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All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

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Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#41

> Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency breaking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control. Not sure what to make of this. New buyers are getting less than current owners now, but expected to get much more later? I can't think of a prece…

>I can't think of a precedent for this as a marketing approach in modern consumer products.

Apple iOS ;) the iPhone 7 had (don't know if it has now) some camera features (autofocus and raw related) disabled that were present on the 6/6s because of software limitations.

This isn't that uncommon many times you can have a new product which comes with some features disabled/not working because the software did not catch up to the hardware yet for what ever reason.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#42

Teslas with new hardware will temporarily lack certain features currently available on Teslas with first-generation Autopilot hardware, including some standard safety features such as automatic emergency breaking, collision warning, lane holding and active cruise control Right, so they are actually announcing that their new cars now have less automation capabilities. I can't keep track with all the "autopilot" hardwa…

When did they say the first generation cars with autopilot would be "fully autonomous soon"?

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#43
post #13

Is this a formal model-year revision/refresh, or just a midyear 'minor revision' thing (despite being a major revision?) Are old models retrofittable? Will this hurt the resale value of existing Teslas that have the last generation hardware? Is there an industry-standard (or governmental) safety test that these autonomous systems have to go through to evaluate their efficacy and performance in different scenarios? (e…

The old models actually had pretty weak sensors which indirectly caused the death of that one guy who used autopilot and t-boned a trailer.

> Eight surround cameras provide 360 degree visibility around the car at up to 250 meters of range.

Previously that was just one camera mounted in front of the rear view mirror

> Twelve updated ultrasonic sensors complement this vision, allowing for detection of both hard and soft objects at nearly twice the distance of the prior system.

Same number as before except instead of 16' of range it will be 32' of range.

> A forward-facing radar with enhanced processing provides additional data about the world on a redundant wavelength, capable of seeing through heavy rain, fog, dust and even the car ahead.

same number and position of radar sensors as before but possibly a beefed up type for inclement weather. I don't know what the prior one was capable of.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware will be standard, but almost certainly you'll pay extra to enable it. (If they do it the same as similar features in the past, there will be a discount to enable it at order, or you can do it later at a slight premium.)

That'll be an interesting court case: the first time a fatality is the result of unactivated safety features on a car that's fully capable of preventing a collision.

Tesla has already said that the Model 3's safety features will come standard, though it wouldn't preclude such a lawsuit against the owner if the features weren't activated.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#46

How interesting. So up-coming Tesla drivers temporarily won't get fancy features. For a time, new Tesla buyers again become early adopters. But unlike traditional early adopters, who take a trade-off (on price, or features, or polish) for being first, these adopters are promised the features when they are ready. The nay-saying around Tesla is immense, even in these early HN comments. Obviously there's some risk here,…

I think it's great that they're taking the big risks needed to move the industry forward, and not letting the lawyers run the company. But some of the risks they're taking are just completely stupid and unnecessary, such as calling their assisted cruise control "Autopilot." That's like waving the proverbial cape at the proverbial bull.

I see where you're coming from, but think that's a calculated risk. From a PR perspective it generates buzz, sounds ambitious, and reflects their ambition.

If you ask anybody today, "what company is interested in self-driving cars?" Their answer is going to be Tesla. They're not gonna say Apple, or Ford or Volvo or Mercedes or Mobileye or Intel. They're gonna point straight to Tesla.

A big part of that is their "inaccurate" word choice. From a PR perspective, the name was a solid gold decision.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#47
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But not software and they don't even have confidence in their current implementation. I think it's quite forward thinking for them to include the hardware when it's ready, knowing they can update the software in the future. And I'd prefer them to be conservative in rolling out the software for an automobile. Not something I'd want to see beta tested on the highway.

>Not something I'd want to see beta tested on the highway. It's not like the previous-gen cars aren't on the highway at the moment. Or has "autopilot" been deactivated in the meanwhile? I understand their step to add better sensors for the future (even though it seems difficult without LIDAR). But disabling autopilot for new cars with better sensors and keeping it enabled for older ones seems like a strange step.

i'm guessing that the data is just plain too different (probably no more mobileye sensors, for example) and not worth adapting to the older ML models (which itself would require extensive testing) when the new system is going to end up with different ML models anyways.

[edit] Tesla previously hired Jim Keller (chip designer) into the autopilot team. considering the kinds of things he may be working on, i'd be surprised if the differences in either the sensors or GPUs aren't significant.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#48
> To make sense of all of this data, a new onboard computer with more than 40 times the computing power of the previous generation runs the new Tesla-developed neural net for vision, sonar and radar processing software.

40 times the performance of a Tegra 3 is not particularly impressive.

Also, I sincerely hope that this new faster computer doesn't also run a web browser.

Re: All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware

#50
post #22

Tesla may also want to consider better copyediting of press releases: "emergency breaking." Yeah, it happens. But it looks bad.

Musk is a notorious grammar Nazi, so he may go after whomever is responsible. They could be in trouble.

As would you now be if you worked for him! "Whom" is the objective case of "who", and correctly replaces e.g. "him", not "he".
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