I agree with this wholeheartedly, even as a Tesla owner. Tesla goofed from the beginning by calling tech like "Autosteer" and "Traffic Assisted Cruise Control" under the moniker "Autopilot" while shifting everything above that to "Full Self-Driving". They should have called it "CoPilot" since that infers that you're still the driver in charge of controlling the vehicle and it would have had exactly the same reception (possibly better) than what's happening now. As it stands, it's misleading and, frankly, disappointing to get into a Tesla for the first time and try "Autopilot" only to realize that you have to keep your hands on the wheel, navigate the accelerator and brakes, stop at lights and stop signs, and basically drive the car while it keeps you in the lane and stops you from hitting other cars. That's not "Autopilot", that's "CoPilot".
Actually I think the name "Autopilot" is the least troublesome part of the marketing.
Other car makers call their systems CoPilot, ProPilot, SuperCruise, whatever and I think the name matters less than the communication and details of using the system.
The main Autopilot marketing page shows a video of a Tesla driving itself, says the Driver is there for legal purposes only, and provides no other disclaimers about the limitations, or that the demonstration is of internal test software and not reproducible with consumer vehicles.
Actually using the car, the system is fairly clear about the need to pay attention and keep your hands on the wheel, but it allows you to engage Autosteer in areas the manual says you should not (ie city streets) and does not clearly indicate what areas are good or not good for using Autosteer. SuperCruise only works on specifically listed highway segments, which limits its usefulness but also prevents these issues.
Also Tesla relies on the steering wheel torque sensor to determine driver presence. This leads to false negatives (my hands are on the wheel but not providing a turning force so the car gives an alert) and is easily bypassed (there are third party products that clip on to the steering wheel and provide enough weight to fool the system).
Competing systems (SuperCruise, BMW) use driver monitor cameras or capacitive wheel sensors to provide a better indication of driver attentiveness.
Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk said this month the electric car manufacturer was close to making its cars capable of automated driving without any need for driver input, so-called Level 5 autonomy.
Yeah, right. Tesla has only Level 2 self-driving. They've never demonstrated Level 3 outside a video of a demo in Palo Alto. They wouldn't even let the press take a ride. Google/Waymo has hundreds of self-driving vehicles running around in test. Go to Mountain View and you'll probably see some. If Tesla had anything that really worked, they'd have enough test vehicles running around that it would be visible to the industry.
Waymo One is offering driverless rides in Phoenix AZ. Interestingly, they are now offering only autonomous rides - the "safety driver" is out, to prevent epidemic spread.
Exactly. He said this in 2014. 2016. 2018. Even at the end of 2019:
> "You'll be able to FSD, coast to coast, by the end of this year".
Meanwhile Teslas are still having a multitude of autopilot accidents that, had a human been paying attention (their fault, I understand), would not have happened - plowing at speed into fire engines with emergency lighting on, plowing into overturned semi trailers blocking multiple freeway lanes, aiming at barriers.
Humans are horrendous at maintaining constant attention to a task that only requires sporadic attention. If there is a human in the control loop, then it needs to take into account human limitations. Therefore, I'd be very hesitant to assign these as being the fault of the passenger who happens to be sitting in a driver seat.
I am honestly not sure how to interpret your comment but I'll try to respond. The fault is not with the AP. That's just a computer doing what it was programmed to do. It's with how the system is presented by the people selling it. The marketing is intentionally deceptive for profit and people died for believing it. And Germany didn't ban the system, they banned the deception.
If Wells Fargo or Comcast did the same pitchforks would be out. But Comcast can only hurt you, misusing AP can hurt others too. So having the government intervene is a matter of public safety and doing what a government should do: look out for people's interests, not the corporations'.
When you build a system you have to compensate for inherent weaknesses. Tesla does the opposite and exploits them for profit (as many other companies do) by capitalizing on these well known human weaknesses (lack of attention, gullibility especially with complex topics). They use easy to fool systems that assume drivers are always engaged because they allow the AP to disconnect less and look more capable. And they capitalize on the gullibility by branding the AP as something it's clearly not:
> 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
> All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go.
> manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed.
> use of these features without supervision is dependent [...] regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions.
I think the parent poster is trying to make the point that it's unreasonable to ask people to pay attention.
In any case the fault is most certainly not merely marketing, it's a fundamental design flaw. You cannot expect people to maintain constant attention when that attention almost never leads to anything; people simply aren't capable of that. That's also why similarly "boring" tasks are so failure prone (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa...) and why all kinds of creative measures are needed if you really need people to stare at stuff looking for black swans until their eyes glaze over.
Better marketing is not a solution to that problem. That's merely a solution to the fraudulent advertising (also worth solving - sure!)
> In any case the fault is most certainly not merely marketing, it's a fundamental design flaw.
I was actually referring to the ruling. The court did not take issue with the autopilot system, just with the way it's marketed.
For the rest of your comment I agree and I implied something along the same lines. Tesla should have built a system that works to compensate for human failings, not take advantage of them to sell more.
New roads are built to be more wavy to keep the drivers more engaged, some traffic light systems that are synchronized as a "green wave" are sometimes stunted to not create this automation of running through lights (especially true of public transport vehicles where lights sync to the vehicle, except when an emergency vehicle is coming), etc.
Tesla should have installed an advanced driver attention monitoring system even before turning on the AP and they should have set very, very clear expectations from the system. In reality they did the opposite with people ending up believing that the AP can handle driving by itself so they can "disconnect", but the attention monitoring being completely unfit for the purpose of making sure the human is "connected".
> > In any case the fault is most certainly not merely marketing, it's a fundamental design flaw.
> I was actually referring to the ruling. The court did not take issue with the autopilot system, just with the way it's marketed.
I meant the parent post you were replying to, i.e. what I think MereInterest meant when he said "If there is a human in the control loop, then it needs to take into account human limitations", to which you replied "I am honestly not sure how to interpret your comment but I'll try to respond. The fault is not with the AP."
I did not mean to imply you thought it was a fundamental design flaw - sorry!
Where I live yes. On some lines especially in the city center and more crowded intersections public transport gets priority. When they have stops before an intersection no matter how long they have to wait there for passengers to get on or off, the moment they are ready to move the light turns red for everyone else. There are also places where a special light turns red (there's no green) when they pass in order to guarantee the priority while the rest of the time traffic uses the right of way for example.
This makes sense, the light sync system is already in place and they carry dozens or more passengers at once. This kind of advantage over a car carrying one person gives people more incentive to use public transport.
(And I can also confirm the effect that at intersections where full public transport priority usually guarantees a green some drivers do react a bit... surprised on the rare occasion when it doesn't work for whatever reasons)
> the rare occasion when it doesn't work for whatever reasons
That's actually intentional (or at least I know for a fact that in some places it's by design). It keeps drivers alert and break the habit of just going ahead. Sometime for whatever reason the light has to be red and in some cases the public transport drivers were so used to just going through the intersection that they completely miss the lights. Also many of them get in their personal cars at the end of the day to the same effect. It's a known, studied effect and the solution is to "mix it up" a bit.
Wow. If you don't mind me asking, where is this? I live in a city that is considered relatively bike-friendly, but the timing of the lights is maximally bad for bikers, requiring us to stop at every light.
You are correct. There is a concept in more traditional engineering called “human factors”, meaning you have to include humans (and their limitations) in the design.
Expecting a human to remain attentive all the time is like using a sensor outside it’s linearity range to detect and mitigate a hazard. Good initiative but bad implementation and possibly a gap in the design culture
I find it easier to pay attention when autopilot is on, for a few reasons. The first reason will fade eventually: it's fascinating to see it in action, and to observe how it reacts to situations. Another reason is I am a bit more free to vary my attention safely, checking mirrors more often, seeing more of the scenery (don't worry, with fleeting glances, not long stares that would lead me to miss a truck crossing the road). Finally it eases the cognitive load of keeping safe follow distance and makes bumper to bumper traffic dreamy easy to the point where I no longer dread it, which is amazing! So I would not call it a design flaw. Checking the mirrors more often is good for safety too btw.
>the fraudulent advertising
purported / alleged. The claims of this have been debunked.
That’s your interpretation of the article’s interpretation of the court’s interpretation I guess. Making all the foregoing my interpretation of your interpretation.
Having read the Tesla website myself and understood its claims, they are not false.
I believe the court was concerned that it was theoretically possible that some people might get confused.
Or to put it in a harsh (to Tesla) way, the court feared some consumers could be misled (I would add, misled only due to the consumer’s own failure to read and listen to the information offered by Tesla with several different opportunities in varied and timely settings).
So with this in mind, the court took action based on those fears.
The numbers are hard to trivially analyze, because there is no source that tracks "deaths caused by tesla cars" - NHTSA tracks deaths in cars and pedestrians, but e.g. not in other cars involved in the accident, even if potentially there car without the fatality was a contributing factor (fault is kind of irrelevant).
But the numbers we do have make Tesla's look pretty dangerous. Tesla's overall fatality rate may be low, but that's true in general of luxury cars (perhaps because they're driven in safer areas, by safer drivers, have fewer safety related faults, or protect their occupants better). Compared to similarly priced cars, tesla does poorly (https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...).
Finally, specifically the autopilot is often compared incorrectly - autopilot isn't used on busy city streets or chaotic traffic situations (it's not capable of that yet) - but those are where most traffic fatalities occur. On the highway, fatalities are comparitively rare, even in "normal" cars. On interstates, in 2012 (I can't find more recent numbers), the fatality rate was 3.38 per billion miles travelled (source: http://www.bast.de/EN/Publications/Media/Unfallkarten-intern...) - and in some countries, much lower even than that (e.g. 0.72 in denmark). Since that includes old & cheap cars, you'd expect luxury cars to do better than that - that's the baseline autopilot should be compared against.
Comparing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_self-driving_car_fatal... with https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/14/lex-fridmans-tesla-auto... I'd say a lower bound on autopilot's record is around 2 per billion miles - that's OK, but not very good. We may be missing autopilot related fatalities; if we missed even a single one, that would make these numbers look outright poor. That's a very rough estimate; but if we want any kind of reliable estimate on autopilot safety, you'd need much more data that we have (also more data on competitors!) Of course the very fact that we can't tell because data is so sparse is good! It means there are few deaths in this category; while driving in general may be dangerous, driving a luxury sedan on an interstate is fairly safe - exactly how safe doesn't really matter.
----
All in all - Tesla's safety record looks good compared to the average car, but not very convincing compared to similarly aged similarly priced cars - i.e. Tesla's competition. If you were to base your buying choice on safety, you probably should not buy a Tesla; but definitely should not buy the marketing nonsense. On the upside; it simply doesn't matter much, driving on autopilot-enabled roads is fairly safe anyhow, regardless of whether autopilot helps or harms safety.
As of a recent update a month or two back, it is now. It is ever improving as they roll out new features.
Some of which are safety features. It’s a moving target. Whatever stats or safety records or flaws or concerns you think you know about today can be invalidated tomorrow.
In fact we just got an update tonight. I can’t tell you what’s in it since I haven’t gone downstairs to the car to read the release notes yet.
Oh definitely. The flaws may well be fixed, and aren't huge anyhow. But they're real enough to consider Tesla's past claims to be super-duper safe to be misleadingly cherry-picked (effectively they were lying), so it's a little hard to take new claims at face value.
Overall, I agree with the decision, that Tesla did falsely advertise by overstating what their autopilot could do. The point I was attempting to make was that that was not the only issue wrong. Specifically, the "their fault" in the GP's parenthetical I took to be referring to the safety driver, implying that the crashes were the fault of the human in the car not paying sufficient attention. I disagree with that statement, as paying high levels of attention to tasks that require zero attention the majority of the time is fundamentally not something that humans can do.
That's a bit cynical, "single-digit number" of people died simply because they believed the marketing. Ultimately it is their fault for taking the marketing over common sense and legal requirements but you can't handwave it away because "not enough people died". You can't blame a government for intervening to make sure more people don't fall for this kind of deceptive advertising tactics.
No car manufacturer today offers anything resembling true self driving. Not even close. But Tesla is the only manufacturer who insists they do and that any issues are of legal and regulatory nature. Wink wink nudge nudge. That is simply not true and if it weren't for drivers repeatedly intervening the AP would cause far more than single-digit number of accidents or deaths.
And this is not an effort against Tesla, it's an effort for consumers and safety. And the right to be informed about what you;re actually buying.
That's really not true. Those are people who consciously chose to ignore numerous warnings presented, both in the marketing (where the exact phrase "requires conscious human attention" is used), and also the warnings of the car itself where it says all the time things like "keep the eyes on the road", "need to stay alert", warnings every 10 seconds, audio signals, turning off in case the car knows the human is non-attentive etc.
It is very unfortunate when people die, but you have to take into account how many people die in other cars in general. If we want to get 0 traffic deaths, we need to ban all cars, period. As a society, we do not want this.
> But Tesla is the only manufacturer who insists they do
This is just blatantly false. No they don't. Show me any marketing material where tesla claims to have operational Level 5 self-driving in currently available to consumers cars. Show me where it says that. Not some article in some mainstream media where a journalist tries to get attention, but in Tesla-distributed materials, marketing or otherwise, where they claim to have Level 5. Where is it? Why would you even make such a claim that is so easy to check...
Yes: "All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today..."
No: "...and full self-driving capabilities in the future—through software updates designed to improve functionality over time."
Yes: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself."
Yes: Video showing self driving car on real roads with no hands on wheel or feet on pedals.
No "Autopilot advanced safety and convenience features are designed to assist you with the most burdensome parts of driving."
Yes: "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."
Yes: "All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go."
No: "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."
This is not what I would describe as clear. It's a contrived dance around the truth, designed to help you arrive at a conclusion without ever quite saying it outright - a deliberate marketing strategy. To be honest, combining this with the use of Autopilot with a capital A, we're not that far off subliminal messaging at this point.
A more honest marketing message would improve safety.
My point was that the page as a whole is not clear, but even the sample you have selected is problematic.
"will need" also implies certainty. This feature may never be available within the lifetime of the product being sold today, or indeed the lifetime of the customer or the company. This is misleading.
Tesla is making unverifiable claims about the future of a product which is on sale now.
It is a fact of the digital distribution age that traditional marketing doesn't fit the model of products which can change post-purchase. They are certainly not alone in this, with some very famous cases like No Man's Sky launching with less features than advertised or iPhone performance degrading after an iOS update.
However, this is a machine which can kill people, not a computer game missing content. Let's err on the side of caution with the marketing and not allow companies to talk about what their products can't do.
> but you have to take into account how many people die in other cars in general
I do and I see a completely different topic. What's your point? That people die in accidents? Sure. That companies should be allowed to mislead even if this leads to deaths? Those deaths in "other cars" are not because the manufacturer mislead the consumer. And if they do they'll probably get the same treatment since there are laws against false advertising. It's done all the time [0]. The end result of all those practices is that the consumer is deliberately mislead into getting the wrong impression even without explicitly lying. There's nothing special about Tesla's case in this context.
> This is just blatantly false. No they don't.
> Why would you even make such a claim that is so easy to check
I checked and quoted from the Tesla website literally 5 cm above on your screen [1]. Feel free to point me to any other manufacturer who describes their technology like that. Or to any other 150.000 E car with advanced self driving tech whose driver attention detector can be tricked with an orange because the manufacturer refuses to implement proper systems based on cameras or capacitive sensors. Or to any manufacturer whose driver assists caused deaths.
This isn't about technology failing. It's about intentionally proliferating an image of that technology that makes it look more capable than it actually is. Tesla's marketing material consistently makes people paint a false impression of the system. That in itself is a good enough reason to label it deceptive.
I’m genuinely surprised there hasn’t been a class action lawsuit over selling “full self driving” on Tesla vehicles. That’s been going on long enough to tip over from “over-optimistic” to “straight forward fraud”.
Tesla has only been promising "FSD" on cars sold after 2016. The service life for most vehicles is on the order of about 10 years or so, meaning I don't think you'll see serious pressure for a class action until the mid 2020's (but I do think it's coming).
About 50% of luxury car owners lease their cars, and 80% of non-Tesla EVs, compared to country wide averages in the 25-30% range. So while most of the Tesla’s sold with FSD are still on the road, a fairly sizable chunk of the 2016 vehicles may already be on their second owner, with the first owner paying for FSD they never got.
Now what’s less clear is how many Tesla owners have re-upped their lease, and how many bought the car they leased. Typically luxury owners lease their cars so they can get the latest features in 3 years, but Tesla hasn’t offered many physical changes to the 3 since it was introduced, with a lot of the changes being done in software.
What I meant is Tesla has an easy out until the first cars they sold the FSD update reach the end of their service life. Shitty for the early adopters yes, but not definitively false advertising yet.
technically, but only a handful (<5) of vehicles are run without a safety driver, each has a dedicated remote operator and a follower vehicle, and the area covered is much smaller than their regular operation (a small area in the suburbs).
I would reallyhope the remote operator is just there to punch a kill switch and force the vehicle to stop.
No idea if that's the case, remote-piloted drone cars just seem like a bad idea -- lag, loss of signal, hijacking, etc.
(Although if it is technologically feasible and we're willing to go that route, it seems like you could make eg long distance truck driving safer that way -- if you have truck pilots working from an office complex in suburbia, you could change drivers without stopping the vehicle, allowing drivers to take frequent breaks and work ~8 hour shifts before going home to sleep in their own beds, while the trucks drive non-stop. If most big-rig accidents are caused by drivers driving too long without enough sleep and rest, you should be able to get substantial decreases without the overhead of sending multiple drivers with each truck.)
Given Alphabet/Google's record of shutting down moonshots--or really services more broadly--what are the odds that Waymo is going to be around in a few years, especially if there'a a serious ad-tech fallout?
ADDED: Google has been pretty clear that they're only interested in door-to-door self-driving and not in incremental driver assistance or freeway-only hands-off. If that goal turns out to be something for an indefinite future--as seems entirely possible--I'm not sure why Google (of all companies) would continue to invest for decades towards an uncertain eventual goal.
It probably wouldn't go to zero. The IP and other assets are likely worth something to an automaker or auto supplier. But that number would doubtless be a lot less than valuation based on being the pre-eminent self-driving company in the very near future.
Dude you are ignoring a whole host of other factors here . Since you ignored them let me clarify . Waymo does not do freeways . It uses HD maps , bulky lidar systems which have many moving parts , speed limits, etc . Waymo will never be a real thing solely based on the fact of power draw for all those electronics . If that system is mounted on a EV it will drain batteries quickly and add weight if it's added on ICE car it will suck the range, same is true for all other car manufacturers attempting full autonomy. Tesla is the only company who even has a remote possibility of getting the feature on the road if they market that realty , as something of a pre-order kind of thing I'm not sure I have a problem with that. Personally I feel they would have to have a another revision of Thier FSD chip and refresh Thier current ML model to realize it .
