Tesla Model S Autopilot Reliability – Why Americans Should Love Tesla
roadandtrack.com
roadandtrack.com
I wish this sentiment was more common. Don't we all want the future to win?
Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold.
Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. Despite that bogus claim being endlessly repeated by the press and other cynics.
Meanwhile Tesla has actually raised billions of dollars in capital.
And meanwhile, Elon Musk is considered a visionary that is taking the human race forward and has accomplished breathtaking feats of technological integration and application. Tesla and SpaceX are renowned for what they're accomplishing, apps to take selfies are not - and they're not being lauded anywhere. (and no, Snapchat isn't an app to take selfies, it's a communication platform that is extraordinarily valuable to people and properly so)
The author rehashed a very commonly abused strawman and then proceeded to beat on it.
http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back
I think the public perception problem is that "people invest in / read about things they understand." By definition, people are less likely to understand an enterprise predicated on cutting edge research than a realization of an existing market need by deploying existing technology. So the bubble talks about Snapchat but not battery technology startups (side gripe about deplorable state of popular scientific reporting).
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Snapchat is an example of one that has, just fyi.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0Y...
> Messaging app Snapchat has raised $1.81 billion in funding, the company reported in a U.S. regulatory filing on Thursday, a sign that investor interest is strong despite concerns among some venture capitalists that the platform is struggling to attract advertisers.
Yeah, a "selfie-app" is basically a "messaging app that is used primarily to send pictures".
I'm sorry but there are 239042903490232930 of these and they don't justify this sort of fund raising in practical value to society.
It's easy to take this glowing 10,000 foot view of Musk/Tesla. Get down much lower and there are...issues that smack very much of dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. Exhibit one is marketing a car that as being able to drive itself, then blaming drivers when the car fails to drive itself.
Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC.
This comment doesn't even pass the laugh test for anyone who knows what happened to him in 2008 when all of his money was tied in his companies and then he got sued for divorce. He literally wound up running 3 companies that were imploding in different ways, and had to borrow from friends just to make living expenses.
He pulled everything off by the skin of his teeth, starting with his 4th SpaceX launch getting into space instead of blowing up as the first three rockets did.
He will raise money in every way that he can. Yes, this includes finding ways to get subsidies from the government if the government is willing to provide them. But it also includes investing his own money, time and effort. (And risking his life - his roadmap includes colonizing Mars, and he's serious about moving to that colony.)
Thanks for that laugh. I hadn't heard that one.
Let us not assume Musk gave up his fortunes and marriage out of the goodness of his heart. He stands to benefit heftily from Tesla's continued success. Assuming he is all good by himself would leave the rest of us as bystanders which isn't the case. We're all interested in contributing towards systems, both technical and social, that foster autonomous vehicles.
I have heard a few hilarious things from Musk, just not that one.
What is on Mars that could generate value for a private company? I'm not convinced investors would be on board for that.
I understand SpaceX can earn money shuttling things back and forth to the ISS. I do not see the benefit for them visiting Mars until a government decides to set up a base there. If SpaceX can find free money, more power to them.
It's ludicrous to expect that an otherwise untrained, average human can keep up his or her attention while day by day the automation just works. It's just not how human psychology works. Someone called this particular kind of operation here the "deadly valley" because it's good enough to lure you to be relaxed and not good enough to solve all the kind of possible problems.
I absolutely want the future to win, and I'm terribly afraid that Tesla in its hastiness might hurt the progress.
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilo...
Despite more crowded skies and terrorist attacks, airline safety has improved since (or perhaps during) autopilot came along [1]. Definitely not causation, but you could argue that autopilot allows pilots to fly more and make air travel more affordable, reducing the reliance on less safe forms of travel. Plus, if it bleeds it leads, and the public wants solutions for everything, despite having an improved quality of life from the technology (most likely).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_...
What are the on-the-road stats for automatic driving? Aren't they better than human drivers already?
Its not a failing, just because they have different failure modes than humans. Because our human failings are so many and so frequent. There's so much low-hanging fruit. Auto-driving never gets tired, never argues with the passenger, never gets distracted by changing the playlist.
We're net ahead already with auto-driving.
Probably not. The fatality rate for urban interstates in 2007 was 0.54 per 100 million miles. That's the type of environment--safe, predictable--where autopilot is most likely to be activated.
With one fatality, we don't have a really accurate picture of Tesla's fatality rate yet, but our best estimate at this point (0.76 per 100 million miles) is higher than that.
Based on what?
> With one fatality, we don't have a really accurate picture of Tesla's fatality rate yet
Correct. You'd need at least 32 deaths. Until then, there is no "probably" one way or the other.
Deaths are also a poor metric, since car safety comes into the picture. You're better off using pure reported accidents instead.
No, that was not his point. He said "Probably not."
That's wrong. It's not probably anything. Both the parent and gp are wrong.
