Tesla Autopilot Crisis Deepens With Loss of Third Autopilot Boss In 18 Months (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: It is no secret that Tesla's Autopilot project is struggling. Last summer, we covered a report that Tesla was bleeding talent from its Autopilot division. Tesla Autopilot head Sterling Anderson quit Tesla at the end of 2016. His replacement was Chris Lattner, who had previously created the Swift programming language at Apple. But Lattner only lasted six months before departing last June. Now Lattner's replacement, Jim Keller, is leaving Tesla as well.

Keller was a well-known chip designer at AMD before he was recruited to lead Tesla's hardware engineering efforts for Autopilot in 2016. Keller has been working to develop custom silicon for Autopilot, potentially replacing the Nvidia chips being used in today's Tesla vehicles. When Lattner left Tesla last June, Keller was given broader authority over the Autopilot program as a whole. Keller's departure comes just weeks after the death of Walter Huang, a driver whose Model X vehicle slammed into a concrete lane divider in Mountain View, California. Tesla has said Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash. Tesla has since gotten into public feuds with both Huang's family and the National Transportation Safety Board, the federal agency investigating the crash. "Today is Jim Keller's last day at Tesla, where he has overseen low-voltage hardware, Autopilot software and infotainment," Tesla said in a statement to Electrek. "Prior to joining Tesla, Jim's core passion was microprocessor engineering, and he's now joining a company where he'll be able to once again focus on this exclusively."

Comments

Too little too soon?

[Dare nMc]

I suspect Tesla's method of using less hardware will be the main path in 15 years for autonomy, once we have car to car communications and car to traffic control communications as standard equipment in every vehicle and bugs worked out. Some cars with humans or lasers can communicate safe passages and routes through construction, and other road conditions (wet/ice/snow...) And lesser equipped cars can then navigate recently validated routes more safely.

But now the NTSB is very likely going to step into national standards for autonomy, and it doesn't appear Tesla is ready to meet the likely minimum standard, such as redundant navigation (operate without GPS, or without optical recognition.) and redundant systems.

Re:Too little too soon?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

I suspect Tesla's method of using less hardware will be the main path in 15 years for autonomy, once we have car to car communications and car to traffic control communications as standard equipment in every vehicle and bugs worked out.

All the kinks worked out and equipment in every vehicle on the road in the next 15 years. Elon, is that you?

Some cars with humans or lasers can communicate safe passages and routes through construction, and other road conditions (wet/ice/snow...) And lesser equipped cars can then navigate recently validated routes more safely.

I'm sure you're not saying that a ~4,000 pound hunk of metal being propelled at ~60mph can make safe operational decisions based not on current environmental conditions but on environmental conditions that existed at some point before it reached a given area.

Re:Too little too soon?

[quantaman]

I suspect Tesla's method of using less hardware will be the main path in 15 years for autonomy, once we have car to car communications and car to traffic control communications as standard equipment in every vehicle and bugs worked out. Some cars with humans or lasers can communicate safe passages and routes through construction, and other road conditions (wet/ice/snow...) And lesser equipped cars can then navigate recently validated routes more safely.

But now the NTSB is very likely going to step into national standards for autonomy, and it doesn't appear Tesla is ready to meet the likely minimum standard, such as redundant navigation (operate without GPS, or without optical recognition.) and redundant systems.

Hardware only gets cheaper, the future of self-driving cars is more and redundant sensors. And no car is going to rely on another car to tell it what is a safe route.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Rei]

But now the NTSB is very likely going to step into national standards for autonomy, and it doesn't appear Tesla is ready to meet the likely minimum standard, such as redundant navigation (operate without GPS, or without optical recognition.) and redundant systems.

Contrary to some bad reporting of late, the Model 3's AP systems are redundant - both onboard redundancy, and redundancy in the mechanical assist systems. And if AP loses a sensor or a sensor is obstructed, AP is disabled until it can be fixed.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Rei]

Also, the NTSB does not set standard for autonomy. The NTSB is an investigation board. The NHTSA sets standards in the US.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans seem to get by ok with minimal hardware. Two cameras and one massively parallel, but extremely buggy and unreliable CPU that completely fabricates a lot of what you see based on its best guess.

Re:Too little too soon?

[haruchai]

I'm surprised that Tesla doesn't already have car-to-car comms for their own vehicles

Re:Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

" AP is disabled until it can be fixed."

Or until the car runs into a crash barrier killing all on board.

Great!

Re:Too little too soon?

[viperidaenz]

... with several billion years worth of AI training data

Re:Too little too soon?

[viperidaenz]

In 15 years?
The average car age on the road USA is approaching 12 years. in 2003 is was 9.7 years, in 2016 it was 11.6 years.
In 15 years the average car will be similar to what's available now. Most cars won't have self-driving capability or car to car communication.
There are plenty of cars from the 70's, 80's and 90's on the roads today. In 15 years there still will be. Maybe fewer from the 80's as they start turning to rust.

Maybe in 150 years.

Re: Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. Then we try and abstract all of that into some electronics and introduce a whole new set of errors and biases. Some predictable, some unforeseen.

Re:Too little too soon?

[vtcodger]

"...once we have car to car communications"

I wouldn't underestimate how difficult that is going to be. It is one thing to get two or even three cars on a test track in the middle of nowhere to talk to one another. It is quite another to get real vehicles in an environment with a multitude of vehicles plus noise sources, plus reflective surfaces bouncing signals around to identify each other and communicate with 100% reliability. And 3rd party relays/signal interpreters may be needed to reliably "see"/"talk" around obstacles.

Re:Too little too soon?

[vtcodger]

Humans are allowed to drive, and generally do so pretty well, even if one "camera" is defective or inoperative.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Dare nMc]

FYI, the Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) system is in some cars today, by 2020 all new cars must have them.

Bigger to me is these communicate to traffic lights, so auto systems in vehicles will get alerts for things like light changes, crashes, weather and temperature. So it is likely a intersection that commonly has problems with Ice will alert.

Re: Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the road repair crew should have replaced the impact absorbing safety device instead of putting a traffic cone in its place after the accident a few days beforehand(it was replaced the day after the tesla crashed) if it was in place it probably would have been non fatal

Re:Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

if AI drivers perform the same, or even half as bad as humans, they would be forbidden.
what I am saying is : humans are bad drivers

Re:Too little too soon?

[sexconker]

if AI drivers perform the same, or even half as bad as humans, they would be forbidden.
what I am saying is : humans are bad drivers

And what everyone else is saying is: Tesla's "auto pilot", Uber's full-fledged self driving cars, etc. are worse. Much worse. They're parlor tricks that work in a rigged scenario at best. They're decades away from being as safe and flexible as even a drunk human.

Re:Too little too soon?

[AmiMoJo]

And no car is going to rely on another car to tell it what is a safe route.

That's actually exactly what Autopilot does. In traffic it follows the car in front. The lead car turns blue on the display when the Tesla is locked on to it.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

That should be fine as long as it keeps a safe distance.

Re:Too little too soon?

[tinkerton]

I can't wait to read about 'lemming mode' megacrashes!

Re:Too little too soon?

[Rei]

You can pick and adjust your follow distance. Some people choose a short follow distance. I personally wouldn't.

Re:Too little too soon?

[stooo]

Aha. Like there is no other living or driving thing around.
No animals or humans on bikes traversing your lane.
No bridges falling between both cars.
No one throwing stones from non collapsing bridges.
No tire exploding, ever.
No water, ice, fog in your path, ever.
No confusing road markings
No sun blinding cameras
No rain

Just pretend all those things do not exist.

Re:Too little too soon?

