Tesla is looking to hire a team to remotely control its 'self-driving' robotaxis | Hacker News Reader

Tesla is looking to hire a team to remotely control its 'self-driving' robotaxis

gizmodo.com

72 pointspseudolus126 comments

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What's the plan to do right by people who were duped into buying HW3 cars:

https://electrek.co/2024/10/23/elon-musk-finally-admits-tesl...

Those buyers were made specific promises which Tesla has never delivered on:

https://electrek.co/2024/08/24/tesla-deletes-its-blog-post-s...

Since when do Tech Companies have to actually have deliverables? I thought they were only supoosed to break things?

No wonder Musk wants to dismantle consumer protection.

https://amp.theguardian.com/technology/2024/nov/28/elon-musk...

“duped” isn’t the right word here. People optimistically paid money for a thing that didn’t exist, in the hopes that it would.

People bought into a kickstarter and are entering the “find out” stage

> “duped” isn’t the right word here.

"Duped" is an accurate description of how Elon Musk has been treating customers who bought a Tesla car with a HW3. He's been repeatedly promising those buyers that full self driving is just a software update away. Now apparently FSD is an impossibility and the company is rushing to hire drivers? In the very least it's bait-and-switch scam.

Aren't the drivers being hired for their recently announced Robo-Taxi fleet and not private, personal cars like your comment suggests?

> Aren't the drivers being hired for their recently announced Robo-Taxi fleet (...)

The robo-taxi fleet is scheduled to be launched by 2026. This means Tesla, in spite of Elon Musk's wild claims, is not counting on providing anything remotely similar to FSD until at least 2026.

Kickstarter is a very different thing. You are paying for a product that does not exist yet in the hopes that it will.

For Tesla, you paid for a product that exists and outright does not have what the manufacturer claims. That's false advertising.

The label on the Tesla site in the past has always been “FSD capable”. For years the FSD software was only available to a very small set of beta testers even if you had paid for it. People still have their money knowing they were not getting something at that monent. Not sure why we pretend they were fooled somehow.

You do realize that's still false advertising, right? People bought these cars because the advertising line was 'All Tesla cars have full self-driving hardware'.

If you bought a computer that advertised itself as having a top of the line video card, but then as it turns out the company wouldn't let you use it unless you paid extra and then outright prevented you from using it entirely I assume you would say the company was trying to scam you.

If they didn't want people to buy into FSD then they shouldn't have advertised and sold their cars with FSD.

The didn’t “sell their cars with FSD”. FSD was always an optional software package, which was clearly mentioned as not available at the time. The grand majority of HW3 owners have not purchased FSD.

Then the "optional software package" was/is the false advertising. And it is irrelevant how many people bought it.

> You do realize that's still false advertising, right?

Tesla won that one in a case brought by Tesla investors.[1]

Defendants argue that the Timeline Statements that FSDC technology “appear[ed] to be on track,” would be available “aspirationally by the end of the year,” and Tesla was “aiming to release [it] this year,” [..] were nonactionable statements of corporate puffery and optimism. […] Plaintiffs contend that the statements provided a “concrete description” of the state of Tesla’s technology in a way that misled investors. […]. These statements about Tesla’s aims and aspirations to develop Tesla’s technology by the end of the year and Musk’s confidence in the development timeline are too vague for an investor to rely on them. […] Thus, in addition to being protected under the PSLRA safe harbor, Statements (10, 11, and 18) are nonactionable puffery.

Defendants also assert that several Safety Statements are corporate puffery. For example, statements that safety is “paramount” (FAC ¶ 325), Tesla cars are “absurdly safe” (id.), autopilot is “superhuman” (FAC ¶ 337), and “we want to get to as close to perfection as possible” (FAC¶363). Mot. at 19. Plaintiffs respond that “super” in “superhuman” is not puffery because it represents that ADT is safer than human and “absurdly safe” conveys greater-than-human safety. Opp. at 12. However, these vague statements of corporate optimism are not objectively verifiable.

So Tesla admitted in the investor case that FSD is a lie. The legal argument relies on the "right to lie".

However, Tesla is not doing as well in a case brought by unhappy FSD customers.[2] They potentially have stronger rights. That case is being stalled by Tesla, but it moves forward slowly anyway.

