On a Tesla: Don't
medium.com
medium.com
She triggered the seat belt alarm, but not straight away, only once we were on the German Autobahn. It showed the icon on the dashboard, then it started beeping. Then it started beeping louder. Finally, it settled into a loud, high pitched beep that continued throughout my drive, designed to force me to obey.
This is directly dangerous. I'm going 130km/h - what the fuck am I supposed to do about the seatbelts now? Not that I even wanted to...
It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea. Just show me the damn icon and if I decide to ignore it, that's my choice...
Unrelated but also relevant to the story: My father's new car (a brand-new Nissan) starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car. It's really annoying because the rest of the car systems take their precious time to start up, so I like to start the car first so the stupid computers start booting and THEN put my seat belt on. But that means being bullied by a loud alarm every time someone uses that car. Why oh why? My Audi only starts the alarm once you actually start driving, and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something.
This is the safe thing to do. A bag heavy enough to set off the sensors (usually 10kg) is gonna kill someone if not belted in in an accident.
It is not uncommon for bags to go through the front windscreen and kill someone in the car that crashes into you.
With respect.
It's uncommon to crash.
It's rare to have a 10kg bag in your car.
It's vanishingly unlikely to have a 10kg bag in a position where it can fly through the front windshield and hit, and kill, someone in the car that crashes into you.
Of course there's enough kilometers driven that it happens, but that doesn't make it anywhere close to 'not uncommon'.
Unrelated too but in France you must put your seatbelts before starting the car. It’s the law.
the alarm mostly stressed me out more than realizing I was not wearing a seatbelt, which only made it harder to find a suitable exit so I could stop the car and put the belt on!
I think this is mostly an edge case though, because I probably held a much lower speed than expected in the parking lot due to being very inexperienced behind the wheel.
No idea about other countries, but in germany you are allowed to not wear the seatbelt while driving "walking speed". So that makes some sense.
Check your insurance policy.
In cases like you encountered with your dog, just put the seatbelt on your dog or bag / boxes. It's actually safer for you in case of a crash, they wont get flying into your face. If it's not possible, just put the seatbelt on under your dog just to silence the alarm
For reasons I don't understand, tactile push buttons, with physical feedback, for most tasks are increasingly being replaced with a touch screen you have to look at rather than looking at the road instead and just reaching over to the dashboard.
Hanlon's Razor? It feels like the national road safety bodies world wide, have dropped the ball on this one.
Not asking nicely for seat belt makes people actually use the seat belt. It’s saving bunch of people every year vs annoying me. And it sure does annoy me, but truth be told sometimes when I move the car just a bit the only reason I use seat belt is that the car is angry at me.
The only seat where the weight is guaranteed to be a human is the drivers seat. By all means, put an alarm on that seat, but the other seats can contain things other than passengers.
Use the boot, people; at worst, put stuff under the seat, never above.
Telephones. The original UK ringtone was explicitly designed to be as irritating as possible (some really weird time signature, I think?)
Unfortunately, one thing he learned is that every measure of forceful compliance is consistently more successful in preventing accidents and deaths. Seatbelts save lives, but they had to be made compulsory by law to drill the concept into people; and even with that, it takes un-inescapable annoyances like this alarm to get into compliance that last 5-10% of stubborn idiots who just won't do the right thing. Full-face helmets save lives, but so many people insist in using pointless "bowls" or even nothing at all. Respecting speed limits save lives, but it takes speed cameras to actually persuade people to do that. Etc etc.
The technical implementations can always improve, of course. And tbh, it takes nothing to fix the issue reported: just fasten the belt "empty" when you have the dog (and accept the poor thing will not survive an impact...). The industry is what it is because People Are Bad At Risk-Assessment, and that's that.
I firmly believe that it's not the government's or automakers role to keep me from harming myself - but it is the governments role to protect others from being harmed by me. Consequently, I believe the government should outlaw drunk driving as it endangers others, but it should not force me to wear a helmet on a motorcycle.
