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

Posted by BeauHD on from the self-driving-strategy dept.

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.

19 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Shit happens, things change. by Kokuyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Shit happens, things change. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Shit happens, things change. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    3. Re:Shit happens, things change. by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    4. Re:Shit happens, things change. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    5. Re:Shit happens, things change. by BostonPilot · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

  2. Why the [sic]? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  3. So... by stealth_finger · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
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    1. Re:So... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. Hey, we did that at our university courses by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
  5. Tesla-starter by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!
  6. Very meaningful by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
  7. Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars? by Mr.+Dollar+Ton · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  9. Charlatans by segedunum · · Score: 3

    ..........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.

  10. Re:Who wants to ride self-driving cars? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  11. It's more about the lawyers than the tech by Reiyuki · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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.

  12. Re:Musk vs Critics. Mistake he makes. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  13. Academia saw this coming in the 80s by mrwireless · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.