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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

I ordered a Tesla Model 3 yesterday. When I see the "Full Self-Driving Capability" checkbox at checkout time (it's an option you can pay $3,000 for right now) I just have zero confidence that they can deliver on this. Almost every other aspect of the car is fantastic. But Tesla's delusions about achieving full self-driving with their current approach just make me lose some respect for them. It makes me worried that they might be deluded about other things too.

I use the word "deluded" above realizing that I might be completely wrong. If they pull it off I'll eat crow and give them props. But I just don't see it happening.

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This is a commonly missed point. You can buy the car today and be very happy with a fantastic car as it is. I did and I'm quite happy, you'll probably be very satisfied as well. I didn't even buy the EAP, as I don't do much highway driving and I think almost no one actually buys the FSD.

Having said that, I find it hilarious that people on here have such immensely strong opinions about something that doesn't exist. They'll go at length about how LIDAR is a hard requirement, about how many FLOPs you need, etc etc etc. Fact: FSD doesn't exist and no one has it. Nobody knows which approach will work and if more than one approach works no one knows the timelines or economics of the different approaches and very certainly no one knows the market impact of these. But people start thinking they know the future and then become very emotionally vested in their make-believe stories.

It's actually quite simple: companies sell you stuff, buy it if you want it/need it. Today Waymo sells me nothing, Cruise/GM sells me nothing, Tesla sells me a great BEV with Level 2 driving assistance. I got the car, but not the level 2 because it doesn't fit my driving needs. If they start selling level 3-4-5, I'll buy it if the price is right and I need it.

Waymo is very close to wide availability of self driving hire cars in Phoenix: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-31/inside-th...

Yes, various companies are in varying states of readiness in various jurisdictions.

> Today Waymo sells me nothing

It's certainly not nothing

Only one of the companies you mentioned currently has cars on the road with self driving tech that can kill you.

Cadillac's CT6? Yeah, I speed away every time I see one.

But there's no need to pick on GM, they all have self-driving tech capable of killing you.

The interesting thing about the $3000 "upgrade" is that if you actually want to get it, I think you're better off taking the $3000 and investing it in Tesla.

Assuming autonomy is make or break for Tesla in the long term: if Tesla fails at it your stock will still be worth something (versus a useless upgrade). If Tesla succeeds you'll make more than enough to cover a retrofit.

>>It makes me worried that they might be deluded about other things too.

Tesla will fail. But they will fail at 5% of their goals, and achieve 95% of that goals. It will still be called 'Failure'.

To avoid that 'Failure' tag, other companies won't even try.

Do this process enough number of times. And it will appear like Tesla is failing all the time, and yet achieving almost 100% more than other companies.

The problem here is in defining success in terms of binary outcomes of success and failure.

Are the model 3 hardware modular? For example, is it possible they’ll have you bring it to the dealer in a few years and get outfitted with these new chips?

Yes, Musk said that on the earnings call. But the hardware upgrade is not the hard part of self driving. At least they have stopped claiming that their current hardware is powerful enough for full self driving already, which was a ridiculous and worrying position for them to take.

> ridiculous and worrying

I think “fraudulent” would be more accurate; it was factually false, it was at best entirely unfounded if not actually knowingly false, it was material to decisions of people to purchase the self-driving add-on.

> At least they have stopped claiming that their current hardware is powerful enough for full self driving already

The Autopilot page [1] still states the following:

"All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."

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

If you consider “hardware” as sensor suite only (quite a stretch of an interpretation, I know), then it’s kind of true, especially if they will replace the brains at no cost once they have an actual use for them

Oh, it's capable all right. Unless you actually try to use it anywhere that's not a perfectly spherical road in a vacuum, then it's also capable of killing you.

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