[HN Gopher] Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safet...
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Tesla loses U.S. designation for some advanced safety features
Author : camjohnson26
Score : 166 points
Date : 2021-05-27 18:41 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| gauravphoenix wrote:
| >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.
| throw7 wrote:
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| > 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?
| aplummer wrote:
| With people hyping it and putting our lives in danger like this
| https://mobile.twitter.com/Scobleizer/status/139541771021799...
| (no hands on wheel) we've got plenty of tragedy to come
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| This guy killed Google Glass by really overhyping it.
| TwoBit wrote:
| Did your lane split into two and it took the left one? What do
| you think caused it to do what it did?
| gauravphoenix wrote:
| 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.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| 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.
| jdofaz wrote:
| One pull is regular cruise control
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| Well it's still a "beta" feature, so according to Tesla you
| shouldn't have trusted it in the first place.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| "Oops we tried to kill the user. Repeatedly." seems like more
| of a pre-alpha kind of bug to me.
|
| Beta would be more like driving 15km/h below the speed limit
| in the passing lane with the blinker left on.
| spicybright wrote:
| Live roads and endangering people's lives is a poor place to
| be beta testing. Test data shouldn't be generated by blood.
| OldGoodNewBad wrote:
| 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.
| spicybright wrote:
| That terrifying as hell. I'm sure a lot of people have died/had
| life changing injuries that were in that same situation :(
| xvector wrote:
| I have had experiences (plural) like this in my Model 3 too.
|
| 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.
| nemothekid wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://mv-voice.com/news/2018/03/23/car-fire-closes-lanes-o...
| vmception wrote:
| I remember that too
|
| 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.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Is there a picture of the place with no median?
| wumpus wrote:
| There's a continuous median in that area.
|
| One Bay-area example where the median disappears to allow a
| left turn lane is C-17 going to Santa Cruz.
| snypher wrote:
| Is it this exit (carpool lane over to 85)?
|
| 37.4110753, -122.0761614
| nemothekid wrote:
| Yes, that one is where the accident occurred in the link I
| posted
| ggreer wrote:
| If anyone is wondering why people are discussing this
| particular exit so much, look at this image:
| https://goo.gl/maps/Q2Qm5RR3myMkdsFE8
|
| 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)
| 19h wrote:
| Off-topic: it's truly amazing that there's a history
| feature built into StreetView. First time I've seen this!
| sorenjan wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| I just don't use Autopilot. It feels so unsafe, maybe that is
| showing my age but I feel like I'm on a rollercoaster without
| tracks when I engage it.
|
| It's totally fine, I didn't buy the car for Autopilot, I just
| wanted a nice efficient car, which it is.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| 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.
| sethammons wrote:
| 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 :)
| dkonofalski wrote:
| I'm confused. If a new left-only turn lane was added, wouldn't
| it have steered you into that new lane? How did it steer you
| into oncoming traffic?
| [deleted]
| gauravphoenix wrote:
| 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.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"I haven't engaged autopilot since then"
|
| Good choice, personally I can't imagine myself using
| "Autopilot" in a first place.
| tqi wrote:
| 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.
| ghoward wrote:
| 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]
|
| [1]: https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/faa-report-pilots-
| addi... [2]: https://hbr.org/2017/09/the-tragic-crash-of-
| flight-af447-sho...
| jfrunyon wrote:
| 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).
| imoverclocked wrote:
| > 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.
| ghoward wrote:
| But what happens when the road is suddenly closed for an
| accident? Or new construction appears? What will database-
| based self-driving cars do then?
| zelon88 wrote:
| 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.
| xnx wrote:
| 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.
| masklinn wrote:
| > 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.
| ghoward wrote:
| Actually, you are right. Guess my naivete showed through.
| wpietri wrote:
| Yup. Rodney Brooks, famed robot scientist and iRobot founder,
| says not to expect driverless taxis in cities earlier than
| 2035: https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/
|
| 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.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| 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.
| what_ever wrote:
| > We've already seen several instances of Waymo's
| approach not working.
|
| Define -
|
| 1. Several.
|
| 2. Not working.
|
| Disc: Googler but I don't know if that's necessary since
| I don't work at Waymo.
| wpietri wrote:
| 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.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _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.
| simias wrote:
| 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.
| roenxi wrote:
| 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.
| bumby wrote:
| > _who cares about philosophical technicalities_
|
| 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.
| Amezarak wrote:
| 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.
| ffggvv wrote:
| 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.
| arcticfox wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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."
| ska wrote:
| 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.
| kevinskii wrote:
| Yes, and in addition, the comparison should be between
| similar vehicle body styles and manufacturing years.
| ska wrote:
| 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.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| ffggvv wrote:
| *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.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think self driving will catch on for special roads or lanes
| that are automatic only. Mostly on long highways that are
| mostly straight.