Feels like, yes, if you go by what the commenter you are replying to said. But read the page for yourself before deciding. It is not as the commenter described.
If you are claiming that the comment is deceptive, you should point out why we should regard it as such.
My objection to this statement is that it is one side of a deeply inconsistent, two-faced message from Tesla. Specifically, the two faces are "it can drive itself - the driver is only there for legal reasons" and "the driver must be attentive and ready to respond to any errors immediately, and is responsible for whatever happens if he does not respond in time."
I don't know if the comment is being deceptive. I'd say the commenter is at least confused. And I did point out why.
The confusing thing is Elon and Tesla both share a lot of information about timelines for prototype technology. "In six months it will do x" kind of statements.
The two faces you are confused by have names. The first face is prototype technology. The second face is shipping cars that we regular consumers can drive.
All the confusion can be cleared up by simply asking yourself, for each statement, which of these are they talking about in the current context?
Keeping in mind that both prototypes and current shipping cars can appear sometimes in the same context, such as that web page. It takes a bit of discernment and careful reading.
If you (general you, not you in particular) are predisposed to assume Elon is a massively deceptive fraudster who is constantly lying and hyping, then it's convenient to overlook that these two faces have a perfectly logical division that fits reality and makes everything consistent.
That is what a lot of people do. They overlook the fact that both Elon and Tesla need to lay out their vision for what is coming in the future. When Elon and Tesla talk about this stuff, they often need to talk about prototype technology. They often make it clear when they are doing this. I mean, look at the web page. The words are there. It does say "future" and "current cars don't have this blah blah" (although Elon in his interviews doesn't do as good of a job, it's often obvious with a moment's thought that he's talking about prototypes, to those of us who are familiar with the fact that there will be a multi-year regulatory process before whatever feature he mentions will come out).
I guess the problem is that technology is complex. Self driving cars are another level of complex because of the context in which they are situated, amongst other cars and drivers who need to learn to deal with the new robo drivers. Socially complex. Legally complex. Complex environments. Complex timelines. Complex rollouts. Complex technology evolution. You don't just flip a switch with this stuff and turn it on one day, because of the education aspects where other drivers are going to be in the picture. People aren't used to this level of complexity. Elon can't spell all this stuff out in every answer to every interview question. It's up to you to understand this.
Average drivers of a Tesla don't need to understand all the complexity. They just need to understand that the current system requires them to be attentive and ready to take over at any time. Tesla makes this abundantly clear in many ways, including on the web site, during the sales process, during delivery, and with active messaging and interventions while driving if the driver does not get it.
The courts will not get involved until someone initiates a legal action. Putting a stop to it before it gets that far is up to legislators and regulators.
Why is that so difficult for people on HN to find? I have read that page once, built an understanding based on that - and then watched youtube videos with the exact operation of the Autopilot, and talked to owners of it - and my understanding did not change, it was exactly the same as the one I received on the Tesla's own page... Am I speaking better English than these people or what? Why can't they just read the website fully? Why are so many people on HN say that Tesla is trying to fool someone?
I suspect it's a need to be the smartest person in the room. A lot of people are long Tesla, a lot of the same people are optimistic by temperament, taking a pessimistic view is an easy way to stand by your reality-filter and look smart if you turn out right.
Then the filter does its job and makes them blind to the kind of things you've pointed out. The only way for this to change is people to get skin in the game so that it hurts when their theses are proven wrong. I wonder how many of the people alleging fraud are actually short TSLA.
My point was about the video itself, which features prominently on the page.
Yes, there are disclaimers on that page. I just think that being up-front with the current state of the system (driver assistance) would be clearer than starting with autonomous driving and then adding a bunch of qualifiers to it. And it seems the German court agrees.
It would be a huge improvement (and a weight off my shoulders as a driver) if the car could show you the confidence level it has in the current road situation. Eg. I took a tesla through the snow, and I wouldn't trust autopilot with my life in that situation, but when driving on 80 towards tahoe during the summer, it's a godsend.
"Adaptive cruise control" sounds like the vechicle is just controlling speed based on the car in front. It does not sound like it implies any type of auto-steering.
Yes, this is exactly what this does. "Lane assist" does the steering.
I think the good think that Tesla does though, is having a simpler package for all of that. German makers can't keep but making 5 different systems that you can (or not) combine so they can charge more $$$.
They've also been promising full autonomy for five years straight. The wording of "Current autopilot features" is intended to help deceive the public into thinking that full autonomy is coming next year.
"Current" means the features that exist right now. This is a correct English description of how it works. In what possible way is it deceiving? How would you even phrase it differently in a short sentence?
This kind of claim — that they are making and breaking promises — is really flame bait. Every time I have asked for links to these promises, people have been unable to provide them.
Instead they provide links to articles where Elon said he "expects" or "thinks" or "predicts" (or, the most utterly damning case which I saw just once, "is certain") of something.
Where generally the something is either:
A) not even full self driving
B) or not on production cars, but only on prototype cars, and rightly so, because a regulatory approval will be needed.
I don't think these mythical "promises" really exist, except in the minds of people who have not understood what has been presented.
Of course you left yourself an out with the word "soon." OK, I think they can get away with saying that, but you have to be discerning as a reader and understand that the time scale is not going to be weeks or months.
turbocapitalists insisting that a "maybe" relieve people from their claims is the reason why progressive countries have laws against misleading advertisements separate from contract law.
I didn't expect Musk's defenders to offer up a defense whose cornerstone is that his judgment is so poor and his knowledge so weak that it is foolish to trust even short-term predictions about his own products.
It’s not exactly how you’re reading it, but you could say bleeding edge is how he operates. When there is a 51% chance of success, he goes for it. We’re talking in the lab. For consumer products, the standards are different. A lot of his statements are about the lab versions.
Considering they now allow use of the interior camera during events there is no reason they cannot expand on that for insuring the driver is paying attention
> Tesla goofed from the beginning by calling tech like "Autosteer" and "Traffic Assisted Cruise Control" under the moniker "Autopilot"
I am not accusing you specifically of using weak language, but let's call a spade a spade: it's not a "goof," it's a dangerous and deceptive business practice. It's one that Elon Musk is directly responsible for and directly encouraged with misleading statements where he deliberately exaggerated the capabilities of Autopilot. It's a disgrace and one of many many many reasons why Tesla needs to outright fire Musk. There are too many good people at Tesla, who don't deserve his selfish and irresponsible leadership.
To the people pointing out that airplane autopilots work similarly to Tesla Autopilot: the problem is not the foolish Tesla owners have never flows a plane before. The problem is that in the public mind, they "know" that "autopilot" means "totally autonomous" and they "know" that the computer-car-spaceship supergenius Elon Musk has been hyping his self-driving tech.
It is true that highly knowledgeable people know that Musk is an idiot conman, that "autopilot" is a very limited set of features, and so on - and that none of these things detract from the fact that Tesla makes a good car. But Tesla fans shouldn't invent ridiculous exonerations. Tesla has a responsibility for the safety of its users and they failed. Fans (along with the EU and US) need to hold the company accountable.
> It's a disgrace and one of many many many reasons why Tesla needs to outright fire Musk.
I drove a co-worker's Tesla and I loved it--and I will never buy one for the reasons you mentioned. I'm glad Tesla exists to force other automakers to compete on the electric front, but that's the extent of my admiration for them.
I bought one in spite of Musk, simply put the technology of the car and that it brought back memories as a kid of all the cool concept cars that never got built sold me. That is performs so well it just a bonus. I feel like I am driving the future day in and day out.
However I think that only does Musk misrepresent what the technology is capable of and the timeline I think that many quality of life features are missing simply because if he does not want it no one wants it; my bugaboo has been the poor support for bluetooth music from phones. It was only recently that a Tesla owner could select what track within a play list to play; they still cannot select the playlist, artist, and more, which are features common in every day cars and for many years.
I have no plans on giving up my Tesla soon, I am looking forward to the Audi BEV TT so I can put convertible and EV together. That is 2023 at the earliest. At least Tesla is forcing the hands of other automakers
PS: I would go so far as to state I believe the 8k cost they apply to full self driving is to convince people it really does what he claims. As in, it can only be so expensive because it must work. That 8k is also why I won't consider a new Telsa, originally I figured a Y would be nice
PPS: I am sure besides myself many of us have posted here and elsewhere that the name "Autopilot" implied far too much. Glad some court stepped in and said stop it
PPPS: Kind of fun a German court upheld this, considering all the years their own auto industry was committing outright fraud
Tesla is one part car company, one part battery company, and 5 parts marketing hype. The only reason people are seriously contemplating buying full electric cars today instead of the bullshit BMW produced is because Iron Man convinced enough people that electric cars will simultaneously fly to mars and cure world hunger. The stock reflects this.
In other words, there is no Tesla without Elon's meme machine. The graveyard of failed EV startups was chockful of more well meaning participants before Tesla came along. I'd go as far as to argue that the Elon's bullshit was the only thing that could stand up to big oil.
> The only reason people are seriously contemplating buying full electric cars today instead of the bullshit BMW produced is because Iron Man convinced enough people that electric cars will simultaneously fly to mars and cure world hunger.
Is this supposed to be ironic or do you actually believe this drivel?
Drive a modern EV and try again. Most Tesla owners will never go back to a noisy, smelly, crappy, slow ICE.
It's supposed to be ironic - if Tesla were "only better cars", then people wouldn't bend over backwards to give Elon every benefit of the doubt. A "nicer car" doesn't get you to the point where people worship your just born baby on Twitter. Teslas are amazing cars. However, Tesla is valued so much more than just delivering a better horse, and I don't think they could have scaled up as quickly had they not been financed by memes (I don't want to downplay Tesla's amazing execution up until this point, they have taken the opportunity they got and delivered, they could have easily squandered under the weight of Elon's promises).
I was all for it and in fact had even reserved a Model 3 when it was announced, but later cancelled after Tesla/Musk engaged in their pricing shenanigans.
And, then I had a conversation with a friend who has a Model X and driven from SJ to LA, and he mentioned that it needed 3 charges each way. Each Way... Yes, it can be argued that how often do people drive from SJ to LA, but still...
On top of that Musk acting like a dude who's permanently high on coke, quality issues with Tesla, the pedo affair, his fights with SEC, the drama he did regarding opening the Fremont plant during Covid-19 and so on and on ......
Anyway, long story short, I'm really not looking to buy a Tesla anymore..
FWIW your friend must have a very heavy foot. My brother-in-law has a Tesla and goes from SJ to LA a few times a year. They make one stop in the middle to supercharge, and use the time to go to the bathroom and have lunch. The car is usually charged before they are done eating.
When we caravan, the Tesla is never holding us up.
I really cannot comment on that. My friend I believe has the regular ~250 mile, or so, range Model X, so perhaps your brother-in-law has a longer range, but that still won't explain 3 times vs 1. So, don't know..
Edit: Now self-doubt is creeping in and I wonder if they had gone to Palm Springs and not just LA. The conversation was over a year ago.. Will that result in 3 charges each way? I've never driven to Palm Springs, so not sure if there is another mountain pass in that direction or not.
WLTP spec ranges favors city driving, in which Tesla has an edge because of the really aggressive recuperation braking. It also factors in highway driving at 90km/h IIRC, which no normal human being drives at. Highway it's actually not anywhere "light-years ahead" from other serious EV attempts like Taycan which does similar Autobahn range with wider tires than a model S.
I live in LA now, used to live in Sunnyvale (right next to San Jose), and have made that drive both directions.
In my Model 3, it takes 1 stop, for 25-30 minutes, at the Kettleman City Supercharger. Good time to grab a snack, use the restroom, and pretty much get back on the road.
Have you driven a modern ICE? I rented a new Honda Accord this weekend. Besides the Model 3's crazy acceleration, and automatic lane changing, I think the Accord matches or exceeds a Model 3 in every single way, and it's roughly half the price. This isn't to say Teslas aren't impressive, but I do think they're overhyped.
> Besides the Model 3's crazy acceleration, and automatic lane changing, I think the Accord matches or exceeds a Model 3 in every single way
Except noise, pollution, complexity/maintenance cost, OTA updates, large touchscreen navigation that gets updated continuously, having to visit gas stations etc. etc.
ICE is just obsolete technology. Half the performance at 10 times the noise and infinitely more pollution.
Not saying that Tesla makes bad cars or that electric vehicles are not the future, but you have to realise that the things you mention are not necessarily things everyone cares about or even appreciates. For many people all Tesla cars are way out of their budget for example, or not big enough, or they don't like the interior finish, or they actually enjoy the sound of a powerful ICE, or they don't like longer charging times and need/want longer range, or they like to be able to work on their own cars or take them to their preferred repair shop for maintenance, or they have a brand affinity and want to wait for an electric model of their favoured manufacturer, etc.
Even in spite of all the good things about Tesla's, the list of reasons people could have to not want buy a Tesla is endless.
This is not even considering the fact that some people (myself included) won't even consider a Tesla just for Musk's antics alone.
The quality control within Tesla is quite poor though, especially considering the price of such cars. I've watched various Tesla videos after seeing some "tear down" videos of a Tesla Y. After that I regularly get various electric car video suggestions. There's a lot of channels/people covering and liking Tesla, while saying things like "ah yeah, they just restarted production so obviously quality is bad and you should not have ordered a car at that time". Then another person talks about the crazy amount of times he had to bring back his car because of issues that it had from once he got it. But instead of being angry, he's happy it's a "free fix", completely forgetting how much he paid for something which apparently wasn't checked that much. Also noticed loads of people mentioning that the Tesla paint department is known to be quite poor. That goes back many years.
I'm very happy people are buying electric cars. For Tesla the increase in experience and expanded production should bring down costs (learned this from an article about solar power costs; costs doesn't just go down because you build bigger, it's mostly the increased experience which brings down costs).
I like that people more drive electric. Tesla is building a factory in Germany, hopefully a with a better paint department. Various EU countries are pushing for more electric, so really hope the price goes down and the quality goes way up. Meanwhile, I'm happy with my bicycle.
> After about 20mph tire noise drowns out engine noise.
This has been claimed over and over and is possibly true in some test scenarios but not in any real situation. Noise is additive, the engine noise may not be clearly audible, but tire+engine noise is always louder than just tire noise. And any time an ICE actually revs up, it's clearly audible at any high speed.
My supercharged V8 5.0L Jaguar would be an absolute disappointment to anyone expecting much in the way of engine noise. The sound dampening in the engine compartment is far better than any car I've had before, and the cabin has adaptive noise canceling specifically for engine / road noise.
> Noise actually isn't a factor. After about 20mph tire noise drowns out engine noise.
I drove (passenger) in a friends electric car once. That car is significantly more quiet than a lot of cars I've been in. Some other people mention that noise dampening takes care of the noise, but that just proves above: an (ICE) engine is very noisy!
It's also very apparent in some hiking trips: any ICE is terribly noisy. You can easily determine which cars are electric though. Everyone driving electric would hugely cut down on road noise. I cannot wait until everyone can afford and uses one.
I can hammer the go pedal in my Tesla any time I want and not worry about trumpeting the intersection. It's pretty satisfying actually. Which is probably why ICE drivers are starting to hate Teslas. But you know what they say... if you can't beat 'em...
I like EVs but the biggest thing that prevents me from buying one is range anxiety. I say this because I think it's funny that you consider having to visit gas stations a weakness of ICE, when I consider it the only reason to still own an ICE.
I own a Tesla, and it’s really nice to never worry about “filling up” except on long distance trips. Gas stations are such an annoyance that some day will be a thing of the past.
The 50+- electric range is plenty for my commute or running a few errands; it's weird to think that when you have hundreds of miles of range, you're mostly lugging around 3+x the amount of batteries you need on average, "just in case", like that XKCD comic. Instead, I lug around a generator and 8 gallons of unleaded, "just in case".
I've got a Model 3 and a Model S. It took me about a week to get used to the central placement of the sole Model 3 screen and lack of a dashboard, but now I prefer it. The dashboard is always in my eye line yet frustrating blocked by the steering wheel. The Model 3 screen is off to the side where I can ignore it (most of the time), yet the information I need is close at hand when I want it. My impression is that it was initially a cost-saving measure, but I think it's a huge improvement over the Model S.
Hm, interesting, I appreciate your comment as someone who has regularly driven both. I've only driven the model 3 a bit, with much more time in the passenger seat and I feel like I have to look away from the road a lot.
I agree that EVs are the future, but plenty of companies have been working on them, but nobody gave a shit until Elon made them sexy. Also, most people will drive ICEs until EVs get cheaper and enough infrastructure is in place to support them.
Have you driven a Model 3? It's like night and day. Everything that burns gasoline feels like a dinosaur to me now after driving a Model 3. I can't stand renting cars, they are all complete junk compared to my Model 3 at home. I said this to a Hertz in Denver, they gave me their best Jaguar. It stinks, it is slow, it is pathetic. It's basically game over for ICE, and they know it. They have 10-15 years maybe but at that point, nobody will be buying a gas car, because they're disgusting, expensive, unsafe, and slow compared to an EV, and everyone will know it by that time.
ICE is rapidly going obsolete, and Tesla is making money digging the grave.
Replying here because your other comment hit the depth limit.
For decades ICE cars have been designed to drop off the mounts and go under the cabin while absorbing energy in a frontal crass. There's not some dramatically higher risk of the engine crushing your legs vs a BEV.
There are many reasons to prefer the BEV, but please don't spread FUD.
I don't see why it's FUD. Having the engine go under the mount pushes the car... up in the air, where it can roll over. The fact is that mass distributed at the nose and tail (gas tank) is worse for dynamics than having the mass evenly distributed along the bottom of the vehicle.
I took my BMW i3 in for service recently and got a high end 2019 BMW SUV loaner..worth 50% more. I was expecting to be impressed. Instead I was amazed how much I disliked it - clumsy tech, loud, needs fill ups...it seems ICE tech is at a dead end. I truly wouldn't want that vehicle if it was free.
Almost everything unsafe about gas cars applies regardless of the power train. The only exception is leaving it running in a closed room (and even there it isn't nearly as bad for a modern car)
Every car I've ever owned had no problem reaching freeway speeds. Even my geo metro which is rightly considered underpowered at best (and mine had a misfire problem). I'm not going to a track so I don't need more speed than is legal.
