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Comment by ivewonyoung | Hacker News Reader

> Mercedes is driving itself and you have 10 seconds to takeover. Huge difference between level 3 and level 2. One is self driving and one is just a drivers aid.

None of that is true, it just follows the car in front in slow moving traffic during daytime in good weather on premapped roads and cannot even change lanes. No car in front anymore? It completely fails to "self"-drive.

These limitations are taboo to talk about because the Mercedes system is used as an anti-Tesla talking point, you can get permanently banned from Reddit and BlueSky for bringing it up. Thats why so many people think its a great system.

Edit: Downvotes for bringing up inconvenient facts.

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I'm very much aware of how Drive Pilot doesn't handle most cases: in my comment I described it as "super limited" and linked to where Mercedes describes the details.

But within the range of cases where the Mercedes system is applicable (which recently went up to 59mph in Germany [1]) it's solidly better than the Tesla system because Mercedes did the engineering to make it reliable enough that you don't have to supervise the car's driving. If I had a highway commute in stop-and go traffic I'd be comfortable reading in a Mercedes, but not in a Tesla.

[1] https://media.mercedes-benz.com/article/4c04b46a-05e3-4a20-9...

> If I had a highway commute in stop-and go traffic I'd be comfortable reading in a Mercedes

It gets dark at 4:45PM in a good chunk of the western world in winter so it won't be useful then.

If Tesla were to artificially set up limitations like highway only, daytime, clearly visible lanes, good weather, car in front, no construction zones, no lane changes, etc, then they would easily have been able to offer full L3 and take full liability for it. Tesla FSD is practically perfected, with no accidents whatsoever, under such conditions already. But Elon wouldn't want to release this kind of gimped system as he is aiming for full self driving everywhere.

> Tesla FSD is practically perfected

Absolutely untrue. It's not even close to perfect. I use it a few times a week and while it's seen some significant improvements over the last year, it still makes pretty dangerous mistakes, especially on left turns, right-turn slip lanes, intersections with flashing yellow lights, streets with very worn road lines or where the positioning of the road lines shift from one side of the intersection to the other. I can think of a dozen other similar situations so I'm very sure there are many others I've never even encountered.

It remains to be seen how much juice Tesla can squeeze out of a transformer approach to autonomous driving, but it's by no means a sure thing.

edit: I misunderstood the comment. I see now that "practically perfected" is a reference to the ideal conditions mentioned in your first sentence.

You seem to have (accidentally?) left off the rest of the comment:

"Tesla FSD is practically perfected, with no accidents whatsoever, under such conditions"

You're right. Thanks. I edited my comment to acknowledge that.

Thank you to post your personal experience. One pattern that I have noticed about Tesla FSD stories on HN: it is black and white, with little grey area. Either people live an area where the roads are easy for FSD to navigate, and they come here to say "It is perfect!". And vice versa: People live in a place with a bunch of complex roads and intersections where FSD does not perform well... And they come to HN to share their experience. (Privately, I cannot wait to see self-driving models try driving on Jakarta or Napoli. It will so much fun to watch those on YouTube!) I do think that Elon/Tesla is taking a crazy gamble to release FSD early to gain billions of hours of training data! I can understand where this would make some people uncomfortable, due to the safety concerns. Except Waymo, who else has the training data that Tesla has at this point? Wiki tells me that FSD has been driving on public roads since 2016. That must an astonishing amount of training data accumulated in the last 8 years! I assume he will be tasking X.ai with improving the FSD model using this enormous training data.

The streets of Jakarta and Napoli wouldn't work with the Mercedes Benz system either.

> Who has the training data at this point?

Woven by Toyota has roof pods on rideshare (Lyft) cars collecting data: https://woven.toyota/en/our-latest/20220407/

How can you claim that they could do it when they clearly are not doing it?

This is so absurd. If they could accurately predict when their system is so reliable, they could get it certified for Level 3 use in these conditions. That's not a gimped version, that's strictly better than the product they offer.

They can't though. Mercedes-Benz can. To pretend that Tesla doesn't offer a better product because they don't want to is...

Tesla aren't allowed to because of woke /s

> Tesla FSD is practically perfected, with no accidents whatsoever, under such conditions already

Disengaging 2 seconds before an accident leads to a perfect driving record

Compare it to FSD which can't self drive on any road in any condition. Thats the real facts.

There are plenty of FSD videos on YouTube where the driver didn't have to intervene at all on long trips, where the car isn't just following the car in front.

You hit it on the nail, the driver didn't have to intervene but they had to be ready to take over at any time. If FSD could safely operate where you had 10 seconds to take over for level 3, why doesn't Tesla go get it certified for L3 driving. FSD isn't even approved for being a drivers aid(hands off, eyes on) in EU and China because Tesla has not demonstrated that it is safe. Even Blue cruise is approved in EU for comparison. And it isn't because Tesla isn't trying to get ADAS certification in these markets.

Imo Mercedes scored a point with their narrow application of L3 driving, Tesla is playing to win the game.

For past decade, with meh results consistently so far. They were/are? selling FSD as premium package and never delivered on promises, that's outright fraud in plain sight.

Technologically Tesla is far behind since one man's ego wants to trump physics and computing limitations and its failing. Still no Lidar.

I don't care about 90 youtube videos of long drives with no intervention. I care about a million out of a million (and maybe 10 on top). Either there is something I can trust with mine and my kids life with, or I am not interested with anything on top adaptive cruise control (since I don't spend my life in stop&go traffic).

Are they? they haven't start certification for self driving any market? It seems FSD is more of way to pump the stock. Mercedes is testing their same cars for L4(point to point) in china.

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