And the negative tone of your comment is wrong too, since there is no evidence to suggest a problem with autopilot. Wait until the data is in. One dead dude and a couple of accidents doesn't mean a damn thing with millions of miles driven. It might be worse, it might be better. That's not an indictment, that's the case with anything new.
That future can't come fast enough for me.
It'll be rather amusing to see the older generations chomping at the bit for the introduction (nay, making mandatory!) of revolutionary new tech.
The youngsters mostly seem rather apathetic towards driving, but there must be a bunch of about-middle-aged drivers who'll resent having their toys taken away (or the ability to use them on public roads, same difference).
This is my line of thought as well. Same problem I have with the anti-nuclear environmental crowd. Are there substantial drawbacks? Absolutely.
That doesn't matter. The important question is not "Does this new technology solve all previous problems?" but rather "Does this technology solve a net positive number of problems while offering more opportunities for improvement?"
With decades of empirical data that average humans are pretty bad at reliably manually piloting powerful, heavy vehicles, I can't see a reasonable reason to reject deploying autopilot technology in an aggressive manner. And that sadly means a few deaths. But those should be measured against the number that would have died were nothing done, not against zero.
What you don't understand is deploying a driving assistance feature is probably the fastest and most efficient way of improving the system because it is the fastest way to collect huge amounts of data. When used properly (As the machine reminds you each time you use it), it should always be a safer option than regular driving with the added benefit of providing valuable data to improve the system.
You should rephrase your question to: "What value is an Autopilot if it kills you when you use it in a way it explicitly told you not to?"
Interestingly, curious if that's why Tesla equipped cars with sensors before enabling autopilot as a user option. Hypothetically, can't see why they couldn't have downloaded the autopilot code to cars and been running it in ghost mode while users drove, generating faults whenever errors were encountered and sending the relevant sensor data back home.
Deep plowing was probably the fastest and most efficient way to farm the Great Plains because you could quickly and easily turn up huge tracts of fertile land.
Then the dust storms came.
What value is an Autopilot that knows you are not using it the way you are supposed to, but keeps accelerating you anyway?
Good point. An autopilot, whose sole purpose is learning, should make sure the user is engaged so it's provided correcting feedback.
>What is important is: what are the odds of getting decapitated while driving vs. autopilot.
Such odds are pretty much impossible to calculate. We know of one instance where a Tesla intentionally drove into a situation where decapitation was inevitable. It happens to manual drivers as well, but not typically without additional circumstances (high speeds, prior crash/accident). Usually if your head is about to impact something, you will react quickly enough to save it.
That's is patently false since 30K people die in car collisions every year in the US alone. Stop focusing on the anecdote, the one death, and look at the numbers.
> I used the word three times. All in highly relevant questions.
They are all irrelevant because they focus on the one, the individual, the act, the emotional.
That's not how good policy is made.
>They are all irrelevant because they focus on the one, the individual, the act, the emotional.
I can parse this sentence, but I don't know what it means. The act, the emotional?
To play advocatus diaboli: Shouldn't it be sufficient for the autopilot to be as good as the worst human drivers that we still let on the road? Or to sharpen the point: As good as the worst licensed drivers under human supervision (compare learner's permit)?
After all the technology is still "learning", under human supervision. And similarly a teenager having a parent as co-pilot does not only endanger their own life but also those of others too.
So if those are allowed on the road with the expectation that they'll get better and that giving them a licence will eventually have net benefits, shouldn't that apply to self-driving cars too?
If nothing else, one could have "pilots" guide the trucks by remote control for the last mile.
You're not providing any argument for the ease of legalization here.
The unions can only have direct leverage with companies that currently employ truckers and those that work closely with those companies. All it takes is for one tech company that doesn't fit into the above category to develop the technology, then the market will make the licensing of such devices inevitable.
You thought you were giving a clever rejoinder. However, I was specifically talking about companies that don't directly employ large numbers of truck drivers. Then it comes down to the economic power of the companies that operate the trucks versus the economic power of the companies that have to pay the trucking companies. The latter is going to win the lobbying contest by sheer size.
Many people are unwilling to cede control of their automobiles even if the statistics support the case of their car being safer when driven autonomously.
The "infinite trolley" problem puts this into better perspective, IMO: https://backchannel.com/reinventing-the-trolley-problem-85f3...
Beyond that, tesla is not an autonomous vehicle. From what I can tell, it is not outfitted with the sensors to make it a viable autonomous vehicle. The danger is marketing it as an autonomous vehicle while having fine print saying that it is not.
Honestly it seems like the big deal is that it is Tesla and how they marketed the feature.
You better believe it. If I sell you a climbing rope and it fails, saying "yeh, but the average human wouldn't have been able to hold you as you came over that ledge" is not a suitable excuse.
Well, being a different sort of entity, an auto-pilot will never be the same as a human driver. So "as good as" has to essentially imply "better than".
"What are the on-the-road stats for automatic driving? Aren't they better than human drivers already?"