EVs are much safer than gasoline cars because of how the mass in the car is distributed. Gasoline cars have a giant brick in the front (engine and transmission) which moves back into the passenger compartment in a frontal collision. Automotive engineers have to work all kinds of magic to stop the engine from smashing passengers. In an EV, the big sled of batteries in the bottom causes the car to rotate away from the crash energy, and makes it almost impossible to flip. Plus EVs can use that frontal space for energy absorption.
I couldn’t find any after a quick search, but are you aware of any studies that compare EV to ICE safety normalized for model year? It would be an interesting comparison given the assumption that there are a lot more older (and this less safe) ICE vehicles on the road
It would be. I also can't find any. One of the challenges here is that in many cases Teslas (the pre-eminent EV of course) aren't even considered "cars" that qualify to be in a safety survey, because (just as an anecdotal example) "they don't crash enough": https://insideevs.com/news/370539/tesla-safest-list-didnt-cr... or in other cases, they simply aren't a qualifying car (not enough market share.) So while actual studies seem to be impossible to come by, commercial studies that sell magazines are completely unreliable due to mostly just not including EVs.
So eventually we will get the data; after all, in some places Teslas were the #1 selling car in the second quarter of 2020. It's hard to ignore the #1 selling car. For now, engineering principles and crash test results are all we have to go on.
Model 3s drive great for a practical sedan, but for getting to point A to point B, I'd slightly prefer a regular economy car. Tesla's UI doesn't quite make up for physical knobs and buttons yet, and gasoline makes road trips a lot easier. I'm really looking forward to the Rav4 Prime and plan on getting that after I move to a place with charging.
> I can't stand renting cars, they are all complete junk compared to my Model 3 at home. I said this to a Hertz in Denver, they gave me their best Jaguar.
I can't stand meat. I've asked McDonalds to give me their best BigMac and it was horrible.
No one can take you serious when you write drivel like this. I have driven many cars more silent than a Tesla. Even my own Alfa Romeo makes as little noise and way less for people outside. Hell even my neighbor's Ford Mondeo is harder for me to hear than a Tesla driving by on the 50km/t limited street outside my garden. It is so so easy to find the Tesla and Musk fans in threads like these. Owning both types (ice + ev) makes it even easier.
I have, and I also adore the cars, my next car will likely be a Tesla and I own the stock. I've spent a lot of time researching the company so I didn't come to this conclusion by being bitter over the company.
I think it's important to point out that the success of the company is largely built on the mythos of the man rather than the objective success of the cars. Tesla, earlier this week reached a market cap exceeding Toyota, and is larger than every other American auto manufacturer combined, despite having a fraction of the revenue. A lot of that is predicated on the "fibs" that
* All the "data" being collected by Tesla cars will be used to create full autonomous driving
* The battery technology will be so desirable that Tesla will sell batteries to everyone
* SpaceX will put a colony on mars, and they will only drive Teslas on mars
You remove Musk from the equation, and its doubtful that any other person could convince investors, fans, and potential customers that Tesla will ever accomplish of these things and tank the value of the company. If that happens it's clear that Musk will not only lose a ton of money, but ,depending on how profitable they are, they will lose their cash cow that allows Tesla to aggressively grow.
I personally think the stock market is bonkers about Tesla. It's a local effect over the possibility of entering the S&P, maybe some short squeeze and possibly expectations about new tech on battery day. Having said that, I think the relative valuation can be supported without any of those outlandish claims.
Tesla produces about 300k vehicles a year. Toyota produces 30x that. However, the demand over Teslas meant they almost did not feel any demand impact because of Covid, while Toyota saw a 30% demand drop. There is a huge room for growth on EVs, and EV today means Tesla.
If Tesla has a 5 year lead, and if Toyota continues to fumble the technology transition, an actual revenue overtake in 10 years is imaginable. Hugely optimistic, but within the realm of possibility, with no need for Mars dreams.
>However, the demand over Teslas meant they almost did not feel any demand impact because of Covid, while Toyota saw a 30% demand drop.
Tesla doesn't even define what a "delivery" is (remember factory-gated?), nor do I believe any numbers that come out of China, so I'm skeptical that they weren't affected by Covid-19. Personally, I think they "delivered" a number to ensure the stock analysts are appeased.
If demand is through the roof, and profits are negligent, what have they cut Model Y prices already?
>if Toyota continues to fumble the technology transition
Toyota pioneered, and continues to sell, hybrid electric vehicles (fuel cell, too). Pure BEVs have many issues (including cost), so it isn't like the market has 100% decided on the technology yet.
I believe tesla's numbers. When you have a backlog of sales a few cancled orders just changes the queue. Toyota didn't have that. Tesla also had customers in industry least affected (engineers and other upper class) who didn't need to adjust their life as much as waiters did.
Toyota (and subsidiaries like Lexus) serve a wide array of customers and demographics. Even with decreasing sales, they should drive net income that will match net revenues for Tesla this year.
You can also drive Toyota's cars through puddles, whereas Tesla's may encounter issues that are "acts of God", which are not covered by warranty:
I believe they "delivered" 90k vehicles too, by whatever definition they choose as "delivered".
I mentioned "factory-gated" in the OP because back when the metric of choice was cars "produced", Tesla had a quarter in which it claimed to have "produced" a certain number of "factory-gated" cars, and touted that number. It turned out, some of these cars were not complete. Some didn't even have seats. So exaggerating relevant metrics isn't new for Tesla (or other companies for that matter).
This isn't a comment on the advertising but I am struck by how Tesla and Elon Musk remind me of Apple and Steve Jobs. Both very divisive companies and leaders prone to downright emotional attacks from one side and staunch defense by the other. While has been quite a bit of hyperbole, overselling, and straight up failure to deliver, you can't dispute that both pushed their respective industries forward almost singlehandedly and consequently reap the financial success.
Steve Jobs didn't go off talking about how the stock is overvalued and go off producing short shorts as a joke. He had numerous notes of how he didn't care about what the competitors or nay-sayers said. Job's jabs at others (flash, app store rejections) were generally marketing, breif, and thought through. He almost never talked about future products and would often say 'let's see what the future holds'.
Both are product minded people who were interested in going into the weeds of the product but Jobs was focused on the UX but Musk is incredibly focused on being impressed by technical details for either the cool factor or some other detail.
These two both were micromanagers and outspoken leaders but thats where the similarities end. Musk is about his own interests of humor, cool factor, or impression. Jobs was focused on 'best' to a fault. I think the biggest difference between the two is that Jobs had a lot of time to get beat down by failure so he could become humble and learn how to lead people and care. (Not to say he is an insane example of it, I simply mean that early Jobs acted closer to Elon and leadership risk factor. Next changed that.)
A thought comes to mind: Twitter wasn't a thing for most of Steve Jobs's career. (Looking at Wiki pages, Jobs's time at Apple was 1976-1985, then 1997-2011; Twitter was created in 2006.) Meanwhile, my impression is that most of Musk's antics occur on Twitter. If Steve Jobs grew up in the Twitter age, would he have done that kind of stuff too?
A Quora answer says Jobs didn't make any social media accounts at all, using only phone and email for communication (although it doesn't cite sources), and another article supports the idea that he never made a Twitter account. So that's a point against that theory. Though not against the underlying theory: "If you're a CEO with a certain kind of personality, you should stay the hell away from Twitter".
Musk isn't some young kid but a 49 year old. 2 years ago he baselessly accused a rescue diver as a pedophile and doubled down on it in court. For some reason, I doubt Steve Jobs would have done that. I don't know what "kind of personality" this is but if you have that kind of personality (CEO or not), yes, stay away from Twitter and all social media. Though that wouldn't be your biggest problem anyways.
For what it's worth, Musk's defense on that one is that, where he grew up, "pedo guy" was generally used as an insult not to be taken literally, any more than "idiot" seriously means "IQ between 0 and 25". He does seem to be telling the truth on that one; his judgment is questionable on multiple counts, but it's not a case of deliberately making up an accusation.
"Elon Musk is right, it seems: in the 1980s the phrase "pedo guy" was used as an insult in Pretoria, where he grew up – and it was a generic reference that did not necessarily mean someone was a pedophile. But telling a court in the United States that the slang was "common" in South Africa may be stretching the truth, according to other people's recollections."
He did then hire a private investigator, who apparently produced some suggestive reports: "that Unsworth had met his wife when she was eleven or twelve, and that he had been unpopular in the cave rescue team because he was "creepy"". Apparently on the basis of this, Musk made further accustions in a later email to a third party—one prefaced "off the record", but that wasn't legally binding:
"“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk wrote in the email, according to BuzzFeed News. “He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time," the email continued." http://web.archive.org/web/20200605035828/https://www.busine...
Clearly impulsive, and he seems to have leapt to conclusions from the PI's report (I don't know exactly what was in it and how much was Musk reading between the lines) that seem to be false. But at that time, the accusation didn't seem baseless to him.
I think I prefer not to look at stock / market cap too much in this climate of excess money sloshing around. It's just a popularity vote.
What I really have to give Tesla is: they have cars; they actually make them in factories they built; they built their own battery factory; they also invest into software side of things. And lastly they invested a ton into the charger network, which initially helped them get off the ground.
Other companies may have EVs but I feel they are not as invested / well matched to IC car manufacturer culture. But again, time and numbers will tell - who is actually making them, how many, and how well do they work.
Car companies have always been build engines and assembly of body organizations, buying other parts from whoever. Each is a bit different but nothing new about not owning all the technology. If it isn't a competitive advantage why bother?
I appreciate your comment on competitive advantage. What would it be in Tesla's case? It's not really the car design or assembly. I know they tried to play "disrupt" games with throwing software at the production line but I understand it didn't go well.
Couple things that come to mind:
1) SV software culture, kinda coming from Musk. This helps with battery pack management (important), electric motor control (important) and fancy car UI (less important perhaps but a "cool" factor. I think I count autopilot here)
2) Skin in the game. This is a bit meta, but some of the things they've done take some real guts and leadership. In their case it was do-or-die. Things like charger network, or getting the cars sold without dealerships, or building their own battery factory, or maybe the very idea of a production EV. I don't see this with incumbents - even if they have EV lines they could probably shut them down without much impact. Maybe this will not last long, I guess VW promised to switch to all electric new platforms? At that point they are kinda committed.
I think it partly is the car design. They were the first manufacturer trying to make a mainstream car which was designed from the ground up to take advantage of being a BEV (for example with batteries flat under the floor). Others always based their electric car upon an existing ICE design despite the ensuing compromises.
This is super important. Most ICE vendors tried to take an existing vehicle, remove the ICE components and shoehorn in an electric motor. Tesla really nailed the “ground up” design (a drag coefficient of 0.24 was almost unbelievable when the model S debuted) and even now the other makers haven’t really caught up.
Are you sure that's part of the hype? I've never heard that one. People definitely have positive associations because of SpaceX, but associations don't need a weird justification like that.
Anecdotally, it's been a meme for years that everything Elon Musk does is about getting to Mars. Solar City? Mars needs solar. Tesla? ICE cars don't work on Mars. Hyperloop? Big vacuum chambers like that don't make sense on earth, but on Mars they might. Personally I'm highly skeptical of this narrative, but I've seen it expressed many times by different people going back years. I think a tweet like the above is Elon Musk playing into it, throwing some red meat to his most ardent fans.
Are you saying people see Musk as a necessary "evil" to fight off a bigger evil (in the form of oil companies) and so they forgive his misgivings in a sort of utilitarian calculus?
No. I'm saying Tesla is successful because of Elon's hype. They are not "forgiving" his misgivings, they fully believe Elon will solve world hunger and invent FTL space travel. If you ask anyone who's bought into Tesla, they will tell you the "Auto Pilot on airplanes" lie, but they also believe Elon will deliver on Level 5 Autonomous driving. No cares about electric cars, they care about the guy's company who is using electric cars as a platform to save the world.
I want to address this because in spite of Elon (whether punching down with Twitter or COVIDiocy, etc) burning up a lot of the goodwill he had accumulated in the past, these things remain:
The reason people think Elon may do level 5 autonomy is because his companies have accomplished several things that industry experts said were either infeasible or impossible. Fast charging, large-battery electric cars that are faster than almost all conventional cars.
Remember, pre-Tesla, electric cars were looked at as pathetic toys, like golf carts or, AT BEST, green bling like Priuses which are pretty slow and kinda ugly.
And not only has Tesla ramped up to mass production of these desirable vehicles, but they’ve also done it during the ending of EV credits (which almost all their competitors still have access to!) AND crazy low gas prices. And every time, the media plays up this or that “Tesla killer” that never ends up living up to the name and often completely tanks. Every time media or experts say Tesla will fail and they don’t reinforces the view in many that Tesla is somehow special.
And even SpaceX’s early successes like Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Dragon Cargo were unprecedented for a private company and at those extremely low costs (at the time, Aerospace was a money pit for cost-inflating defense contractors, not nimble rocket startups). Then when they proposed propulsive landing, some NASA experts in the field thought it’d fail. I know one NASA GNC guy who said droneship landing is impossible. Clearly not, as we see now that it’s routine! Then Falcon Heavy, And now Dragon Crew... beating out Boeing, who had long been favored by old guard experts to beat SpaceX to ISS. Similar experts were certain SpaceX would be beat by OneWeb to launching the initial constellation... and we know how that has turns out (OneWeb went bankrupt). Then experts said that SpaceX had no Starlink terminals... until of course pictures emerged of sites they’ve had user terminals testing for months already.
So while I share the skepticism for level 5 autonomy, you should keep in mind That Musk’s companies keep accomplishing what many folks (who should know what they’re talking about) said couldn’t be done. And the more those experts say it’s impossible, the greater that Musk’s reputation soars after the task is completed nonetheless.
What exactly did his companies deliver, that experts said was impossible, in the technological sense I mean? Reusable rockets, deemed possible but not economic due to the low number of launches. SpaceX delivered amazing stuff, so, but nothing impossible. EVs were a thing already 100 years ago, so technically totally feasible, as is mass production. And the battery tech is to large part Panasonic. Still impressive what Tesla did, but again nothing technologically impossible.
Not feasible is a different thing. A lot of people said that about EVs and reusable rockets. With EVs he pushed the industry in zzhe right direction, at enormous costs. Funding seems to be directly linked to Elon, so. And whether or not reusable rockets are feasible is hard to tell, since SpaceX isn't publishing any results.
I think that the moment Elon runs out of stuff to hype and sell to investors, or just fails to sell, is the moment his companies go down. Which would be a pity.
This is some serious revisionist history right here.
No one was talking about technically possible. We're not discussing space elevators.
The key point is combining economic feasibility with the prevailing cultural will.
Of course electric cars exist. GM made a bunch of them in the 90s and literally forcibly recalled them and crushed them into tiny cubes in front of their owners. They held a candle light vigil. The documentary about this is what inspired Musk to get involved with Tesla in the first place.
There was clearly passionate market demand that was being suffocated and purposefully ignored by bloated incumbents who couldn't see anything past their bottom line and they lost track of the market.
Americans are sick of excuses for space travel. The USA is made entirely out of a culture of optimism and all the aerospace companies have nothing to show for meaningful progress as they collect their massive government checks.
SpaceX is the first group to ever over promise and then also over deliver. They don't give excuses, they get results.
There is hype because these are the first companies since the post war utopia that are actually making things again that are fundamentally changing our transportation reality with technology.
So you are saying that before Tesla EVs were not a thing. They were, already during the early day of automobiles. Funny how better electric motors enabled ICE cars and killed EVs.
Before SpaceX, humanity travelled to the moon, shot probes out of the solar system, landed on other planets and moons. We got multiple space stations into orbit. We didn't have reusable rockets so.
And aerospace companies did, in fact, change transportation fundamentally post WWII. Jet engines, passenger jets, the 747, ever decreasing fuel consumption per passenger, ever quieter aircraft.
And the parent was talking about technical impossible. Which clearly it isn't. Never argued against incumbents being unwilling to do certain things. But please stop putting Musk, and people in general, on podests like that.
> What exactly did his companies deliver, that experts said was impossible, in the technological sense I mean?
Landing the Falcon 9 booster on a droneship. As a physicist, I never believed it was impossible (the bar for “impossible” is rather high in physics) and yet an expert in the field told me it was!
I mean, people had demonstrated VTOL rocket landings before SpaceX came along. It was obviously just a matter of scaling it up and throwing tons of engineering man hours and test money at it, as SpaceX did.
Oh, absolutely. And yet... the consensus among most of the oldguard was that that approach wouldn't work. Many in the industry thought that reuse had effectively failed due to the lessons of Shuttle and the real future lie in expendables. Additionally, the old guard at NASA that WERE into reuse were generally for single-stage, horizontal landing architectures. In the specific case of the GNC specialist that told me it was impossible, he actually said this AFTER SpaceX had proved Falcon 9 VTVL on land! He thought the relative motion of the droneship would make the landing effectively impossible... I disagreed.
The phrase "hindsight is 2020" applies to Elon's accomplishments in spades... anything he hasn't achieved yet is an "obvious con" and "impossible" while past achievements were "merely a matter of throwing engineers at the problem"...
One of the reasons nobody tries seriously before was economics. They came to the conclusion that it was simply cheaper to not reuse boosters due to the overall low number of launches. And whether that is true or not cannot be evaluated without SpaceX results being published.
100 $ / kWh battery packs. Or the range of the Semi, deemed 'physically impossible' by a Daimler exec. Let's see how that goes.
Musk's whole point is this: much more things are technologically feasible, but most people / companies limit themselves within apparent constraints.
As mentioned: he's a physicist. From a physics standpoint, only a small amount of things are actually impossible. Only the deepest fundamentals give rise to constraints, and only those are the constraints he accepts. Everything else is debatable. At least. Sure, money so that he can throw army of talented engineers at problems helps. But it's his whole point! If it's your goal and it's possible in principle, reach for it.
Be it batteries, reusable rockets, autopilot.
That's why he says that it's possible in principle to achieve level 5 autonomy without lidar (having worked with lidar as chief engineer at SpaceX) and that it's possible in principle to do brain-machine-brain communication of language or complex ideas within a decade.
It might not work eventually. If so, it might be very well delayed for years.
But there is a reason that ppl like Thiel or Palihapitiya say: never bet against Elon.
Imagine Tesla actually rolling out level 5 autonomy within a year or two...
We are waiting for Level 5 for way longer than 2 years by now. And you don't have to pull the physical impossible argument. EVs were among the first cars built 100 years ago. Reusable boosters were deemed possible but not economic by EASA before SpaceX talked about them.
