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Comment by buffington | Hacker News Reader

I think one of Tesla's biggest problems with any of their autonomous systems is the names they give those systems. They confuse regulators, reporters, and consumers.

Most reporters seem to confuse "autopilot" with "full self driving" or vice versa. It's not uncommon to see sentences like "Autopilot, a feature that costs $10k, is still in beta."

Autopilot is cruise control that keeps you within a lane when it can. That's it. Other cars have it, and they're equally effective or ineffective.

Full self driving, aside from being terrifying, does it all, and I suspect it's usually what regulators and reporters mean when they say "Autopilot."

I think if Tesla had used "lane aware cruise control" as the name for "Autopilot", it'd have helped reduce the number of times people confuse the two.

Frankly, as an owner of a Tesla that has both features, I wouldn't mind at all if both were pulled from the software. FSD is absolutely terrifying. I'd rather let my teenage son drive me than have FSD do it. Autopilot feels like a novelty. Given how frequently the car yells at you when you're not holding the wheel, it's hardly better than simple cruise control.

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It doesn't help that Tesla's own marketing confuses the two features. For example, their marketing material for Autopilot sure sounds like it's describing a feature called "Full Self-Driving"[1]:

> The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.

That very same embedded video from Tesla has the title "Autopilot Full Self-Driving Hardware"[2], as well, further confusing the two.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/videos/autopilot-self-driving-hardware...

[2] https://vimeo.com/192179727?embedded=true&source=vimeo_logo&...

To me it seems that Teslas goal was to get to ”full self driving” by now.

If Musks moonshot had been successfull, we would not be having this discussion now.

But it was not, and now Tesla is in trouble because they can’t deliver what people think they were promised.

> they can’t deliver what people think they were promised. [emphasis mine]

Tesla isn't delivering what people not only were promised, but were actually sold for real money.

Musk very explicitly claimed in consumer shows that FSD would allow your Tesla not just to safely drive you around, but allow you to use it as a robotaxi, making money for you while you're at your own job.

What a great idea. When I buy a $70,000 car, I would like to use it as a robotaxi so that random people can use it as a bathroom or a diaper changing station, and test the sharpness of their EDC knives on the seats. Perhaps Elon can add some AI feature that detects vandalism and responds with a bleating noise.

I would find this very rewarding and lucrative.

Well, according to his pitch [0], in 3 years it will be financially irresponsible to buy something that doesn't make its value back like this.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8TLsdpYsow

> people think they were promised

When so many people "think" they were promised something then the more likely explanation is that the promises were misleading.

I think this was Tesla's strategy and it was a winning one too. Tesla got a lot of cash from that promise, helping it be the company it is now. But the strategy is also a victim of its own success because there comes a point to deliver on the promise and you can only delay that by doubling up on the promise for so long. Then so many people start asking questions at the same time it's like a bank run. The strategy goes bankrupt unless it can actually deliver.

He funded another team to work on the same problem many teams had been working on for a long time, and he wasn't bringing anything significantly new to the mix. Maybe that qualifies as a moonshot but it's not what I normally think of for the positive connotations of the word. Tesla should have had a better handle on timescale.

> Given how frequently the car yells at you when you're not holding the wheel, it's hardly better than simple cruise control.

I tried that in a Hyundai Sonata traveling at highway speeds. The car stayed in the lane, turning the wheel on its own as it was supposed to. My hands were off the wheel, but at no point did I feel comfortable enough to look elsewhere, or move my hands further than a couple of inches away from the wheel. It's completely pointless to me, and actually worse than that, it gives me one more thing to worry about. I suppose if all of the vehicles were 100% autonomous, and the entire highway infrastructure was set up with that expectation, I could go ahead and fully relax while the car drives itself completely. But this 10% automation is like an uncanny valley. Well, valley of terror is more like it.

Cruise control on the other hand seems fine, because my foot is basically in the same position with or without it. The automation just saves me from having to modulate the thing with my foot, and it's not making changes that have very fast, significant consequences.

> Cruise control on the other hand seems fine, because my foot is basically in the same position with or without it. The automation just saves me from having to modulate the thing with my foot, and it's not making changes that have very fast, significant consequences.

Maybe I am just living in the past with my 2007 Toyota Camry but cars have come a long way in just fifteen years. Just look at adaptive cruise control or lane assist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smf1uop7HoY

Maybe I am just in awe because I don't own a new car and don't feel the pain of things like replacing a broken windshield (holy smokes these new things are expensive to calibrate) but it is nice when these things work. However, when I drive someone else's new car I can totally see myself going fora new car if I could somehow justify it financially.

>because I don't own a new car and don't feel the pain of things like replacing a broken windshield

I’m having my Land Rovers windshield (with heated filaments and collision avoidance) replaced in a week. It’s a $50 deductible and they said a $50 calibration charge, but that wasn’t on the final bill. Given that these windshields are $500-$1500, I’m pretty happy with the cost.

My insurance company replaced a broken windshield on my Volvo, and per policy the glass company used some cheap third-party garbage. The adaptive cruise control and lane assist kept erroring out. After three separate attempts to calibrate it, eventually the dealership said that the third party glass was distorting the image that the cameras were capturing so much that it was impossible to calibrate correctly. We had to get the windshield replaced again using the OEM part, and the glass company is trying to force us to pay the deductible again.

Just a word of warning about how this can go.

