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Comment by dstroot | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who owns a Tesla with “full self driving” knows how this is going to go. Teslas using only camera vision just don’t have the sensor package and programming to actually perform self driving. I just don’t see this going well for Tesla as it’s more likely to reveal the weaknesses in their technology than be a showcase.

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Given that and given that they know the data better than anyone, what's your hypothesis as to why they would deploy if the data isn't in their favor?

Musk needs to keep hyping the next big thing to justify the insane valuation. So it was going to launch regardless of how ready or safe it was.

Still seems nuts to me, they're pretending Waymo doesn't already regularly drive without supervision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

But if you're correct, then won't it be a massive harm to the valuation once they are at fault in many accidents over the coming weeks? They have the Q2 earnings call coming up next month.

It seems like it would be a really bad idea to put this out there if they know from the data that it will cause lots of accidents.

It depends on how much autonomous driving they actually do. My guess is that they will only drive a miniscule amount in favorable conditions for the foreseeable future. That would maximize the hype:risk ratio.

It's also possible they quietly rely on remote operators to a large extent. The fake robot PR stunt wasn't even that long ago, the company might try the same thing here.

Yeah, well, companies like Enron show that covering up mistakes with other mistakes ends badly. Fake it til you make it works if you make it, blows up otherwise.

So you're saying they developed it up until this level where it can mostly drive itself, but now they've pivoted toward collapsing the company?

I just don't see how this train of thought makes sense.

Let's see, the future is yet to manifest.

One can only delay the much-hyped thing so many times before the markets get irritated, and Musk isn't great at acknowledging that he screwed up.

So you think they chose to launch it yesterday despite the data telling them that they will be at fault in lots of accidents over the coming weeks, and will presumably be forced to roll it back? You think they decided that's somehow better than delaying?

I mean, if that were to happen, they wouldn't exactly be the first. It's not particularly rational, but "launch very late thing in an unacceptable state and then pull it a few weeks after" is not an uncommon industry pattern. Admittedly, it's unusual for _hardware_ (though not totally unknown; see the Humane AI thing, say).

Pulling something a few weeks later isn't uncommon when it's unknown how a service will go, but in this case they actually have data that pretty much tells them how this is likely to go.

Same phenomenon as this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-5s4JlBesc

Nobody's gonna be the one to tell Elon that the stuff isn't ready.

So you think Elon is not interested in numbers? Or you think Tesla employees are presenting fabricated data to him?

The phenomenon in that video is only possible when management is heavily disconnected from ground truths & data, but that seems the opposite to how Musk's companies are run.

Honestly, I have been hearing this since years now. I was suspicious about it for a long time. But they have been allowing vision based FSD for a long time now and the data shows it's getting better, fast. I am ready to park my skepticism (sometimes cynicism) for some time and give them a benefit of doubt out of optimism. Tesla knows that if things go wrong with Robotaxi launch, they are screwed. They wont' take that risk unnecessarily.

> They wont' take that risk unnecessarily.

Tesla: a company that doesn't take risks unnecessarily.

exactly!

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