Apparently not as enoch_r points out.
Further, there's miles-driven and quality of miles. Suppose, just suppose, the average driver starts out barely trusting Tesla and using auto-pilot on short runs in clearly safe conditions and this same average driver over-time trusts Tesla more and more until they reach the point that they trust in situations they shouldn't - and then you get a series of accidents.
Yes it must. I can readily accept responsibility if there was something on the road to which I wasn't able to respond properly and resulted in an accident but if it was autopilot that screwed up I would sue $brand's ass.
Well, if you want people to use the tech you need to be able to tell them that the car is at least as good as they are and in reality better than they think they are.
That's no really the problem though. The problem is the current generation of automatic driving is not automatic at all. It is assisted driving - i.e. an evolved cruise control - and the problem with it is that it requires inhuman circumstance to work alright ( driver being alert despite not having to do anything ).
There is case on what amount of assistance is actually too much to avoid that "death valley".
Automatic systems are another problem entirely. If a human intervention is necessary, automatic system need to be designed for a human not ready.
The currently assisted driving system in the Tesla is used as an automatic driving system by misguided drivers. The risk is that this mistake is going to hurt public goodwill in adopting real automatic system when they are available.
Yes. Imagine that it crashes with the same average incidence rate as humans. Humans are imperfect creatures. They break the law. Let's even say that only 1% of crashes involve someone breaking the law (intoxicated, no licence etc). If the car is only on par with humans, then the car is only able to match a law abiding citizen 99% of the time.
You could argue that the car is basically driving buzzed. We have laws that would arrest 1 out of every 100 of those humans, but what would we do to the algorithm? What sort of punishment could you do to it when it messes up?
Speeding? Let's then raise that 1% to like 40% or something. Looking at some random sources[0][1], all the most common causes of traffic fatalities are the ones machines already deal better with than humans. Distracted driving? Check. Failure to stay in lane? Check. Speeding? Check. People die on the roads mostly because drivers behave like idiots or hit their natural limitations.
[0] - http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cause-of-the-most-fatal-c...
[1] - http://www.sixwise.com/newsletters/05/07/20/the-6-most-commo...
I haven't drove the only system that calls itself autopilot, but some of the comparable systems from other manufacturers.
In my opinions the cars are significantly worse drivers than the average human. Their perception field is tiny to what a human can recognize (especially with 1 camera / 1 radar systems), they partly react later than a human can do (e.g. you see a traffic jam 700m ahead or other cars wanting to change the lane far ahead) and their lane holding is not really smooth.
They have one theoretical advantage at the moment: They don't get tired or distracted and make errors because of that. They might even have better reaction times in some situations.
However in the same way that humans can fail in 1000 ways the software can do that too. You could argue that humans won't be prone to buffer overflows, segfaults, deadlocks or other kinds of bugs. Most automotive software is written in C - which is here most often not even trusted for non-safety related jobs. And although the software is probably better reviewed and tested than the average web or consumer app there's still a lot of room for errors due to various reasons. And developing some completely new system with an insane kind of complexity (automated driving) won't make that easier.
Life would have been a little better for them had they not bundled relatively common ACC tech with bleeding edge lane-management tech, called it all one thing (autopilot) and then said that thing was in beta. Basically they hyped almost-industry-standard ACC off the charts and are now getting special scrutiny for it.
On another note, saying your driver safety system is in beta testing is its own fail, just with the word "beta" that screams "still has bugs." They really need to watch out with the crossing over of tech culture idioms to vehicles. There were probably other ways to position that tech.
> We're net ahead already with auto-driving.
We don't really have enough data to know that. Really, we haven't even scratched the surface of figuring out if that is true. E.g. we have no idea what kind of emergent phenomena will arise when roads full of self-driving cars interact with each other.
History is littered with examples of engineers thinking they were 90% of the way there when they were actually like 10% of the way there.
I believe that could give them alot of data to analyze.
You could even make some kind of tournament out of it...
* http://fiaformulae.com/en/news/2015/november/formula-e-kinet...
Formula E isn't well regarded in racing fan circles - I personally try to catch the races when I can but I don't have cable and hardly ever watch so I don't know the state of the racing this year.
It will be Mr. Musk's responsibility if (when) he disables manual driving option fully, without the opportunity to take back the control.
So far, everything's well.
Left unchecked, that's possible, but I think we have a chance here to ask for more reports on accidents involving autopilot. If Tesla were more transparent, it'd be easier to collaborate on solutions.
Although there is a lot of junk out there already: http://i.stack.imgur.com/nxIh2.jpg
The simple facts are, it does not work well enough to ensure the absolute safety of those using it or those not using it. It is horribly named for what it can actually do. Tesla needs to step up and admit it is not ready for prime time and since they cannot guarantee how their customers use it they cannot in good faith allow non designated testers from using it
Building an "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is a lower CODB, obviously, but it's a product people apparently value and it can be done by a small team[0] instead of a fleet. There have been a few HN threads that discussed successful software/games/webapps that were developed by a single person (Slither.IO)
Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor?