I’ve read a bit about that. I almost spent the time to get my insurance company to prefer OEM glass, but then I noticed that the 3rd party provider is actually the same manufacturer as my current OEM glass (Fuyao, if anyone is curious) not sure how it’ll all go.

That's weird. If strong distortion was the problem it should be very obvious and it should cause problems well beyond the camera.

Both of my Range Rovers need the windscreens replaced because the heating elements have failed. It's about a £75 excess, but it's kind of questionable whether it's worth it for a 25-year-old vehicle. You still need to scrape the ice off the side windows ;-)

> because my foot is basically in the same position with or without it.

Do you think that's true in general? I've never left my foot hovering over the pedals, back to when cruise control first became popular. I rest my foot fully on the floor, which is much more comfortable, but requires that I move my foot to apply either the brake or the accelerator.

I didn't mean to imply it's hovering. I'll usually have it close by on the floor. But it's where it would be even if the car were not running.

That's confusing.

It'd be nice if there was a thing to lean your foot on near the brake pedal.

This is a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_pedal

The muscle memory for braking is all it matters, if you used to food on floor it works well enough, but to me if I don't have the foot on the gas pedal I take longer to find the brake pedal

I have a car with lanekeeping and distance-keeping (Mercedes) and it is extremely nice for long distances on U.S. interstates. After many hours of driving, I feel much less fatigued, and more able to keep up "command" tasks like looking ahead and scanning mirrors, compared to no lane assist. I can't recall a single time when it made a dangerous move, either; it's been extremely good at following lane markings even in difficult conditions like driving into the sun, with patchy concrete. I've been really impressed.

I have a Volvo and I can confirm this exact experience. After an 8 hour drive I feel totally fine.

I’ll add it makes the drive much safer, on occasion it’s slammed the brakes before I can react. Both of us together is much better than just one of us.

Same. Did a 12 hour drive across Europe in a Volvo XC60 with the PilotAssist system and I felt fine. In my previous cars I know I'd be absolutely shattered - in the Volvo with this system the mental load was massively reduced.

I had a full kitted rental with level 2 systems and it was the same for me. After a long day at a client I drove three hours to get home and I got there almost more rested than I started

Also rental for 2 weeks of a petrol ionic. Just feel less tired when the car keep the distance and lane. A bit nervous when the car turned for you. But by and large ok.

I have generally the same feeling in the Tesla. It's not full self driving by any means but it's nice. The only thing is a lot of other drivers on the road are not so good at staying in their lane and the Tesla will generally not react at all unless the violation is egregious, instead plowing forward at full speed down dead center of the lane. Often the result is just fine, it asserts your dominance and snaps the other driver back into their lane. But it's not how I drive and it's nerve rattling at times.

I agree with what you say, but part of the reason Tesla is even around to have these problems is Musk's dubious talents as a relentless hype man. Musk himself says they were at the brink of bankruptcy at least twice: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-bankruptcy-m...

Personally, I think if we had better laws Musk would be looking at charges of criminal negligence for encouraging people to think they have things like actual "autopilot" and "full self driving". But as it is, he lied his way to the top of the world's richest list. So Tesla's problems here are just the consequences of his actions.

He strikes me more as a physicist arguing from first principles. Once you have drive-by-wire and a sensor array, self-driving is a pure software problem. You should be able to get 99% of the way there in simulation with a team of 4 really smart coders and an endless supply of Redbull and a year, tops. Also, the world's energy problems are trivial when you consider how cheap and efficient solar power is, and how little surface area is required. Clean water is just a matter of filtration at best or desalination at worst, which just devolves into an energy problem. And so on.

I do it myself sometimes, but at least I recognize how annoying and inaccurate it is. It is kind of nice to have someone arguing these positions and even better to act on them, and I for one wish that these analyses held (the world would be a better place if they did). But the real world just doesn't care about your first principles, and even simple ideas present obstacles you never imagined. Musk knows this, but willfully leaves it out during his pep talks, which is dishonest. But sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself, which is quite chilling considering the amount of real power he's amassed (being able to launch large things into space is about as real as real power gets.)

> You should be able to get 99% of the way there in simulation with a team of 4 really smart coders and an endless supply of Redbull and a year, tops.

I can say this about a lot of things, but man, it scares me that there’s people in the world who are crazy enough to think that’s true. Even Elon Musk isn’t that delusional.

Once you have drive-by-wire and a sensor array, self-driving is a pure software problem.

This is correct, but only if you have the right drive-by-wire and sensor array tech. Essentially what you're saying is "Once you solve the hardware problem the rest is just software" which isn't particularly insightful.

What happens if Tesla can't solve the software problem because the sensors aren't providing the necessary data?

add more inaccurate sensors and do corrections in software? We have photos of black holes out of almost a pure noise, surely it is possible to build self driving car with current gen of hardware.

add more inaccurate sensors

The point here is that Tesla have already sold the $10k FSD sensor pack to people and told them that one day in the future a software update will provide FSD, with no additional sensors necessary. Adding more sensors is not an option (well, maybe Tesla will do that for people who bought the upgrade, but it seems unlikely they'd do that for free.)

One part of the argument you are missing is that FSD requires real-time decision making as well, so when complexity goes up with a larger number of inaccurate sensors that can become an issue. No one cares if getting a picture of a black hole from noisy data takes one year to process, the same is not true for self driving.

>what you're saying .. which isn't particularly insightful.

Which was my point. I'm intentionally making silly arguments that are valid from first principles, but clearly wrong in the real world. I'm sorry that wasn't obvious because I endeavored to make it so.

