Tesla Shifts the Goalposts For 'Full Self-Driving' Technology (arstechnica.com)

AmiMoJo writes: Tesla has been selling "full self-driving" capability since 2016, promising that "you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere," and that "once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else en route [sic] to your destination." Last week Tesla shifted the goalposts, redefining "full self-driving" as a number of Level 2 driver assistance features that were already available, and a few new tricks to be delivered later. All will require a qualified driver behind the wheel, paying attention at all times and ready to take over if the car can't handle the situation. Worse, owners who bought the previous full self-driving feature paid $8,000 for it. Tesla is now offering owners who bought their cars prior to the change the same package for $5,000. Owners who paid the $3,000 higher price are unsure if the previously promised technology has been abandoned and Level 2 is now the most they can expect.

Comments

Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[Anonymous Coward]

As they've shilled about anything they do.

But then, on /. they shill with permission. Or maybe with a payment.

Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically they are gonna tell us what self driving means in a series of tweets over an inordinate amount of time? Will there be anything left for the brochure?

Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all part of Putin's plan!

Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[saloomy]

As with anything new, they are pushing the boundaries on what is currently available and moving at a quick pace. Full Self Driving is supposably coming later this year (though I suspect more like later next year) and includes hardware changes. I read they are going to put a second forward-facing radar unit, changing the driving computer out for one with a 10X faster chip that sits behind the glove box, and enabling the technology slowly as reliability increases, regulations allow, and hardware developed. The current chip works by processing 200 FPS of video from the 8 cameras, and the new chip processing 2000FPS.

I have a Tesla ModelX, with enhanced autopilot and I paid for the FSD upgrade when purchasing. I read all of the fine print, the purchase agreement, and made an informed decision to bet that they would deliver on it. Why not? They have delivered (eventuallly) on many of their other goals. Worst case scenario they refund me my purchase of that option. I still think with everything else I got, it was a hell of a purchase and I am very satisfied with it over all. Honestly the worst part of the owner experience is the service timelines.

No other car gets software upgrades like this, and every time they do, I get excited again to see what new functions they enabled. Drive on Nav is super cool.

No where have I read that you will never be able to summon your car from across the US one day. Tesla have shown videos of the development vehicles driving, both in the city streets and on the highway unaided successfully. What I think they need to do is answer for a high number of so many thousands of edge cases before they can go "unaided" as well as seek regulatory approval.

They demonstrated this two years ago: https://youtu.be/VG68SKoG7vE

Now, we are waiting for the HW 3.0 upgrades and drive-on-nav to work off the freeway.

Also. One final thought: Super charging is going to have to work with that snake thing they use to auto plug in, or Tesla is going to need an attendant at the Super Charger for personless cross-country travel. The new faster SC is nice and all, but I was hoping for self-plugging in.

Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[Anonymous Coward]

keep loving the people who conned you

Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[saloomy]

Why con? I put X miles on my car, loved the experience. Love the autopilot, and love the free supercharging. It's a deal in my mind. Sorry you are so biased.

Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[Anonymous Coward]

Why con? I put X miles on my car, loved the experience. Love the autopilot, and love the free supercharging. It's a deal in my mind. Sorry you are so biased.

saloomy, are you posting at teslamotorsclub.com?
Is your Model X your only car?

Full Self Driving is supposably coming later this year (though I suspect more like later next year) and includes hardware changes. I read they are going to put a second forward-facing radar unit, changing the driving computer out for one with a 10X faster chip that sits behind the glove box,

Except you just suffered reading comprehension failure (according to Tesla: " All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances.").

Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[saloomy]

Just relaying what I'm reading man: https://www.teslarati.com/tesl...

But if you insist...

Re: Tesla shills about "full self-driving"

[Anonymous Coward]

saloomy, are you posting at teslamotorsclub.com?
Is your Model X your only car?

Yes I insist...

Shit happens, things change.

[Kokuyo]

So it's harder than Tesla expected. Big whoop.

Now go ahead and reimburse your loyal customers for the functionality you cannot deliver and I see no issue.

Don't do that, however, and I feel Tesla is just a bunch of lying scumbags...

Being a good person is simple... just take responsibility for your fuckups. Oh, wait... that's hard, isn't it? Well, let's see whether Tesla rises to that challenge.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was not "harder than expected", it was impossible to begin with. If any other company would do it, they'd be in trouble for false advertising.

Not fElon Musk's outfit.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[AmiMoJo]

Aye, it may be impossible the way Tesla is trying to do it. Their original plan was for a coast-to-coast demo in 2017, which obviously failed.

Other self driving systems like Google/Waymo's one use lidar, cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors. They are anticipating the cost/size of lidar systems to reduce rapidly in the next few years.

  If Tesla had managed to use just cameras, radar and ultrasonics. It would have been a huge coup if it had worked.

Their problem is twofold. First they underestimated the processing power needed to do handle images from the cameras. They use neural nets to process them and on the original hardware they shipped (known as AP2) it just wasn't powerful enough, they couldn't even get it to compare consecutive images (which helps when you don't have stereo vision). They went to AP2.5 and now AP3, but it's not clear if even that is fast enough for what they want to do.

The second problem is that it's just really, really hard to use neural nets to do everything they need. Not just recognizing objects like cars, signs and traffic lights. It has to see road markings, it has to see traffic police and understand their gestures, it has to understand complex 3D spaces with no/poor road markings like car parks and private driveways. It has to be able to recognize small objects that the radar/ultrasonics close to the ground won't pick up, like toll barriers and the over-hanging rear ends of trucks.

To give you some idea of how far away they are, even the current driver assist parking isn't good enough for full self driving. Sometimes it ends up a metre away from the kerb. The human driver can fix that, but for full self driving they have to get the camera to recognize the kerb, indistinct as it may be, and get close to it. Worse still, the current side facing cameras don't point far enough down to actually see it close to the car, so it has to see it from a distance, make a 3D model of the parking spot and navigate into it from memory.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Now go ahead and reimburse your loyal customers for the functionality you cannot deliver and I see no issue.

Don't do that, however, and I feel Tesla is just a bunch of lying scumbags

What you mean to say, is that they can expect a lawsuit where a bunch of lawyers make a few millions dollars.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's harder than Tesla expected. Big whoop.

Now go ahead and reimburse your loyal customers for the functionality you cannot deliver and I see no issue.

Don't do that, however, and I feel Tesla is just a bunch of lying scumbags...

Truth be told, they are scumbags just by having the nerve to sell a product they didn't have in working condition even on their labs.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Viol8]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Tesla engineers were tearing their hair out at the idiotic claims made by Musk and his BS ... sorry - marketing dept. Unfortunately Musk doesn't understand the difference between optimistic projections and downright lies. Mind you, he's not alone in the Billionaire Bullshitter club, Richard Branson and his going nowhere for a decade space venture runs a close 2nd.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[AmiMoJo]

They had a lot of engineering staff turnover in the first couple of years after he made the promise. Then it seemed to settle down a bit, I guess someone came in who was able to manage expectations.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's harder than Tesla expected. Big whoop.

Now go ahead and reimburse your loyal customers for the functionality you cannot deliver and I see no issue.

Don't do that, however, and I feel Tesla is just a bunch of lying scumbags...

Being a good person is simple... just take responsibility for your fuckups. Oh, wait... that's hard, isn't it? Well, let's see whether Tesla rises to that challenge.

You see no issue. I can guarantee you lawyers don't, which is the real issue here. Rather hard to just stand up and admit your "fuckups" when the end result is a class-action that destroys you.

Miranda law strongly recommends you shut the fuck up for a reason.

CAPTCHA: contempt

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

So it's harder than Tesla expected. Big whoop.

Now go ahead and reimburse your loyal customers for the functionality you cannot deliver and I see no issue.

Don't do that, however, and I feel Tesla is just a bunch of lying scumbags...

It's a shame there are no honest businesses out there selling something like the Tesla. Just corrupt, lying scumbags.

"reimburse your loyal customers for the functionality you cannot deliver"? Yeah right. Elon Musk will give up some Shekels right after pigs fly out of my ass.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or they drank the Kool-Aid too.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[110010001000]

People don't get it. Self-driving isn't just dependent on processing power. You can have complete 360 degree visibility and infinite processing power and it still won't work. The same thing applies to "real AI". There is more to it than just computation.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to see the facts/evidence to support this oft repeated statement “impossible to do with just cameras”

Intuitively, self driving cars using just cameras IS feasible since humans do it on a daily basis, so where are your definitive facts that say otherwise?

Your post seems to consist of unsubstantiated opinions stated as if undeniable facts, in the hope that if said with enough confidence people will think you know what your talking about.

And by the way, I am professionally involved in this field.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[fluffernutter]

They can't even make a car look right with the correct sensors on it and they still have to put the datacenter on somehow.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Self driving cars *ARE* real AI.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Kazymyr]

Or, you know, don't charge for a feature until you can actually deliver it. That seems a good way to avoid fuckup cleanup.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Kokuyo]

Have you seen what goes on in the current market? What you are proposing is integrity on a level never before encountered in an MBA... you should set realistic expectations, my friend :D.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[BostonPilot]

I've posted this a few times: I never understood why Tesla pursued self driving so vigorously. In my mind, a really nice electric car was groundbreaking enough that I didn't see the need, and I saw a lot of downsides.

One downside is certainly that I didn't think they could pull off FSD ever. When I got my Model 3 last October and saw how poorly Autopilot worked, I couldn't believe Tesla ever believed they could improve it enough to FSD. They need many orders of magnitude improvement before they'll be able to turn it loose on city streets by itself. Waymo seems to have the strongest story, and I think they're still 15-20 years away from a coast to coast drive without intervention.

Another huge downside is that FSD is a bet your company proposal. First there are all the lawsuits if you can't make it work... But even worse is the liability. And the more cars on the road, the worse the liability gets. Every time a pedestrian gets hit, there goes millions of dollars. Every time the car runs itself into a truck and kills the occupants, more millions of dollars. Aviation went through a phase where half the cost of a GA aircraft was for the liability insurance. I could see that happening for automobiles as well.

I don't see that they have any choice but to immediately refund everybody who paid for FSD. It'll cost them a lot more if they have to be sued for it. And they'll still get sued... they might end up having to buy back some cars from people who claim they wouldn't have bought the car if it wasn't for the FSD promises. Cheaper to buy the car than go to court.

Right now seems to be one of the more difficult times for Tesla. Certainly their announcement of closing all their stores worries me. And I really like Elon (being an engineer myself I appreciate his humor and way of looking at things). But I have to say, I think it was a huge mistake for him to have gone down the FSD pathway. He should have partnered with Waymo with no promises of the technology ever making it into a Tesla... It's one thing to overpromise a bit on schedules to push the workforce... that's pretty common in high tech. But overpromising stuff like FSD just gets you sued. I hope Tesla survives.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

You use stereo vision, stereo hearing, IMUs, touch/pressure sensing when driving, and knowledge/memories, including basic understandings and predictive knowledge of newtonian mechanics at our speeds and life experiences.

