Just to issue a correction: your info about AP2 filtering out stationary objects is obsolete. The most recent AP2 update handles stationary objects just fine. You really should try it at some point, it's been making really big leaps forward (still doesn't do rotaries, though!)
Re, eye tracking: indeed, I think that's a good approach. The fact that Tesla included a driver-facing camera in Model 3 suggests that they're planning to take that same route. With eye tracking, it should be pretty easy to tweak the required level of attentiveness to strike the right balance between "annoying the driver" and "keeping them safe". Perhaps with adjusting the required level of attention relative to the surroundings (aka, if they're driving some no-traffic straight restricted-access road in good weather, vs. driving in city traffic on an icy road)
I'm more amused by this AC's repeated inclusion of the China case, despite the fact that the family refused to let Tesla check the logs to see if AP was actually in use.
AP should by now be up to around a billion miles or so driven. The average fatality rate on the roads is around 1 per every 80 million miles.
It has little, if any competitive advantage that couldn't be easily overcome by its competitors.
Right. They'll just pop down to their gigafactories after a quick recharge on their supercharging networks and build vehicles on lines and with components that are the result of billions of dollars of investment over years. Easy as pie!
The BMW i3 and Renault Zoe dwarf Tesla in both sales and market share and for good reasons that you tried to mention:
Not true. The Zoe does make up 22,7% of European EV sales (vs. the Model S's 11,5%), but the i3 is only 10,8% of European EV sales. Furthermore, the fact that the Zoe has less than twice as many sales, yet is selling to a price bracket that represents a market 1 1/2 orders of magnitude larger, isn't exactly a bragging point, and doesn't bode well for it when the Model 3 arrives next year.
- Charge speed: 99% of charging is done at home
I'll take that as "no contest". The fact that you do most of your charging at home is completely irrelevant when you need to go on a road trip.
the only places I've ever seen Teslas is plugged into the stock standard socket
Wow, you've not seen Teslas plugged into superchargers at places that aren't supercharger stations? Imagine that.
Next, try actually going to a supercharger station if you want to see Teslas connected to superchargers.
- Less reliable network is just a load of garbage.
Plugshare status reports say otherwise. The consistent stream of reports of down stations on our local EV group says otherwise. Yesterday literally a third of our CCS chargers in the country were down.
the Zoe is a perfectly normal looking car.
If you mean "looks like an econobox", yes.
The Model S is a tank and almost impossible to reverse park in Europe.
Apparently you forgot that we're talking about the Model 3, not the Model S. The Model 3 is the same size as a BMW 3-series.
Correct. It's not enough to just touch or squeeze the wheel; a light tug will do it, however.
They want there to be an active action to show attention (a muscle movement), rather than a passive action (constant holding). A person can fall asleep with their hand still on the wheel applying pressure.
It's not clear from the article whether the requests to take the wheel were the normal periodic "I'm going to make sure you're paying attention" requests, or a "Hey, I don't know how to handle this situation, you need to do it!" request.
You've seen thousands of news stories about Tesla crashes? Because there have been thousands of Tesla crashes.
When the NHTSA last investigated, they found that the rate of crashes with Autopilot on was 40% less than with it off. Hence they supported its further use.
Indeed. It's often been described as win-win for shareholders, in that it doesn't cost them anything if Elon fails, but they're rich if he succeeds. But in reality, a lot of people who voted it saw it as win-win-win - the "extra" win being that not only do they earn a lot of money, but so does Elon. Namely because they like the sort of things that Elon spends his money on.;) He's not the sort of person who makes a ton of money and just retires and buys a private island and a superyacht and whatnot. There's no telling for sure what he'll spend his money on next, but you can rest assured that it'll be like something out of sci-fi;)
But, in the case of Tesla, I don't really get why anybody is giving them money to reserve a car that hasn't yet been built and may not be built for quite some time
Because there is no competition to the Model 3. Plain and simple. The "competition" charges vastly slower, from less reliable networks, is slower, doesn't have as good handling, don't look as nice, don't have anywhere near as interesting options (long-range pack, dual motor AWD, air suspension, etc), and on and on and on.
Look at, say, the 2018 Leaf. Yeah, you save $5k. You also get an econobox that looks like a catfish that only goes 2/3rds as far (which becomes even worse when you consider the need to leave yourself a safety buffer), charges at a max rate 1/3rd that of the Tesla before #RapidGate sets in, 1/5th the speed after #RapidGate sets in, with much worse performance.
With the Bolt you can pay more to go the same distance, perform worse, still charge at 1/3rd the max rate, and again have your car be a dorky-looking econobox.