[vtcodger]

You're talking about V2V? Yes, they have spectrum and some implementations. They don't even seem to have a single agreed to or dictated protocol that would allow, for example, BMWs to talk to Cadillacs. And no, there is no current Implement_by-date although several have been proposed. NHSTA proposed a standard at the end of 2016, but it seems to have quietly died in late 2017

Not that I'm opposed to V2V? Seems like a perfectly OK idea actually if everyone can be persuaded to speak the same digital language.

But what they have does not seem remotely what will actually be needed to support autonomous vehicles.

Re: Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe drivers who don't pay attention to obatacles as they head directly towards them, shouldnt drive.

Re:Too little too soon?

[mjwx]

I suspect Tesla's method of using less hardware will be the main path in 15 years for autonomy, once we have car to car communications and car to traffic control communications as standard equipment in every vehicle and bugs worked out.

Will _all_ the bugs be worked out before, or after Pagani deliver my flying unicorn.

Re: Too little too soon?

[fluffernutter]

I here the sound of taxes going up for the sake of autonomous driving.... again.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Dare nMc]

> Most cars won't have self-driving capability or car to car communication.

Doesn't take most, just takes enough. Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) was introduced to new cars 2 years ago, and will likely be in all news cars in 2 years. Driver assist (lane assist, emergency braking...) with NHTSA is already recommending CIB, DBS and PAEB braking, and was on a path to make them mandatory, but the current anti regulation path in the US has likely put a delay to that.

With these style of cars, we are a few system updates away from converting them to be part of a smart grid. So 15 years may be optimistic with a deregulation movement likely to slow things for the next 3-7 years. But if we had a hard regulatory push away from petrol cars in 10 years, we could be 90% smart cars in 15-20 years.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Wdomburg]

It's so minimal that it takes massive amounts of hardware to even poorly replicate specific aspects of its function.

Re: Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

In California, they would fill plastic barrels full of water or sand.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Dare nMc]

> make safe operational decisions based not on current environmental conditions but on environmental conditions that existed at some point before it reached a given area.

You probably don't realize we all do that. Not exclusively from the past, but it is important. When I drive to work in freezing temperatures, I have a past knowledge making it safer. I know if it rained/snowed/sleeted, I smell see the affects of water to know where it may flood or freeze, I see it on the wipers, I know what roads are high traffic and were salted, and had high traffic to either maintain a clear surface (or were more likely to turn snow into ice, and to avoid.) I know to look out for road sections that are shaded from sun, or bridges.

Similar with looking at tracks of other cars, and have to trust the cars around me, looking way ahead for brake lights over hills...

If a car system assumes the worst, and thus doesn't get help from off car data, they will be driving 20 mph on all paved roads in freezing temperatures. If it drives normally in freezing temps, and doesn't know these special details, it will not be able to stop on the ice in time for intersections, or go into ice in a shaded corner sailing off the road.

If it blindly follows are car in front, it may not know that car is a dump truck into construction, or has studded tires on ice, or more clearance for deep snow, or if a stock Tesla follows to close to something like a corvette that stops from 60 in under 100 feet (stock model Tesla is around 180 feet) not having the same capabilities are things we can know, but the tesla wont without communications.

Re: Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, obatacles are really dangerous especially the long dangly ones that hang down from tunnel roofs. They can pull a driver out from the car in seconds.

Re:Too little too soon?

[SlaveToTheGrind]

You probably don't realize we all do that. Not exclusively from the past, but it is important. When I drive to work in freezing temperatures, I have a past knowledge making it safer. I know if it rained/snowed/sleeted, I smell see the affects of water to know where it may flood or freeze, I see it on the wipers, I know what roads are high traffic and were salted, and had high traffic to either maintain a clear surface (or were more likely to turn snow into ice, and to avoid.) I know to look out for road sections that are shaded from sun, or bridges.

Similar with looking at tracks of other cars, and have to trust the cars around me, looking way ahead for brake lights over hills...

I get all that, but every single one of those examples involves your immediate senses in combination with your general knowledge of your surroundings, and you make your operational decisions based on the least common denominator of the two. In no circumstance are you squeezing your eyes shut to what you're actually seeing and feeling and instead guessing at your environmental conditions based on some weather/traffic report you heard on the radio 5 minutes ago. And that's ultimately what OP was proposing -- reliance on stale environmental data in an effort to reduce sensor costs.

If a car system assumes the worst, and thus doesn't get help from off car data, they will be driving 20 mph on all paved roads in freezing temperatures.

Good. Hazardous driving conditions dramatically amplify the cost of mistakes. If that's all the faster they can safely go based on what they're able to sense of the real world around them, it'll be even clearer they're not ready for prime time.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Dare nMc]

> And no car is going to rely on another car to tell it what is a safe route.

Not exclusively, but often it will either by reliant on other cars, or your going to be by far the slowest car to the point of causing a crash.

Almost every day, usually multiple times a day, we go over hills and around corners where we cannot see far enough to see something in time to stop before hitting it. We are either trusting luck, or looking at the cars in front/around, did they hit their brakes? Especially in freezing temperatures after weather, in the morning. We often trust enough cars have driven to keep clear ice, or are driving the usual speeds. Or if the roads are bad, enough cars back up to slow us. Or that we know where the usual risks for issues are.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

The NTSB can only make reports and recommendations. They can not regulate.

Re:Too little too soon?

[HuguesT]

Some hardware gets cheaper some of the time. I've noticed for instance that the old-fashioned mechanical watches that were the staple of the last century have not gotten any cheaper at all. Recently the price of high-end GPUs has skyrocketed.

Mass production of some goods can cause them to become cheaper but this is by no means a foregone conclusion.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Dare nMc]

> And that's ultimately what OP was proposing -- reliance on stale environmental data in an effort to reduce sensor costs.

No, I am OP, and specifically stated Tesla will need V2V communications. Only with no cameras does it still need to be able to navigate for short periods safely in the event of a system failure in the vision system while at speed it cannot have the camera/radar lose power, or get hit buy a mud shower, then stop in traffic, unable to navigate out of the way to a safe location. Same with loss of GPS, it cannot rely on just a GPS model, it must have exact positions of visual marker to navigate short distances with no GPS (such as laser data would provide.)
And you will be the cause of the crash (maybe not legally at fault) if yours is the only car that slows to 5 mph for a corner of unknown navigability. A car with Tesla's sensors will not be able to negotiate at speed several situations, that a laser car can, such as snow covered signs or lane markers, or tunnels/canyons/etc where GPS is lost. But the Tesla can follow/compare it's visual radar data to a recent laser car's 3d model, and then go to those places safely.

Re:Too little too soon?

[superdave80]

FYI, the Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) system is in some cars today, by 2020 all new cars must have them.

Where did you get the 2020 date? Their website states that they have made no such mandate yet:

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/v2v-statement

"The Department of Transportation and NHTSA have not made any final decision on the proposed rulemaking concerning a V2V mandate."

Re:Too little too soon?

[BlackPignouf]

Just sayin': a few years ago, AI was supposedly "decades away" from beating the best Go players.

Re:Too little too soon?

[eepok]

Speaking of NHTSA, I was at a conference a month or so ago that was jam packed full of futurists who were under the impression that Uber, Google, and Tesla were just a couple years away from launching saturation-ready fully autonomous vehicles. Then David Friedman, former interim head of NHTSA, gets up to speak in the keynote and burst their bubbles. He basically said that AVs have got to be nearly perfect or (1) people will sue the companies for everything their worth when an injury/fatality happens and (2) the tech is nowhere near affordable or ready to meet this requirement. The crowd went silent.

Re:Too little too soon?

