Tesla admits its Full Self-Driving technology is a Level 2 system
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You need both. It’s the difference between a company with exceptional engineering talent that also runs well, and a company with exceptional engineering talent that doesn’t run well.
I’m really happy with my Model 3 and I continue to wish them success. But these kinds of moves are just pure uncontrolled Elon Musk as-the-engineer. He’s as bad at estimating as I am. I knew the state of machine learning when I decided to just get EAP and not FSD. I’m not celebrating their miss, I’m just saying all this was avoidable.
They've gone from nothing, to a major competitive auto manufacturer, in 10 years. Not only that, they've built out the service and infrastructure to support themselves as a major auto manufacturer, as a side project.
Seriously look at this map: https://www.tesla.com/findus?v=2&bounds=58.46119224394316%2C...
If this was tesla's only accomplishment, it would still be a major one.
Im currently sitting at one of the Tesla Superchargers in Phoenix. It’s full of cars. There is a CHAdeMO charger across the lot and I’ve never seen somebody use it.
Have any of Tesla’s competitors (other than the Ford ~~model t~~ mustang) even shipped yet?
“Nikola” appears to have been a blatant scam. Rivian hasn’t shipped. Lucid hasn’t shipped.
Meanwhile Tesla has a month long waitlist (at least), a retail store network, charger network, service network, and is on the 4th generation of actual shipped products.
That’s sounds exactly like spacex to me. The competitors (if you could even call them that yet) are trying their best to copy SpaceX but so far even Jeff Bezos seemingly infinite wealth hasn’t been able to do it.
I’m not saying Tesla isn’t ahead. I’m saying SpaceX is comparatively much more ahead. Tesla at least has competition.
VW's brands (VW/Audi/Porsche) are shipping and leading the market in Europe. Deliveries in the US are ramping up as well.
Depends on region. "Renault's Zoe was the best-selling electric car in Europe in 2020, beating the Tesla Model 3 to second place." [1]
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/972845/electric-vehicles...
But yea, in Europe a lot of manufacturers sells decent fully electric cars.
Tesla might be (way) ahead of auto-manufacturers when it comes to churning out individually-owned electric cars and providing a great experience for their customers, but I don't think Tesla is ahead at all when it comes to self-driving.
Rocket launch was a far smaller market that was basically run by governments only for all practical purposes.
Both business for by all practical reasoning have performed absurdly well.
The only other brand that has this reach would be Apple. Every single communications player have been gunning for them since iPhone 1. No one has even come close.
Shotwell and Musk are working together very closely and have for 10+ years. Shotwell is often just as aggressive as Musk. On Starship specifically Shotwell has been just as agressive as Musk.
And Elon is not a 'hype man' he is the Chief Engineer no matter how much people want to ignore that and call him a marketing guy or business guy or a hype man.
NASA was clearly impressed with what SpaceX is doing with Starship and that was during the time when 'hype man' was running it (according to you). Accept of course we know that Shotwell is very much involved.
Starship is developed the way it is because it is the most of how ambitious it both for operations and production. And those criticizing have clearly never developed a fully reusable rocket the size of a sky scraper so their criticism is mostly worthless.
To (badly) paraphrase, Elon is definitely the visionary and chief engineer. He’s the one who says things like “we can go to Mars in 7 years” and everyone gasps and says he’s out of his mind. Then he lays out “no, we can do x,y,z and make it there, correct?” And then people kind of nod. And then she takes his ridiculously ambitious vision and has to figure out how they run a company with that goal. It really is that sort of dynamic. I am saying that with her, they are a terrifyingly effective duo. He needs that in Tesla.
I own Tesla stock. I want them to continue to wildly succeed. It’s for that reason I want Elon to have a true peer there too.
The quote doesn't actually disagree with what I have said however.
However, Tesla as a company seems to jump from burst to burst of technological wizardry. Build a great car, get stuck in manufacturing hell. Solve the manufacturing problem, you’ve injured a bunch of factory workers. Solve that problem, you’ve now created exceptional battery cooling tech. Solve that problem, but owners can’t get their cars fixed in a timely manner. Solve that problem and then you have suddenly raised solar panels prices 3x. Build amazing solar tiles but then your FSD was always a fad.
It’s a constant thing where they are jumping around from tough problem to tough people to constantly put out fires. Again, they have a world class engineering talent so they solve these problems with exceptional solutions that often leapfrog their competitors. But it feels like they jump around a lot.