Yeah, because entire armies of top-class engineers and researchers are clearly less competent than “4 really smart coders with Redbull”. Jfc.

In case anyone else was wondering: a) jfc => jesus fucking christ, and b) you missed the point.

ah sorry, missed the sarcasm in your original post. I should have read more closely.

> Once you have drive-by-wire and a sensor array, self-driving is a pure software problem.

This argument proves a little too much. Even if we assume that the sensors are equivalent to whatever input stream humans are working with, reduction of the problem to ”software eng” doesn’t mean it is tractable in our lifetime. Compare: ”Once you remove the requirement that employees work from the office, building a software engineer is a pure software problem.”

>Once you remove the requirement that employees work from the office, building a software engineer is a pure software problem

Hey, that's a good point!

To others commenting on the comment above: read the entire comment, the first paragraph is a satire on the trivialization Musk and others often do of complex subjects.

Thanks for saying that. But the lesson for me, or anyone making points like this, is that you can never be too explicit. Intricate constructions are dangerous on the internet. I like them but I have to admit they function something like a trap that readers can fall into. It's tempting to blame them for not understanding, but it's really on me. At the very least I should have put a warning label at the bottom.

> pure software problem

Rather a missing algorithm.

Software can no doubt be capable of being written to implement the alg... but no one has a good enough alg or even knows if one can exist or can exist with tesla's limited sensors.

> self-driving is a pure software problem. You should be able to get 99% of the way there in simulation with a team of 4 really smart coders and an endless supply of Redbull and a year, tops.

Hyperloop was a great example of a project that made no sence from first principles, yet he pushed it anyway. It makes no sence because it's capacity, passengers it can move per hour, is like 2% of a high-speed train line. Additionally he came up with some pure fantasy cost estimates where the whole things cost less to build than a cycle path would, budgeted $0 for land aquisition, compacting or earth-works.

Re software problem:

Human genome is now digital too now, so figuring out immortality is a pure software problem.

Making money on the stock market is a pure software problem.

Simulating a concious mind is a software problem.

> I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself

Maybe tha's what happens when you fire agressively anyone who disagrees and end up surrounded by yes-men

> But sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself

That is one of the best ways to lie. If you stop caring whether things are true, it can be much easier to sound like you believe whatever thing is most useful in the moment. And think of all the brain cycles you can save by not checking in with thinks like external reality or consistency with one's past statements.

Agree. Regarding so called auto-pilot/full-self-driving, Tesla was at best misleading, if not deceiving. So far seems not much we can do about it.

It's pretty bad that Musk was asking people to pre-pay for the FSD feature years before it's even close to finished - with promises like "it's $5000 if you buy it now, or $10000 if you buy it when it's done."

Even worse, some people are falling for this scam.

>>Personally, I think if we had better laws Musk would be looking at charges of criminal negligence for encouraging people to think they have things like actual "autopilot" and "full self driving". But as it is, he lied his way to the top of the world's richest list. So Tesla's problems here are just the consequences of his actions.

Your idea of better laws would mean no Tesla and no SpaceX.

Tesla has replaced two million gasoline cars with electric cars, and given its current growth rate, and Musk's long standing plan to release progressively more affordable cars, this number will likely be massively larger in a few years.

Beyond Tesla's own sales, its success has sparked massive investment by other carmakers to push their electric vehicle manufacturing timetables forward. All told, Tesla has had a massive impact in pushing the world to replace gasoline vehicles with electric ones.

SpaceX, for its part, is responsible for reducing the cost of launching material to orbit ten fold, with another 100 fold reduction possible with StarShip. The spike at the end of this graph is almost solely due to SpaceX:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...

I see laws that prevent the emergence and flourishing of Tesla and SpaceX as far worse than current laws.

Your line of reasoning depends on a strawman: that Tesla could not have achieved this much if Musk had called it Cruise control and lane assist.

Not quite - GP cites the spectre of Tesla nearly going bust to imply that Musk helped achieve the opposite (extremely healthy company) via dubious, ideally criminal means. It's not entirely based on that, but the implication is there.

Put simply, if Musk only made one controversial call, this comment thread wouldn't exist. The many controversial calls cannot be easily disentangled.

Do really healthy companies often have their stock price fall by half?

Personally, I think that Tesla is not particularly healthy, and that its future is grim as mainstream car manufacturers get in on the EV action. Tesla is not particularly well regarded by Consumer Reports. Of the 16 EV cars with current rankings, Tesla's models are at spots 4, 10, 11, and 16, with low reliability scores. [1]

Tesla does have a big slice of the US EV market, but that's only 3% of the total market. It's perfectly plausible that Tesla's lead among tech enthusiasts, always a small fraction of a market [2], won't translate into mainstream acceptance, and that Tesla will enter a death spiral where their relatively low volumes mean they won't be able to keep up with the major car manufacturers. Their eventual fate could be what happened to so many promising early manufacturers of internal combustion cars: they become brands owned by bigger car companies. [3]

So personally, I think Musk lies did create a window of opportunity for him, but that as with so many liars, he sowed the seeds of Tesla's destruction with the same lies that enabled initial success.

[1] https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/types/new/hybrids-evs/r...

[2] see the first graph here: https://thinkinsights.net/strategy/crossing-the-chasm/

[3] https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/planes-trains-and-...

Apple are down 26% ytd. It wouldn’t be unheard of in this market. What should hopefully be clear is that stocks such as Tesla are not particularly correlated to the fundamentals of the company, there are whole-economy effects driving price rises and drops.