[nasch]

Of course 100% reliability will not be the standard, because that's never acheivable.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Dare nMc]

> Where did you get the 2020 date?

Thanks for that, It was in a article from around January 2016. posted to /. so likely just a planned date, as yours is newer.

Re:Too little too soon?

[HornWumpus]

Until it finds a collapsed crash barrier to 'follow'.

Re:Too little too soon?

[HornWumpus]

Sure they have. Chinese Rolexes have never been cheaper.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Hognoxious]

And a light doesn't change just after the first one passes it.

Re: Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not directly v2v, but they do upload data to Tesla's servers which other cars can then download and benefit from.

Re:Too little too soon?

[david_thornley]

And, fortunately, cars never go off the road into a ditch.

Re:Too little too soon?

[farble1670]

That should be fine as long as it keeps a safe distance.

Or as long as it doesn't plunge 200 feet into a ravine.

Re: Too little too soon?

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he wasn't watching a movie when he crashed

Re:Too little too soon?

[quantaman]

Some hardware gets cheaper some of the time. I've noticed for instance that the old-fashioned mechanical watches that were the staple of the last century have not gotten any cheaper at all.

The cheap old-fashioned mechanical watches of the last century vanished from the market, replaced by cheap digital watches, smartphones, and fitbits.

The mechanical watches available now are more jewellery than watch.

Recently the price of high-end GPUs has skyrocketed.

That's mostly a supply shortage caused by cryptocurrency miners. Though I'm curious what will happen if mining stays profitable longterm.

Mass production of some goods can cause them to become cheaper but this is by no means a foregone conclusion.

There are exceptions, but I see no reason that car sensors would get more expensive when self-driving cars become mainstream.

Re:Too little too soon?

[Hognoxious]

we go over hills and around corners where we cannot see far enough to see something in time to stop before hitting it.

Then we'd better hope Plod doesn't nab us, because we're committing an offence.

https://www.bcc-wv.com/blog/20...

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

Re:Too little too soon?

[Hognoxious]

I think your numbers are slightly off, unless the first drivers were bacteria.

Re:Too little too soon?

[viperidaenz]

It may be a surprise for some, but there is a theory we all evolved from single celled organisms.
The human brain wasn't created by an almighty being.

Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[fozzy1015]

Pretty soon Elon will be wearing all the hats. Or maybe he'll assign his cyborg dragon to fill some of the roles.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Rei]

In case anyone is wondering why you're seeing so many stories like this about Tesla all of the sudden, here is your answer. In particular, this chart.

Tesla is the most shorted stock in the US right now. There is literally no company in the US that more people have a financial interest in seeing fail than Tesla. A third of the stock is in short positions. The problem is that this is incredibly dangerous from the perspective of a short squeeze. Shorts hold the stock price down - the massive surge in short selling countered the benefits (from a stock price perspective) of the major increase in Model 3 production rates. But this can only be taken so far; it's not like they're going to be able to short 100% of the stock. If Model 3 production continues to rise like it's been doing - and along with it, the stock price - not only will some short sellers want to liquidate, but others will be contractually forced to liquidate. This is done by purchasing an equivalent number of shares of TSLA to cover their short. This purchase in turn raises the stock price. With such a massive percentage of Tesla shorted, this can easily snowball, where the obligations of some shorts to purchase cause the next to be forced to purchase, and the next, and so forth - all purchased at whatever price Tesla happens to be at the moment. The shorts would need to acquire literally 1/3rd of Tesla's stock in a short period of time.

Needless to say, this would be a financial disaster for them. If Tesla underperforms what the market expects of them, longs lose some money. But if Tesla overperforms what the market expects, shorts lose a huge amount of money. It's highly asymmetric.

So in case you were wondering if it was a coincidence that all of the sudden everyone and their cousin suddenly started bashing Tesla in the news - even for something as mundane as another company poaching talent from Tesla - no, it's not a coincidence.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

My theory is that Ford is about to buy it.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Yes yes yes, Karen... why's everybody picking on your poor lil' Elon?

Maybe, just maybe, Tesla is the most shorted stock in the market because it's considered the most overvalued and most likely to crater. Nah, can't be. MAAAAAARS!!!!!!!

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Rei]

In case anyone is wondering: all of this "Autopilot is doomed" stuff comes out at a time when it just had one of its most massive updates in its history (unfortunately, it hadn't significantly rolled out before the fatal crash in California). It no longer filters out stationary objects, it handles roads with unusual lane widths, two-direction roads with no central lane markings, and will deliberately "break the rules" when needed for safety (for example, driving into the shoulder when a truck is about to hit you, or when the normal "rules of the road" have suddenly changed.

But of course, you're not going to see a million articles about that because that's not the obligate doom-and-gloom.

I consider myself a self-driving pessimist. I think there's far too many rules that we process, with too complex reasoning, for self-driving to be immediately around the corner. I have slowly been becoming more optimistic with the realization of how much more one can enable a car to "see" than humans (for example, using radar brightness at different wavelengths to determine road smoothness / traction conditions ahead, or past altimetry data to determine the depth of water on a road), but still think it's going to be a long time before full self driving becomes mainstream. But I also believe that, if properly implemented, combined human-computer systems can be much better than either alone - with the computer bringing new senses and "constant attention" to the picture, and the human bringing their brain. The key is ensuring that the human pays full attention. Making them regularly torque the wheel is one thing, but even better looks to be where the tech is headed - eye tracking. With eye tracking, they can't stop paying attention to the road. And I can't see how in such a situation that "human + computer" is not better than "human alone".

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[nonBORG]

The reason that everyone is shorting Tesla stock is it is over valued.
Current the Price to Earnings for their stock is 145 (this is forward PE)
Compare that say to Amazon 98, Facebook 20, apple 12.6

A little insight into the numbers lower is better from an investor point of view and anything over 25 would be considered well overvalued.
However due to the bigger fool scenario you can make a lot of money from an overvalued stock. But at some point people start to see that the emperor is wearing no clothes and start shorting.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Rei]

If you believe this, jump aboard the short train. There's a nice echo chamber over at Seeking Alpha to assist you in parting with your money.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[SlaveToTheGrind]

I have no position either way -- I'm just sitting back waiting to pop the popcorn when the world finally gets over one of the true charlatans of the century. [Oh, LOOK! FLAMETHROWERZ!!!1!! What was I saying? Nevermind.]

You, on the other hand, are obviously long -- probably way long. Maybe it's time to take your profits and reclaim all the time you spend on your desperate astroturfing. It has to get tiring after a while.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Rei]

Right. You're convinced Elon is a fraud and it's all a big house of cards ready to crash. Yet rather than making money on what you know to be a sure thing, you've decided, "Nah, money's overrated"?

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

There isn't a snowballs change in hell that Tesla can exceed market expectations. It is only downside risk and that is why shorts are all over it. You're not smarter than the market.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

Upfront disclosure: long Jan '19 280 puts to the point it hurts.

One of the most difficult lessons to learn in the stock market is that shorts are almost always savvy...and usually right. Savvy in that it requires hard analysis and serious conviction. It has to be because it's much more difficult to craft and hold onto a short position than a long.

Tesla is in serious trouble. The tells are right there in the market, the premium on the puts are at an insane level right now and the 2025 bonds are throwing off death spiral signals.

Yes, shorts could squeeze 100% from here on any Elon tweet but what the market is telling you is that the longs are not facing "losing some money". They're looking at getting the dreaded Q added to the ticker where those Jan 19 50's puts get priced to $49. Yes, given the debt load, future obligations and mismanagement, it's that bad. The 10-Q/Ks are right out in the open for anyone to read and have all the necessary clues.