The chief point I'm making is it's all very relative. Rushing headfirst into a new world sounds nice, but have we even stopped to consider and react on the negative impact that Social Media and our current innovations have made?
[0] http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-use...
If it's coupled with basic income, yes.
It might be a valid argument if any of us actually thought that Pokemon Go was the apex of human civilization.
But we don't.
Yes. To get there, we can ask for more transparency from Tesla and other companies offering driver-assistance systems.
Look, I'm a robotics engineer, so my job security and career prospects directly depend on technologies like autonomous cars becoming mainstream.
That said, the way Tesla is rolling out this technology is just irresponsible. An excellent post from yesterday [1] succinctly outlined the deficiencies of the system, which are now obvious to people outside of Tesla. Given this list, if I were in charge there, this technology would NOT see the light of day until these defects were properly fixed.
Beyond the technical problems, there is also a social issue that Tesla is exacerbating. For the last few years now, the general public has been hearing from a variety of popular media sources that autonomous cars are "right around the corner". People have been told that these cars will use their superior computer minds to virtually eliminate traffic accidents.
Now you have Tesla producing a car with a feature that sounds a lot like "driverless car" to normal people; right or wrong, it seems like people are treating it with the expectation that it's one of these magical life-saving driverless cars they've been hearing about.
To Tesla's credit, the feature does work well given the correct conditions. The common user probably couldn't tell you the difference between "autopilot" and an actual autonomous car. Yet, the user is not properly aware of the limits of the system, and Tesla itself doesn't do much to educate users about those limits. Further, Tesla doesn't seem to do anything to keep users safe when they get close to those edges.
What you have here is insufficient and untested technology being used in a production environment by users who have the wrong expectations about what the technology is. The result, as we have seen, ends in death.
And no, these failures are not inevitable conclusions of statistics. These failures are due to concrete, identifiable engineering and messaging issues that can and should have been corrected before the product was ever introduced to production cars.
> unsuspecting victims
Is a bit much in my opinion. They are operating heavy machinery, and decide not to follow the clearly stated operational guidelines. People are not children, driving a car is a responsibility.
Note: I'm not saying that such accidents aren't tragic, or that the drivers 'deserve it' in any way. Simply pointing out that no one forced anyone to take their hands off the wheel, or subject themselves to driverless testing.
But they are unsuspecting in that they spent $60k on a car, $2500 to install the autopilot feature, and another $3000 to just enable the autopilot feature. And what they get from that, is something that can keep a lane, but with a laundry list of caveats: It doesn't work if the road is too curvy, or if the lane markers are too faded, or in the snow or rain or dust, or if it's too sunny out, or if the obstacle is too high (but low enough that it will still decapitate you), or ... or ... or .......
So I would say, that Tesla is still testing this feature, and customers really aren't aware that they're spending ~$5500 for something they don't realize (and are not told) is deficient on multiple fronts.
Just because you call it progress doesn't make it so.
How did the author arrive at this conclusion?
"In any even remotely sane universe, this achievement would be celebrated in the most hyperbolic fashion possible by every man, woman, and child on the planet. "
So everyone who doesn't do that is not remotely sane?
"Americans would be as proud of the Tesla Model S as we used to be about the moon landing or about winning the Cold War."
It's a car.
"Note that the harshest critics of Tesla and its products are not affiliated with Nissan, General Motors, BMW, or Ford. Instead, they are gadflies who rarely have any industry experience whatsoever. "
Not sure why this article did ended up on the frontpage, it doesn't really add anything useful to the discussion and does not address the main criticisms people have about the autopilot like the limited number of sensors, wrong expectations due to the name and lack of strict enforcement of driver engagement (hands on wheel).
Great point.
Drive-by upvotes that are based on the title. People love Tesla.
Furthermore, during those entire 130 million miles, there was theoretically a human also sitting behind the wheel ready to take over if the system failed. If there was no human behind the wheel, the cars would not have been able to attain 130 million miles of drive time without a very large number of crashes. When humans drive, there is no intelligent being ready to take over whenever we make a mistake as is the case for Autopilot.
In my opinion, using this "statistic" is a very lazy way of hiding behind the numbers in dealing with a very non-obvious issue.
Yes. That is the point, though. When Autopilot is used the way it is supposed to be used, it doesn't seem to decrease safety, and it may actually increase it.
I agree with the point in your first paragraph, though.
If I flip a coin twice with one head and one tail as the result, we cannot say whether or not the coin is fair. Even with both heads or both tails as the result, we still do not have enough information. It's best to just say that we need more data.
I agree we have no statistically rigorous argument yet that Autopilot increases safety. I agree with you and others who say we need more data. My only point is that there is no reason, IMO, to stop gathering that data in real-world conditions by banning Autopilot, as some media articles are suggesting (not anyone in this thread), because we have no evidence so far that it decreases safety.