The driver is also an example of one of the most valuable targets they intend to protect while driving: humans. So you're also filled with knowledge and memories of life activities that allow you to judge and assess motions of other humans and their likelihood of being hit by your car while driving--you do this without thinking. Kids playing with a ball nearby, school zones, pedestrians waiting at a stop light, bikers everywhere, people immersed on their phones... you're able to identify and asses the risks of these cases on the fly and adjust your acceleration, foot position for braking and vigilance accordingly. I suspect when you're driving inside a town with hundreds of cars and pedestrians moving you feel far more stressed than driving on an empty interstate.

A few CV algorithms and DNNs aren't going to do it, not if you're trying to mimic the human approach. If you to try another approach then sure. You're going to need a more general AI to drive and were not even remotely close, we only have highly specialized AIs.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

What company doesn't oversell? It's like false advertisement doesn't exist anymore because all advertisements now come with a footnote basically saying what you read is bs. We really need to push new legislation to reel in advertisements again since they all skirt around ththe issue and make finding useful information impossible in the name of profit seeking behaviors.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of the problems would be solved overnight if ALL cars were robotized vehicles and could interact with each other. That would even work in "parking spaces" as each car perfectly aligns itself to the next car using the proper communication (who needs painted lines anyway?). The only real problem is the lack of discipline of human bikers and pedestrians which are probably the hardest stumbling block in everyday traffic.

As usual the humans are the problem. In most if not ALL of the problems of this planet. And these problems will only get worse as our human population grows. Funny thing is that we want technology to adapt to our irrational needs but we don't want to adapt ourself to the limited possibilities of (current) technology. We are the problem, not the car.

Perhaps Skynet isn't so bad after all [:-]

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[AmiMoJo]

I suspect that the re-branding of "Full Self Driving" is an attempt to stave off the lawsuits by claiming that they delivered on it, but people aren't going to ignore that it isn't what they were sold.

Since the first sales started in 2016 people are now reaching the end of their leases without receiving it, so there is time pressure too.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Khyber]

"What company doesn't oversell?"

Any company I've run. Pretty hard to lie when raw numbers/specs are what the customer is interested in and you have to deliver verifiable digits.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Self driving cars *ARE* real AI.

And they don't exist.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of the problems would be solved overnight if ALL cars were robotized vehicles and could interact with each other. That would even work in "parking spaces" as each car perfectly aligns itself to the next car using the proper communication (who needs painted lines anyway?). The only real problem is the lack of discipline of human bikers and pedestrians which are probably the hardest stumbling block in everyday traffic.

As usual the humans are the problem. In most if not ALL of the problems of this planet. And these problems will only get worse as our human population grows. Funny thing is that we want technology to adapt to our irrational needs but we don't want to adapt ourself to the limited possibilities of (current) technology. We are the problem, not the car.

Perhaps Skynet isn't so bad after all [:-]

If there were no humans, there would be no car. The car, and all other technology, exists to serve humans. Even the concept of a "problem" is a human construct. Humans can, for the most part, drive just fine. So the problem really is the technology. And that's okay too!

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Kazymyr]

I'm aware of this shit happening all the time, but haven't lost all hope for mankind yet.

In the meantime, please get off my self-driving unicorn. :)

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

You thought Autopilot worked poorly? I thought it was awesome. What didn't work as well for you?

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Miamicanes]

It's not quite *that* easy... you STILL have to account for the very real possibility that another vehicle might LIE about its current state or intentions... possibly to try and get an advantage for its driver & allow it to save 30 seconds merging into traffic, get a better parking spot, etc... possibly to cause mayhem, death, and destruction.

Simply put, trusting untrustworthy input is dangerous. At best, you can treat it like, "Trust, but Verify".

More likely is that someday, government road departments will deploy their own sensors & make the data available (with robust security) to cars in the area. And even THEN, you have to consider the real possibility of sabotage (if only the equivalent of, "drunk teens taking a stop sign for shits & giggles).

You have to deal with scenarios where multiple signals contradict each other. Some are easy... if a database says you're approaching an intersection with a stop sign, but no stop sign is visible, the algorithm can sensibly assume there SHOULD be a stop sign & act accordingly, because the consequences of an unnecessary stop are minor compared to the consequences of an IGNORED necessary stop. Ditto, if the car sees a stop sign, but the database says nothing, or says it's a yield sign. Worst-case, the car treats it as a 'yield' & slows down enough that it COULD stop if it sees an oncoming vehicle.

That said, there's also a case to make for "conga line" logic, especially if most cars are still human-driven. If the car finds itself on a road with ambiguous/conflicting lane markers, and the car in front of it swerves, there's a solid argument that the car behind it might want to swerve, too, even if it sees no other reason to do it. Where external sensors (in other cars, on state DOT drones, etc) become useful is evaluating the logic for such behavior when detected so that a single swerving human won't turn into a 6-hour ripple (think: those times when you're in gridlock, the road suddenly opens up wide in front of you, and you're left wondering why everyone in front of you stopped. It's because some past event brought traffic to a halt, and it persists long after the original reason is gone).

Where self-driving + external coordination can help is resolving those situations gracefully. Like Howard Stern's joke about, "ok, on the count of 3, everyone stopped by mm77 on the NJ turnpike slowly begin accelerating & everyone can start moving together". With humans, it would just cause more fender-benders. But with autonomous vehicles & proper PID logic, the electronic "traffic cops" COULD carefully break up the "clots" and digitally shoo people along to break up wave effects.

Current self-driving is entirely self-contained in an attempt to bootstrap it, because it takes DECADES for road upgrades, even things like signage (there are STILL a few 1960s-era nonstandard-colored US-highway route signs scattered around Florida... the ones that show US-1 in red, US-41 in orange, US-27 in green, etc. Admittedly, it's because they aren't really hurting anything & the few remaining ones have almost become tourist attractions & photo spots, but it shows just how long legacy stuff can persist). It can take a decade or two just to plan & fund a road project, and ANOTHER 5-20 years to do it (Miami's Palmetto Expressway has been in a state of perpetual construction somewhere along its length for pretty much my entire sentient life... as soon as the late-80s round of upgrades finished after ~30 years, FDOT tore it up AGAIN to add the Lexus lanes & rebuild the I-75 interchange for the third time in 20 years (#1 grafted exit ramps to NW 138th st into it, #2 widened the deck of the ramp to northbound 75 to add a lane, #3 is underway now). Even if everyone agreed NOW about how to add electronic sensors & signaling for autonomous cars, it would take 10 years for the minor upgrades, and 25-40 years for the ones requiring major new construction to get funded & built.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[fat man's underwear]

I like you. You should log in to provide some balance to the tech fanboys.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? It works in the lab alright. The difficult part is getting all the actual edge cases correct.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Altus]

People should already be demanding refunds as Tesla has admitted that they will never deliver what is promised.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You use stereo vision, stereo hearing, IMUs, touch/pressure sensing when driving, and knowledge/memories, including basic understandings and predictive knowledge of newtonian mechanics at our speeds and life experiences.

Obviously, the "just cameras" omitted information processing. I don't think it implied that you can remove the computer (or your brain).

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[fluffernutter]

I've been down this road before. Self driving proponents will just make up sensors that can see around and through cars and bushes and walls and buses. THey can see under cars and over cars. They work in fog and rain and snow and ice. They'll ask you to trust them that these sensors will be in all vehicles and will work by the time self driving is commercial as a condition of having a conversation.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[fluffernutter]

But what processing can we realistically fit on a car? Can google's data center even process 1000 images a second from a million cars all with completely random pictures of traffic? For each car there will be a significant delay through wireless transfer. Therefore the logic needs to be on board, on the car.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[green1]

They got away with lying outright about the original autopilot without any consequences, why would this be different?

Go look at the "D" event video, not a single thing that Elon promises for the first generation of autopilot has been delivered.

I've always said that the best case scenario for "full self driving" was that it would fulfil the stated functionality for AP1. Seems even that part may turn out to be optimistic.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Whorhay]

If it's only sometimes that the car parks a meter away from the curb it'd be a marked improvement over the drivers I see everyday. If I was a police officer I swear I could fund the entire municipal budget from issuing parking citations to jackass drivers.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Many of the problems would be solved overnight if ALL cars were robotized vehicles and could interact with each other.

I take it you have never dealt with standards bodies that define these sorts of interactions. You can't solve the placement of a comma overnight, much less communications and data quality standards for vehicles traveling in extremely close proximity. Sure, after a few decades of research, standards development, high-profile failures, standards re-writes, unnecessary limitations imposed to appease a single manufacturer who doesn't want to have to rewrite their code, more research, and compromises that greatly water down the available fucntionality, it will be solved overnight. We just might not live long enough to see that night.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[im_thatoneguy]

The article is full of shit. Here is the actual new language:

All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driverâ(TM)s seat.

All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you donâ(TM)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.

The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving capabilities are introduced, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.

The only thing they changed was to put the imminently releasing features up front on the order page and to be more honest on the largest obstacles to release. They used to say "dependent on government approval" which was bullshit. Now they correctly say dependent on actually working. But the Summary claiming that they are only going to do L2 driver assist features is bullshit. Especially since Navigate on Autopilot will be L3 and Advanced Summon will be L3 and both are already being tested in public cars.

Tesla wanted there to be a reason to sell FSD now and that reason is Advanced Summon and NOA. Splitting the price and the features out of EAP and just releasing AP makes the most valuable EAP features available to more people for less money to be more in line with Honda and Audi pricing for L2 features.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm convinced it will be FSD capable...for Elon once he builds his own personal on/off ramps from the interstate for his house and offices.

Just like coast-to-coast wouldn't be bad if you did something like I20->I35->I80, yeah it isn't a straight shot but it avoids the northeast and socal and a few other really crappy places to drive.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Short answer: Musk is a capitalist who needs to be in the news as much as possible.

An Attention Whore.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they finally hired an Expectations Manager.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[LetterRip]

Aye, it may be impossible the way Tesla is trying to do it. Their original plan was for a coast-to-coast demo in 2017, which obviously failed.

What "failed" is that they had to start over from scratch because MobileEye felt that it should own all of the self driving data, and Tesla disagreed. So it took a few years to get back to their 2016 status.

They actually could do a coast to coast demo now and have had that capability for about a year. Their current difficulties are the same that Waymo is having - you have to trust that other drivers will actually obey red lights and stop signs - thus ignoring that the other drivers current velocity will cause a crash if they don't slow down or stop when you make a left turn. Similarly aggressive behavior required for merging, etc. that will cause an accident if the other driver ignores you trying to merge, etc.

Their problem is twofold. First they underestimated the processing power needed to do handle images from the cameras. They use neural nets to process them and on the original hardware they shipped (known as AP2) it just wasn't powerful enough, they couldn't even get it to compare consecutive images (which helps when you don't have stereo vision). They went to AP2.5 and now AP3, but it's not clear if even that is fast enough for what they want to do.

You should watch youtube videos that show the shadowmode debugging output that is tracking people, cars, bikes, road markings (lane boundaries, stop at light boundaries) etc. in real time for all cameras. The hardware works fine for what it needs to do.