What I see in Tesla: - extremely profitable car manufacturing. industry beating profits per car driven by cheaper BOM than legacy manufacturers, in large part due to innovation. margin of 30.5%. - Manufacturing limited - huge wait list despite accelerating production (Q1 2022 best quarter ever, 68% increase yoy). - huge investments in manufacturing across the supply chain starting to pay off. - for the first time, manufacturing investments that can rival premium legacies. With the factories in Berlin and Texas coming online, it’s believable that Tesla has capacity to produce in excess of a manufacturer like BMW. - very high purchaser satisfaction (the product is good). - large overall profit - already beating most in the industry.

I'm no finance expert, but Tesla being down twice as much as Apple is not what I'd call a positive sign.

We'll see how Telsa's finances go once competition heats up. A major source of profit for them is selling emissions credits to other companies. Which a) undercuts Tesla's claims to eco-goodness, and b) will surely decline as others EV sales pick up. We'll also see how much that profit is affected by recalls and lawsuits.

In many cases, high customer satisfaction is indicative of a good future, but I'm not sure that's the case here. One, their satisfaction is in the same range as a lot of car companies, including BMW and Honda [1], so it's not a competitive advantage. And two, their current user base is a technophile, early-adopter niche. It's not clear that Tesla can cross Moore's Chasm and serve a mass audience that doesn't care who Musk is.

I look forward to seeing how it turns out. But given the way Musk is flaming out in his attempts to buy Twitter, his success is clearly not guaranteed. And that's before we account for him being distracted by trying to run 3 big companies at once.

[1] https://www.theacsi.org/news-and-resources/press-releases/20...

> replaced two million gasoline cars with electric cars

What does the power method to the wheels have to do with self-driving? Tesla fan bois.

> Your idea of better laws would mean no Tesla and no SpaceX.

Tesla, SpaceX, and Elon Musk are not cool/impressive any more.

And with every tweet, Elon becomes less respected by the public.

It’s telling when you see this sentiment on Tesla Motors Club, r/SpaceX and r/TeslaMotors.

Elon was on a roll. But he royally fucked up the past 2 years.

It’s fascinating how quickly people will suddenly decide apolitical things you are associated with are “not cool/impressive” when you start expressing political opinions they disagree with.

You're talking about Musk becoming open about his backing for an authoritarian, cult-of-personality party? People have been plenty critical about Musk well before that, and about most of the same points.

Honestly, I think the causal arrow goes the other way. Musk has beclowned himself with the way he handled the Twitter deal, and Tesla's stock price has dropped accordingly. So a lot of the noise he has made since then can be seen as attempts to distract people with politics so they don't notice how his impressiveness is declining. This article makes a good case for that: https://twitter.com/BITech/status/1534939630809800706

>>You're talking about Musk becoming open about his backing for an authoritarian, cult-of-personality party?

Musk doesn't have any good alternatives, unfortunately. He's supposed to back the Democratic Party, that relies on a long-tradition of union-backed left-wing violence to intimidate the opposition? [1] The party that fanned the flames of 500+ riots in the summer of 2020, leading to dozens being killed and billions of dollars worth of people's livelihoods going up in flames?

The party that is aggressively moving toward authoritarianism, and trying to silence/cancel any one who speaks out about it, like Glenn Greenwald? [2]

The party of lawyers [3], who early on pushed aggressively for CCP-style lockdowns and vaccine mandates [4]?

The party fully backed by elite anti-Free-Speech movements? [5]

Even when the GOP were under Trump, the Democrats weren't clearly the more moral choice.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

[2] https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1450487818766143492

[3] https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/industries

[4] https://twitter.com/NYSBA/status/1326149426063224832

[5] https://youtu.be/54zIUalrCyA

Economy less based on lies and more based on truth would be win for everyone. The competitive market would be much better.

Are you saying that bold lying and criminal negligence were also necessary for SpaceX to succeed? I wasn't aware of that, but I'm happy to take your word for it.

> Your idea of better laws would mean no Tesla and no SpaceX.

Elon is not the only one that needs to be held accountable -> big oil has literally prosecuted and killed people, just look at what they've done to Steven Donziger.

If we actually enforced these laws, maybe we would have electric cars even earlier, and indeed, there maybe wouldn't be Tesla.

> Tesla has replaced two million gasoline cars with electric cars

Laws don't work this way - If I save someone's life today that does not give me a voucher to murder someone tomorrow.

>>If we actually enforced these laws, maybe we would have electric cars even earlier, and indeed, there maybe wouldn't be Tesla.

This is just utopianism.

>>Laws don't work this way

I wasn't saying they do. I was explaining the consequences of those "better laws" existing. In truth, the laws being sought by the OP would further undermine the very foundations of a liberal society, with contract liberty, to replace it with social control by an officialdom made up of unionized government bureaucrats with next to zero accountability, micromanaging the actions of others based on an elitist "government knows best" philosophy.

"he lied his way to the top of the world's richest list" ... why do midwits always chose AP thread to gather .... i guess you dont need to start a rocket company an electric car company or try to create a fintech company in 1999 ... why work 100 hr weeks when you can just "lie" .... if biden goes ahead with this he will only shoot the foot of his supporter's like GM ( half of its current value is tied to cruise ) and blow up VC mna pipline for all the lidar based startup's

I am having trouble extracting much sense from this.