Just to be clear: I absolutely believe you SHOULD wear a helmet while motorcycling - but I believe if I choose not to and by doing so am only endangering myself, that's my choice.
I hear you, but - on the road you're not alone even after you die. Someone will have to pick up your remains, see your brain splattered all over the road, and live with the trauma forever. Someone will have to try and resuscitate you, taking time that could be spent helping someone else. Worse, partial helmets could save your life but still get you partially paralized or disfigured, which would further burden society and yourself (treatment etc).
Note I'm a rider myself (bonneville ftw), and yeah full-face helmet doesn't fit my Easy Rider fantasy, but if it spares myself and others from the worst consequences, I'm ok with it.
moving fast enough to hurt or kill you in a car means you're going fast enough to damage or kill whatever you hit, too. even if that turns out to be a ditch or tree, you're still running into something.
pulling your corpse and smashed vehicle out of a ditch is going to cost someone something, even if no one else died.
You're in love. It is romantic. smooth, sleep touchscreen for everything feels so modern. It is a better car than ICE, hands down. Everything that was before was terrible.
And everything is getting better!
But at some point, you realize some things are never going to change, and you are going to have to live with it.
- it is dangerously hard to use any control that doesn't have a dedicated button. The touchscreen in a moving car is a moving mess of tiny targets crowded too close together
- even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers.
- if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really)
- some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will.
- don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm.
- going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.
Is it harder to change a spare on a tesla compare to other cars?
No donut or anything. Goop and an air pump made by Honda
can you elaborate on this?
What? How do you signal a turn then? How do you change the gear?
Buttons on the steering wheel. It's not very usable when you're trying to indicate while turning (like around a roundabout):
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/tesla-steering-wheel-mode...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA2dSHu-hns
> How do you change the gear?
Via the touch screen or buttons in the overhead console:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/h6CgpHMuqC8
They are both dumb design choices.
No it isn't.
> - even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers.
Sensor-based wipers fail to predict rain regularly. I discussed this topic recently with a friend, her Mercedes has the same problem and it does have a sensor.
> - if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really)
That's a valid point. But it remains to be seen how much of a problem this is. Certainly other manufacturers (Volkswagen ID.4 for example) cramp many more buttons on the steering wheel.
> - some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will.
Like what?
> - don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm.
Most modern cars don't have a reserve tire. Not sure what you're talking about.
> - going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.
It's still wrong if you repeat it multiple times.
EDIT: never mind, I see Teslas come with a repair kit instead. (I suppose by modern car you might mean electric.) TIL
I generally find it really strange that so many articles single out Tesla to complain about issues that apply to many new cars. But maybe the US market is very different and maybe in the US Teslas really are very different from other cars.
Buy a Mustang with bigger brakes or wheels, you get the same treatment
Touchscreens demand I look away from my surroundings, because I will never know where anything is nor if I did whatever I wanted to do correctly. That is fundamentally terrible as regards safe driving.
Additionally the lane keeping and adaptive cruise control on the highway are rock solid, so even if you would look briefly - for example at the navigation system, just like in any other car - not much can happen.
Regarding looking away - in Europe we are taught in driving school to look over our left shoulder when changing lanes. So we take the eyes of the road ahead FAR longer than a brief peak at a touchscreen. Yet this is deemed to be acceptable and safer even in a car that does not keep the lane and does not automatically break if there is an obstacle in front.
I suppose I should clarify I am speaking generally, I don't own nor have I ever driven a Tesla. I have, however, had to deal with touchscreen controls in recent years.
>even if you would look briefly
>a brief peak at a touchscreen.
The thing about touchscreens is they demand more than just a "brief" "peak". I need to look at it, obviously, and also devote considerable attention and mental processing to comprehending what's on the screen and then moving my hand and finger as necessary.
I can't rely on muscle memory or peripheral sensory feedback, because nothing is ever in the same, consistent place on a touchscreen nor is there any useful tactile or auditory feedback. I must decipher the touchscreen every time and hope to dear god the shitsilicon running the thing can process my input in a timely and reliable manner (spoiler: it won't).