The second problem is that it's just really, really hard to use neural nets to do everything they need. Not just recognizing objects like cars, signs and traffic lights. It has to see road markings, it has to see traffic police and understand their gestures, it has to understand complex 3D spaces with no/poor road markings like car parks and private driveways. It has to be able to recognize small objects that the radar/ultrasonics close to the ground won't pick up, like toll barriers and the over-hanging rear ends of trucks.

It isn't as hard as you seem to think, also they aren't using NN's for everything. Also FSD doesn't have to handle every case - you can geofence it - so it never has to handle private driveways. Something that is level 5 for well defined common use cases, but doesn't do country rounds in the middle of nowhere is still a major game changer; or that announces that "in 10 minutes we will be approaching the boundary for FSD, please take over soon".

To give you some idea of how far away they are, even the current driver assist parking isn't good enough for full self driving.

The driver assist is an entirely different code base. It is using essentially none of the data that is being used for FSD development. They are parallel development tracks with almost no resources being devoted to the non FSD stuff.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Kjella]

Waymo seems to have the strongest story, and I think they're still 15-20 years away from a coast to coast drive without intervention.

Well a trip coast-to-coast is 2500-3000 miles and for last year Waymo reported one disengagement per 11017 miles driven. Granted, that might not be the same roads but considering that coast-to-coast highway trips have been done 95-99% autonomous by much simpler systems and done entirely by moderately advanced systems statistically my money would be on the Waymo getting there by itself way more often than not. Basically there's three situations:

1) It's driving okay
2) It's confused and knows it's confused
3) It's oblivious and/or utterly wrong

Nobody really cares about 2), sure once every thousands of miles you might have to give it a nudge through a construction area or whatnot. It's 3) that's keeping engineers awake at night, what are all the exceptional things that could happen either outside the car or to the car's systems and how serious/deadly would the consequences be? There's a reason most industrial robots are in safety cages. A self-driving car is not. Heck sometimes I think it's crazy we let people drive a ton of metal at 50+ mph a feet or two away from others...

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

As of today, nobody has solved all the hard problems of automatic car driving.

It all marketing BS so far. Musk needs the BS to win customers and capital. So he lies.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Tesla needed that cash desperately to ride over the delays in Model 3 ramp.

As the cash position improves, it will return the money, may be with interest, and scale back the FSD rhetoric.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like a fanboy with no data or citations to back up anything you've said.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[King_TJ]

Musk likes to be an optimist, for sure.... But he hasn't really sold anyone anything that was a lie either. These promised future upgrades were all clearly marketed as a "Pay now to lock in your place to get them whenever they may be ready." arrangement.

Like I told one guy ... I never even pre-order new video games titles that are "coming soon". If you pay for anything that's not delivered immediately upon the payment, you're essentially just agreeing to loan them some of your money.

Tesla might as well have just offered the self-driving upgrades as a Kickstarter campaign really.

I think many people forget or don't know that Tesla's first "auto pilot" (AP1) was just Intel's MobilEye system that they paid for the rights to use. So it wasn't until a few years reselling it that Tesla began trying to replicate its functionality with their own system. MobilEye features like ability to OCR read speed limit signs is something Tesla is STILL unable to do. (The current system relies on GPS info to know the road speed limits.)

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[misnohmer]

Ah, but here is the problem, what should the refund be? If I bought a Tesla with the intent for it to drive my kids to school, or to drive my old parents around using Full Self Driving, should I be able to return the car and get 100% refund? Or should Tesla take responsibility for that by paying for a full time driver for the reminder of my ownership of my car?

Of course, they are offering no refunds whatsoever, but if they were, the problem is in assessing the liability for their screwup.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[AmiMoJo]

Full self driving was advertised as being able to come out of your garage, pick you up by the front door, take you to work and then go off and find its own parking space. It needs to handle every situation, including unmarked private roads that are narrow and do not conform to the normal standards.

If Tesla could do coast to coast they would. They can't. They did zero autonomous miles in 2018 according to the report they filed.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[AmiMoJo]

What has changed is that they started calling level 2 features "full self driving", and removed the specific descriptions of what the real full self driving would eventually do. At best it confuses matters, at worst it looks like they are backtracking and have no intention of delivering what they already sold people.

Also remember that this system has been sold since 2016 and was supposed to have a fully functional demo in 2017. Now even Musk is saying 2022.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[sphealey]

- - - - - Well a trip coast-to-coast is 2500-3000 miles and for last year Waymo reported one disengagement per 11017 [9to5google.com] miles driven. - - - - -

A trip coast-to-coast on I-80 is probably the 2nd easiest autonomous vehicle test imaginable, right behind driving the wide dry boulevards of Phoenix. I worked for a company that could have built a vehicle capable of doing that in 1980 (although it would have been towing a trailer full of electronics and cooling equipment). Call me when an autonomous vehicle can navigate the streets of a major city 3 days after a large snowfall.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[sphealey]

- - - - - - They actually could do a coast to coast demo now and have had that capability for about a year. Their current difficulties are the same that Waymo is having - you have to trust that other drivers will actually obey red lights and stop signs - thus ignoring that the other drivers current velocity will cause a crash if they don't slow down or stop when you make a left turn. Similarly aggressive behavior required for merging, etc. that will cause an accident if the other driver ignores you trying to merge, etc. - - - - -

Other than the minor point that a coast-to-coast drive on I-80 is pretty easy and autonomous vehicles capable of doing that have existed for a long time (longer than I-80, which wasn't a complete interstate until about 1985), what you are saying here is that Telsa's autonomous system can do everything except the parts that make driving hard. Human drivers assess their fellow drivers, the trustworthiness of signals, the need to break laws to keep traffic flow every minute if not every second and take action based on that analysis. If everything must be perfect for AI-based autonomous vehicles to work outside of benign environments such as Phoenix boulevards and I-80 then they will never work.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

I'm not going to say "they should have known the naysayers were right"; Elon has disproved a hell of a lot of naysayers. And by all appearances their efforts were sincere and substantial and not any sort of scam. Indeed, Tesla advanced the state of the art in self-driving and I have to give them credit for getting some of it into the hands of the public.

But they do need to promptly refund the people who paid in advance for something they will now never get. As long as they do that, I don't see that they've done anything improper.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Waccoon]

I've posted this a few times: I never understood why Tesla pursued self driving so vigorously.

Publicity. That's always been Musk's specialty, which keeps the investors coming.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[nukenerd]

Winning customers is not Musk's only aim. He has no personal need for more money. What he really wants is to try out some of the ideas he saw in his sci-fi comics as a teenager. At the same time he gets his rocks off by seeing himself in the media, so he tosses "outrageous" ideas to the public and the media knowing thay will publicise it; they lap it up and cry for more.

Sometimes however, his pigeons come home to roost.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

He has no personal need for more money.

Says who? The more one has, the greedier they are, and fElon is not the exception there. The only thing that is stronger than his greed is his narcissism.

Re:Shit happens, things change.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is more to it than just computation.

There plainly isn't, because your brain is able to do it with nothing more than just computation.

Well, kind of. People's brains kill some 1.25 million people per year with cars worldwide, so they cannot do it very well. Anyway that is a low bar to exceed.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[mapkinase]

I wish industry stop making big deal out of self driving. There will be plenty of Tesla drivers pretty soon who will be able to do complete route to their work. It won't be called full automation, it will be called driver assist, but it practically won't matter.

Tesla drivers will be sleeping in the cars all the way. It won't cover everything and it will be stull illegal, but they will do it, do it, do it, becausr they can.

This bullshit abiut complete automation is much less important than huge comfort improvements drivers have been getting since 30 years ago when cruise control is introduced.

Re: Shit happens, things change.

[mattcasters]

So this is what Slashdot has become: a bunch of whiny progress fearing afraid of the future. It used to be about cool new things, you know, stuff that matters.

In the mean time I'm driving constantly on Tesla Autopilot and for those parts it supports (highway) it is indeed fully self driving.
Yesterday I drove over 1000 km on Autopilot. The parts it supports, it supports very well. I feel quite safe driving long stretches without any intervention. So keep mind reading Elon Musk and ignore the actual reason why they rushed Autopilot out of the door: to save lives! The stats are very clear: 4x fewer accidents on Autopilot compared to human drivers. It was deemed immoral to NOT roll it out.

Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a techie I know technology sometimes do freak up. No way I will let myself inside a self-driving car.

Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[Lozrus]

As a techie and a human, I know that people "freak up" way more often. So yeah I want to ride self-driving cars. But more scary to me is the interim period where the technology is immature and there is a mix of computers and human drivers on the road.

Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

I know as a techie that humans tend to be really bad at statistics and often over estimate the abilities of technology and underestimate the abilities of humans. Techies are especially bad about this.

You seem to forget that self driving cars "freak up" about once every 600 miles right now, humans "freak up" about once every 150,000. And that human number includes all the very worst drivers driving in all the very worst conditions. That self driving car number is them operating only in the best conditions. Fact is, the average human driver will only be in a handful of accidents in their life time and will never be in a severe injury or fatal accident.

Humans tend to be very bad about understanding rare occurrences in large populations. Yes, somebody dies in a car wreck every day. The chances of you dying in a car wreck ever are very small.

Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

I know that people "freak up" way more often.

[Citation needed]

People are pretty damned good at complex tasks like driving, and it will be quite a while before a machine can even do what an average driver behind the wheel does routinely while holding onto their smartphone for dear life.

Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[Oswald McWeany]

As a techie I know technology sometimes do freak up. No way I will let myself inside a self-driving car.

People make more mistakes than a well-written and tested application that is working within the scope it was designed for.

That's what worries me most about these "half-way-there" solutions. You do things enough for people to trust them and people's focus drifts. If you expect your car to do everything, you won't be prepared when it doesn't. I don't even like to use Cruise Control for that reason.

Re: Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

Although your chances of dying in a car accident are extremely low (even being injured is fairly low), riding or driving in a car is one of the most dangerous activities most participate in on a daily basis.

That gives you an idea of how safe your daily life really is and how unwarranted most your fears are.

Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[LynnwoodRooster]

well-written and tested application that is working within the scope it was designed for.

It's that little qualifier clause you added that is the killer.

Scope: the entire Earth, no bounds on what can happen as long as it obeys the laws of physics. Go.

Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[fat man's underwear]

So I guess air travel is out too.

Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[bluefoxlucid]

Thing is a self-driving car might get confused, swerve off the road, and cause some minor property damage. A human in the same situation might get confused, lock up the brakes, and either fail to steer entirely or steer into opposing traffic.

Often we see the severity of each incident lower than a likely comparable scenario with a human. Think more property damage, less severe property damage and loss of life and limb. Gives you a huge dilemma.

Re: Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. That's what your going with? A hypothetical you just pulled out of thin air?

Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars?

[philmarcracken]

The difference being that humans seem to ignore patches on their behavior.

Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with "en route"? Don't tell me - a cretinous AMERICAN didn't understand the language. What's new?

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot Editor

noun
noun: Slashdot Editor; plural noun: Bunch of lazy morons

        1. A person who takes no pride atall in their work and doesn't have the skills to do it properly even if they bothered trying.