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| > 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.
| ghoward wrote:
| I can't, but like Justice Potter Stewart, "I know it when I
| see it."
|
| In fact, I believe that the difficulty of even _defining_
| AGI is yet more evidence that we are not anywhere close to
| it.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| 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.
| osmarks wrote:
| Humans are hardly perfect drivers either.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| 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.
| nobodylikeme wrote:
| 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.
| sneak wrote:
| > _Personally, I will never be okay riding in a car that is
| on autopilot._
|
| 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.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 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.
| ghoward wrote:
| 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."
| gmadsen wrote:
| 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.
|
| these are problems Tesla is giving itself
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _Waymo does not have these issues at all._
|
| False:
|
| https://jalopnik.com/watch-a-waymo-av-get-freaked-out-by-
| tra...
| gmadsen wrote:
| did you read the article?
|
| 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
| clouddrover wrote:
| > _Waymo coming to a controlled stop in front of a
| traffic cone_
|
| 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?
| Closi wrote:
| > 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.
| henrikschroder wrote:
| > 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.
| Closi wrote:
| 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.
| tgaj wrote:
| 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.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| Waymo claims to already be able to deal with things like
| hand signals[1]. Assuming that's true, would that make
| you question whether AGI is required?
|
| [1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/waymo-self-
| driving-cars-p...
| dmm wrote:
| > However, IMO, it will never happen because it needs a full
| artificial general intelligence.
|
| I think it will happen but only by making many expensive,
| intrusive changes to our cities and roads to accommodate
| "self-driving" cars.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| 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.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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.
| gmadsen wrote:
| These are self inflicted problems by only using cameras.
|
| These are entirely avoidable problems using the sensors
| and methods every other company besides Tesla are using
| jonplackett wrote:
| If those camera were hooked up to an AR helmet and a
| human had 360 view of the car through them, I bet they
| could drive just fine. The data is there.
|
| Sensors might be an alternate strategy though and a way
| to at least take vision processing out of the list of
| hard problems.
| mathstuf wrote:
| [ 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...
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| You're literally asking humans to create life. This is
| strictly the Creator's domain.
| AareyBaba wrote:
| 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.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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.
| emkoemko wrote:
| well can't we just clone a human brain maybe one from
| like a F1 driver and stick them in cars ? problem
| solved..
| osmarks wrote:
| 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.
| wpietri wrote:
| 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.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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
| wearywanderer wrote:
| 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.
| osmarks wrote:
| 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.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| 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.
| osmarks wrote:
| 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.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I think the link between 1 floating point operation and 1
| synapse is probably a bit dubious.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _Something is off._
|
| 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.
| markkanof wrote:
| 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.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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!
| bobthepanda wrote:
| 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?
| simias wrote:
| 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.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| Yep that will be coming first - rail is a good example or a
| dedicated road for freight from say a factory complex to a
| port.
|
| NY to Jersey - nope.
| Syonyk wrote:
| > _I think it will happen but only by making many
| expensive, intrusive changes to our cities and roads to
| accommodate "self-driving" cars._
|
| 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."
| computerex wrote:
| As someone who works with ML/data science for my day job, you
| couldn't pay me to enable AP and sit in the front seat on a
| public road.
|
| Unless Tesla gets LIDAR I'm not getting in one with the AP
| enabled.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway77112 wrote:
| Videos of Tesla fails, mostly from 2021:
|
| [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_Te
| s....
|
| 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
| wombatmobile wrote:
| 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.
| IncRnd wrote:
| 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?
| osmarks wrote:
| 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"?
| wombatmobile wrote:
| It depends on who you ask.
|
| 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?
| xvf22 wrote:
| 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.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| 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.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| 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.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| 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.
