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Mobileye Says Tesla Was Dropped Because of Safety Concerns

An anonymous reader writes: On Wednesday, Mobileye revealed that it ended its relationship with Tesla because "it was pushing the envelope in terms of safety." Mobileye's CTO and co-founder Amnon Shashua told Reuters that the electric vehicle maker was using his company's machine vision sensor system in applications for which it had not been designed. "No matter how you spin it, (Autopilot) is not designed for that. It is a driver assistance system and not a driverless system," Shashua said. In a statement to Reuters, Tesla said that it has "continuously educated customers on the use of the features, reminding them that they're responsible to keep their hands on the wheel and remain alert and present when using Autopilot" and that the system has never been described as autonomous or self-driving. (This statement appears to be at odds with statements made by Musk at shareholder meetings.) It is also emerging that the crash which cost Joshua Brown his life in May of this year was unlikely to have been the first such fatal crash involving Tesla's Autopilot. In January of this year in China, a Tesla ploughed into the back of a stationary truck at speed, killing the driver.

39 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Unreasonable by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Asking customers to remain alert while the car drives itself for hours on end is unreasonable. Psychologists know that, NASA warned them about it... Human beings simple can't concentrate for that amount of time with nothing to do.

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    1. Re:Unreasonable by stanjo74 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Survivor bias. You were not alert, just lucky.

    2. Re:Unreasonable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      And did you remain alert all that time or did you just imagine that? The problem with losing concentration, dozing off etc. is that there's a good chance you don't notice it at all.

    3. Re:Unreasonable by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Exactly. If you call something autopilot, then people expect it to be an... autopilot.

      ... unless they are actually a Tesla owner. I use Autopilot, and Tesla repeatedly and emphatically makes the capabilities of the system and the responsibility of the driver very clear.

    4. Re:Unreasonable by I4ko · · Score: 4, Insightful

      His point exactly - YOU drove, you weren't driven.

    5. Re:Unreasonable by Dare+nMc · · Score: 4, Interesting

      >Asking customers to remain alert while the car drives itself for hours on end is unreasonable.

      It is also be unthinkable to have your "backup" to evaluate the performance of the autopilot watching only the output. I have hundreds of hours logged in autonomous vehicles, but I would review the data, see all the diagnostics logged, all of the GPS signal lost, or drifted, etc for the week. I thus have never completely trusted them. All of the operators, even when told by engineers of running a beta release with big untested changes would spend all of their time working on their phones. Without knowing when every backup and sensors have failed to read something wrong. You cannot evaluate the maturity just off of, well it stopped the other 5 times someone stepped in front of the vehicle, why would I have to worry about walking in front of them. If you don't know 15 times in the last mile the cameras failed to maintain the road edge monitoring, and 20 times during that same period that sensor was the only thing that kept you on the road. Only dad those 2 events overlapped, which they eventually will, would the failures actually show up in the output.

    6. Re:Unreasonable by Nutria · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If the driver has to keep his hands on the wheel, and pay attention, then... it's not an autopilot.

      (Not that I'm shocked or anything by deceptive marketing practices.)

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    7. Re:Unreasonable by Octorian · · Score: 2

      Except everyone who casually reads tech news, only vaguely paying attention to headlines written by tech writers, has a completely mistaken impression of what it is and does.

      Seriously, I've seen everyone from random friends to strangers on the street assume the car could basically drive itself. (Yes, even before they released the feature.)

      The capabilities of the system, and the responsibilities of the driver, are quite clear... if you actually drive the car or read past the headlines. Unfortunately, most people who write knee-jerk article comments don't fall into either of these categories.

    8. Re:Unreasonable by rhazz · · Score: 2

      And here I was hoping to see a Tesla conversation that didn't devolve to an argument about the definition of the word "autopilot". Every fucking thread. Get over it.

    9. Re:Unreasonable by bobbied · · Score: 3, Informative

      Exactly. If you call something autopilot, then people expect it to be an... autopilot.

      The problem though is actual "autopilots" are in airplanes and they range in complexity and features.