Musk is constantly moving the goal post, so when he ultimately delivers something one day, people tend to forget how often he didn't deliver in the past. He seems to be the only one to get away with that.
> hen when they proposed propulsive landing, some NASA experts in the field thought it’d fail. I know one NASA GNC guy who said drone ship landing is impossible.
Propulsive landing was not a spacex innovation. They simply picked back up the research agenda of Delta Clipper.
There is one aspect that SpaceX absolutely pioneered: supersonic retropropulsion. NASA was actually planning on testing it as it's needed for landing heavy payloads on Mars, but SpaceX figured it out for "free."
To be honest, SpaceX got a ton of VC money on top of a ton of NASA money on top of a ton of government launch money.
Not saying SpaceX isn't impressive, but without published results it is impossible to tell how economic their tech is, how expensive development and so on.
> The reason people think Elon may do level 5 autonomy is because his companies have accomplished several things that industry experts said were either infeasible or impossible.
That is all well and good, but what is at issue here and in many of these comments is the deceptive/dangerous marketing around Tesla's current offerings and, implicitly, the potential dangers it presents to the public roadways.
There is no progress if said "progress" is achieved unethically at any stage of its development.
I think we all, deep down, know this to be true.
I think Musk does not believe in that or marginalizes it (to cynically achieve business objectives) given some of his public statements and actions (snubbing the NTSB during the Mountain View investigation, taking his own hands off the wheel for a considerable period of time during an early 60 Minutes interview, several questionable statements on Twitter, glossing over the hundreds of abuses on YouTube and other social media platforms) with respect to Tesla - particularly in the past year or so.
Furthermore, let us consider that developing a highly desirable electric vehicle and the technical bar to clear to achieve that pales in comparison technologically to what Musk and Tesla are promising in Level 5 autonomous driving several times (wrongly) in the past and in the near future. Level 5 Autonomy presents several unpredictable engineering unknowns that may require similarly unpredictable breakthroughs while the development of say, the Model 3, was an iterative improvement upon what was already available in the market at the time - impressive improvement though it may be.
> they fully believe Elon will solve world hunger and invent FTL space travel
Well, maybe not fully believe, but certainly believe that Elon will move the needle materially in the right direction. I'd much rather spend my money on a product that supports a billionaire who is determined to save the world (Elon) than I would spend my money on a product that supports a billionaire who seems determined to take it over at any cost (Page, Brin, etc)
Remove autopilot from a Model S and it's still a hell of a car. Just from a pure driving dynamics a mechanical engine can't touch a VFD in terms of power dynamics and range(which is also why Diesel-Electric locomotives use them).
Don't disagree on the autopilot, the killer app has always been for me stop-and-go traffic where the speeds are lower and the sensors need to do less vision and more radar based.
Short of range issues, you should drive a Taycan to see just how much better it can get. The Car lacks the infotainment tech of Tesla, the network, and the autopilot tech but from a driving dynamics and quality standpoint makes the Model S feel poor.
Diesel-Electric locomotives do it that way because there's no clutch mechanism that would sustain the load being put on it, they have to use the magnetism for load coupling.
The man on the Clapham omnibus [1] thinks aeroplane autopilot pretty much flies the plane, with the pilot just watching. That's what is relevant to Tesla's marketing material, and they are surely fully aware of this.
It's not telling the whole truth, because the average person doesn't fly planes and has no firm grasp on how extensive a plane's autopilot is, or what the difference in situations is. What they do see is the Tesla marketing videos that hype it up to be better than it actually is.
In the context of someone using airplane autopilot as a defense of Tesla, they're not omitting anything. So I don't think that's a full answer to my question.
Musk is a great hype man in an industry where hype is the difference between success and failure. If he'd started out in a different field, he could've been the next Tom Ford or Zaha Hadid. That's not necessarily a statement about the quality of his or his companies' work - Zaha Hadid does not make nice buildings, and I wouldn't buy a Tesla - but it's difficult to say whether Tesla would've succeeded if not for Musk's hype... and the point of great hype men is that people buy into the hype.
On balance, having a hype man for [PayPal Mafia voice] innovation in the world of atoms seems like a good thing. Musk may not be the best person for the role, but you probably have to be a little crazy to want to be a celebrity in the first place.
I think people have a warped view of what a hero is. Simplistic morality stories in our entertainment have primed us to think of heroes as better than regular people, and see anyone larger than life who isn't better than regular people as a villain.
In actual fact though, heroes are both better and worse than regular people. The ancient Greeks understood this, which is why their myths are still compelling today.
While he has achieved a lot, His claims sometimes are downright bizarre... I don't know if it is just intentional deception, drugs, or some kind of bi-polar mania, or a combination of all the above.
We should be able to make our Teslas to be fully automated robo-taxis by now... and earn cash on the side....
Most of the achievements people ascribe to him aren't even his. Musk bought the company then gave himself the title of 'founder'. He's a businessman, not a scientist
How can you even say that? I've heard more scientific discussions out of him compared to all the other CEO's I've ever heard speak combined. Musk has a head for physics and numbers and can easily come up with calculations for classical mechanics, material technology, information theory off the top of your head. For you to say the contrary is doublespeak.
The poster you commented said a true fact (Elon bought a company and calls himself founder). There is no facts across your rambling response, and you say others do doublespeak?
Because there's a difference between having "a head for physics and numbers" and "working with physics and numbers for your career". Fundamentally, he is a CEO, who's job is not to work on any of the underlying technology. His job grow the company.
That's a bit misleading. Musk was a part of Tesla from day 1 and provided most of the funding. He served as Chairman since 2004.
When he took over in 2008, Tesla had just started producing the first roadster, which was really just a conversion kit for a lotus. After musk became CEO, Tesla became the world's most valuable car company...
In what way did they "have the Roadster" in February 2004, 6 months after the first two founders started the company and 9 months before it was named Tesla? At the point that Musk joined they were still working with a TZero converted to a lithium battery pack.
Not a Musk fan by any stretch but that's unfair to Musk. He does deliver, albeit too late and overhyped. He also has a tendency to shoot his mouth off and doesn't know how to deal with dissent. But Trump is an outright fraud and that's several levels removed from where Musk sits, arguably Musk has done more in two decades than Trump has managed to achieve in his entire life.
likes to rewrite history and ignores facts he doesn't like, bullies people that oppose him, goes on unstable twitter rants, builds a cult of personality around his persona, paints himself as a rule breaker, etc
They are not the same person by any means, but they do share similarities
It's a personality cult at this point; they will never even entertain the idea that the glorious leader can err, or that if he does, it's for our own good.
Some of us have explained many times how his quotes get taken out of context and twisted into being “promises” and “lies” but the haters have the upper hand at the moment. Believe what you want to but at least look at his statements yourself, with care, and in context, and notice when he prefaces things with “I think” and “I believe” etc.
The bending over backwards is being done by the haters, not by his supporters. If anything his supporters are pretty quiet and just vote with their money.
> let's call a spade a spade: it's not a "goof," it's a dangerous and deceptive business practice
There's a very odd tendency for people to engage with corporate PR packages in the same way they engage in interpersonal interactions. In the abstract, sure, they get that it's a crafted artifact meant to maximize profits, but in the immediate sense... they act as though the words have any intrinsic meaning at all rather than "white noise that maximizes likelihood of profit, while ideally not instigating litigation or regulation."
It's not unique to Tesla. It's every single time a major corp. issues a significant public statement, as though it's some sort of earnest missive from the founder rather than a PR-crafted artifact vetted by legal, compliance, and probably the COO and CMO, if not a board member or two.
Corps are profit-maximizing engines. They are not your buddies. They are not speaking from the heart. They're not even spinning something that started off as something from the heart. They are designing cognitive drone strikes meant to optimize public reception of current business practices.
Many companies have learned (the hard way) that public statements are admissible to court. All public statements from most big companies go through many levels of checking to ensure they don't send a wrong message.
I know of one case where the warning label on a lawnmower that rocks can be thrown conflicted with the advertising picture of a kid close to a lawnmower and therefore the company doesn't believe that warning lable. I'm not sure what came of it (probably settled out of court for big $$$). However many companies are careful what they say.
Look I really don't have a dog in the $TSLA or Tesla fight - I have no investments in the stock market and due to a disability I cannot drive a car. My grievance is with celebrity CEO worship, and in giving CEO credit for labor's accomplishments (which is particularly egregious in the case of SpaceX).
Being an idiot conman and being a technical genius are not mutually exclusive. And clearly being an idiot conman and being the CEO of a valuable company aren't mutually exclusive. Musk's idiotic conning has repeatedly gotten Tesla into serious legal trouble, including running a con - and it's a plain con job - about Tesla's autonomous vehicle capabilities. I know I am being mean to Elon by calling him an idiot and if I were trying to be neutral I might say "recklessly dishonest." But facts are facts.
> I know I am being mean to Elon by calling him an idiot [...] But facts are facts.
You are not being mean, just silly. Elon clearly isn't an "idiot" however you stretch the meaning of the word, he's a highly capable and successful man and has demonstrated repeatedly his skill, both in engineering and entrepreneurship. And your opinion isn't a fact.
I am copying another comment of mine to address this. The point is that I am calling Musk an idiot because he has a long history of being an idiot. The comment was more addressing him also being an obvious con artist, but I think his idiocy shines through.
~~~
[...]I am not denying that he is talented and he probably has a > 105 IQ.
The Autopilot controversy is just a straight con job, and a very stupid one. The BS about the $420 stock price was a horrendously stupid con job. His disinformation mongering about coronavirus - when he is smart enough to know the truth - is also a con job, both for his fans and his workers. Deliberately under-counting workers injuries at Tesla plants is conning safety regulators - it's not as dumb as Elon's other cons, but it's a con. Removing safety markers because Elon doesn't like them aesthetically is maybe not a con job but it is remarkably idiotic. The PR-motivated stuff about Musk engineering a solution to those kids trapped in Thailand - straight-up con job, and one that blew up in his face due to his idiotic and narcissitic use of Twitter. Hyperloop (remember that?) was always a con job, and one that was so transparently stupid that nobody but Musk could have gotten away with it.
I could go on. The point is that I am calling Musk an "idiot conman" because of
a) his well-documented affinity for conning his customers, fans, investors, and government agencies
b) his well-documented acts of being a huge idiot, including in his planning and execution of most of the above con jobs
In fairness, the company set incredible records for fundraising and lines of credit every quarter to offset massive losses, ignores basic safety concerns in production, ships beta software, sold still non-existing products ( Roadster 2, Semi, Autopilot LV5) with a promise they would ship them, took reservations for cars at false prices they would eventually never ship or make hard to get [35K model 3 which was briefly sold, $39K Model Y which they cancelled in favor of a base $45K Model Y, $40K Cybertruck which they don't even know how big it will be or if it will pass any safety tests] and then used reservations numbers to leverage raising capital.
If Tesla acted like a normal responsible company, they should have been out of cash like all the nay-sayers said. Instead they frauded and scammed their way alive.
That is a pretty good summary. And also where the hype comes in. Every other company or CEO would get nailed to the wall for that, Tesla not so much.
It also shows how VC money and hype can distort competition. Every EV company out there is not just competing with ICEs but also Tesla's inflated pockets. Which, IMHO, stifles innovation in that sector.
> It is true that highly knowledgeable people know that Musk is an idiot conman
Sorry to nitpick but highly knowledgeable people will surely never claim Musk is an idiot anything. He is definitely a genius in several ways.
For something so technologically advanced as self-driving cars, his stuttering style seems to convey more sincerity to the general public than Steve Job's glib speech ever would
Musk isn't an idiot, he's overseen some great things at the companies he runs, and I hope the companies he's running continue pushing technology forward.
But Musk as a human isn't so great. He'd do better to keep his mouth shut sometimes, and lay off Twitter every now and again. Between falsely accusing people of being pedophiles, claiming to take Tesla private in a tweet, and various other "incidents", he's kind of an idiot when it comes to PR.
Musk is technically great, he has OK business sense, he has really bad social interaction skills and really needs to work on developing a better filter.
He's an idiot in the sense that Trump is an idiot. Made billions (sure, not started from scratch, but they still made billions more than you and me), says stupid things all the time but they still can get away with it and win (the presidency, the most valued car company in the word, whatever it is they want).
I thought the narrative was a $1 million dollar loan from his father? Do you have a source for "100's of millions"?
Sure, a $1 million dollar loan from family is pretty generous, and an amazing starting place - certainly not a "from nothing" tale. However, it's not outlandish money for a business loan to a top-rated business school graduate with extensive industry experience either.
I'd also wager if you gave most people $1 million dollars, they would not turn it into billions within their lifetime.
Classic ad hominem. They write an article, list their sources and you dismiss it out of hand because of which entity wrote the article. Surely you can do better than that?
> but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s
Donald Trump had already taken over the business in 1971.
Seriously disingenuous to call it "his father's real estate empire" 30 years later.
Even more disingenuous to claim he received $413 million in today's dollars through tax dodges - it's not like you get paid by paying less taxes; that was money earned regardless. Not to mention the framing of "tax dodging" vs "paying the minimum amount the government required by law". (Taxes are due tomorrow - did you decide to pay more than you were required just out of generosity? I'd bet not.) It's also unclear what "records" the article is citing, since Trump's tax returns famously have never been released. I'd like to think, by now, if something nefarious was up with the Trump tax returns, the IRS would have taken notice...
Clearly the NYT has an axe to grind. Their word choice, and decision to lump a decade into one monetary number, and represent earnings earned while serving as company president as some sort of fatherly gift is clearly a misrepresentation of reality.
> Trump started out with 100's of millions
Flatly, this is wrong. Ran the company for 30 years before earning that money. That's not "starting out" no matter what way you want to frame it.
> I thought the narrative was a $1 million dollar loan from his father?
A few thoughts: there are other sources that say there were significant other inputs, up to and including someone going to a Trump casino and buying $3.5M in chips and not playing. And there's the inflation value - a $1M loan in the 1960s is a lot more than $1M now.
> business loan to a top-rated business school graduate
Numerous people (including the faculty at said business school) have said that Trump was the worst student they'd ever seen, and at least one has made the claim that if it weren't for significant donations, Trump would never have graduated.
> I'd also wager if you gave most people $1 million dollars, they would not turn it into billions within their lifetime.
Quite possibly true. But in Trump's case he could have done absolutely nothing with the money he inherited and relied on earned interest and be richer than he is now.
> Quite possibly true. But in Trump's case he could have done absolutely nothing with the money he inherited and relied on earned interest and be richer than he is now.
Also a myth that's been busted numerous times. You don't live an extravagant life, gold plated everything, private jets, numerous high-rise towers, restaurants, golf courses, hotels and more without spending a single penny - which is the premise of that assertion. That assertion also assumes Trump inherited hundreds of millions of dollars, which isn't true, and would have had to make near perfect stock market investments over 50+ years, which nobody can achieve. So, essentially, the premise is total garbage.
> Trump casino and buying $3.5M
The casino's came way after Trump took over the organization. So zero impact on his inheritance, which was the initial claim.
Look, I know a lot of people don't like Trump, and have a serious vested interest in seeing him fail or knocking him down several pegs... but this is just petty and an untrue representation of reality. There's plenty of real things to knock him with... but this isn't one of them.
I would be very hesitant to criticise someone who has arguably done/will do more for the continuation for humanity than anyone else who has ever lived.
Maybe it's your definition of "isn't great" that needs re-calibration.
maybe the billionaires could actually do something about climate change instead of trying to flee to mars. i doubt musk is saving space for me in his escape pod
But you don't understand. Car analysts since the early 90s have been saying that electric cars would become profitable and become a serious chunk of the market by 2020 because they all knew that musk was going to come along and show us how great electric cars are and save the world.
To be clear: being an idiot and being a genius aren't mutually exclusive. Elon Musk is in many ways a genius business executive, and in many more ways a huge friggin' idiot.
The idea that he's a "polymath"[1] completely whitewashes the actual scientists and engineers who did the actual work behind SpaceX and Tesla and SolarCity. I have seen literally zero evidence that Musk understands the physics and mathematics required to actually engineer a rocket or electronic car. For that matter, while SpaceX has made admirable technical contributions to economic spaceflight, they are not innovating new technologies in the way that government space agencies are (especially NASA).
He seems like a decent programmer and, when he's not high on Twitter, a very good tech CEO. It seems like he has a rare "spark of vision." But translating these admirable qualities into universal genius is just worshipping the Cult of the CEO. Musk is, first and foremost, a celebrity venture capitalist.
[1] Edit - I know you didn't say "polymath," I was responding to another rant from a few days ago. I do hear the term tossed around a lot and it drives me up a wall.
He is obviously a genius, like Steve Jobs, and Donald Trump, and just about every billionaire are. You don't become as successful as that without being both very lucky and very smart.
What many people don't realize is that these people are not genius engineers, they are all genius marketers. Their amazing talent is not in creating something useful, but in convincing other people (investors, buyers, voters) to give them money.
It goes further than that: and then, when - predictably - people die the company turns around and engages in the most terrible form of victim blaming I've ever seen, to suggest that those consumers should have known better than to believe their marketing.
Some of your points are valid though saying he is an idiot and a conman undercuts your statement.
The man is no idiot, and while some of the things he has said have not come true, or not been true to begin with, i do not think it is not reasonable to describe him as a “conman.”
See above about being an idiot and being a genius not being mutually exclusive. I am not denying that he is talented and he probably has a > 105 IQ.
The Autopilot controversy is just a straight con job, and a very stupid one. The BS about the $420 stock price was a horrendously stupid con job. His disinformation mongering about coronavirus - when he is smart enough to know the truth - is also a con job, both for his fans and his workers. Deliberately under-counting workers injuries at Tesla plants is conning safety regulators - it's not as dumb as Elon's other cons, but it's a con. Removing safety markers because Elon doesn't like them aesthetically is maybe not a con job but it is remarkably idiotic. The PR-motivated stuff about Musk engineering a solution to those kids trapped in Thailand - straight-up con job, and one that blew up in his face due to his idiotic and narcissitic use of Twitter. Hyperloop (remember that?) was always a con job, and one that was so transparently stupid that nobody but Musk could have gotten away with it.
I could go on. The point is that I am calling Musk an "idiot conman" because of
a) his well-documented affinity for conning his customers, fans, investors, and government agencies
b) his well-documented acts of being a huge idiot, including in his planning and execution of most of the above con jobs
Isn't airplane autopilot only used when there's no traffic around. An analogous autopilot for cars would never be used unless if you're in an empty parking lot.
