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German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

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

#331

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…

Even "autosteer" is more commonly called "lane centering" by the industry. A term that provides much more clarity to the user.

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

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 is true that highly knowledgeable people know that Musk is an idiot conman The same "highly knowledgable people" who have been shorting TSLA and parroting that the company is going broke any moment now, surely. I'm actually surprised people aren't ashamed to write such utter nonsense in a place like HN.

In fairness, the company set incredible records for fundraising and lines of credit every quarter to offset massive losses, ignores basic safety concerns in production, ships beta software, sold still non-existing products ( Roadster 2, Semi, Autopilot LV5) with a promise they would ship them, took reservations for cars at false prices they would eventually never ship or make hard to get [35K model 3 which was briefly sold, $39K Model Y which they cancelled in favor of a base $45K Model Y, $40K Cybertruck which they don't even know how big it will be or if it will pass any safety tests] and then used reservations numbers to leverage raising capital.

If Tesla acted like a normal responsible company, they should have been out of cash like all the nay-sayers said. Instead they frauded and scammed their way alive.

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

#333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let's call a spade a spade: it's not a "goof," it's a dangerous and deceptive business practice There's a very odd tendency for people to engage with corporate PR packages in the same way they engage in interpersonal interactions. In the abstract, sure, they get that it's a crafted artifact meant to maximize profits, but in the immediate sense... they act as though the words have any intrinsic meaning at all rather…

Many companies have learned (the hard way) that public statements are admissible to court. All public statements from most big companies go through many levels of checking to ensure they don't send a wrong message. I know of one case where the warning label on a lawnmower that rocks can be thrown conflicted with the advertising picture of a kid close to a lawnmower and therefore the company doesn't believe that warni…

I'm not saying they're wrong to be careful. If my words could shift the share price of an entire enterprise, I'd have them damn carefully vetted, too.

I'm saying that their words are very carefully crafted, and should be engaged with as the product of artifice, not genuine expression.

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

#334
post #4

> The Munich court agreed with the industry body’s assessment and banned Tesla Germany from including “full potential for autonomous driving” and “Autopilot inclusive” in its German advertising materials. Fully autonomous driving won't be here for _at least_ half a decade so this judgement makes complete sense. Tesla was engaged in flase advertising.

Only five days ago Elon Musk claimed that "we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year." (yeah..!) https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53349313

"I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year. "There are no fundamental challenges remaining. "There are many small problems. "And then there's the challenge of solving all those small problems and putting the whole system together." Real-world testing was needed to uncover what would be a "long tail" of problems, he added."

This is so ridiculous. Of course the basic functionality is easy. The whole point of having intelligent drivers is dealing with the edge cases.

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

#335
post #89
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you flown on autopilot? It maintains speed, height and direction. It doesn't land or take off. Originally it couldn't even turn.

Sure. And during those hours of straight and level flight you can read a book or talk to the cabin crew or have a meal. Shouldn't do that in the car (yet).

Because what are you going to hit up there, cumulogranite? There's a whole industry devoted to "let's keep the planes out of each other's way; luckily the sky is huge".

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

#336
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The people who claim airplane autopilots work similarly are flat out lying. Pilots can briefly take their attention away from the plane without issue. They have to be present and ready to intervene but not constantly closely monitoring what the aircraft is doing. There is a very real difference in the amount of attention required.

That is more about how planes and cars are different than about how plane and Tesla autopilots are different.

When driving a car, if you take your hands off a car, you will crash within seconds. Either you will come to a corner, or the shape of the road will just cause you to drift off. You are always zooming past obstacles that are meters away from you. Often less.

Planes are different. Even without an autopilot, the pilots have trim wheels that allow them to adjust all the surfaces so the plane flys excatly level and stable when they aren't touching the controls.

So even without an autopilot, the plane is able to fly for minutes at a time without the pilot touching the controls. Eventually the balance will change, fuel is burns and the wind conditions might change, but these things happen slowly.

All the autopilot really does is extend the amount of time the pilots can avoid touching the controls from minutes to hours.

The other major difference with planes is the available recovery time from any issue is much longer, at least when not landing/taking off. When planes are near the ground the pilots are require to pay just as much attention as Tesla drivers are, actually far more attention.

But when planes are at high altitude, pilots have tens of seconds to detect something is going wrong, disengage the autopilot and correct the attitude. There are no obstacles. ATC keeps other planes far away.

But with cars, you are always seconds away from hitting an object. The driver needs to be able to take over from the autopilot instantly.

Plane autopilots work great for planes. They simply don't transfer over to cars. The operating environment is completely different.

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

#337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some can land in some conditions. However take off is still done by pilots in everything other than a few experimental aircraft.

> Some can land in some conditions. So... a bit like a Tesla parking itself in some conditions?

Requires total coordination and compliance from both stationary and moving parts of the system, and operator is supposed to take over immediately, continuing the manouevre, at the sign of any trouble?

Yeah. That's almost completely unlike a Tesla parking.

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

#338
post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Besides the Model 3's crazy acceleration, and automatic lane changing, I think the Accord matches or exceeds a Model 3 in every single way Except noise, pollution, complexity/maintenance cost, OTA updates, large touchscreen navigation that gets updated continuously, having to visit gas stations etc. etc. ICE is just obsolete technology. Half the performance at 10 times the noise and infinitely more pollution.

Noise actually isn't a factor. After about 20mph tire noise drowns out engine noise. Excluding cars that are purposely build/modified to be annoyingly loud.

I can hammer the go pedal in my Tesla any time I want and not worry about trumpeting the intersection. It's pretty satisfying actually. Which is probably why ICE drivers are starting to hate Teslas. But you know what they say... if you can't beat 'em...

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

#339
Great. I hope they bring charges against Tesla for causing deaths that were completely avoidable.

In fact we keep talking about AI ethics and so on. But we seem to have missed this very basic key ethical point: when Silicon Valley VC funded madness via AI/ML crap is pushed at breakneck speeds via these metal torpedoes, who is taking accountability?

It's really amazing that Elon is worried about AI overlords when a 'simple' autopilot is not engineered to ethical standards. (Same goes for people like Andrej Karpathy and co who should take the blame and publicly apologize/resign).

Shameful.

Glad Germany is ahead of the curve.

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

#340
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However good the public think autopilots are, I'm sure they don't think they're more capable than a co-pilot!

Etymologically though, the co-pilot is pilot along with you and supports you, while the auto-pilot is a pilot by itself , independently (dare I say: autonomously). "Autopilot" remains a very misleading term in the car context.

No you have it the wrong way around.

A co-pilot is equal to a pilot.

An autopilot automates just some functions of piloting.

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