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

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321–330 of 1001 posts

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

#321
post #91

I think what people are missing here is an understanding of how these systems are tested and deployed at scale. While I have no involvement with Tesla I do have first-hand knowledge of similar programs at tier 1 automotive suppliers. The suppliers provide (or are looking to provide) an electronics suite to car manufacturers. The car manufacturers want the system to be safe lest they be sued out of existence. One part…

Of course, Tesla acts like it owns that data. Their privacy policy permits them to monitor your vehicle unless you opt out. But there's no reason you can't download that data yourself, if you can figure out how to do so. Does anybody make an antenna-level middle box for GSM phones? Something you hook into the antenna cable as a firewall/monitor?

Does this mean that Tesla owners could band together and sell all this massively valuable data to Google?

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

#322
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going play devil's advocate here. In the future, would Telsa use these data for other purposes? ie after analysing the data, it finds that my driving behaviour risk and has a higher chance of accident. It could trigger high insurance premiums or restriction on which car I can purchase etc.

Let me play the devil's advocate here as well :) What exactly is the problem with punishing people for risky driving? Or rather, let them pay a corresponding premium to cover for the (statistically expected) higher damages they will cause? Keep in mind that driving behaviour is something the user has full control of, in contrast to e.g. disabilities, for which of course no insurance premium should be paid. I actually…

I suppose it's a similar argument as answering the question "why shouldn't sicker people pay way higher insurance premiums instead of driving up the average cost". For health insurance I think the pool of insured people to protect against black swan type problems is reasonable and ethical (it protects people with birth defects etc.). However for car insurances I feel like this argument doesn't hold as your driving behavior is very much in your control.

The interesting question is if it might actually be a smart strategic move to announce such a use of data. It's a bit counterintuitive as that would limit your customer pool. However I think there are benefits to limiting your customer pool to more "positive" cases. Let's say Tesla would announce that they'd collect data on reckless driving, warn the drivers and upon ignoring the warnings a couple of times inform insurers about it. That would probably result in less reckless drivers buying their cars which might actually not be horrible since that would also reduce the number of accidents etc. The big issue is of course that it would violate all reasonable privacy laws I can think of (I guess they could make it opt in).

[all assuming non-automated driving]

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

#323
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think americans are going to get left behind in this technology. It's not just the crumbling infrastructure, it's the lack of public transport options. I expect there will be plenty of cities around the world that will be adopting self-driving car technology long before the US does.

Surely lack of mass transit would be a boon to self-driving cars. Public transportation makes owning a car — self-driving or otherwise — less necessary.

Also, self driving cars can follow eachother and communicate closely. A group of cars could be like a train going along the road. Thus, much less roadway space is needed and valuable real estate brought back into use.

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

#324
post #52

Are the cars going to look like Google's and Uber's self driving cars, then? I never cared that much about self driving capabilities - I like to drive myself - and I certainly don't want to shell out $35,000 for a car with what looks like a food processor or a police emergency light mounted on the rooftop. IMHO, one of the best features of Tesla has been that they actually made EVs look like traditional cars. It migh…

Have you seen the e-Golf? I'm pretty sure they stole that design from somewhere. Hard to believe but it happens to look like a regular... golf. I'm sure they will get in trouble with VW. /s

http://i.auto-bild.de/ir_img/1/1/6/2/7/2/7/VW-E-Golf-1200x80...

There is also the Kia Soul EV and Skoda Octavia Green E Line which basically are just their regular line up with the major difference being that they are EVs.

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

#325
post #145

If you go to the order page of the Model S, it says for the "Full Self-Driving Hardware": >Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year. Interesting decision.

Note that they say “using a self-driving Tesla”, not “using a Tesla”. Perhaps it means that they don't want you to use the Tesla in its self-driving mode for revenue purposes but it's still fine to use the Tesla for such purposes if you drive it without using the self-driving features.

Sure. Or else you would see no Uber Teslas right now.