People are waiting because they want what they're waiting for, and not what else is available. Yes, there also are some people waiting specifically because it's Tesla - they don't want to support companies that have continually tried to minimize how many EVs they need to build so that they can just get back to making ICEs. Others want specifically Teslas because all of the competition has terrible depreciation rates but Teslas don't, due to excellent pack management, over the air updates, etc.
You didn't get it down enough for their triggers ($250). But I do - and this isn't sarcasm - wish to sincerely thank you for doing your part to get the price down enough for me to buy at $268. I was beginning to think I'd never get a chance to buy low before the Model 3 ramp accelerates (I plan to cash out after 9-12 months).
So again, while it's funny being thankful for someone who I couldn't more profoundly disagree with... Thank you. Seriously.
The big thing is that it eliminates all of your local hops and dumps your traffic straight onto a backbone - at a ground station that's up to a couple thousand kilometers closer to your traffic's destination.
That's some weird math. So apparently, in your calculations, all SpaceX communications go from "wherever you are", to the US East Coast, to Denver, to the destination? And beyond that, 13000km at speed c is about 43 milliseconds, hardly triple 25-35 - although of course the calculation isn't that simple.
Regardless, here's how it actually works, for the vast majority of communications. There's one hop from you to the nearest satellite. There's then a hop down not to some random location, but rather a base station located on an internet background, with the choice being "whatever's most on the direct route to your traffic's destination", as well as being physically as close to the destination. The same applies for return traffic in reverse - routed to whatever ground station that is in range of a satellite in range of you has the lowest ping time.
I think Björn Nyland from Norway put it best: when initially only the RWD versions were available, everyone he knew couldn't stop raving about how awesome they were on snow and ice, how they was no need for AWD, how it'd be a waste of Tesla's time and money to make an AWD version. But once Tesla came out with AWD, and people started getting a chance to drive those, one by one, all of those people eventually ended up switching over to AWD.
Indeed. Satellite-satellite relays are a minority of traffic, not the majority. Where possible, the communication is a single hop - between the user and a base station located on an internet backbone. Now, this station may be a significant distance from the user, but it's all still line-of-sight.
Go get your shorts in now, since you're so convinced that it's going down. I know some people who wanted to buy in around $250 and missed out because it only dipped to $253. Help them out.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to issue a correction: your info about AP2 filtering out stationary objects is obsolete. The most recent AP2 update handles stationary objects just fine. You really should try it at some point, it's been making really big leaps forward (still doesn't do rotaries, though!)
Re, eye tracking: indeed, I think that's a good approach. The fact that Tesla included a driver-facing camera in Model 3 suggests that they're planning to take that same route. With eye tracking, it should be pretty easy to tweak the required level of attentiveness to strike the right balance between "annoying the driver" and "keeping them safe". Perhaps with adjusting the required level of attention relative to the surroundings (aka, if they're driving some no-traffic straight restricted-access road in good weather, vs. driving in city traffic on an icy road)
I'm more amused by this AC's repeated inclusion of the China case, despite the fact that the family refused to let Tesla check the logs to see if AP was actually in use.
AP should by now be up to around a billion miles or so driven. The average fatality rate on the roads is around 1 per every 80 million miles.
Musk agrees, hence Loop. Which is basically underground SkyTran, albeit for higher speeds and with the option to move vehicles as well.
Don't be ridiculous. Tin-Foil-Hat.com is secretly censored by Tesla, working in conjunction with the NSA, Antifa and Nigel Farage.
Right. They'll just pop down to their gigafactories after a quick recharge on their supercharging networks and build vehicles on lines and with components that are the result of billions of dollars of investment over years. Easy as pie!
Ed: Accidentally linked to a specific post in that thread, while I meant to link to the thread itself.
Not true. The Zoe does make up 22,7% of European EV sales (vs. the Model S's 11,5%), but the i3 is only 10,8% of European EV sales. Furthermore, the fact that the Zoe has less than twice as many sales, yet is selling to a price bracket that represents a market 1 1/2 orders of magnitude larger, isn't exactly a bragging point, and doesn't bode well for it when the Model 3 arrives next year.
I'll take that as "no contest". The fact that you do most of your charging at home is completely irrelevant when you need to go on a road trip.
Wow, you've not seen Teslas plugged into superchargers at places that aren't supercharger stations? Imagine that.
Next, try actually going to a supercharger station if you want to see Teslas connected to superchargers.
Plugshare status reports say otherwise. The consistent stream of reports of down stations on our local EV group says otherwise. Yesterday literally a third of our CCS chargers in the country were down.
If you mean "looks like an econobox", yes.
Apparently you forgot that we're talking about the Model 3, not the Model S. The Model 3 is the same size as a BMW 3-series.
A counterpoint.
