California DMV accuses Tesla of falsely advertising Autopilot and FSD features
latimes.com
latimes.com
Astonishing that they haven’t been sued over this. What a joke.
This is just patently false. I have been in the beta for months, and I have yet to have "an entire drive" without having to disengage. FSD behaves like a fifteen-year-old who has just gotten their learner's permit and has zero long-term memory.
Any intersection that has a dedicated right-turn lane, when that lane comes out of a widening right lane (as most of them do), FSD will fail on, and will at the very last moment swerve to make the lane change, endangering human drivers coming up from behind, who are correctly getting into the space on the right. Every single time. I cannot count the number of times that a left turn onto a road with a slightly raised middle divider (planters, whatever) will fail. Every single time. At a four-way stop sign FSD does not know when it has the right-of-way and will always defer to every other car. This often leaves you sitting waiting for the intersection to completely clear before FSD will decide to proceed. It took me exactly 48 hours with FSD to realize that Tesla isn't close.
"Green light chime", come on.
My 20 year old car also has that feature, and it is seriously useful, it's not a joke at all! It even has 3D spatial audio, as the chime seems to come from somewhere behind the trunk. And it has an incredible number of different melodies, I haven't exhausted them all yet.
There's a nasty bug in it though, and the manufacturer hasn't ever fixed it: when there's no other car waiting behind my car, the feature somehow won't work.
Are there any historical or modern-day equivalents of this form of transaction?
It's like people forget the rest of the car industry when talking about Tesla.
I understand that many people are confused by the name. I get the argument that aircraft autopilot has a lot of the same constraints, but there are plenty of people who hear "Autopilot" and don't understand the disambiguation between a hands-on assist system, vague rumors that "Teslas drive themselves", and "Full Self Driving". An appropriate remedy is to change the name or put heavy disclaimers on. But it doesn't feel intentionally deceptive like Full Self Driving.
Full Self Driving is a huge mess and there should absolutely be more regulatory action or class action. I paid $10k for the language in the article - get in your car and it drives you where you want to go. Every 8-10 months it's only another year away. I'm not 100% convinced that what Musk claims is even possible with the hardware on my car at this point.
The FSD beta is fun but terrifying and not useful. It drives like a 15 year old and I've never had a single drive where I haven't taken over, either for safety or because the car was holding up traffic. It's also important not to confuse safety (it rarely tries to drive me into a solid object!) with actual usability (it consistently gets confused and blocks other cars in traffic). It's not a few updates away, it's fundamentally not even close to full autonomy. It's not what I bought and it's absolutely false advertising to take $7-12k and just push out the deadline indefinitely.
Oddly, they BOTH drive far to close to parked cars on unmarked city streets when there is no oncoming traffic. I normally drive right down the middle to leave space in case a door opens, and I've tried to instill that in my son.
In many U.S. states, even on unmarked streets you must always stay on the right side of two-way roads.
A thing that narrows the effective width is people parking on both sides or double parking.
Anyway, are you saying that it is legal to pass someone on a road with a dotted yellow line, but never on an unmarked street?
If I could refund it, I would, since there seems to be no way for me to get it.
But really there's no need. Any modern Toyota has most of these same features but doesn't try to pass them off as "self driving". Adaptive cruise, lane keeping, blindspot checking. Makes freeway driving a breeze.
Not really a surprise to see the deception scam that Tesla has done with their false advertising with both autopilot and especially Fools Self Driving (FSD), as I have already said before.
With the countless videos showing both of these contraptions malfunctioning on the public roads, it is safe to say that they don't work reliably and this is even before mentioning the price increases on both of these features.
So essentially, customers are paying for a feature that doesn't work and is dangerous enough to put the driver and many other drivers on the road at risk.
Therefore, this dangerous contraption is an indefensible scam which is already being investigated by many regulators.
The FTC should be involved, too, and require refunds for anybody who wants one.
FSC, "full self-crashing".
And the NTSB.
Overall Automotive-related deaths not withstanding, people are being sold a lie and that’s resulting in deaths
What are Tesla falsely claiming about autopilot?
Unlikely, but the likely remedy will be that Tesla needs to change the names of these features so that they aren't misleading to the general public.
All car makes including Tesla that are offering advanced cruise control (e.g., lane following), should be required to geofence the feature with other conditions like weather taken into account too. If Tesla, Volvo, Ford, etc., have a product that works at an acceptable level on simple straight highways during daylight and clear weather conditions, then those are the only locations and conditions the advanced cruise control devices should be allowed to operate in.
Lane holding assist and adaptive cruise control only works for speeds up to 170 km/h (which is also very near max speed for the electric version, to be honest), while you are holding the steering wheel and are giving active input and only if the weather is good enough.
Failing to hold the wheel for some seconds or only "resting" your hands on it will trigger optical and visual warnings and will disable the assistance systems if you fail to act.
I've also experienced that heavy rain or snow have disturbed the car so much that it wouldn't allow to activate the assistance systems due to the weather conditions.