Yes, anybody who has used an autopilot on a boat or airplane will understand that they work exactly the same way the "autopilot" on a Tesla works. But that's not how the general public understand the word and so Tesla shouldn't have used it in advertising copy aimed at the general public.
The people who claim airplane autopilots work similarly are flat out lying. Pilots can briefly take their attention away from the plane without issue. They have to be present and ready to intervene but not constantly closely monitoring what the aircraft is doing. There is a very real difference in the amount of attention required.
That is more about how planes and cars are different than about how plane and Tesla autopilots are different.
When driving a car, if you take your hands off a car, you will crash within seconds. Either you will come to a corner, or the shape of the road will just cause you to drift off. You are always zooming past obstacles that are meters away from you. Often less.
Planes are different.
Even without an autopilot, the pilots have trim wheels that allow them to adjust all the surfaces so the plane flys excatly level and stable when they aren't touching the controls.
So even without an autopilot, the plane is able to fly for minutes at a time without the pilot touching the controls. Eventually the balance will change, fuel is burns and the wind conditions might change, but these things happen slowly.
All the autopilot really does is extend the amount of time the pilots can avoid touching the controls from minutes to hours.
The other major difference with planes is the available recovery time from any issue is much longer, at least when not landing/taking off. When planes are near the ground the pilots are require to pay just as much attention as Tesla drivers are, actually far more attention.
But when planes are at high altitude, pilots have tens of seconds to detect something is going wrong, disengage the autopilot and correct the attitude. There are no obstacles. ATC keeps other planes far away.
But with cars, you are always seconds away from hitting an object. The driver needs to be able to take over from the autopilot instantly.
Plane autopilots work great for planes. They simply don't transfer over to cars. The operating environment is completely different.
I don't think it's dangerous, necessarily, unless you ignore people's personal responsibility in the situation as well. As currently designed, "Autopilot" requires you to keep your hands on the steering wheel, provide rotational counter-weight on it, and you have to agree to safety and attention disclaimers before you can even enable the features.
Yes, there are absolutely misconceptions that may happen with the general public who think that "Autopilot" is completely autonomous but anyone who actually owns the vehicle and has the ability to drive with it would have to be willingly negligent in order to consider it "dangerous" or "deceptive". As an example, someone posted a link as a comment to the OP stating that Elon has been marketing Teslas as FSD when, in reality, the blog post in question just says that every Tesla has the hardware that makes it capable of it and that's absolutely true.
You're right that the general public auto-translates "Autopilot" to "Fully Self-Driving" but that's just as much a media and reporting problem as it is a Tesla or Elon problem.
Apparently, the dictionaries are in conspiracy with the general public, as they also define autopilot as "a device that keeps aircraft, spacecraft, and ships moving in a particular direction without human involvement". The etymology of the word automatic is also very telling.
Generally we ascribe meaning to words by how people use it, and I'm not sure I'd call marketers people.
> Apparently, the dictionaries are in conspiracy with the general public, as they also define autopilot as "a device that keeps aircraft, spacecraft, and ships moving in a particular direction without human involvement".
Plowing you into an obstacle is what you get when you maintain your existing course and speed without regard for what's in front of you. "Forward" is a direction.
And whether you call it cruise control or not, the definition still matches a thing the car actually does. It has lane keep assist too.
The thing is: Cruise control maintains the speed without human supervision. Lane keep assist does not keep in a lane without human supervision (hence it is only assist).
> The thing is: Cruise control maintains the speed without human supervision.
At which point you would immediately veer off the highway and smash into an overpass, so no it doesn't.
It maintains speed without human involvement, which is the same thing lane keep assist does. It steers the car to keep it in the lane. Presumably even if the lane goes out to a pier and dumps the car in the sea.
Cruise control maintains the speed as long as it is physically possible. You don't need to supervise that it maintains the speed, it is able to do it on its own. It is (usually) even better than a human in maintaining the speed. Of course you still need to control the steering wheel or brake for obstacles -- but that's nothing cruise control promises to control.
On the other hand, lane assist is good, but it is not good enough to keep the lane without supervision. It can get confused by strange markings, obstacles, construction work, weather etc. It might fail to keep the car in its lane, although it is easily possible for a human.
> As an example, someone posted a link as a comment to the OP stating that Elon has been marketing Teslas as FSD when, in reality, the blog post in question just says that every Tesla has the hardware that makes it capable of it and that's absolutely true.
Actually, that is an utter lie, as there isn't any hardware and/or software in the world right now that is capable of "Fully Self-Driving". Sure, in limited conditions, many of these cars can drive on their own and not immediately hit the first tree or child they can find. But the current track record, especially for Tesla, is not much greater than that. And there is no hardware that could drive a car in heavy rain or snow. Hell, the sensors we have would just not work in some of the real driving conditions that people care about.
But autopilot is explicitly a term for hands off operation.
In general, in driving, things happen too fast for any control assist system to allow hands off driving.
EDIT: Any existing control assist system
And I don't think we are that close, since "self driving cars" still seem to be limited to "driving at 25 MPH around Mountain View and Sunnyvale where the curbs and streets have been pre-mapped to within inches".
I have. Lots of them, all over the world. On every ship I've worked on the track pilot is used for hands off operation. Hell, some guys would do paperwork or work on stowage plans during their watch.
> No, just the common understanding of autopilot for aircraft.
The autopilot for a aircraft does whatever it is supposed to do without human supervision. If you turn on keep heading, it will keep the heading (within physical limitations). I guess it is similar for a boat.
Lane assist, however, requires constant human supervision because it is just an assistant. I think this is the important difference that needs to be highlighted here.
Tesla’s own website mentions Autopilot and full self-driving capabilities on the same page. Just go and configure a car and see if anyone could ever misunderstand Autopilot in that context.
Add a bunch of cool YouTube videos of people presumably sleeping on the wheel.
Add a CEO who claims "car can run nightly errands soon" and "level 5 very soon" (by redefining level 5) and you easily have the currenct perception.
It's like the Summon feature. "Will come to you across the parking lot with no intervention while you deal with a fussing child".
Must have vision of vehicle at all times. Must maintain one finger on dead man's switch on phone. Vehicle owner must not be distracted.
(Oh, and it may well drive through your half-opened garage door because there's no sensors at that height, and nothing could ever go wrong with a garage door, right?)
> I don't think it's dangerous, necessarily, unless you ignore people's personal responsibility in the situation as well.
Yes, but let us recognize the stark reality and known limitations of "the people" in the driving public - as Tesla should (and in my opinion did not or does not).
Not suggesting you are, but Tesla cannot hand-wave it.
While their may be an outsized amount of technical persons here on Hacker News that are perhaps aware of at least some of the technical risks and limitations of Autopilot and/or that state of autonomous driving systems in general, it is simply unrealistic and a fiction to expect that the broader driving public is going to be able to safely utilize an opaque, autonomous system with minimal safeguards and written instructions - particularly if they can be easily defeated.
We are talking here of newly minted drivers in their compulsive teen years all the way through older persons who may not familiar with technology nearly at all.
Take some time to visit TikTok and YouTube[1] where it is replete with fans and other owners are "showing off" Autopilot in dangerous and creatively dangerous ways that generate clicks and likes, pushing Autopilot to the limit and/or otherwise not paying attention to the roadway while Autopilot is engaged.
It is difficult for me to fathom that Tesla is not acutely aware of these issues given their focus on social media viral campaigns.
In fact, when my wife and I test drove a Model X in Chicago a few years back, one of the first things that the Tesla salesperson did was to encourage my wife to remove her hands from the steering wheel in Autopilot mode (which she did not). I cannot say for sure if this internal Tesla sales practice is alive and well today, but I would discount it.
In my view, this is and was always a core part of Tesla's sales model to move metal - and, thus, I think that Tesla tacitly approves of the social media abuses I noted above to draw attention to their vehicles (unless they are talking with a regulator or in a court of law). Case in point, other automakers are taking the strategy of installing in-cabin driver monitoring systems in their vehicles and/or limiting the use of autonomous features to certain roadways and roadway types which I think is at least safer in principle given the unsophistication of the driving public.
Tesla could employ the same in their vehicles, but then it would take away a key differentiator in their product from all others. Tesla knows this, so they resist.
>when my wife and I test drove a Model X in Chicago a few years back, one of the first things that the Tesla salesperson did was to encourage my wife to remove her hands from the steering wheel in Autopilot mode
My fiancee was told to do the same thing with her new Toyota Corolla when purchasing it with lane assist...not that it's totally related but sort of enforces your point more that the general public is where the issue really shines.
> It is true that highly knowledgeable people know that Musk is an idiot conman
That and the richest man on the planet. What does this tell about us as a species? Some compare him to the late Jobs. I think this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
> All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.
"have the hardware needed" ... being legalese/marketing speak for "the hardware may indeed be capable, but the software is not (yet)". So they're gearing people to expect the full self-driving capability, _eventually_. Shady to say the least.
That marketing was not misleading, it was and still is a lie. They have upgraded the hardware at least 3 times already.
The first time this lie might have been just sheer incompetence. But after three upgrades, I can only assume that the lie is malicious and negligent.
Musk has been claiming that his "fleet" of 10,000 robotaxis will arrive next year for a couple of years already. I mean, he is going to be right eventually.
But Tesla's competition, e.g., NVIDIA et al., are claiming that for full-self driving we'll at least need hardware with an order of magnitude more TOPs than what the current generation provides, and that we won't see that hardware before 2022-2023. They are also not promising that this hardware will suffice, only that they are pretty sure that it cannot be done without it.
I'm skeptical of Tesla's claims to say the least, but I guess we'll see. Statistically speaking, Musk predictions about when we are going to see full-self driving have been 100% wrong to date.
This is rich. I was watching a K8S/Puppet video from 2016 on YouTube today. In that video, the presenter pulls up HackerNews and the 6th item on HackerNews at that time was exactly this:
All Tesla vehicles now have all the hardware needed for full self-driving capability
It's also almost certainly true. Whether you think LIDAR-based systems are the way to go, there's no doubt that full self-driving based on cameras is possible given the right software. That's what humans are, after all, so it's "just" a matter of building the software to drive that hardware.
It's may or may not be, and most likely not. Humans are more than just software, they are also hardware. And no, the consumer grade cameras included in Tesla vehicles are not replicas for eyeballs.
> They should have called it "CoPilot" [rather than "AutoPilot"]
Huh but a co-pilot is much more capable than an auto-pilot system. An auto-pilot mostly keeps you level, going the right speed, and pointing in the right direction, and can do some limited landing and things.
That sounds to me exactly like what Tesla's system does?
A co-pilot is a human who can take complete control from you for the rest of the whole flight and deal with any emergency or unexpected situation. The co-pilot is much more advanced than the autopilot.
Because the original parent comment is using an analogy to aviation terms, and depending on a more than cursory understanding of the limits of an aircraft autopilot. I am willing to make a monetary bet most members of the population do not understand the precise limitations of an aircraft autopilot, though I admit I have not conducted a poll to verify this. I also think Tesla likely named it this to differentiate it from the competitions systems, and in my eyes it is pretty obvious what distinction they were aiming for most people to make.
It's the same thing as putting "fat free" on the Twizzlers. It's technically true which means they can get away with it. Except that that probably kills more people than "autopilot" ever will.
There are a hundred ways to say that something won't cause you to gain weight. They chose the one that sounds like it means that even though it doesn't, because it also has a different meaning which is technically true.
But autopilot in a plane doesn't require the pilot to take over in a split second. Keeping you level, at the right speed, in the right direction, etc. is enough to keep the plane safe. Pilots have tens of seconds to reorient themselves to avert any disaster.
In contrast, Telsa "autopilot" requires constant vigilance since you might have to take over without any warning.
Where immediately is generally measured in seconds (with the exception of perhaps autoland). Normally the autopilot will have the plane trimmed at all times, so the plane will continue flying its current course for some time without control inputs.
> In contrast, Telsa "autopilot" requires constant vigilance since you might have to take over without any warning.
Neither version eliminates the need for the pilot/ driver to cease situational control. Pilots have absolutely flown into the side of mountains while on autopilot. (Ironically called "Controlled flight into terrain"). The big difference between the two is in an aircraft there is less to collide with when the pilot screws up.
The big problem isn't whether the two are actually similar or not, the problem is most people assume that autopilot on an aircraft does a lot more than what it actually does. In most cases, autopilot in an aircraft maintains heading and altitude, that's pretty much it.
Adding to all the confusion is the fact that "Autopilot" in aircraft can mean a giant pile of different things, but the term was originally coined quite a while ago to refer to basic altitude/ bearing hold.
Is there an archived copy of the manual somewhere that doesn't say to keep your hands on the wheel?
I read it a few years ago and again a few months ago; from what I recall in both cases the manual insisted that drivers keep their hands on the wheels. But this is at odds with how their cars are promoted and evidently programmed. It seems to me that Tesla has been coyly but deliberately encouraging and facilitating a usage pattern which, for legal/liability reasons, they forbid in the manual.
> It seems to me that Tesla has been coyly but deliberately encouraging and facilitating a usage pattern which, for legal/liability reasons, they forbid in the manual.
I'd agree with you there. Same with Summon. "Deal with a fussy child while your car comes to you" says the promotion. Legalese says "must not be distracted (like you might be by a fussy child)".
I'm sure that the manual probably says something exactly like that: "Driver is required to keep hands on the wheel. Your vehicle will warn you to put your hands on the wheel if they are not every fifteen minutes". Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, and don't mind our CEO blatantly not keeping his hands on the wheel in our videos.
You are splitting hairs. The problem isn't whether someone has their hands on the controls or not, it's the fact that the operator isn't paying attention to what's going on outside the vehicle.
It's not splitting hairs if the expected reaction time and circumstances are so different. That being very unattentive can kill you in both doesn't make the differences irrelevant.
> It's not splitting hairs if the expected reaction time and circumstances are so different.
No, the likelihood of incident is vastly lower in the air, but the required reaction time is not necessarily different and could easily be a lot lower, particularly if you are flying IFR. That's the whole point, much like in a car, a pilot must have eyes outside the cockpit.
Again, I'm not arguing that Tesla is right here about advertising, just that the two technologies are very similar in nature. The other big difference is the fact that pilots have to go through training and are tested on their understanding of the specific technology they control. Drivers, never have to be certified or trained on any specific vehicle.
If a pilot treats autopilot in a plane the way some people treat it in a Tesla, there would be a lot more fatalities in air travel, particularly in smaller aircraft with older technology.
Well, per the article, it is NOT allowed, at least in Germany. I have been kind of amazed how hands off the advertising and road safety regulators have been with Tesla so far, tho.
You're transposing airplane terminology with automobile terminology. In a car, the co-pilot is typically someone that sits in the passenger seat and functions only as an additional set of eyes. They can't take complete control over the vehicle from that spot. Cars, unlike airplanes, don't have two sets of full controls.
> You're transposing airplane terminology with automobile terminology.
Well yeah... transposing terminology is how an analogy is supposed to work. And I didn't pick the analogies - Tesla did and then you proposed another flying analogy!
> In a car, the co-pilot is typically someone that sits in the passenger seat and functions only as an additional set of eyes.
Do you mean a co-driver? Like in a rally car? I've never seen that called a 'co-pilot' before.
If you don't want to confuse with aeroplanes, why didn't you suggest 'co-driver'?
This comment seems to pretty much ignore the lingua franca of American drivers. Transposing terminology only works to the extent that the public actually understands how an airplane autopilot functions, which they don't. Plenty of people refer to their front seat passenger as a co-pilot or navigator, but I've never heard anyone call their passenger "co-driver".
The word literally everyone uses in that scenario is "navigate". Aside from rally drivers, nobody in the history of ever has used co-pilot in that scenario..
C'mon... you know that's not true. Maybe it's a regional thing or a geographic thing but I've lived in multiple US cities on both coasts and in the north and south and have had people use the term on many occasions. I even had a friend when I was growing up whose parents designated the role of "co-pilot" to the eldest when they were old enough to sit in the front seat.
"I need you to be my co-pilot and watch out for cops."
In my experience, you're correct. "Shotgun", "copilot" and "navigator" are all terms used interchangeably in my family. And urban dictionary has entry for 'co-pilot' from 2005 referring to the shotgun passenger.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that the general public has an inaccurate understanding of what airplane autopilots are capable of. The belief that modern airline pilots just push a button to turn on the plane then take a nap until the plane lands is widespread.
In naming their system after a system the public has a poor understanding of, Tesla is being misleading.
I agree that 'co-pilot' would also be a very misleading name.
I think they should avoid these sort of airplane analogies entirely and just describe features as they are. E.g. call lane assist "lane assist", call adaptive cruise control "adaptive cruise control." These are terms that reasonably convey what the systems do, without exploiting the public's general ignorance of how airplanes work.
Etymologically though, the co-pilot is pilot along with you and supports you, while the auto-pilot is a pilot by itself, independently (dare I say: autonomously).
"Autopilot" remains a very misleading term in the car context.
That’s my point: what happens to be the case in actual aviation is in some sense the opposite of the words‘ connotations. So, they’re very misleading terms. Which becomes problematic when marketing a powerful, but limited technology to the mass market.
It sure does get them a lot of attention though! My Jeep Cherokee has lane assist, adaptive cruise control, auto-parking, and crash detection (emergency braking) but they don’t get all this press about it.
But it doesn't automatically change lanes to follow routes or pass slow traffic. It doesn't take exits or navigate interchanges. It doesn't stop for stoplights. You can't drive it around a parking lot from your phone with nobody in the driver's seat.
What Autopilot offers is not "Full Self Driving", but don't pretend like the features on your Jeep are equivalent.
Maybe because it’s not the same ? I don’t own a Jeep but Lane assist typically means warning the user if you drive over the line. Tesla steers by itself and more.
Adaptive Cruise Control typically works only above a given speed. Tesla’s does work at low speed too.
At least Tesla cars seem to do more than the German cars I have driven before.
No that is lane departure warning. Lane assist, which almost every major manufacturer now offers, does the steering to keep you in your lane, and combines with adaptive cruise control to follow the car in front of you at a safe distance. This is almost universally available, and not specific to Tesla at all.
But is Lane Assist equivalent to Autosteer? I own a Model 3, which also has Lane Assist as a separate feature. I'd say it's a gentle nudge, while Autosteer has full control of the steering wheel (with a fairly high resistance).
Right, but by the same token there's also a reality distortion field where some Tesla owners believe that they have functionality that no-one else does.