Bottom line is that Tesla is a penny stock that just happens to have a current market cap of $40B.

(This guy does the reality check better than anyone has so far imho: https://quoththeraven.podbean.... )

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Rei]

PE ratios are great for a company with relatively static business operations in a relatively static field, but they're terribly misleading for growing companies. Ex: in late June of 2014, Amazon had a PE of over 500. Was it a bad buy? Hardly; people who bought it then would be 4 1/2 times richer today.

PE ratios don't cut it for growth companies that are dumping tons of money into capex, expanded options for future sales and building a new market. Quite the opposite , PE ratios paint precisely the *wrong* picture. In such a case, they're more a measure of how aggressive the company is being toward growth.

For such growth companies, the real question is how large of a market they're aiming for and how likely they are to get there. E.g. the reason Tesla shot up so much after Model 3 preorders opened is that nearly half a million people put down real money to wait over a year for a BMW-priced electric car that they'd never even seen in person, much less driven, without any advertising . That's pent-up, untapped demand. That's a market. Tesla is priced based on the potential shown, relative to the risk in getting there. Its current profits are almost irrelevant except for helping fund its route to "there".

One can disagree about the exact market size and the risks. It's expected! But what should not be in dispute is that PE is totally the wrong tool to employ here.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[SlaveToTheGrind]

As Buffett once put it, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. The sure thing is that eventually investors will get tired of Elon's sweet crooning and flashy distractions and will stop giving him more money to throw after the billions he's frittered away. The unsure thing is exactly how long that will take. But I'm heartened at the (dare I say) S-curve of reality that finally seems to be setting in.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Rei]

Then spread your shorts out over a length of time to soak the risk of uncertain timing. Come on, "reality is setting in", right? So why stay off the money train?

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Karen, even if it's not your intent, you're coming across like an insecure bully. WANNA BET???? HMMMM????? YOU MUST BE WRONG IF YOU WON'T BET!!!

Sit back and enjoy the show. And try to grow up a bit.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[nonBORG]

What you say is true with a big dependency, how long are you holding the shares for. If this is a 20 year investment then you are correct, if it is a 6 month or 1 year investment then take into account the PE ratio.
With respect to the 4 1/2 times richer that would depend on holding the shares for the intervening period most traders have a 1 year/ 2 year kind of ball park to take profits.
If in 1 year they will not increase their profits then it is hard to hold the news cycle on positive indefinitely (people might be killed while driving on your autopilot) without the strong fundamentals on your side then what is going to hold the share price up?

I would not buy Tesla presently as it is a gamble, there is plenty of reasons why it would come down and potentially never go back up. However I have seen companies with strong fundamentals go down too. Tesla is overvalued even if they produce all the cars they are planning/hoping to they are overvalued. They don't really believe they will grow to match their value Musk admitted it.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[mlyle]

I don't believe Tesla deserves a $48B market cap-- worth more than Ford's $45B and close to Honda's $60B.

Tesla hopes to sell 500,000 vehicles this year, and 1,000,000 next year, both with a net outflow of cash. Tesla is also significantly encumbered by debt and will likely have to dilute existing stockholders more. Honda sells 5 million vehicles a year with an operating profit plus all kinds of other "stuff".

Yes, electric cars will be important, and ultimately TSLA may move as many vehicles and deliver as much profit as Honda. Maybe. But-- how much of that upside will current stockholders enjoy (vs. new stockholders and bondholders), and how long will it take to reach that point (time value of money)?

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[swillden]

Karen, even if it's not your intent, you're coming across like an insecure bully. WANNA BET???? HMMMM????? YOU MUST BE WRONG IF YOU WON'T BET!!!

It's foolish to trust the predictions of a pundit (or a fund manager) who won't commit their own money. Not because having skin in the game changes the probability that they are right, but because the lack of it demonstrates that they don't really believe their own words, and if they don't, why should anyone else?

Since you clearly don't believe your own predictions, why should anyone else believe you?

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

insecure bully? LMAO. What a great ending to the thread. With lot of caps, no less. And then you ask him to grow up. Classic. He's also a poo poo head. Please type that too.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that you are on the wrong side of Jim Chanos, who is short Tesla.
The guy manages a fund that made a return of over 100x over the past 30 years through shorting companies into the ground, including Enron and Valeant. The guy managed to dissect through Enron financials and discover fraud long before others could.

When there are eager sharks on the other side willing to snap take your wagers, you have to wonder at least ever so slightly if you are the one being the fish instead.

Enjoy your hold.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[SlaveToTheGrind]

It's foolish to trust the predictions of a pundit (or a fund manager) who won't commit their own money.

Pundit? Fund manager? From whence come these straw men?

I have to say I find it fascinating that when I express an opinion on a discussion board I get the functional equivalent of "$10,000, Rick". This is clearly a touchy subject for some of you.

Since you clearly don't believe your own predictions, why should anyone else believe you?

I actually don't care if you believe me or not. You likely have more than enough Google bux to splash around on the casino table that you'll be fine. I fear, though, that poor Karen has overextended herself. Maybe you can spot her a few when things go thud.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the first rules of investing is not to get your emotionally involved with your investments - sounds obvious, but it can be a pain to follow at times. So, unless you can stay cool about it, better stay out. And judging from your passion about the topic, I hope you'll not stay too attached to your Tesla longs when/if/... the time comes, for your own sake.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[serviscope_minor]

The sure thing is that eventually investors will get tired of Elon's sweet crooning and flashy distractions

Oh yes that "flashy distraction" of actually selling more electric cars than he can make to people who want one. He does actually have a product and customers. That's not an accident.

after the billions he's frittered away.

Success or failure he's actually trying to do interesting things with his money.

However the world is and always be full of naysayers who never do anything useful or interesting but take potshots at those who do.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that the Model 3 has negative gross margins. The more cars they build, the more money they lose. It's literally impossible for them to make a profit. At least Amazon has some E in the P/E equation.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[swillden]

I actually don't care if you believe me or not.

So you're just trolling. Okay. Thanks for clarifying.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

If he's not making any money on those cars, the number he sells is irrelevant.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Rei]

Tesla is not really "significantly encumbered with debt". There's 200-something million due in November, and next spring there will be another round due that brings the total up to $1,1B. 500k vehicles with an average sale price of $45k is $22,5B. At 25% margins, it's $5,6B. Knock that down by SG&A, R&D, etc - the debt is not at all disproportional compared to the business activities it was acquired to fund.

Tesla has no plans to stop at the vehicle numbers you state (although your timing figures are outdated - the slow Model 3 launch delayed some of the timing). Model 3 is to peak at 500k without advertising, 700k when Tesla starts advertising in the future. Model Y is expected to be 700k without advertising. No figures that I'm aware of have been announced for their Semi expectations, but let it suffice to say that freight vehicles are a very large market in their own right. After the Y Tesla will be launching a pickup, which is a huge market. Etc. Tesla is not stopping at the Model 3.

Additionally: Honda's 5M vehicles per year are nowhere near $45k average sale price.

As for "how long": Model 3 should be hitting "around 5k/wk" at the end of June (they're trying for 6k then, but a miss is expected, even by them). The line should be tuned to 6k or higher in Q3 and potentially Q4. Tesla plans to duplicate the 3 line, but the delays and the good news on the China front make it increasingly likely that they'll duplicate it directly into China to have local production for the asian market, rather than duplicating at Fremont. Gigafactory, after having paused in size for nearly a year, is as we speak undergoing a significant expansion; they're expanding the base to the full target width and they're building a new peripheral parking lot so that they free up the current parking area for building expansion.

