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Comment by resolutebat | Hacker News Reader

Tesla uses only cameras for FSD, not lidar, so it can't tell what's a solid object and what's not. Driving in foggy conditions where everything is fuzzy to the camera isn't helping.

I'm surprised FSD stayed engaged, and I'm also surprised the driver thought it was a good idea to use FSD in this weather.

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These types of comments are unhelpful. The expectations on the driver are getting vaguer and vaguer. Can't drive in damp weather? Yet it's Full Self Driving? Tesla wants to market it as powerful AI but leave all responsibility with the driver, don't encourage that narrative.

I'm not a fan of Elon's branding either, but if you've ever actually driven a Tesla, it's very obvious very quickly that "FSD" is not fully autonomous driving, and Tesla itself festoons "Beta" all over the place. So, yes, the driver deserves some responsibility for relying on it in manifestly unsuitable conditions.

100%. Whatever the actual limits, flaws, and failings of FSD, the outsize criticism of the branding is crazymaking. (as I've commented in many of these threads) no one who actually uses the product for even a short period of time is deluded into thinking it is fully autonomous by the labeling.

My pet theory for some of these dramatic fails: the driver is not risk-averse, and knowingly uses FSD at some limit "to see what happens" (I know I do it from time to time, though not in anything truly risky).

It turns out that if you loudly proclaim something is "Fully Self Driving", with a tiny asterisk, people assume it's fully self driving and engage it in all sorts of places where they shouldn't.

And that fault lies squarely with marketing, and much less with individual drivers.

Note that "not disengaging" is one of the critical differences between L2 and L3/L4 systems. The latter are required to disengage when they're outside their safe operating domain like this.

In foggy and rainy conditions only a radar will help you.

Great, sensor fusion should work well then. I’m not sure I see the reasoning behind avoiding lidar and other sensors now.

The reasoning is that Tesla wanted to spend less money so they could make a higher profit.

I guess Elon is just hell bent on making it work with a bunch of cameras, because that's the closest to what humans have.

That logic is flawed and will not get us cars which are an order of magnitude safer than driving manually.

When lidar/radar gets to commodity pricing, I'm certain Tesla will reverse course on "vision only". As it is today, FSD is very impressive, though not autonomous in all conditions.

why does everyone parrot musk, what he says may not be the real reason for things.

> I guess Elon is just hell bent on making it work with a bunch of cameras, because that's the closest to what humans have.

a smarter guess is, he doesn't want expensive lidar systems in his cars so Tesla can make more money. Stop taking Musk's words at face value

Lidar does not work in fog. Did you mean radar?

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