      Some are simple 2 axis affairs that can maintain heading and altitude, sort of, as long as your DG doesn't drift and the altimeter works. Some are fully automatic, land in a fog bank worthy of a mystery novel affairs that literally do everything but talk on the radios from departure to arrival with little more than a few button pushes. Most fall in between the extremes.

      Using an autopilot in an airplane requires the pilots be fully aware of the automation's limitations and be monitoring the flight's progress. It's purpose is two fold, 1. to lower the pilot workload and increase safety at critical phases in flight, by automating the more mundane tasks like controlling altitude, heading and speed, and 2. Increase efficiency by keeping the aircraft operating in its most efficient way possible.

      Tesla's "autopilot" is something totally different. It's not about efficiency, and it's not about safety, it's about convenience. Though they call it an autopilot, it's most certainly isn't one. It's built for a totally different reason.

      --
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    10. Re:Unreasonable by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      Asking customers to remain alert while the car drives itself for hours on end is unreasonable.

      Asking drivers to remain alert while they drive for hours on end is unreasonable. That's why we have rest stops, and why everyone and your mom (literally!) will tell you to pull over and take a break occasionally.

      Perhaps Autopilot will, in the future, require that drivers do the same, and offer to drive them to a rest stop.

      Human beings simple can't concentrate for that amount of time with nothing to do.

      Except when you're in traffic with a bunch of fuckheads and your life is being threatened every few minutes (or seconds, as is more likely around say the Bay Area... or any big city in Texas, or lots of other places) driving is already well below that threshold for anyone who has any actual business driving. Hence the need for more automated driving features...

      --
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    11. Re:Unreasonable by jbengt · · Score: 3, Funny

      I drove from Albuquerque to seattle in 17 hours, nonstop.

      I admire and envy your bladder.

    12. Re:Unreasonable by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Exactly. If you call something autopilot, then people expect it to be an... autopilot.

      I know. Tesla's system isn't an autopilot. It's far better than that. Autopilots as we traditionally know them can't cope with anything, they can only maintain direction and heading and drop back to the pilot control everytime someone looks at them funny. It'll happily fly into a storm or into a mountain.

      I propose we name the Tesla system the drunk chauffeur, much better than an autopilot system but it may still get you killed.

  2. Well... by johnsmithperson123 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Tesla has about 2 fatalities per 100 million miles. South Carolina, the worst state in the US for accidents, has 1.65 accidents/100M. Massachusetts has .57. Clearly, self driving cars have a long way to go.

    1. Re:Well... by mbeckman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Statistically insignificant. Tesla stats will only matter when tens of thousands, if not millions, of trips have been made under autopilot. Then compare accident rates. If Tesla turns out to be safer, it won't be because of AI, because we have no idea how humans drive in the first place. It will be because of image processing and predictive algorithms, combined with pre-ordained decision trees. And there may well be major unforeseen consequences, such as cascading failures and catastrophic feedback loop interactions between vehicles.

    2. Re:Well... by jeremyp · · Score: 3, Informative

      Nope.

      That's not what "statistically significant" means. What it does mean is that the result is unlikely to happen by chance. If there have only ever been two fatalities while driving on autopilot, there really isn't enough data to be confident it's not a random cluster and so the number is not statistically significant.

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
    3. Re:Well... by speedplane · · Score: 2

      Statistically insignificant. Tesla stats will only matter when tens of thousands, if not millions, of trips have been made under autopilot.

      The problem with waiting around for better data is that you're asking consumers to be the guinea pigs for an untested and potentially dangerous device. Through their overreaching marketing, and their lack of transparency, most would not trust Tesla with their life, and those that do, do so at their peril. A safer (albeit slower) approach would be for Tesla to demonstrate safety through public testing data.

      --
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    4. Re:Well... by barc0001 · · Score: 2

      > The problem with waiting around for better data is that you're asking consumers to be the guinea pigs for an untested and potentially dangerous device.

      Counterpoint: You HAVE seen the roads being filled with potentially dangerous and unqualified meatbags driving multi ton objects at lethals speeds, yes?