Y is to be announced this summer. I anticipate that they want to have Model 3 production up to ~5k/wk before announcing it so that they don't get accused of trying to draw attention away from Model 3 production rate issues. Expect at least half a million reservations for it within the first couple months. Model Y is built on the Model 3 architecture, so it's not going to take near as long to go into production (Model 3 is a brand new architecture). I expect about a year, maybe 1 1/2, before first deliveries, with a much faster scaleup. So we're talking mid-late 2019. I expect a pickup in late 2020 or early 2021. By that point, Semi will have gone from pilot orders to full fleet orders. So we're talking maybe 3-4 years before Tesla becomes massive.

Also, the problem with comparing to other automakers production today, is that the more the market Tesla expands into, the more they take away from other automakers. So not only does Tesla become larger, but its competitors become smaller. In short, a bet on Tesla's success is simultaneously a "short" against other automakers. Right now, according to surveys, Model 3 is mainly hacking away at a market that's about an even mix of customers from entry-level luxury brands (BMW, Audi, Cadillac, etc) and customers from eco-friendly vehicles (hybrids, other EVs, etc). But as prices continue to drop, the market segments that it draws customers from will also move downmarket.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[jeremyp]

On any rational examination of Tesla's financials, its stock is currently overpriced. For example, if you compare its revenue with that of General Motors, its market cap. is about ten times what it should be.

People are shorting Tesla because they expect it to go down and it should be going down. No other company that is not making a profit and is experiencing manufacturing delays on the one product that is supposed to bring profitability would still have such a high stock price.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

You sniff like a seeking alpha troll ... What's your current position re tsla , you sniff like you're long tsla ...

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing that is holding Tesla back, is their ability to produce cars fast enough. They have an inordinate amount of customers waiting for their cars. When the backlog gets shorter, more orders will come in from other people who wants their cars.

They have the customers. They just don't have the production rates yet.

I recently bought a used Model S. Only reason for that is that I couldn't be bothered to wait for the model 3 backlog to start clearing.

Plenty of other people I know, also want Teslas. The model S is too expensive. They are waiting for the backlog of model 3 to start clearing up.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[fluffernutter]

So this is the version where they got it not to kill people? Funny, I would have put that feature in first.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Hognoxious]

The only thing that is holding Tesla back, is their ability to produce cars fast enough.

That's quite a big hindrance for a car manufacturer.

P.S. You use too many commas.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[SlaveToTheGrind]

I actually don't care if you believe me or not.

So you're just trolling. Okay. Thanks for clarifying.

Well, actually, friend, if you review the thread it turns out you're the one that spontaneously jumped into an exchange between me and Karen and started piling on.

It's really interesting how hard you're flexing the bounds of logic to try to come up with ways to be dismissive. Why not spend your cycles actually arguing Tesla's merits (if you feel there are any)?

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Rei]

M3 is expected to reach positive gross margins in Q1 or Q2. It was negative in Q4 because they were building so vastly fewer than the design levels, using very expensive equipment and labour intended for a far higher rate.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

Rei shilling for Tesla, what a surprise! EVERY SINGLE THREAD.

Auto-pilot accidents .... not their fault, blame the user
Production failures .... not their fault, they're on the cutting edge
Elon saying increasingly dumb things because of the echo chamber cult surrounding him .... he's an eccentric genius
Reason for any and all bad press about Tesla ... biased media are attacking them, greedy people trying to profit from short selling

Get ahold of yourself man. It's just a fucking company.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[mikael]

Just having auto-braking to avoid obstacles on the road has reduced insurance claims by 60%. Some cars already had proximity sensors to assist in parking in a garage.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Green Mountain Bot]

Tesla is the most shorted stock in the US right now.

Interesting that you think that this is the cause of Tesla's bad press, without considering WHY it's the most shorted company. Tesla's stock price is wildly out of proportion with its fundamental financial picture, or its production capacity (even accounting for expected growth). It's really that simple. It's not a conspiracy - it's basic financial analysis.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Type44Q]

And... it's over; thanks for playing.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

False.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[superdave80]

Oh yes that "flashy distraction" of actually selling more electric cars than he can make to people who want one.

Whether or not he can SELL his electric cars is not the question. Can he MAKE MONEY doing it? That is the real question.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[superdave80]

..At 25% margins...

For my next trick, I will pull even MORE made up, fantasy numbers out of my ass! Behold!

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

take a deep breath there, fuckwit.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[nasch]

Well it's good you're not investing, because thinking you know the sure thing about a stock's future is a great way to lose a bunch of money.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla is energy company and their energy products are hugely successful with big potential for growth.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[apoc.famine]

If you're going to honestly complain about self driving cars, you're obligated to require that feature in human driven cars too. Apples to apples and all that.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[HornWumpus]

The maintenance costs of Tesla model S/Xs that are being tracked are completely out of line. Unless the ones tracked are atypical, Teslas will be put in museums or junked shortly after going out of warranty.

If the ones being tracked were atypical, Tesla would likely release fleet wide data. They don't.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[david_thornley]

It's a relatively good problem to have, particularly when it's fixable. Being able to produce maybe a third of the cars they can sell beats being able to sell maybe a third of the cars they produce.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[david_thornley]

For a short investment in a growth company, the P/E ratio is even less relevant. You're buying and selling based partly on what the market expects the P/E ratio to get to when the company matures, not what it is.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[david_thornley]

It also has nothing to do with Tesla's future profitability. Right now, the stock is way overpriced. It's almost certain to go down a lot sometime. That doesn't mean it's a bad investment, it means it's a bad investment at the price it is now.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Khashishi]

So, what happens if sellers fail to deliver? Would it be considered financial fraud?

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[nonBORG]

There is a difference between investing and gambling. I think short investment would be 3 months kind of time in which case you are mostly interested in news cycles. But if you don't want the share price to go off the edge of a cliff then you probably want to know that the company has some sort of strong fundamental reasons for investing in it. PE ratio is not the only fundamental but it does show a huge comparative picture of how the share compares to other investment opportunities. This understanding the fundamentals is Warren Buffet kind of investing, you may think he is not the best investor in the world but he has had a lot of success.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Why not spend your cycles actually arguing Tesla's merits (if you feel there are any)?

Or, you can just plug your virtual fingers in your virtual ears and virtually say "LA LA LA LA... I CAN'T HEEEAAAR YOU!!!!"

What a colossal lack of intestinal fortitude.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[Anonymous Coward]

That's assuming they even make it to Q1. After the Moody's downgrade to junk, the bond market is cut off. And they can't raise via equity because of the sec investigation.

That leaves trying to weasel $5B of dumb money out of some sheik in a private placement. Either that happens or it's bankruptcy by fall for sure.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[fluffernutter]

Well if you want Apples to Apples, let's talk about how Autopilot cannot 'see' plainly visible concrete barriers, yet humans have their license taken away if their eyes are that poor.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[apoc.famine]

So humans never crash into those? You live in a much different world than I do.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[fluffernutter]

You keep trying to side track the conversation. Humans aren't legally allowed on the road unless they can see things like that. Why is Autopilot allowed to drive a human if it cannot. An 82-year old grandpa with cataracts cannot see well enough to drive, therefore they cannot legally touch the steering wheel of a moving vehicle, period. It doesn't matter if the person in the next seat has full driving controls with an instructors license and a race car certification. Why is a technology being allowed to drive if it cannot see what it is in front of it, like an 82-year old grandpa? What many other flaws are they hiding under the guise of 'intellectual property' and why does the public have a right to know? How long do they get away with "oops, I guess we'll fix it now" AFTER someone has died for their mistake? Human driving is very safe if you consider the 3.2 *trillion* miles driving in the US every year. Much safer than Autopilot would be if it were to drive everywhere and in all conditions like a human.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[apoc.famine]

You keep trying to side track the conversation.