From everything I could glean, the technology does not seem mature yet, and shock!!!, despite the disbelief of some robotaxi/FSD evangelists, I actually like driving. Ok, so I don't like stop and go barely moving traffic, but I don't think FSD can handle that today or anytime soon anyways.
However, away from the controversy about their approach to and messaging around full self driving, Tesla is otherwise pretty exceptional, if you look at what they’ve achieved. (As detailed by some of the other replies to your post.)
I don't get why Tesla is allowed to continue like this. There is two companies I know of that can do basically whatever they want without consequences: Tesla and Apple. Their users believes anything they say.
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/teslas-reliability-ratings-are-...
Sadly I'm not a Tesla owner but my Apple stuff works well.
> Please note that Tesla’s development of true autonomous features (SAE Levels 3+) will follow our iterative process (development, validation, early release, etc.) and any such features will not be released to the general public until we have fully validated them and received any required regulatory permits or approvals.
2016: https://elonmusk.today/#autonomous-cross-country-trip
2020, explicitly mentioning L5: https://mobile.twitter.com/Benshooter/status/133387343433455...
Tesla needs to explain better, but given the intentional mis understanding by journalists lately, I sense they feel silence is better than being taken out of context yet again.
This article is essentially disinformation. If the article actually included the relevant source email, it would be obvious to everyone that it is a nothingburger.
I mean this is obviously spurious bordering on ridiculous at this point.
I swear this whole comment section is being over-run by agents of disinformation or luddites. Not sure which is worse.
I doled out ~$5000 for FSD on a Model 3 Performance bought 2018 which has now had a new computer fitted (at no cost to me) and always considered FSD pretty much a “bet”, which is not IMHO a complete loss since the HW3 upgrade got me more Level 2 features on a 2018 MY vehicle, something which is quite unprecedented in the auto industry.
I suspect Elon may be wrong about LIDAR and for any manufacturer to get to Level 5, it may be required and cannot be replaced entirely by cameras and computer vision. Since it is not present on any Tesla today and cannot be sanely retrofitted, barring what feels like a miracle to me, the “Defects per Million Miles” (e.g. disengagements, and accidents leading to property damage or non-fatal injury) and the “Fatalities per Million Miles” (where one was enough to tank others Autonomous Driving programs) will probably continue too high for public and regulatory acceptance that Tesla has attained Level 5 autonomy with their current vehicles and their current hardware.
In both cases, both people seem fundamentally and adamantly adversarial for whatever reason.
The computer for processing the cameras will probably be swapped out a couple of more times before the cameras need to be swapped. The question will be if your 2018 car will get FSD in 2035 by having all of the hardware replaced instead.
Their cars are attractive but they will lack the hardware for level 5 when it comes, and anyway will most likely be past their end-of-life then.
When asked about a cross-country autonomous trip; “[by 2017] 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.” [1]
He explicitly promised L5 by end of 2020:
“I am still confident we will have the basic functionality for level 5 complete by this year“ [2]
He’s a conman, and the cult of personality is going to end like any other cult.
[1] https://www.inverse.com/article/37652-tesla-self-driving-car... [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/Benshooter/status/133387343433455...
So its Tesla fault if people doesn't listen?
What law tesla broke in this case?
Not gonna lie you have a very dim view of "normal people". Clearly you do not believe planes are entirely flying themselves, so I'm wondering who these "normal people" are that you are speaking for.
autopilot in a plane is a true autopilot as it truly controls the plane. in fact apart from takeoff and landing most of the flying is done by the autopilot.
is the problem of controlling a plane easier than driving a car? yes. so what?
That is only true for modern autopilot systems in commercial airliners and business jets. But the system has been called "autopilot" since the 70s, when it could barely hold pitch and yaw within a tolerable deviation, with no regard to the engine, altitude, yaw or a dozen of other parameters that still had to be maintained manually. Most plane autopilots are somewhere in between these extremes, and require constant supervision by the pilot in command when flying.
it’s probably true that airplanes were also ambitious at first, but the difference is that flying (paradoxically) is way way more forgiving than driving. Also, in flying you have a support system that is built to promote safety as everyone understands that mistakes == death when they happen. When was the last time you thought about the fact that you might die when getting into a car?