I have had multiple people tell me about how revolutionary Tesla's blind spot warning system is, because it's adaptive to relative speeds, and not "just a dumb sensor like everyone else's".
Except even my entry level 2015 Audi has it. Car in your blind spot or just behind that's at your speed, or slower? Warning time is adjusted accordingly. Sit in traffic while cars whiz by you in the HOV lane? It accounts for the massive speed differential and alerts you far earlier.
But somehow at least some Tesla owners think that "no-one but Tesla does this".
Ah sorry, I was conflating two technologies (which are basically the same in my model). "Available LaneSense® Lane Departure Warning with Lane Keep Assist alerts you with visual and audible warnings during unintentional lane drifts and corrects your vehicle back into its lane."
I get a visual (and optional audio -- which I disabled) warning and a little steering wheel resistance to bring it back into the middle of the lane.
While I'm not sure what the minimum speed for adaptive cruise control is, but I use it in freeway stop & go traffic often.
Elon is a master of saying something that's technically correct, but sounds like something completely different, something that people want to believe and is completely untrue. So the car has "full self-driving capability" but is not actually self driving. The "basic functionality for L5 will be done this year" but not actual self driving [0]. Autopilot branding comes from the same strategy.
Elon became a master at low key commenting on features "soon to be released" and on the "verge of" but those comments are non binding. You know what those comments do? They become nudges for stonk buyers who want to get in on the deal early before the features are released & the stonk price goes higher. Yeah, Elon knows how to make potential investors go crazy with the "buy low and sell high" fomo; Just read his Twitter feed filled with carrots on the proverbial stick. Oh Elon, you cheeky, cheeky bastard :)
TTYl everybody, gotta go catch my robo taxi! opens Waymo on smartphone
PS: Never forget, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning were the original Tesla visionaries, Elon pretty much just bought his way into the vision...and pushed out Martin Eberhard.
I too have a Tesla vehicle, and I too agree with this German regulator's decision. You CAN'T climb from the driver's seat to the back seat and take a nap while the car is running. And that's because lane holding and adaptive cruise control are not reliable enough.
"Autopilot" is deceptive. In aviation, it's hard to engage an autopilot until you have a desired altitude, heading, and speed. And that's in the sky, far from guard rails and hopefully far from other traffic.
Oh, and by the way, before you do any of that you have to go to school, pass a rigorous practical test, get your hands on an airplane with autopilot, put fuel in it, get cleared for taxi, takeoff, climbout and cruise. There are some hurdles to jump over.
I wish they had used some other word to brand this stuff.
And, they've been saying "Level 5 this year" for a few years now. This is the kind of hype that got us the "AI Winter" back in the 1970s. Let's not go there again.
In aviation the auto-pilot is a relatively dumb machine that must be supervised, whereas a co-pilot is a human that could be trusted with full operations of the aircraft.
I find it rather droll that the common use of the words completely inverted the original meaning.
It likely inverted because vehicles don't come with two sets of steering instruments and therefore co-pilot/driver means something else in the driving world.
A co-driver in the driving world is either a Rally co-pilot who gives extremely detailed navigation instructions or someone who will literally get into the drivers seat to relieve the duties of the other driver on long road trips. It's a much more involved process than what an airplane autopilot can do.
Putting aside that modern plane autopilots can also navigate and land planes, the common definition of words is often more important than the technical definition. Especially when it comes to marketing to the general public. Terminology gets reused because it has a common usage and somebody wants to use that to frame their new & shiny product.
Ask a normal person what they think autopilot does and they'll say "the plane flys by itself". Using that for cars becomes "the car drives itself". Same for copilot, most people probably think they're there to help the pilot.
There is precedent for using the word auto-pilot[1], even in a plane the pilots are required to pay attention. It’s only the deceptive claims of the system’s ability that should be banned.
We should actually look at the court's reasoning (which I can't find referenced anywhere in the news articles). I doubt it singularly revolves around the interpretation of the word autopilot.
What I've realized is that Elon Musk simply puts less value on individual human lives than most others do. I don't mean that quite as harshly as it comes off, but it does seem that Elon likely believes the world would be a better place if all of the "dumbest" people were allowed to get themselves killed, allowing the rest of the human race to move forward. He may have a point, but I can't go down that path with him.
I was reading somewhere that a while back Germany classified "autopilot" to be at least Level 4, where's in case of emergency the car needs to be able to take and maintain control for a least X-time duration. Under those rules Tesla does not qualify, and neither do other manufacturers. However, if the rules are rules, it would be unfair that Tesla gets to advertise something that others aren't allowed to.
I didn't even realise that was all that the touted "Tesla Autopilot" did, so much was the hype around the internet. My 20k car does the same then (lane keeping + auto emergency braking).
This is how evolution works though, he described it himself. "There will be death, there will be some outcry, and [regulation will step in to move the evolution in the direction of absolute Good] ..."
The issue is one of definition. I don't know why people associate autopilot with a definition that isn't autopilot.
An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilot does not replace human operators. Instead, autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems) [0]
The "why" is not really relevant here, the general perception is. The fact is, if you say "autopilot" and "self driving capabilities" to most people, they will infer that the car does not need a driver to be operated safely, which is definitely not the case.
Because it is being sold to customers in a different context. Autopilot for planes does not need to take into account other planes (flight paths are separated) to the same degree as cars do (where other "obstacles" constantly zip next to you).
Sure. And during those hours of straight and level flight you can read a book or talk to the cabin crew or have a meal. Shouldn't do that in the car (yet).
Because what are you going to hit up there, cumulogranite? There's a whole industry devoted to "let's keep the planes out of each other's way; luckily the sky is huge".
That violates the sterile cockpit rule and is a HUGE no no. Pilots can only read a book or talk to cabin crew if the control of the aircraft is with the other human pilot in the cockpit. Someone has to be ready to take control of the aircraft at a moment's notice in the case of a sensor, software, or mechanical failure.
> That violates the sterile cockpit rule and is a HUGE no no. Pilots can only read a book or talk to cabin crew if the control of the aircraft is with the other human pilot in the cockpit.
Sterile cockpit does not seem to apply at cruising altitude though, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_Cockpit_Rule:
"The Sterile Cockpit Rule is a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulation stating that during critical phases of flight (normally below 10,000 feet (3,050 m)), only activities required for the safe operation of the aircraft may be carried out, and all non-essential activities in the cockpit are forbidden."
I hope you really don't think it's a good comparison. The level of effort and safety engineering that went into ILS Cat IIIb and Autoland is above and beyond what any automotive company is doing. Autoland is mandatory in certain conditions.
Perhaps, but I've already responded to you addressing this, in this thread. The public's ignorance must be considered; being "technically correct" isn't good enough if the "technically correct" statement is being made by somebody who has every reason to believe it will be misunderstood.
Requires total coordination and compliance from both stationary and moving parts of the system, and operator is supposed to take over immediately, continuing the manouevre, at the sign of any trouble?
Yeah. That's almost completely unlike a Tesla parking.
Good. These statements are lies. The company should face punishment in the US for saying that full self-driving is blocked by “regulatory approval” when they’re still an unknown number of years away from even being able to demo something they plan to ship.
They still don’t know if full self-driving is even possible at the required level of reliability with their current hardware suite. They could well be wrong and sitting on a scandal that will eclipse Theranos.
Which statements? This is what they say when you select the full self driving option when ordering a car:
>The currently enabled features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous. The activation and use of these features are 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 features evolve, your car will be continuously upgraded through over-the-air software updates.
That's merely speculation. Speculation and projections shouldn't be marketed as fact. The fact is that Tesla has no where near the capability of full self-driving now, and they aren't even remotely close. So claiming that the current hardware configuration will be enough seems foolishly optimistic at best and deceitful at worst. If they were very close to the milestone then perhaps claims like that would have more weight.
> It does. Poorly but it's gotten a lot better.
Look at the myriad of videos on YT demonstrating how spectacularly the car fails in doing this.
> A CEO making optimistic projections.
> Where are these lies?
There is a difference between making optimistic projections that are realistic and achievable based on current capabilities and data, and what Elon Musk has said with Tesla and FSD. Mark my words, he is just going to shift the goal-post, like he always does. And he is going to cheat customers out of thousands of dollars.
Agreed. Personally I think it depends on whether the projections are being made in good faith. Being wrong about something doesn't make you a liar unless you knew you were wrong when you made the statement in the first place.
When it gets there, regulatory approval will absolutely be a bottleneck to deployment. They don't say it is a current blocker.
And it won't come close to Theranos. Tesla makes real products that are class-leading. Even if Tesla can't reach level 5, it will be damn close and make driving 10-100x safer than just a human.
This is an absolute abuse of language. Can I say that my backyard nuclear fusion reactors are held back by regulatory approval? Surely when I finally get around to building a working one, I will have to jump through those pesky hoops.
Sure, but to even mention it now is disingenuous because they’re not even close to having a solution that their own engineering department would be willing to ship.
You and I have no idea whether it’s possible to get close to level 5 with their currently shipping hardware. Neither do they. And this stuff about being 10-100x safer than a human is pure fantasy right now. The industry is incredibly far away from that and there’s no evidence to suggest Tesla is years ahead of other teams working on the problem.
10x is within striking distance. Search for Autopilot reporting for the evidence. While it is biased towards highway miles, all the safety features augment the human driver. This will only get better with time.
Shipping is different from functional. You don't know what their engineering department thinks. Unless you are an insider, it is hard to guess the timeline, trajectory, or confidence levels.
>Unless you are an insider, it is hard to guess the timeline, trajectory, or confidence levels.
You realize that as a public company who is selling this product, they are obligated to spell this out to consumers and shareholders, right? The entire point is for it to be unambiguous.
You also need to figure out how many of those crashes are intentional suicides or a result of something else (such as someone having a heart attack and losing control of their car).
Basically, you would need to figure out how many of those accidents hits stationary objects on the highway that are the drivers fault. That's what Tesla cars have done. I don't think those stats are available.
And it won't come close to Theranos. Tesla makes real products that are class-leading.
Class-leading in what sense(s)?
Even if Tesla can't reach level 5, it will be damn close
But that's the problem with self-driving cars. Damn close isn't good enough. A miss is as good as a mile.
The problem with the self-driving/automation scale is that anything around levels 2-4 probably shouldn't be allowed on public roads, at least not yet.
Basic driver aids, where the driver is always fully engaged but the system can help to avoid mistakes, are proven to improve safety. This is what you get at level 1, and such technologies are already widespread in the industry.
If we can ever make a fully autonomous vehicle that can genuinely cope with any driving conditions, so you don't need any driver or controls in the vehicle any more, then obviously this has the potential to beat human drivers. This is level 5. But we don't know how to do this yet, and I have seen absolutely no evidence so far that anyone will know how to do it any time soon either.
In between, we have several variations where a human driver is required for some of the monitoring and control of the vehicle but not all. This has some horrible safety implications, particularly around the transitions between human- and vehicle-controlled modes of operation, and around creating a false sense of security for the human driver. The legal small print will probably say that they must remain fully alert and able to take over immediately at any time, but whether it is within human capability to actually do that effectively is an entirely different question.
and make driving 10-100x safer than just a human.
I've been driving for more than 25 years, and racked up hundreds of thousands of miles behind the wheel. I've never caused an accident, as far as I'm aware. I've never had a ticket. I try to be courteous to my fellow road users and give a comfortable ride to any passengers I have with me. What, in your opinion, would driving 10-100x safer than mine look like?
Humans certainly aren't perfect drivers and we have plenty of variation in ability. Things can go wrong, and I'm sure we'd all be happy to see fewer tragedies on our roads. But given the vast amounts of travel we undertake and how many of us do drive, autonomous vehicles will need an extremely good record -- far better than they have so far -- to justify the sort of claim you're making here.
>But that's the problem with self-driving cars. Damn close isn't good enough. A miss is as good as a mile
Maybe close is good enough. The problem as I see it that people usually don't seem to be focused on is that it's impossible for humans to monitor the situation while doing other stuff. You can only do that when you're far away from other things like in a plane or on a boat.
How can we simultaneously believe it's possible to instantly engage with driving and that people can't be trusted to text or make phone calls while driving?
How can we simultaneously believe it's possible to instantly engage with driving and that people can't be trusted to text or make phone calls while driving?
Exactly. Driving while distracted by phones is well-known to be very dangerous, which is why it's against the law in many places. Encouraging drivers who might need to take over in an emergency to zone out and focus on other activities seems unwise for the same reason. This is why the middle levels on the self-driving scale could be very dangerous.
Level 5 isn't the only safe level. Level 4 is safe too - e.g. a car that is fully capable of driving itself without human monitoring in slow stop and go traffic on a highway.
Levels 2 and 3 are the danger zone (and it worries me that car systems have gone ahead from level 1 to level 2, as having the human steer ensures driver attentiveness which is harder to maintain when the car does lane centering for you).
Level 5 isn't the only safe level. Level 4 is safe too
I agree that, by definition, this is necessarily true.
The catch I see is that the same definition is predicated on the vehicle being able to safely end the journey before entering any unsupported situation, without requiring any driver interaction. I'm not aware that we have any known strategy for solving that problem in the general case that would not achieve level 5 anyway.
I acknowledge that in specific situations like geofencing, where a vehicle does effectively operate at level 5 but only under predetermined conditions, that would be level 4 according to the scale. However, it's the ability to operate fully autonomously, albeit within those boundaries, that makes the vehicle safe in this scenario.
So, what happens if external conditions (for example, directions by a police officer, or some sort of road accident or severe weather) mean that the vehicle cannot safely remain within the area where it can operate autonomously? Unlike a vehicle with a human driver, it cannot adapt and safely leave that area either.
In short, unless perhaps we're also going to have a new set of rules and possibly some separated infrastructure for use with level 4 vehicles, I'm not sure they can ever fully match the safety of a human driver without necessarily reaching level 5.
Yes, exactly. Quite a few possibilities are being tested, as in they exist (maybe). It is quite literally being blocked by regulatory approval, with the testing for validity and safety being the approval process.
Nope. They're being tested for validity, meaning that their existence _as a treatment_ is under test. If it turns out they don't have an effect, will you say "we did have a cure for a moment: leeches; but it was rejected by the regulatory process, therefore bad bureaucrats for showing that it didn't work"?
Of course not, that doesn't make sense...if your goal is a cure. (If you're peddling hope, or just looking to make money off quack medicine, OTOH...)
> The Munich court agreed with the industry body’s assessment and banned Tesla Germany from including “full potential for autonomous driving” and “Autopilot inclusive” in its German advertising materials.
Fully autonomous driving won't be here for _at least_ half a decade so this judgement makes complete sense. Tesla was engaged in flase advertising.
"I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year.
"There are no fundamental challenges remaining.
"There are many small problems.
"And then there's the challenge of solving all those small problems and putting the whole system together."
Real-world testing was needed to uncover what would be a "long tail" of problems, he added."
This is so ridiculous. Of course the basic functionality is easy. The whole point of having intelligent drivers is dealing with the edge cases.
I think there's a missing financial product here. Something like an anti-index, where you buy "everything except X". Or better phrased, a way to get your bank to model you a dynamic index, where you can manually specify what is in and what is out.
Counterpoint: Elon Musk is the only (publicly visible) CEO who is seriously talking about going to Mars and direct interfacing between machines and humans and making tangible steps toward these futuristic goals.
His rockets are [mostly] not exploding, his cars are selling to [mostly] good reviews, and neuralink seems to be doing something too.
Perhaps his cult of personality is deserved because although he (along with basically the entire industry) overpromised on self driving timelines, nonetheless he does seem to be one of the few people with the practical vision to take us into a techno future.
Consider that this guy went from a payment processing app to a bonafide private rocket company and is democratizing space flight (and satellite internet!) in what, about a decade?
People love to hate the guy, I believe because he has brash and harbors some unpopular (callous but rational) opinions. Regardless, the respect that he gets from his fanboys is arguably in deserved, if you're the type to find inspiration in great people.
I don't think that anyone is arguing that Musk hasn't done big things. The problem is, he's about 50/50 on how often the big things he does are actually good. This is completely ignored by his fanboys, who ignore the bad, and laud the good to an extent that's entirely untethered from reality.
Take your post for example: You soften the word "lied" to "overpromised" and then slowly build to more and more absurd lavishing praise. "Practical vision" is a bit of a stretch, but "democratizing" is just not reality. And "if you're the type to find inspiration in great people"--just about everyone finds inspiration in great people, so that's not even saying anything, it's just trying to indirectly say Elon Musk is a great person.
SpaceX watchers call it "Elon Time". When Gwynne Shotwell gives you a time estimate, you can take it seriously (subject to regular engineering uncertainty). When Elon Musk gives you a time estimate, laugh it off and say "that's adorable" and recognize that it's mostly intended to keep investors happy and to put pressure on his engineers.
Yes and I would already have won before posting this reply. He said it would be here by now and then moved the timeline when it wasn't and he's done so more than once.
> "SEC, three letter acronym, middle word is Elon’s"
I seriously cannot understand how it is he gets away with all of his gimmicks. I mean, insulting federal government agencies is not a crime, but so many of things he does seem to be awfully close to a crime these agencies are supposed to prosecute for.
P.S.
Hmm... How comes his brilliant TSLA price evaluation of 2 months ago isn't cited? If anything, this should have been captured for future generations.
I realize this is a sarcastic comment, but I think this illustrates the problem.
Tesla vehicles cannot operate fully autonomous as-of now. Tesla has no idea if they'll need to replace or upgrade hardware either. They simply have not solved the problem yet, but want everyone to buy into the hype. And, the hype machine is working, unfortunately.
It's a scam. They're implying level 5 capability is just around the corner, when none of the current hardware will ever get past level 2. The current cameras can't even stay clean enough to keep autopilot reliable, it'd be pretty foolish to rely on them for any kind of real self-driving.
I love my car but the FSD debacle is embarassing. A lot of people are finding out that they'll never get anywhere near $8K value from their pre-purchase, and they bought a license that expires when they sell the car. I expect a class action lawsuit eventually (I'm surprised it hasn't happened already).
I mean looking at it it would be a good litmus test for how confident any automaker is in their tech, if the driver is still liable for crashes it implies the driver isn't fully out of the loop which is what I'd expect to be true if we're actually living up to the Autopilot name.
This is correct. The driver is responsible when their actions—in contravention of the road rules—cause an accident. If a vehicle is L5, the only "driver" is software. This software would need to attain a driver license just like a human would. Thus software becomes the vehicle's legal driver for the purpose of accountability in an accident.
