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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the letting-someone-else-drive dept.

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."

3 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Free Tesla! by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1, Interesting

    1. Purchase said car advertised as having "Full Self-Driving capability"
    2. Discover it does not, in fact, do that
    3. Sue Tesla for false advertising
    4. Profit!


    Death and destruction due to the 'discovery' of said capability may be hazardous to your health.

    1. Re:Free Tesla! by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Assuming you survive... It looks like there was yet another case of Autopilot decapitating a driver due to not seeing a trailer last week.

      That's a bit one sided. Last week there were 35 deaths in the UK on the roads caused by good old-fashioned human drivers.

      Self driving cars are *never* going to be perfect. And they're going to make mistakes that a fully alert, attentive, skilled driver would never make. But overall how many drivers are any of those things? What about all those overconfident[*], sleep deprived drivers yelling at their kids?

      What you never hear of is the time when the human driver would have got decapitated by a trailer due to not watching the road, but the autopilot didn't make a mistake and everyone carried on as normal not noticing.

      Statistics will tell us if self driving cars or even autopilots are better than human drivers. I *strongly* suspect they are. Every time I venture on to the road and encounter the usual array of the clueless, the careless, the phone-users, boy racers, texters, fuckwits, arsholes, dickheads, white van men, and Audi drivers I can't help thinking that even crappy autonomous cars would be a step up.

      Calling it "autopilot" was a mistake,

      In hindsight perhaps? In practice it does much of what an autopilot does. You set it, and it basically flies/drives the thing for you except you're supposed to be paying attention and in control all the time, it can't do every situation and you're meant to take over if things get too hard. Apparently though most people don't know what autopilots in aircraft do.

      [*]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority#Driving_ability

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  2. west coast only by hunter44102 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Autopilot works in California, Arizona, new mexico where the weather is perfect. I can tell you in Ohio (with newer Honda Civic) my assist features are fooled and/or disabled all the time by snow and rain and metal plates on the road (wants to stop). There is salt residue all over the roads and the lines are hard to see, so the lane assist is messed up also. They have a long ways to go before I trust any kind of autonomous vehicle in this area