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

Came here to make the same point.

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

I came here for the same reason. Thank you for calling attention to this idiocy.

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad I'm not the only one.

Re:Why the [sic]?

[CapS]

The Slashdot poster edited the original quote when they probably shouldn't have. The original quote used "enroute" without the space.

And please, Anonymous Coward, don't be a troll.

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

"enroute" and "en route" are both perfectly cromulent.

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with "en route"? Don't tell me - a cretinous AMERICAN didn't understand the language. What's new?

Europeans developing breakthrough technologies would be a nice newness.

Why it's always the Amercians?

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it supposed to be one word? Enroute.

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wondered that too. But I doubt it was due to cretinism, that is quite rare in the USA nowadays...

Re:Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's "en route". The original article had it written incorrectly as "enroute" and the idiot who posted it here corrected it and added "[sic]" when they should have only done one or the other.

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/en_route

Re:Why the [sic]?

[GearheadShemTov]

"en route" is standard American English, no sic required.

Re:Why the [sic]?

[AmiMoJo]

The Slashdot editor actually fixed it. In the original quote it was spelt as one word, "enroute". Kind of like how some people write "alot" I guess.

Re: Why the [sic]?

[Anonymous Coward]

The editor fixed it and left the "sic" ?

How stupid is THAT !?!

Tesla like the USB foundation

[Anonymous Coward]

"Full Speed" = 11 mbit.

Re: Tesla like the USB foundation

[Anonymous Coward]

Eye likk yerr tow cheez

So...

[stealth_finger]

So full self driving doesn't fully drive itself? Gotchya.

Re:So...

[AmiMoJo]

Just to be clear it's actually worse than that.

Tesla sold "full self driving" that really would drive itself while you took a nap for $8000. People pre-ordered it with the promise of it being ready by 2017.

Now they have changed the definition and started selling the reduced functionality for a lower price.

People who pre-ordered both paid more and have no idea if what they were promised is now cancelled and this Level 2 stuff is all they are going to get. To add insult to injury, if they had not pre-ordered they could now buy the same thing for $3000 less.

Re: So...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait till Rei shows up to explain how you are wrong and that Tesla is really amazing.

Re: So...

[AmiMoJo]

Yeah, she is a little late to this party... Maybe she is busy today.

Re: So...

[stealth_finger]

Probably babysitting a 'self driving' car.

Re:So...

[beanpoppa]

No, Tesla sold Enhanced Auto Pilot for $5000, and Full Self Driving for an additional $3000 if you pre-ordered. It was supposedly going to be an extra $5000 to add FSD after delivery if you didn't pre-order*. Enhanced Auto Pilot has been functional since day 1, and included Traffic-aware adaptive cruise control, self parking, and summon (the ability to drive the car forward or backwards from the smartphone app.) I always knew FSD was a gamble, and figured paying more to get the feature later was worth it compared to the risk of not knowing when FSD would be available, and how good it would even be. I also figured that there would likely be sales later on where it would be discounted so that Tesla could quickly get zero-cost revenue for an end-of-quarter push. I think the bigger problem is not that they were pre-selling a feature that is likely years away, but that they are now selling it for less before it's even released without refunding the difference to those that bought early. I would have no problem if EAP were cheaper today than when I bought it. Prices for technology always go down, and that's the cost of being an early adopter. But at least in those cases, the early adopters get the benefit of enjoying the technology before others get in at a lower price. That should not be the case for pre-orders.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll get better. Next, we'll find out that "Full Self Driving" means that you are fully able to drive the car yourself. Provided that you are properly licensed and can legally obtain a car to "self drive." Because there's always a catch...

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

People pre-ordered it with the promise of it being ready by 2017.

yeah, and some people also buy "vitamin B17" to treat their cancer.

Re:So...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I think the bigger problem is not that they were pre-selling a feature that is likely years away, but that they are now selling it for less before it's even released without refunding the difference to those that bought early."

uh, if FSD not working at all isn't a problem for you, why would a $2k price difference even show up on your radar? you thought it was worth at least $8k, so you paid that and supported Tesla.

Re: So...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tesla had to lay-off all their paid shills. Cash is running out pretty quickly.

Re: So...

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Rei might have modded up some posts in this thread. So she would not post anything.

Hey, we did that at our university courses

[Opportunist]

First we wrote the software, then we wrote the specs. It was way easier to meet the target that way.

Re:Hey, we did that at our university courses

[green1]

So far they've wrote the marketing spiel but not bothered with the specs, or the software. or the hardware for that matter.

Tesla-starter

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Musk has been very successful in getting Tesla treated like Kickstarter - people paying money, $8,000 for this software, thousands to reserve a car, for things that did not exist at the time. Usually using similar motivations as kickstarter - preordering because they like the company and want it to exist even more than because they want the product. Man, I wish I had that salesmanship.

Re:Tesla-starter

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a helluvalot more than just salesmanship. Massive companies and government organizations with boatloads of cash could have done everything Elon has brought into reality through Tesla and SpaceX... but they didn't. And he did. Most of that (aside from getting investors on board at key points) has nothing whatsoever to do with salesmanship, and everything to do with knowing how to hire and direct skilled engineers toward goals everyone thought were impossible and *actually achieving* them.

Re:Tesla-starter

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, I wish I had that salesmanship.

You need to promise to transform science fiction into reality.

Free energy on your roof. Self-driving car that uses the free energy. Rocket ships to Mars. Supersonic travel in underground pods. Science fiction fans think that stuff could be real if only more CEOs like Musk had "the vision".

Re: Tesla-starter

[Anonymous Coward]

They're not wrong. Those things could become reality with time but if no one is working to those goals directly (or even indirectly) you'll find that achieving those goals are nearly impossible.

Working in R&D for awhile I came in with the naive concept that in a domain that should be driven by science and scientists, communication surrounding the work would be realistic. While its OK to be optimistic, I figured must could ground the goals in realism and I still think that's fairly true (there are lots of overly optimistic people).

The problem is, realism doesn't sell and R&D needs money. If you tell the truth of current state of the art and what's realistically achievable, you won't get money to pursue those goals. Instead, the money goes to the team that's willing to push the truth a little more. That tug of war goes on and on and you ultimately end up with personal jetpacks and quantum teleporters delivered next year. Scientists and engineers are people too and they have to eat and support their family, unfortunately, they often have to compromise their ethics to do so because that's what society imposes on them through business and business marketing strategies they permit which someone eventually has to backup or take the fall for.

The general public also doesn't like to hear realistic claims. Real functionally achievable goals aren't sexy and consumers dont want to buy them. They want lies for some reason.

Re: Tesla-starter

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, he is lying in the meantime saying these features are ready, when they in fact aren't. How is that not deceptive advertising I don't know. None of what you say means jack shit when the things they are delivering aren't living up to the marketing hype.

Electric cars were a thing before musk. All he's done is lie his way to where they are. They deliver but not in the way that a reputable company does. They are always late and overpriced if you aren't a preorder.

About meaningless expressions

[CustomSolvers2]

if the previously promised technology has been abandoned and Level 2 is now the most they can expect.

I find very funny when I read statements on these lines, backed by meaningless words but assumed to have some profound meaning. Level 2 technology! Better than Level 1 technology, but worse than Level 3 technology! LOL. I remember an article here not long time ago (2 years max.?) where a car manufacturer (Volvo I think) was planning to release their first Level-5 self-driving car within a year. I guess that we are now back to Level 2 technology.

LAST thing

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome the the LAST thing shorters can bitch about

Bridge salesman

[DrYak]

If you really though that promises within next year or so for "Tesla comming autonomously to pick you up, and letting you sleep while delivering you to your destination" is anything but marketing department's bulcrap, then you're really gullible.

There's a hint: that bridge isn't for sale neither.

You're probably also firmly believing that the cold gas thrusters on the upcoming new Roadster will enable Tesla to make an actually flying / hovering car, instead of simply being Tesla's spin and slight evolution of an anti-skid/stabilisation tech that has already been researched by BWM and Bosch for motorcycles.

Re:Bridge salesman

[Mr. Dollar Ton]

I know quite a few people who really, honestly and stupidly thought Musk can do anything at all in general, and that full self-driving isn't all that difficult for him, specifically. A few even dropped money into the money pit that is Tesla, and even refused to listen when they were told Tesla marketing is mostly bullshit. All of them lost money, one or two - a lot.

Now, I don't really feel pity for any one of them, but if Tesla had been responsible with their claims about Tesla cars, these people would not have lost as much, which is the smaller benefit in the grand scheme of things.

The bigger benefit is that had Tesla not used false and misleading claims, it may have happened so that someone with a better technology and abilities but less "marketing savvy", that is, propensity to lie and exaggerate, would have gotten this money and moved the state of the art further ahead to the benefit of us all.

Re:Bridge salesman

[nukenerd]

Mod this up.

Many people have added Musk to their personal gallery of what they consider to be modern saints and geniuses : Musk is on that pedestal alongside Gates, Mandela, Jobs, Zuckerberg, Thatcher etc. You cannot say or do anything that will weaken their faith in these figures. Most people seem to need such figures for paternal or matriarchal reassurance.

Of course, in the USA "genius" is more or less equated with success at making money, even though that rules a lot out, Socrates for example.

Re:Bridge salesman

[mattcasters]

As one of the people who supposedly "lost" on the "Full Self Driving" feature let me tell you, you couldn't' be more wrong. Sure, Tesla posted early videos and was overly optimistic about a lot of things but in the end, Tesla is at the top of the self driving capabilities right now. There's nothing you can buy out there that matches what Tesla can do. As a techy, being part of this evolution and revolution, seeing the new features uploaded into my car every few months has been worth more than what I paid and I know that most buyers feel like that. It's always the non-Tesla owners that are screaming on the side-lines that have some kind of anti-progress ax to grind.

I obviously knew that Slashdot had become less popular but this anti-progress, conservative, anti-tech nonsense is not something I expected. You should read the whiny bitchy comments on this article. Not a single Tesla driver but everyone complaining. Get a grip on yourselves.

What a shifty company

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Tesla is a cult figure company with a product that appeals only to people who can afford to take a chance on new technology. Lot of bad results come from people and companies who over promise and underdeliver. None of the Tesla's have really made any vehicle with a mass market appeal and the basic quality and support seems very underwhelming.

Re:What a shifty company

[green1]

I have to both agree, and disagree at the same time.

Tesla makes the best vehicle on the market today. They also lie through their teeth about every aspect of it. If you expect a Tesla to be anything even remotely like what was promised, you'll be horribly disappointed. But if you try to find another car that can do what the Tesla can, you'll be equally disappointed.

I've always said that it's the best car ever made, by the worst company I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

I truly believe that once there's actual competition in the space (currently there's none, but I expect that to change significantly within the next 5 years) Tesla will either have to change their ways, or be in serious trouble. But right now, there's no competition, and they act like it.

I love my Model S. I will never again buy any product made or sold by Tesla, nor would I recommend them to anyone else either.

