Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

The advertising is clearly deceptive. Read their marketing materials:[1]

"Build upon Enhanced Autopilot and order Full Self-Driving Capability on your Tesla. ... All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination or just home if nothing is on the calendar. Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed. When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you."

Tesla does not have that technology. Not even close. Their cars do not have the sensor suite to do it. They did a demo back in 2016 of a limited self-driving capability on quiet roads in Los Altos Hills. They haven't said much since.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

Did you forget the next paragraph, where they clearly state that it is not yet available? Firsts words are even in bold: "Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval. Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year."

> Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction

So the software is ready, it's just those damn regulators that are holding it back.

Come on.

The way this is phrased makes it sound like the features are just around the corner, not that the software is years from working, if it's even possible at all.

I know somebody who was told by a Tesla salesman that "Destination Based Autopilot is only months away". The advertising is absolutely deceptive, and I say this as a Tesla owner and fan of the company.

Come on... We all know that sales people will quite literally say anything to make a sale.

This is understood, and we all expect them to carefully phrase things to put their product in the best possible light. Misleading statements are the norm.

Outright lying is another matter entirely, and in some cases could even be criminal. If I have you on video telling me I can drive the car I'm buying at 90 mph toward a brick wall and the car will prevent a collision, and I then test that statement and die, the video will be used against you in court by my surviving family members.

This is understood, and we all expect them to carefully phrase things to put their product in the best possible light. Misleading statements are the norm.

Only where enforcement is weak. Two years ago, the government of Germany shut down Tesla's "autopilot" advertising for making false claims.

And that's no reason for us to accept it without comment. Especially when it encourages people who are not quite as smart as you to do things that put other people (and themselves) at risk.

I agree with you. I don't personally have a problem with the claims around Enhanced Auto Pilot, but the FSD option is really bad marketing, IMO. It is nowhere close to being ready to do the things that they talk about and may never achieve some of them.

The owners who buy that are really donating a few thousand dollars to Tesla without getting anything in return. Its really strange.

Indeed.

A lot of people talk about the "Does it have enough sensors for Full Self Drive?" but my question would also be: Does it have the Compute?

As vehicles get closer and closer to full self drive the compute requirements have shot up, that's because a lot of the building blocks are just adding more machine learning models, pattern recognizers, and a more complete picture of the world. It is all well and good having a dozen sensors, if you can process their input.

A lot of the key cycles cannot be offloaded to The Cloud because of the tolerances (e.g. sub-second query/response for safety). One university project I happen to know of had $20K worth of compute sitting in the trunk. That will obviously come down as it is optimized but a vehicle sold in early 2018 isn't evergreen.

Musk mentioned this in the last IR Q&A. He said that it might indeed not have the compute, but that swapping in hardware with enough compute would be a 'plug and play' operation.

That's what he said but it won't be.

> Did you forget the next paragraph, where they clearly state that it is not yet available

Where does it clearly say that? "may very widely by jurisdiction", "it is not possible to know" are anything but clear.

Hand waving statements about the autopilot being safer than human drivers, and blaming passenger-drivers for not taking control earlier whenever there’s wreck is ridiculous, but it sounded more like overconfidence than bad faith.

That second paragraph is a far worse thing. Intentionally leading people into believing that government regulators are why a technology doesn’t exist makes it sound like they’re venturing into Theranos territory.

The last sentences about selling rides sound like the sort of false concern someone would try to raise in a pitch to misdirect investors away from asking about software problems that they internally worry might be insurmountable.

With his latest "fake news" attack he's starting to sound more and more like Trump:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/23/technology/elon-musk-media/i...

He liked being the media's golden boy when they were fawning over him for a decade, now things get tough because him and his company exaggerate and he wants to take his ball and go home.

Eh, I think at this point Tesla exiting the auto market would have relatively little impact on the future of electric cars. They may have played an important early role in proving the technology is ready and creating demand, but the demand is there now and many manufacturers are trying to meet it.

(Whereas, SpaceX exiting the market would probably set back space travel considerably.)

If Tesla fails, then EV are essentially dead for another decade. Hybrids will fill the role for ecologically respectful transportation.

Not a chance. Look at what is happening in China.

This is a ridiculous statement, Tesla accounts for less than 10% of global EV sales.

January-March 2018: 304K EV sales, 25K Tesla sales

https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

Apple accounts for a similar fraction of smartphones, but is far more influential than any other maker. Tesla occupies a similar role in terms of EV mindshare. At least in the US, carmakers are developing EVs out of fear that Tesla will succeed and suck out all the profits.

As others have pointed out, Tesla's failure in the EV market won't do much damage as it really isn't the big player and their poor execution is only handing money to competitors. Worse for Tesla they have already given time for established brands to enter and or announce their own EVs. Many people are waiting for their preferred brand of car to come with an EV option.

What the real threat is the damage to self driving that Tesla gives the public. After a series of very publicized crashes where Tesla handled their response poorly journalist are looking at every Tesla crash for involvement of their Autopilot software. Every crash is under suspicion. That alone is a hole that Tesla is going to have a hard time crawling out of and it combined with other companies missteps it will only keep setting back the field.