So, for some car brands it's already there.
As for the 'security' features you mentioned, my 2015 Mazda CX-5 did the same (just not sure about the weather as I don't remember driving it in very bad weather except for a snow trip but I didn't put any of those things on). Couple seconds no pressure, beep. A few more and disabled lane assist. It also warned me of driving fatigue by analysing my driving and other stuff. I always felt it was helping me by making me a 'better driver' and not actually trying to control the car.
I'm very, very happy after 2.5 years of having (leasing) it. I've got a pre 2020 model though, these are the points that are not good imho:
- Got the big battery (64 kWh) but the internal charger is a small one (4.5 kW), so loading on normal wallboxes takes a long time. Newer models got a bigger charger (11 kW, I think), which is great. I can charge at work though, so no big deal for me most of the time as the car is standing around all day anyway.
- Charging network data is outdated (EU model), so I don't use the internal navigation to find charging points. Lead me to non-existent chargers twice, won't happen a third time. That's sad because the integration is nicely done with "find a charging point along your route" when the battery level gets too low. Good idea, bad execution.
- Android Auto is only available via a wired connection. So you're fiddling around with USB cables in your center console, then there's not a real good place to lay your smartphone down (with the usb cable sticking out! got an angled one now, still not perfect), something always dangles around in the middle there.
- There's a little "the car is in D, be careful"-icon in the display. It stays on, even when you're driving 160 km/h on the Autobahn. I KNOW IT'S IN D. Would prefer to get that clutter out of the display, but that's a minor point.
Besides that I think it's a great car. Lots of things have improved with the 2020 model, too, I think. The bigger charger (by default?!), Bluelink for remote connectivity, also I prefer the look of the newer models with the smooth front.
I still have 2.5 years left till the end of my lease but I can totally see myself getting another Kona then.
Also: The "Eco" drive mode normally provides you with enough acceleration for everything. But I'm guilty of sometimes using the "Sport" mode to embarass tailgaters or highly motorized cars. "Sport" mode is also great to shock people and push them in the seats who have never driven an electric car before. :-D
Enjoy the car!
Also "active input" is possibly a bit of a stretch. The system checks whether you are providing some force "against" the motion of the steering wheel. It's not trying to steer away, it just tests if somebody is actually having a "strong" (another stretch) grip on the wheel.
Which is a perfectly good feature. But a system that just does that sounds like it's a safety backup system, not something that makes driving easier.
> Also "active input" is possibly a bit of a stretch. The system checks whether you are providing some force "against" the motion of the steering wheel. It's not trying to steer away, it just tests if somebody is actually having a "strong" (another stretch) grip on the wheel.
Okay, this gives me an entirely different impression then. To me "active input" means I'm following the lane. If I just have to keep a grip then I don't have to do the work and there's a clear value.
You can let loose of the steering wheel and will keep you in the lane, too. But only for a few seconds...
This isn't some web app where the consequences are a bad experience. Automakers aren't supposed to be allowed to put unsafe technology on the road regardless of marketing.
At least people have earned good money by renting out their cars as robot taxis in the last years. Oh wait, that also never happened.
So many lies, so much false advertising.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...
From https://dot.ca.gov/about-caltrans :
> Caltrans manages more than 50,000 miles of California's highway and freeway lanes, provides inter-city rail services, permits more than 400 public-use airports and special-use hospital heliports, and works with local agencies
Motor vehicles not under their jurisdiction
It is like that guy drinking a beer and suing the beer producer for all those women and the military jet from that beer ads not materializing in his life.
You're being deliberately obtuse, IMO. Context matters. If we lived in a world where launching missiles into interstellar space is possible and a weapons company sells a rocket with this claimed capability, then I'd be wondering if this feature means it can actually make a star go supernova.
To use your own logic: Tesla sells cars. It claims "full self driving". Oh wow, what activity should I expect this feature to be doing? And what object will the feature apply to?
Dumb or not, they were intentionally cheated out of a lot of money and it's documented.
This has to be the dumbest thing I’ve read on this site. Congrats I guess.
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Full Self-Driving Capability
All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat.
The future use of these features without supervision is 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 capabilities are introduced, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.
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It never once says or implies Full Self Driving is available now. Tesla intends it to really be "full self driving", when it's ready and has regulatory approval.
100 times more capable would be 2,000 minutes, or 33 hours. Do you really think the beta, which is an opt in closed program that you have to qualify for and has caveats and warnings, needs to be 100 times more capable before it's released?
As an analogy, let's say something is 30cm, and you want to get it to "almost a meter". If that's 95cm, then you need to get about 15 times closer. That means reducing the gap by a factor of 15. It doesn't mean you need 450cm.
Though I'd be fine with your time metric too. I do want to get to the point where 33 hours without disengagements is routine before "full self driving" is talked about as almost done. I wouldn't want to require that before it's released at all, I just want an accurate name applied.
Let me know if you made this survey I will watch the results.