One time, the touchscreen controls for the AC locked up and stayed broken until I turned the entire car off and back on when I was done with that leg of driving.
Touchscreen controls in a car are a driving hazard, I would argue worse than "text and drive" smartphones.
Additionally, as I said, the steering wheel buttons handle everything that matters, so there is no need to even interact with the touchscreen at all during driving.
Let's look at the interactions in detail:
- Most controls of the car are done using physical controls. This includes left and right blinking, reversing, steering, lights, wipers, honking, the acceleration and break pedals, windows, seats, doors, opening compartments, audio and media controls, autopilot and lane keeping, camera controls.
- The only things where interaction with the touchscreen is preferable are (a) setting a destination in the navigation system - for going home or to work this is literally a swipe gesture on the main screen, usually done before the car is started and (b) adjusting the heating or temperature. For this there are two buttons at the bottom of the screen, always in the same location. However I always have them on auto and there is simply no need to fiddle with this, ever. If it's important to you it can be configured to be on the steering wheel as well.
- I think people who think that constant adjustment of the temperature settings is necessary are used to driving cars where this is not sufficiently automated. I have seat and wheel heating set to auto and that works just fine. I have set my temperature to 20 °C and it feels comfortable in summer and winter. Why would I want to change this while driving?
- Setting a new destination in the navigation system can be done using voice. This is not great but will certainly be improved. A modern system like Whisper should handle this easily. In any case, why would anyone want to do this while driving? And in any case it will be the same issue in any other car, because this simply requires typing out letters which is difficult.
> I would argue worse than "text and drive" smartphones.
Obviously holding a phone and typing out text on a tiny keyboard that certainly has to be looked at takes far more focus than touching a pre-defined spot on a huge fixed screen. But as I said this is never needed.
Yep. First world problem for sure but so frustrating. And other first-world cars don't have this issue.
It is the same with the ultrasound reversing sensors that've been removed.. the Tesla Vision / AI simply is not as good and probably never will be in a dark carpark.
But in my own view, the reason for 'don't' is that against many expectations, the incumbents have largely caught up in the EV space and there are new entrants doing exceptionally well. Tesla's complacency might be what harms it the most.
The comparison to Apple is not particularly great. I don't know how distracted is Cook and what his politics are, but I am still dealing with major iphone bugs than apple never bothered to fix in years, like all the music artwork being randomly reschuffled. And the experience only gets worse with time with more aggressive nagging for Apple services, my phone feels like the web in the 1990s, pre adblockers.
Not really sure how you got that; to me it seemed like more an afterthought. The author had already made his case before we got to the (fairly short) political section.
Huh. This must be what it's like to be a glass-half-full person. Speaking for myself, I tend to focus in on it rather obsessively.
> Elizabeth Holmes, at least, didn’t kill anyone.
Statistically, she almost certainly did.
> I’ve never actually thought that I needed a fart machine in my car, but pre-teens think it essential.
IMO this encourages bad behaviour, and should be banned. Its only apparent application seems to be startling pedestrians, potentially dangerously (obviously a horn would do this too, but the bad behaviour is more likely if it is made funnier to the sort of gormless idiots who indulge in this).
Anyone who _actually uses this_ should be shunned from society, of course.
In 2013 Consumer Reports called the Tesla Model S the best car it had ever tested. The Model S earned a score of 99 out of a possible 100 in the magazine's tests.
"If it could recharge in any gas station in three minutes, this car would score about 110," said Jake Fisher, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. Fisher called the car's performance in the magazine's performance tests "off the charts."[1]
What happened in the last 11 years? Did Teslas get worse or did expectations change significantly?
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consume...
Autopilot is on a separate branch from FSD, not getting significant updates with the promise that at some point, it'll be merged with the FSD branch and it'll be super awesome - this year for sure, but maybe next year or 10 years after, look we made a robot that's definitely not a guy in a suit and it'll be out in 5 years, maybe 10, it can water plants now!, look a Cybertruck! isn't steel cool, etc
When they switched from Mobileye to their own stack, it noticeably regressed in performance, then they worked to get it to work decently, but dropped the radar during Covid, going all in on Vision, regressing it even further. They promised at that time to at some point match the original Autopilot by reintroducing a distance of 1 and a max speed higher than 140 km/h and it's been 2 years since then with nothing on the front.
