All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware • Hacker News Board

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

#851

Post by patrickg_zill » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:30 PM UTC

visarga wrote: post #423

patrickg_zill wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually we also have very sophisticated direction finding sound processing, and tactile sensors on the wheel and seat plus proprioceptors (a trade secret that no at tesla has been able to reproduce). This allows for e.g. driving over snow and being able to process the sound of the snow as it is driven over as a hint to the rest of the driving system.

There's no reason why a microphone and an accelerometer would be hard to connect as input features. The car can make use of the same hints, and most probably make better use than even humans by learning to distinguish more informative patterns.

I agree it "could" happen - but nothing is shipping yet.

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

#852

Post by drzaiusapelord » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #616

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or whats the maintenance schedule for these things? Suddenly we have tons of complexity to worry about. How will this affect the used market where repairs are usually DIY? Is the used market for autonomous cars pretty much dead because 3rd party mechanics will have no idea how to service these things? I imagine so. What does that do to resale value? I've read about how hard it is to sell an aging Prius because the ba…

This has been a "potential problem" lobbied against advances in car technology since... the beginning of car technology. Obviously you need different (and many could argue "more difficult to learn") skills compared to mechanical repair. But that's always been the direction car repair has headed, from the beginning. Ideally, there's a fair amount of (reliable) self-diagnosis. If you merely have to replace a camera tha…

Its a little different now that you're just not replacing static parts. Sure you can replace a complex fuel controller and such in a modern car which means plugging a box into some wires, but what about something that is net enabled, requires some subscription (or active warranty) and is constantly being updated and monitored by Tesla HQ? Where do you get a new central computer for an old Tesla? How to you get it back onto HQ? Will you be allowed to?

Its a bit like building a PC vs having a smartphone, which is mostly run by the OS supplier and carrier. The former is doable but the latter is way too locked down for the DIY crowd. The phone-ifcation of all things is concerning from many perspectives.

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

#853

Post by dghughes » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

aerovistae wrote: post #617

hipshaker wrote: post #570

Isn't this hackernews?? So many "but what if this and that and this..." & "and yeah let's see if it can handle X & Y" This is the iPhone 1 of self-driving cars! That's akin to saying Apple should have waited to release their phone until iPhone 7 "because of this & that & this..." Don't we have to start somewhere ?? Aren't there supposed to be a big user base here who understands that it's an evolutionary process - we…

I laughed out loud when I googled "tsla" after watching the video and the top headline in the news section of the google results was "Analyst doubts the new move by Tesla Motors." Clicking on the article for humor's value, I continued to read: > However, Edmunds.com, Inc. analyst Jessica Caldwell questions the value of purchasing a self-driving car before regulations catch up. Caldwell said that, meanwhile, competito…

>It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down.

I see the opposite Musk seems to be the new Steve Jobs people are crazy over him and seem to think he can do no wrong.

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

#854

Post by Alupis » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

fitzroy wrote: post #795

aerovistae wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I laughed out loud when I googled "tsla" after watching the video and the top headline in the news section of the google results was "Analyst doubts the new move by Tesla Motors." Clicking on the article for humor's value, I continued to read: > However, Edmunds.com, Inc. analyst Jessica Caldwell questions the value of purchasing a self-driving car before regulations catch up. Caldwell said that, meanwhile, competito…

No surprise since Edmunds makes money off of everyone except Tesla (no advertising, no dealers, no comparison shopping that converts to lead gen). "How does Edmunds make money? Edmunds sells advertising to marketers who have contextually relevant messages for site visitors. Also, car-shoppers who visit Edmunds have the opportunity to request price quotes from dealers and providers of insurance, financing and extended…

Or, how about Edmunds observes car resell values and is predicting whatever Tesla puts in cars today, will not maintain it's resell value (relative to other vehicles in it's class) tomorrow since this market aspect is going to move rapidly before it "gets it right".

The resell value may be less than a comparable "normal" car, and there's the risk that some government regulation makes all the technology in a Tesla today obsolete or illegal to use in the future.

(and I believe Tesla quietly killed their promise to artificially inflate resell values by footing the bill themselves a while back)

Some people naturally won't care about resell value - of course, others will.

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

#855

Post by maherbeg » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:38 PM UTC

rsync wrote: post #590

kriro wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

"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"." I don't think that is a good analogy ... many "sicker" people have played no role in their sickness which may not be related to behavior or decisions. A better analogy would be: Why don't mountain climbers and scuba divers[1] pay higher insurance rates ?…

Doesn't this happen already with some classes though? Smokers vs non-smokers?

