Introducing Navigate on Autopilot

That actually is a part of v9 autopilot but Tesla is never going to put that in writing.

The fixing of bugs like this without admission of guilt isn’t unique to Tesla. Apple, Google, Samsung, and many others do the same.

The reason they haven’t been buried in a lawsuit is because these are driver assistance features, not self driving features. It’s the responsibility of the driver to keep control of their car at all times.

Arguing that “people think they can drive with their hands off the wheel” isn’t a real legal argument. This is why Tesla warns drivers in documentation that they need to keep control of the car at all times.

This is the same legal argument that has caused warnings in microwave manuals about not putting animals inside them to dry them out. Just because someone misinterprets the capabilities of technology they purchase doesn’t mean the technology isn’t doing what it’s designed to do.

All self driving cars and driver assistance tools will be imperfect. The question is whether or not they are statistically safer than the average human. If you are an above average driver (by your record, not your impression of yourself), these tools may be unnecessary or may actually be worse for you. It’s the average and below average people that they do wonders for.

Please stop using one or two data points to form an opinion about something that has millions and millions of data points.

I watched the video. My Nissan has lane-keeping and it does exactly the same thing as in this video. My impression is it's because it follows the left lane line when it's not sure.

Maybe the state should take responsibility and realize that poorly maintained and marked roads lead to accidents that cause injury, including death.

The Model X that hit the barriers in the Bay Area would not have happened if A. Lane marker painting had been kept under maintenance. They were mostly missing.

B. The crash barrier had been in place, instead it was missing from an earlier crash. The missing arresting system caused the car to strike the Jersey barriers with no safety controls. This is the equivalent of driving into a 6" wide concrete wall at freeway speed.

No kidding. This does not inspire confidence. v9 already does weird things like show stopped cars bouncing around randomly. This kind of thing along with crazy branding really makes it feel unsafe.

It’s one thing that the stereo goes to 11, that’s funny. But I’m not going to die if the stereo has a bug.

I agree, but to give Elon the benefit of the doubt for a moment, labeling it "Mad Max" may actually discourage people from setting their car to it (as people often perceive themselves to not be reckless), whereas labeling that setting something like "Often" may lead to it being selected more frequently. Of course, this can also backfire if people select "Mad Max" because it's the only one with a funny label.

It's a joke, just like the volume control going to 11. Fun is okay. Whimsy is okay. I've never understand why so many people disapprove of little bits of joy scattered throughout the world. Little moments of fun make life a more tolerable experience.

Thoughtless criticism like this, even as a joke, is what will prevent us from getting any self driving cars.

There are three modes for how aggressive to be with lane changes. A least aggressive mode, a most aggressive mode, and a middle setting. You can also turn it off completely.

Naming the highest setting Mad Max mode doesn't make that setting more dangerous -- it makes the average car less aggressive by discouraging people from selecting that option. Contrast that with if they called the options "drive super slow", "drive slow" and "normal" without changing the behavior of each setting.

Living in Paris center, I'm convinced it will be the last place where autonomous cars will be allowed. Roads are smalls, the city plan is old, there are experiments with new e-scooters, people don't respect priorities, etc

It could only work if ALL vehicles were automated and no human driving was allowed. But even then, walking people will exploit the overly-safe vehicles' decisions and just force the priority (which is probably a good thing to give the city back to walking people).

In my opinion, the capital cities won't be the same once autonomous cars are fully developed, there will be probably more public transport, and more car-pool sharing drive services, more escooters, etc. The most interesting long term usage of autonomous driving is on highway and smaller cities than capitals, with less traffic

Interesting that you consider US highways and streets to be well designed, given that they are objectively substantially more lethal to their users than European roads.

You’re going to be disappointed for quite some time then. Most of the improvements to autopilot in the near future will be refinement of the cars reactions to sensor data and not new public facing features. They are closing in on the line where regulation does not allow for further “self driving” festures. Having the car change lanes itself is “self driving” and that’s why the driver must initiate the lane change. The same argument can be made about stopping at stop signs and red lights which is the next killer iteration of driver assist. Hopefully there will be enough data collected and good decisions made to allow for iterative improvements to driver assist features which would improve overall traffic safety.

You don't think your drive will become even more boring when your car is "doing everything" but you are required to "pay attention and be ready to take over at all times?"

I'd agree if you could trust it and didn't have to be actively involved in watching your car drive for you. Sounds pretty boring as is though. Sleep inducing.

It'd be like having a normally very reliable chauffeur that would occasionally get horribly confused and do something very wrong, and you had to watch their every move, most of which are perfect, for the remote chance of terrible confusion and be ready to grab the wheel.

I think this is still a super under appreciated point. The focus is often on full autonomy, but we don't need full autonomy in complex city driving environments to unlock a potential sea change in behavior. Imagine the impact of simply being able to trust your vehicle to do the heavy lifting for an hour to get you from, say, Sacramento to San Francisco, only needing to take control at the highway end points for 30 minutes on each end.

It doesn't sound like that to me. It sounds like they are saying that this is NOT a driverless car and you need to pay attention. However, it is a little bit misleading in that this is all Tesla's software can do right now. Even if the regulatory framework was in place, they couldn't just enable it instantly. They have a lot of dev / testing work to do before that happens. But they do have stuff working in the lab that is more capable than what they've released publicly.

No, it's not. This can be read either as Tesla wants you to read it, that the only reason they're setting it this way is because legislators demand it, or the way you should read it, which is that Tesla will find any possible excuse to blame you for not paying enough attention when the car makes a mistake and kills you.