It's essential to Musk's net worth that the FSD lie not collapse. Tesla's 94.64 P/E ratio assumes huge future growth. Now that everybody makes electric cars, just being an electric car maker isn't enough. Tesla is behind CATL and BYD and Samsung on battery technology and battery cost. Much of Tesla's overvaluation is being propped up only by Tesla's FSD hype. If the FSD bubble collapses, and P/E drops to a value appropriate to a car company (under 15, maybe lower), Musk stops being one of the richest people in the world.

This explains the sucking up to Trump.

[1] https://electrek.co/2024/10/02/elon-musk-celebrates-winning-...

[2] https://electrek.co/2024/06/10/teslas-dmv-self-driving-false...

Didn’t realize Teslas were sold on Kickstarter. Could you show us where?

My reference to kickstarter was a metaphor, so I’m using kickstarter to describe a similar situation that occurred when people bought a capability that didn’t exist in the hopes that it would.

I would bet if you surveyed Kickstarter backers versus Tesla backers "How confident were you that this product would come to market as-described?", you'd see a huge difference.

Is comparison to Kickstarter just a post-facto excuse for false advertising that anyone can use for any product, or does just Tesla/Musk get this benefit for some reason?

Musk gets special benefit because anyone paying attention knows that he’s 5 years late on everything. I’m fairly sure we were supposed to be living on Mars several years ago, by now.

I agree it’s false advertising, and musk should be held accountable for that. But there has to be a little responsibility on consumers who pay for a thing that does exist and worse has actually never existed in the universe (camera-fed self driving)

I've never heard of this and don't know what HW3 is, yet I will still speculate that the plan is

"If that turns out to be the case, we will upgrade those who bought HW3 FSD for free. And we have designed the system to be upgradable."

which is what it says in the link you provided.

No the first time for Tesla.

Fool me once …

If people don’t learn it’s on them.

Same with Trump.

> Same with Trump.

With buying cars you get to choose between more than two candidates, you can choose "wait", and the other candidate isn't worse.

Actually there are more than two candidates

Not effectively.

The consequence of voting for a 3rd minority candidate is that your vote will effectively be wasted. Or, perhaps in a less pessimistic view, a protest vote, a flavored way of blank voting. In several European voting systems, parties form coalitions, so your vote will only go to waste if the party you vote for fails to cross some minimum boundary, e.g. 2%.

As for buying electric cars, you still have at least 10 models to choose from that won't have a really bad, unfixable experience, or a high risk of the car brand going bankrupt.

So comparing buying Tesla and voting Trump seems a little simple.

It’s not about choice, it’s about getting fooled.

Both Trump and Musk fooled their supporters. If that doesn’t disqualify them, it’s not their fault.

If you still believe these liars, you’re to blame.

I'm not sure what to say.

I drive a Tesla, and I never believed it would drive by itself.

When it comes to the election, it's a big circus and everyone who believes the primary candidates are fools.

Blame is making someone responsible for your misery, you don't have to do that.

Musk has said HW3 owners will get free upgrades. It’s easy to replace the hardware and cameras.

If it's easy, why hasn't it happened? HW4 doesn't have the same form factor as HW3. They'll have to make a HW3.5. They won't replace the cameras.

So like I say, what's the plan? More empty words from Musk count for nothing.

If you believe that I have a FSD deposit to sell you...

Those cars will get free upgrades, if required.

The cars don't have the inbuilt technology. I also HIGHLY doubt that Tesla would upgrade all cars at their own expense.

They’ve done it before and will again

Yup. They did it for HW2 to 3 for the S and HW2.5 to 3 for the 3.

Please show me where Tesla paid for a hardware upgrade for existing users/customers to a self driving standard.

Please show me where Tesla paid for hardware upgrades of existing users for self driving.

There's not much "if" about it. It's been 8 years since Tesla claimed "as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver".

So where are the upgrades?

If required, The upgrades will come when FSD is at a point they know what is required.

It’s hard to determine if upgrades are needed before they have FSD working.

That point has already passed us by:

https://www.teslaoracle.com/2024/10/31/fsd-v13-to-go-public-...