      An autopilot car has never crashed because it was doing its makeup, talking on a cellphone, had too many at the local bar, fell asleep, argued with its wife and jerked the wheel around to punctuate a salient point, confused the gas and brake and run through a farm market crowd, or just straight up had a psychotic break and decided that running over a sidewalk full of people was a cool thing to do. All of the former have been done by meatbags, who will continue to do so.

    5. Re:Well... by fluffernutter · · Score: 2

      Tying the steering wheel with a rope and putting a brick on the gas pedal never got into an accident for any of those reasons either.

      --
      Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    6. Re: Well... by mbeckman · · Score: 2

      Make a good point. Quite possibly driverless cars are impossible to adequately tested without putting many humans at risk. We have to decide if the value of that risk, and the inevitable deaths that will result, outweighs the benefit inconvenience and not having to drive ourselves. There is no guarantee that driverless cars will end up being safer than driving ourselves. It may be a wash, or it could be far more deadly. Nobody knows, because there is zero data on accidents in an environment where many or most cars are driverless.

    7. Re: Well... by Cederic · · Score: 2

      http://www.ford.com/trucks/f15... suggests you're at best being disingenuous.

      Most people spend a fuck of a lot less than $60k on a car.

  3. Mobileye understands lit. Musk doesn't. by HBI · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Expecting Tesla to survive the avalanche of product liability suits that are coming is crazy. Musk appears oblivious to the problem. This is not a PR issue. There are numerous chinks in Tesla's armor that will be pried open and exploited by plaintiff lawyers. The company is toast. Mobileye is just trying to save itself and preserve relationships with other vendors.

    As for that idiot Hotz...we can go visit him in some slum apartment in a few years. Bring a 12 pack and you can listen to him complain about how the system is rigged.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    1. Re:Mobileye understands lit. Musk doesn't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Musk is a Silicon Valley software guy. They have no concept of making things and they are used to an industry where you can sell people defective crap, have them find the bugs and then sell them a new version that fixes the crap that shouldn't have been shipped in the first place. Also SV people have this knack for over-hype that leads people to have expectations that the product cannot deliver.

      AND, Musk has Space X and Tesla going.

      Even if he were a competent manager, he is stretched too thin.

    2. Re:Mobileye understands lit. Musk doesn't. by BostonPilot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Expecting Tesla to survive the avalanche of product liability suits that are coming is crazy. Musk appears oblivious to the problem. This is not a PR issue. There are numerous chinks in Tesla's armor that will be pried open and exploited by plaintiff lawyers. The company is toast.

      I'm glad you mentioned this. Just this weekend I telling (another pilot) that I don't understand the strategy. The goal of Tesla was to bring electric vehicles to the masses. How are they going to do that when they get sued into oblivion? A conservative approach would have been to offer assist technologies similar to what their competition (other luxury brands) was offering. Instead, Elon has acted like it's Autopilot that's selling Tesla cars. I think people like Autopilot, but would buy the car if it had a much less aggressive auto-drive system because the real value is in the electrification of the car, not the autopilot system.

      It's not all that dissimilar to his falcon wing door misstep, except that falcon wing doors did not present an ongoing risk of expensive lawsuits.

      So far the accidents have been such that the Tesla driver was the one who got hurt. What happens when a Tesla hits another car and kills everybody inside? How is Tesla going to avoid the liability? Yeah, sure, the driver should have been paying attention, but at least in the US Tesla will still get named in the lawsuit, and when they lose guess who is going to have to pony up the majority of the settlement? Hint: it won't be the driver.

      The good news is that Elon may have already jump-started the electric car industry and even if Tesla gets sued out of existence we may have enough momentum for the other car companies to keep moving forward.

    3. Re:Mobileye understands lit. Musk doesn't. by HBI · · Score: 2

      My theory is that Musk didn't realize what was going to happen because it's his blind spot - the practicalities of selling hard consumer goods.

