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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.
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.
As a techie I know technology sometimes do freak up. No way I will let myself inside a self-driving car.
What's wrong with "en route"? Don't tell me - a cretinous AMERICAN didn't understand the language. What's new?
So full self driving doesn't fully drive itself? Gotchya.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
First we wrote the software, then we wrote the specs. It was way easier to meet the target that way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
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.
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)
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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.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
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.
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.
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.
Work bio at MMWD
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
[*] 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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
..........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.
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.
You mean that EVs won't work for every single person's use case? Gee, that's an insightful statement.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The lawsuits that follow their first catastrophic crash will likely kill development in self-driving cars for the next decade or more.
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.
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.
Ezekiel 23:20
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".
Ezekiel 23:20
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. ;)
Ezekiel 23:20
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?
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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.
Try again.
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)
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
This is a *true* national security issue.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
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.
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.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
Thanks, this is the best way I have seen it said.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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!
Clearly, you speak as someone who is NOT a Comcast customer!
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.
"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.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Just relaying what I'm reading man: https://www.teslarati.com/tesl...
But if you insist...
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.
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".
1. cars cost more than horses
... and so on ...
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
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.
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.
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