I think that Tesla is doing a disservice to the rest of the industry by being overly zealous with their marketing and naming department. "Autopilot" is a bit of an exaggeration that needlessly oversells what is effectively a lane-assist feature. By saying that it's "autopilot" they set an expectation of a high degree of autonomy, and thereby influence how their technology is perceived and evaluated both by users and the press. Fatal accidents caused by incorrect use of a "Lane Assist" is a very different headline than an accident caused by "Autopilot."
Tesla is not the only manufacturer with some kind of active cruise control, they just get a lot of attention because they like to pretend they are selling autonomous cars. I am just crossing my fingers that their recklessness will not cause a significant setback to autonomous car technology in general. Tesla hand waving away safety concerns by quoting dodgy apples-to-oranges "statistics" doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy.
edit:
> Tesla hand waving away safety concerns by quoting dodgy apples-to-oranges "statistics" doesn't exactly make me feel warm and fuzzy.
Same here. I've always liked Audi's philosophy and their slogan really spoke to me: Vorsprung durch Technik - "Advancement through technology". After their emissions scandal, it seems that their strengths do not extend to ethics. I was hoping Tesla would replace Audi in my eye, but they are turning out to be just as morally bankrupt, IMO.
Tesla's "autopilot" problems come from bad engineering and bad human-factors design. I wrote on this in another topic yesterday.[1] It's not that automatic driving is bad; it's that Tesla's semi-automatic driving isn't very good. It's way under-sensored. Google and Volvo are ahead in this area.
Volvo is very close to shipping their autopilot. They're testing now. In 2017, they will release 100 self-driving cars to customers. They do not require the driver to pay attention. Volvo's CEO says that if a Volvo self-driving car gets into an accident, it's Volvo's fault, and they will take full responsibility.
Their "City Safety" anti-collision system has been on all new Volvo cars for a year now. Unlike Tesla's system, it's always on. Volvo has radar and LIDAR and cameras, more sensors than Tesla has.
Volvo's self-driving car has even more sensors, for full coverage in all directions and redundancy. Redundant computers and actuators, too. And if it gets into a situation it can't handle, and the driver doesn't take over, it will pull over and stop.
There's a way to do this right, and Volvo is a lot closer than Tesla is.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12082893 [2] http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/in...
As a community, robotics researchers now know what kind of engineered system works. In the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, EVERY car that finished the race had a 360 degree velodyne laser. It was very much a game-changing sensor for autonomous cars.
For Tesla to now say "Oh, we'll do the same thing but without all the fancy sensors" is just incredible. Speaking in terms of the information that the cars acquire, Tesla is driving blind compared to its rivals.
I used to work on self-driving cars, specifically this one - https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/dri... - and while that was a few years ago I know just how many things the technology is fundamentally not ready for, such as adverse weather.
I agree that Tesla took the wrong approach, I was just commenting that I would be amazed if Volvo was that many years ahead of everybody else.
Oh, I would agree with you there as well.
> I agree that Tesla took the wrong approach, I was just commenting that I would be amazed if Volvo was that many years ahead of everybody else.
I think that's where we were differing. I think Volvo is many years ahead of Tesla only because Volvo is using the state of the art in driverless tech. Other rivals like Google, BMW, and VW are doing the same. On the other hand, Tesla is choosing to use technology the robotics field had proven to be ineffective over 10 years ago.
I'm not trying to play devil's advocate, just pointing out that it's a fiendishly difficult problem. I like what Tesla did, I just dislike how they handled the PR.
Likewise I like what Volvo is doing, and I'm curious how they're going to price it.
Actually selling cars to the public is an exceptionally poor excuse for -- as it has been described upthread -- using technology that is known to be inadequate to safe implementation of the feature set.
If a feature cannot be safely implemented at a price point suitable for the target market of the vehicle, then it shouldn't be in the vehicle. Deliberately choosing otherwise goes beyond mere negligence into actual recklessness, IMO. (Note, I'm not saying that Tesla is doing this, I'm saying that the use of the excuse "they're actually selling cars" as a response to the claim of proven inadequacy of the sensor choice made upthread is an inadequate excuse, since if that was the reason and if the sensor choice was proven to be as inadequate as described, then that would be reckless.)
I do think the way they've handled the crashes lately though has been pretty poor - especially spinning bad statistics to justify what happened rather than admitting fault.
Yes, I think that this is part of the real issue, but there is also a real engineering issue. Other vehicles with cruise-control-plus require hands on wheel at all time. Tesla seems to alert you when your hands are off, but the autopilot will continue on merrily. The Tesla that drove under the semi had its roof torn off, the driver decapitated, and it continued driving only until it was stopped by a pole. Also the crash happened in the first place because the AP was essentially blind (it couldn't even see the semi). You and I both know there are ways to tell when you're blind (usually involving orthogonal sensors suites, something the Tesla lacks).
