Not the person hoping to make money from dishonest marketing and publicity stunts.
Tesla has achieved way more than I would have expected, had someone told me about it beforehand. But it doesn't magically absolve them, just because the tech is cool.
Their numbers[1] show autopilot as safer than human drivers, even though they don't have full autonomy yet. A lot of people consider 1 human death from a computer driving as unacceptable, but hundreds of thousands from human drivers as totally fine.
>In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 2.87 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 436,000 miles.
Take from this 2 things:
1. Either Tesla drivers are 4x safer than the average driver or their stats aren't comparable with the industry standard measures (1.76m vs 0.43m) and they have no problem with misleadingly comparing the two.
2. Tesla is not interested in supplying a real metric for how likely you are to crash in a Tesla, but instead provide PR numbers (accident per million miles when Autopilot is overwhelmingly used only on the safest roads?)
Most car accidents happen to drivers that are very young/inexperienced or very old, two groups very unlikely to own a Tesla. People in the 40-55 age range, which is the 'safest' age range, are probably greatly over-represented among Tesla drivers so just that fact probably makes Tesla drivers 'safer' than average. It would be interesting to compare Tesla, not to all cars, but to 'equivalent' cars.
I'm trying to explain what he thinks is reality, even if it is detached from what most of the rest of us think as reality. SpaceX's real goal is to send Elon back to mars to be with his real family.
Elon's POV has access to a lot more data than we do.
He could give more fine grained details about safety. He actively chooses not to:
Can you help understand what's wrong in that statement, "In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 2.87 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 436,000 miles."
Answering your questions: 1. Either Tesla drivers are 4x safer than the average driver or their stats aren't comparable with the industry standard measures (1.76m vs 0.43m) and they have no problem with misleadingly comparing the two.
-> Well, Tesla has one of the best NHTSA safety ratings.. so their driver might be actually be 4x safer... or at-least based on 1.76m vs 0.43m number...
-> one can argue that oldest Tesla on road is 8-9 years and the total # teslas on road are less thus they have lower denominator for total miles driven by all teslas / total # tesla vehicles on the road, which help them get to 1.76M but that doesn't change the fact 1) it is 4x safer based on that number and 2) it has one of the best NHTSA safety ratings.
2. Tesla is not interested in supplying a real metric for how likely you are to crash in a Tesla, but instead provide PR numbers (accident per million miles when Autopilot is overwhelmingly used only on the safest roads?)
-> first, Tesla used NHTSA metric here, which is "NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 436,000 miles."
-> Based on that metric, they provided 2 data points, 1) "we registered one accident for every 2.87 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged." and 2) "For those driving without Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million miles driven."
-> that is the real metric on how likely a Tesla car (either autopilot or not) could run into accident... now for "supplying a real metric for how likely you are to crash in a Tesla" (emphasis on "you") would be difficult for any car provider...
I'm strictly commenting for the statement you quoted and the 2 questions you posed. I'm not discussing anything like, how they have over-sold (an idea) of auto-pilot, if its truly safe, if its ready and so on.
Robots are almost certainly better drivers, but at the numbers we have now we can't say for sure.
I don't have numbers, but their comparison of a luxury sedan to all drivers has seemed disingenuous (to put it kindly, lying with numbers to put it less kindly).