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| 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.
| ghoward wrote:
| This is a perfect summary of why self-driving doesn't work
| (yet?).
| [deleted]
| jedberg wrote:
| 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?
| kevinskii wrote:
| Perhaps your other comments were also made in the context of
| Tesla discussions, which tend to be fairly polarizing.
| jedberg wrote:
| One was, the other was in the thread of "what's something you
| bought that turned out to be super useful".
| [deleted]
| paxys wrote:
| I'm having difficulty understanding the timeline here.
|
| - 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?
| andrewmunsell wrote:
| 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.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| So if we were going to purchase one soon, should we instead wait
| for this to be fixed?
| takeda wrote:
| 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.
| HighPlainsDrftr wrote:
| 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.
| bengale wrote:
| > The argument could be that drivers also only use vision,
| but other cars do come with radars to supplement driver's
| vision.
|
| 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.
| takeda wrote:
| 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.
| GoOnThenDoTell wrote:
| Seems odd to buy a not-finished car
| [deleted]
| goshx wrote:
| There is nothing to be fixed. They are replacing radar with
| vision.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| 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...
| goshx wrote:
| "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.
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| 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.
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| 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.
| tpmx wrote:
| I'm going to assume that the vision-only system typically works
| okayish in Sunny California and in more climate-wise challenging
| regions, not.
| aaomidi wrote:
| 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.
| mnouquet wrote:
| If it doesn't work on snow covered roads, at night, in the
| middle of a snow storm, it's junk.
| graiz wrote:
| 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?
| computerex wrote:
| They are in a pickle due to the chip shortage. There are no
| good technical reasons for removing the radar sensors. What
| would they say?
| nickik wrote:
| Nonsense. They have been talking about removing radar for a
| while, that was always part of the plan.
| [deleted]
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| Tesla doesn't have a PR department. It was dissolved last year.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2020/10/15/teslas-decision-to-scrap-i...
| asdff wrote:
| No point in bothering with PR when elon still has access to
| his twitter to post ridiculous things
| xvector wrote:
| > 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.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| 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.
| chronic83027 wrote:
| - 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"
| bob33212 wrote:
| If in July the systems are safe and Beta FSD has improvements
| are you going to admit you were wrong about these things?
| chronic83027 wrote:
| > If in July the systems are safe and Beta FSD has
| improvements are you going to admit you were wrong about
| these things?
|
| Still waiting for the 2017 coast-to-coast FSD drive.
|
| https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/866482406160609280
| bob33212 wrote:
| 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"
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| If 2024 comes and Musk says it's coming in 2 weeks will
| you still believe him?
| bob33212 wrote:
| If there have been no advancements between now and 2024
| and then Elon says that FSD is 2 weeks away. Is that the
| scenario you are asking about?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| 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.
| nickik wrote:
| 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.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| > _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.)
| clintonb wrote:
| 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.
| masklinn wrote:
| > 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".
| chronic83027 wrote:
| > meaning if you don't have a Tesla you either simply can't
| make trips beyond a single-charge round-trips
|
| 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.
| notJim wrote:
| > Most Americans never leave their hometown
|
| 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?
| amalcon wrote:
| 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?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2019/05/02/perce
| ntage-o...
| masklinn wrote:
| 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.
| notJim wrote:
| 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.
| masklinn wrote:
| > 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| qRNA wrote:
| I think you can charge Tesla at any charger (at least in
| Europe)
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
|
| Tesla is still 100% proprietary in the US.
| oses wrote:
| 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.
| nickik wrote:
| I'm sorry but this just total nonsense.
|
| 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.
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| 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.
| chovybizzass wrote:
| 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
| bumby wrote:
| > _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.
| valine wrote:
| 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.
| sjcoles wrote:
| Honda also announced they are removing radar and using video
| only adaptive cruise.
| new_realist wrote:
| 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.
| bosswipe wrote:
| The tell that their vision tech is not as good as radar is that
| their high end models, S and X, are keeping the radar.
| xvector wrote:
| And also the fact that existing vehicles are keeping radar.
|
| 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.
| tapoxi wrote:
| 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?
| natch wrote:
| 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.
| akerl_ wrote:
| Because the actual change is driven by supply chain issues w/
| radar gear, and the vision-is-better party line is just to make
| it sell better.
| ggreer wrote:
| 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.
| azinman2 wrote:
| 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.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Can someone tell me if SpaceX's tail-landing rockets are
| vision-only systems?
|
| Street vehicle navigation seems at least as difficult as
| nailing a rocket landing.
| mdorazio wrote:
| They are not. Cameras would not be all that useful. See [1]
| for an estimated system diagram - the main sensor stacks
| are based on AHRS and GPS.