And you know there's a HW5 on the way, right?

The plan was regulatory capture and defanging. It worked.

I can't speak for Tesla, but Elon's plan is to get rid of the Bureau of Consumer Protection which is the institution that you would appeal to in such cases.

Edit: Open and honest edit, Elon wants to get rid of the CFPB, not the FTC's BCP.

Regardless of the agency under question, wouldn't "deleting" them require an act of Congress and significant analysis?

In the US bureaucracy, if you control the executive branch you can stop enforcement which is effectively the same thing. That is an act solely delegated to the executive/president.

The House can also just not fund the particular agency.

Both of those options are more expedient than official removal.

1. HW3 is capable of running the latest iteration of FSD, which is very very good. In fact, the FSD stack still targets HW3, despite HW4 having significantly better hardware.

2. Tesla stated that they would upgrade HW3 cars if they run too far behind HW4...not that this means much.

3. Tesla has also been consistent about HW3 lagging behind HW4 while still being at least 3x safer than human drivers...not that this means much either.

> HW3 is capable of running the latest iteration of FSD

No. It isn't:

https://electrek.co/2024/11/14/tesla-pushes-end-to-end-neura...

https://electrek.co/2024/10/31/tesla-gives-update-on-self-dr...

It's funny. The bigger the lie the more people will believe it and ardently defend it.

Smells ripe for disaster. Not self-driving and will be ridiculed all over the place. I guess the lies are starting to catch up with them.

But not only PR-wise. Imagine any kind of security issues. Or what if the signal is blocked out somehow, unintentionally or intentionally by some bad actor.

Basically this looks like remote taxi drivers. Maybe they will be able to work from home or something. But probably badly paid. And then driver quality might go down. Oh and imagine the PR disaster, if any of them ever gets a customer into a car crash...

I mean his "IA android" was the same thing.

I really dislike Altman but if Musk was in charge of decision over there ChatGPT would be a pipe into Amazon Mechanical Turks or something like that ...

There’s a lot of ignorance in these comments. do people not realize that Waymo and the other full self driving companies have tele operators as well?

It’s a back up system in case The vehicle gets stuck. Simple as that.

I'd really like if Tesla had the same system as Waymo, i.e. a disambiguation and no direct control. If it is direct control, i won't trust it.

Tele-operate conjures images of RoboTaxi simulator on Steam, or something.

What's really going on is it's more like Air Traffic Control for a taxi fleet - a welcome and very necessary step.

"Oh 47 is stuck behind a fruit truck, requesting illegal go-around. Authorize it"

> It’s a back up system in case The vehicle gets stuck

People seems to be thinking emergency control, but that would make no sense. Imagine being dropped into a completely unknown setting, milliseconds away from a crash and being expected to take over the wheel. That's pretty obviously not what this is about, it can't be much beyond a car that hasn't moved in a few minutes because it's stuck.

Waymo can do no wrong though, being part of an organization that's never ever done a bad thing, and different rules apply.

The other robot taxi systems with cars actually on the road are SAE level 4 systems. Unless Tesla's will also be level 4 or 5 they are not comparable. Their current consumer FSD systems are level 2.

This is exactly what Waymo are doing right now with their fleet in SF, without an of the issues you raise.

Your concerns are pure FUD.

The drivers won't just be badly paid, I'm sure the hours will be ridiculous. Tired, overworked, underpaid, poorly trained drivers.

The logical step after that will be Mechanical Turk for remote driving.

I suspect that the remote driver will not have unilateral control of the car. It'll probably be something along the line of giving hints when the car asks for them.

Really surprised by some of the comments here: a mix of hatred, ignorance and lack of foresight

This is a great way to:

- Have a fail-safe / fallback in case the software does not work as intended

- Allow them to continue training the already immense dataset using real data (as opposed to synthetic data)

I don’t want to sit in a taxi that’s remote controlled by someone who has low stakes (their body not in the way of harm). There will be a number of accidents attached to the self driving mechanism, so I can make an informed decision, but there won’t be such a number for the person taking over remotely.

Really? You're surprised that I don't want to get in a vehicle driven by Greg in Florida while he's scratching his nuts? ... Or Javinder in India while he's got a side eye on how his cricket bet is going?