Comic

[cerberusss]

Reminds me of this recent Ctrl+Alt+Del comic:
https://cad-comic.com/comic/ro...
(For the visually impaired readers: comic shows an exciting roller coaster that turns out to be half finished)

Re:Comic

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't inflict Buckley upon Slashdot. We are better than that. It would be a great loss for this community to sink to that level.

Why?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does anybody believe anything Tesla announces?

Their cars are fine so long as you don't want to drive too far. If you do, you get to wait at their superchargers for an hour or more. Far more patience is required if there isn't a supercharger on your route. Compare that to any non-electric vehicle that takes less than five minutes to fill up. Their cars aren't as well made as any current Japanese or Korean vehicle.

Media whore is the most appropriate term for their announcements.

Electric vehicles will come, they won't be made by Tesla. They will be from any of several well known car companies.

Re:Why?????

[micheas]

It seems like in the end electric cars will mostly be made by LG, with Toyota and possibly Tesla having a small market share.

If you 50% of the cost of the car is made by LG (the batteries and motor). Tesla makes their own batteries and motors (the batteries are a partnership with Panasonic). Toyota makes their own batteries in partnership with Panasonic. Everyone else is basically just wrapping a car around LG batteries. Toyota seems to be about five to ten years before they get to solid-state batteries, and Tesla is making improvements, and have the best current technology, but it seems like they have such severe cash flow issues that they may not be making the investments to keep their lead.

Musk's announcements are clearly aspirational, but the cars are amazing and the model 3 is clearly pushing other companies to start developing real electric cars.

Most Tesla owners I know planned on keeping a second car for road trips and found that road trips are more pleasant driving the Tesla than the other cars, even with the charging station issue. And, really the Supercharger version 3 with a Tesla model 3 isn't all that much worse than stopping for gas. (And not no worse than stopping at Costco for gas in California)

I expect that the well-known car companies will wind up mostly failing with the transition to electric cars. I think Tesla is still a long shot to be around in 20 years, but GM and Volkwagon are having problems producing something technologically on par with the original roadster, much less something like the model S or model 3. Maybe Nissan will pull it off, but they dumped their own battery technology for LG.

The one thing that Tesla clearly created was the market for electric sports cars. It will be interesting to see who will be the big players in it. But, Tesla seems to still be pretty limited by its battery production. It will be interesting to see how things change over the next few years.

Re:Why?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you do not live in an area with ice and snow.

Re:Why?????

[Anonymous Coward]

presumably you haven’t driven one let alone owned a Tesla, either that or you’re a shill for some vested interest group that wants to bury electric cars.

Re:Why?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I drive a car that’s universally regarded as a piece of shit?

Re:Why?????

[Anonymous Coward]

Agree with most of your comment except

  “Tesla is a long shot”. I think they will definitely be around, the question is will Tesla the company or the products/technology be in its current form or some other ownership? I don’t discount it going private as per Elon Musk’s tweets.

Severe cash flow problems: nope, they don’t have cash flow problems now, in fact they look pretty much cash flow positive, give or take the quarterly ups and downs. What I suspect you meant was, do they have the resources or ability to acquire resources to make the necessary design and capital investments to stay in front of the competition. That is an interesting question and will be fascinating to watch as the market develops.

Re:Why?????

[110010001000]

Let me guess: Big Oil, Shorts, legacy Car Manufacturers? No, we just think Tesla is another tech scam. You don't need to work for "big oil" to think that.

Re: Why?????

[Anonymous Coward]

And? EV donâ(TM)t work? Your statements are a non sequitur.

Re:Why?????

[Anonymous Coward]

So... Arkansas? /grin

Just kidding, I expect the vehicles you had were equipped with 4WD, a winch, and extra cans of petrol in the back.

Re:Why?????

[aardvarkjoe]

You mean that EVs won't work for every single person's use case? Gee, that's an insightful statement.

Re:Why?????

[fluffernutter]

No, they don't work for MOST use cases. As in "a person buys a car for a lot of money and may go on a long trip once in awhile". I really don't see how we can talk about them seriously when all the people who can by them do, it really won't make a dent on the environment at all. Gas will still be king, it will still have to remain the same price it is today. Likely as crude gets more expensive, governments will shift 30% road taxes from gas to electricity to keep the prices on-par.

Listen, I want to buy an EV badly. The industry needs to hurry up and make something that reasonably replaces an ICE.

Re:Why?????

[K. S. Kyosuke]

EVs don't work. I grew up probably more north than you, with people that hunt with bows, and go ice fishing in the middle of nowhere.

Ah. That one again... There's a massive hole in your your argument.

Re: Why?????

[K. S. Kyosuke]

So, yes, in cold areas up north, EVs are almost fucking useless.

Fortunately, almost nobody lives in cold areas up north, since EVs are not the only thing that hates cold. So saying that EVs don't work very much like saying that chemotherapy doesn't work. Just because something doesn't work for 100% of people doesn't mean that it "doesn't work".

Re:Why?????

[K. S. Kyosuke]

No, they don't work for MOST use cases. As in "a person buys a car for a lot of money and may go on a long trip once in awhile".

Ah, so it *does* work most use cases, then. ;)

Re:Why?????

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Also EVs are falsely made cheaper because the government raises taxes on ICEs.

Considering that the raised taxes seem to be comparable to what carbon pricing would do to the price of ICEs, PLUS the existing difference in energy prices for vehicles between $7/US gal. gasoline and $0.15/kWh electricity, what's the big deal here?

Re: Why?????

[fluffernutter]

So when they stop making ICEs, the people who cannot use an EV should just keep their gas engines going together? Will we have a nationally supported gas vehicle so we can still drive around?

My point is that EVs should work for everyone and should be better.

Re:Why?????

[fluffernutter]

That makes it a worse issue. If citizens in sparsely populated areas get left behind then that is a national issue. Exactly why farmers rioted in France.

Re:Why?????

[fluffernutter]

I really don't know how you got that. Almost everyone needs their vehicle for a long trip from time to time. Especially the vehicle they pay +$5K for. The second vehicle for $5-$10K can run around the city where it is ok to break down.

Re:Why?????

[fluffernutter]

People cannot lose their ability to access remote areas. If there is no EV charger there, then there must be a comparable vehicle that will do the job. Therefore the ICE market cannot change significantly until all these issues are resolved.

Re:Why?????

[fluffernutter]

This is a *true* national security issue.

Re: Why?????

[mark-t]

Fortunately, almost nobody lives in cold areas up north...

Sure... in the same way that "almost nobody" lives in North America when you compare it to populations like China and India.

My point is, saying that many millions of people are effectively "almost nobody" is going to come across as being very suggestive of the idea that their feelings or experiences do not matter. It is liable to be seen as both dismissive and possibly even a bit insulting.

Re: Why?????

[bingoUV]

A trailer containing a gasoline tanker and electricity generator can be designed in weeks. Next version of electric cars can contain a better inbuilt way of attaching such a trailer : though I think most of today's electric cars can attach a trailer, or can be modified in less than a few weeks to be able to attach a trailer.

Next, only the places which don't have super chargers need to have the gas pumps. It's a bit taxing on the economy of scale of the gas pumps : and gas prices might rise a bit, but may not be exorbitant.

Of course, Musk most likely hasn't thought of reachability, national security, or practically anything other than next week's stock price.

Re:Why?????

[green1]

I drive a Tesla (Model S P85+), I live in Canada. My commute is 155 km of highway each way and I regularly do 2000 km road trips. I don't have the luxury of picking what weather I drive in.

The Tesla is the best car possible for my use case, there is nothing better on the market currently.

That said, Tesla as a company is the worst company I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with, and I will never again give them even a penny of my money. I just hope that I don't need to replace this car before some other actual competition appears in this space.

Re:Why?????

[green1]

You're mixing up the car and the company. The car is the best vehicle I've ever driven. The company is the worst company I've ever dealt with.

Re:Why?????

[jeff4747]

If citizens in sparsely populated areas get left behind then that is a national issue

Nah. It's a local issue. The nation is in no way required to fix it. Just like the nation does not require, say, all vehicles to be 4x4s or otherwise have sufficient off-road capability to work where you life. You just don't buy the gas cars that were designed for commuters in a city.

There is a sufficient market for vehicles that run in sufficiently rural areas that there will always be someone making them. But that does not mean all vehicles must be able to do it.

Also, you're forgetting one advantage of EVs in your scenario: You don't stop to fill them up occasionally. You plug them in every night when you get home. Which means they have a "full tank" every morning. So as long as that fishing hole is 100mi or less from home, you're better covered day-to-day with that EV because it isn't getting left with a quarter tank in your driveway.

Re: Why?????

[fluffernutter]

Thanks, this is the best way I have seen it said.

Re:Why?????

[fluffernutter]

Yeah I don't really care about the full tank every morning bit if I can't go and rescue someone who hit a ditch full of snow on the highway. EVs represent a sacrifice to our way of life and our freedom because we will have to call a company to help us.

Re:Why?????

[Anonymous Coward]

No the car is universally gaurded as a piece of shit. Only retards think otherwise.

Re: Why?????

[Khyber]

"Fortunately, almost nobody lives in cold areas up north"

With your head so far down south up your ass, I'm not surprised you can't see the roughly 150 million people that live north of the 45th parallel.

Very meaningful

[Actually, I do RTFA]

Level 2 technology! Better than Level 1 technology, but worse than Level 3 technology! LOL

These are referring to autonomy levels, not versions. They are defined by the federal government (at least in the US). Level 5 is what all non-tech people imagine. "Car, take me to work. I'm going to sleep now". Level 0 tops out at something like ABS. Level 1 is something like cruise control or lane assist (but not both). Level 2 is both, or Tesla's autopilot. The car can maintain speed and steer, but the driver must be ready to take control back at any time. Level 3 is the car drives itself and asks for help when it needs you to take over (if traffic is crazy or the rain is messing with LIDAR), so you can read a book til then and not pay attention. Level 4 is fully autonomous but it has limitations known at purchase time. And Level 5 drives as well as you.

So, yeah, it's meaningful.

Re:Very meaningful

[CustomSolvers2]

These are referring to autonomy levels, not versions

I know that and this is the reason why I didn't say "Level 2" (with some meaning), but "Level 2 technology" (without any real meaning). Or, in other words, one thing is the target result (reaching certain level of autonomy) and a completely different story is doing what is required to accomplish that result (accounting for all the involved issues what, here and almost anywhere else, are addressed through many casuistic solutions rather than a comprehensive single one, as implied by "Level N technology").

In any case, these autonomy levels are still pretty generic and not-too-well delimited. They are similar to expressions like AI, which might be rightfully used in many different contexts by referring to many different situations, without properly defining any of them. As said in the title of my previous post: meaningless expressions.

Re: Very meaningful

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is the autonomy ARE well defined:

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/autonomous-driving-levels-0-to-5-understanding-the-differences/

Re: Very meaningful

[CustomSolvers2]

The point is the autonomy ARE well defined:

Again, my original post wasn't about autonomy levels, but we can discuss about this too. Let's take as examples Levels 2 and 3 which, according to your link, are defined as follows:

Level 2: In level 2, at least one driver assistance system of "both steering and acceleration/ deceleration using information about the driving environment" is automated, like cruise control and lane-centering. It means that the "driver is disengaged from physically operating the vehicle by having his or her hands off the steering wheel AND foot off pedal at the same time," according to the SAE. The driver must still always be ready to take control of the vehicle, however.

