Tesla Angers Autonomous Vehicle Experts By Promising 'Full Self-Driving' Model 3 (cnn.com)

Tesla's now taking orders for Model 3's with a "full self-driving capability" -- meaning "automatic driving on city streets." CNN reports that experts on self-driving technology "say CEO Elon Musk is playing fast and loose with definitions, overselling the technology and potentially creating safety issues." Experts say Tesla's "full self-driving" feature is really a partial self-driving feature that handles minor driving tasks such as keeping pace with other cars on a highway and still requires diligent human oversight. To most autonomous vehicle experts, "full self-driving" means a car in which a person could safely fall asleep behind the wheel, and the steering wheel and pedals aren't even needed...

Dean Pomerleau, of Carnegie Mellon University, who in 1995 drove a minivan that steered itself across the country, told CNN Business he has "grave concerns" about Tesla's practices on autonomous driving. "Claiming its vehicles will soon be 'feature complete' for full self-driving is one more step in the unconscionable practices that Tesla is already engaged in with Autopilot -- overselling its capabilities and reliability when marketing its vehicles and then blaming the driver for not reading the manual and paying constant attention when the technology inevitably fails," Pomerleau said.
CNN notes a 2018 study which found that 71% of drivers believe they could already purchase a self-driving car today -- despite the fact that currently there are no such fully-autonomous vehicles. "Experts warn that this lack of understanding could be deadly as humans may put too much trust in systems like Tesla's, leading to crashes...."

"A Tesla spokeswoman declined to comment on details around the automatic driving option, and pointed CNN Business to fine print on Tesla's order page that tells buyers the currently enabled features require 'active' driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous."

Comments

Re:"To most autonomous vehicle expert"?

[Rei]

It's not known if the person in the first link was on AP. It's at least possible that they were, unlike the latter case. The person in the second case almost certainly wasn't (they were estimated to be driving 70-90 mph on a city street; AP can only be set to 5mph over the speed limit on city streets).

I'd also like to know what car you think can plow through three palm trees in a row and have the occupant be just fine.

As far as I and anyone else I've talked have been able to ascertain, the first case appears to be the first case ever of someone dying in a Model 3. And it took being split in half by a semi to do it. Guess what? For the foreseeable future, people will continue to die in car accidents. What matters is the rate per unit distance driven.

The only thing I'm mad about in the first case is the fact that the US inexplicably does not require side crash guards on semi trailers like we've have in Europe since the 1980s.