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Tesla and Autopilot Supplier Mobileye Split Up After Fatal Crash (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from USA Today: Tesla and Mobileye, one of the top suppliers to its Autopilot partial self-driving system, are parting ways in the wake of the May accident that killed an owner of one of its electric Model S sedans. Mobileye is considered a leader in developing the equipment that will be needed for fully self-driving cars. The Israeli tech company will continue to support and maintain current Tesla products, including upgrades that should help the Autopilot system with crash avoidance and to better allow the car to steer itself, said Chairman Amnon Shashua in releasing the company's second-quarter earnings Tuesday. Shashua said moving cars to higher levels of self-driving capability "is a paradigm shift both in terms of function complexity and the need to ensure an extremely high level of safety." He added there is "much at stake" in terms of Mobileye's reputation, and that it is best to end the relationship with Tesla by the end of the year. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, meeting with reporters at the company's new battery Gigafactory outside Reno, indicated that Tesla can go forward without Mobileye. "Us parting ways was somewhat inevitable. There's nothing unexpected here from our standpoint," Musk said. "We're committed to autonomy. They'll go their way, and we'll go ours."
Shocked! I say I'm shocked that a boutique car made by a startup company directed by an eccentric tycoon could possibly have had a supplier or design change. Unfathomable!
First world problems mate.
Impressed but not surprised Mobileye would ditch Tesla. If one of my customers was using my shit recklessly on public beta experiments that got people killed I would ditch them too.
This sounds familiar. Oh yeah... Ford and Firestone parting ways because they were blaming each other for Explorer rollovers. It's funny how the rollovers continued after they put everything else but Firestones on them.
I'm not at all convinced that anything will change. Car companies have to be forced by the government to spend $5 on seat belts, they're always going to be looking for the absolute minimum cost to produce economy/midrange vehicles and full automation will never fit into that.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
"is best to end the relationship with Tesla by the end of the year"
it's extremely rare that a parts supplier stops being a parts supplier by their decision. only reasons could be the customer(tesla) not paying it's bills or using them out of spec in a manner that might bite them later, and it basically says just that on the inv. call. so tesla and the sensor manufacturer were probably at odds over them shipping the autopilot sw. the sensor manufacturer knows that it can't be good enough with the sensors they sold tesla.
the mobileye system is mainly for collision avoidance, it's just an extra safety feature kind of a thing. thats how other car manufacturers are selling the same thing.
but I can imagine Musk looking at the spec sheet for their product and just going "AUTOPILOT!!!! WHEEE!!" after seeing that mobileyes off the shelf system has lane departure, headway monitoring/warning and forward collision warning. because hey, all you need for autopilot(tm)(r) is to hook up lane departure software output to the wheel and you're DONE! right??
autopilot, a name chosen to make the illusion that it can drive itself. they can't even trademark it, it's only purpose as a name is to deceive.
Most people buy a Tesla because it's electric and fast, NOT because it has a bot.
Table-ized A.I.
Two humans and one computer failed to avoid the collision. One human was at fault for failing to yield to oncoming traffic. Fatal accidents involving left hand turns are common.
About 100 people die every day on US roads. Beyond regretting that yet another person failed to yield while turning left in front of traffic and it resulted in a death what, exactly are we supposed to care about regarding that particular accident?
I don't know how many lives would be saved with autonomous vehicles, I only know that about 30,000 deaths a year on the roads are caused by human errors. Far more accidents involving serious injuries and billions of dollars in damage also occur each year due to human errors.
Two musky stories in a row? Some PR firm must be getting some big dollars.
Not really. Lots of people just really like Musk's products. I mean, he landed a fucking rocket on a boat! He makes the world's fastest production SUV. His autopilot is orders of magnitude better than the competition.
Musk is in some ways similar to Steve Jobs. Early on, trolls would shit over Apple products. Too expensive. Too simple. Then Jobs guided Apple to be the most profitable company in the world. Why? Because people liked Apple products. Musk received nearly 400000 pre-orders for their next car. Why? Because people liked the car when they saw it. It wasn't some tricky marketing campaign. People just like how the Model 3 looks, and how it performs.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
I think the name "autopilot" starts to suffer the same fate as the name "hacker": they both have a precise meaning, but in the general use by the public, the meaning has shifted
Hacker used to be someone who is good at McGuyvering, at finding creative uses, etc.
But the press ended up using it for Cracker, someone who just breaks into things, not necessarily showing any creativity.
Same happenned with Autopilot: in aviation, it is a very precise thing - an apparatus which can take care automatically of the small minute details of flying the plane. The human need to provide it an order (a destination) and then only watch over it and control that everything is going well, but not actually hold the commands themselves.
Nobody has ever deigned this for the whole crew to take a nap while it is on.
Same in a boat: the autopilot will keep a destination, so you don't need to hold the wheel. That doesn't mean that you should be napping, you still need to whatch out for dangers, obstacles, etc.
But suddenly, the general public has taken a different meaning: as you say, now the think of it as Chauffeur: the Chauffeur (not necessarily electronic, it can be a human) takes care of everything, while you can safely take a nap or whatch some harry potter.
Elon should have called it "Ship's Commander mode" (as the one which gives orders instead of holding the wheel) sound both mor awesome and a little bit less passive role for the driver.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]