      I think he may actually have an inkling of the fact that Tesla is doomed already and that's why the Mobileye announcement. Typically, if they thought they could weather this, they would join at the hip and offer a common defense and probably announce more cooperative deals. Someone got the hint amidst their discussions that Tesla realizes its impending doom and is going to throw its supplier under the bus, as it were. (ha) Mainly because they lack better choices because of poor strategy, as you note. So Mobileye is now blaming Tesla for its implementation, to absolve themselves of liability. You can see the battle lines forming.

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      HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    4. Re:Mobileye understands lit. Musk doesn't. by Digicrat · · Score: 2

      Not that again: Once again, the only stats that show Tesla safer than human drivers compares Tesla divided highway driving (the safest kind of driving) with human driving in general.

      And that is also the only stat that matters for the Tesla Autopilot. The system was only designed to be used on divided highway driving. Any other usage is not supported or encouraged. Just because early versions of the system didn't prohibit the driver from engaging it on unsupported roads, doesn't mean that those use cases are supported. They clearly state that the driver is responsible for paying attention, and that it should only be used for highway driving.

    5. Re:Mobileye understands lit. Musk doesn't. by ripvlan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'll agree with the suggestion - although think Musk has enough influence to survive and make it go away. If real problems began he'd probably leave to pursue other opportunities and new management would right the ship.

      As a person who works in a regulated environment - you can't make claims about something that aren't proven. The product must be specifically designed & tested for these *Uses*. Read the back of a Tylenol / Aspirin bottle : "This product intended for the temporary relief of pain caused by ....(etc)" It doesn't cure cancer. If a salesperson tried to hint that maybe it did - they'd be strung up and fined (the drug industry has many examples of this).

      However - apparently Tesla isn't regulated in this space. They can hint and suggest. The can say, "It is so good that most of the time it works as an autopilot self-driving system... but don't try it at home." It wasn't specifically designed to do this - so they shouldn't be able to hint at it. Customer's don't understand what this means - the darn thing works most of the time and they get used to it working.

      Since the auto-pilot is designed to Assist the driver - the computer should monitor the driver and verify they are paying attention or pull the car over. Or NOT take over the wheel for indefinite periods of time. Consumers get used to this "not an approved use" behavior and begin to trust it - even make up their own uses ("hey look I can take a nap").

  4. Translation: Tesla dropped our product. We Mad by BenJeremy · · Score: 2

    Sour grapes from a former vendor. Mobileye would sell cameras to blind people if they could. Vendors are not leading any auto program in the industry... 2nd and 3rd tier vendors are even worse, and require constant attention, or they will deliver poor quality and unsafe products.

    More likely they raised their prices and Tesla balked at the price and moved to another vendor.

  5. Autopilot works on Airplanes.. by bagboy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    because there isn't much to run into in the air and flights are required to file a flight plan so they have clear airspace. Even then, you always have a pilot on the ready. And this has been around for decades. Letting a computer be in full control of your life on the ground at high speeds is foolish.

  6. Re:Mobileye got dumped by HBI · · Score: 2

    You don't understand litigation either. Tesla sold the vehicle and will take the lion's share of the liability. Even if they manage to hold in a component vendor, it won't be for the bulk of the payouts.

    Even if Tesla had an umbrella liability policy covering this type of thing, it's either cancelled already or under underwriter review and will be cancelled based upon these events.

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  7. Distract from a buggy product by Steve1952 · · Score: 2

    I find the timing interesting. After the Tesla crash, Mobileeye admitted that their system can't distinguish cars or trucks entering the main road from a side road. They then said it would take several years to implement this functionality. Then they "dropped" Tesla. It looks to me more as if the Mobileeye product had a hidden defect. If Mobileye had publicised this problem in advance of the crash, it is likely that Tesla and the other car manufacturers considering Mobileeye would have had a better understanding of the Mobileeye limitations, and could have adjusted their plans accordingly.

  8. Re: I'm short TSLA by lxs · · Score: 5, Funny

    Shorting a Tesla is generally a bad idea. 60-85kWH batteries tend to react vigorously to that sort of treatment.

