, police, and just about everything else that could possibly be on the road.
Start talking about 99.998% or so, OK, now it's worth sitting down with the math. But 98% accuracy at avoiding construction/existing crashes/etc is horrible.
> If a self driving car can't handle this sort of thing (or an accident and coming on a flagger) autonomously, it has no business being allowed on the road.
> And if it can - then there's no need to have a centralized database of weird things, because it can deal with the range of events autonomously.
'Conditions on top of the road' (vehicles, debris, etc.) and 'conditions of the road itself' are not the same thing and I'm not sure why you think that they are.
There's also the very common argument (even here on HN) that it doesn't matter because "humans have plenty of accidents too".
I think it's not a good rebuttal because self-driving cars will have to be orders of magnitude safer than humans if order to be successful. If I'm drunk and I decide to drive and I end up crashing into a pedestrian, then it's my own damn fault and I'll face the consequences. If a self-driving car bugs out and kills someone, who's responsible?
All it'll take in a few dozen stories of self-driving cars diving into oncoming traffic like in the parent's story and that'll destroy any trust in the tech for the foreseeable future.
theres actually no proof of the claim that its safer or even as safe as human driving. The only "data" is from tesla themselves. Which will hurtle you 200mph at a wall and then disengage autopilot 100ms before hitting the wall and not count it as an autopilot death.
It would be more helpful to focus on actually deceptive issues in how they report data, namely the conflation of easy highway miles (Autopilot enabled) with more dangerous city driving (Autopilot unavailable). For example their Q1 2021 report:
"In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 978 thousand miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 484,000 miles."
5 seconds is not nearly enough time. If you need to drive 3 seconds behind a vehicle going the same speed as you to have safe reaction time & stopping distance, then you certainly can't (a) move your attention back to the road you weren't looking at because "autopilot" "self-driving" and (b) react to a stationary object and (c) come to a stop, all in 5.
*except in cases where the black box is totally destroyed due to 4 hour battery fires.
yeah maybe i was exaggerating but autopilot can definitely get you in positions where its impossible to get out of and the deactivate 5 secs before actual collision.
And autopilot is only engaged on highways but they are comparing its safety to accidents per mile in general. But those stats are strongly skewed by city and non-highway driving, where autopilot doesnt work at all.
You are correct about the 100ms (although 5s is too short, should be something like 30 given our understanding of task switching) but it's worth pointing out that the comparison you quote (and all those like it, not just from Tesla) is disingenuous.
All the self driving companies do this, but it only makes sense to compare # of accidents/mile between like processes. It's an ok proxy for total risk iff accidents were uniformly distributed, but we know that isn't even close to true.
With a system like Teslas', it is preferentially, probably approximately exclusively if normalized by distance, deployed in situations with a lower accident rate - comparing that to total rates is nonsense.
What would be more interesting is Tesla vs. human accident rates on only freeway miles, say, but I haven't seen that anywhere, have you?
Best rough stats I can find is that less than 1/2 of all accidents happen on highways. There are a also a ton of fender-bender, parking lot and/or traffic jam accidents that aren't really applicable either.
True; a really interesting way to do these comparisons would be by narrow year, vehicle category, and purchaser (e.g. don't conflate fleet sales to private) as it normalizes a bunch of factors all at once. Sample size can be a problem, I expect.
It doesn't make any sense to look at a situation and say "well, I could save 5 lives at no cost ... but nah". It really doesn't matter who is responsible when a self driving car kills someone. We're going to respond by making the self-driving module of the car safer whether it is responsible or not.
We're putting a driver on the road who can still learn after suffering a fatal accident! This is huge, it means all parts of the system can learn from anything and will practically eliminate deaths in the long term; much like in the airline industry. If the short term is safer but confusing we should do that and who cares about philosophical technicalities.
This attitude could literally get people killed for no measurable gain. Saving lives and reducing road deaths (which comes with a whole host of other benefits, like freeing up an enormous number of hours of people's time) is much more important than worrying about holding people responsible. We shouldn't be trying to hold people responsible for tragedies, we should be trying to prevent tragedies!
And we need to keep getting self driving cars into common use to push them up the technological learning curve . This is much more important than worrying about who is at fault because it will make the cars an order of magnitude safer. The payoffs here are so huge it is even worth putting them on the road if they are slightly less safe than humans then subsidising the producer's legal costs to hold their risk down.
The whole argument above is built upon the assumption that everybody agrees with a utilitarian mindset so I’m assuming the answer to the question, in part, is you should care about the philosophical underpinnings.
Which philosophy are people subscribing to where they are happy to accept a mound of corpses in exchange for holding someone accountable?
Not preventing them from doing something in the future, mind you. Holding them accountable won't be a net long term improvement. Just accountability for the sake of punishment.
I'm sure there are people who believe that, but I suspect most of the reputable philosophers will agree with the utilitarians on this particular issue.
It is difficult to defend against "your stubbornness will cause mounds of corpses for no obvious gain". This is a pretty clear cut line of approach.
It's not so much about accountability in the legal sense, it's in the public perception sense.
"Old Uncle Bob forgot his glasses again and ran over a kid" doesn't have any implication regarding my use of a car. "A self-driving Tesla was confused by work signage and ran over a kid" would destroy a lot of trust into self-driving cars.
>Which philosophy are people subscribing to where they are happy to accept a mound of corpses in exchange for holding someone accountable?
(I'm not a philosopher so maybe somebody with an actual background can correct me if I'm wrong)
Ignoring the hyperbole in your statement, I think the traditional counterpoint to consequentialism is deontology. Meaning, the intent behind an action matters despite the consequences. So if you are willingly putting people at risk in the short-term for the "long term good", it's morally wrong. History is rife with examples of how taking an "ends justify the means" philosophy can lead to truly abhorrent policy decisions.
>but I suspect most of the reputable philosophers will agree with the utilitarians on this particular issue.
This comes across as a "no true Scotsman" defense by implying if one is not a utilitarian in this case, they must not be reputable. Kant is generally considered a "reputable" philosopher and would likely fall on the deontological side of the argument as would many others.
>This is a pretty clear cut line of approach.
Ethics is not mathematics so there is often no "clear cut" answer. If you are defining policy, absolutism in this realm is dangerous; you have to acknowledge other people's morals may differ from yours and not fall prey to the presumption that just because it makes sense to you, it must be right.
> Meaning, the intent behind an action matters despite the consequences. So if you are willingly putting people at risk...
People by and large don't intend to put people at risk. The intent of someone who causes a car crash is rarely malicious.
> This comes across as a "no true Scotsman" defense...
I suspect Kant would agree with me that it would be a difficult argument to carry as a philosopher when you are arguing in favour of increasing the corpse count for no particular reason. "If a self-driving car bugs out and kills someone, who's responsible?" certainly isn't a reason to kill people. We can afford to live in ignorance if it means more people live to die in their old age.
I'm on board with the idea that maybe someone has a reason that it is a good idea to just let people kill each other by accident. But so far in this thread nobody has bought one up.
>The intent of someone who causes a car crash is rarely malicious.
And yet it happens, which is to the point and (depending on locality) people are still held accountable. Adopting nascent technologies almost always comes with risk tradeoffs because we don't yet have a solid understanding of the latent risks. Look at aircraft statistics if you need an example. To your point, over time they will improve, but not without accepting additional risk in the near-term. The last point is false only if you believe we understand the risk profile enough to unequivocally say autonomous cars are safer in all conditions. I don't think we can claim that yet.
What you're advocating is like someone in the early 1950s being told "Just make everyone fly in a de Havilland Comet! Don't you know air travel is going to be the safest mode of travel per mile!?" While true over the long run and in the aggregate, that individual on the Comet is being told to take an outsized risk. I'm making the claim that some people (not even necessarily me) would have a moral issue with being told at the individual level they need to take a larger risk for the betterment of society in the future.
So even while in the long time horizon they may be safer, or even be safer in the aggregate now, you could be subjecting passengers to higher risks in those individual cases. I can't speak for Kant, but I think some people may think it's immoral to draconianly force them to accept that risk. Kant speaks against the hypothetical imperative which is a motivation to obtain certain ends (like forcing policy that reduces traffic deaths in the aggregate).
If you disagree, ask yourself or others a hypothetical: take whomever you love the most in this world whether it's a child, a parent, or a dog. Would you be willing to adopt a rule today that they can never step foot in an ape-driven car for the rest of their life and every instance of travel be relegated to autonomous vehicles? Even if you are okay with that risk, there are plenty of people who would balk at it.
What makes you think cars will ever drive more safely than humans? What if they don’t? This always seems to just be a given, but like GP, I think “self driving safer than humans” requires GAI unless maybe you make massive changes to the road infra.
There’s no need for GAI, a driver doesn’t need to solve logic puzzles or crosswords or diagnose medical conditions.
A driver needs to identify lanes, understand road markings and signs, model the physics of moving objects and predict the immediate future behaviour of other objects based on immediate past behaviour.
Also basing an evaluation of FSD on current AP behaviour is like assuming a housekeeper will be as effective as a Roomba.
> it needs a full artificial general intelligence.
How do you define full AGI?
On a side note, another approach would be to have sensors in the roads that would transmit boundary information. That might be too expensive and difficult to maintain though.
There will always be an edge case that could result in a crash leading to a loss of life - don't think 99% is good enough that is why we won't have aircraft flying on autopilot all the time.
NHTSA says the leading cause of accidents is driver distraction , speeding and drunk/drugs , would rather solve those problems which are far more attainable than an actual level 5 car.
Curiously - Are Humans are AGI benchmark? Or is there more upper room at AGI+ level intelligence? I just think that we're on a continuum from virus to Humans, Chimps being significantly lower on the intelligence scale compared to Humans. There is nothing that says continuum stops at Humans. So, I am curious if AGI is defined as something profound (Turing complete, beats humans at every imaginable task by a large margin or mathematically max intelligence?) or just someone who can converse in a Turing test with humans without giving it away or drive as good as humans.
I don't think humans are the AGI benchmark, but smart mammals probably are.
What I think an AGI needs to have is the _ability to learn_. To me, that's what intelligence really is. For many people, it's having a lot of knowledge. However, that is merely lack of ignorance.