I'm not saying lying is all he did. But his major skill is hype. E.g., you cite his fintech history as something apparently good. But he got rich on that because after a merger he ended up as PayPal's CEO for like 6 months, after which he was fired. His major focus, apparently, was shifting away from Unix to Windows. Which even if it were a good idea at the time (it wasn't), it was a terrible priority for a fast-growing company.

People treating that as some sort of sign of business acumen, as opposed to a golden parachute for an arrogant chump correctly getting fired, is a great example of how good a hype man Musk is.

> why work 100 hr weeks when you can just "lie"

Because lying is hard work! Ask any politician, clergyman, lawyer, or nearest big corp C-suite leader. Noone said it was easy.

> tell a main paint is wet, and he has to touch it to be sure. But tell him there's an invisible man in the sky that created the universe, and the will believe you

> i guess you dont need to start a rocket company an electric car company or try to create a fintech company in 1999

Did you mean "start" as in founding a company or "start" as in purchase established existing companies?

> why work 100 hr weeks when you can just "lie"

Well 60 of those hours are playing wario on SNL then playing wario on twitter then strategizing with your PR firm on how to convince people that buying Twitter means you invented social media.

>blow up VC mna pipline for all the lidar based startup's

Better to blow up lidar pipeline VCs than autopiloting battery fires straight into pedestrians

> why do midwits always

Peak Dunning–Kruger effect I suppose.

i cant counter plain crazy . you win i guess . I am not claiming the dude can do no wrong . I am stating the fact that claiming he didn't do any thing new or special is just plain crazy . just try doing any one of the things he has already done .

> just try doing any one of the things he has already done

Alright I'll go find some wealthy South African emerald mine owners and ask them to give birth to me.

Tesla use Autopilot to refer to FSD too, for instance take the below statement from the Tesla website:

> Many of our Autopilot features, like Autosteer, Navigate on Autopilot and Summon, are disabled by default.

So I don’t think it’s fair to say that Autopilot just refers to cruise control - that’s certainly not how Tesla use the word.

Tesla “Autopilot” is otherwise known as the combination of “lane keeping assistance” and “adaptive cruise control” for virtually every other manufacturer. Sure, Tesla’s version is better than many of their competitors, but it still doesn’t make the marketing Tesla insists on doing any less misleading.

real autopilot on an airplane is just keeping it in a straight line and constant speed - much less advanced than tesla's autopilot features. autopilot is notoriously stupid, that's why "operating on autopilot" is a metaphor for the mindset that causes careless mistakes.

as a name, it's a pretty good descriptor for what the system actually does. the misleading part is all the other marketing telsa does around it, and the muddying of the line between autopilot and full self-driving.

Modern autopilots can autoland a plane. The systems have enough limitations that they are usually not used except in extreme low visibility situations.

> real autopilot on an airplane is just keeping it in a straight line and constant speed - much less advanced than tesla's autopilot features

The fact you think this is exactly why Tesla’s naming choice is so dangerous.

Even antiquated general aviation autopilots can intercept headings and change elevation. This is capability that has existed for decades. GA planes are getting the capability to land now. Airliners have been able to land themselves for decades.

Whether "[intercepting] headings and [changing] elevation" is meaningful improvement when the real issue is situational awareness of the automated system (which is obviously the problem with Tesla's system, or any currently existing vehicle automation, really) seems dubious to me. The ability to change altitude instead of just keeping the flight level will not help the automated system avoid an airplane that comes out of nowhere because it's not an environment sensing feature -- it's just a feedback control feature. I strongly suspect that what is controversial about automated car driving systems is not their inability to follow a fixed pre-determined trajectory.

Well flying and driving don’t have much in common so the comparisons break down fast.

Airplanes operate in a completely different environment than cars. Airplanes have radar and radios onboard and rely on ground based information and pre-planning for traffic avoidance. It’s a completely different system.

GM’s vision of self driving cars looked a lot more like the air traffic control system than Tesla’s autopilot.

https://youtu.be/cPOmuvFostY

Absolutely untrue. They can follow a preprogrammed path and can land themselves if the airport has the correct equipment, which most do.

> real autopilot on an airplane is just keeping it in a straight line and constant speed

Not even close. Even light aircraft autopilots can fly a full route from just after takeoff all the way to 200' AGL on final approach. Autopilots in transport category aircraft have full autoland including rollout.

> Tesla “Autopilot” is otherwise known as the combination of “lane keeping assistance” and “adaptive cruise control” for virtually every other manufacturer. Sure, Tesla’s version is better than many of their competitors, but it still doesn’t make the marketing Tesla insists on doing any less misleading.

The Autopilot moniker is also used by Tesla to describe automatic lane changing, automatic start/stop at stop lights and 'summon' - so it's not quite just lane keeping assistance and adaptive cruise control.

> automatic lane changing

Multiple manufacturers have that feature too as part of their “lane keeping assistance” offering

“Autopilot feels like a novelty”

No way are you for real? Autopilot is incredible, for me it substantially reduces fatigue on long highway drives and decreases my stress when commuting in stop and go traffic. The difference between autopilot and simple cruise control is substantial. I wouldn’t buy a car that didn’t have Autopilot at this point.

You couldn't pay me to use it in stop and go traffic. My stress would be through the roof. I was using Autopilot once on one of the straightest stretches of highway in America (I-80 as it passes through Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah). With no cars on the road, and perfectly clear conditions, Autopilot decided that the lane I was in was ending (it wasn't) and began merging on to the shoulder.