Says he of the ever moving goalposts. Waaay back in this conversation, you said

So this is the version where they got it not to kill people? Funny, I would have put that feature in first.

You didn't say "better than humans" or any sort of comparison to humans. You effectively said, "It has to be perfect."

As soon as I pointed out how perfect is a ridiculous standard, considering humans aren't perfect, you started shifting those goalposts. Next it was, "why couldn't the system see something people can see?". What you've done is pick one situation where the system didn't work as intended, you ignored hundreds of the exact same situation, in the exact same part of the exact same road where it did, so I guess it makes sense for this to be an issue for you. Rational people don't do that. Only people with a serious agenda cherry pick like that and ignore all the evidence to the contrary.

In your last two sentences, you've finally gotten to a reasonable argument to have:

Human driving is very safe if you consider the 3.2 *trillion* miles driving in the US every year. Much safer than Autopilot would be if it were to drive everywhere and in all conditions like a human.

Now we're comparing rates of accidents between humans as a whole and autopilot as a whole. Bravo, this is actually meaningful, and what I was saying all along, albeit indirectly.

So lets have that discussion. There isn't a ton of research on this, but there is a little. AUTOMATED VEHICLE CRASH RATE COMPARISON USING NATURALISTIC DATA is from 2016 and finds that self driving cars are a lot safer. How Safe Are Self-Driving Cars? Waymo Proves They’re Pretty Darn Safeis from 2017 and summaries WayMo data, which you can argue is likely a bit biased towards Google. But even in the worst case scenario, they find self-driving cars an order of magnitude safer than human drivers.

In the NHSTA's report on the Tesla crash where it hit the semi-truck side-on and took off the top of the car, they interestingly don't find fault with Tesla. Just that they needed to be more specific on the limitations of autopilot. And buried in that report is a graph that shows auto-steer dropping the accident rate (airbag deployment) per million miles from 1.3 to 0.8 when it's enabled. I'm finding it hard to find non-fatality rates for the whole US, but in the couple of states I looked at, the accident rate seems to be between 1 and 3 for most types of roads.

If you've got more comprehensive and current research, I'd be very happy to see it. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a ton, but what's out there seems to strongly suggest that the current self-driving tech is at least as safe as the average driver, if not more safe, in most circumstances.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[fluffernutter]

Well, there are no self driving cars, they all have humans in them, so I'm sorry you wasted your time with those stats you think are on automated vehicles. There is an entire list of issues with the NHSTA study with regards to it's suitability to make any comment on the safety of Autopilot; it does not draw that conclusion because the sample wasn't right to draw that conclusion and it was likely a Tesla media spin. Even if they *are* actually safer in the environment they currently drive, that says nothing about how they will ever do in the truly dangerous environments where people die and insurance companies end up paying out, such as in extreme weather conditions.

The fact is, if a person is too blind to see a brightly colored concrete divider in the road you don't let them drive because you don't know what will happen. Autopilot is the same blind person yet we encourage it to drive. It just defies logic.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[apoc.famine]

Anecdotes, made up shit, and guesses aren't data, and you can't claim "facts" stemming from them. We have well established methods to determine relative risk, and I'm a little baffled why you don't seem care about them.

If you just want to feel and believe random shit, good for you. But you don't to get to label your personal fantasy as fact and truth. You've spent time arguing with me ignoring any facts I might present, and providing none of your own. That's not how adults communicate.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[fluffernutter]

What part was made up? The fact that current automated cars have safety drivers? The fact that Waymo may be able to drive around 3500 miles without an interaction in limited circumstances, but humans drive around 37,000 miles without accidents in any environment? I'm really confused what part you think is made up. Maybe that's just how you make arguments.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[apoc.famine]

Autopilot cannot 'see' plainly visible concrete barriers...Why is a technology being allowed to drive if it cannot see what it is in front of it, like an 82-year old grandpa?

Teslas went past that exact same part of the road bunches of times before and never had an issue. That exact same Tesla went past that barrier multiple times before the crash. It is very clear that Teslas could see it, but for some reason they had trouble identifying what to do about it in a few situations. That is the opposite of not being able to see the barrier.

Human driving is very safe if you consider the 3.2 *trillion* miles driving in the US every year. Much safer than Autopilot would be if it were to drive everywhere and in all conditions like a human.

I provided evidence to the contrary, and you decided you didn't like it. You declined to provide any evidence to back up your lie.

Well, there are no self driving cars, they all have humans in them.

Did you miss this?

There is an entire list of issues with the NHSTA study with regards to it's suitability to make any comment on the safety of Autopilot; it does not draw that conclusion because the sample wasn't right to draw that conclusion and it was likely a Tesla media spin.

That's a flat out fabrication on your part.

Maybe that's just how you make arguments.

Re: Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[fluffernutter]

So... you're making the case that the Tesla saw the barrier yet still thought it was a good idea to drive into it? This gets better and better.

Ok well let's dig deeper into your articles:

Waymo has logged over two million miles on U.S. streets and has only had fault in one accident, making its cars by far the lowest at-fault rate of any driver class on the road

Considering they choose where and when to drive, I should hope that they have a low fault rate. This only proves they chose safe places to drive that the car could handle. It is the human in the car keeping it safe. No where does it say that the car can drive on it's own for two million miles so the comment is not addressing autonomy at all.

I won't go into the NHSTA report, except to say that they didn't compare like for like. They should be comparing the safety of Teslas to the safety of other $80K+ luxury vehicles but they do not, they compare it to all vehicles. Many of the cars they used in the study to represent safety of Autopilot didn't even have Autopilot miles logged.

Re:Rats fleeing a sinking ship

[david_thornley]

Investment can get awful close to gambling sometimes. If you invest in ten risky businesses, and nine just crash and one returns twenty times your investment, you're well ahead. You probably want to make sure that the company is actually doing something potentially profitable, and that there's at least plausible path between where they are and profitability.

For a growth company, P/E isn't a fundamental, which it is for more established companies. If it's got a stable business, that's great, but that's not as important as you might think. Right now, I have investments in a company with a P/E of over 60. It's been doing profitable business for many years now, and is established in its field. It's also on a rapid growth trajectory. If the growth were to stop today, the company would continue to be in business for the foreseeable future, and would have good profits. Without growth, the price would drop to a P/E ratio of 20 or so, which means I'd lose about two-thirds of my investment (well, on paper anyway, since I didn't pay anywhere near current price for my shares). The difference between losing two-thirds of my investment and all of my investment isn't really all that great.

LIDAR is the way to go

[MouseR]

LIDAR is the way to go and both Google and Apple know this.

The problem is, puck-sized LIDAR systems, as seen in 8-packs on the Apple dev car, cost 8000 a piece and that is why Testa uses cheapo-cams and parking radar.

Re:LIDAR is the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

A. Number of vehicles

B. Probable rate of failure

C. Average out-of-court settlement

X. Cutoff number for a redesign including LIDAR

Following the math, X .lt. A*B*C or Redesign .lt. Vehicles*Probability*Settlement

Re:LIDAR is the way to go

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. LIDAR has too many shortcomings. Besides the insanely high cost, it degrades in fog, snow, and heavy rain. In addition, it can't read stop signs and traffic signals. So any self-driving car with LIDAR needs a backup system of cameras, radar, etc. Tesla (logically) decided to just go with cameras in the first place and throw all their resources at making it work well.

Re: LIDAR is the way to go

[fluffernutter]

So if the real answer is that autonomous cars need both to be safe?