The reason that the ability to learn is important for AGI is because the true thing we miss with self-driving cars is _adaptability_. When roads change, humans adapt. But a self-driving car does not, unless a human interferes and tells it, "You learned about cones today."
It is disingenuous to equate general self driving with tesla autopilot.
The idea the full AGI is required is silly and incorrect. Waymo does not have these issues at all. It couldn't happen either. You don't need AGI to have a detailed map, you don't need AGI to properly localize to a detailed map.
that is not related to the tesla issue at all. Furthermore, this article just described bad decision making with regards to traffic cones, however was not dangerous. It was aware of drivable surfaces and direction of traffic... because it has a map
Do you see how these are different situations?
1. Telsa swerving into an oncoming lane
2. Waymo coming to a controlled stop in front of a traffic cone, then thinks it is blocked and needs help
again, nothing high danger. That is not a neural net, it could have easily been programmed to not try and maneuver around and just stay stopped, so sounds like a behavior that needs some additional improvement. It didn't lose sight of the cones. It was an issue with generating an appropriate path around the cones. Notice how it didn't hit the cones or anything else
That is fundamentally different than trusting a neural net to tell you where the lanes are, where the objects are, and what kind of objects they are.
you do not drive into an oncoming lane if you have a hd map. you do not drive into a concrete wall if you have lidar.
It doesn't actually need full general AI, but it does need to know and understand all of the roads in its "service area". IMHO the real solution will be building a database of roads (and lanes, speed limits, traffic lights, stop signs, etc).
BTW, the average driver gets in a crash every 18 years. The best humans aren't perfect either, and a self-driving car really only needs to be better than the worst humans to be an improvement (although it will have to be much better to succeed).
> a self-driving car really only needs to be better than the worst humans to be an improvement
I think this is false because varying abilities of people will use the autopilot, not just the worst. The autopilot needs to be better than average for an overall improvement. I think it needs to be much better than average to be compelling enough for most people to adopt it. Most people consider themselves to be good drivers, even with sufficient evidence to the contrary.
> I think this is false because varying abilities of people will use the autopilot, not just the worst.
That depends entirely on how effective it is and what incentives/disincentives there are (i.e. subsidies, taxes, insurance), which will itself depend on how effective it is.
They would handle it the exact same way they handle any obstacle in front of them. Which is a lot easier than figuring out the speed limit, and the lane demarcations, and which lanes go where, and oh the stripes are covered by snow, and oh the stripes are worn away, and ...
No one ever said that they could get all of their info from a database. But there is a significant amount of info which they could get from a database, which they might not be able to get at all otherwise.
It won't happen until cars can talk to each other, think of how ants walk in a line and follow each other around an obstacle.
Car A (driven in manual mode) tells Car B (FSD) that tells Car C (FSD) that tells... Car Z (FSD):
"I stopped at a stop sign in stop & go traffic at Lat/Long xyz while I spotted a human in the middle of the road. This is marked on my maps data (updated overnight) as not being a normal stop. No new data was detected except the human standing and a human laying on the ground."
Car B, C, D... all confirm the same until Z passes the area and sees no more humans (they've been moved). Car Z tells Car AA all good here, proceed as normally.
I'm just rambling now, but it's truly how ants operate. Draw a line of chalk in the middle of their "line" or walking patch and watched them avoid it and find a way around it. The difference is all of these cars will feed a true neural net of public data of live road conditions, accidents, etc. A possible privacy nightmare, but these are different times.
Self driving is really hard, but don't confuse Tesla's failings for the state of the art. Waymo's Driver is both much more advanced and much more cautious.
That's the reality that Tesla owners already live in. Last week I visited my family for my grandmother's birthday. Of the 700+ miles traveled, over 98% were on autopilot. I entered my destination and hit "Navigate on Autopilot". It drove from onramp to exit, obeying speed limits and switching lanes to get around slow vehicles. It even handled the interchanges.
I agree with most of your post, but I'd like to point out that as more and more traditional cars are replaced with robots the possibility opens up for creating communication protocols between highway infrastructure controllers and vehicles. Vehicles communicating with each other and their surrounding infrastructure. Imagine coordinated intersections that don't need traffic lights.
The capability of the system would increase as more nodes are added. Kind of like the Geth from the Mass Effect series.
Yeah, it only takes a couple times of AP making really questionable, even exciting choices like you experienced to really sour someone on the technology. It's supposed to make your life easier, but then it makes an attempt to kill you. Hard to get used to that.
What's meta disturbing about autopilot is the argument that it could save X lives a year, by cutting the road toll from Y down to Z.
For that statement to be a validation for legalising autopilot for open usage, the bar for Z needs to be a lot lower than Y. It needs to be zero or else we would be blessing fatal bugs.
Related to what you wrote, I strongly disagree with the argument that some people make, where it is said X lives were saved. But, what they are really saying is that Y people, who wouldn't otherwise die, were killed by the new technology, yet overall fewer died! What good is any technology if it is known to kill people who would otherwise be alive?
Why does the particular set of people matter instead of just the difference in numbers? If the Y people happened to be a subset of those who would die without the technology, is that better? If you somehow move all the deaths caused by a thing to a different but equally large set of people, is that bad because those people "would otherwise be alive"?
If we could lower the national death toll by 1,000 people a year but it meant that 4 people you love the most would perish, would you support this new initiative or oppose it?
Not to be a dick but why would you even enable it in the first place? I assume most people here are somewhat embedded in the tech world and you have probably seen or experienced bugs in software before. It seems a little crazy to me to turn on "beta" software and let it hurl me around the world at 70mph.
For me this is a big drawback of half-baked autopilot. It takes us humans time to engage in a split second and react to surroundings even if they are monitoring it. When driving I'm constantly updating my situation awareness by doing a 360 degree scan every few seconds and I'm 100% engaged with the car so I know which way to safely swerve, what happens if I slam the brakes etc.,. With this auto-pilot-assist I'm monitoring mostly forward and I'm not engaged with the car so my ability to handle emergency situation is severely impaired.
Right; you're practicing inductive logic--something computers can't do--at all times, thus essentially predicting possible futures. Until this ability is present in software, there won't be an adequate replacement.
Autopilot is terrifying. I've been a huge admirer of Tesla for years. I've always wanted a Tesla. I test drove a Model 3 a few weeks ago and had a very negative experience. Auto-pilot/FSD are enabled in different ways (one pull of a stalk vs two). It shows up on the center screen as a small blue dot. There were times I wasn't sure if it was engaged, or if I needed to take control. Since the screen is to the right I had to take my eyes off of the road.
Part of the problem is me not trusting the car, but it's also because the system isn't very intuitive.
It feels like Tesla's pitch for it's current iteration of self driving is that it is akin to spotting someone who is lifting weights. Sure you are paying attention the entire time, but it's much less demanding that lifting the weight yourself. However to me it's more like if you were spotting the spotter. Most of the time you can get away with just being on your phone or zoning out, but to do it right you basically have to spend the same amount of energy as the primary spotter.
Thankfully you were alert! The problem is it works really really well just enough to have people drop their guard a bit which leads to all sorts of bad outcomes. Who knows when a car firmware update kills someone by adding a twitch like this where previously there was none.
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, I think you make a really valid point: It appears to work well-enough for many people that they lower their guard, but not well-enough to actually work reliably, so it actually increases the overall risk profile.
I'll trust "auto pilot" the day when legal responsibility is shifted to the manufacturer.
Honestly, a fully autonomous driving car is a pipe dream (KITT I need ya buddy!!!), but with infrastructure and remote support I think it's totally possible. The question is whether there's a will for that.
I've seen several videos of Tesla's autopilot getting confused by road markings and steering towards obstacles as a result. Using fewer sensors gives you less information, which seems like a bad idea for something as critical and difficult as automated driving on public roads. It's strange that Tesla's been getting away with unmet promises and dangerous behavior for years now.
Keep believing in the dream - will be fixed in the next FSD beta.
I wonder how their codebase looks like - neural net training model for a slightly wobbly Amish buggy crossing the road in rural Pennsylvania during Rumspringa.
> I haven't engaged autopilot since then. I can't trust auto pilot anymore- it couldn't deal with a dead-simple scenario of a clearly marked lane getting added.
I have a question about Tesla Autopilot.
Looking at the common driver assistance features that are common nowadays even on many entry level models from most car companies, I see adaptive cruise control (often with low speed following), warnings if you start to drift out of your lane (sometimes with minor steering nudges), warnings if you turn on a turn signal when something is in your blind spot, and similar things. They are usually separate features you can individually enable or disable.
I assume Tesla does those things, too, but are they part of Autopilot or are they ? If they are part of Autopilot, do you lose them when you decide not to engage Autopilot or can you turn on and off individual features of Autopilot?
Put another way, if I found myself driving a Tesla, and only wanted it to only use those driver assist features that I'd find if I were driving a low to mid level Honda Civic or Toyota Camry, is that possible?
Absolutely. All the features you mentioned are standard and work independently of Autopilot [0]
It probably has the best and most intuitive lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, blind spot alerts, collision detection warnings, etc. out there (at least from the cars I've driven). For example, other intelligent cruise control systems I've used will rigidly and aggressively maintain a fixed distance from the car in front of you, like a robot--with only 3 options: awful tail gating, kind of acceptable, and piss everyone else off as you stay a mile away.
Whereas Telsa's have some 8 levels of distance options--easily adjustable by pushing the right steering wheel button left or right, which shows a visual indicator on the screen. And more importantly, it isn't some rigid algorithm that will "always maintain 8 car lengths", instead its behavior is based on current conditions.
Autopilot is a fantastic driver-assist tool, and makes driving so much more enjoyable and less stressful. Part of the problem is that even technically inclined people, as witnessed here, have trouble with the distinction between "Full Self Driving", and "Autopilot". Autopilot is basically cruise control with steering. If you wouldn't use cruise control normally, certainly don't use Autopilot. And when using it, keep your hands on the wheel, and be prepared to take control immediately, just like it says--especially whenever there's an upcoming change to road conditions (e.g. a new lane appears, an intersection, a merger, etc).