Level 3: Drivers are still necessary in level 3 cars, but are able to completely shift "safety-critical functions" to the vehicle, under certain traffic or environmental conditions. It means that the driver is still present and will intervene if necessary, but is not required to monitor the situation in the same way it does for the previous levels. Jim McBride, autonomous vehicles expert at Ford, said this is "the biggest demarcation is between Levels 3 and 4." He's focused on getting Ford straight to Level 4, since Level 3, which involves transferring control from car to human, can often pose difficulties. "We're not going to ask the driver to instantaneously intervene—that's not a fair proposition," McBride said.

Expressions like "using information about the driving environment" (what information? what environment? The road, weather, inside the car, other cars?, etc.) or "driver is disengaged from physically operating the vehicle" (under which conditions? For how long? Does it include all the possible actions or only essential ones?, etc.) or "safety-critical functions" (what does it mean? Avoiding a person or an animal jumping in front of the car or problems due to heavy weather or avoiding obstacles in the road, etc.? All these cases require different skills/"technologies", and also include tons of sub-scenarios, how could anyone accurately define all of them under the same category?!) or "certain traffic or environmental conditions" ("certain" might be easily considered the exact opposite to properly defined!).

I am not criticising the definitions you are proposing or suggesting that I can do it better. This is a tremendously complex reality and, as such, can't be generically defined in an accurate enough way. The only accurate enough definition has to be the result of accounting for a huge number of sub-situations and making lots of decisions about unclear scenarios what, ultimately, would be somehow against the over-simplifying essence which underlies these levels. These are reasonably good generic ideas for as long as they are treated as such, not as perfectly-defined absolute truths. Knowledgeably avoiding complexity is certainly acceptable, unreasonably expecting a complex reality to be fully defined by simplistic ideas is, at least, tremendously naive.

Re: Very meaningful

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod up. Finally we have a realist on slashdot. Not someone who just take Elon at his word and vague definitions used to cheat people.

Re: Very meaningful

[CustomSolvers2]

Mod up. Finally we have a realist on slashdot. Not someone who just take Elon at his word and vague definitions used to cheat people.

Thanks for the kudos, but I think that you got some bits wrong (probably like the people who down-modded some of my posts above for no clear reason). None of my posts was about Elon Musk or Tesla, but about lies (or marketing or promotion or whatever you prefer to call it) regarding self-driving cars; in fact, Volvo was the only manufacturer which I expressly mentioned. The quoted autonomy level definitions come from the article linked by other AC up this thread referring to the US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) classification. Again, nothing to do with Musk/Tesla. The intention of my original post wasn't even critising these levels, but "Level X technology" as a perfect example of expression apparently meaningful but really meaningless. And as per Musk/Tesla critics, it seems that you can find quite a few of them here in Slashdot.

So and although I am certainly a very realistic person who is completely opposed to any dishonest, empty-words, etc. attempt and much more when dealing with issues about which I have a relevant knowledge (the case with mechanical/industrial engineering, automation approaches or software development), this wasn't a direct critic to Elon Musk, Tesla or this exact article. I am not a Musk fan, but I don't hate him either. Honestly, I don't even care about him, what he does, his wins/losses/truths/lies. I care about openly and objectively discussing about whatever issue which, eventually, might refer to Musk or Tesla.

Well, mystery solved

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing when I first saw this pop up on the front page: rather than one of the usual suspects of the editor crew it said "posted by" amimojo. Immediately followed by the expected submission quote naming the same.

Database error? Unlikely since all other stories show as posted by the usual editor list.

We've all probably long suspected amimojo's army of sock puppets were the explanation for the unusually fast connection of mod points on trollish or factually wrong/misleading posts.

Now evidence that amimojo is secretly an editor with mod and story post rights, or maybe even just a sock puppet of the editors.

The state of Slashdot saddens me.

Re: Well, mystery solved

[Anonymous Coward]

But does it come with an inflatable sheep?

Re: Well, mystery solved

[Anonymous Coward]

It still says posted by Amimojo. I think for a long time it was obvious Amimojo was a sock puppet or the second account of one of the ridiculously incompetent editors. Anywhere else someone as consistently stupidly trollish would have been banned.

Re: Well, mystery solved

[Anonymous Coward]

You can tell they're an editor by the moronic "[sic]"

Too easy: Musk lies, Rei WRONG!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a few days ago I told Rei that no fucking way will Musk have level 5 autonomy by 12/31/2019.

I expected to be here in early January to viciously mock Rei for her sheep-like stupidity for having any such faith in a known liar and unethical bullshit artist.

How was I to know Christmas was right around the corner?

Lmao!

Hi Rei! Got anything to add? Are you going to try to convince us that level 2+marketing is the same as level 5?

Don't the laws have to change first?

[SGDarkKnight]

Not that I'm trying to defend anything here, but the statements about requiring a fully alert driver behind the wheel... isn't that the law? I know he's made some very large claims about the self driving technology, but until the laws change to allow people to not pay attention to the road, they need to put that statement in everywhere, don't they?

I mean, I think the self driving feature as it is now, can work... but you need a place where there are no human drivers. Until that "random" factor of human error is removed from the equation, I think it will be a very, very long time before we see fully (legally allowed on the road) self driving cars.

Re:Don't the laws have to change first?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please cite the laws you are referring to. Thx.

Re:Don't the laws have to change first?

[Khyber]

Too stupid to look up "distracted driving laws" for yourself, eh?

Re:Don't the laws have to change first?

[AmiMoJo]

Waymo is starting their driverless taxi service in a few months, with no-one behind the wheel. They have already demonstrated it on public roads to journalists.

Why [sic] after correct "en route" ? Ah: Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

"En route" is correct:

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/is-it-en-route-or-on-route

Editors, edit !

Captcha: transit

goal posts

[fluffernutter]

Self driving seems to be all about shifting the goalposts. It's all about being better than a human until you point out a flaw in this sensor or that, then it becomes about being "at least as good as" a human.

Re:Why [sic] after correct "en route" ? Ah: Slashd

[Anonymous Coward]

Came here to say this.

Con man

[Anonymous Coward]

felon musk is a conman.

Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

All the critics have been saying "impossible" to all the things Tesla is attempting. Clearly many things the critics said impossible, turned out to be possible after all. You can see a long list in tesla fan sites, Tesla death watch in 2012, cant make a sports car, cant make S, cant make S in volume, cant sell enough X, cant make gull wing door, cant make profit [*], cant make model 3, cant ramp up model 3, cant sell enough ...

[*] While the critics and PR were talking about net profits, Musk had internal numbers showing a healthy 20% gross margin in S and X. Once gross margin is positive, getting net margin is simply a matter of scaling up.

So Musk has come to believe ALL the critics are wrong ALL the time. That is again not true. But from Musk point of view, everything he did starting from writing a shoot them up arcade game as a teenager, to making money in the dot com irrational days were deemed "impossible" by most people. So he has come to distrust everyone.

But once in a while I see reports of him being very realistic and candid. With Monroe agreeing the bad designs that was costing too much money in making model3 for one. His praise for the little known "pump team" in the cave rescue. There is a lot to like the engineer in Musk, and the dedication to chase the impossible.

But he would have benefited from a few honest critics who could have earned credibility by saying, "This is possible, That is hard, that one is impossible, this one is a question of money, that one is a question of time, but that one is really really impossible". Hope there are a few in his trusted circle. There must be a few, else Space X would not be this successful.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[fluffernutter]

But the $35K Tesla is now available!

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[segedunum]

All the critics have been saying "impossible" to all the things Tesla is attempting. Clearly many things the critics said impossible, turned out to be possible after all. You can see a long list in tesla fan sites, Tesla death watch in 2012, cant make a sports car, cant make S, cant make S in volume, cant sell enough X, cant make gull wing door, cant make profit [*], cant make model 3, cant ramp up model 3, cant sell enough ...

This won't help you. Tesla promised a fully self-driving car that customers paid money for. It hasn't been delivered, never will be and isn't possible.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[110010001000]

No one said he COULDN'T build an electric car. Who EVER said it was impossible? Do you guys realize that electric cars are over 100 years old? Why couldn't he build a "gull wing door"? It has been done before.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[Anonymous Coward]

But the unprofitable $35K Tesla is now available!

Fixed that for you.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Please spend time going through all the criticisms heaped upon him. "Gull wing unbuildable, says Bob Lutz" Bob Lutz is not some random internet cowboy.

Electric cars are 100 year old, and no gas car maker successfully made a no compromise electric car, BEV that can compete with ICEV in at least a few significant performance parameters like, speed, range, capacity and price. Every industry analyst was saying it is impossible, till 2017. The industry started saying, "we can build them BEV anytime we want, when we do we will wipe the floor with Tesla's ass" only recently.

BEVs can be made profitably. BEVs achieved price parity[* 1] with F segment cars (roadsters, above 120K $) in 2012, in E segment (80K) in 2015, in F segment (50K +) in 2018. Tesla is claiming price parity in D segment (35 K) in 2019. Giving Elon Time dilation, it will be probably in 2020. It should have price parity with C segment, (25 to 35 K) in 2023 [* 2]. But not sure Tesla is planning to enter this market. Might leave these segments to Korea and China and stay in D and above. Half the profits of the car industry are made in D, E and F segments. So it might not enter A (less than 15K), B (15 to 25 K) or C (25 to 35 K).

Go rent a Tesla for a week, get used to its handling and performance. Then see if you feel the same about the gas car. I find BMW 3 series under powered and laggy once I got used to the Tesla. 40 mph to 60 mph is 1.5 seconds. In merging traffic, this is incredible. When people see what an electric car can do, the gas car sales will tank faster than BEVs could be made. [* 3]

[* 1] I am talking about price parity, not cost, not including tax subsidies or savings in running costs.

[* 2] Citation provided.

[* 3] The Osbourne Effect.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

This won't help you. Tesla promised a fully self-driving car that customers paid money for. It hasn't been delivered, never will be and isn't possible.

I am not disputing this. All I am saying is, "if the critics had been more accurate and more discriminating, instead of saying 'impossible' to everything, he might have listened to them more".

He things all his critics are wrong all the time. Definitely not correct. Some of his critics are right some of the time. If you give the critics the same level of scrutiny and same level of strictness you would see that lots of his critics were wrong and unfair at least a few times.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[Khyber]

"When people see what an electric car can do"

They die nicely in the desert. Already had to rescue a Volt and Tesla out in the Mojave last weekend. Tesla had no ground clearance and got its ass bottomed out on a fucking BLM MAINTAINED ROAD (there's no excuse for that, my old Taurus had zero issues with this same road,) and the Volt simply died due to the colder weather fucking over their expected driving range by about 80 miles ("It was charged this morning!" Yea, welcome to battery physics, n00b!)

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

OK fine, you can have the market for people who want to drive in Mojave desert and BLM maintained roads.