Most other car manufactures label similar level 2 systems as lane centering and adaptive cruise control. Cruise calls it super cruise in reference to being a better cruise control system. If it was level 3 capable, autopilot would be a descriptive name.
For this reason, the connotation of "autopilot" is "the vehicle controls itself with no effort needed on the part of the operator", which is simply untrue for Tesla.
However, it is annoying that Musk touts non-existent features when the existing feature set is already compelling.
“Just weight the steering wheel and it’s basically level 3!” - probably something a Tesla salesperson has said to a prospective buyer
So Tesla has a choice of no unprotected left turns, HD mapped area only or go full in. And they are choosing the full in route which is very Elon's style. And allow them to roll out beta quality features quickly and iterate.
I agree it's a PR nightmare right now. I hope they will eventually recertify the current cars as L3+, but for the regular user that will only mean they can now officially take eyes off the road and only look when it beeps.
Oh, and anyone who paid extra for these features should be given a refund, as those features were falsely advertised.
IMO there are some features that shouldn't exist until full L4 so that people aren't tempted to let the car do the driving when it can't
They walked back, or qualified a lot of the initial claims and added mitigations to prevent their 'self-driving' systems from being used as such.
>Oh, and anyone who paid extra for these features should be given a refund, as those features were falsely advertised.
There may be some validity to this. Musk/Tesla certainly made explicit claims that existing cars have the hardware to achieve full autonomous driving via a future software patch.
The product names are fraudulent, there's no walking back when they're still called Autopilot (a term which in all other uses essentially does not require operator attention) and Full Self-Driving (which is definitely not what the feature is).
It's fraud, plain and simple. Until the features are renamed, Tesla continues to commit fraud.
Autopilots don't stop crashes, or change lanes. So Tesla's Navigate on Autopilot already does more than a standard Autopilot
Most laypeople who encounter autopilot do so on small sailboats near the coastline where a collision is extremely likely if you just turn on the autopilot and go chill in the cabin.
That's for courts to decide, but I don't think so, at least not to the level of hostility that you seem to hold.
This kind of reasoning is typical online where deductive logic based on strong assumptions made by the posters, is then used to reach equally strong conclusion (in this case, that a marketing term implies outright fraud). The reality is that regulatory, judicial and cultural boundaries have much more slack than you give them credit for. And that's a good thing.
If that is the general perception, how it got that way doesn't change what people think the word means, or what they'll hear when Tesla names a feature Autopilot.
Of course people recognize that they can get around Tesla's precautions and have nobody in the driver's seat, just like pilots could all leave the cockpit while the 737 is in flight and go get wasted at the minibar or whatever. But they don't and neither should drivers, and Tesla isn't suggesting that driver's should – in fact they've put technological precautions in place that airplanes with autopilot don't even use to ensure someone is at the stick.
You can also run over pedestrians with [insert car here], but nobody is suggesting you do it. People doing it anyway is not [insert car manufacturer here]'s fault.
I'm not saying "people think Tesla wants you to defeat their safety mechanisms and sit in the back seat."
I'm saying "The name implies more autonomy to the average person than the system actually has."
I could be wrong - I certainly don't have statistics to back up my perception of laypeople's usage of the word "autopilot."
It still seems to me like for the average buyer the name is misleading, though.
If tomorrow Boeing came out and said "hey, Autopilot on the 787 Dreamliner is sophisticated to the point where the plane can totally fly itself, from takeoff to landing", would it be reasonable for all 787 Dreamliner pilots to just leave the cockpit and get wasted with the flight attendants in the back? I don't think so. So I don't understand why people are holding Tesla to a ridiculous standard that they're not holding any other company to. Teslas can drive themselves from A to B in many situations at this point. It's not false advertising to say that. What would not be OK is if Tesla was saying if you buy this car you don't need to be in the driver's seat right now (not in the future, which is how they're currently selling it).
My point is: I don't think this is true. But if you have a survey which indicates that a broad swath of the population believes Teslas with Autopilot don't need any human intervention or shouldn't have someone in the driver's seat I'd love to see it.
Literally dozens of people in this thread are saying "this is what the average person believes" when none of them believe it themselves. Where are ya'll getting this insight into the average person's thought processes?
Most people hear "autopilot" and think "set it and forget it".