It's also really easy to take control if it starts to veer into, say, another lane that appears. When I first got a Model Y in January, there were a couple places on my daily drive where it'd tend to rather aggressively steer into an an emerging turn lane with poor/non-existent markings. However, it would ultimately make the right decision, even if it was a little unnerving.
But with the latest software updates, those edge cases have been addressed; at most, it'll gently and momentarily steer in that direction, and then gracefully correct to maintain its previous heading (as you'd expect).
Autopilot doesn't have a detailed understanding of the road path, stop signs, intersections, etc. It's literally just using onboard sensors to figure out its surroundings.
Full Self Driving is a totally different animal.
And I think everyone would agree that Telsa has done a rather poor job communicating these distinctions and limitations.
I just finished a couple of 500 mile drives in my Model Y and can confirm that Autopilot was wonderful. The lane keeping was great and the adaptive cruise control was outstanding! It was very relaxing being able to relax a bit while letting the car make most of the decisions.
On straight highways with little traffic there I had zero problems with Autopilot. As a test, I engaged it in some not-so-great conditions (rainy, twisty mountain roads with lots of tractor trailer traffic) and the result was a bit more exciting. So, yes, used appropriately, Autopilot is great. I'm not really sold on FSD yet.
A colleague at work gave me a ride in his new tesla a couple years ago. I know that autopilot has improved a lot since then, but we were on a freeway and the left lane was merging onto the expressway and had come to a stop. The lane we were in was moving just fine. The tesla though we were in the left lane or something because it slammed on the breaks to prevent us rear-ending the stopped/slowing car in the left lane. This caused us to nearly get rear-ended for erratic driving. My colleague drove manually for the remainder of the commute :)
I'm amazed at how toxic the comments are and how many are mentioning people are going to be killed.
Have you seen how most Americans drive?
Makes sense that they did this with the chip shortages. I don't doubt that they can rely entirely on cameras and be way safer than most drivers on the road.
Human drive in fog just fine with pure vision, why can’t AI do the same?
Keep in mind that vision is needed in all cases for lane keeping at the very minimum. So if vision is not able to see in fog, it won’t be able to self drive even radar is working.
Is there a formal proof that FSD requires the same level of intelligence of AGI?
Stereo vision can be built from cameras as well, even with a single moving camera. This is exactly what tesla is doing with their new DNN but with multiple cameras.
I don’t disagree with you that Tesla is still far away from FSD, but using what’s not possible today to draw the conclusion that a goal is not achievable in the future is the opposite of first principle thinking. 10 years ago i could also say go AI can’t even beat semi-pro so we will never be able to solve Go with AI.
Tesla is a great at many things but managing customer/media expectations isn't among them. I'm sure Elon has the data and will tweet why vision is better, he may even back it up with really good data, but it's reactionary media management rather than preventative.
How hard would it have been to write a press release explaining why they are removing radar, what it means to safety, and how it impacts the future of self-driving?
There is a difference between not relying on radar and having it there to provide redundancy and removing the thing altogether and presenting a single point of failure that can cost someone their life.
MobilEye for example can run on vision and radar independently and they have been for a while. The reason they don't remove one or the other sensors is to provide redundancy.
When your tech can kill people, it's a good idea to provide redundancy.
The redundancy is not free. The false positives cause the car to potentially react in the wrong way and that can also kill people. Tradeoffs have to be made in the real world.
Why don't we force ever car to have radar, sonar, cameras, lidar and so on. Who cares what the cost is? If we can save a single life we should equip all 10 million cars that are sold every year with all of these things.
This is not how safety works, if with vision they can hit the targets they are trying to achieve and radar causes issues, then removing it is a option. Radar also uses energy and is extra weight you have to transport and its extra cost.
This is specially true that because of all their investment into vision their new pure vision solution is better then the old vision+radar solution.
The phantom braking is not a radar issue, it's an issue with the vision system. That's why removing radar is such a monumentally stupid idea because Tesla's vision system has proven itself to be a pile of burning dog poop.
If their vision system was actually good/safe and was truly unneeded then they'd have a stronger case for removing radar (but not a watertight case, because redundancy). As it is, their vision system sucks.
It shows his ignorance. What happens when their model misclassifies with high confidence and fails to detect an obstacle? A collision.
There is a reason why every major company out there uses radar/LIDAR in addition to vision. It's because machine vision is a heuristic and it can and will fail with high confidence in its predictions. In those situations if you only have vision you are screwed.
Whereas lidar/radar are based on physics. They are physical systems and thus fundamentally more reliable and consistent than MV.
Thats why we use lidar/radar in places like the ISS to dock vehicles, because safety is critical.
> Elon has the data and will tweet why vision is better, he may even back it up with really good data
I doubt Elon has any sort of data. This is a way to maintain Tesla’s brand image during the radar chip shortage, and continue selling cars.
Hell, even Tesla says vision-based proximity might not be fully functional for some time for new Tesla’s. Clear evidence that this is rushed and not ready.
Considering almost every programm out there has a bug or chronically experiences bugs, it is crazy to trust a programm with driving you car.
Fsd without dedicated lanes and pedestrians will never match an able and alert human.
Even if it's designed by a far in the future AI, the AI will be built by humans and inherit the flaws.
Why do people even see self driving as the ultimate transport solution? It does not scale, even if vehicles are shared.
The full self-driving capabilities at $10,000 seem to be a poor value when you compare it to the fact that you could just... pay a person to drive you around.
I mean, hopefully no one is financing or leasing these cars when you're purchasing FSD, right? It only makes sense to me if you buy the car in cash. You could literally just set aside the $10,000 to occasionally have a professional driver chauffeur you, provide drinks in the car, etc.
As someone who has had the auto emergency braking (radar based) engage while the car was already on autopilot, I find this scary. Had it not been on, autopilot would have not slowed down fast enough and hit the vehicle in front of me.
Also the fact that without radar they are limiting vehicles to 75mph means it's useless in Texas and many other states.
For history buffs: Tesla began to rely heavily on radar for AP after their vision only system decapitated people. But now they've run out of parts, so back to vision-only it is.
For years I've been saying my next car will be a Tesla, because I wanted an electric car with autopilot.
A few weeks ago I got a Comma2, which runs OpenPilot, and installed it on my Honda Odyssey minivan. I've driven a Model X with autopilot, and I have to say, my minivan is just as good, if not in some cases better, than the Tesla.
I'm now much less excited about getting a Tesla. Knowing that I can upgrade basically any recent car to have autopilot, now I'm just waiting for an electric minivan that I can install OpenPilot on. And if I end up needing a sedan again, I'll most likely look first for an electric sedan from another automaker that I can add Openpilot to.
Edit: This is strange. This is my third comment that I mentioned OpenPilot, and in all three cases, my comment got a downvote within 30 seconds of posting it. I wonder, is there some bot that goes around downvoting posts/comments about OpenPilot? I don't think what I said was in any way controversial?
Tesla has had voice commands 'working' for a few years. A simple rule-of-thumb to think the FSD (or whatever they call it in 2030) is working, is to ask yourself, how many of the last 100 voice commands has it understood. If the number is different than 100, then don't trust the FSD.
I really feel like the whole AI/autopilot is Tesla's achilles heel. It's a great electric car, and they have good product people and should do well in the marketplace. But overselling self-driving risks tarnishing the entire brand and exposing them to claims they misled investors and committed fraud by selling a feature they couldn't deliver. The whole thing seems like a huge distraction from the real story which is electric vehicles.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] threadStreet vehicle navigation seems at least as difficult as nailing a rocket landing.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/64ew8x/falcon_9_a_s...
Not saying it never makes dangerous mistakes, but the mistakes I've seen it make seem solvable. For example it has trouble with unprotected left turns when there are trees or fences obscuring the view. That to me is understandable and could probably be fixed with an update to the vision stack, maybe train the object detector on cars partially obscured by trees.
Humans also have eyes with a lot more than 1.2 megapixels of equivalent resolution and vastly more dynamic range, attached to a brain with damn near infinite more compute power than any computer.
Neither has SpaceX. On the other hand, humans have been using their plain jane eyeballs to land helicopters for years.
Of all the potential criticisms of fsd this is an odd one.
We'll know for sure if they ever re-add radar to the Model 3/Y in the US. I think they won't. My main source of, "WTF are you doing, autopilot?" is phantom braking due to the radar incorrectly perceiving an overhead sign as an obstacle.
Also there’s a lag time between manufacturing and delivery, so that gives them time to do a software update if needed. And it’s possible the cars manufactured this way will have the software to support vision only from day one.
Or what the mix is of all three of those things, I guess.
Instead of idling plants (like other automakers https://www.autonews.com/manufacturing/ford-idles-f-150-plan...), Tesla decided to cut out the radar entirely.
That means cars can be produced, and sold, without these radars / chips.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451404/tesla-luminar-li...
> they’re using lidar to develop FSD.
Your comment:
> they’re just using LiDAR rigs to validate data from their vision based approach
In 2019, Elon called lidar a crutch:
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is...
I'm pulling this from archive.org, because Tesla has removed this blogpost from their servers.
As recently as March, they kept this pro-Radar blogpost up. Only now are they purging this data from their archives. Fortunately, the Internet Archive remembers the history, so they won't find it so easy to rewrite history in their favor.
Do you really expect, or even want, companies to go back and purge all old engineering blogs which they now disagree with? By calling out an old post as evidence that they are "pro-lidar", you're the one forcing companies to try to curate the public history of their development process.
That's not healthy. Don't do that.
Sometime between March 2021 and May 2021 (today), Tesla has deleted this blogpost. The above link is now a dead-link. I've included the original blogpost from archive.org in my earlier post, so that you can see the original content.
My expectation is for Tesla to be honest about their history, and not be ones who delete inconvenient blogposts years later. This selective picking-and-choosing of historical posts is immediately suspect, and extremely damaging to the reputation of the Tesla blog.
In any case, the _timing_ of this deletion event tells us everything. Tesla only recently began thinking about Tesla Vision seriously, which provides evidence that this is a temporary supply chain issue, as opposed to a forward looking technological innovation.