We can even mandate all Teslas should carry a warning sticker, "this car is not suitable for Mojave desert driving and BLM maintained roads". The market of people who would knowingly buy a car that can not survive deserts and back roads is big enough for Tesla to survive and thrive.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't the Volt carry a gas generator too? Or does that not work when the battery is completely dead? Was kind of interested in that car, but way too expensive. I think they've discontinued it now anyway in favor of the all-electric Bolt.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[drinkypoo]

Tesla had no ground clearance and got its ass bottomed out on a fucking BLM MAINTAINED ROAD (there's no excuse for that,

I've been on BLM maintained roads that had ruts in them deep enough to get a 4x4 stuck in. That I didn't get my 1982 300SD stuck there is a testament to my ability to put the wheels in the right place, not to BLM road maintenance. There are lots of cars that would be helpless on BLM roads.

and the Volt simply died due to the colder weather fucking over their expected driving range by about 80 miles

Now that's a real problem.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Volt has an gasoline engine. Volt plugin range is 40 miles. It can not fall short by 80 miles. Unless a full tank of gasoline was not enough. By then we cant blame the battery range estimate. Let us be charitable about the OP. Why blame malice when mere incompetence provides adequate explanation?

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[drinkypoo]

Volt has an gasoline engine. Volt plugin range is 40 miles. It can not fall short by 80 miles. Unless a full tank of gasoline was not enough. By then we cant blame the battery range estimate

It wouldn't be just the cold, it would also be the terrain. That estimate won't hold true on rutted dirt roads. Just driving over a lot of bumps consumes a whole bunch of energy.

Let us be charitable about the OP. Why blame malice when mere incompetence provides adequate explanation?

Agreed. But bad range estimates are a real problem which will persist as long as batteries remain temperature-sensitive.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[Anonymous Coward]

All the critics have been saying "impossible" to all the things Tesla is attempting. Clearly many things the critics said impossible, turned out to be possible after all.

But 140ManDickHolster262Jamuna, you're the Musk boypussy that claimed a 2019 Tesla would have double the range of the 2012 model due to battery energy density doubling.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[Anonymous Coward]

110010001000 you're a liar exposed https://science.slashdot.org/c... You're trash.

Re: Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[bingoUV]

How can "critics" be more accurate , when the word, in plural and non-specific like you have put it, is extremely inaccurate ?

By definition, it includes the ACs on /. , the trolls on YouTube comment section, the "short sellers" that regularly frequent Musk's nightmares, and also somewhat technically qualified people. The latter, in my experience, have largely restricted themselves to mentioning the unlikelihood or unprecedentedness of some of Tesla's achievements. Or contradicted timelines of Tesla's profitability : which did slip a few times. Also, given the fundamental inaccuracy of tweets due to brevity: it is hard to know what kind of profitability Musk is claiming to attain by what time. This makes the critics criticise one interpretation of the tweet, and the fanboys extol another.

  Some of the technically qualified commenters have been supportive of Tesla, but that makes them "non-critics", by definition.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[jeff4747]

and the Volt simply died due to the colder weather fucking over their expected driving range by about 80 miles

Wow, considering the Volt had an electric range of about 50 miles, that's impressive! Negative 30 mile range!!

Or, alternatively, you're full of shit and don't know what you're talking about. Which is quite likely since you don't seem to know the Volt has a gas engine too, and gets the vast majority of it's 300mi range from the 250 miles of gas in its tank.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[Khyber]

"OK fine, you can have the market for people who want to drive in Mojave desert and BLM maintained roads."

That's more than half of the USA. But you were too eager to just throw in a jab without bothering to think about how much the BLM covers, didn't you?

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[Khyber]

"Volt plugin range is 40 miles"

This is the fucking desert - people modify their vehicles for extra range, from EVs to little mopeds. This one had the trunk full of battery. Please try again when you know every fact of the situation, and not just assume like the ass you are.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[sphealey]

- - - - - nd the Volt simply died due to the colder weather fucking over their expected driving range by about 80 miles ("It was charged this morning!" Yea, welcome to battery physics, n00b!) - - - - -

TheVolt has 300-400 miles gasoline range, and both the electric and gas gauges work exactly as on a pure ICE vehicle, along with a Total Range Remaining display and the same set of "low fuel" DIC warnings as any car built since 1980, so I'm not sure why the Volt would be considered at fault in this case.

The Volt does have very low ground clearance, as do many cars (ICE, hybrid, and electric) designed for maximum fuel economy, and I personally would not drive it on anything rougher than a groomed gravel road, but that's not unusual. Buy a Subaru if you want a car (not a Jeep) that can take a bumpy Forest Service road.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[sphealey]

- - - - - -That's more than half of the USA. - - - - - -

In terms of population density, no, and that's pure cartography. In terms of estimation I'd personally estimate that 85% of the population of the US will never drive on anything rougher than a paved county road. Let's see, 0.85 * 400 million = ...

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Half? BLM roads cover half of USA? FedEx and UPS do not deliver in 85% of America by that measure. Let the gas cars own that market. Your logic is product A is not suitable for demographic B. OK Fine. Let A concentrate on selling to !B.

Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

So some crazy guy modded a car, and got stranded. Along with the BLM road country, you can have this market for gas cars too.

You seem to be scrapping the bottom of the barrel to come up with markets that can not be served by Tesla.

Unlimited Sef Driving

[Anonymous Coward]

So full self driving doesn't fully drive itself? Gotchya.

It's "unlimited" self driving. Like "unlimited" mobile data service.

Re: Unlimited Sef Driving

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you order Tesla self driving packages with only so many miles of self driving available per month, similar to a mobile phone talk plan. If you happen to use up all your monthly self driving minutes while taking a nap during a road trip, the vehicle immediately smashes into the nearest group of schoolchildren in order to slow down in a way that is safe for the driver.

Re: Why [sic] after correct "en route" ? Ah: Slash

[Anonymous Coward]

It is "on root"!

I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

AmiMoJo writes:

Tesla has been selling "full self-driving" capability since 2016, promising that "you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere," and that "once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else en route [sic] to your destination." Last week Tesla shifted the goalposts

Let's click the link on the word "shifted"

Tesla has:
Full Self-Driving Capability
All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driverâ(TM)s seat.

All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you donâ(TM)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.

The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions. As these self-driving capabilities are introduced, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.

Doesn't look any different from before, no shifting of the definition.
AmiMoJo continues to write claims that are directly contradicted by the very link he provided.
Hmmm

The only not-difference is that page still does not list a year when it will be ready. It never did, but it still does not.

If it wasn't for the fact everything else being claimed is directly contradicted, I might have been inclined to believe tesla said a release date and missed it.
But with such a smear campaign being made, knowing no one here clicks links to see who's talking out of their ass, it's just not worth looking up on the off chance one of the multiple claims is correct.

Re:I'm confused

[segedunum]

Sadly, you can't read:

All new Tesla cars have the hardware needed in the future for full self-driving in almost all circumstances. 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.

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.

I'm not entirely sure why you've bolded these statements, but they are not the same thing.

Doesn't look any different from before, no shifting of the definition. AmiMoJo continues to write claims that are directly contradicted by the very link he provided. Hmmm

The only not-difference is that page still does not list a year when it will be ready. It never did, but it still does not.

Except people have paid for this feature. What they're now doing is trying to claim the entirely unrevolutionary system they have meets the needs of what they promised and what people paid for. Best of luck with that.

But with such a smear campaign being made..........

Whatever sweetheart. Hold on tight, it's turtles all the way down from here.

Charlatans

[segedunum]

..........and dangerous charlatans at that. Everything from the name Autopilot to the impression they give of what the system does is simply dangerous and disingenuous. Everything they're saying suggests that self-driving vehicles are here. They are not, and never will be for perhaps decades to come. There are far, far, far too many variables.

Re:Charlatans

[Darren Hiebert]

Because you have an incorrect mental impression of what an "autopilot" is does not mean that Musk in responsible for your error. Tesla Autopilot is directly analogous to what an aircraft autopilot does, and after which it was named.

An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace human operators, but instead they assist them in controlling the aircraft. This allows them to focus on broader aspects of operations such as monitoring the trajectory, weather and systems. The autopilot is often used in conjunction with the autothrottle, when present, which is the analogous system controlling the power delivered by the engines.

Autopilot.

Re: Charlatans

[Anonymous Coward]

Except if you read Tesla's marketing materials, what they call auto pilot is totally different.

What they were calling auto pilot back in 2016 didn't sound anything like an aircraft auto pilot. They intentionally used marketing speak. The Tesla marketing material promised me I could summon my car from my phone, get in, turn on auto pilot and not have any worries until I reached my destination. Then all I have to do is press a button to put it in seek park mode and it will auto park for me and find a space. And when I want it, I just summon it using my app.

That's their marketing speak for autopilot. So either they were intentionally lying , or had no idea wtf they were talking about.

Besides we've had cruise control which fits your definition of auto pilot since forever. But cruise control doesn't sound as fancy and sell as many cars as the word "auto pilot" would.

So in kind, fuck off. Saying that we don't know what auto pilot means. This tired argument has been debunked over and over again. And if you still think it's true, well then you are a flaming Elon fanboy.

Re: Charlatans

[Anonymous Coward]

If musk is using the aircraft definition of auto pilot, why didn't he come out and say so? Instead of telling people they can get in a car, it will do the rest, including parking, when none of that is remotely true?

You don't say

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually a great many of us *did*, the entire time. Fools and their money are indeed soon parted. Musk is probably one of the most unethical (and delusional) mainstream businessmen alive today, he has more in common with P.T. Barnum than Nikola, or even Steve Jobs.

It's more about the lawyers than the tech

[Reiyuki]

Like humans, self-driving cars will occasionally get into horrible accidents. The question is, when it happens, who is at fault? the driver, the auto manufacturer, the dealer, the programmer, etc?

The lawsuits that follow their first catastrophic crash will likely kill development in self-driving cars for the next decade or more.

Re:It's more about the lawyers than the tech

[Anonymous Coward]

CNN just put up a story about the uber killing the pedestrian in phoenix. The prosecutor declined to file charges against uber. The prosecutor gave no reason as to why they were not filing charges. The story goes on and on, but I suspect because it is a company, they will never get charged. The gov will always argue that self-drive is required, or it is better than humans or whatever. In the US, companies almost never get criminally charged and there have been some whoppers. My hope is that it turns out to be just too expensive. And it may be. Between processing requirements, lidar, camera's radars, power to process all that, it may cost more than it is worth. Especially if Moore's law really is done for,. It means that extra oompf for less dollars in the future may not materialize. And I am sure the self drive companies are literally banking on that.

Re:It's more about the lawyers than the tech

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't totally buy this argument. Car manufacturers are liable for design/manufacturing flaws, especially if negligent, but not for all crashes. The operate takes liability for operating the vehicle. The self-driving feature will (presumably) not claim to be perfectly safe, only to be at a safety level equal to or greater than manual operation. The owner/operator will buy insurance to cover their liability during self-driving operation.

Re:It's more about the lawyers than the tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, what?

