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Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#131

Post by toomuchtodo »

danaliv wrote: post #107
jniedrauer wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this accurately considers how the term "autopilot" is actually used in aviation. Autopilot can mean anything from "hold a gyro estimated heading but not pitch or speed" to "maintain airspeed and follow the localizer down a glide slope while cross checking GPS and ILS." > if it needs you to intercede there is pretty much no emergency in which you wouldn't have a few seconds to react. Traffic avoidance is…

You're absolutely right, but the issue isn't what an aircraft autopilot actually is. It's what the word "autopilot" evokes in the minds of the non-pilot public. To them, autopilot means fully automated with no oversight. ("Planes fly themselves!" and other such nonsense.)

Please don’t force marketing to conform to the lowest common denominator.

People have some responsibility to educate themselves about the products they’re using.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#132

Post by Shivetya »

TM3 owner, car has EAP. I have the option to buy FSD for two thousand but haven't jumped. I not only don't believe it but I don't have a need for it. Now it might be useful down the road for resale.

That being said, two thoughts.

First, if they want me to buy it then demo it in passive mode in my car. That is, there is space where the current speed limit is shown. Use that space and below that to show what signs and signals it has seen recently and the order of importance. Currently it does not see speed limit signs and it that is wholly FSD territory then Tesla is overcharging compared to other systems.

Second, just at a stand still cars around me jump and I am not sure it sees stationary cars when I am driving. The best example I have is a two lane road through a subdivision I usually take, the outer lane is a long turning lane but people tend to stop there to let kids out for the water park. I cannot recall my car showing a car when someone is loading/unloading kids but it does see cars moving in that lane when I over take them. So is it just going by too fast for the stopped car in the lane over to register? It knows its a lane. I am not sure but I will wait to see how it develops.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#133

Post by [deleted] »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #131
danaliv wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right, but the issue isn't what an aircraft autopilot actually is. It's what the word "autopilot" evokes in the minds of the non-pilot public. To them, autopilot means fully automated with no oversight. ("Planes fly themselves!" and other such nonsense.)

Please don’t force marketing to conform to the lowest common denominator. People have some responsibility to educate themselves about the products they’re using.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#135

Post by kalleboo »

mbreese wrote: post #95
zaroth wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife’s car has a similar long list of “features” (Mercedes DISTRONIC package with active lane keeping) and it is nothing even remotely comparable to driving my TM3 with autopilot. Those cars do not steer themselves. The difference between having to steer the car and not having to steer the car is extreme. It totally changes the way you drive. Instead of looking down your lane and keeping the car centered, you scan…

And my wife’s Acura will completely steer itself (with a much shorter list of features), but requires your hands on the wheel. It works without your hands, but it gets testy if you don’t move the wheel slightly every 15 seconds. It’s significantly nicer to drive long stretches with this system, but I can’t imagine doing it without your hands on the wheel. When the sensors fail (weather or poor lane markings), you nee…

I had the same experience with Subaru's EyeSight system. I drive very rarely (you can count the number of times I drive in a year on one hand) so after a day of driving I'm usually completely beat. But after a day of highway driving with the EyeSight lane keeping/adaptive cruise control I was remarkably less fatigued.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#136

Post by FireBeyond »

leesec wrote: post #116
FireBeyond wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least Tesla has an actual product you can buy? What self driving product do they have? Elon's "Oh yeah, we will have full self driving coast to coast in [8 months]" is horseshit to the point of "How is he allowed to say this on an earnings call?" Other competitors, widely recognized to be ahead of Tesla estimate 5, more likely 10 YEARS. Coast to coast? Your Tesla will navigate a Pittsburgh winter storm on poor r…

How are you going to say Tesla doesn't have a product and then go on to list a bunch of worse products as if they are better? Tesla has effectively incorporated Lane Keep Assist/Automatic Cruise Control into a single product called Autopilot that has vastly better software than other similar products. Simply put, if other companies had a product that would have allowed for billions of miles to be driven hands free fe…

Vastly better? I'm not sure the last time my car did an uncommanded lane change on a well painted road with good ambient light. Yet, I can find multiple videos of Teslas doing exactly that.

I'm not sure the last time (actually I am - it has not) my car treated a roundabout with a shallow center median as "entirely optional, follow the circle or go straight over", but I can find multiple videos of Teslas doing that.

The two cars I've driven that are modern (2017 and 2018 Audi and Jaguars) also didn't hit a big white pickup truck in broad daylight in parking mode, but I've seen Teslas doing that, too.

So, how are we defining "bunch of worse products"? "Less advanced, but better tested"? If that's the case, I think I'll take that.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#137

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

justapassenger wrote: post #105
devy wrote: post #64

The top editor promoted comment[1] on the article summed up very well. The attention problem is well known in engineering. It is very hard to get a human to concentrate on something that will turn up good more than 99% of the time, even when there's serious or fatal consequences of failure. Trains are the classic example - tracks are amost always clear, signals are almost always correct which means you have to devise…

Sadly, Silicon Valley companies don't think that best practices of engineering apply to them. It's all about disruption, both with products and safety.

"We're going to apply well known engineering to an existing problem" doesn't sell VCs as much as "We're going to disrupt things and launch satellites illegally"

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#138

Post by sliken »

Retric wrote: post #126
pbreit wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a huge problem with the supposed goalpost movement. I am wondering though if drivers need to keep a fairly close eye on things what the true benefit of self-driving is in near future.

It’s more obvious is you break it into smaller jumps. Cruse control requires you to pay close attention etc, but you can avoid making a lot of minor speed corrections, which makes long drives less taxing. Adaptive cruse control takes this one step further again reducing cognitive load. Lane following might not seem like much, but represents a huge number of tiny course corrections. I could go on, but even if you can’…

Sure, question is, does that lower level of stress make it harder to pay attention enough to save your life when the 0.1% event happens?

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#139

Post by ksherlock »

ufmace wrote: post #100
CPLX wrote: post #29

It's funny how much people have danced around all this, including this article, but what Musk has done with his statements on self-driving capabilities is called lying .

Lying seems to have a strong moral component in English that doesn't seem to be evident here. Most people would say that a proper "lie" involves intentionally trying to convince somebody of something that you know is not true, usually for personal gain. If Musk honestly believes that he can do it, then I guess it isn't technically a lie, even if most people who know the industry say he would have to be delusional to…

Ahh, the old George Costanza defense.

Re: Tesla has a self-driving strategy other companies abandoned years ago

#140

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

sliken wrote: post #128
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the first snowstorm hits it never ceases to surprise me how the dynamics of the road change - not just the friction, but the number of lanes and where they go all change as people give their best guess, which over the next 2000 cards becomes codified. If you have self-driving cars following the old lanes you're going to have accidents.

Dunno, I think of the people that follow other cars as sheep. In my subaru I can pick any lane I like, and often the one with the least travel has the best traction. With snow tires and a subaru I can handle just about any conditions up to where the snow lifts up the car off the tires.... which I've had happen. Digging compressed snow out from under a car is no fun. So often I see a giant line of cars behind the plow…

It has nothing to do with the traction, it's the fact that people are now travelling across the road at different angles than they were before, if you're trying to stay in the regular lane, you're going to be fighting people moving across the lane.
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