I've never used Autopilot without it doing something clearly stupid. That is not a recipe for "stress free."

Are you sure we're talking about the same thing here?

This does not reflect my experience with autopilot. I've found it to be incredibly reliable and convenient.

Autopilot doesn’t merge or change lanes on it’s own. That only happens with “Navigate on autopilot” which is a FSD feature not part of basic autopilot.

Jfc people make a ton of excuses for Tesla. This doesn’t invalidate what they were saying in any way. If lane changes are this buggy, why should they trust the auto braking?

Because one is fully baked, the other is explicitly billed as under development not yet complete Beta software. Also there are a lot of people that just make up lies about Tesla people deserve to hear the truth.

A company that allows people to use "beta" software on public roads should not be trusted to manufacture vehicles. That is grossly irresponsible.

I love the FSD beta, and the car has already prevented my wife from getting hit head on by a car running a red light at 80-90MPH. Your comment is exactly how I feel about Microsoft, it's grossly irresponsible to run that crap, and it's not even labeled as beta.

When was the last time you used it? A couple years ago, it wouldn’t go 10 minutes before I had to intervene because of a phantom break or some other stupid/weird thing it was doing. But just last week, I engaged FSD and Autopilot when I left an Airbnb in New Jersey and it drove me from the house to the highway and all the way through dense NYC traffic into Long Island, an 85 mile (!) drive with only two interventions. The first was when a car to my right darted into my lane (I instinctively slammed on the brakes immediately, though the car also beeped loudly so I suspect it also would have hit the brakes anyway), and the second time I shut it off because it was being too cautious getting into an exit lane and other cars were never going to let me in (if you drive through NYC you know what I’m talking about).

Thanks for providing a positive perspective. It feels like I only hear negative things of autopilot and Tesla on HN and Reddit, so it's nice to hear a different perspective.

It is pretty unfortunate, I don’t know how else people think we’re going to solve driverless cars and eventually save tens of thousands of people from dying in car crashes every year in the US. At some point these systems need to be tested on real roads.

> (I instinctively slammed on the brakes immediately, though the car also beeped loudly so I suspect it also would have hit the brakes anyway)

Interesting, I would have thought that when (if) the autopilot intervenes it would be way faster than human reaction.

I have no car with similar features but I remember renting a VW golf that had some adaptive cruise control, the simple "keep the speed constant" worked just fine (like in older, simpler cruise controls) but the "adaptive" part was (IMHO, and it may well be a specific/single issue of the car or some settings that I knew not how to regulate) very, very cautious.

On the highway, driving in the left lane at a speed of 120 km/h, every time a car a long distance ahead (100 metres or more) merged from right lane to left lane the car would suddenly slow down/brake long before I would have normally done manually (and often without need as the car was travelling at my same speed or nearly so), it was, if not uncomfortable, "strange".

It’s possible I hit the brake the same time as the car did and just didn’t notice, we’re talking fractions of a second here. Like I said in a previous comment, since I had the autopilot on I was able to look at more of my surroundings rather that just focusing only on the car in front of me so I actually saw him driving erratically a few minutes before that so when he was next to me I was being extra defensive and I reacted really quickly to it.

I see, you were already somehow alerted.

Lane keeping assistance and adaptive cruise control make long distance driving significantly less physically stressful. It's really impressive.

I agree 100%. It definitely makes me a safer driver because I can pay attention to other things that may be going on 7 cars away when I don’t have to micromanage the job of staying in the lane and making sure I’m at the correct distance between the car ahead of me.

I too use adaptive cruise control (this is the real name for it, not that Autopilot PR of yours). This is not something Teslas are unique for

I recently drove a BMW 750i with lane-following on a long trip and then he lane-following feature was terrifying. It seemed like it was doing the most brain dead line-following algorithm that made it “bounce” back and forth between the left and right sides of the lane. I couldn’t stop worrying that it was freaking out the other cars around me by careening towards them and yanking back in the other direction at the last moment. I sure hope Tesla autopilot is better than that.

VW/Audi lane assist also "bounces" you off the side of the lane, but it doesn't send you so far to the other side that you bounce back. Overall the combination of lane assist + adaptive cruise does an okay approximation of FSD on highways.

It feels like different systems are better and worse at that. On my 2019 Honda Insight, it's actually pretty smooth and does a good job of staying in the center of the lane, but it won't turn the wheel too much -- if you're taking all but the gentlest curves, you're going to be turning the wheel. On my mom's 2018 Subaru Outback, it's exactly what you're describing -- it's fine in a straight line, but it doesn't really seem to judge the curve of the lanes as much as simulate a pinball. (I don't think I ever tried to let it take a turn on its own!)

I've only ridden in Teslas, not driven one, but it seems like it's probably got the best following/lane-keep system on the market, although the last time I rode in one -- admittedly about two years ago -- it was markedly jankier when the driver engaged more "self-driving" features, e.g., have it change lanes, take exits based on its own GPS guidance, etc. It was impressive that it could do it, to be sure, but it was the self-driving version of your reckless friend in high school you do your best never to ride with.

My Mercedes E-class has a setting where you can change between strict och relaxed (whatever the names were.)

In strict, it very closely keeps in the middle of the lane. That's not how I normally drives, so it feels scary. I usually bias away from oncoming traffic. It's probably fine on a wide highway, so this is more about me not feeling in control.

However, in relaxed mode, it seems to have the issue you're describing where there's too much slack, and it looks like it's playing pong between the lane dividers. Have the exact same worry about what this looks like to others...

