Hacker News Reader

Comment by tinbad | Hacker News Reader

Yes! My previous (A6) and current (S6) Audi's can basically do the same (and could for years!) without all the hype. Whenever I show it to friends they seem to be amazed it's possible and, until then, thought only Tesla was capable of such a feat.

View on HN

Agreed. My subaru forester can do this with just 2 cameras by the rearview mirror. And it was <<30k out the door with 7 year warranty and 3 year maintenance.

That's marketing for you I guess. (Don't get me wrong, would get a Tesla if money were no object)

I have a subaru crosstrek with the eyesight package, and it can't do lanekeeping. Are you sure your forester can?

Auto braking and automatic speed adjustment cruise control, but no lanekeeping. It does have an alert when you leave a lane without signaling, but that's not the same as actually keeping you in the lane.

2017 added lane keep assist. Note everything else featurewise has been available for a while and the outback has had LKA for at least a year.

http://media.subaru.com/newsrelease.do?id=940&mid=141&allIma...

So, I've made it from Burlington, Washington to the Canadian border without turning off Autopilot in Friday evening traffic (about 50 miles, including some pleasant winding interstate). As described by Subaru LKA "...can gently guide the vehicle back to the center of its lane if sway is detected". It sounds like it only corrects for small deviations rather than actually completely steering for you? Is Subaru under-selling it in their press release (which would honestly be sort of amazing)?

Having owned an Eye-Sight Subaru and AP Tesla at the same time I can attest they aren't nearly the same.

For one Eye-Sight turns off if you come to a complete stop and won't re-engage until you get over a threshold(I believe 18mph). It has a pretty limited HUD to communicate what the system is seeing.

In comparison the Tesla will do full rush-hour traffic flawlessly and does a much better job of communicating what it's seeing in the vicinity of the car. It also bounces the radar under the car ahead of you so it has the ability to see heavy braking conditions much sooner.

C&D did a pretty good comparison recently[1], it didn't include the A8/S8 but most of the other competitors but Tesla was far and away the better system.

[1] http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomous-cars-co...

You are mistaken.

Yes the eyesight disengages if you're stopped for more than about 2 seconds (will acknowledge it's annoying), but you can restart it at the touch of a button even from a stand still. This might be a recent change.

That car and driver review doesn't fully explain the features.

I'm sure the Tesla is a bit nicer and more autopilotey, but it will cost you 70-80k MORE out the door which is the point. Eyesight gets you 80-90% there. The tech is otherwise similar features wise.

If anything what you could argue is that the Tesla can get you on the freeway on its own which is pretty cool. Can it do that?

How many times are you pressing that button in 40 minutes of rush hour traffic? That to me is where Tesla's AP really shines, 70mph AP is nifty but not nearly as useful.

I was just commenting since we've owned both systems, if you haven't had a chance to give Tesla's a spin they are happy to do free test-drives, on paper they look similar but in execution I found Tesla's to be miles ahead(and constantly improving).

That extra 60k also gets you some really acceptable 0-60 times :).

It's more than 60k all in when I looked into getting.

You'd be surprised, during most drives home I only have to hit it 2-3 times.

Listen, I'm not trying to argue that my Forester is nicer than your Tesla. By no means is that the case.

My comment was more to point out that the tech is a lot more common than people think.

I am still surprised they haven't been sued. It's not an autopilot (like in planes). It's enhanced cruise control, which has been around since forever.

I feel like Tesla pulled an Apple on this.

But it is like an autopilot in planes. Autopilot in planes does not do anything particularly complicated; it mostly just keeps it heading in one direction. The next part of this discourse that I've seen played out elsewhere on HN is where someone mentions that the public perception of the word "autopilot" is that it flies the plane all by itself in a rather intelligent manner. That's what Tesla is leveraging by calling it "autopilot".

The autopilot in modern planes does a lot more than just keeping the plane flying in one direction. You can get a plane land on autopilot (well up to like 1 or 2 minutes before touchdown). You can make it increase altitude automatically at a certain waypoint, decrease to a different flightlevel at a certain waypoint, and adjust speed. It monitors pilot input and intervenes if the pilot tries to do something "stupid." Basically, an autopilot in the planes is more than just a cruise control for headings. It can fly from point A to B with some intervention (like changing some data based on what ATC gave you).

The cruise control in Teslas cannot (yet?) drive you from point A to point B or even keep you driving in one direction forever without you holding the steering wheel occasionally or even hitting other objects. It can (just like cruise control in other cars) warn you if you are about to do something stupid (e.g. leaving the lane, about to hit an object etc.).

This is like people using foglights in cities at night to see better. You can use it for that, but it isn't made for that purpose. A light meant for FOG or other scenarios where the car itself is hard to see and not for you to light up everything in front of you (as it is quite bright if not used in fog).

A significant advantage aircraft on autopilot have is that the majority of the aircraft routinely using autopilot are flying under Instrument Flight Rules [IFR] and can rely on Air Traffic Control to provide separation from other aircraft.

Because of this, an aircraft under autopilot (especially one ascending and descending on its own) doesn't need to worry about hitting things. There is usually a distance of 3-5 miles¹ between the aircraft and other hard objects.

I would say calling the Tesla system an Autopilot is vastly understating its abilities.

¹ http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/2806/how-much-is...

Most planes does have the ability to land themselves. This is called autoland.

autopilots can land an aircraft which is a much more complicated process than station keeping.

Autopilot in Teslas can park the car...

Overall I like Elon Musk (although I've never met him), but people seem to think he's the über-engineer when really he's the über-salesman.

Can't he be both? He says he spends 50% of his time on engineering. Spacex launches and lands rockets. Standing up. On a Barge. In the ocean.

Seems like an engineering achievement to me.

I would say it's more the engineering achievement of his staff. Obviously Mr. Musk gave the right working conditions and probably motivated people who had the idea, so there is that.

Those things are huge, and super rare, despite being pretty simple. He totally deserves some of the credit for that alone.

But then why does every single one of the engineers who have worked with him report that he's the single smartest person they've ever worked with?

If you read the biography, there have been times when an engineer has said "I can't meet these requirements," and he said "Ok, I'll do your job AND my job, and I'll get it done." And he did.

I think anyone believing he's not an extremely talented engineer has not read much about him.

Honest question - has Elon written any of the code for Tesla or SpaceX? Or has he designed any of the electrical or mechanical systems? I know he used to code at past companies, but a quick google search doesn't tell me he still does this.

Elon takes an active hand in all of the engineering discussions and contributes heavily to design deicions. Of course he doesn't write code or machine parts himself, that would be a really poor use of his time-- that's what he's hired thousands of engineers for, so that he can be head engineer overseeing the countless moving parts involved in manufacturing both rockets and cars simultaneously.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com