Maybe he installed a big notch in the middle of his windshield, and he couldn't see the barrier through it ;)
Correct. It's not enough to just touch or squeeze the wheel; a light tug will do it, however.
They want there to be an active action to show attention (a muscle movement), rather than a passive action (constant holding). A person can fall asleep with their hand still on the wheel applying pressure.
Oh god, imagine how much you could freak people out by replacing the standard autopilot-engagement sound files with "KILL ALL HUMANS" ;)
It's not clear from the article whether the requests to take the wheel were the normal periodic "I'm going to make sure you're paying attention" requests, or a "Hey, I don't know how to handle this situation, you need to do it!" request.
You've seen thousands of news stories about Tesla crashes? Because there have been thousands of Tesla crashes.
When the NHTSA last investigated, they found that the rate of crashes with Autopilot on was 40% less than with it off. Hence they supported its further use.
Indeed. It's often been described as win-win for shareholders, in that it doesn't cost them anything if Elon fails, but they're rich if he succeeds. But in reality, a lot of people who voted it saw it as win-win-win - the "extra" win being that not only do they earn a lot of money, but so does Elon. Namely because they like the sort of things that Elon spends his money on. ;) He's not the sort of person who makes a ton of money and just retires and buys a private island and a superyacht and whatnot. There's no telling for sure what he'll spend his money on next, but you can rest assured that it'll be like something out of sci-fi ;)
Because there is no competition to the Model 3. Plain and simple. The "competition" charges vastly slower, from less reliable networks, is slower, doesn't have as good handling, don't look as nice, don't have anywhere near as interesting options (long-range pack, dual motor AWD, air suspension, etc), and on and on and on.
Look at, say, the 2018 Leaf. Yeah, you save $5k. You also get an econobox that looks like a catfish that only goes 2/3rds as far (which becomes even worse when you consider the need to leave yourself a safety buffer), charges at a max rate 1/3rd that of the Tesla before #RapidGate sets in, 1/5th the speed after #RapidGate sets in, with much worse performance.
With the Bolt you can pay more to go the same distance, perform worse, still charge at 1/3rd the max rate, and again have your car be a dorky-looking econobox.
People are waiting because they want what they're waiting for, and not what else is available. Yes, there also are some people waiting specifically because it's Tesla - they don't want to support companies that have continually tried to minimize how many EVs they need to build so that they can just get back to making ICEs. Others want specifically Teslas because all of the competition has terrible depreciation rates but Teslas don't, due to excellent pack management, over the air updates, etc.
You didn't get it down enough for their triggers ($250). But I do - and this isn't sarcasm - wish to sincerely thank you for doing your part to get the price down enough for me to buy at $268. I was beginning to think I'd never get a chance to buy low before the Model 3 ramp accelerates (I plan to cash out after 9-12 months).
So again, while it's funny being thankful for someone who I couldn't more profoundly disagree with... Thank you. Seriously.
It is many simultaneous beams. They can be along any angle up to an arc of, if I remember right, something like 30 degrees.
Concurrent with the launch of the constellations, SpaceX will be building a global network of ground stations, which functionally act like ISPs.
The big thing is that it eliminates all of your local hops and dumps your traffic straight onto a backbone - at a ground station that's up to a couple thousand kilometers closer to your traffic's destination.
That's some weird math. So apparently, in your calculations, all SpaceX communications go from "wherever you are", to the US East Coast, to Denver, to the destination? And beyond that, 13000km at speed c is about 43 milliseconds, hardly triple 25-35 - although of course the calculation isn't that simple.
Regardless, here's how it actually works, for the vast majority of communications. There's one hop from you to the nearest satellite. There's then a hop down not to some random location, but rather a base station located on an internet background, with the choice being "whatever's most on the direct route to your traffic's destination", as well as being physically as close to the destination. The same applies for return traffic in reverse - routed to whatever ground station that is in range of a satellite in range of you has the lowest ping time.
I think Björn Nyland from Norway put it best: when initially only the RWD versions were available, everyone he knew couldn't stop raving about how awesome they were on snow and ice, how they was no need for AWD, how it'd be a waste of Tesla's time and money to make an AWD version. But once Tesla came out with AWD, and people started getting a chance to drive those, one by one, all of those people eventually ended up switching over to AWD.
Take from what what you will. :)
Indeed. Satellite-satellite relays are a minority of traffic, not the majority. Where possible, the communication is a single hop - between the user and a base station located on an internet backbone. Now, this station may be a significant distance from the user, but it's all still line-of-sight.
Why hello, TTAC - I miss your Tesla Deathwatch column from a decade ago!
Did you short it? No? Sucks to be you.
Go get your shorts in now, since you're so convinced that it's going down. I know some people who wanted to buy in around $250 and missed out because it only dipped to $253. Help them out.