In other words, it's non-news (unless you happen to be planning to buy a Tesla this week).
Shouldn't this operate in the other direction?
Vehicle manufacturer supplies model for testing, regulator either approves it gives manufacturer opportunity to fix then retest?
"Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance may be disabled at delivery"
I may be reading it wrong - happy to be corrected.
See: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36542541/tesla-model-3-mo...
https://st.motortrend.com/uploads/sites/5/2017/07/Tesla-Mode...
The Subaru cameras are either side of the mirror, probably much more effective for stereo vision.
Radar / no radar is a pretty drastic change though.
This would still go the same way if org B wasn't a government org.
It seems pretty clear to me that the NHTSA just hasn't tested this version, so it won't certify them.
Nothing has changed for vehicles that have already shipped with radar modules.
The radar was pulled from already ordered vehicles. The sale isn't finalized until pickup. I assume they would allow the order to be canceled at least.
Talking about the industry in general (not only Tesla), so far radar has failed for either being too insensitive and failing to avoid collisions or being too sensitive and causing phantom braking.
- FUD-free Tesla Daily coverage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3zsmZx4kfA
- Details from Tesla: https://www.tesla.com/support/transitioning-tesla-vision
I own a Model 3 and it will be my last Tesla.
Though radar is a powerful technology. Two camera's with the right depth sensing software behind it could do a lot. What about light source though? Camera's with great light sources provide a super powerful technology, but what are you going to do in the dark/rain? Then again, camera's are cheaper and can do better in some conditions with (semi)reflective surfaces. It's all up in the air, but making sense of the world in a moving object with constantly changing scenery and multiple other vehicles/cyclists/foot traffic moving around.
I think the argument they make is quite interesting, with vision (our eyes) we do anything and everything in the car. Therefore, camera's are like eyes so they should give comparable performance. The fact is that the dynamic range of the eye is insane and no commercial camera can currently even come close to it. Once that technology is there, (which is physically impossible with the current sensor tech) I'd agree with them.
> Newer Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles will no longer be labeled as having some advanced safety features after the automaker said it was removing radar sensors to transition to a camera-based Autopilot system
Given how long they’ve been promising that the FSD beta rollout is right around the corner, I’m not holding my breath.
Tesla says that software update will be provided in the future that will enable these features using vision cameras (previously radar was used).
NHTSA certified the radar solution and it didn't certified whether the vision one is as safe.
So until they finish developing and releasing the features, they aren’t available. Once that’s happened, NHTSA can review them for certification.
- Tesla is going to remove radar from new Model 3 & Y cars starting later this month.
- Tesla is going to add back the removed features via software updates at some point in the future.
- All Model 3 & Y cars sold since April 27 will not have these NHTSA check marks.
Why is there a one month overlap? What's different about the cars shipped on April 27?
If those features are important to you, it makes sense to wait for the update to be released before you buy.
Don't trust a Tesla promise, wait for the feature to be there in reality. It took them a very long time to make the promised automatic wipers work last time...
Smart Summon (if equipped) and Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance may be disabled at delivery."
Are these really important features that you would postpone a purchase of the car? With the exception of the "Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance", no other car in the industry has these features anyways.
And I am going to call out on your BS. No state begins at 75. Max speed in most states is 70 and 4 or 5 have a max speed of 80, which is the max across the country. So go lie somewhere else.
https://www.iihs.org/topics/speed/speed-limit-laws
They will provide that in a software update, it will be just a period of time for new Teslas where the feature is not available. There's no point to wait, since you will eventually get it in update, and if you want the radar you will have to buy used model.
Personally I don't believe vision can replace radar in 100%. In a bad weather vision will be inferior. The argument could be that drivers also only use vision, but other cars do come with radars to supplement driver's vision.
Two lanes will turn down to one, and back to two really quickly (snow removal). Toss in 60-80MPH wind gusts, and it really is a test.
Add in wild critters, inexperienced drivers, impatient drivers, and it can be a bit insane.
I don’t buy this argument at all, a lot of drivers are absolutely terrible. I think we should be making automated vehicles better than humans.
Also I'm not sure to which koolaid you refer, but if its the Tesla one you should probably know I'm extremely sceptical of their claims and have no intention of owning one.
- As a result, Tesla can’t make vehicles
- Tesla (as always) is cutting it close to making a profit
- Therefore, sell cars without radar
- This “profit squeeze” is corroborated by this week’s (May 27) increase in vehicle prices by $500-$2,000, the reintroduction of enhanced autopilot for $4,000 and Elon trying to pump n dump crypto again with his “crypto eco-oversight committee”
Is there evidence this is the motivation for the decision? I’m not skeptical, just couldn’t find it in the article.
When I first read it, I assumed it a was a technology choice as there seems to be competing camps between cameras and radar. Musk has previously stated he was in the camera camp because they provide more information and I figured this was just a another step in solidifying that position.
Still waiting for the 2017 coast-to-coast FSD drive.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/866482406160609280
"Yeah I mean it work now, but what about that tweet from 2016"
The worst part is they’re nowhere near: the effective strength of Tesla is that they built a large and reliable network of fast chargers. I don’t know how non-Tesla charging is in the US, but in Europe it’s still a complete mess of half-assed crap, meaning if you don’t have a Tesla you either simply can’t make trips beyond a single-charge round-trips, or you have to plan the trip for days in advance poring over maps and fallback chargers like it’s the 60s and you have to account for 50% odds of needing to rebuild the engine on the roadside.
Not “green book” bad, but absolutely “get close to hurling from the stress and triple travel time because you had to hypermile to reach the charger then it was worse than a home socket”.
You’re overestimating how many people make road trips > 200 miles.
Most Americans never leave their hometown, with an even higher percentage who never left their state.
For the middle class family who drives to visit grandma once a year in a different state, they’ll just use their ICE car.
This can't possibly be right. Maybe they never move away, but never leave a radius of 200 miles from their home town? Do you have a cite for that?
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2019/05/02/percentage-o...
Not to mention there are many states you might not get out of in 200 miles. 200 miles from the Californian coast is still Cali unless you’re at the northern or southern edges.
It seems like many routes (not all though) along interstates have enough Electrify America fast chargers that the mere existence is adequate. However, the charging experience is very buggy and unreliable. Cars randomly refuse to charge, charge much slower than they should, etc. And it's not rare, it's likely that this will happen multiple times on a trip, from what I've seen. The videos posted were with the Mach-E and ID.4, so very recent cars.
However, I think as long as these cars sell (and the F-150 lightning does too), this will all get better very quickly. Most of it looks like it should be fixable with software updates, and these companies are all doing OTA updates now.
Indeed that seems to be very common around here hence my mentioning fallback chargers: you can’t currently rely on a specific charger working, so you must plan for an alternative or two at every charging stop.
What I think a lot of people are starting to realize is that the road trip angle is small. It needs to work, but it doesn't make or break the experience. In both cases I found that I did 99% of my charging at home, and so the experience has been the same.
The third-party networks are also collectively growing at a rate much faster than Tesla is growing the supercharger network. At some point in the foreseeable future it will be a disadvantage that you can only DC fast charge a Tesla at a proprietary supercharger.
Tesla is still 100% proprietary in the US.
The idea that the Cybertruck who has 100ks of reservations and beats the F-150 on pretty much every technical metric will not sell well is just nonsense.
> actually use as a truck
So people who 'actually use' a truck don't want to drive long distance or transport a lot of cargo? Or charge fast if they do want to go long distances?
People who want to go off-road don't want significant better clearing.
People who have expensive tools or carry a lot of luggage don't want to make sure its not stolen?
What's your objective measure other then the look of the Cybertruck are you applying here.
What is your objective basis for believing I have said anything about the appearance of cybertruck? My comment talks about availability of spare parts and third party repair. Tesla vehicles are notoriously poor in these regards. You seem to have read quite a lot that I did not write (Tesla fanboys seem to do this a lot.)
So you mentioned actual argument, repair parts availability. So you mention one thing and the declare the CB to be DOA. You must release how incredibly dumb that is right? How would you react if a Tesla fan said 'Cybertruck is faster to 60mph therefore the F-150 is DOA'. Its just disingenuous analysis purely driven by, I don't know, I assume you have some sort of dislike for Tesla.
Tesla service is a actually a great experience for many people. The mobile service is amazing for anything that isn't a full crash. The Cybertruck design makes many typical repairs unnecessary. There are just fewer things that can break overall.
In terms of battery and EV motor Tesla has 1000x more experience and have known high reliability and Ford just had to recall their last EV and had to delay another EV for 8 months.
The truck market is 2.5 million in the US alone. EV trucks have significant advantages (including life cycle cost) and they will be production limited for years. To believe that in that environment the Cybertruck is DOA is just incredibly dumb.
This is a theme in your posts. You assume that everyone critical of Tesla's choices must be a hater. Just because you see Tesla as some sort of personal reflection doesn't mean the rest of us do.
I'm not saying F-150 will not sell, I'm saying the people in this thread who use the unveil of the F-150 to shit on Tesla and the CB don't know what they are talking about.
People who go off-road absolutely want better clearance; it's one of the most popular aftermarket modifications made to off-road vehicles. On that front, the Cybertruck has relatively poor experience for a truck (but would for right in with a Subaru wagon).
Unlike Tesla, Ford designed the Lightning with the actual input of the people who would use it, and it shows in all the small features that the Cybertruck is missing.
And Tesla is building a factory that is equally designed to build that many trucks and the vertically integrate it with a huge battery factory likely even cathode manufacturing and lithium hydroxide production.
The last Ford CEO (not that long ago) still believed Ford didn't even need a battery partnership. And the new CEO has been scrambling like crazy to get a partnership and they want to build a plant but that is still quite far away.
> Unlike Tesla, Ford designed the Lightning with the actual input of the people who would use it
And you know that how?
> People who go off-road absolutely want better clearance; it's one of the most popular aftermarket modifications made to off-road vehicles. On that front, the Cybertruck has relatively poor experience for a truck (but would for right in with a Subaru wagon).
And that modification costs fair amount of money I would bet. The fact is the experience you get for the money is better. And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
Just stop
And the new CEO has been scrambling like crazy to get a partnership and they want to build a plant but that is still quite far away.