Re:LIDAR is the way to go

[drinkypoo]

The problem is, puck-sized LIDAR systems, as seen in 8-packs on the Apple dev car, cost 8000 a piece and that is why Testa uses cheapo-cams and parking radar.

Velodyne announced solid-state LIDAR in 2006, and developed a prototype in 2017. They have claimed that in mass quantity, they will be able to get the manufacturing cost down to $50 per sensor. The smartest thing Tesla can do is simply punt on self-driving until it comes out, and then go ahead and adopt it even though they said it wouldn't be necessary. The units are supposed to enter mass production this year...

Re: LIDAR is the way to go

[MouseR]

That's what both Apple and Google do. I think other manufacturers too. I recall the Volvo big rig has a lidar on top of the cabin but dont have links to that.

Re:LIDAR is the way to go

[apoc.famine]

I think a smarter bet is to continue down their path, and keep the tech they develop as backup or supplemental sensing to go with the cheap LIDAR, LIDAR has some real limitations, and what they're currently working with mitigates some of them. Likewise, what they're currently working with has some severe limitations, and LIDAR mitigates some of them as well.

No reason not to use complementary systems, especially if they have developed half that system already.

Re:LIDAR is the way to go

[HornWumpus]

How many beams? Most cheap LIDAR, is cheap because it's _much_ less capable.

Autopilot Design Process

[rtb61]

It seems the real problem with autopilot design, is they are locked into it being a programming problem, rather than an environmental assessment problem. The easy part is the programming, that can be done entirely virtually. The really difficult part is assessing the environment, feeding information about the environment back into the system, so that the computers algorithms can pick the right path and the right speed. That's a real multifaceted engineering problem, quite complex. Likely a mix of sonar and infrared imaging. I would think a detection strip that completely encircles the vehicle at low, mid and high level is required, with spaced emitters, sending an unique digital signal and the entire strip picking up on it, for sonar. Infrared for longer range, with special note placed upon motion. Radar is problematic, you now ionising damage, so pretty much a no no. Lidar probably would work but needs to be kept clean.

Visual recognition would be cool but really quite complex and to make 100% reliable, super complex. Sonar makes the most sense, so study bats more before trying to design autopilot cars. A mix of fixed field sonar arrays and directed focus units, with infrared detection to absolutely make sure you are picking up living things.

More about designing the standards for making autopilots for cars, than trying to build it into cars. Standards first, then manufacture.

Re:Autopilot Design Process

[nonBORG]

Radar would be a problem if you were using 10kW pulsed kind of powers but for different radar technology (FMCW) this can be overcome. FMCW is unsuitable because of having multiple units operating in one area but there is pulse compression radar which is code-able and for the kind of range you need (probably 250m) can be low power. The way these radars work is to put the power on the target over time rather than instantaneous or pulsed, however pulse compression is still a pulse it is spread over a much greater time period. Radar is better than LIDAR at some things, particularly fog or difficult optical environments.

Re:Autopilot Design Process

[mikael]

The vehicles have cameras, radar, lidar and they integrate this information into a single stream. The have a "bullshit detector" known as a Kalman filter to only accept accurate information. Any data that conflicts is discarded. That information comes out as a cloud of points and has to be processed as road surface, road signs, pedestrians, vehicles, obstacles. Those are the easy ones. Then there is ice, snow, water puddles, reflections, vehicles with razzle-dazzle adverts (buses with a collage of road signs), street art (some cities have murals painted on concrete walls. Classic example is the hole-knocked-in-the-wall with a paradise of green meadows and blue sky on the other side). On the rare event side, there are sinkholes, overturning trucks.

One way is just to have the vehicle trained to match the current camera view with what should be done using a training set of video frames.

Re:Amazon Prime price increase

[Mr D from 63]

It just like airplane autopilot, except airplane autopilot development bosses didn't all quit.

low-voltage hardware, Autopilot software and infot

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, explain to me how low-voltage hardware, Autopilot software and infotaiment are related and how one guy is supposed to take care of all of them?!

No wonder he quit.

The real problem, and how to fix it.

[DontBeAMoran]

Stop calling it autopilot, rename it to "drive assist".

Re:The real problem, and how to fix it.

[stooo]

Why?
An "autopilot" is an assistance system.

Re:The real problem, and how to fix it.

[DontBeAMoran]

automatic
adjective
1. (of a device or process) working by itself with little or no direct human control.
"an automatic kettle that switches itself off when it boils"

So no, it does NOT mean "assistance system". And for 99.99999% of the population, it means "my car will drive itself while I sleep".

Renaming the damn thing "drive assist" will solve the problem of people not driving while in the driver seat, people thinking it's as good as in science-fiction movies and the lawsuits because people have accidents because they're sleeping instead of driving.

Re:The real problem, and how to fix it.

[stooo]

You're holding it wrong.

Re:The real problem, and how to fix it.

[apoc.famine]

See, you're jumping to conclusions here. How did you get from "autopilot" to "automatic"? It's like you think the "auto" in both words tie them together. "Auto" actually comes from "automobile", and it's thus a shortened version of "Automobile Pilot".

Don't be a moran and jump to conclusions like that.

Re:The real problem, and how to fix it.

[Anonymous Coward]

are you honestly that fucking stupid? do you know where the AUTO prefix in Automobile comes from? Automatically mobile, as in it propels itself, knob chucker

Bit of an exaggeration

[haruchai]

Neither Keller nor Lattner is a huge loss.
Lattner wasn't there long and he was out of his depth. Keller is a talented hardware designer but what Tesla and all self-driving companies need is software prowess. Losing Sterling Anderson surely hurt, losing Andrej Karpathy would be a big frickin' deal.
This is not that.

Re:Bit of an exaggeration

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you just wonder how many of the people posting this stuff are short on Tesla?

Ars didn't post any disclaimer about the author's holdings. You'd think if they were going to write articles about a "crisis" like that, they'd want to state that definitively, one way or the other.

Re:Bit of an exaggeration

[Anonymous Coward]

It can't be anywhere near the number of Tesla fanboys and long owners.

Re:Bit of an exaggeration

[Anonymous Coward]

Only if you define fanboys as folks absent irrational hatred for all things Tesla.

Wish they did not do auto pilot

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

I am a big fan of tesla, patiently waited for the Model 3, after plunking down $1000 April 2016 and got my invite and configured my car and am waiting for VIN.

But, all the same, I wish they never got into this auto pilot self driving thing. It is a distraction from getting the affordable electric car done. That is the most important thing to get done.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[dknj]

It is a distraction from getting the affordable electric car done.

Meanwhile the redesigned Nissan Leaf is here today and is surprisingly even more roomy than the last model :\

-dk

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[SlaveToTheGrind]

Um, how much are you ending up paying for your "affordable electric car"? Government subsidies don't count.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

at the very least, they should be sued for calling it auto-pilot

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they never got into this auto pilot self driving thing. It is a distraction from getting the affordable electric car done

Getting an auto pilot feature for Tesla vehicles isn't a wrong decision by itself

The wrong thing they did was they hired all the wrong people to head the division

A guy who created the "Swift" language in Apple might be a genius, but is he the suitable candidate for the auto pilot project?

Similarly, a chip designer for AMD might also be a genius --- the problem with them is, they have no prior experience in self driving cars, had no idea what's important and which difficulties to tackle first

In other words, Elon Musk has fucked up the auto pilot division

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

Not me. I have autopilot. It's awesome. It's not full self driving. Not even close. But it's still awesome, and as it gets better, it gets awesomer.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Rei]

And can go 200-250km before its charge rate gets cut from an already slow 40-45kW to an unbearable 20-25kW.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Rei]

Even if there were no subsidies, the average US user saves about $1000 per year in energy costs, and the average European user double that. Ignoring maintenance savings, etc.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Rei]

Because airline autopilots (where the term came from) mean the pilot can just nap off and do everything for the pilot?