Count me out. This is a laughable version of the promised vision.

You'd think that if they can't get a reliable self driving car given how much training data they must currently have, perhaps they need to try a different strategy.

More compute.

Yes I learned that too a while ago. If you say anything slightly positive about Tesla, you'll be downvoted into oblivion. I can't wait for the day for this US/Western tribalism to cool down and we can have substantive discussions again.

Remote human intervention to some degree is not unexpected at all. The question is only how often it’s going to be needed.

Agreed. Reads as a bit of a gotcha. But wouldn’t we expect and want humans to be in the loop here?

Stop fooling yourself ffs ... call a spade a spade and think clearly.

This is abosolute horseshit compared to the dream and vision and what was promised for some people who have actually paid hard cash for FSD.

Waymo does the same thing: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/on-self-driving-waymo-i...

I assume they mean take emergency corrective action when an issue arise like google with Waymo, and the general thing will still be sorta kinda self driving like tesla does (which is not like waymo, but still better than nothing) ? Because being a network latency event away from a car crash doesn't inspire me much confidence, and I don't have to sit in one of those to be affected, just to be on the same road.

> assume they mean take emergency corrective action when an issue arise like google with Waymo, and the general thing will still be sorta kinda self driving like tesla does

Having taken Waymos and put my parents' Tesla in FSD, I wouldn't assume as much. Tesla's FSD makes mistakes more frequently, and they're bad ones, in part due to its willingness to aggressively accelerate when it thinks the road is clear.

I would describe the difference as: Waymo drives like a limo driver, carefully and smoothly, and tries to disappear for the passengers in the back seat. Tesla FSD drives like a car owner might, and tries to make the person in the front seat feel like the behaviour of their car is the same as they would do it.

I rode in a Waymo for the first time last week. The highest praise I can give it is that it's boring. It drives like a careful human with zero surprises.

Yeah it’s hilarious (frightening) when Tesla cultists say that the surprise in FSD’s behavior makes it exciting.

That attitude is why people who share the roads are tired of Tesla’s and their loyalists’ constant excuses for this stuff.

Humm I wonder if there's some truth to that, some kind of pattern matching, like "at this stretch of the road usual behaviour was: speed X mph, turning at this and this points, etc"

The more important difference is that Waymo's FSD system is SAE level 4. The Tesla FSD system that is in their cars that people can currently buy is level 2.

The difference is that the former only needs human help in rare circumstances. The latter needs human help in common circumstances.

If you base you robot taxi on a level 4 system you just need humans on standby to respond when the car knows it needs help and asks for it. If you base it on a level 2 system you need humans monitoring during routine trips to be ready to intervene when the car is about to do something stupid and has no idea that it is out of its league.

And FSD is improving everyday. The only question is when will it be good enough to run a system similar to Waymo where a remote operate an help if it gets stuck, and then when will it be good enough to not need that and be full autonomous.

Place your bet.

2018!

The people who placed that bet are something like 500x their money, so I’m sure they’re happy!

Huh?

"Fuck the customers, shareholders are happy!" So odd.

Probably never unless they get off their high horses about lidar.

Network latency is no issue when operators control cars in LLM style:

„Slowly drive around on the left of the obstacle on the right, accept crossing the opposing traffic barrier line if you are sure you will be back on your side after you drove around the obstacle.“

What happens in the event that the LLM starts halucinating and driving at 100mph in the oncoming lane?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20241128-i-taught-rats-to...

Problem solved!

Tesla is apparently talking about full teleoperation, with someone using a remote steering wheel while wearing a VR headset. Phantom Automotive tried that.[1] Baidu does that.[2] Apparently Tesla is hiring people to do that.

Waymo doesn't do that. The support center can only give hints to the vehicle software. If the situation is so bad that won't work, they dispatch someone to go to the car and drive it manually. The sensor suite, with all those LIDARs and RADARs, isn't well matched to VR-type driving by a human.

Tesla is trying to get away with Fake Self Driving, which they've been trying to do since 2016.