Ford's EV truck facility is already complete and is in pre-production trials to iron out kinks in the manufacturing lines. It is scheduled to begin mass production by the end of the summer. And unlike Tesla, Ford hits its timelines.
And you know that how?
I'm part of the crowd of people who would use it. And I talk to people, online and off, in the hiking, trail running, mountain biking, and aquatics, and off-roading communities. The interest in the Lightning in these groups is huge. People even cancelled their orders for Subarus when the Lightning dropped. In contrast, the Cybertruck is viewed as a joke: a truck that can't be used for hauling, can't be used for work, and can't be used for any outdoor activities; in short, a truck that can't be used as a truck unless you think a truck just sits in a driveway or a parking spot.
And that modification costs fair amount of money I would bet. The fact is the experience you get for the money is better. And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
No, lifting a car is generally less than $1000.
The fact is the experience you get for the money is better.
A Tesla interior is about the same quality as a 90's era KIA. Or in other words, it's the worst in the industry at almost any price level. And yes, I have ridden in every model of Tesla, including the original hand-made Tesla Roadsters.
And comparing it to a Subaru wagon just tells me you are not actually serious, you just a hater.
You're right, I was being very unfair to Subaru. Their wagons (the Outback and Crosstrek) have superior off-road capabilities compared to the Model Y or the expected capabilities of the Cybertruck. And the Subarus have nicer interiors. And better range. And better warranties. And are easier to get repaired. And are way cheaper.
So did Tesla for 15 years and in that time they build a huge amount of knowledge and worked together with Panasonic on improving their cells. They learned a huge amount, hired many experts, bought a number of technology companies and are bringing things to production that literally nobody else has managed yet. They actually did the hard work of bringing university ideas into mass production.
Your claim that Tesla simply can not achieve the lower prices is your assumption that is based on nothing. Not having to pay for the profit of the cell maker alone is a huge part of the cost.
Ford has to buy on the very contested open market because their former CEO failed to set up a partnership. So in fact its very likely that they pay some of the highest amount by any of the major car manufactures. And of course so far they are a tiny part of the market while Tesla is by far the market leader.
Tesla simply buys far, far higher volume then Ford and will continue to do so.
> Moreover, by not competing with the battery makers, Ford can always choose the best battery available when it comes time to sign new contracts, and isn't stuck with whatever technology their CEO is promoting on Twitter.
Tesla is continuing to buy lots of cells from battery makers and they will continue to increase that. Tesla is the largest costumers of 2 of the 3 largest battery makers in the world.
The idea that Ford who has tiny volume will somehow get better prices then Tesla is nonsense. Tesla also has long term supply contracts for the raw materials that they locked in years ago while Ford is fully exposed to the raising market in raw materials.
> I'm part of the crowd of people who would use it. And I talk to people, online and off, in the hiking, trail running, mountain biking, and aquatics, and off-roading communities. The interest in the Lightning in these groups is huge. People even cancelled their orders for Subarus when the Lightning dropped. In contrast, the Cybertruck is viewed as a joke: a truck that can't be used for hauling, can't be used for work, and can't be used for any outdoor activities; in short, a truck that can't be used as a truck unless you think a truck just sits in a driveway or a parking spot.
So here is my problem with your argument. You simply say thing, based on literally wrong facts. Tesla Cybertruck has significantly better performance for hauling, loading and range at the same price. And a far, far higher top level specs. If you seriously want to haul something long distance the top range CB is far beyond anything the F-150 can do.
Its absolutely simply wrong to claim the CB can be used for outdoor activities or work. Like, this is just an opinion that you have that you have absolutely no factual bases for.
Talking to people who are not equally not informed and have formed their opinion on pictures and maybe a few confused news articles is simply not a valid source of information.
They could make lots of profits if they weren't growing 30-50% a year reinvesting massively, paying massive bonus to Musk that he only gets based on massive growth.
They have 18+ billion of cash on balance and could easily raise much more if they needed too.
They have upper tier operational margin and extremely good per unit margin.
> EVs are commodities.
EV are only 2% of global vehicle sales and Tesla is clearly the leader and is growing very fast still.
Go actually read about the limited availability of lithium, nickel and chemical processing. Not that there is not enough in the ground but scaling the supply chain to 100% EV will be massively challenging and that is before you even get into cell manufacturing.
> their profit is entirely due to credits?
I really don't understand why people are so utterly obsessed with this one part of Tesla income stream. Their margin are all clearly still fine and their growth is amazing even if you subtract profits.
Sure in the last couple quarter if you assume no credits at all then Tesla would just be an amazing growth company that doesn't make a profit but it wouldn't actually fundamentally change the bull case for Tesla all that much.
Tesla is by a huge margin the dominate EV player in US, EU and China by revenue generated while they have good margin (other car makers don't break out their margin for their EV business btw) and there is no evidence what so ever that their growth will stop, there is actually a huge amount of evidence that the opposite is the case.
I know some people don't like Tesla, that fine but people who still treat Tesla like this tiny startup that is just about to go bust unless they deliver on some feature X is simply not the case.
And also the fact that Tesla says certain features like Autopilot may not work for some time until vision-based proximity is “ready.”
That’s the biggest tell. If vision-based proximity was working, they’d roll it out to everyone and it would not be restricted off the bat.
Instead it is clear that they are using new drivers as an A/B test or canary, because they are not yet confident their system is safe.
Tesla owners, we should sue Tesla for this. They're going to take away features that influenced our purchasing decision with an OTA update. This should not be allowed.
(1) my delivery was delayed (my original order was supposed to be 4-8 weeks, I'm currently slated for ~10 weeks)
(2) there seems to be supply chain issues, but the company denies it
(3) after not shipping in cars for 2 months, they announce that radar is deprecated, and then suddenly people start taking deliveries.
My biggest fear is that Autopilot won't work as well as the Radar equipped cars and I won't know until 2-3 months down the line which will both affect the value of the car and part of the reason I bought it.
I personally don't care if its vision, radar, or if Elon himself remote controls the car from his house. I'm well aware of the current limitations of the software and I'd like to purchase the car knowing what I know. Having the radar come out is like buying the FSD promise; it might work next month, or it might be next year; and seeing how Autopilot was one of the features I was looking forward to, that sucks.
At the same time, there's little recourse if you want to buy an Electric car other than moving up to an S/X (which are currently 3-6 months out and 40-50k more).
I know they revamped the production of Model 3's just after Q1. In late March, the wait times were 2-12 weeks. However, this was a big overestimate. If you had an order in then, you could have gotten in within 3-4 weeks (late April/early May). But this production change was for a change in the interior trim. It looks like the radar change is different. Given the fact that they already had a production change at the end of Q1, I highly suspect that dropping radar was a supply chain issue. This was probably planned for a while, but the supply issues may have forced the timeline.
I'll be very curious to know they will support the two systems going forward. Hopefully the radar-less system is just as accurate, but I'd be happier if there were multiple systems to make these decisions.
It did not help that I started getting phantom braking at overpasses with some regularity, and the auto wipers were just not ever getting any better.
I've decided I like the old style of car manufacturing better. Turns out I want an appliance, not an experiment.
And that's because Tesla decided to ditch radar due to chip shortages?
We moved from "You don't own your computer" to "You don't own your car" really fast
Okay I'm glad we get over-the-air updates, but it just makes me sad that the updates improve things so slowly in a two steps forward one step back sort of way. I thought it would be further along by now.
As far as I'm concerned, that $10k is basically an interest free loan to Tesla. FSD as promised by Elon is going to take decades, and the worst part is that it's not even transferable from one car to another.
That would make sense to do it that way: Sell FSD as some sort of license that always works in any Tesla one drives.
How does it currently work? If someone sells their Tesla does the FSD package follow the car or does the new owner need to purchase FSD for that car?
(Since its on the monroney label they have to keep it for cars that are ordered with it originally)
if it is a liability on their books, then i would agree with OP that it is an interest free loan.
Don't underestimate power of accounting, mixed with loose ethics.
https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-autopil...
https://loupventures.com/teslas-software-advantage-is-clear-....
I am actually surprised they haven't been hit with a class action over FSD yet.
And this seems to be par for the course for Tesla. If you look at what they've done with Solar Roof, they have increased prices by 50% for people who already have signed contracts. It's blatantly illegal and yet they are fearless in trying to trick people into cancelling their contracts. Hopefully the current class action lawsuit for Solar Roof gets traction because it's incredible to me that Tesla behaves like this and doesn't get their ass handed to them in court.
A few weeks back, I had a terrible experience while using auto pilot. I was driving on a highway (in CA) with autopilot engaged. For the most part, there was a concrete median on the highway. Suddenly, a section came with no concrete median and a new left only turn lane gets added. For whatever reasons, autopilot thought it is a great idea to suddenly move the steering wheel to left while there is oncoming traffic. I immediately took control of the navigation but the car did wobble a bit. My heart kept racing with an adrenaline rush for the next half an hour. I haven't engaged autopilot since then. I can't trust auto pilot anymore- it couldn't deal with a dead-simple scenario of a clearly marked lane getting added.
Beta would be more like driving 15km/h below the speed limit in the passing lane with the blinker left on.
EDIT: Downvoted, but I'm totally serious. If you're going to let your robot assault me, I'm going to execute you.
https://mv-voice.com/news/2018/03/23/car-fire-closes-lanes-o...