I’ve been in a few Tesla and they drive themselves quite well (I’m not an expert in self driving but I’m a good driver)
I’m genuinely curious, which other manufacturer has a similar level of self driving as Tesla, can deliver an electric vehicle within a week on my doorstep within the same price range?
I suspect a lot of companies could deliver a Tesla-equivalent system. They're just opposed to killing people in the process. See, for example, this thread from a host of The Autonocast contrasting Tesla's approach with others: https://twitter.com/Tweetermeyer/status/1383778011766398983
The issue here is that Tesla actually wants a generalized system that will work anywhere a human driver can drive, and does not seem interested in geofencing at all until they've reached that (level 5) point.
Feels like a risky bet for Waymo and others to reach level 4 or 5 only in a limited environment, you might end up with so many untested assumptions
e.g. the car did the wrong thing at the intersection of 9th and Elm? Give it 100 similar situations (at 9th and Elm), let it generate lots of possible behaviors, and then have humans tell it which are correct. Then whenever a car is at 9th and Elm, it uses that training as a priority. For a relatively small geofenced area that is a reasonable approach and should work well. Unfortunately it doesn't scale to the whole country/world.
Unless I misinterpreted the recent Tesla safety report, the Tesla FSD seems statistically safer than human drivers (please correct me if I’m wrong).
Which history? Safety of cars in the US has been improving for nearly a century: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:USA_annual_VMT_vs_de...
If that graph indicates car companies are willing to sacrifice lives to get an edge, I wonder what you think the opposite would look like.
The world we live in is full of improvement toward a illusive ultimate solution.
Marketing messages seem to be the problem here but I’ve experienced self driving a few times in heavy traffic (including at night a year ago) and it was really reliable and felt very real to me.
Discussing the philosophy of self driving technology using analogies was your attempt of making your point but it will always fall short of discussing the topic at hand.
FSD is not full self driving by many standards but it is doing a lot and saving lives too (like collision avoidance). To go with your analogy it is not only comfort but provides real benefit to an existing problem
I honestly do not understand why cannot we have a regulation that if both hands are not on a steering wheel for more than 10 seconds, then car should gracefully stop?
There are technologies in place which measure driver's blinking and tell of driver is tired. Why cannot we detect if driver is looking at the road at all. And if driver does not look at the road for more than 3 seconds, then car should gracefully stop?
Maybe I am wrong, but I believe it could make driving much safer, because these stops would be extremely annoying. We already have enforced stop as part of car anti-theft systems and rental car control and it is considered safe enough, so why the heck not?
Heck: this is the type of situation which most self-drive systems currently have a very hard time dealing with - a stationary vehicle where they don't expect it.
* citation needed. Tesla level quality control and wonky reliability is what personally turns me off from paying top dollar to be both 'owner' and beta tester.
>Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars
>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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190118080103/Tesla.com/autopil...
Seemed very confident about it at the time...
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autonomous-idUSKBN2...
And please don’t reply with “well he didn’t literally say, ‘we have the software.’”
It is extremely clear that Tesla is either intentionally lying about their self-driving capability or have lied to themselves to the extent that they actually believe their own bullshit.
The current FSD beta test is the best that's available on a car you can buy. However the instructions say "be ready to take over at any time", so it's obviously level 2 currently
Also:
> Wonder what they mean by "basic functionality"
Probably whatever definition they want to make up in hindsight so Musk fanboys will be able to twist things around to make it look he was technically right all along.
Do you know anybody who do such a thing?
No one has shown full level 5 self-driving yet, so Tesla should never have said "we have the hardware it takes."
We don't even really know it's possible yet.
Tesla is aiming for better than humans.
That said, I don't think self-driving system has come close to "better than human" yet, so my point still stands.
Some may do better in limited circumstances, but nothing even comes close to handling the range of weather and weird roadway conditions that humans can.
This by no means means that they are not attempting to develop a Level 5 system and it also doesn't mean eventually they call it FSD.
When you buy it they are very clear on what features are included and what features are not. And they say what features will be added soon. Promising more updates as features come online.
This is all clearly stated when you buy the car.
Previous discussions:
Tesla Admits Current ‘Full Self-Driving Beta’ Will Always Be Level 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26390834 - March 2021 (186 comments)
Tesla Admits Current ‘Full Self-Driving Beta’ Will Always Be a Level 2 System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26533489 - March 2021 (36 comments)
Tesla has discovered they can bypass this because "Full Self Driving Beta" is not a regulated term and it sells like hot-cakes to consumers. I am sure other companies are/will be following suit. No one wants to stamp an official "LEVEL 3/4/5 CERTIFIED" sticker on the official sales sheet.