Tesla is absolutely willing to take responsibility. You'll have to use Tesla as your car insurance provider, but it'll be cheaper than anyone else's insurance so that's fine.
Why would it be cheaper? Because they're insuring a driver that never gets angry, never gets distracted, doesn't drink and has high resolution dash cams pointing in every direction and capturing every moment. Even as the software is imperfect, it's going to have so many fewer accidents that the statistical risk of insuring the entire fleet is going to be minuscule compared to random humans.
I wonder why Tesla even needed to go that far to make the product sell. It is already a damn good car, a leader in its space. Also, Waymo which was closest at that time to Level 5 autonomy was far off from a product.
It’s never been about selling product, although it helps. The hype around autonomy and full self driving has fuelled their share price growth for some time.
Just selling cars alone does not justify Tesla’s current valuation (how could it? Making cars is a notoriously tricky and oftentimes unprofitable business).
It's not just for press, they directly make money selling "FSD" add-on for ever-increasing thousands of dollars which currently does a couple of gimmicks, but, trust him: will soon be driving you around effortlessly (and other passengers for $$ when you're not using it)
This is exactly how I see autopilot as well. You can debate the ethics of this approach and people will forever (I certainly think its been misleading the public), but it so far seems to have worked for Tesla and has arguably forced industry in the BEV direction sooner than otherwise might have.
The bigger issue (for Tesla at least) is what happens to Tesla if they don't deliver the promised autonomy now in a reasonable timescale. Company itself still isn't all that independently secure, yet to turn an _annual_ profit etc. It feels to me like the recent surge in their value is driven by over-enthusiastic investors hopeful that one day all those Model 3s on the road become autonomous revenue generating entities (driverless cabs etc), which I still can't personally foresee happening anytime soon.
I own a Model 3 - the cabin alone, while nice enough, wouldn't stand up to more than a few months "shared" use IMO, ignoring all the other technical barriers. If these things really become shared, we are going to have to seriously rethink cabin design and materials. The kind of cabin a private buyer expects when spending 35k plus on a car today simply isn't going to last a bunch of drunk kids autonomously Ubering, even more so when you consider a long range Model 3 is approx $50k today.
Despite my own misgivings about how autopilot is conveyed to users, I still find it to be a really competent auto steer system on highways, which of course is a relatively simple use case for these systems to excel in. Ford's decision to brand their competing system in the forthcoming Mustang Mach E "CoPilot" feels far more appropriate. Ford aren't as dependent on hype for short term survival though.
Nope, that's not profit. That's positive cash-flow. They are investing heavily into developing FSD.
I'm doubtful whether that racket will pay off. I guess they will have to pay more and more back to disillusioned buyers. It certainly hasn't turned into profit yet and rather looks like a massive risk.
I own a Tesla and love it. Having said that, “full self driving” is so far off what it actually does it’s actually not just a marketing issue, it is a safety issue.
I’ve had my Tesla drive towards an incoming lane, slam on the breaks in the middle of the highway with no cars in front of us, swerve into another lane with no warning, and probably other hiccups I don’t remember.
I know now I not only need to keep my hands on the wheel but I need to actively make sure the car doesn’t kill us. And I know the car warned me the feature required awareness, but its name made me think it was way more developed and safe than it actually is, and that disconnect will surely cause other drivers to trust it more than they should.
This is what bothers me the most about "Autopilot". Marketing aside I think that this level of automation is in an uncanny valley of danger. It isn't good enough to take full control, but it is good enough that the driver feels safe enough to get distracted.
I'm sure there are many of drivers who keep their full attention on the road, but in general humans are bad at focusing on tedious things that they don't feel are necessary.
When I test drove a Tesla for a weekend my opinion of the Autopilot was the same as the car's owner: "It drives like a learner driver". Just like the nervous parent teaching their teenager to drive, this is not a relaxing experience.
However, the speed-adaptive cruise control is the best I've ever experienced. It maintains the set speed exactly, slows down for corners automatically, and follows the car in front as if there was a steel rod connecting the two vehicles.
Using the cruise control in the Tesla was some of the most relaxing long-distance driving I've ever done in my life...
His remarks talking about how Level 5 is fundamentally solved should be investigated by the FTC. I think he is purposefully and fraudulently saying that self-driving will be available to get more people to pay the $8000 for the self-driving software "before it goes up". They should make sure his statements are actually true otherwise he would be fined severely because to me, self-driving is decades away still.
When are we going to address the elephant in the room?
Advertising regulators aren't able to regulate, or arre taking too long to regulate, and we're leaving this to platforms.
When it should be done by a regulator, and fines should be applied to both the advertiser and the media owner - BECAUSE YES, media owners/platforms have the responsibility and should abide by law. I'm looking at Google/Facebook.
If platforms can't do it, too bad on them, pay up.
False advertising is alive and well, and it's encouraged. People are being defrauded and we're whistling.
Whether or not a camera-based solution will work reliably in the future is not the issue at hand here.
The issue is the vast, vast gap between the current capability of Autopilot vs. what it is marketed as, and how this false advertising can literally kill the average consumer.
> Whether or not a camera-based solution will work reliably in the future is not the issue at hand here.
Actually, it is precisely the issue at hand:
From the ruling:
> The Munich court agreed with the industry body’s assessment and banned Tesla Germany from including “full potential for autonomous driving”.... in its German advertising materials.
So Tesla are not allowed to advertise that it has the potential to do it in the future.
sort of, but it is the gap that is the issue. Today, tesla seems so far away from that goal that this amounts to false advertising. it's so far that one can actually doubt that they will achieve it in our lifetime.
whether or not you think tesla is close, just drive a tesla on a narrow road in Germany.
As a Tesla owner, and regardless of the presentation, I have serious doubt that Tesla will be able to solve all the edge cases. Machine learning needs data, and with my family in the car, I don't want it to make a decision whether or not to break, while heading in ongoing traffic. I want the car to know.
Right now, 99% reasonable self-driving doesn't bother me because I am always in control, and I already know where the car is going to mess up and get ready to take control ahead of time. It works, and it works really well.
But the different between 100% and the 99% is all the difference that matters, and it's colossal.
I hope they can figure this out, but I don't know how. I hope they do.
2. Some company will succeed at L5 FSD, eventually. Just because it can be done does not mean that Tesla will do it. Tesla has been selling Vaporware for a decade, and they are investing a lot of resources in trying to get FSD to work with the hardware they sold customers 5 years ago to save face, while right now we don't know, and many do not believe, that such hardware suffices. Companies that have not tied themselves to such promises are much more flexible from a technology point-of-view to make quicker progress.
For all we know, next year somebody could ship a smaller, better, and cheaper lidar systems, that might give every manufacturer willing to use them a huge advantage over Tesla. Tesla would be in a very tight spot to incorporate such technology into their existing customer base.
I don't think we will see L5 in the next 10-20 years and a lot of things can happen in such a time-frame technology wise.
2024. Cathie Wood's bull case for everything going right for Tesla is 24k/share in 2024. She also breaks out everything else, shows what happens to the share price if autonomy doesn't happen, or if they don't keep building gigafactories, etc.
Everything going right for Tesla would have been Elon's 2015 prediction of "in two years" coming true in 2017/18 ;)
Do you have a link that explains why the predictions now will be better? I haven't seen much to suggest it, but also honestly kinda stopped paying attention.
Yeah, but that's how every single thing that Elon Musk does is.
I followed all those failures at SpaceX before they landed the first booster, or the Model 3 intro, or fairing catches, or the original Model S. These things all took a lot longer than you'd expect from his comments, but they all happened!
Google has a much larger and better funded team that still doesnt seem close. Karpathy is no doubt smart but google has like 10 karpathys for every one TESLA has.
I skimmed the video. It's doing what I expected, knocking down a goofy strawman of LIDAR-only while ignoring the obvious camera/LIDAR sensor fusion. The depth map Tesla is getting from stereoscopic vision is pretty shoddy; sensor fusion with LIDAR is the obvious solution. The reason Telsa resists this is because they want to market their cars as having all the requisite hardware and acknowledging the usefulness of LIDAR wouldn't let them market their cars that way profitably.
I also think that being so cynical about Tesla's motives is pretty short-sighted from an investment perspective. In the long-term, they don't win if they don't get this right.
Their radar/ultrasound has awful angular resolution. That's where LIDAR excels.
This is why Telsa cars run into trucks parked across the street. Their stereoscopic depth map is shoddy and the radar or ultrasound has awful angular resolution that can't tell the difference between an object parked next to the street and one parked in the middle of the street.
> "In the long-term, they don't win if they don't get this right."
They've been claiming they're on the cusp of getting it right in the short-term for years. So far, my cynicism has served me well.
It's unsurprising that Germany isn't as tolerant of "growth hack" advertising as the US. Many Tesla owners are smart enough to realize that their cars can't actually drive themselves. But those few who buy into the marketing and ignore the fine print pose a risk to themselves and the drivers around them.
I wonder how many people complaining about Tesla's marketing actually have a Tesla. The car clearly makes you acknowledge that the driver is responsible before using any Autopilot/FSD capability, and if you bought the car with the expectation that it didn't , you have a return period to get your money back in full. It doesn't matter if they said it would take you to the moon and back. If you test drive or buy it and don't like it then just return it: no harm done.
It does in Germany (as the ruling in question indicates). False advertising here is very much considered 'harm done' and no way to do business. Lying to the customer until she takes the product out of the box is in no way, shape or form how you operate in this country. (well I guess it was for wirecard which is embarassing enough)
I do not want to live somewhere where I have to order ten things, three are fake, three I have to sent back, another few break and the last thing works.
Even in the US false advertising like OP suggests is considered fraudulent and against the law. There are just too many Musk fanboys around here that don't seem to know how the law works.
> It doesn't matter if they said it would take you to the moon and back. If you test drive or buy it and don't like it then just return it: no harm done.
Under German law it seems that it does, in fact, matter.
It sounds like you don't believe in the concept of false advertising at all. Telling the truth after you buy the thing doesn't absolve you of the initial fraud. To my mind it exacerbates it, because it demonstrates that you know that your advertising is fraudulent.
I think some of the comments here are specific to the German market, and others are more general. My original comment was "in general" and not specific to the German market.
False advertising may be wrong, but it might not always be criminal. Is "Fat Free" really fat free....? If we held politicians to the same standard there would be a lot more of them in jail.
Ceveat Emptor, but at least Tesla does let you return it, minus the inconvenience, which you might deserve for not reading up on it before (I did when I bought mine and knew exactly what Autopilot "meant").
> False advertising may be wrong, but it might not always be criminal
Here, you got it exactly right. I am delighted to see that Germany makes sure that wrongdoing (at least this particular case) is a crime there, and I can only wish other markets make these two words more synonymous as well. I mean, this is pretty much exactly what law is supposed to do.
I get your point, and to a small degree agree with you. The Tesla owners I know understand the limits of the technology and drive reasonably. I'm considering buying a Tesla, knowing the limits of the technology myself. However there are two big ugly facts which bug the hell out of me...
- Their advertising is misleading to most consumers. Whether informed people or existing owners know what the product is capable of doesn't matter, they are advertising in a misleading way.
> no harm done.
It is clear that a subset of Tesla drivers puts too much faith in the effectiveness of Tesla's autopilot. Even though these drivers acknowledged and accepted the risks, it's clear they believe they can trust their Tesla to keep them safe even while they are not watching the road. Tesla's marketing clearly exacerbates this. The fact that Tesla's do the right thing 99% of the time reinforces that marketing message... up until that 0.01% situation occurs, then lots of harm done
So, on that basis, all false advertising should be legal provided the manufacture includes a ‘yeah, we made that up, this is actually a toaster, not a time machine’ pamphlet?
That’s an old image: I couldn’t find the current warning screen on Google Images, but it’s even more stark and serious about the driver’s role w.r.t. autopilot.
I’m actually confused by the phrase “ads”, because my understanding is that Tesla has an advertising budget of $0. I assume they’re referring to marketing materials (pamphlets, websites, etc).
The channel used to perform the advertisement and how expensive that channel is are completely irrelevant.
For example, if Tesla claims in their website that their cars can drive themselves and they can't, that's false advertising and illegal in Germany. If Tesla organizes a concert in some city somewhere, and the singer states that Tesla's cars can drive themselves and they can't, that's false advertisement.
If Tesla distributes stickers to their car owners that claim that Tesla's can drive themselves, and their car owners stick them in public bathrooms where people can see them, that is, as well, illegal advertisement, even if Tesla did not stick those stickers themselves.
The law basically requires all companies selling products in Germany to be honest about what their products can and cannot do. This is good for consumers, and good for companies doing business there, because everybody is forced to play by the same rules.
The definition of being honest and what communication means etc. are all super loose, so most companies don't risk lying about their products. There are dozens of consumer protection organizations that'll sue a company for you due to false advertisement. The main consequences for the sued company are usually damages if there are any, and mainly the fines designed to discourage false advertisement. Most of the money ends up on the tax payers accounts, so consumers are really encouraged to report these times of crimes.
But that stuff is particularly relevant for non-owners as well and thus must be judged primarily through the eyes of non-owners. It doesn't matter whether Tesla pays anyone for screen time or whatever to get their message to receptive eyeballs - these eyeballs are those of non-owners which Tesla wants to convert to Tesla owners, that's the point.
The ban in question relates to any kind of marketing material, whether it is on Tesla's website or part of advertisement billboards.
Advertising is a pre-purchase concern however, and requires companies to not be deceptive. "You'll figure out what our term really meant after you buy it" isn't much of a defense.
Due to recent hype we decided to re-visit the state of Tesla. Our local Tesla seller told us a week ago (after our test drive) that FSD was awesome and that once the legislation in EU allowed it (bad guys in EU blocking the progress) and fullyfull-FSD was available, the price of the car would increase as much as 50% and that it was a great investment. Having some related tech knowledge we saw how utopian that still was and our test drive had convinced us self-driving was still at least 10 years away... It is false advertising and most younger tech enthusiasts may not see all the challenges involved in camera-based self-driving!
FSD is very cool. But Musk also parrots the idea that Teslas are investments, which makes no sense to me. Why would my $50k Model Y be worth $75k in 10 years, when a brand-new Model Y in 10 years would also cost $50k (assuming prices stay constant)?
The Full Self Driving package is actually quite good. With the exception of going “hands free”, this is an accurate video on the current state of FSD: https://youtu.be/tlThdr3O5Qo
Another huge difference: the current FSD feature set will not make turns at intersections as demonstrated in this video. It now (as of recently) can be configured to automatically stop at appropriate traffic signage (stop signs, red/yellow lights, not sure about yields). However, it won't make a left or right turn.
Some caveats: sometimes it will still want to stop at a green light, in my experience, and requires a manual override; and, if you're the foremost car in your lane at a traffic light, it won't begin moving on its own. I assume the same is true for stop signs.
I guess that video is intended to be a preview of what the current software could do with all the driver interaction safety switches off (no required hands on wheel, no requirement to confirm safety through intersections/turns, etc) and all the internal feature flags turned on (particularly: enabling turns and enabling Navigate on Autopilot on non-freeways).
This is merely a demonstration of what it is capable of in ideal conditions.
Perhaps the driving engine was manually pre-trained for this particular stretch of road. Maybe what we see in the video is one successful run out of 100s that have been tried. We do not know the details. In my opinion it is reasonable to assume that it was a publicity stunt. Maybe if you try the same thing on a neighboring road two hours later, it would fail 95% of the time.
So far, the customers cannot use this level of autonomy. We can only speculate why but I believe that if it was usable in real world scenarios, Tesla would have enabled it. Since Tesla does not enable it and instead focuses on low hanging fruits like stopping on red lights, it appears that the technology is not ready yet. I think that is the main issue with Tesla's advertising about it. Not the name they use for it.
I can imagine that $8000 option of "full self driving" sells better than $8000 option of "restricted driving assistance limited to ideal weather and traffic conditions hopefully available in a few years", for instance. But at the same time I believe that using misleading product names or descriptions in order to increase the product's perceived value should not be tolerated.
Sorry but 3-lane highway with constant flow of cars is very different to some Europe 2-lane highways with aggressive drivers changing lanes frequently. Also when shooting ads, you can do 50 trips and select only couple of "successful" ones where the driver intervention was not necessary. But the final video then does not reflect the real-life average experience.
Why not call Full Self Driving: "Future Self Driving". This way you don't need to make the claim. People will make the inference from FSD. If they can change FSD to mean. "Future Self Driving" Perhaps this will help them make it very clear what the FSD can do and cannot do. amiright?
Good. This kind of advertising is misleading and was not only posing a risk for individuals but also for the sector of autonomous driving as a whole.
I always feared that one more Tesla autopilot death might cause the public to generally distrust any company working in the field.
Exactly! That's why I am glad EU is very cautious in approving self-driving solutions. Yes, we need full self-driving and it doesn't look like an impossible task to achieve eventually. But it has to be done step by step, ensuring it behaves consistent and that the current limitations are well-understood by drivers. Bad reputation of some self-driving implementations could cause damage to the whole self-driving industry which would be bad.
I am wondering if a regular person when is thinking about autopilot term in a car is thinking at movies and not at aircrafts. In SciFi/spy movies autopilot means the ship or car is piloting itself and you can do something else.
Sure, they probably do. But more problematic is what does an average person think when they read "Full Self-Driving Capability" and "Includes the Full Self Driving Computer"?
Yeah, but the "autopilot" claim will spawn a large numbers of fanboys with dictionaries and definition trying to defend Tesla's marketing department , the terms you mentioned will mostly get the mention of some text message you have to click OK on when you start using the car.
Auto-pilot is disingenuous at best, it should be labelled "driving assist" or something similar. I remember that one person in florida[1] where they died by having their tesla on "auto-pilot" and a tractor trailer truck collided and killed them while they were watching Harry Potter and not driving with their attention on the road. Would this person have died if the Auto-pilot feature was named something different? Who can say as people do dumb things on the road, but it could lead tesla to future lawsuits from similar events.
> All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.
From Tesla.com/autopilot in February of 2017. Absolutely shameful.
Great. I hope they bring charges against Tesla for causing deaths that were completely avoidable.
In fact we keep talking about AI ethics and so on. But we seem to have missed this very basic key ethical point: when Silicon Valley VC funded madness via AI/ML crap is pushed at breakneck speeds via these metal torpedoes, who is taking accountability?
It's really amazing that Elon is worried about AI overlords when a 'simple' autopilot is not engineered to ethical standards. (Same goes for people like Andrej Karpathy and co who should take the blame and publicly apologize/resign).