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

#856

Post by simplemath » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

dschiptsov wrote: post #798

aerovistae wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I laughed out loud when I googled "tsla" after watching the video and the top headline in the news section of the google results was "Analyst doubts the new move by Tesla Motors." Clicking on the article for humor's value, I continued to read: > However, Edmunds.com, Inc. analyst Jessica Caldwell questions the value of purchasing a self-driving car before regulations catch up. Caldwell said that, meanwhile, competito…

Time to re-read Atlas Shrugged? Remember the complains about Colorado?) They will always say such things.

Never is a good time to re-read Rand.

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

#857

Post by Retric » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:40 PM UTC

devy wrote: post #674

frik wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's staggering that Tesla don't use LIDAR at all. Sure LIDAR is more expensive but the data quality is very stable and good. Cameras won't work that well or at all in night or when the sun rays blend in morning / evening or in bad weather conditions like heavy rain or snow. All other self-driving cars I know of have at least a small LIDAR beside several other types of sensors.

LIDAR's high cost[1] is prohibiting it from being commercialized. This article below was dated 2015 so price might have actually gone down a bit - but still a few orders of magnitude higher than cheap ultrasonic sensors and cameras. This is actually common problem not only for Tesla. We won't see LIDAR in production cars (you will certainly see them in prototype cars as usual) until its cost drastically reduced [1] h…

It's more than just high cost, LIDAR has issues with rain making it questionable in real world conditions. AKA, if you need some fallback, just use that fallback.

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

#858

Post by grecy » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:45 PM UTC

bosdev wrote: post #735

grecy wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately this is really common on HN nowadays. What I find really interesting about Tesla (and SpaceX and HyperLoop) criticism is that people think it will fail for what it doesn't do , instead of focusing on what it does do. What they don't realize is that all products in history that got hugely successful didn't do a ton of stuff initially. They just did some things really well. Early washing machines were noi…

To be fair, being enthusiastic and positive about the future isn't that useful of a comment. There is only one way to say 'Elon's vision is right and it will happen,' but there are countless, interesting, ways to point out how it might fail. So after the first few excited comments come in, often the only novel thing to contribute is a counter point. This doesn't mean that the majority of people aren't optimistic abou…

>To be fair, being enthusiastic and positive about the future isn't that useful of a comment. .... but there are countless, interesting, ways to point out how it might fail

Sure, but there is more than one way to say it:

"I live in the mountains of Virginia and this will never work here with the snow, therefore it's crap, therefore it will fail!!!!"

OR

"It's going to be really hard for them to solve the problem of heavy snow. I wonder if they'll use or . I wonder if they've teamed up with to research . I think the best approach would be x,y,z and I read the Google are using a,b,c".

etc.

I mean, we're talking about a multi-billon dollar company trying to push forward - OF COURSE there are tons of hard parts. Pointing them out it not useful - thinking about (and working on) how to solve them is what HN should be about.

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

#859

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:46 PM UTC

woodpanel wrote: post #755

aerovistae wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I laughed out loud when I googled "tsla" after watching the video and the top headline in the news section of the google results was "Analyst doubts the new move by Tesla Motors." Clicking on the article for humor's value, I continued to read: > However, Edmunds.com, Inc. analyst Jessica Caldwell questions the value of purchasing a self-driving car before regulations catch up. Caldwell said that, meanwhile, competito…

> It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. As much as I anticipate more cool stuff from Tesla, one could say the same about akin-ness of people to find everything that Tesla does "super innovative" and "revolutionary" while the same features already existed in other cars for quite some time. I actually laughed out loud when I saw the Headline of this submission "Tesla…

I hear you, but this move is >actually< super innovative and revolutionary, and has potential to catapult Tesla's self driving team way ahead of the pack.

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

#860

Post by WalterSear » Thu, Oct 20, 2016, 5:47 PM UTC

falconed wrote: post #792

woodpanel wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just hilarious the contortions of logic people will go to in order to put Musk down. As much as I anticipate more cool stuff from Tesla, one could say the same about akin-ness of people to find everything that Tesla does "super innovative" and "revolutionary" while the same features already existed in other cars for quite some time. I actually laughed out loud when I saw the Headline of this submission "Tesla…

I think the interesting point here is that the hardware is available on all Teslas. The functionality shown in the video could be available on everyone's Tesla by installing an update. What they showed may be similar to what's been demonstrated by other companies in the past, but the potential for broad availability is novel.

It's about gathering training data. Any benefits for the users is secondary to that.