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.roadandtrack.com/news/amp35... [2] https://mobile.twitter.com/Benshooter/status/133387343433455...
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that we are 10-30 years away from level 5! Level 2 is barely possible and only half-assed if you are in an ideal environment like a "planned city in AZ". Absolutely NO existing self-driving tech could ever handle:
* Snow * Heavy rain * Country Roads * Dirt Roads * etc.
Humans sometimes have problems with these!
Elon’s gamesmanship to maintain access to capital so he can lengthen the runaway is a tactic, but again, you have to deliver and this can only go on for so long.
Based on what exactly? They have fast growing revenue and growing operation income, good margin, huge new investments and an exiting product product pipeline with 100000s of per-orders.
What exactly outside of getting FSD to Level 5 have they failed to do?
> Elon’s gamesmanship to maintain access to capital so he can lengthen the runaway is a tactic, but again, you have to deliver and this can only go on for so long.
They have 20+ billion of cash and the have lots of free cash flow as well.
Your statement seems totally divorced from reality of the balance sheet.
Some acquaintances in the industry have said for years that Tesla is in the bottom of the self driving competitors.
While Tesla has a wealth of data, Google has thrown countless PhDs at the problem for over a decade and is not anywhere close to level 5.
Wrong. He didn't say that about self driving, he said that about overall use of AI.
> Some acquaintances in the industry have said for years that Tesla is in the bottom of the self driving competitors.
Yeah, because people form the industry have been so great at predicting what Musk companies will achieve.
Nobody knows how to do generalized self driving and nobody knows how to get there. Its pure value judgments about the right process.
I agree the responsibility for clarity is on their marketing to fix, but I’m also saying that if you read the fine print on the site while configuring your purchase it’s pretty clear what FSD is and isn’t.
> Tesla 'very close' to level 5 autonomous driving technology - Musk says [0]
> Level 5 Self Driving Cars this year (2020) [1]
Now, it is admitted that it is Level 2. So its not 'Full Self-Driving' as promised.
When will the Elon fanatics stop listening to his bullsh*t?
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autonomous-idUSKBN2...
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/07/09/elon-mu...
Doesn't the two links refer to the same statement by Musk?
Though it will require some serious material much better than e.g. the picture in this article: https://www.dxc.technology/analytics/insights/146175-racing_...
The current problem is that Tesla is marketing Level 2 capability as if it is Level 4 or 5.
I’m no Elon fan, but Tesla FSD is still a generation ahead of anything else available on the market. GM (SuperCruise) and Ford (BlueCruise) make good attempts, but it’s not near FSD quality. Plenty of YouTube videos (@EVDave) out there that compare them against even Tesla basic AutoPilot. Super/BlueCruise are fine for pre-mapped straight line highways, but for the other 90% of the roads out there, Tesla AutoPilot can traverse most of them.
(https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sel...)
Also, your question refers to Waymo in the past tense, but not sure if you meant it that way. Waymo still is building and shipping and driving, AFAIK.
Quoting from the gp: "in our defined operational conditions."
The operational conditions (weather, location) are probably way too limited
E.g. sudden dust storm on the highway in Germany where dust and/or sand storms on itself are a rarity (also this is something humans are bad at coping with themself, as given example caused a accident with multiple dead people).
Less unusual but still realistic example: Sudden extreme heavy rain (I had that once, the car I was driving in was old needed new windows and I wasn't able to see anything at all. The only reason I didn't cause a crash is because I knew the road I was driving on very very well). Or sudden fog.
Humans just tend to be better at handling such potential fatal unexpected situations, e.g. because they have a good memory of the road and contextual thinking in ways which are hard to explicitly train a robot in.
So they kinda need to find ways to still handle things well in such situations and "just stopping" isn't an option as this might endanger people around you (and yourself).
Tesla FSD isn't Level 4/5 because they're skipping level 4, at least they're trying to. Honestly the level system is pretty stupid. The gap between 4 and 5 can be tiny or it can be huge, depending entirely on what you decide to constrain your vehicle to.