Most people are unaware of Tesla's second-rate sensor system. They think it is grade-A because it is called autopilot.
That may not constitute false advertising. It is, at least, highly suspect.
True, but part of that cost is an economies of scale issue, and we are finally seeing lasers like the velodyne come down in price. The 64 laser version used in the Urban Challenge cost over $75,000. Today, you can get a smaller version for $7k. Still a lot, but the price is coming down and it's coming down fast. Even putting one of these guys on board would be a huge improvement of sensing capabilities over what they have.
Remember, people are paying $5500 for the autopilot alone and as much as $130k for the whole car. If anyone would be willing to pay a premium for some better sensors, it's Tesla's customers.
I was referring to IBEO sensors which are already used in automotive manufacturing. When these cars are actually commercialized, the sensor suite is still going to cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Anyway, I'm sick of coming across as so negative. I think self-driving cars are awesome (it's pretty surreal when you actually sit in one driving around a city) and I look forward to them becoming more common. I just think it will take longer, and cost more, than most people like to admit.
Oh quite contrary, I believe your input has added greatly to this discussion. Thank you.
> I just think it will take longer, and cost more, than most people like to admit.
Agreed. Even Google now seems to be tempering their predictions, saying anything from 3 to 30 years. I say, they will be here when then are ready and no sooner. Don't rush it.
Are they not being a bit irresponsible unleashing a beta feature on the public and using them as guinea pigs? Do you feel they should require hands on the wheel more than once every few minutes?
These are design decisions to (a) collect more user data and (b) enable the easiest way for users to abuse the system.
Wow, there's a headline. You sound pretty knowledgeable about the history. Why not write a blog post? Constructive criticism is a positive thing.
Wow really? That's either crazier than Elon or they have a really good product. Either way, it should be an interesting couple of years.
Or they are just familiar with product liability law and are engaging in the time honored corporate PR tactic of spinning the consequences of the mandates that the law puts on the company as if they were a civic-minded free choice of the company.
Volvo putting 100 cars on the road in Sweden in 2017 doesn't necessarily mean they're close to shipping autopilot in the US. Insurers may request more testing to give an affordable price.
From what I've read, Tesla isn't insured. My guess is that has either to do with cost or insurers' reluctance to put a value on a brand new feature
From a Fortune article [1],
> Tesla noted that it does not carry insurance against such events. Were the company to be sued because of a death related to, say, its autopilot feature, it could result in a “substantial monetary award” that would have to be paid from “company funds, not by insurance.”
[1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/06/tesla-autopilot-crash-material...
It really seems to me that the sales benefit of reassuring customers about Volvo's confidence in their platform is likely to far outweigh any marginal increase in lawsuit risk to Volvo in this kind of statement.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I think insuring liability at the manufacturer level is the right thing to do. I just have doubts that it will be affordable any time soon. Animats was saying Volvo is close to shipping their autopilot. I doubt it for the reason of the cost of insurance. I could be wrong.
You can charge customers a subscription for "Volvo self driving insurance", or charge a lot for the car to cover Volvo's costs.
Accidents and lawsuits are more likely to occur at the beginning of self-driving cars' introduction before many people have bought them.
Likely, the first companies to do this will either (a) wildly succeed or (b) fail dismally and teach a lesson to the others. I don't see much middle ground. Again, I could be wrong.
Completely besides the point. A true self driving car won't have a steering wheel or a break pedal.
Or will disable steering and brake controls when self driving feature is active.
Urmson goes into great detail on Google's 2mph collision with a bus. The sensor data from the Google car is shown. The video from the bus (it had cameras, too) is shown. Exactly what the software was trying to do is discussed. The assumptions the software made about what the bus driver would do are discussed. What they did to prevent this from happening again is mentioned.
Most of the talk is about the hard cases. In the beginning, Google developed a highway driving system, but that was years ago. Now they're working hard on dealing with everything that can happen on a road, including someone in an electric wheelchair chasing ducks with a broom.
Here's the part where he starts talking about the 2mph bus accident [1]. He says the self-driving car should not have moved. He does not say why. He says they ran a lot of tests to make sure it will not happen again.
In plain English, I'd say, when the SDC is stopped on the side of the road, give sufficient time for traffic coming from behind to clear out before the SDC moves forward. Also, if an accident is imminent, being in a non-moving position is probably safer and less likely to cause liability for the SDC than moving. Plus, rolling over some sandbags is probably preferable to being hit by a bus.
I can build an autopilot to drive a car with zero fatalities ever; it just goes forward on an infinitely straight road.
Statistics can only be compared under the same conditions, otherwise it's just pointless self-delusion.
While I generally agree with the author's sentiment, I think part of the difference with why Tesla is getting so much flak instead of praise is because the pioneers of yore were astronauts, scientists and soldiers who took risks they understood, and did it willingly.