  9. Re:Gives new meaning to computer crash by Rei · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Or not. I love the weasely " In January of this year in China, a Tesla ploughed into the back of a stationary truck at speed, killing the driver. Should that incident prove to be related to Autopilot...". Well, yes, in the same way that if a train were to crash tomorrow you could write "Should that incident be related to the Galaxy 7..." without any evidence that it was involved at all.

    Here's a Google Transmangle of the original article in Chinese:

    https://translate.google.com/t...

    Basically, the evidence that autopilot was in use was... um... his dad thinks it must have been because his son is a good driver and wouldn't have hit that truck. And he wants to "prove" it by... showing that the car's speed wasn't changing.

    Whether the autopilot was on or off in a given situation is logged and easy to recover. Any reporter who suggests that an incident was "due to autopilot" without at first finding out whether the system was even on is being grossly irresponsible.

    --
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  10. Re:Well.... by bobbied · · Score: 2

    Then Tesla has obviously been lying to everyone about Autopilot. From the way they described it, it was practically a self driving car.

    Well... It IS a self driving car... Until it crashes into something...

    How's that different from and airplane which flies... Until it hits the ground?

    How practical this all is, is left up to the reader to decide.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  11. Liability is not for everyone by cloud.pt · · Score: 2

    One of the few things I will take for granted from Elon, is his vision that if EVERY car on the road follows SOLIDLY PROGRAMMED RULES (and the sensors, of course, do not all catastrophically fail, frequently), you will have a drastic decrease, maybe even statistically eliminate car accidents. Everybody has this misconception that automated "piloting", whatever its form, will eventually create harm either by outright failure or for being so right it eventually acknowledges the "crew" is "a" harm. Fact of the matter is, everybody is just afraid of acknowledging their own imperfection, and of losing their jobs and their economy, because the definition of automation is exactly that: replacing people with a better, cheaper and easier process. We have robots flying millions of miles to other planets without much issue. Yet the main reason we don't send humans to first missions of anything is not because they're worse - it's just that they're a liability to lose in a complexity of aspects that cannot be controlled at all - public opinion is very powerful into downing any idea it preempts wrong..

    I believe Elon is damn right that it is necessary to take risks in driving automation, and the holy grail in that field is to move human brain and action 100% out of the equation, for the simplest reason of them all: the driver, unlike computers, does not always have his safety as the first priority, be it by will to do something else or by distraction. Were talking big car companies here, not a service provider of a yet small car producer. Small companies cannot phathom the handling of such liability, oftentimes they don't even have the financial or legal capacity to handicap themselves with an established legal defense: ultimately the driver is liable for 99% litigation that happens about accidents TODAY because HE IS MAKING ALL DECISIONS IN REAL-TIME. Drivers don't stand a chance really. Judges will minutely side with the driver in litigation "against a car", and when they do, it usually makes it to national television.

    Elon has been risking it with both Tesla and Space X because he knows he has, to some extent, the money (or the ability to direct others' money) into something bold. This is not courage like Apple likes to call it, it's calculated risk assessment with a very high return and smaller than usual probability - nobody wants that kind of bet, unless they're either truly altruistic or they're in the business of not having a standardized existence in this world. And guess what, that is just fine by me and I won't blame him for trying to be great.

  12. Rename it ... by Monoman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Rename it to something like Copilot or Driver Assist. They can say what they want about how Autopilot should be used but the name suggests otherwise.

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    1. Re:Rename it ... by Monoman · · Score: 2

      Troll much? I disagree that they would be more misleading. I guess we should rename it "Not Autopilot"

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    2. Re:Rename it ... by Monoman · · Score: 2

      Your comments "spectacularly brain-damaged suggestion" and "drug-fueled" are why I consider your post troll like. Have a great day.

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  13. Re:Gives new meaning to computer crash by curiousgeorgeishere · · Score: 2

    new info as undiscovered feature found in Tesla Autopilot https://www.inverse.com/articl... Could this could be an issue in terms of agreement ?