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/spacex/comments/64ew8x/falcon_
| 9_a_s...
| valine wrote:
| 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.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| > _Pretty sure no human has ever propulsively landed a
| rocket on earth using nothing but vision._
|
| Neither has SpaceX. On the other hand, humans have been
| using their plain jane eyeballs to land helicopters for
| years.
| moojd wrote:
| I don't think humans are a good benchmark for what we
| should expect from FSD.
| valine wrote:
| 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.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| 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.
| valine wrote:
| 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.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| From what I saw, it drives worse than an intoxicated
| teenager on the first week of their learner's permit.
| havemurci wrote:
| Driving with headphones is illegal in 17 states. Can
| Tesla's Autopilot hear a horn or siren?
| valine wrote:
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > 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.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| 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).
| gct wrote:
| Not a chance, at the very least they have a hot shit
| inertial nav unit if not a full imaging landing radar
| agogdog wrote:
| 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.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| 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.
| bradlys wrote:
| Paying cash for a car isn't really that good. You should almost
| always finance it since rates tend to be well below what you
| can get in the market.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| akmarinov wrote:
| Well they're not removing radar on 3/Y in Europe...
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| 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.
| wedn3sday wrote:
| Thank for the clarification, this makes perfect sense.
| headmelted wrote:
| 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.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| The story I read on this was new cars losing features until
| their vision-only equivalents show up
| moralestapia wrote:
| This is it, period. You make a new vehicle, you have to go
| through the certification again, common sense tbh.
| nradov wrote:
| And it is possible to meet NHTSA certification requirements
| for recommended safety technology with vision-only systems.
| Subaru has done that for years.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Teslas are basically just overpriced knockoff Subarus that
| don't actually work properly. The independent testing data
| has shown this for years, e.g.:
| https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a24511826/safety-
| featu...
| harles wrote:
| 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.
| bradfitz wrote:
| Tesla has multiple cameras on the front.
|
| See: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36542541/tesla-
| model-3-mo...
| snypher wrote:
| They don't seem very far apart in the Tesla..
|
| 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.
| harles wrote:
| 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.
| Forbo wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| treeman79 wrote:
| I'm usually one to not like over regulation.
|
| Radar / no radar is a pretty drastic change though.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| 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.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| 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.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > The agency said it "only includes check marks for the model
| production range for the vehicles tested."
|
| It seems pretty clear to me that the NHTSA just hasn't tested
| this version, so it won't certify them.
| dragontamer wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| 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.
| _Microft wrote:
| Tesla did not ditch LIDAR, they never actually used it (not
| in production cars at least?).
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Tesla is ditching radar, not lidar.
| chronic83027 wrote:
| As of May 2021, Tesla publicly announced they're using
| lidar to develop FSD.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/24/22451404/tesla-luminar-
| li...
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| 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.
| _Microft wrote:
| 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.
| rjsamson wrote:
| 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.
| chronic83027 wrote:
| My claim:
|
| > 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...
| dragontamer wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210312022048/https://www.tesl
| a...
|
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Pretty sure they can have it wiped from the archive as
| well so if you want to hold on to it better do it
| somewhere else.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| That post is from 2016. From an engineering blog.
|
| 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.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| 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.
| camjohnson26 wrote:
| That seems incredibly blatant, given that all the other
| posts from 2016 are still available.
| stoddur wrote:
| You meant March 2016? I would not call that recent in the
| self-driving vehicle world
| dragontamer wrote:
| https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-
| world-...
|
| 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.
| pests wrote:
| Deleted, not posted.
| zests wrote:
| This is the kind of shenanigans that a software company would
| pull. On the surface it seems like a great business decision
| from Tesla.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| 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).
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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?
| malwarebytess wrote:
| 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.)
| [deleted]
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| I see, thanks.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Bear in mind, there are safety features actually being
| dropped for this change:
| https://www.tesla.com/support/transitioning-tesla-vision
|
| "Emergency Lane Departure Avoidance may be disabled at
| delivery"
| _ph_ wrote:
| At delivery. Sounds like a software update waiting. Lane
| depature would be a pure vision based thing anyway, as
| radar can't detect lane markings.
| lancesells wrote:
| Who is buying a car with features that "may be disabled"?
| ffggvv wrote:
| they removed radar because of the chip shortage and now even
| more people will die from auto kill.
| aaomidi wrote:
| 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.
| nemothekid wrote:
| 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.
| bengale wrote:
| I'd be cancelling my order.
| aaomidi wrote:
| They said they're going to stop using the radar in the
| existing cars too.
| nemothekid wrote:
| 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).
| mbreese wrote:
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| selectodude wrote:
| This kind of nonsense isn't going to end until somebody from
| Tesla goes to jail for negligence or fraud. Until then, bombs
| away!