The tech exists at what I would kindly call a prototype level. Why would something that barely works be lawyers and not tech?

Tesla is junk

[Anonymous Coward]

if you want an electric car buy one from a manufacture that has been making cars for decades, not someone one trying to build the entire thing from scratch.

Re:Tesla is junk

[krray]

I don't own a Tesla ... but drive one. Just try it. Once. (WOW!)

As for your comment ... LOL. Because they know what they're doing?? Let's see -- off the top of my head:
AMC - Gremlin, Pacer
Cadillac - Fleetwood, Cimarron
Chrysler- Desoto, Imperial LeBaron
Chevy - Chevette, SSR
Ford - Edsel, Pinto
GM - EV1
Pontiac - Aztek ...
the list is LONG of "duds" from manufacturers that have made cars for decades.

Re:Tesla is junk

[green1]

That would be great, if even a single one of those manufacturers actually made a compelling electric car. But they don't. That means it's Tesla or nothing.

That said, the Model S is an amazing car, nothing better on the market today. Unfortunately it's sold by Tesla, no worse company in the marketplace today.

Re: Tesla is junk

[Anonymous Coward]

Every car company except AMC which you listed, is still making new cars today.

They've had decades long runs of success. You naming 1 or 2 failed projects from those companies doesn't change that fact. You basically proved the GPs point.

Academia saw this coming in the 80s

[mrwireless]

What I find most troubling about this is how it shows Musk does not get enough push back and/or there are not enough critically thinking people from academia allied with Tesla to even raise the issue.

Because this was completely predictable.

We've known about the complexity or reality since the 80's, with people like Lucy Suchman pointing out how we underestimate the complexity of the world (in books like Situated Actions). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

We've know about the limits to AI since then too. The famous quote is "the hard things turned out to be easy, and the easy things turned out to be hard".

Machine learning, as one Slashdot commenter once said, is basically "statistics on steroids". It you say "we're going to build self-driving cars that can handle the complexity of the life world with statistics", well... then you will fall into the same trap that technologists have been falling into for the past 30 years.

The problem with Silicon Valley is that it started to believe the stories that were originally designed to separate investors from their money. The Californian Ideology slowly became an unspoken faith, and anyone who questioned it was branded a 'pessimist'.

Musk is a clever man, but he is clearly from Silicon Valley. His fear of AI taking over is another example of this, as anyone who has studied the digital humanities can explain. It's only a valid fear if you have a simplified view on the world, a view where everything can, in the end, be modeled in a system.

The truth is it can't. Society is amazing at producing never before seen situations. The long tail of edge cases is unending, and the degree to which society demands that you cover them is greater than any non-intelligent/non-sentient system ever can.

Don't get me wrong - having a simplified view of the world is what makes people like Musk such powerful forces. But as we've seen here it has its limitations too.

Re: Academia saw this coming in the 80s

[Anonymous Coward]

While that long edge cases may be long, the insurance companies have already figured out the cost of those cases.

Re:Academia saw this coming in the 80s

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a difference between AI taking over as in there being robot overlords with general intelligence and it just being ubiquitous and disruptive.

The long tail of edge cases as you say it is unending, but for an application such as self driving, there is a point at which the holes are deemed acceptable, and are better than the alternative. The demand to cover those cases will still be there, but the 90% solution we get to on the way is still an improvement.

The problem is that the reality is too complex and could use some simplification so that the automation needs to do less.

Further Proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Silicon Valley shouldn't be allowed outside their open-air-insane-asylum and into the real world.

Tesla's work fine on long trips.

[Brannon]

Try again.

Re:Tesla's work fine on long trips.

[fluffernutter]

Well I guess when they're at 80% market adoption I can come back and you can call me wrong. We have a long time to wait.

Self-driving folks (including Tesla) always knew..

[gupg]

They are behaving like this is a surprise. Anyone who knows anything about self-driving cars knows that 1. You need about $100K in sensors (LIDAR, radar, cameras, etc) to build a true L4 car 2. The software, the test cases, situational training, etc is not there yet and won't be there for 5+ years (if not 10 years) 3. Waymo is furthest ahead, but even they can only achieve true L4 driving in geo-fenced situations (Geo-fence = known area, with known routes, with good weather)

Overly Negative?

[aaarrrgggh]

While Musk does have his own Reality Distortion Field, I'm not entirely sure this is as bad as most of the comments make it out to be.

The radar, ultrasonic, and cameras that Tesla uses are likely to be able to solve "full self driving" in a comparable time to LIDAR. They have a penalty in terms of processing time and power required vs LIDAR, but it shouldn't be a deal-killer.

But. the overly negative tone really seems to be more manipulation.

Re:Overly Negative?

[green1]

No. The cameras on Tesla vehicles have zero chance of ever getting to full self driving. No camera system without any redundancy can.

The issue is that any little piece of dirt can completely block the only camera and without an active driver there's nothing you can do about it. the ultrasonic sensors are too short range to be useful at all on the highway let alone for this purpose, Tesla vehicles still don't even have the most basic working blind spot detection due to their lack of corner radar and reliance on ultrasonic sensors that don't have enough range or work at high speed. cuz while their radar is good they insist on only having one of them going forward which isn't enough.

I'm not convinced that lidar is essential for self-driving but I am certain that the hardware suite on the Tesla vehicles is simply not enough.

Re:Self-driving folks (including Tesla) always kne

[green1]

The worst part is Tesla never even gave it a serious try. They released a system based entirely on cameras, and non-redundant cameras at that, with only a single forward facing radar, and claimed they could make it Level 5.

Nobody with half a clue ever believed them because it didn't matter how good their software was, there was just no way that hardware suite could do what they claimed. (Not that this is new for Tesla, their original autopilot suite still doesn't do even a single thing that was claimed in the original release, and that's after more than 4 years of software updates)

I think L5 in a properly designed vehicle is still a decade or more away. I do however think that commercial L3 is just around the corner, and commercial L4 probably in the next few years.

So anything short of 80% is a failure. Got it.

[Brannon]

I'm at an age where I've witnessed several technology revolutions and there's a very predictable set of naysaying talking points.

One of them is that the new technology has to be superior to the thing it replaces in every single way, including cost: Automobiles aren't better than horses in *every* way, but somehow they still caught on.

Another is that the standard for success is that it has to completely supplant the previous technology. This is also stupid. "We still have paper books, so ebooks are a failure".

Re:So anything short of 80% is a failure. Got it.

[fluffernutter]

Other than the cost, how were cars not better than horses in every way from their very inception? You're saying some day bluetooth will be as good as a cable? It's just going to take some advances in bluetooth unlike anything we have seen before?

Re:So anything short of 80% is a failure. Got it.

[mark-t]

No, the standard for success is that the new technology not necessarily be superior in *every* way, but unless the new technology can overcome at least most of the practical hurdles it faces in ubiquitous adoption, it cannot succeed.

In no particular order, these are the factors that keep most people away from EV's today.

Cost to buy: Fully electric vehicles currently typically cost at least $10k more than *comparable* gas-only models. That means a substantially bigger car payment each month.

Range: Only the most expensive EVs have a battery range exceeding 400 km. Most lower-cost models available now are below 200 km, particularly in cold weather. While fine for the average daily commuter, that kind of range means longer roadtrips come with pit stops and require some extra planning around the availability of charging stations.

Where to recharge: Coupled with the limited range of some EVs, you don't see anywhere near as many public chargers as you do gas stations across the country. That scares people.

Time to recharge: It takes a few minutes to refuel a gas vehicle. Recharging an EV takes about half an hour with the fastest public chargers available, but it can be double that at some public stations -- and as long as 14 hours for a full charge with the slowest types of chargers.

I would suggest that at *LEAST* one of these four factors needs to be permanently and entirely resolved, or some combination of them in part, before you can seriously expect electric cars to truly supplant gasoline vehicles.

Of course.....

[King_TJ]

You could ALSO say that any Tesla owners who paid the $8000 for that before 2017 are much MORE financially damaged by the Model 3's release and subsequent huge depreciation on used Model S's!

Re:Of course.....

[AmiMoJo]

People who bought a top spec Model X recently lost over $20,000 the moment Tesla announced the price cut.

re: car vs company

[King_TJ]

Clearly, you speak as someone who is NOT a Comcast customer!

Hey TWISTED homo felon - thanks... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: FOR https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... you twisted aberration INFERIOR, lol... no questions asked.

* :)

(OH yea, by the way - where's that LAWSUIT you threatened on me? It's not - THAT, in & OF itself ALLOWS ME TO FRY YOU IN A COURT OF LAW BUT> I already KNOW, for a FACT, you are FUCKING WORTHLESS, period, lol!)

Yes, I COULD level you in seconds for that - but it's ENOUGH to let YOU LEVEL YOURSELF... GROVEL bitch (up the ASS bitch, no less, homo DEVIANT aberration YOU ARE).

Shall I put out PROOF of that from you to HUMILIATE you by letting YOU do yourself? Ask... puh-leese (you're not worth it BUT you are worth allowing a FOOL like YOU to eliminate yourself, FOR me, lol... hahahahaha).

APK

P.S.=> THANKS as usual for making ME look GOOD & yourself for being the LIMITED in technical range INFERIOR with a damaged brain you are, lol "He's a CALIFORNIA MAN" (ugh, home of FUCKUP weirdos & the DEVIL himself, you sodomite TWISTED FUCK (does homosexuality fit the PURPOSE of sex in procreation, you FUCKUP weirdo? ANSWER THAT freak - you'll STFU as always KNOWING you are fucking wrong as WRONG gets)... apk

Re:Hey TWISTED homo felon - thanks... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

APK is raging out again. His homo ass must have been beaten pretty hard recently so now he feels like lashing out at people who keep getting the better of him. Maybe he just needs a new live in boyfriend, sorry I mean roommate so he can pay the bills in his $1 house.

re: Model X

[King_TJ]

Yeah....

I listened to a recent interview with a CEO who said his company is pretty good at making educated guesses about actual costs of production and profit margins on vehicles. And his belief was, Tesla typically makes between a 25% and upwards of 40% profit margin on each vehicle it sells. The higher margins are all on the fully loaded S's or X's. The new base Model 3 probably comes close to being sold at a break-even point, as long as it's built in America. But he calculates a 25% profit margin on it if it's made in China instead (which looks like is Tesla's plan).

I always felt like the X was purposely overpriced to give Tesla a "flagship" model. They know SUVs are very popular and made the most sense as the platform to command a premium price while still selling a decent number of them. Since it's built on the same frame as an S, with the same dash and electronics, it was really just a matter of redesigning the body panels and then (probably too much) money spent on those gull-wing doors to give it more "cool factor".

Ways in which horses are better than cars:

[Brannon]

1. cars cost more than horses
2. you can't breed two cars to make another car
3. you can't refuel a car using grass and a stream
4. horses are more affectionate than cars
5. horses are far more fuel efficient than cars
... and so on ...
New technology is frequently not uniformly superior to the thing it replaces, but it's enough better in enough ways to carve out some market share. This is how it has been with every wave of technology since the beginning of time.