The fact that they cannot disambiguate between a white truck and the sky color that killed an innocent driver is a starting point.
I realize the drivers probably should be paying attention etc: but when Tesla falsely advertises (or worse by the toddler antics of Elon, portrays the optics of L5 automation); and drivers believe such advertisements then of course they wouldn't know that the car is much worse than promised.
> An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilot does not replace human operators. Instead, autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems).
This is 100% exactly what Tesla is selling. Instead of constant manual control you focus on the broader operations of your car.
This argument is boring (because even if you were right, that's not what the public understands) but let's pretend it is not: so are you actually right?
It's debatable.
To fly a plane safely, you have to prioritize in the following order: aviate, navigate, communicate.
An autopilot takes care of the aviate part (under some conditions) - and even bits of navigate in some case, but this is probably an easier problem actually. It can warn you when it is disengaging, so you have to be available, but you don't have to monitor actively at all time and with your full focus (as-if you fly manually) that it is working correctly and be able to disengage it yourself.
Tesla "autopilot" does not take care of the aviate equivalent. It is believed so imperfect that you are supposed to stay extremely vigilant at all time, keep your hands on the wheel, look at the road as-if you were actually fully manually driving, and disengage it yourself if it attempts to kill you (or somebody else).
My own judgment is that it is not an autopilot, by the most common parallel possible (with the autopilot of a plane). And again, that's probably not even very important. If most of the public believe a car autopilot is supposed not only to "aviate"-equivalent perfectly, but maybe even navigate on top of that, then Tesla, not even having reached the first part fully, should be just careful a little and chose some other wording.
They don't, because they are completely playing on that. I found it even more than dishonest; I found it unethical.
Not sure if that quote supports your argument. Tesla states:
"Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment." [0]
This sounds very different from "allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations". I have never heard of pilots having their hand and feet on the stick and paddles in case the airplane make an incorrect maneuver.
The section of that document on "Deciding When To Use the FD/Autopilot" suggests using it for "distracting tasks."
The FAA states that "the FD/autopilot is used to control basic aircraft movement while the pilot focuses attention on tasks such as reviewing charts," which seems quite different from Tesla's autopilot which is "intended for use with a fully attentive driver."
The FAA guideline is "ready to fly manually" -> key word "manual" from the Latin manus meaning "hand". Tesla is going a step further by requiring hands-on contact at all times, which makes this system a MORE restrictive autopilot.
Contrary to what has been posted in other comments, pilots don't just get up and start walking around the aircraft. There must be one pilot always ready to take IMMEDIATE control of the aircraft.
I hate when arguments devolve into semantics, which is the premise of this whole thread. But for the sake of discussing semantics, the use of the word "autopilot" is technically accurate. Its vernacular understanding is not. But this was also the case with cruise control. See this case where a driver set a cruise control on her RV and got up to make a cup of tea:
Being semantically right does not help against technically colliding. I can hook up an avian autopilot to a car to keep my bearing. While this is semantically a car with an autopilot, the contraption is useless on a road.
When I talk about autopilots, I'm talking about a system that allows me to disengage from steering. Literally by employing a self-steerer. The Tesla "Autopilot" does not permit this because I still have to closely monitor the trajectory at every moment. As such it does not fulfil the main expectation I have of an autopilot. What are your expectations of an autopilot?
> Literally by employing a self-steerer. The Tesla Autopilot does not permit this
This is not how Tesla autopilot works.
If you are genuinely asking my opinion, I would very much like to see this technology in the driver seat of more vehicles on the road as soon as possible. Where distracted drivers kill 9 people PER DAY in the US [0], if an autopilot system (speaking about the current one available today) is anything less than that, then it is well worth it.
Autopilots are reliable in aviation because they are simple. An autopilot for road steering cannot be that simple. The term transfers badly.
It is a false dilemma to say that we need autopilots to avoid road deaths. Because assistive tech is already successfully being used for exactly this.
We want self-driving cars to avoid the drudgery of driving. But the current batch of implementations needs very controlled conditions (Waymo), or close human supervision (Tesla).
Trucking jobs are a little more vulnerable because theoretically highway driving to a depot or drop off is easier than city driving. Or there's an older idea of making convoy trucks where multiple semis follow one human piloted truck.
Good. Not that it will stop Tesla from the next round of hype, from the most recent news we can expect level 5 autonomous driving soon. Maybe they'll call it 'autopilot'? Who will they blame when it doesn't work?
> Hardware für autonomes Fahren
Jedes neue Model S verfügt standardmäßig über modernste Hardware, um die Autopilot-Funktionalität schon heute und vollkommen autonomes Fahren in der Zukunft zu ermöglichen. Software-Updates werden diese Funktionalität im Laufe der Zeit weiter ausbauen und verbessern.
> Die Autopilot-Funktionalität ermöglicht dem Fahrzeug automatisches Lenken, Beschleunigen und Bremsen auf seiner Spur. Die Funktionalität für autonomes Fahren bietet zusätzliche Merkmale und erweitert
bestehende Funktionen, um Ihrem Fahrzeug weitere Fähigkeiten zu verleihen.
Looks like a pretty close translation of the same thing on the US site:
> Full Self-Driving Hardware
Every new Model S comes standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future—through software updates designed to improve functionality over time.
> Autopilot enables your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within
its lane. Full Self-Driving Capability introduces additional features and improves
existing functionality to make your car more capable over time including:
That web site clearly advertises a Tesla car. Hence it is an advertisement.
Maybe you meant to say "TV commercial"? The German law doesn't make that distinction though, which means that blatantly false claims about capabilities of a product are just as illegal on the products' website as they are in a products' TV commercial.
That thing you saw on tv that came on during the show you like? Simply a short, informative documentary my company has produced. No advertising here, no sir!
In general, for the purposes of regulating advertisement, everything a company says about a product is advertisement. Whether they put it on their website or a billboard is largely irrelevant.
That's hypocrisy from the German court. This is 100% a push from German car industry lobby. Note that the case wasn't started from consumer complaints, it was instead started by an industrial group.
I bet all Tesla buyers are aware about what they are actually buying. They can return the car and get a refund if they are not pleased with it.
This ban is bullshit considering that many ads in many industries are deceptive, including healthcare. Tesla is punished only because it is a direct competitor of German cars.
> You can’t advertise prescription-only medicines (POMs) to the general public but you can promote them to healthcare professionals and others who can prescribe or supply the product.
The advertising to prescribers is fairly strictly regulated, though; you certainly couldn’t put ‘we anticipate this malaria drug will cure COVID-19’, say.
"Probiotic" term has been banned on ads and packages. Those products are now sold as "Ultrabiotic" or other variants. Same product, same impact on consumer, but legal.
German is a huge car manufactoring country. Wonder if they feel a bit of a threat from Tesla on certain points and wish to control their inner markets.
On the other hand, Tesla doesn't come close to driving an Audi, BMW or MB. Neither tech-wise. It might be the choice for the nerd or the socalled envitonmentalist, but for people that don't have time for reloading batteries all the time, it's a toy car.
This is good, even though it could be a possible result of VW/BMW/Mercedes lobbying efforts. Human life safety is the top priority in any industry in Germany. Regulations are keeping Germany a little behind in the innovation race but, at the end, it is all worth it if people are not dying everyday because of failed tech.
> Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk said this month the electric car manufacturer was close to making its cars capable of automated driving without any need for driver input, so-called Level 5 autonomy.
I suspect we will remain “close to” autonomous cars for several decades.
I think / hope that Elon Musk wanted everyone to be crystal clear about the end goal from the outset. Go on public record about the ambition in a way that will push himself and his employees. Use language to drive vision and outcome.
I agree that presenting a vision and facing it with reality of what is currently possible is great because it may motivate people to try to achieve something better than they would normally think of.
But misrepresenting the reality as if it already was reflecting the vision, when in fact it is not, bears in my opinion many signs of fraud.
For example, consider someone who has a "vision of wine" and decides to sell bottles of grape juice which are supposed to represent that vision. They can have honest intention to fill those bottles with wine at some point in time. But as far as they in fact sell the grape juice, I think that it is reasonable to require them to clearly present it as such.
They should call it "DriveAssist" because thats what it is instead of layering autonomy with Autopilot (for that matter, even Copilot carries similar underlying semantics).
I think it’s poor for “autopilot.” That word has a long history. It really is the best existing word to use.
But a fair ruling for “autonomous.” And I think the concerns HN people have with “autopilot” are in part due to the fact that the terms have not been properly contrasted by Tesla. Being more careful with “autonomous” and “self-driving” would help a lot with the confusion with the word “autopilot.”
Tesla's not only calling their stuff "autopilot", but also "full self driving", which is probably the wrong way to describe their current implementation.
Its a bit annoying to see people so fixated on the word "autopilot" when its clear that "full self driving" is complete and utter vaporware, a $5000 lie sold by the company.
The reason many people buy the full self driving package is so they can experience the latest state of the art autonomous driving software as Tesla develops it, and Tesla continues to deliver on that promise. Smart summon and stopping for traffic control were both added recently as software updates. Even more recently they’ve improved the lane keeping performance on curvy roads, which is something nobody really mentions. Many of the problems people talk about like Tesla’s swerving out of the lane have been greatly improved in recent updates.
There’s also the auto lane changes on the highway, which is really quite impressive to watch. Your car will automatically pass slow cars, move out of the passing lane when traffic clears up, and change lanes to follow your gps navigation. Not sure how you can call that vaporware.
>>> (Question from Twitter): Update on the coast to coast autopilot demo?
>> Elon: Still on for end of year. Just software limited. Any Tesla car with HW2 (all cars built since Oct last year) will be able to do this.
May, 2017. Elon bragging that "coast-to-coast" autonomous driving will be available by end of 2017. Straight up vaporware, a lie, no where close to done. We still have "Full Self Driving" cars crashing into the sides of trucks in 2020.
Selling $5000 features to paying customers that don't work is immoral, and the very definition of vaporware. Its blatant false advertisement.
When a customer crashes into a police car and dies, due to misunderstanding what "full-self driving" means, the blood is on Telsa's hands. When a customer is beheaded by a stationary truck in the middle of the road, because the "Full Self Driving" Tesla cannot see stopped vehicles, it is blood on the hands of Tesla.
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Leave the speculation to stockholders and bondholders. They're rewarded with speculation. Customers literally die if they use these features wrong, and have already died over this issue.
The features do work though, navigate on autopilot is great. Sure there is a potential for misuse but that’s true for any car, cars are just inherently dangerous.
Overall Tesla’s have great safety ratings. Can you show me hard data that autopilot makes the car measurably less safe? If anything I would guess that it makes good drivers better.
Not according to the German courts they don't. That's why Tesla's marketing was just banned there. Its not "full self driving", not by any definition of the word.
If you don't like it, take it up with the German courts. Despite being from America, I think the Germans did the right thing here.
Call it what it is: automated lane assist. Automated lane centering. Etc. etc. Don't lie about it. That's where the line is drawn.
A lie requires the company to believe it is not true and yet say it anyway. Elon is pretty delusional (at least that he often has crazily optimistic ideas about what is and is not feasible); he’s also paranoid about AI becoming self-aware and destroying humanity; it’s reasonable to suggest that Elon believed his own projection, here.
> That word has a long history. It really is the best existing word to use.
Yeah except it doesn't seem to mean what you think it means
> equipment on an aircraft or ship to make it continue to travel in the correct direction by itself without needing a person to control it
Whenever a crash happened where the car went straight into a static thing, or failed to see splitting lanes and crashed in the wall, Tesla clearly clarified that their system was "needing a person to control it" at all time.
So no, Tesla driving help are not an autopilot, they're piloting help or copilot or whatever variant of that you want.
If anything this clarifies to people who thought that teslas could self-drive that this is incorrect and that their ads are deceptive. Tesla is pretty well known now so it's not exactly a positive look. Someone who planned to buy a Tesla based on its marketing might now consider one of the other EVs on the horizon.
This was probably the most brilliant advertising scheme of all times. Tesla is not just an electric car, it's the self driving car brand - even if it doesn't actually do that.
I believe banning this kind of advertisement will only cement Tesla's image as the "Self Driving Car company" as no other company would be able to replicate it. People will continue to post memes about self driving Teslas but no one else would be able to claim anything like that up until they actually make a self driving car, and if they do it before Tesla, when people hear about it they will say "Oh cool!, So just like a Tesla?".
> This was probably the most brilliant advertising scheme of all times. Tesla is not just an electric car, it's the self driving car brand - even if it doesn't actually do that.
Acting with total disregard for the safety of your users and violating laws around false advertising is not "brilliant." It wasn't "brilliant" when Bill Gates browbeat manufacturers to bundle Internet Explorer with Windows, even if he made a lot of money. It wasn't "brilliant" when Mark Zuckerberg broke the law to snoop on users phones and sell their data to advertisers, even if he used some of that money to buy a private island.
And if I distract my opponent and steal their bishop, I don't become a brilliant chess player if I win the match. Like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Gates, I would just be a massive jerk.
Or it backfires when people realize their newly purchased, expensive car doesn't do what they thought it could do. Tesla is not managing expectations well.
Do regulators have an idea of what test a car needs to pass to be able to claim certain things? It there were levels of tests and passing each gave you better rating, that might give everyone an idea of there the system is. But most of the talks about this type of stuff seems to be gut feeling rating. Someone will say they think some car/software is good, other's will say it's no where close and the conversation ends there.
It is also possible that updates can make software worse than it was before right? Say a software does pass some test. But how do you know it's still as good or better after some update?
Is the problem we know for sure if has specific issues or it is more that we have no idea where it might fail while randomly driving? Are all this problems considered solvable in short term?
> Do regulators have an idea of what test a car needs to pass to be able to claim certain things?
What "regulators"? There's a lot of different regulatory bodies in different countries and almost none of them has any detailed rules about self-driving-like systems.
Constant claims about "regulators" is Tesla's smoke and mirrors - it's another part of their deceiving marketing. For an outsider, just reading headlines, they make you think that tech is almost ready, "pending regulatory approval".
>Do regulators have an idea of what test a car needs to pass to be able to claim certain things? It there were levels of tests and passing each gave you better rating, that might give everyone an idea of there the system is.
The 'five levels' of autonomy are fairly well established by now. Full autonomy generally is defined as driving capability that does not involve human attention, that is to say it is what the name suggests, the vehicle drives itself, you could ship it to the consumer without a steering wheel.
Likely can't ship. The Vienna Convention on Road Traffic prohibits fully driverless cars [1], I assume the US has something similar. Cruise is still waiting for their waiver to have cars without a steering wheel and that's not even for consumers.
As far as I know there are no standardized tests for how well these systems work.
Euro NCAP has recently started doing tests on autonomous emergency braking systems, testing both stopping for objects and pedestrians. But that doesn't extend to general adaptive cruise control and lane steering systems.
And yes, software updates can and have made Autopilot behavior worse in some cases.
I think the difference you're getting at has a lot to do with the approach of US vs European regulators. The US is far more "check the box" focused whereas Europe tends to look to the spirit of compliance and the underlying goals of the regulation(s).
I wonder how much BMW/Daimler/Volkswagen had to do with this.
It is a common practice for technology companies to offer features that will only become available after a certain time period. It actually takes time and money to build these features.
I'm sure the fact that BMW/Daimler/VW have completely botched their EV/Autonomous vehicle strategy and the automotive industry is Germany's cash cow has nothing at all to do with the court's decision.
Disclosure: I do not any automotive companies stock, and I am a dual US/German citizen.
> I'm sure the fact that BMW/Daimler/VW have completely botched their EV/Autonomous vehicle strategy and the automotive industry is Germany's cash cow has nothing at all to do with the court's decision.
What are you implying? That the German Court felt pressured by the Auto Lobby to take this decision? That the judges were biased? Bribed? Vague statements like this are very unhelpful, because you can't argue against them but they try to make a point anyway.
> That the German Court felt pressured by the Auto Lobby to take this decision?
Probably that + the constituents. When a very large chunk of your constituents are employed by local car manufacturing companies, letting those companies fail and lose to a foreign competitor not only loses money for those companies, it also puts a threat of unemployment on your voting population.
Lobbying from local car companies + your voting population's employment dependent on success of those local car companies is a very strong combination.
EDIT: to clarify, I am aware that judges in Germany are not elected, I wasn't implying that judges would support the ban just get re-elected. I meant it to say that the judge could see it not only as some lobbying effort, but also as a move to protect interests of the working people they are serving.
But in Germany courts have basically no relationship to "their constituents" because judges aren't elected but appointed (lifetime appointment). Of course you might argue that promotion chances are higher if your decisions are "popular", however such a small decision as in the current case which hase basically not had any media attention in Germany will most likely not have any impact on the deciding judges career.
Edit: after reviewing it, there hase been some media attention on this case in Germany as well.
I am aware they are not elected, I wasn't implying that judges would do it just get re-elected. I meant it to say that the judge could see it not only as some lobbying effort, but also as a move to protect interests of the working people they are serving.
I am implying that governments (including court systems) often make decisions directly and indirectly to protect domestic companies at the expense of foreign companies.
Whether the decision was influenced by German car makers, I think the decision is correct. The car is not fully autonomous and requires your hands on the wheel all the times.
Announcing features to be delivered later is common. Charging up front for those features with no delivery date is a bit less common.
In any case, should it not be made clear what the current capabilities of the car and system are as part of the advertising and purchase process?
That seems to be the issue that the court is discussing, not the premise that Tesla is pre-selling future autonomous capabilities that have not yet been delivered.
"The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself"
They also sell a package literally named "Full Self-Driving Capability"
Yes, they qualify it in smaller print, in the manual, on the website, etc. But the number of Youtube videos of people showing their car "driving itself" shows that there's definitely an implication that the car can almost drive itself and is constantly learning and getting better, reinforced by things said by Elon over the years.
It's not blatantly incorrect, but it does all combine to create a picture than can be misleading for someone who doesn't dig into the details. And misleading marketing is what is being discussed by the court.
Right, the video is a tech demo of FSD. Directly above - the first words on the page - are:
"All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future" (emphasis mine)
> They also sell a package literally named "Full Self-Driving Capability"
> an implication that the car can almost drive itself and is constantly learning and getting better
The car can almost drive itself, with driver supervision. On-ramp to off-ramp autopilot including lane changes and exits is real today. The car is constantly learning and getting better, we get neural network updates pushed to us that improve AP performance roughly monthly.
Frankly your arguments prove the opposite of your point -- I know what AP does, you know what AP does; where are all these plebs that are supposedly being hoodwinked?