I went looking hard for Waymo-in-extremis kind of stuff, and it just doesn't seem to be there. I think a lot of the argument here is being confounded by the vapor problem.
Full disclosure: I pulled the trigger a few weeks ago and am awaiting delivery of a Model Y with FSD. Two levels in the hand are worth four in the bush.
> Honestly the level system is pretty stupid
Indeed, the SAE Autonomy classification scheme is the OSI Network Layer paradigm of our age. People were sure TCP/IP was going to fail for not being OSI-compliant.
[1] Edit: this is a great example from urban SF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_zTZjCCoxo&t=0s The car manages narrow lanes, double parked cars, a ton of pedestrians, hilltop crossings with poor visibility, scooters in the lane, unprotected left turns, etc... It looks great in this particular video. And I can't find anything with a Waymo car dealing with similar environments, just big flat suburbs.
Sorry, I've been over Tesla for a while now. Huge respect for the engineers, but their hypeman isn't doing them any favours at this stage in their lifecycle.
Massive respect to the company for altering and accelerating the auto markets move to EV's but I wouldn't buy a Tesla just on brand alone.
The Ioniq 5 is currently the top of my list and if I was in the market for a model S or X, I'd instead be looking at Lucid Air. I'm glad realistic alternatives are finally getting there.
Not interested in FSD at all. I won't be using my car as a Robotaxi and I actually enjoy driving. Lane assist is enough for me.
Anyway, n=1
Ioniq looks good but doesn't seem very roomy in the back, so kids+dog+luggage won't fit.
Interestingly in some podcast Franz von Holzhausen (the guy responsible for Teslas design) mentioned that he was tired of always designing concept cars and never releasing them before he went to work at Tesla.
Probably because 90% of a concept car is one-off (and that’s for the rare cases where it actually is a whole car, and not a shell), and re-tooling to create it (not to mention addding all the usual safety features) would make the mass production car cost hundreds of thousands.
Because it builds media attention to the potential related production development; there’s usually particular features that are envisioned being for future production.
> As a consumer seeing them at this point is just aggravating
Consumers aren’t really the target audience, their exposure is more of a side-effect.
VW.ID Buzz looks pretty bad@ss, to be honest. But if we're going down that route, I'd be sending up some prayers for a VW.ID Beetle. I can dream.
No wonder those in the market are confused as to what these cars are actually capable of.
0: last video on https://www.volkswagen-vans.co.uk/en/electric-vans/id-buzz.h...
Does lane assist work at night when its raining or snowing ? I dont think I have ever needed lane assist during daytime however I find driving at night in snow or rain to be very stressful.
Like "has this lane been plowed" ? And "has the plow actually followed the lane or gone in the middle of the lanes" .
I wonder what self driving cars will make of situations like this?
Some which supposedly Tesla had the best of.
Until people ran tests on it and realized it's much worse then some much less hi-tech solutions. (And it wasn't just one group which ran similar tests and came to the same result).
So I'm always very careful when Tesla (or other Car manufacturers) promise that "their tech works the best"/"very good" until I have seen some reasonable independent tests.
Sure, it doesn't work in heavy snow, but I also wouldn't trust it in heavy snow either. I appreciate that my car doesn't provide false confidence in dangerous conditions.
My other vehicle lacks any of the modern radar features, and the one time I did the same drive with that car was... surprisingly more stressful.
I live in a traffic jam prone area, and being able to not worry about stop and go traffic takes all the stress out of driving.
(Kia understates the capabilities of their ADAS a lot, probably so people don't abuse it, but it will pretty much drive itself as long as your hands rest on the wheel.)
The idea is that when paving a road, mix a whole lot of passive RFID tags into the paving material. By a whole lot, I mean that every square meter of road should have a dozen or two tags. The tag IDs do not have to recorded in advance, and there is no need for any systematic ID assignment. Just order a bazillion tags with random IDs and dump 'em into the road.
Then afterwards you send vehicles over the road that have readers than can gather data to make a database of what tags are in what lanes of what roads, and where. The where part just needs to be the distance along the road from some reference point.
That data gathering can be done by paying commercial vehicles to install and use the readers.
The idea was to then make the data available to the general public. You could then make car navigation systems (remember, this was pre-GPS) that could read the tags in the road, consult the database, and figure out that they are on road X and they are Y meters from the reference point of that road.