Summon/ Smart summon as the guy in the article points out - is great, but doesn't work without USS sensors, which they removed and the functionality is coming back some day, but likely not soon, because it's not a priority. They've been selling cars for more than a year now that don't have that functionality, even though it's in a package worth 4000 euros that gets you basically nothing.
Autopark - same thing, just look at these videos as a comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA&pp=ygUTcnN5bW1vb... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfM8pZS7PFU&t=190s&pp=ygUTcn...
It's easily the worst out of all manufacturers.
In the meantime FSD V11 will be the big one, V12 will finally drop the beta tag, etc, etc things that never happen and the rest of the functionalities just rot away.
I think Model S is still quite good because it retains more physical creature comforts like turn signal, circular wheel, instrument panel, and hand-adjustable AC vents (in the model y, you can only change vent angle on the touch screen).
My brain reasoned it meant approx “cry/complain” as the article was registering a grievance:
> This jammern is thus about the car
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig
I'm not sure any of this makes him terribly qualified to comment on Tesla's economic prospects though.
I personally think this prediction is grounded. It has been over-promising and under-delivering for a while, and Musk has gone from a money printing machine to someone perceived as toxic/erratic. They will face difficulties in a scenario where competitors can make better, cheaper cars, and their stock market value is not inflated to compensate for that.
Also, while the sales are nothing to scoff at for such an expensive car, Tesla is still a small player in the world car market. Toyota sells more cars in the USA alone than Tesla sells worldwide (but much cheaper).
It's a wild introduction, something I would expect from someone like Lessig.
Very confused by this, I never had the seatbelt chime appear before the car starts moving and I have the same model as the author. It also doesn't chime when you drive very slowly in a parking situation.
If they do eventually be the first then all is forgiven (i.e. Fritz Haber is known for the Haber-Bosch process, and not for inventing mustard gas). If they don't, they'll slowly fade into irrelevancy and they'll end up as an MBA case study in 50 years.
If they're a company that seem the closest to solving the biggest problem in using auto-motives and you're a razor-sharp freshly graduated engineer, wouldn't you want to be on that train with ideas that you will actually significantly contribute to self-driving vehicles instead of...increasing Google's/Meta's Ad Revenue?
I'm not defending Tesla's approach, but interested if there's a bit more reasoning behind the inconsistency in the claims ("we're one year away, you better join us to matter!") and not just capitalism gone wild?
I think it's clear that it's targeting investors and is used to (successfully) pump the stock value much higher than what would be reasonable.
"We over-promote a product which is unfit for purpose, then vaguely claim it is a beta, as if that somehow makes the over-promotion okay" is generally the sort of thing that scares engineers away, rather than attracting them. Like, it's basically a poorly-run-company _trope_.
> If they're a company that seem the closest to solving the biggest problem in using auto-motives
I mean, maybe, if that were the case, but it clearly isn't. That would probably be Waymo.
If Tesla is this delusional about how bad automatic windshield wipers are, why not require FSD to be enabled at all times?
From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), those "astonishing and good" parts, about the design of the vehicle itself, were already mostly in place before Musk managed to place himself as Tesla's CEO (which is an interesting story in itself).
I find it very hard to know what's true about such a polarising figure. Personally I don't think it's likely that Musk has done what he's done without talent and a lot of hard work, especially in an age of constant iconoclasm. But I could be wrong.
Elon is a massively intelligent and business savvy guy with strong engineering talent.
He is also unhinged and an absolute idiot.
Both things are true at the same time and in different ways. People tend to let one of the two perspectives overwhelm their impression of him as a whole.
You are completely wrong. Musk joined as the first major outside investor in February 2004, six months after the company's founding. The Roadster, Tesla's first automobile, did not come out until 2008.
Hear hear.