Now we see why Musk wants federal pre-emption of state regulation.[3] California's "restrictive rules"[4] require SAE 4 or SAE 5 autonomy for autonomous vehicles. Worse, DMV can (and did, with Cruise) revoke a company's license to drive autonomously. They apply about the same standards they do for human drivers. Musk probably wants Federal rules where Tesla can cover up, litigate, and stall after accidents, since that's what Tesla has done in the past after major accidents. DMV can suspend a license immediately.

[1] https://www.statesman.com/story/money/2024/11/18/tesla-feder...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/simracing/comments/1f0avac/baidus_s...

[3] https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/heres-where-federal-automated-...

[4] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/av_second15day_notice_exp...

Here is the police interacting with Waymo support staff to clear in the vehicle...

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/6/24193094/phoenix-waymo-car...

> Recent reports show the company is planning to hire a human team to remotely troubleshoot its robotaxi operations.

> Tesla would not be the first robotaxi company to use this method. In fact, it’s an industry standard. It was previously reported that Cruise, the robotaxi company owned by General Motors, was employing remote human assistants to troubleshoot when its vehicles ran into trouble (the vehicles appear to have run into trouble every four to five miles). Google’s Waymo is also thought to employ the same practice, as does Zoox, the robotaxi firm owned by Amazon.

Big pile of nothing. Fools only read titles exclusively. If Teslas offering is bad then that’s a story, but hiring human operators is the norm.

> fools only read titles

The lady doth protest too much?

What matters is the frequency of interventions, remote or in person. Having taken Waymos and Teslas in FSD extensively, the interventiona rate in the latter is substantially higher, in part due to them being a Level II system trying to operate globally.

The article isn't anything damning. But it's also not a nothingburger.

The title leads the reader to believe that Tesla’s robotaxis will be piloted by humans rather than self-driving software. The combination of the word “control” with scare quotes on “self-driving” gives this impression.

The article may not be damning, but the title? It doth mislead.

This is about robotaxis like Waymo not FSD. Even if it were there are orders of magnitude more FSD cars available than Waymo cars.

> This is about robotaxis like Waymo not FSD

What "this" are you referring to? Tesla doesn't have a robotaxi. It does have FSD, which makes it a reasonable comparison for (a) existing and (b) sharing FSD's camera-only dogma.

> Big pile of nothing.

Not really. In the very least it proves that at best Tesla is way behind established robotaxi operations, and once again demonstrates that Elon Musk's recurrent promise that "full self driving cars is just around the corner" is just a blatant lie to fool investors. I mean, think about it: if Tesla's promise of full self driving was indeed around the corner, why would they suddenly feel the need to hire teams of drivers to drive there cars?

The leading company Waymo does the same thing - is Waymo not full self driving?

Is Tesla Waymo?

I mean it’s not nothing. Those companies have been honest about their practices and intentions while Elon Musk is known to have lied consistently and persistently and egregious about the “self driving” state and capabilities of Tesla and resently made the bogus claims that they had autonomous robots that were just remote controlled.

The subtext is that it’s likely Tesla will soon claim that have self driving cabs, which are just remote controlled.

> the vehicles appear to have run into trouble every four to five miles

This sounds like one cannot take a trip anywhere without a human driver.

Not what your quote says

I'm not sure what the news is here. Of course they are going to have a team of people to take over when the self-driving software reaches its limits. It would be stupid not to, and every autonomy company does.

I believe the sticking point is that they are only now doing this industry standard practice- years after selling cars with FSD

I don’t understand why this is a bad thing for so many people here. This kind of tech will eventually allow more people to have their own “private driver” who works remotely and on demand. Fully reliable self driving via AI isn’t coming for a very long time.

So a taxi? Just with even lower pay and less skin in the game?

Yes? What else do you think this tech is for?

Increasingly we should just move toward reducing all work just to the purest form, eliminating things like commutes or geographic locations from the requirements.

I'm not sure if your post is ironic or if you're being serious. Perhaps you could clarify.

> I don’t understand

As much as I would enjoy some Elon-bashing, this is a bit unsurprising.

I used to write remote dashboards for autonomous vehicles, and if we had been able to fully support remote operation (latency was just unbearable at the time), we would have gladly done so, if only to unstuck vehicles from tricky situations.