You could also continue to pay commercial vehicles to gather and report data. By comparing that data with previous data, you might be able to detect damage to the road. For example, if a pothole develops, that should lead to a loss of some tags, which should show up in the data.
You could generalize your idea to a more normal case of 'mix balls of {METAL/MATERIAL} into pavement and equip cars with sensors'
Clever.
These automations are extremely useful to relieve long and easy drives. Not to handle difficult conditions better than a concentrated driver.
Same. We used to have 2 cars, we ditched one early on in the pandemic and haven't missed it. Now we just have a small Toyota Aygo which barely fits a stroller for the kid.
I'm trying to postpone the need to buy a car as long as I can to have more electric options.
We just bought an electric cargo bike with a kids seat and that has been great too so far.
It has replaced 95% of car trips, even giant grocery runs. The bay is lucky to have 3+ bike boulevards running parallel to major roads.
Citymapper has been an awesome app to find more bike friendly routes that Google would never surface
It's easy to forget that building a concept car or small quantities is dramatically easier than mass producing something that's affordable to the masses.
I own a model 3 and I certainly wasn't dumb enough to pay the 10K for the FSD. That being said I'm not a fan of the other electric cars because the charging infrastructure is garbage. Whenever I stop at a non Tesla charging station I have a very high probability of having to try two or three different plugs before I can get remotely decent current. Electrify America is the network VW was forced to fund after the diesel emission scandal and it's pretty bad. ChargePoint is the other one and they're not very good either.
Definitely don't think the build quality on Tesla's is what it should be and I look forward to the factory in Texas coming out to solve that because Fremont is not going to cut it.
That being said these other cars might be better for the price but good luck charging them.
I assume it’s because their CEO/CTO was the chief engineer for the Tesla Model S. So, not only has he done it before, he presumably has some lessons learned on how to do things better the second time around. Agreed, that’s no guarantee though.
How does a factory being in Texas change build quality in a Tesla run environment? (Legitimate question, I know very little about this)
Not that I expect the Austin factory to solve all their fit and finish issues, but I am delaying my Model Y purchase till it comes online.
As a result, meaningful changes or innovations seem to be limited to the design/opening of new factories.
Change the name in that statement from Lucid to Tesla and go back in time. People gave Tesla a chance at the beginning. And that's why you're driving a model 3 today.
I'm not in the market for a Lucid or a Tesla, but I think the Air is far more beautiful than the S, and with decent specs, and I would definitely choose the Air.
But that's an early adopter thing, I guess. Luckily there are enough early adopters around so you don't have to worry about the mass-producing issue.
Competitors are catching up, but slowly. I'd say Tesla still has 3-5 years of market dominance where I live due to superchargers.
Yes I'm pulling numbers out of my ass here, so please don't ask for sources
I disagree with that, their equity is doing quite nicely and without the hype I doubt it would've been possible to this extent.
They've got a long ways to go on the manufacturing side of things and at best look like they're 2-4 years behind where Tesla is today.
Disclosure: Don't hold stock in either or anything in EV space.
The software/FSD capabilities aren't good reasons to get one. Further, I think their current price tag of 10k is absolutely ridiculous.
That said, if you are in a nation with good EV charging stations, plan on just using the car as a commuter, or if the buildout of current charging stations are good enough then I don't see a reason to pick a tesla over anything else on the market.
I say all this as a current owner of a 2018 model 3 with FSD.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
He's popular because people buy into his bullshit 100% instead of having a measured approach to a guy whose reeeeally into self promotion.
It is unquestionable at this point that a very large number of rules have been broken.
Just on the securities fraud: Musk has committed securities fraud multiple times and has been let off the hook (if anyone else did the 420 thing, they would have been barred for life for being a public company CEO...it was appalling). The same rules apply to everyone, whether you are a self-aggrandizing billionaire or not.
Multiple consumer law violations. Multiple instances of securities fraud. None of this is legal.
Also, it is possible to raise money without lying. Musk didn't raise money on the basis of these lies. He raised money initially with no claims about FSD. And the money he has subsequently got came from China.
April 2019 - Tesla Autonomy Investor Day - Musk makes various claims of your Tesla turning into a profit center via "robotaxis", million robotaxis on road in 2020. "In two years Tesla will be making cars with no steering wheels or pedals." https://ir.teslamotors.com/events/event-details/tesla-autono...