Tesla makes abundantly clear , over and over, every time you start the bloody thing, that you're responsible for driving it, and makes you not only touch the wheel, but torque it at regular intervals, to prove you're paying attention - and now appears to be going toward adding eye tracking into the mix as well. They make it literally impossible at checkout for you to think you're getting a self-driving car, because they break AP into two parts, "Enhanced Autopilot" for basic features, and "Full Self Driving", which literally states over and over again that you can order it now but the functionality is not available yet. If you choose EAP-only then you specifically have to choose not to get Full Self Driving. And if you choose the latter, you're repeatedly informed that it's not available yet.

Meanwhile, you have Mercedes advertizing their god-awful Drive Pilot system literally as a self-driving car. But oh no, it's Tesla who should be scolded here...

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[stooo]

>> it is a distraction from getting the affordable electric car done.

This.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[stooo]

Yeah, like sue over some marketing terms.
What a joke.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[jeremyp]

I don't see how that's possible. The energy costs for my petrol powered car probably come to around $2,000 per year (I am in Europe). You're saying that, if I had an electric car, the electricity would be free. Ha, ha.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

Deleting old ads to whitewash history does not make Musk's old claims any less of false advertising.

Mercedes can be guilty of false advertising also, it's not like we have only one judge capable of handling false advertising cases.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[b0bby]

You may not be the average European... but either way, I'd expect you'd see significant savings.

Here in the US, I can charge my EV with off peak electricity, so 100 miles costs me about $1.50. My ICE car gets 25 mpg on a good day, so that's at least $10 to go 100 miles. I'll probably spend $200 vs $1200 a year so that $1000 estimate is pretty close for me.

And if my time were worth nothing, there actually are quite a few places around me which don't bother to charge for EV charging, so I could do all my miles for next to nothing. But charging at home is so cheap and easy that I don't bother.

If you own your home (so you can install a charger/EVSE and charge overnight) I'd say most people buying a new car in 2 or 3 years time would be financially better off getting an EV. There are a lot of improved models in the pipeline, and the advantages in most cases outweigh any range issues.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Rei]

Then you're below average: either below-average fuel prices, below-average driving distances, or above-average fuel economy.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Rei]

Tesla has never advertised its vehicles as, and I quote from the Mercedes ad, "A self-driving car"

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, how much are you ending up paying for your "affordable electric car"? Government subsidies don't count.

Of course they count. They also count when they are applied to the oil industry (with directly to oil companies, or wars with certain middle eastern countries, etc).

Why would they not count?

Do healthcare costs count? Do firefighting costs count? Do hurricane repair costs count? Do flood repair costs count?

At the end of the day EVERYTHING counts ... that's why a smart Government might provide subsidies to help establish an electric car industry, so that other costs might be reduced over the long term. Such strategic planning is the main raison d'etre for Government in the first place (though we might not see it functioning optimally very often).

But yeah, let's bash the one time they do something right.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[HuguesT]

Compared to petrol, electricity is free. You can fill an electric car for 400km for 2 euros. Currently this is like 30€ for petrol in Europe.

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla has never advertised its vehicles as, and I quote from the Mercedes ad, "A self-driving car"

I quote from tesla.com, "Full Self-Driving Capability".

BTW, Rei you said TSLA was accepting money $3k I think you said, for "FSD" which you now admit is vaporware that TSLA has yet to develop?
Isn't that like Apple taking $3k extra for an iphone with a Taser built in?

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Rei]

Why did you link me to a site that says, and I quote:

Full Self-Driving Capability

Build upon Enhanced Autopilot and order Full Self-Driving Capability on your Tesla. This doubles the number of active cameras from four to eight, enabling full self-driving in almost all circumstances, at what we believe will be a probability of safety at least twice as good as the average human driver. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat. For Superchargers that have automatic charge connection enabled, you will not even need to plug in your vehicle.

All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination or just home if nothing is on the calendar. Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed. When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you.

Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval. Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.

Why did you just link to a page that entirely undercuts your argument that Tesla is claiming that its vehicles are currently self-driving? You linked to a page packed full of the future tense and a big boldfaced message stating that it's not available yet. Is this seriously your argument?

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

So Rei, in your opinion will indicates it's not currently available?
So from the link above, and I quote:

Your Tesla will match speed to traffic conditions
your Tesla will determine which lane you need to be in and when

Maybe your gripe is with Elon Musk hiring lawyers with poor command of the English language?

More to the point however, you just admitted Full Self Driving is vaporware.
Now according to you, tesla is pocketing $3k for vaporware.
Did the Tesla ESL lawyers also came up with that one too?

Re:Wish they did not do auto pilot

[Anonymous Coward]

You're either trolling or stupid with that comment. Which is it?

An engineer with over 20 years

[Anonymous Coward]

experience with both the NTSB and FAA on both autonomous and safety critical systems, this is playing out exactly as many other people with similar experience said it would.

If everyone quits

[Anonymous Coward]

Then nobody can get sued.

ZIP a.k.a. apk-slayer

Tesla full of smart dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately Tesla is full of smart people who are clueless at real world effects of how people use their products and how to manufacture cars to the standards of today. If Tesla wasn’t the Golden child of automotives future. Tesla would have been done by this time if it were a GM or Ford. You are now seeing everyone begin to abandon ship and rightly so.

Re:Tesla full of smart dummies

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no unfortunately, just your irrational hatred.

Very little, indeed

[DrYak]

The most frightening part is that Tesla's Autopilot, in addition to relying on less hardware compared to more autonomous vehicle like Google's (Level 2 vs. Level 3/4), is even relying on less hardware than LESS autonomous cars.
(Tesla's Level2 is relying on a single Camera,
Whereas Level1 like Volvo add laser lidar in addition to camera,
and several brands including mercedes have been adding stereo cameras for quite some time).

But on the scale of the price of the whole car (I mean, on scale on the price of the whole battery to which the strap a free car as a bonus~ :-P ) does reducing the hardware has really a significant impact ?

Who stays too long as the boss will get sued in th

[Zorpheus]

Maybe that's just the problem here? If I've guy is the boss all the time he will be made responsible for the people who die due to any bug in the autopilot, because they should have seen it. If the boss keeps changing they can always blame someone else.

Well theres your problem....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Prior to joining Tesla, Jim's core passion was microprocessor engineering, and he's now joining a company where he'll be able to once again focus on this exclusively."

I marvel at how tech companies throw software and electronic engineers at problems that they are not qualified to do. Maybe a self driving car program should be headed by someone you understands traffic and human behaviors and safety!

As opposed to...

[nashv]

102 fatalities PER DAY by human drivers.

Re:As opposed to...

[HuguesT]

How many billion miles travelled per day? The relevant statistic is the number of fatalities per billion miles (or km) traveled. See here. We don't know for sure the relevant statistics for driver-assisted vehicles.

There is a very good chance that driver assistance is going to improve the fatalities statistics, but this needs to be done correctly.

As Oscar Wilde said

[Hognoxious]

Losing three seems like carelessness.

This isn't the first or the last failure

[Contract Gypsy]

Tesla is so focused on the high end product capability they have fast tracked the basics. I have walked into businesses as a contractor, and given the task of fixing their product that was already launched. Invariably, the cause came down to crap like board layout issues, insufficient filtering, and firmware things such as passing a pointer instead of a variable, and of course unused floating inputs. They need to refocus on the details, their algos are probably good, they just missed the basics.