37.4110753, -122.0761614
See that lane on the right that has solid white lines on each side of it? Now pan around: https://goo.gl/maps/TunvNLGvX9sUTbXp9 It actually leads directly to a barrier. If instead of putting smooth pavement before that barrier, Caltrans had placed grass or dirt or rumble strips or pretty much anything else, this would be a non-issue. But they didn't, so people hit it all the time. You can look at the street view history:
Feb 2008, the barrier is surrounded by cones (probably recently replaced): https://goo.gl/maps/faxMWWBCwXxnqqKS8
Nov 2008, no more cones: https://goo.gl/maps/LPLkCeqeojEgHV679
Feb 2011, the barrier is twisted metal covered in warning signs: https://goo.gl/maps/G3oQ4NxkiweJwVdx8
Sep 2011, the barrier has been repaired: https://goo.gl/maps/zs7WrXgUa8cxShKN6
Dec 2013, the barrier has been replaced. Note that this is now a reusable crash barrier. Most crashes won't be noticeable on street view history because the barrier is typically reset within a few days of a crash: https://goo.gl/maps/34oVqmDAJuTepUT76
Aug 2014, damaged again. Now the barrier is shorter (needs to be reset by Caltrans): https://goo.gl/maps/LYHidVpVgCt8uDa48
Oct 2014, now it's reset: https://goo.gl/maps/5uhK8bx8cExJR13z5
Sep 2015, damaged again. Now it's ridiculously short (needs to be reset by Caltrans): https://goo.gl/maps/m7ui9naztjRrgdx67
Oct 2015, barrier destroyed again: https://goo.gl/maps/6A6GCESsvjkKGK7A6
Apr 2016, replaced. Now the concrete behind the metal barrier is damaged: https://goo.gl/maps/zUiJzbrDMoUWaJqb9
At some point between 2017 and 2019, Caltrans painted between the lanes to make it more obvious: https://goo.gl/maps/zR8sGB2LxG1dUBSz5
Again, since late 2013 the barrier been reusable. Only particularly devastating crashes will damage it enough to require replacement. Usually Caltrans resets the barrier after a few days. Sometimes it takes them longer, such as when they didn't reset the barrier before the 2018 crash that killed an Apple engineer driving a Tesla with autopilot enabled.[1]
1. https://abc7news.com/dan-noyes-tesla-crash-iteam-barrier-bat... (Warning: auto-playing video)
My confidence in semi-self driving cars was that crashes and mishaps would all get auto-updated to all the cars at once, leading to a greater library of exceptions to consider, which would be an upgrade from humans
But if that hasn't happened for that one spot in 3 years, I'm out.
One Bay-area example where the median disappears to allow a left turn lane is C-17 going to Santa Cruz.
It's totally fine, I didn't buy the car for Autopilot, I just wanted a nice efficient car, which it is.
Good choice, personally I can't imagine myself using "Autopilot" in a first place.
In your case, the new lane was clearly marked, which just shows how weak the system really is. Imagine if there was snow covering the lane markings. Or sunlight reflecting off of the road confuses the vision.
People bought the self-driving hype because the first 80% was easy. They forgot that the next 20%, as usual, would be incredibly hard, if not impossible.
Personally, I will never be okay riding in a car that is on autopilot. Heck, I'm not even okay with the amount of automation in airplane cockpits. [1] [2]
[1]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/faa-report-pilots-addi... [2]: https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-tragic-crash-of-flight-af447-sho...
I don’t think that’s true - but it certainly needs more than a couple of poor resolution cameras and some underpowered hardware powered by hype. You can see how poor the vision of these systems is by just watching a few Tesla autopilot videos and seeing cars flash into/out of recognition on the screen.
The first actual self driving car won’t be the one that does it with bargain basement hardware prioritising low cost over efficacy and safety.
How would your imagined autopilot system handle traffic flaggers, construction workers with signs, or various people directing traffic with handsignals?
How will your system see the difference between a police officer making hand signs that you have to obey, and some random person making hand signals?
How will it solve turn taking at stop signals, and how will it solve people waving you on, thereby changing the turn-taking order?
There are tons of driving scenarios that require you to look at other humans, figure out who they are, and figure out what they want. For humans, this is dead simple. For computers... Nope.
Any situation with hand-waving should be passed back to a human driver until the hand-waving can be eliminated with future laws and road rules. We aren't going to have full level-5 autonomy that's reliant on cameras interpreting people waggling their hands around.
The solution is that you architect a full system to allow for self driving, which will inevitably include changing how people interact with cars.
...which reinforces the point me and the grandparent post was making: You can't solve self-driving without AGI.
I guess there is a sliding scale with self driving cars:
* Low technology, high societal or infrastructure change (for example we could build a totally different road network and dig cables into it, not practical but possible with technology 20 years ago!) * Medium technology, medium societal or infrastructure change. * High technology, low societal or infrastructure change. * Very high technology, no/little societal or infrastructure change (eg AGI that can interpret hand signals).
All of these are possible versions of self driving cars - there is no “one” solution. Having AGI and going for the last bullet point isn’t the only option.
As an example, when the 1950s imagined robotic vacuum cleaning they pictured a standing robot that would use your existing appliances - so they might have said “we need to work out how to pick up and use a household vaccum cleaner in order to make a useful household robot, which requires AGI!”. We now know that a better solution is the roomba, and AGI isn’t required.
I personally think we will inevitably need some level of societal change, legislation change and possibly even infrastructure change to make self driving cars happen sooner.
[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/waymo-self-driving-cars-p...
Also, it doesn't account for the fact that police officers can make hand signals from inside their vehicle (with or without yellow vests) that you have to obey as a driver.
Autopilot is not FSD. Autopilot is using the old system, FSD is using an architectural rewrite.
I think it will happen but only by making many expensive, intrusive changes to our cities and roads to accommodate "self-driving" cars.
When you look at nature and see a tiny bee or fly navigating perfectly around all sorts of obstacles, including the newspaper I’m trying to swat it with, using just that teeny tiny brain running of mili-watts of power with just compound eyes to guide it. And in 3D space not a nice flat surface.
But we still can’t make a car not drive into a massive concrete barrier?
Something is off. But that gives me hope that there’s a discovery waiting to be made that can fix it.
The power gap is so huge, our software simply must be inadequate. We're talking about a power gap wider than the gap between my toaster oven and the Saturn V.
I just found this weird video of how a dragon flies brains act basically like a homing missile, using only a few dozen neurones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0vRupFPw90
If we used genetic algorithms to design the algorithm, it'd probably be able to get something as efficient as that. However, you're also not going to be able to "fix this one thing" because it's more likely to be the result of emergent behavior from interactions more complicated than anyone can understand. I believe one could get something that works like that, but you're also going to have other behaviors akin to moths flying into lamps because they navigate by the moon which is recognized as "the brightest thing at night".
We think we can make rules for everything and expect them to be followed without exception to perform these complicated tasks, but I think that's hubris. Anything that ends up doing it at that power scale is going to be as inscrutable as a brain. Asimov's robopsychology is then likely to be something real, but it's going to be dissecting neural networks because "fix this issue" on something that took multiple GW of energy to train in the first place will need fixing from that end versus "well, time to train it again".
As an anecdote for this thread, I remember there was some setup where physical circuits were designed via genetic algorithms to do some task. There were results with unconnected resistors that actually influenced the behavior of the circuit. You're generating behavior which is sensitive to that level. Wish I could find that again…
These are entirely avoidable problems using the sensors and methods every other company besides Tesla are using
Sensors might be an alternate strategy though and a way to at least take vision processing out of the list of hard problems.
If driverless cars were crashing because all of a sudden a giant sheet of glass appeared in the middle of the road, or a giant alien death ray shot up the tarmac, I think most people would have some sympathy.
Yes. The fundamental assumptions about how brains work are wrong.
I see, far too often, the dismissive interpretation of brains as "A couple crappy cameras tied to a neural network" - which leads to the "Well, we have better cameras and we know how to do neural networks, so it can't be hard!" Throw in some dismissive statements about how awful humans are at driving and such, and you're set for the trap.
Human/animal vision systems are way more optimized than that sort of handwaving dismissal. The "cameras" are well optimized for what's needed, and have some pretty darned impressive scanning features to make a very small central cone of resolution do everything that's needed - without flooding the brain with HD video in places that don't matter. It's an optimized system for making a fairly narrow feed cover everything that's needed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade
And, yes, there are some weird quirks of vision systems - optical illusions and such. But once you get past the eyes, the rest of the "Make sense of the 3D world around us" system is insanely optimized, and exceedingly power efficient. It works well enough and reliably enough to handle absolutely absurd changes in the operating environments. Humans did not come born with "supersonic low level flight" built into the system, yet... our brains can work with it. It just takes some learning and brain adjustments.
And the whole rest of the system following is similarly impressive.
There's a typically paired arrogance you also see: "We are like gods in the synthetic world of the internet, because we know code and manage 99.995% API success rates, therefore we can use code to solve reality." Reality is infinitely more creative at throwing wrenches into things than we are at solving them with code, and while it doesn't really matter on the internet, it very much does matter at 75mph.
When you dismiss all that as "crappy cameras and a neural network, we know code, we can do that!" - you end up failing in the predictable ways we see with the self driving cars.
In the rich world it is not hard to find a potholed road with faded markings, so how can we expect our society to maintain and upkeep expensive infrastructure when we can barely manage paint and basic asphalt?
In many countries it would be a huge culture shift, and IMO a step in the wrong direction. We don't need more urban real-estate devoted to cars.
NY to Jersey - nope.
We could put some metal guides in the ground so they can follow that path.
We could then separate that path from other obstructions with barriers, maybe put some tunnels in the ground that keep other people out.
And have signals that indicate when the "self driving" stuff is going to interfere with other roads, so nobody gets in the way!
"Totally change cities to meet the requirements of self driving cars" sounds an awful lot like "Just put rails in and call it a train."
People who were not convinced by autopilot shoving cars under trucks are not going to get convinced by one more anecdote.
I don't think we quite need AGI to make something like a commercial urban taxi service work. For any given place, we can substitute a very large amount of training data. And I think we can get there through an approach like Waymo, where the taxi's number one job is to ask for central human help if it's in the slightest confused or at risk of causing harm. But even that will be a very long slog.
And for the supposed goal of "full self-driving", I agree that is basically AGI, because it requires levels of judgment that even humans struggle with. The other day I came across some Covid-related road changes and I had to reason about human intent as expressed in roads while exchanging human social signals with the people around me.
Brooks suggests we instead may see people trying to simplify the problem by banning humans and/or human drivers from areas where we want automated driving. That's anthema to me, but given the history of building to favor cars vs other modes and given the vast amounts of money behind these efforts, it wouldn't shock me that it turns out that way.