May 2019 - Tesla Looks to Raise as Much as $2.3 Billion Through a Bond and Stock Sale https://www.wsj.com/articles/tesla-looks-to-raise-as-much-as...
"Tesla Autonomy Investor Day"...
He’s lying on purpose, because he knows he immune from any consequences. And he’s right - those lies propelled him to be one of the richest people in the world.
When Elon stops making such statements? And that will only happen when he faces the consequences from regulators for doling out unrealistic promises and claims.
When someone else will sell us a car.
I literally just ordered a model Y, with the $10k FSD package. Would I have bought something else if I could get it? Maybe. But this is here, and I can get it. Look, the product as it exists today is real and has value. Maybe you're not exited by it, but I am. And I can buy it. And I just did.
I'm old enough to remember when "make something people want" wasn't considered "bullshit" on this site.
Exactly what am I not getting? This really seems like a strawman kind of thing. You're inventing a product and a market that don't correspond to real cars or consumers, and then arguing about what those consumers "really" wanted or what the car was "supposed" to do, and not what they actually want or what the hardware actually does.
I don't see how that's helpful to anyone other than an investor short on TSLA. The way to prove that this is a garbage product, again, is to make a better one.
If you know that what you're paying for is L2 then all good, enjoy your new car :)
The problem people have is the misleading lies, like L5 being right in the corner, I'm pretty sure many fell for it.
Full Self-Driving Capability
* Navigate on Autopilot
* Auto Lane Change
* Autopark
* Summon
* Full Self-Driving Computer
* Traffic Light and Stop Sign Control
Coming later this year
* Autosteer on city streets
The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and
do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these
features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human
drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as
regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As
these self-driving features evolve, your car will be continuously
upgraded through over-the-air software updates.> The FSD package as it exists gets you autonomy on highways already
did you say that before you had the chance to read that text?
Maybe... you just want something different? Why are you so angry about a product you aren't buying.
As for assuming good faith, giving all Elon Musk's actions and statements, it is hard to assume it at this point.
People don't need to "learn" how to operate semi-autonomous vehicles that have insufficient safety features. Tesla's autonomy does not train drivers to be attentive. In accident situations, a driver who's been lulled into complacency has no chance to respond appropriately.
Every other company took a more conservative approach to self-driving. Only Tesla barrels forward, head in the sand, ignoring all standards, like being able to exit the vehicle in an accident without needing to find the latch behind the speaker cover. A random passenger would not know this. Tesla breaks things that were not broken and claims they are innovative solutions, meanwhile wasting public investment money.
> The FSD package as it exists gets you autonomy on highways already.
This is incorrect. It's a level 2 driver-assist feature no matter what road or surface you're driving on. This means keeping both hands on the wheel and paying full attention to driving 100% of the time.
Also level 1 is driver assistance. Level 2 would be “partial automation”, see http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/12/sae-levels-driving...
When you think about it, level 5 is the only level that should be described as autonomous. For all we know, level 5 could require strong AI to achieve. My guess is that the gap between levels 4 and 5 is much wider than most of us are assuming.
All because you apparently can't handle the fact that Tesla's $10k FSD package actually provides value to consumers?
I mean, be real: I almost certainly know more about this vehicle's capabilities than you do, and I assure you that I am more expert on my own purchasing logic.
I am using the word autonomous as defined by the SAE levels, which are described as “levels of autonomy”. You are yak shaving and contorting the words to your liking.
Also tesla is level 3, not level 2. It also doesn’t require hands on wheel 100% of the time, although they say it requires this
Another poster above says they were smart for not purchasing FSD,
Tesla does see a market in the Americas, so they actually sell cars here. That gives them a big leg up, even among people who don't like them.
We have, and love, our Chevrolet Bolt. In addition to the Bolt, Kia, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi, Jaguar, Polestar (Volvo), and more all have electric vehicles, all available in the US.
Charge $10k for pixie dust. Even for SV, this is an unbelievable abuse of consumers.
It's more of a "the other options suck" kind of thing with Tesla, no?
> Would I have bought something else if I could get it? Maybe.
"Autonomous driving is right around the corner" my ass.
It means that can mostly drive itself but the driver still has to be alert and ready to take over at a moments notice. Which is the worst off all worlds, and I believe all manufacturers have said they will skip level 3 in their offerings.