But with Tesla, the intrepid pioneers of autonomous driving are everyday people who are engaging in behavior that is probably more risky than they realize, and we're now seeing some of the consequences of that.
At the same time, I think you could argue that some people, at some point, are going to have to take on these risks at a large scale, and the one thing Tesla has going for it is a rabid fan base, and it may be true that without that kind of cult following, no company would be able to survive this phase of autonomous driving development.
Yeah. The author of this article has the same observation [1]. Tesla seems to have been caught off-guard by pushback against its driver-assistance system. Yet, everyone knew there would be pushback if a fatality occurred.
> At the same time, I think you could argue that some people, at some point, are going to have to take on these risks at a large scale, and the one thing Tesla has going for it is a rabid fan base, and it may be true that without that kind of cult following, no company would be able to survive this phase of autonomous driving development.
Fan bases are important, particularly ones that include people who can be give constructive criticism. 100% praise or 100% critique is rarely useful in identifying the path forward. It's a windy road. Everything Musk says is not gospel.
[1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/11/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-c...
A) Autopilot launches gradually over 20 years by a big co, costing hundreds of thousands of lives due to 10 year delay or
B) Tesla launches fast below the radar, iterates quickly, makes data-driven incremental updates to autopilot and saves 10 years of human error deaths?
C) put these tech features into the car but force the driver to keep actively driving the car getting the best of both worlds. AKA what every other automaker is doing.
Reminds me of the Tragedy of Theranos. A company valued at $9 billion, staffed to the gills with engineers and medical experts who were building a revolutionary disruptive way to draw and test blood, was taken down based on the accusations of a newspaper reporter who has never run his own startup, nevermind having not attained enough medical expertise to even competently check someone's temperature.
I'm being a little facetious here. There's a difference between a cable news reporter blabbing about something that happened 7 minutes ago to fill an hour of airtime with controversy and fear, and a 5-month investigation by a Pulitzer-winning reporter. But let's not shit on the laypersons who dare to challenge the clergy.
But in one aspect I agree with the OP. People who aren't experts and who don't bother to check with other experts should perhaps be mindful before they propagate uninformed armchair analysis. But let's make that cut both ways. These uninformed reporters should also hold their tongues when a company touts any technical feature. Maybe that would reduce the incentive for the Elon Musks of the world to name things in viral-headline-friendly ways, e.g. "Autopilot" for advanced driver assist. Tesla has benefited heavily from the press corps ignorance about technology -- you think Tesla has received $4 billion in government subsidies based on technical merit alone? And now they're paying for it. Maybe 10 years from now we'll all agree that that was a good strategic gamble. But it doesn't mean Tesla should be given kid glove treatment today, after the effort they've put in to manipulate the press to their own benefit.
I believe some of this controversy began with an article by Fortune [1] in which they claimed Musk overlooked some business reporting requirements.
Do you agree that a financial news outlet is qualified to judge a company based on how they report to the SEC? The world of corporate finance is their wheel house, and that spans to any company, tech or not. The larger the valuation of the company, the more interesting the news would be to them.
Fortune's readers are current or would-be Tesla investors.
[1] http://fortune.com/2016/07/05/elon-musk-tesla-autopilot-stoc...
Yeah. I feel the Fortune article came out, then Musk claimed it was BS, and other headlines both critical and defensive of Tesla started popping up. Fortune's legitimate criticism has been overlooked by many who believe Musk can do no wrong.
At this point, Musk has tweeted in response to the article from Road and Track titled "Leave Tesla Alone",
> "We don't mind taking the heat for customer safety. It is the right thing to do"
Perhaps tensions are easing between Musk and Fortune.
[0]: http://fortune.com/self-driving-cars-silicon-valley-detroit/
I'm not sure it is necessary to do alongside the likes of Google and other AI experts. Musk does not have a background in AI
That number is influenced not just by Autopilot avoiding accidents, but also by the overall safety of the car. Teslas are incredibly safe in accidents. The current 25% lead that Autopilot has over the average is probably not attributable to Autopilot at all, and instead to the overall safety of the vehicle.
* Fatality rates vary by make/model quite a bit (up to 8x). Some of this is surely attributable to the relative driving skill of purchasers, but most is probably the safety of the cars themselves. Given the spread seen in this IIHS report I would guess that Autopilot performs worse than the average human. http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/driver-death-rates
Those 100 million miles include non-divided roads, motorcycle deaths, adverse weather conditions, and cheaper, older cars.
This one per 100 million miles statistic keeps getting thrown around. I think we can come up with a better number for comparison (see #'ed list below)
I also think we can push for more transparency from Tesla and other companies offering driver-assistance systems. California already requires monthly reports on all accidents involving completely autonomous vehicles [0]. We should be getting this for systems offering driver-assistance across all states. Tesla seems unlikely to report on this until their competitors are forced to report on it too.