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

#326

I get that tech companies want self-driving cars really bad because they smell billions of dollars in "disruption" but no matter how good AI gets, I have a suspicion it won't actually do better than a decent human driver can do. It's not about processing speed, it's about experience and reflexes, which granted, not everyone has. Let's see a self-driving car win a Formula 1 race--and even that controlled racetrack env…

>In terms of safety, people will still lose their lives, they will just die from different kinds of car accidents than the kinds we have now If self driving cars kill 20 thousand people a year, it would still be a major improvement. 30 thousand people die every year from human drivers.

That's not how it works. Imagine you had a medical device that had a high rate of operator-error that would result in serious injury or death. Now imagine someone made a fully automatic device performing the same function, but which would kill or injure a person half the time a manual operator would. Would such a device be allowed on the market? Of course not. The first time a machine did any damage to a human it would be recalled and would disappear off the market, no matter how much better it is than a manually operated machine.

If an automatic car kills a person through software error(and I would argue it has already happened with Tesla) the public backlash will be severe, even if those errors happen much less often than human mistakes in manual cars.

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

#327
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going play devil's advocate here. In the future, would Telsa use these data for other purposes? ie after analysing the data, it finds that my driving behaviour risk and has a higher chance of accident. It could trigger high insurance premiums or restriction on which car I can purchase etc.

Let me play the devil's advocate here as well :) What exactly is the problem with punishing people for risky driving? Or rather, let them pay a corresponding premium to cover for the (statistically expected) higher damages they will cause? Keep in mind that driving behaviour is something the user has full control of, in contrast to e.g. disabilities, for which of course no insurance premium should be paid. I actually…

I 100% agree that more dangerous drivers should pay a higher premium, but there needs to be a fair, equal, transparent way to determine what dangerous is. Between law enforcement agencies, speed cameras and red light cameras, we have established well-tested legal frameworks which determine whether a driver is dangerous or not.

We we don't have are any legal or moral frameworks for passive, always-on methods of observation. Until we do, we shouldn't be letting private companies arbitrarily determine whether a driver is dangerous or not.

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

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps, but it is not uncommon for example for chip manufacturers to specifically say their parts cannot be used in safety systems without their express written authorization. They are certainly confident their chips work, and they sell them by the bucket full, but if someone dies as a result of using their product that their chips are in, they don't want to be liable. They use those disclaimers to shift liability t…

There is a funny example of such a disclaimer in the Java license agreement, it says: "You acknowledge that Software is not designed, licensed or intended for use in the design, construction, operation or maintenance of any nuclear facility"

Similar restraint is on iTunes.

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

#329
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am going play devil's advocate here. In the future, would Telsa use these data for other purposes? ie after analysing the data, it finds that my driving behaviour risk and has a higher chance of accident. It could trigger high insurance premiums or restriction on which car I can purchase etc.

Let me play the devil's advocate here as well :) What exactly is the problem with punishing people for risky driving? Or rather, let them pay a corresponding premium to cover for the (statistically expected) higher damages they will cause? Keep in mind that driving behaviour is something the user has full control of, in contrast to e.g. disabilities, for which of course no insurance premium should be paid. I actually…

The problem is that statistics isn't that accurate a branch of math. For example, drivers who drive faster are statistically more accident prone. I'd wager, though, that Lewis Hamilton driving faster is less accident prone than me driving slower, something that'll never show up in any statistics based result set.

Statistics are obviously useful, but they are a big gun that sometimes points towards feet.

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

#330
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 'final designs' of other companies' EVs still look ridiculous. Volt, Leaf, i8, none of them look like regular cars like Teslas do.

'Regular cars' look like they do because of design limitations imposed by things like fuel tanks, engines, and gearboxes.

I think the fact that it needs to have Wheels and be aerodynamic as possible while having a decent amount of interior space has more to do with it. And even without a motor you still need a crumple zone for safety.
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