It's usually very good at staying perfectly centered between painted lane lines, even when following curves. This is fine usually, except when a lane on the right merges into your lane. In the United States, interstate highways don't always have any sort of markers establishing the non-merging lane. Because of that, about halfway into where the lanes merge, Autopilot considers that portion just one very wide lane and aggressively tries to center itself, rather than just keeping a relative distance from the lane markings on the left.

Tesla fans will say "Autopilot in planes isn't much more than glorified cruise control," but they miss the point. What matters is what people think when they hear "autopilot," and Tesla AP or even NoA is nowhere close to that perception.

Autopilot can land and take off, so it _is_ more than glorified cruise control.

sigh

No. It can't.

There are no aircraft autopilots which are permitted to be used for takeoff. None. Zero. Nada. Full stop.

There are no aircraft autopilots which can be used for a fully hands-off landing. Doing that would require a "Category IIIc" certified autopilot and IIIc precision approach. The FAA recently (a few months ago) removed the definition of IIIc. Why? Because, 30 years after being defined, there are ZERO autopilots certified to do that and ZERO IIIc approaches for them to use.

Among those autopilots with a low decision height (when the pilot takes over), all require a so-called "precision approach". That, in turn, requires a specialized radio beacon at the end of the runway (GPS is not sufficient).

Additionally, there is exactly one type of airplane in the world, no longer in production, (the Airbus A380) that can automatically take evasive action if it detects another airplane on a collision course.

It's well beyond time to admit that, whatever you feel about Tesla, their "autopilot" is no less sophisticated than an aircraft autopilot.

Auto land exists https://www.planeandpilotmag.com/article/garmin-autoland-thi...

I would think auto take off would be easier to automate

In 1947 the Air Force supposedly flew a Douglas C-54 across the Atlantic Ocean fully under autopilot, including landing and takeoff.

https://www.nytimes.com/1947/09/23/archives/robotpiloted-pla...

Partial article text: https://www.rarenewspapers.com/view/623884

> There are no aircraft autopilots which can be used for a fully hands-off landing

There's no certificated 3C approaches or equipment, but category 3B autopilots will arm at DH, and then continue all the way down and flare and land.

For that matter, there's all the emergency landing autopilots showing up in turboprops now. Push a button and wait to be on the ground. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-ruFmgTpqA&t=219s

Autoland is a common capability on many aircraft, and it is commonly used in inclement weather.

I don't know what you are talking about with the A380. I have never heard about it being able to fly a TCAS RA maneuver (collision avoidance) on autopilot.

The A350 can handle TCAS RA maneuvers on autopilot. It can also fly windshear escape maneuvers on autopilot.

Bill Palmer (A350 check captain) talks about it: http://www.airplanegeeks.com/2018/02/14/490-airbus-a350/

May want to look into the VTOL space.

Many are looking at an autopilot capability to do the take off and land.

_sigh_

Yes. It can.

You’re intentionally misrepresenting reality for what I suspect is some ideological fondness of Tesla.

Sure, no _commercial_ plane can take off with autopilot, but such planes exist[1].

But, saying Cat IIIc is required for hands off landing is silly. It’s required for hands off landing in the absolute worst conditions. It’s needed only when conditions are so bad that you can’t safely taxi and you’ll be stuck on the runway. That’s why it’s not used.

[1] https://youtu.be/9TIBeso4abU

I don't think that really matters when you're marketing to the public. Using language that people perceive in a way that benefits you, and then claiming it was the customers fault for not understanding the technical meaning and reality of the words you used is at least unethical and possibly illegal.

If I make a chocolate bar and tell everyone it cures cancer, I shouldn't be able to wriggle out of lawsuits by saying "cures" doesn't actually mean "stops a disease" with some complex medical jargon.

No one is confusing anything. It's obvious that they intend these things to do much more than they are currently capable of. Why are you making excuses for a company that some 8 years in has only ever doubled down on the naming and the connotations?

If anyone is confused, it's intentional.

> No one is confusing anything. > If anyone is confused, it's intentional.

I guess you're right. I've never read a more confusing comment on HN.

Software in general has a naming problem - they all tend to be aspirational metaphors. From 'AI', 'ML', 'Cryptocurrency', 'Agile process' to 'self-driving', the confusion they create is really frustrating and harmful at times.

A Big Mac isn’t a big burger. I’m sure many shoe names don’t reflect well on the increased abilities they sound like. Naming is a big part of marketing hype. It always has been, it’s not just software.

Indeed. However, Big Mac does not cost you $10,000.

In contrast, something like Comma.ai is open-source and even the complete kit that's compatible with almost any car is like $2k and they don't claim to be "Full Self Driving", by any means. Funny enough, they perform with just a kit that goes where your rear mirror is almost as good as FSD beta that Tesla has.

I won't dispute that the branding is hyperbolic (isn't all/most branding?).

Do you think Tesla's support page describing Autopilot and Autopilot with Full Self Driving is clear enough? https://www.tesla.com/support/autopilot

For instance, there's this paragraph: "Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment. While these features are designed to become more capable over time, the currently enabled features do not make the vehicle autonomous."

The problem is that this technical writing runs counter to all the flashy marketing, and the flashy marketing sticks in people's minds more thoroughly.

> Autopilot is cruise control that keeps you within a lane when it can. That's it. Other cars have it, and they're equally effective or ineffective.

