Ex-Tesla employee casts doubt on car safety | Hacker News Reader

Ex-Tesla employee casts doubt on car safety

bbc.com

16 pointsdoener15 comments

It's the same old tale about autopilot not being ready or safe enough.

This has been said on HN a billion times already but the problem is in the name "autopilot" , giving the consumer the impression that the car is autonomous and can be totally hands off. Both Ford and GM have correctly marketed their features as "cruise" (Blue Cruise / Super Cruise). Ironically, even given the issues that Tesla has had with it because of the marketing, I think it's one of the major drivers of sales in recent years because it's been incorrectly marketed as autopilot instead of a "SomeCoolName Cruise", consumers get the impression that it's superior to other self driving features. On the one hand tesla makes more sales, on the other hand they get a constant barrage of stuff like this.

Or maybe it's people misinterpretation of the word autopilot?

Even in aviation it doesn't mean no human operator.

>An autopilot is a system used to control the path of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilots do not replace human operators. Instead, the autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems).[1]

Great. Let’s accept that everyone misinterprets the word autopilot. That means one of two things:

The marketing people at Tesla are naïfs and innocently assumed everyone understands the true meaning of the word autopilot.

The marketing people at Tesla are cynical bastards who know that people misinterpret the word autopilot but used that word anyways since they know it will sell more cars.

Which do you think is more likely?

Cool, let's put everyone through the same scrutiny and licenses to drive a Tesla as we do for aviation pilots then.

That's certainly one way forward.

> it's been incorrectly marketed as autopilot instead of a "SomeCoolName Cruise", consumers get the impression that it's superior to other self driving features

I don't think that's quite a fair view of history.

BlueCruise and SuperCruise are both limited systems that only promise hands-free driving on pre-approved sections of highway. That's all they are marketing and all they are aiming to do right now. It's not anything like full self-driving in city streets and not being sold that way.

Tesla's Autopilot has very directly promised full self-driving capability in city streets for years but failed to deliver on it. That's completely different than what BlueCruise and SuperCruise are promising.

For example, in 2019, Elon Musk promised that you'd be able to "for sure" rent out your current 2019 Tesla in the year 2020 as a fully autonomous robotaxi:

“From our standpoint, if you fast forward a year, maybe a year and three months, but next year for sure, we’ll have over a million robotaxis on the road,” Musk said. “The fleet wakes up with an over the air update; that’s all it takes.” [1]

In hindsight, he was wrong and didn't deliver that. You can decide if the Tesla is just over-ambitious on timelines or if their plan can't/won't ever work. But you can't blame this on the name of the product. Tesla has been following a very different self-driving product strategy than Ford and GM (and several other automakers) and so far that plan hasn't paid off.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/tesla-plans-to-launch-a-ro...

All of what you say is true, yet there are ton of people here who still spew Elon Musk's propaganda like a gospel.

There are. But there are also people seem to be on the opposite side no matter what.

Is this the guy that leaked all the SSNs and addresses of every tesla employee because he disagrees with the self driving rollout?

I read that he leaked a very large (100 GB of documents) dataset to a news publication and did not properly redact or remove some information. Didn’t seem like intentional doxxing.

I'll take the department of justice audit as 100x more valuable than the gut feeling of a random ex-employee.

I think some people are unconsciously blind to just how bad human drivers are.

What's with these constant hit pieces against self-driving cars and AI from the BBC?

"Its autopilot feature, for example, includes assisted steering and parking - but, despite its name, it does still require someone in the driver's seat with their hands on the wheel."

Why would "assisted" imply no assistance?

Autopilot is the name which implies no assistance.

No, it doesn't.

You’re right. But it does imply a higher level of performance than delivered (probably to most people).

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