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| 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.
| qshaman wrote:
| 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.
| c0nsumer wrote:
| 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.
| mbreese wrote:
| _> pulled from already-sold vehicles _
|
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The feature is intended to be removed from all vehicles,
| though, the radar will be turned off according to Tesla.
| nickik wrote:
| 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.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| 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.
| soheil wrote:
| 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.
| towergratis wrote:
| Did I read that correctly? Are they removing the feature from
| existing cars as well?
|
| 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
| paxys wrote:
| No you did not read that correctly. There is no indication
| whether Tesla is going to remove the feature from existing cars
| or not.
| sutherland wrote:
| This is part of Tesla's plan to transition to a vision-only
| system:
|
| - FUD-free Tesla Daily coverage:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3zsmZx4kfA
|
| - Details from Tesla:
| https://www.tesla.com/support/transitioning-tesla-vision
| ffggvv wrote:
| their decision to sell their auto kill software at all kills
| people. but they don't care. as long as elon gets his pumps
| xvector wrote:
| 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.
|
| I own a Model 3 and it will be my last Tesla.
| ffggvv wrote:
| 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.
| RandomWorker wrote:
| Right on, this might be a great move.
|
| 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.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Fun tracking this https://upvotetracker.com/post/hn/27306550
| everetm wrote:
| 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.
|
| Looking forward to FSD release in 2030.
| philjohn wrote:
| What about conditions such as fog?
| theopsguy wrote:
| 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.
| asah wrote:
| False. Here's dozens of cases of pile-ups caused by fog:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=fog+highway+pile+up
| xvector wrote:
| > Human drive in fog just fine with pure vision, why can't
| AI do the same?
|
| 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.
| Lendal wrote:
| 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.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| sadfasf122 wrote:
| lol, no it doesn't. Why are you pretend you are a Tesla owner?
| xeromal wrote:
| 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.
| ping_pong wrote:
| 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.
| paxys wrote:
| 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.
| dhbanes wrote:
| How is it a loan? Can he recover the principle?
| pmastela wrote:
| It's a "loan" insofar the interest is paid out in over-the-
| air FSD updates and the principle is irrecoverable.
| spsful wrote:
| 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.
| sorenjan wrote:
| 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.
| m463 wrote:
| But having auto-parallel parking on a rainy night with tight
| spacing is awesome. (even though I think it exclusively uses
| sonar)
| wpietri wrote:
| 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.
| jdhn wrote:
| >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.
| pmastela wrote:
| > 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?
| jdhn wrote:
| I believe it follows the car, as you can buy used Teslas
| with FSD.
| oses wrote:
| 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)
| nobodylikeme wrote:
| 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.
| pmastela wrote:
| thanks for answering my question. wow, "wipe the upgrade
| and charge for it again"... what a racket _smh_
| popz41 wrote:
| 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.
| ping_pong wrote:
| They can still spend that cash though. It's just an
| accounting formality.
| justapassenger wrote:
| 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.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Interesting. Do you have a source that confirms this?
| dangrossman wrote:
| I searched "Tesla recognizes FSD revenue" and found
| several immediately.
|
| https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-
| autopil...
|
| https://loupventures.com/teslas-software-advantage-is-
| clear-....
| JoshTko wrote:
| Parent stated that Tesla is using party tricks to
| recognize a larger than merited portion of FSD revenue.
| Your links do not make this case.
| dangrossman wrote:
| 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.
| edub wrote:
| >deferred revenue to Tesla, and is reported as a liability
| on the balance sheet
|
| if it is a liability on their books, then i would agree
| with OP that it is an interest free loan.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| 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
| akerl_ wrote:
| Notably, even Tesla says that the vision-only cars will ship
| with reduced safety features which they'll backfill later via
| software update.
|
| Given how long they've been promising that the FSD beta rollout
| is right around the corner, I'm not holding my breath.
| takeda wrote:
| I believe those are two different things.
|
| 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.
| akerl_ wrote:
| 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.
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