Here are a few reasons why the 100 million figure isn't as good as it could be,
(1) Those 100 million miles include all roads, not just divided ones where autopilot is likely to be activated
(2) Autopilot is less likely to be activated during adverse conditions like rain, ice and snow
(3) The 100 million figure includes all types of vehicle deaths, including those from motorcycles. Motorcycle deaths should not be compared to car deaths
(4) The vehicle price is lost in such an average. Safety reports are best done when considering cost. Obviously a 2016 Tesla is going to be safer than a 1990 beater
I'd like to see someone report a more useful statistic for comparison using available data such as this [1]. This guy [2] says it is 1 in 150 million when considering only divided roads. That would make Tesla's autopilot less safe than the average American driver given current statistics.
[0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/vr/autonomous/auton...
[1] http://www.iihs.org/iihs/topics/t/general-statistics/fatalit...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/4sgxv1/while_te...
Rather, they mention a "wealth of internal data demonstrating safer, more predictable vehicle control performance when the system is properly used."
I'm drawing a different conclusion from the same data. I'm not claiming it's gospel. I'm just an internet commenter.
Forthcoming investigations from the NHTSA and NTSB may shed more light.
For sure. Through this discussion about assisted-driving cars, I also try to contribute to a safer driving community, more transparency from companies offering driver-assistance systems, thoughts about the best ways to advance AI, and better capital allocation.
> I was trying to engage you in a discussion about your error, not Tesla's.
I don't see what error of mine that you are pointing out here. It sounds like you're talking about Tesla's data:
>> Given the large error-bar on the Tesla data, you have no idea if Tesla is less safe or more safe than the average American driver.
From here on in each new technological update and safety regulation will like likely be based on some unfortunate and unforeseen event.
Like they say when you study the rules of aviation: Each one is written on a tombstone.
It's an incredibly low standard, sure, but more lives are saved, and it only to get better from then on.
The only problem is the public's perceived unwillingness to accept such risks in using autopilot.
Not to mention, there's only one datapoint for Autopilot fatalities, which makes any attempt to use it as a statistically significant point useless. Just one more death in the coming months this year would make the number jump significantly above the averages reported in this article. And with the number of potentially deadly autopilot wrecks reported lately, it's inevitable.
Given the number of Autopilot miles driven, you'd only expect one death so far, so that we have one doesn't really tell us anything.
However, injuries from car crashes are (fortunately!) much more common - roughly 60 times as likely. So you'd expect to have about 60 Autopilot incidents resulting in injury by now. I don't really keep up with Tesla news but, based on the reaction to the previous story (where the guy wasn't even injured), I'm going to assume the actual number of injuries is tiny.
I disagree with the "single lane" though: if Autopilot enforces driving in a single lane, and that turns out to be safer, then that's all that counts.
If you don't have a proper control group, the Tesla autopilot will be significantly biased for success because it is dealing with much simpler driving conditions than "in all conditions" human driving.
It's really telling when it is expected that the Autopilot will kill someone.
What is the current death toll of Google's tech?
The Google tech that is driven by professional drivers who take over when required, hasn't killed anyone yet. Do you honestly think there will be zero deaths in a Google vehicle when it's released to the public?
I would not expect an Autopilot to kill me.
You can't claim you have a driverless car (autopilot) when it is expected of the driver to keep their eyes on the road, hands on the wheel and a foot near the brake. That is so over-promising.
I think the only thing tesla has over the competition is the willingness to upgrade their cars after they're sold. With everyone else it's basically always going to be how it was when you drove it off the lot.
I imagine VW could also tighten up lane assist to not be as slot car and pick the middle of the lane rather than whatever side of the car is closest to the line.
You've never flown in a pilotless airplane. Autopilot is not AI.
There's also some sort of bias against negative events that are (more) out of your control, I think.
The system gives multiple warnings that it's in Beta.
>I'm not sure there's much to be gained.
There's miles and miles of data to be gained.
We're now in the world of software and users. "Multiple warnings" aren't enough. Chernobyl had multiple warnings. The car should quit if the driver doesn't have his hands on the wheel during a beta test.
If only the drivers of the test cars were at risk, I would have no objection to what Tesla is doing - in fact, I would try it myself, given the opportunity.
Because it's not. comparing highway death rates to all-roads-and-conditions death rate is completely disingenuous.
Because it's not actually better than a human driver. It's worse. Much worse.
The statistics cited in the article are for a HUMAN plus autopilot. Not autopilot alone.
Autopilot alone has a very poor track record.
If only that were the case. It seems to me that more likely when someone says Teslas are too expensive, or not practical they get attacked as luddites and imbeciles.
I'd really prefer if those vehicles were driverless instead. And mine as well.
"These individuals are assisted in their quest by a media that long ago decided that it was completely okay with killing the society on which it parasitically feeds."
All forms of transport have to accept the possibility of fatalities to a certain extent. The test for Tesla is are they safer, not are they perfect.