But "Autopilot" obviously sounds cooler. So you can pay 10k and feel good, while that feature costs 1.300 Euro in my Hyundai (where it also comes with heated seats and steering wheel in the package).

The more I read and see from Tesla, the more it look likes some kind of A/B test on how much money people are willing to spend on a beta software/car-test.

Tesla's Autopilot feature is standard. The thing that costs $10k is Full Self Driving.

Which is an example of what I mean when I say "Tesla's biggest problems with any of their autonomous systems is the names they give those systems. They confuse regulators, reporters, and consumers."

But isn't FSD at this moment just that lane holding assistant?

Anyway... Confusion at its best. :-D

Nope. FSD is the nightmare inducing beta software that does a pretty good job of actually driving for you. This includes stopping at stop signs, making turns, changing lanes. It also sometimes does very dangerous and stupid things, like stopping as it makes a left hand turn, then deciding to start driving against the flow of traffic as a group of cars heads your way. AKA, nightmare inducing.

I have a Nissan Leaf with lane following and adaptive cruise. It’s nice on road trips but it’s not something you can set and ignore. It’s just better cruise control that lets you relax a bit more.

If FSD is anything like the many videos I’ve seen I don’t want it and don’t think it’s ready for general use.

FSD seems like one of those problems where getting 80% of the way there takes 20% of the effort and getting the remaining 20% takes 80% of the effort. There is a truly massive chasm between adaptive cruise with lane following and FSD.

I drove a rented Nissan Murano and I found the lane keeping and adaptive cruise control to be excellent. If the auto supply was in better shape, I’d have seriously considered buying one.

It’s such an irony that Nissan features are almost entirely development in spite of Tesla, but they’re far better at actually sciencing it and shipping it to be delivered today.

Sciencing? Is that like engineering or designing?

Just curious as to word choice here, does engineering not include the design of technology?

It's of course not a real word, but my mental definition I was thinking was problem discovery/definition is science and clarifying/solving is engineering. Nissan is shipping NoA and demoing dynamic obstacle avoidance, latter of which I thought is towards discovery.

> Given how frequently the car yells at you when you're not holding the wheel

What? You claim to own a Tesla but don't know that you must keep your hand on the wheel at all times?

The car will yell at you even when your hand is on the wheel. If it doesn't feel resistance, it assumes you're not paying attention.

It’s confusing until you use it, then it’s capabilities and limitations become clear. So I don’t see this as a reason to pull it.

I think the number of comments in this thread where people confuse Autopilot with FSD is reason enough to at least rebrand the names of the two distinctly different features.

They need to rename Autopilot to Deadpilot now. More accurate.

Or Livepilot as my Model Y saved my wife's life.

If your Tesla is "yelling at you when you're not holding the wheel" "frequently" you are admittedly misusing the level 2 assist.

Contrarily, I use autopilot responsibly and appreciate that statistically it is reducing my odds of death. As such I WOULD mind that a political decision like buttieg's appointment, is being made to endanger me.

Im downvoted for using level 2 with my hands? Or for recognizing its safety value? Or for agreeing with the authors assesment of buttieg's appointment?

> I use autopilot responsibly and appreciate that statistically it is reducing my odds of death

I don't think it really does, does it? I thought that "Autopilot" basically only worked on highways in fairly unsurprising conditions?

Autopilot crash statistics for last quarter were one crash per 4.97M miles driven.

National average crash statistics for that quarter were one crash per 484K miles driven.

Even if you consider that accidents are 3x less likely to occur on highways and boost that to 1.5M, that is still a multi-times safety factor.

A lot of accidents on highways occur because of aggressive or negligent driving. It's really not hard to beat humans so this shouldn't be a shocking find.

I'm not sure what you mean by "in unsurprising conditions" I turn on autopilot on the entry ramp, and disable it on the exit ramp. I would instead characterize that as "all highway conditions"

Okay, but that 3x should be 3000x, because people don't get in crashes in the conditions in which "Autopilot" actually works.

It's easy to avoid crashes if you're travelling on a perfectly straight road at the same speed as everyone around you with no changes in speed or lane, which is all that Autopilot does.

????

i've already explained that autopilot is capable of all highway conditions

not straight lines... curved roads that split with multiple lanes, getting around slow traffic and avoiding fast traffic... i'm really not sure what your argument really is. What you are really explaining here is that you don't have experience with autopilot, or you would know these things.. maybe you've used driver assists from other companies which are as limited as in your imagination? you believe that autopilot doesnt change lanes? lol that's the main benefit. I hate merging into traffic, finding gaps, etc. that's why i have autopilot engaged on the entrance ramp... to do it for me.

Average highway users aren't average highway users because "its easy"?

so lets just add 3 orders of magnitude??? what kind of logic even gets you to that point...

i've provided statistics to show my original argument, which was statistical safety... you are just using evidently ill-formed opinions and invented numbers

> Average highway users aren't average highway users because "its easy"?

Maybe the standard of driving in the UK is several orders of magnitude better than it is in the US.

I've driven a Tesla with Autopilot, and it simply didn't feel safe to let it do its thing, and it gave up as soon as it saw anything it didn't like, like maybe a junction or a vehicle changing lanes.

I don't know why you insist on inventing orders of magnitude for each opinion ... Is this hyperbole I'm not picking up on?

Maybe the vintage accounts for our disparity of experience? I took a 2000km road trip to the Austin GP last year. Texas is known for agressive drivers. It never disengaged because of a vehicle changing lanes, or because of a road union.

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