A company with such an awful engineering ethic is pushing for mass-market self-driving cars. Given what happened after the Uber incident, I can only hope those idiots at Tesla don't ruin it for all of the players.
Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
351–360 of 589 posts
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#352This reads like something out of a cyberpunk story...
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why Linux instead of an RTOS? Same reason SpaceX eschews radiation-hardened processors for redundant off-the-shelf cores: supplier competition. There aren't many RTOS engineers on the market; there are many Linux engineers. Once they got over the cost of hardening the kernel, SpaceX found itself at a scaling advantage versus RTOS-based competitors.
> There aren't many RTOS engineers on the market; there are many Linux engineers. There aren't many Linux engineers who have experience with resource-constrained systems or real-time programming requirements.
What about people who make video games? There is a great video on YouTube called "Software powering Falcon 9 & Dragon - Simply Explained" which goes more into this topic.
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
Banks can reverse transactions if they want to. Tesla's cavalier attitude towards manufacturing has yielded a 14% first pass through rate on the Model 3 line (which is abysmal and may bankrupt the company along with declining M3 demand) vs. the industry standard of ~80% FPT rate. Source - https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-hit-model-3-target-by-... We're at the point in the Tesla story similar to that of 2008 wher…
I don't think the rework rate is a big deal for the customer. Ultimately manufacturing is about increasing the yield rate so that costs are lowered, because rework is expensive. But if you can make money with lots of manual rework on every product, it's no big deal. Something to improve next quarter. I have so many electronic devices, from cheap to expensive, that have some passive component manually bodged on somewh…
Rework dramatically slows production.
Tesla cannot get the rest of their booked-sale cash for an undelivered car.
But they must pay all the fixed production costs anyway. In cash, creditors at this point will be getting squirrelly.
Therefore: slowness in production is the fast-track to a possibly fatal cash crunch.
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#355I have a Model S, and Tesla pushes buggy firmware to it last week. It causes the entire instrument cluster, including the speedometer, to disappear periodically while driving. Tesla knows about the bug and it’s apparently a “high priority”. It’s not entirely clear to me that they are capable of rolling back the update.
I join the III family this coming week. I am really interested in how well the updates are managed as the idea of cratering my car isn't something anyone is keen about. can you as an owner delay updates?
Yeah, you can choose to postpone an update. The car may occasionally prompt you again, but I don't think it will force you to install it if you really don't want to. I've never postponed for more than a day or two though.
I have a Model 3 and so far haven't had any problems with updates. Installed the most recent one (2018.32.2) last night.
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> Apparently Tesla's autopilot also runs Linux, which seems like a huge accident waiting to happen (pun intended). Not to worry, the tight control loops the require determinism all run on Arduino boards.
Not sure if you’re trolling or not. Well played
What would be particularly bad about running a real time application like that on an Arduino? Isn't that what they're made for?
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it were that easy to setup tech-based infrastructure, we would have had positive train control implemented years ago.
Rio Tinto have spent more than a decade on autonomous freight trains. On tracks they own. With no other traffic than theirs. And unlimited funding.
What is Rio Tinto? I'm curious because it is the name of a local city here in Porto.
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#358Tesla can SSH into a customer's car? What could possibly go wrong?
More than anything else, this makes the SSH keys a very high-value target. I may trust Tesla not to crash my car or violate my privacy, but I also have to trust them to sufficiently secure the SSH keys from bad actors who would (or sell them on the black market where they almost certainly would arrive in malevolent and capable hands). The latter is what scares me.
Sometimes, when I consider the quality of the software/systems engineering work that we do, I wonder how everything is not crashing and burning all the time.
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree completely. Hard real time is possible with Linux, we use it for sub millisecond control of Traffic Lights. The only issue we ever hit is proving that the code running is the stuff we expected to run.
On a tangent, but still germane to the thread: Why arent their efforts to create "autonomous only" traffic managment scenarios, where people drive into a given, known area, and the area then takes control of managing the traffic and vehicles. Such that you relinquish control of the vehicle to that area's control system, with your destination stated and then your vehicle is managed accordingly. For example, a parking…
Airport baggage systems are mostly automated.
Re: Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Rio Tinto have spent more than a decade on autonomous freight trains. On tracks they own. With no other traffic than theirs. And unlimited funding.
What is Rio Tinto? I'm curious because it is the name of a local city here in Porto.
One of the world's largest mining companies.