I agree that ultimately they need a significant amount of local training data. But I believe they would be better off having a human drive a car around to map things out, run their 'AI' on the results, and then manually review/correct lower confidence results. Or, better yet, make a database and have cities provide feeds of changes/permits/closures.
Define -
1. Several.
2. Not working.
Disc: Googler but I don't know if that's necessary since I don't work at Waymo.
Self-driving will arrive eventually, but don't hold your breath.
"Sorry, I know you crashed, your car's on fire, and you're bleeding out. But I need to get this road closure form submitted before I can help, or a self driving car might ignore the stationary accident and make things worse. Ugh, 5G's not working today... hold on..."
The cars must be able to handle random, unexpected events happening without maps, and without external guidance. A wheel falls off a truck in front of you for metal fatigue reasons and is bounding down the road - that's a thing that happens, and a thing that in no way will be reported before it becomes relevant.
If a self driving car can't handle this sort of thing (or an accident and coming on a flagger) autonomously, it has no business being allowed on the road.
And if it can - then there's no need to have a centralized database of weird things, because it can deal with the range of events autonomously.
Start talking about 99.998% or so, OK, now it's worth sitting down with the math. But 98% accuracy at avoiding construction/existing crashes/etc is horrible.
> And if it can - then there's no need to have a centralized database of weird things, because it can deal with the range of events autonomously.
'Conditions on top of the road' (vehicles, debris, etc.) and 'conditions of the road itself' are not the same thing and I'm not sure why you think that they are.
I think it's not a good rebuttal because self-driving cars will have to be orders of magnitude safer than humans if order to be successful. If I'm drunk and I decide to drive and I end up crashing into a pedestrian, then it's my own damn fault and I'll face the consequences. If a self-driving car bugs out and kills someone, who's responsible?
All it'll take in a few dozen stories of self-driving cars diving into oncoming traffic like in the parent's story and that'll destroy any trust in the tech for the foreseeable future.
This is false: "To ensure our statistics are conservative, we count any crash in which Autopilot was deactivated within 5 seconds before a crash."
https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
It would be more helpful to focus on actually deceptive issues in how they report data, namely the conflation of easy highway miles (Autopilot enabled) with more dangerous city driving (Autopilot unavailable). For example their Q1 2021 report:
"In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 4.19 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.05 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 978 thousand miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 484,000 miles."
yeah maybe i was exaggerating but autopilot can definitely get you in positions where its impossible to get out of and the deactivate 5 secs before actual collision.
And autopilot is only engaged on highways but they are comparing its safety to accidents per mile in general. But those stats are strongly skewed by city and non-highway driving, where autopilot doesnt work at all.
All the self driving companies do this, but it only makes sense to compare # of accidents/mile between like processes. It's an ok proxy for total risk iff accidents were uniformly distributed, but we know that isn't even close to true.
With a system like Teslas', it is preferentially, probably approximately exclusively if normalized by distance, deployed in situations with a lower accident rate - comparing that to total rates is nonsense.
What would be more interesting is Tesla vs. human accident rates on only freeway miles, say, but I haven't seen that anywhere, have you?
Best rough stats I can find is that less than 1/2 of all accidents happen on highways. There are a also a ton of fender-bender, parking lot and/or traffic jam accidents that aren't really applicable either.
We're putting a driver on the road who can still learn after suffering a fatal accident! This is huge, it means all parts of the system can learn from anything and will practically eliminate deaths in the long term; much like in the airline industry. If the short term is safer but confusing we should do that and who cares about philosophical technicalities.
This attitude could literally get people killed for no measurable gain. Saving lives and reducing road deaths (which comes with a whole host of other benefits, like freeing up an enormous number of hours of people's time) is much more important than worrying about holding people responsible. We shouldn't be trying to hold people responsible for tragedies, we should be trying to prevent tragedies!
And we need to keep getting self driving cars into common use to push them up the technological learning curve . This is much more important than worrying about who is at fault because it will make the cars an order of magnitude safer. The payoffs here are so huge it is even worth putting them on the road if they are slightly less safe than humans then subsidising the producer's legal costs to hold their risk down.
The whole argument above is built upon the assumption that everybody agrees with a utilitarian mindset so I’m assuming the answer to the question, in part, is you should care about the philosophical underpinnings.
Not preventing them from doing something in the future, mind you. Holding them accountable won't be a net long term improvement. Just accountability for the sake of punishment.
I'm sure there are people who believe that, but I suspect most of the reputable philosophers will agree with the utilitarians on this particular issue.
It is difficult to defend against "your stubbornness will cause mounds of corpses for no obvious gain". This is a pretty clear cut line of approach.
"Old Uncle Bob forgot his glasses again and ran over a kid" doesn't have any implication regarding my use of a car. "A self-driving Tesla was confused by work signage and ran over a kid" would destroy a lot of trust into self-driving cars.
(I'm not a philosopher so maybe somebody with an actual background can correct me if I'm wrong)
Ignoring the hyperbole in your statement, I think the traditional counterpoint to consequentialism is deontology. Meaning, the intent behind an action matters despite the consequences. So if you are willingly putting people at risk in the short-term for the "long term good", it's morally wrong. History is rife with examples of how taking an "ends justify the means" philosophy can lead to truly abhorrent policy decisions.
>but I suspect most of the reputable philosophers will agree with the utilitarians on this particular issue.
This comes across as a "no true Scotsman" defense by implying if one is not a utilitarian in this case, they must not be reputable. Kant is generally considered a "reputable" philosopher and would likely fall on the deontological side of the argument as would many others.
>This is a pretty clear cut line of approach.
Ethics is not mathematics so there is often no "clear cut" answer. If you are defining policy, absolutism in this realm is dangerous; you have to acknowledge other people's morals may differ from yours and not fall prey to the presumption that just because it makes sense to you, it must be right.
People by and large don't intend to put people at risk. The intent of someone who causes a car crash is rarely malicious.
> This comes across as a "no true Scotsman" defense...
I suspect Kant would agree with me that it would be a difficult argument to carry as a philosopher when you are arguing in favour of increasing the corpse count for no particular reason. "If a self-driving car bugs out and kills someone, who's responsible?" certainly isn't a reason to kill people. We can afford to live in ignorance if it means more people live to die in their old age.
I'm on board with the idea that maybe someone has a reason that it is a good idea to just let people kill each other by accident. But so far in this thread nobody has bought one up.
And yet it happens, which is to the point and (depending on locality) people are still held accountable. Adopting nascent technologies almost always comes with risk tradeoffs because we don't yet have a solid understanding of the latent risks. Look at aircraft statistics if you need an example. To your point, over time they will improve, but not without accepting additional risk in the near-term. The last point is false only if you believe we understand the risk profile enough to unequivocally say autonomous cars are safer in all conditions. I don't think we can claim that yet.
What you're advocating is like someone in the early 1950s being told "Just make everyone fly in a de Havilland Comet! Don't you know air travel is going to be the safest mode of travel per mile!?" While true over the long run and in the aggregate, that individual on the Comet is being told to take an outsized risk. I'm making the claim that some people (not even necessarily me) would have a moral issue with being told at the individual level they need to take a larger risk for the betterment of society in the future.
So even while in the long time horizon they may be safer, or even be safer in the aggregate now, you could be subjecting passengers to higher risks in those individual cases. I can't speak for Kant, but I think some people may think it's immoral to draconianly force them to accept that risk. Kant speaks against the hypothetical imperative which is a motivation to obtain certain ends (like forcing policy that reduces traffic deaths in the aggregate).
If you disagree, ask yourself or others a hypothetical: take whomever you love the most in this world whether it's a child, a parent, or a dog. Would you be willing to adopt a rule today that they can never step foot in an ape-driven car for the rest of their life and every instance of travel be relegated to autonomous vehicles? Even if you are okay with that risk, there are plenty of people who would balk at it.
A driver needs to identify lanes, understand road markings and signs, model the physics of moving objects and predict the immediate future behaviour of other objects based on immediate past behaviour.
Also basing an evaluation of FSD on current AP behaviour is like assuming a housekeeper will be as effective as a Roomba.
How do you define full AGI?
On a side note, another approach would be to have sensors in the roads that would transmit boundary information. That might be too expensive and difficult to maintain though.
In fact, I believe that the difficulty of even _defining_ AGI is yet more evidence that we are not anywhere close to it.
What I think an AGI needs to have is the _ability to learn_. To me, that's what intelligence really is. For many people, it's having a lot of knowledge. However, that is merely lack of ignorance.
The reason that the ability to learn is important for AGI is because the true thing we miss with self-driving cars is _adaptability_. When roads change, humans adapt. But a self-driving car does not, unless a human interferes and tells it, "You learned about cones today."
The idea the full AGI is required is silly and incorrect. Waymo does not have these issues at all. It couldn't happen either. You don't need AGI to have a detailed map, you don't need AGI to properly localize to a detailed map.
these are problems Tesla is giving itself
False:
https://jalopnik.com/watch-a-waymo-av-get-freaked-out-by-tra...
that is not related to the tesla issue at all. Furthermore, this article just described bad decision making with regards to traffic cones, however was not dangerous. It was aware of drivable surfaces and direction of traffic... because it has a map
Do you see how these are different situations?
1. Telsa swerving into an oncoming lane 2. Waymo coming to a controlled stop in front of a traffic cone, then thinks it is blocked and needs help
And then driving off again, and then blocking traffic, and then evading Waymo's roadside assistance, etc.
Do you see how these aren't different situations?
That is fundamentally different than trusting a neural net to tell you where the lanes are, where the objects are, and what kind of objects they are.
you do not drive into an oncoming lane if you have a hd map. you do not drive into a concrete wall if you have lidar.
Not having control of the car is high danger. Even when they recognized it needed rescuing they still didn't have control of it.
BTW, the average driver gets in a crash every 18 years. The best humans aren't perfect either, and a self-driving car really only needs to be better than the worst humans to be an improvement (although it will have to be much better to succeed).
I think this is false because varying abilities of people will use the autopilot, not just the worst. The autopilot needs to be better than average for an overall improvement. I think it needs to be much better than average to be compelling enough for most people to adopt it. Most people consider themselves to be good drivers, even with sufficient evidence to the contrary.
