Live data from Hacker News

German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

mobile.reuters.com

211–220 of 632 posts

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is true that highly knowledgeable people know that Musk is an idiot conman Sorry to nitpick but highly knowledgeable people will surely never claim Musk is an idiot anything. He is definitely a genius in several ways. For something so technologically advanced as self-driving cars, his stuttering style seems to convey more sincerity to the general public than Steve Job's glib speech ever would

Musk isn't an idiot, he's overseen some great things at the companies he runs, and I hope the companies he's running continue pushing technology forward. But Musk as a human isn't so great. He'd do better to keep his mouth shut sometimes, and lay off Twitter every now and again. Between falsely accusing people of being pedophiles, claiming to take Tesla private in a tweet, and various other "incidents", he's kind of…

He's an idiot in the sense that Trump is an idiot. Made billions (sure, not started from scratch, but they still made billions more than you and me), says stupid things all the time but they still can get away with it and win (the presidency, the most valued car company in the word, whatever it is they want).

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#212
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but to even mention it now is disingenuous because they’re not even close to having a solution that their own engineering department would be willing to ship. You and I have no idea whether it’s possible to get close to level 5 with their currently shipping hardware. Neither do they. And this stuff about being 10-100x safer than a human is pure fantasy right now. The industry is incredibly far away from that an…

10x is within striking distance. Search for Autopilot reporting for the evidence. While it is biased towards highway miles, all the safety features augment the human driver. This will only get better with time. Shipping is different from functional. You don't know what their engineering department thinks. Unless you are an insider, it is hard to guess the timeline, trajectory, or confidence levels.

>Unless you are an insider, it is hard to guess the timeline, trajectory, or confidence levels.

You realize that as a public company who is selling this product, they are obligated to spell this out to consumers and shareholders, right? The entire point is for it to be unambiguous.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm saying Tesla is successful because of Elon's hype. They are not "forgiving" his misgivings, they fully believe Elon will solve world hunger and invent FTL space travel. If you ask anyone who's bought into Tesla, they will tell you the "Auto Pilot on airplanes" lie, but they also believe Elon will deliver on Level 5 Autonomous driving. No cares about electric cars, they care about the guy's company who is usin…

What's the autopilot on airplanes lie? If you said "misdirection" or something, I would fully understand. But what's untrue about saying that plane autopilot is pretty limited?

It's not telling the whole truth, because the average person doesn't fly planes and has no firm grasp on how extensive a plane's autopilot is, or what the difference in situations is. What they do see is the Tesla marketing videos that hype it up to be better than it actually is.

It's lying by omission.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#214
post #151
post #116

Full autonomous driving is so far away that I don't know why people and media even talk about it.

Because companies like Tesla keep claiming it's just around the bend...

and politicians that need a useful lie to leverage ie Yang stating all the driving jobs will be gone in 5 years lol

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#215

I agree with this wholeheartedly, even as a Tesla owner. Tesla goofed from the beginning by calling tech like "Autosteer" and "Traffic Assisted Cruise Control" under the moniker "Autopilot" while shifting everything above that to "Full Self-Driving". They should have called it "CoPilot" since that infers that you're still the driver in charge of controlling the vehicle and it would have had exactly the same reception…

> Tesla goofed from the beginning by calling tech like "Autosteer" and "Traffic Assisted Cruise Control" under the moniker "Autopilot" I am not accusing you specifically of using weak language, but let's call a spade a spade: it's not a "goof," it's a dangerous and deceptive business practice. It's one that Elon Musk is directly responsible for and directly encouraged with misleading statements where he deliberately…

It goes further than that: and then, when - predictably - people die the company turns around and engages in the most terrible form of victim blaming I've ever seen, to suggest that those consumers should have known better than to believe their marketing.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a disgrace and one of many many many reasons why Tesla needs to outright fire Musk. I drove a co-worker's Tesla and I loved it--and I will never buy one for the reasons you mentioned. I'm glad Tesla exists to force other automakers to compete on the electric front, but that's the extent of my admiration for them.

