> AP News was unable to reach Tesla for comment, but that’s no surprise. The electric car company disbanded its public relations department in 2020.
That's some salt.
That's some salt.
No 2014 Model S's were sold with FSD. The product didn't exist yet. It's not subject to that recall notice, so the final sentence is just outright incorrect.
At this point I just give up on the ability of society to deal rationally with anything involving "Tesla". This was a decade-old car with a lanekeeping solution along the lines of what normal cars have today. Absolutely no one ever billed it as an autonomous vehicle. And, like normal cars today, sometimes they end up in fatal crashes. But no one cares if a Lexus on cruise control hits someone. That's not news.
Doesn't matter. My car drives me around anyway. Haters gonna hate, as it were.
this reporter didn't know it's a public company, not owned by Musk?
The CEO of Mobileye thought very differently, and walked away from a Tesla partnership after Musk's rhetoric killed someone in 2016[1].
Mobileye CEO Amnon Shashua claiming that Tesla "was pushing the envelope in terms of safety" and that Autopilot is a "driver assistance system" and not a "driverless system"
Musk has been calling it Autopilot since day one, and promising features and safety levels that are completely unobtainable even today.
But it doesn't matter, because putting "Tesla" in the headlines drives people absolutely bananas. We'll literally engage in screaming matches on the internet about whether it's fair to blame brand new autonomy software for an accident involving a nine-year-old vehicle running a tech stack from a different company. Because Tesla.
[1] After a very public split where Mobileye lost their biggest customer, they still haven't really recovered and at this point are way behind Tesla, Waymo and Cruise.
The facts are - Tesla installed this system, called it Autopilot, told the buyers it does magical things, and people have died and probably will continue to die.
I understand some people badly want Tesla to succeed no matter what. But this is silly... they chose not to call it a Driver Assist (like all the other car manufacturers) on purpose. Now Tesla reaps what it sowed...
And again I ask for a contemporary cite relevant to the car in question where Tesla (or Mobileye) claimed it would drive autonomously. They didn't make that claim, and you know it. So... I guess your whole argument rests on the name[1] of the product[2] and not the technology? If they called it "BananaDrive" you wouldn't be upset? That seems doubtful.
Look: this is a 100% vanilla distracted driver accident under cruise control, and you know it. It's not the first. It won't be the last. It happens probably every day in other makes of cars with very similar systems, and you don't care. You only care because of the name of the company that made the car.
[1] Not to put a fine a point on it, but Chrysler was selling cars with "Auto-Pilot" in the 50's. People didn't freak out about those.
[2] Again, to repeat: not the product being sold today or at any time over the last seven years, with which you keep trying to conflate.
1. Some 2014 model S were retrofitted and subject to the recent recall. The news article simply said some model S were subject to a recent FSD recall. It did not say whether the one in the recent fatal accident was
2. Musk as recently as 2021 was bragging that “autopilot” specifically (not FSD) reduces crash rates by a “factor of 10”
This is completely 100% untrue
The stats Elon continues to tout currently about safety are a complete joke, and not normalized by road type, driver age, or condition
It’s like telling someone drug A given to cohort 1 had no side effects, while drug B given to cohort B caused tons of bad effects, and leaving out the fact that cohort A is 20 year old men and cohort B is 95 year old men
You’re not a victim. Please allow people to have normal discussions that are had about all cars.
No, they weren't. That generation of cars can get a HW3 upgrade[1], but that's only offered to cars that purchased FSD. No FSD was installed on a 2014 vehicle, ergo no 2014 S's have HW3. Is it possible someone got an aftermarket part installed? Sure. Is it likely? Be real. It is correct for a journalist (or you) to say that this car was subject to the FSD recall? Absolutely not.
> 2. Musk as recently as 2021 was bragging that “autopilot” specifically (not FSD) reduces crash rates by a “factor of 10” [...] This is completely 100% untrue
They literally release a safety report with data to back that kind of thing up (honestly not sure which Musk statement you're talking about, you didn't cite, but the numbers are indeed in the order of magnitude range). Yelling about it in an HN comment from a 1-comment green account doesn't make it "100% untrue".
[1] Edit: post-some-research, even that's not necessarily true. Apparently early S's lacked the camera mounting points and can't be upgraded for mechanical reasons. Exactly where the cutover happened isn't clear.
Also, I love my car driving me around. It's the reason I bought it and it is amazing.
Don't sleep on FSD. I've had it for a year and a half and it's improved dramatically in that time.
Apparently, blind hatred for someone can excuse an awful lot of illicit behavior...
> Messages were left Wednesday seeking comment from Tesla, which has disbanded its public relations department.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/tesla-firetruck-autopilot-investi...
It seems more unbecoming to me to keep marketing and selling a system called 'autopilot' without responding to the very reasonable criticism that it has a rather dubious safety record - 'According to AP News, “at least 15 Teslas have crashed into emergency vehicles nationwide while using the system.”' I don't have fine-grained accident statistics for emergency vehicles year by year, but that seems disproportionately high for a somewhat niche brand.