Also, it seems like it's already done in other robotaxi setups.

It makes sense for the company, as long as the remote operator only drives a fraction of the miles ran by the vehicles (and if you can keep the wage low enough, while still ensuring driver engagement.)

It makes sense for the user as long as the vehicle reach its destination, and they don't have to car about driving.

I would still heavily fine Tesla for calling it "Full Self Driving" or "Autopilot", because it's a plain lie.

But Elon retired from science & engineering to focus on running an ad-funded political campaigning platform, so "truth / lies" is a bit of moot point.

Moot point for sure but can and should be criticized and made fun of repeatedly.

> Also, it seems like it's already done in other robotaxi setups.

I think you're missing the whole point.

The whole point is that Tesla has been promising full self-driving cars for years, and going as far as to talk shit about specific computer vision strategies used by competitors with actual real-world autonomous car services being provided to the public. Elon Musk has been promising the public that full self driving was just a software update away for those who spent money on a Tesla car with a specific onboard computer.

And now, after years of making promises about full self driving cars and shitting on companies who already provide autonomous car services, they silently decide that after all they "need the ability to access and control [Tesla cars] remotely” ?

I mean, using teleoperators is a widely known industry standard. Tesla was promising way more than that and shitting on those who were using them. And now apparently they are scrambling to catch up with what Waymo was doing over a decade ago?

If I was a shareholder or a customer, I'd be pissed.

Well, the share is up 3% since that article was published. :shrug: , I guess ?

> Well, the share is up 3% since that article was published. :shrug: , I guess ?

I don't know where you get your stock quotes. The ones I get tell that last monday TSLA stock prices were at around $350 and right now they stand at $345.

First Google hit, but I probably misread, I don't gamble much on the stock market.

Problem is, after listening to or observing most Tesla owners for a few minutes, I’d steer the car directly into the nearest guardrail or garbage truck.

Genuine question: instead of self-driving cars, why don't we have remote controlled cars all around? With cameras all around the visibility would not be as terrible, together with the current self-driving capabilities which can get through basic situation I would have imagined we'd see more of them around.

Now your taxi driver doesn’t have to put their life on the line while they drive you around town.

And they can be employed on the other side of the world for considerably less money and with less qualifications.

You want to be driven by a guy who has an added 200ms latency at best ? I don't

Too bad! You don't own the company or make the decisions. The value of your life has already been determined and paying a low wage to someone far away makes the most financial sense for these companies.

We exist in a terrible, and great time.

the only time Elon supports remote working is when he can break some laws doing it.

Some SNL cast members in the 80s would have been glad for that (not sure it was Richard Pryor)

Imagine if we put these remote operators inside the car, the latency would be unrivalled.

@elon, Just put it on Steam as 'GTA: Tesla Edition' and let gamers pay Tesla to drive :D

Everyone hates Elon Musk and you are all laughing, but clear your head and think straight:

This is genius. Cars meant to be without a driver as much as possible, mixing AI and AI (Artificial Intelligence and All Indians).

This allows minimising human costs with the future option of further reducing it.

There are plenty of situations and roads where Artificial Intelligence is enough: waiting for a red light, a straight, simple street, a highway…

Human operators will quickly cycle between different cars taking over in any situation that is too complicated for the computer.

What this will do to safety is a different issue.

Not genius, not by a long shot. It's not surprising they're doing this. Even Waymo has human operators for emergency situations.

> This is genius.

This is a peak Elon Musk stan quote: playing catch-up to what is described in the article as the industry standard, and something that established players were doing over a decade ago, is... "Genius"? Is that it?

What does the word "genius" mean to you at this point?

I consider Elon Musk a clown. But this move is economically very clever. It is the beginning of the next disruption of the personal transportation business.

The aggressive push to cover LEO with Starlink satellites is starting to make a lot of sense.

This worldwide communication and telekinetic infrastructure has the potential to change the global economy in dramatic and unpredictable ways. Your imagination and experience can fill in the blanks here. Brilliant foresight and execution ostensibly by Elon.

Gotta love a new age of slavery where human drones in the colonies are serving us without us having to look into their faces.

Now the anti immigrant push makes perfect sense, it’s priming demand for the slave labor matrix

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