I bought one in spite of Musk, simply put the technology of the car and that it brought back memories as a kid of all the cool concept cars that never got built sold me. That is performs so well it just a bonus. I feel like I am driving the future day in and day out. However I think that only does Musk misrepresent what the technology is capable of and the timeline I think that many quality of life features are missi…

> I think that only does Musk

I think you dropped a 'not' in there.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#217
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While he has achieved a lot, His claims sometimes are downright bizarre... I don't know if it is just intentional deception, drugs, or some kind of bi-polar mania, or a combination of all the above. We should be able to make our Teslas to be fully automated robo-taxis by now... and earn cash on the side.... https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-robo-taxis-elon-musk-p... I wouldn't trust my family's life, on his (ofte…

Most of the achievements people ascribe to him aren't even his. Musk bought the company then gave himself the title of 'founder'. He's a businessman, not a scientist

That's a bit misleading. Musk was a part of Tesla from day 1 and provided most of the funding. He served as Chairman since 2004.

When he took over in 2008, Tesla had just started producing the first roadster, which was really just a conversion kit for a lotus. After musk became CEO, Tesla became the world's most valuable car company...

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#218
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's strange how much people will bend over backwards to give Musk the benefit of doubt when he openly lies about such things

There is a weird personality cult around somebody who is basically the Trump of tech.

Not a Musk fan by any stretch but that's unfair to Musk. He does deliver, albeit too late and overhyped. He also has a tendency to shoot his mouth off and doesn't know how to deal with dissent. But Trump is an outright fraud and that's several levels removed from where Musk sits, arguably Musk has done more in two decades than Trump has managed to achieve in his entire life.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#219
Well, I'm gonna disagree. Let's quote wikipedia:

> An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilot does not replace human operators. Instead, autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the trajectory, weather and on-board systems).

This is 100% exactly what Tesla is selling. Instead of constant manual control you focus on the broader operations of your car.

Even the colloquial use of "autopilot" makes it clear that being on autopilot means you're not paying very much attention: https://learnersdictionary.com/qa/what-does-on-autopilot-mea...

Your car being on autopilot very much implies you still have to pay attention.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#220
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying people see Musk as a necessary "evil" to fight off a bigger evil (in the form of oil companies) and so they forgive his misgivings in a sort of utilitarian calculus?

No. I'm saying Tesla is successful because of Elon's hype. They are not "forgiving" his misgivings, they fully believe Elon will solve world hunger and invent FTL space travel. If you ask anyone who's bought into Tesla, they will tell you the "Auto Pilot on airplanes" lie, but they also believe Elon will deliver on Level 5 Autonomous driving. No cares about electric cars, they care about the guy's company who is usin…

I want to address this because in spite of Elon (whether punching down with Twitter or COVIDiocy, etc) burning up a lot of the goodwill he had accumulated in the past, these things remain:

The reason people think Elon may do level 5 autonomy is because his companies have accomplished several things that industry experts said were either infeasible or impossible. Fast charging, large-battery electric cars that are faster than almost all conventional cars.

Remember, pre-Tesla, electric cars were looked at as pathetic toys, like golf carts or, AT BEST, green bling like Priuses which are pretty slow and kinda ugly.

And not only has Tesla ramped up to mass production of these desirable vehicles, but they’ve also done it during the ending of EV credits (which almost all their competitors still have access to!) AND crazy low gas prices. And every time, the media plays up this or that “Tesla killer” that never ends up living up to the name and often completely tanks. Every time media or experts say Tesla will fail and they don’t reinforces the view in many that Tesla is somehow special.

And even SpaceX’s early successes like Falcon 1, Falcon 9, and Dragon Cargo were unprecedented for a private company and at those extremely low costs (at the time, Aerospace was a money pit for cost-inflating defense contractors, not nimble rocket startups). Then when they proposed propulsive landing, some NASA experts in the field thought it’d fail. I know one NASA GNC guy who said droneship landing is impossible. Clearly not, as we see now that it’s routine! Then Falcon Heavy, And now Dragon Crew... beating out Boeing, who had long been favored by old guard experts to beat SpaceX to ISS. Similar experts were certain SpaceX would be beat by OneWeb to launching the initial constellation... and we know how that has turns out (OneWeb went bankrupt). Then experts said that SpaceX had no Starlink terminals... until of course pictures emerged of sites they’ve had user terminals testing for months already.

So while I share the skepticism for level 5 autonomy, you should keep in mind That Musk’s companies keep accomplishing what many folks (who should know what they’re talking about) said couldn’t be done. And the more those experts say it’s impossible, the greater that Musk’s reputation soars after the task is completed nonetheless.

Post reply on HN