I'm not sure why you say "more and more like Trump". He always sounded like someone with a similar approach to handling a lot of things.

OTOH, that doesn't make some of his charges less accurate. The media does engage in a lot of hyperbole about Tesla crashes and always has. We don't get hyperbolic reports every time some other car has an AEB failure. We definitely don't get them about every other car's post-crash fire. And a lot of the financial opinion pieces are only marginally better.

On the other side of the coin, you have the company's misleading marketing materials. Some will say that is just as bad as the bad journalism, I guess.

Who would have guessed that two blowhards who inherited their wealth would throw temper tantrums when the media doesn't paint them in the kindest light possible.

It's a shame that those specific details pertaining to the Full Self Driving feature were accidentally entered on to the Tesla AutoPilot page. The mistake seems to have caused a cascade of errors, because right after the FSD caveat, there's a video, but it's for the full-self-driving demo back in 2016, something that has nothing to do with the Autopilot feature.

By the way, this was also very offensive to me:

> Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.

Why does Tesla get to tell me what to do with my car?

I guess Tesla believes while under self-drive it is no longer your car. That's going to be an interesting case for the law/layers in the future.

Tesla owns their software, not you. Why would they enable other ridesharing companies to profit off of their autopilot work?

If you want to drive your car for Uber, you can. If you want Tesla’s software to drive it for Uber for you, that isn’t part of the end user license agreement.

There will probably be court cases over this.

At one time automakers tried to say if you used third party oil filters or other parts, or if anyone other than the dealer did work, then your warranty was void. That didn't hold up.

Publishers tried to say that you could not re-sell books and recordings and software media after you purchased them. That didn't hold up.

Not sure that this will hold up either.

You’re referring to physical parts. To my knowledge, no automaker providers their software and related tooling to end users (please correct me if I’m mistake).

You’re going to need a copyright law overhaul to change this status quo.

And you're referring to what you can physically do with your own vehicle after you buy it. To my knowledge that has absolutely nothing to do with software copyright law. I don't understand your basis for arguing that software's copyright can be used to infringe other rights.

For example can my water heater's manufacturer ban me from washing my dog in the bath because they own copyright on the software in the thermostat micro-controller?

If Tesla were going to provide liability insurance, I could absolutely see them having the ability to limit usage (under that insurance). But software copyright is an unusual argument.

To use Tesla FSD (full self driving) with a rideshare network, you will need to hook into the Tesla vehicle onboard software or Tesla’s API. Those actions will require Tesla’s cooperation. Otherwise, feel free to sit in the car while it drives itself on autopilot, Tesla isn’t stopping that, only the use of its full autonomy software (when it arrives) for commercial purposes on rideshare networks other than its own.

Existing law supports this, and I don’t foresee policy changing in this regard.

> To use Tesla FSD (full self driving) with a rideshare network, you will need to hook into the Tesla vehicle onboard software or Tesla’s API.

If there is an operator in the vehicle, they could just enter the destination the old fashioned way.

> Existing law supports this, and I don’t foresee policy changing in this regard.

It really doesn't. I'm not sure which "law" you're even referring to.

They are I think referring to first-sale doctrine.

> There will probably be court cases over this.

Well, probably not, because realistically Tesla's self-driving isn't going to be happening anytime soon.

Tesla seems to think software license agreements don't matter though, because they've been violating other people's license agreements for years by shipping GPLed code without source. About a week ago they finally released some (not all) of the code they're required to.

https://electrek.co/2018/05/19/tesla-releases-softwar-open-s...

Probably because the autopilot tech isn't just your car. It's connected to the rest of the Tesla `fleet`, all the ML that makes it work is done by Tesla. All the updates you get to improve the capabilities is done by Tesla?

Your car perhaps, but probably not your software - check the EULA (it is an issue that bugs me too - I am offering this in way of explanation, not justification.)

The clause is probably there because Tesla wants to become the self-driving Uber, and it cannot (even if it wanted to) limit the restriction to corporations because, as we know, Uber does not have drivers or cars.

> Why does Tesla get to tell me what to do with my car?

My guess:

Because they think it's their car, even after they sold it to you. And, because, more to the point, they expect that (contrary to their claims) that retaining that control and exploiting it is the only way they will be able to be profitable with the cars.

The simplest explanation to me is that the self drive software is essentially provide under a non-commercial license.

Frankly, it's not your car, no matter how much money you forked over for it.

And, if you have a Tesla, you can verify this by disabling its ability to talk to Tesla. After some period of time, your car will no longer run.

Or you can crash it, get it fixed by a non-Tesla service provider, and watch it also fail to run. Not because of a mechanical failure or even a software failure, but because Tesla hasn't OKed it to run.

I'm curious about what happens if/when Tesla goes out of business. What happens to all those Model S and Model 3's out there - do they get OTA patched to no longer phone home, does the data coming out of the Tesla flip over to whoever purchases that capability from Tesla, or do they all just stop? It will be interesting to see.

This is almost certainly illegal, and if you have a Tesla, you should use the self-driving ability for Uber or Lyft and literally just dare Tesla to sue you for it.

> If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination

What, so you'd enter your car to vacuum clean it or something, and suddenly it'll start driving to some destination it "assumed" :/

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