That depends entirely on how effective it is and what incentives/disincentives there are (i.e. subsidies, taxes, insurance), which will itself depend on how effective it is.
No one ever said that they could get all of their info from a database. But there is a significant amount of info which they could get from a database, which they might not be able to get at all otherwise.
Car A (driven in manual mode) tells Car B (FSD) that tells Car C (FSD) that tells... Car Z (FSD): "I stopped at a stop sign in stop & go traffic at Lat/Long xyz while I spotted a human in the middle of the road. This is marked on my maps data (updated overnight) as not being a normal stop. No new data was detected except the human standing and a human laying on the ground."
Car B, C, D... all confirm the same until Z passes the area and sees no more humans (they've been moved). Car Z tells Car AA all good here, proceed as normally.
I'm just rambling now, but it's truly how ants operate. Draw a line of chalk in the middle of their "line" or walking patch and watched them avoid it and find a way around it. The difference is all of these cars will feed a true neural net of public data of live road conditions, accidents, etc. A possible privacy nightmare, but these are different times.
The capability of the system would increase as more nodes are added. Kind of like the Geth from the Mass Effect series.
FWIW, I'm not okay riding in a car that's driven by ~50% of nonprofessional human drivers; people are, in general, really bad at the task.
The old system. Current Autopilot is using the old system. Not relevant to the new FSD beta.
For that statement to be a validation for legalising autopilot for open usage, the bar for Z needs to be a lot lower than Y. It needs to be zero or else we would be blessing fatal bugs.
If we could lower the national death toll by 1,000 people a year but it meant that 4 people you love the most would perish, would you support this new initiative or oppose it?
Part of the problem is me not trusting the car, but it's also because the system isn't very intuitive.
Unless Tesla gets LIDAR I'm not getting in one with the AP enabled.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=antLneVlxcs
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uClWlVCwHsI
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ozx5R-P9zM
[4] https://twitter.com/olivercameron/status/1319835514887831552
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29GZg4gGMMM
Other things:
[1] https://www.elonmusk.today/
[2] a video which was taken down from youtube
https://troll.tv/videos/watch/54bc7bd0-8691-4359-aa7d-dc5148...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lawsuits_involving_Tes....
Bonus material:
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsKwMryKqRE
Edit: For saner info regarding self-driving, A.I etc:
[1] https://twitter.com/missy_cummings/
[2] https://www.twitter.com/MelMitchell1
[3] https://twitter.com/rodneyabrooks
[4] book to read, suitable even for laypeople >> 'Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell
IMO everyone should read that book
Edit 2: Children of the Magenta Line
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs
Honestly, a fully autonomous driving car is a pipe dream (KITT I need ya buddy!!!), but with infrastructure and remote support I think it's totally possible. The question is whether there's a will for that.
I will never buy Tesla again. I don’t think Tesla realizes how much goodwill they are destroying.
For example, /r/TeslaMotors is fairly critical of the company these days where it used to be cultish and fanatical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVJSjeHDvfY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKyUqZDYwrU
https://youtu.be/6QSsKy0I9LE?t=82
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqURFUcl5NI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jheBCOpE9ws
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTu3blQa3qk
I wonder how their codebase looks like - neural net training model for a slightly wobbly Amish buggy crossing the road in rural Pennsylvania during Rumspringa.
I have a question about Tesla Autopilot.
Looking at the common driver assistance features that are common nowadays even on many entry level models from most car companies, I see adaptive cruise control (often with low speed following), warnings if you start to drift out of your lane (sometimes with minor steering nudges), warnings if you turn on a turn signal when something is in your blind spot, and similar things. They are usually separate features you can individually enable or disable.
I assume Tesla does those things, too, but are they part of Autopilot or are they ? If they are part of Autopilot, do you lose them when you decide not to engage Autopilot or can you turn on and off individual features of Autopilot?
Put another way, if I found myself driving a Tesla, and only wanted it to only use those driver assist features that I'd find if I were driving a low to mid level Honda Civic or Toyota Camry, is that possible?
It probably has the best and most intuitive lane keeping, adaptive cruise control, blind spot alerts, collision detection warnings, etc. out there (at least from the cars I've driven). For example, other intelligent cruise control systems I've used will rigidly and aggressively maintain a fixed distance from the car in front of you, like a robot--with only 3 options: awful tail gating, kind of acceptable, and piss everyone else off as you stay a mile away.
Whereas Telsa's have some 8 levels of distance options--easily adjustable by pushing the right steering wheel button left or right, which shows a visual indicator on the screen. And more importantly, it isn't some rigid algorithm that will "always maintain 8 car lengths", instead its behavior is based on current conditions.
Autopilot is a fantastic driver-assist tool, and makes driving so much more enjoyable and less stressful. Part of the problem is that even technically inclined people, as witnessed here, have trouble with the distinction between "Full Self Driving", and "Autopilot". Autopilot is basically cruise control with steering. If you wouldn't use cruise control normally, certainly don't use Autopilot. And when using it, keep your hands on the wheel, and be prepared to take control immediately, just like it says--especially whenever there's an upcoming change to road conditions (e.g. a new lane appears, an intersection, a merger, etc).
It's also really easy to take control if it starts to veer into, say, another lane that appears. When I first got a Model Y in January, there were a couple places on my daily drive where it'd tend to rather aggressively steer into an an emerging turn lane with poor/non-existent markings. However, it would ultimately make the right decision, even if it was a little unnerving.
But with the latest software updates, those edge cases have been addressed; at most, it'll gently and momentarily steer in that direction, and then gracefully correct to maintain its previous heading (as you'd expect).
Autopilot doesn't have a detailed understanding of the road path, stop signs, intersections, etc. It's literally just using onboard sensors to figure out its surroundings.
Full Self Driving is a totally different animal.
And I think everyone would agree that Telsa has done a rather poor job communicating these distinctions and limitations.
[0] https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2021/04/18/tesla-autopilot-is-just...
On straight highways with little traffic there I had zero problems with Autopilot. As a test, I engaged it in some not-so-great conditions (rainy, twisty mountain roads with lots of tractor trailer traffic) and the result was a bit more exciting. So, yes, used appropriately, Autopilot is great. I'm not really sold on FSD yet.
You are not supposed to trust it. You are supposed to use it as an assistance feature. It's not meant to be autonomous.
Have you seen how most Americans drive?
Makes sense that they did this with the chip shortages. I don't doubt that they can rely entirely on cameras and be way safer than most drivers on the road.
Looking forward to FSD release in 2030.
Keep in mind that vision is needed in all cases for lane keeping at the very minimum. So if vision is not able to see in fog, it won’t be able to self drive even radar is working.
https://www.google.com/search?q=fog+highway+pile+up
Humans also use real intelligence and higher-order thought when driving. Humans also have stereo vision.
Unless you’re telling me that Tesla has invented AGI, the comparison is absurd.
In the meantime, Tesla can’t even get my auto wipers right.
Stereo vision can be built from cameras as well, even with a single moving camera. This is exactly what tesla is doing with their new DNN but with multiple cameras.
I don’t disagree with you that Tesla is still far away from FSD, but using what’s not possible today to draw the conclusion that a goal is not achievable in the future is the opposite of first principle thinking. 10 years ago i could also say go AI can’t even beat semi-pro so we will never be able to solve Go with AI.
How hard would it have been to write a press release explaining why they are removing radar, what it means to safety, and how it impacts the future of self-driving?
https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/15/teslas-decision-to-scrap-i...
MobilEye for example can run on vision and radar independently and they have been for a while. The reason they don't remove one or the other sensors is to provide redundancy.
When your tech can kill people, it's a good idea to provide redundancy.
Why don't we force ever car to have radar, sonar, cameras, lidar and so on. Who cares what the cost is? If we can save a single life we should equip all 10 million cars that are sold every year with all of these things.
This is not how safety works, if with vision they can hit the targets they are trying to achieve and radar causes issues, then removing it is a option. Radar also uses energy and is extra weight you have to transport and its extra cost.
This is specially true that because of all their investment into vision their new pure vision solution is better then the old vision+radar solution.
If their vision system was actually good/safe and was truly unneeded then they'd have a stronger case for removing radar (but not a watertight case, because redundancy). As it is, their vision system sucks.
Where are you getting that information?
It shows his ignorance. What happens when their model misclassifies with high confidence and fails to detect an obstacle? A collision.
There is a reason why every major company out there uses radar/LIDAR in addition to vision. It's because machine vision is a heuristic and it can and will fail with high confidence in its predictions. In those situations if you only have vision you are screwed.
Whereas lidar/radar are based on physics. They are physical systems and thus fundamentally more reliable and consistent than MV.
Thats why we use lidar/radar in places like the ISS to dock vehicles, because safety is critical.
I doubt Elon has any sort of data. This is a way to maintain Tesla’s brand image during the radar chip shortage, and continue selling cars.
Hell, even Tesla says vision-based proximity might not be fully functional for some time for new Tesla’s. Clear evidence that this is rushed and not ready.
Why do people even see self driving as the ultimate transport solution? It does not scale, even if vehicles are shared.
I mean, hopefully no one is financing or leasing these cars when you're purchasing FSD, right? It only makes sense to me if you buy the car in cash. You could literally just set aside the $10,000 to occasionally have a professional driver chauffeur you, provide drinks in the car, etc.
Also the fact that without radar they are limiting vehicles to 75mph means it's useless in Texas and many other states.
A few weeks ago I got a Comma2, which runs OpenPilot, and installed it on my Honda Odyssey minivan. I've driven a Model X with autopilot, and I have to say, my minivan is just as good, if not in some cases better, than the Tesla.
I'm now much less excited about getting a Tesla. Knowing that I can upgrade basically any recent car to have autopilot, now I'm just waiting for an electric minivan that I can install OpenPilot on. And if I end up needing a sedan again, I'll most likely look first for an electric sedan from another automaker that I can add Openpilot to.
Edit: This is strange. This is my third comment that I mentioned OpenPilot, and in all three cases, my comment got a downvote within 30 seconds of posting it. I wonder, is there some bot that goes around downvoting posts/comments about OpenPilot? I don't think what I said was in any way controversial?