Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

mobile.reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 632 posts

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

#421

Post by FireBeyond »

Animats wrote: post #238
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main Autopilot marketing page shows a video of a Tesla driving itself, says the Driver is there for legal purposes only This alone feels like lawsuit-bait. I'm surprised it took this long for the courts to get involved.

Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk said this month the electric car manufacturer was close to making its cars capable of automated driving without any need for driver input, so-called Level 5 autonomy. Yeah, right. Tesla has only Level 2 self-driving. They've never demonstrated Level 3 outside a video of a demo in Palo Alto. They wouldn't even let the press take a ride. Google/Waymo has hundreds of self-driving vehicl…

Exactly. He said this in 2014. 2016. 2018. Even at the end of 2019:

> "You'll be able to FSD, coast to coast, by the end of this year".

Meanwhile Teslas are still having a multitude of autopilot accidents that, had a human been paying attention (their fault, I understand), would not have happened - plowing at speed into fire engines with emergency lighting on, plowing into overturned semi trailers blocking multiple freeway lanes, aiming at barriers.

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

#422

Post by amznthrwaway »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #408
amznthrwaway wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've also been promising full autonomy for five years straight. The wording of "Current autopilot features" is intended to help deceive the public into thinking that full autonomy is coming next year.

> next year this year https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/07/09/elon-mu...

2014: in a year https://www.theverge.com/2014/10/2/6894875/elon-musk-says-ne...

2015: in two years https://fortune.com/2015/12/21/elon-musk-interview/

2016: in a year https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-autonomous-tesla-d...

2017: in two years https://electrek.co/2017/12/08/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-...

2018: in a year https://electrek.co/2018/03/11/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-self-driv...

2019: in a year https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-drivin...

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

#423

Post by lolc »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #65
actuator wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why Tesla even needed to go that far to make the product sell. It is already a damn good car, a leader in its space. Also, Waymo which was closest at that time to Level 5 autonomy was far off from a product.

Because they can’t sell the car for what it cost to produce. FSD has added ~$3,000 of essentially pure profit

Nope, that's not profit. That's positive cash-flow. They are investing heavily into developing FSD.

I'm doubtful whether that racket will pay off. I guess they will have to pay more and more back to disillusioned buyers. It certainly hasn't turned into profit yet and rather looks like a massive risk.

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

#424

Post by temac »

martythemaniak wrote: post #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 traj…

This argument is boring (because even if you were right, that's not what the public understands) but let's pretend it is not: so are you actually right?

It's debatable.

To fly a plane safely, you have to prioritize in the following order: aviate, navigate, communicate.

An autopilot takes care of the aviate part (under some conditions) - and even bits of navigate in some case, but this is probably an easier problem actually. It can warn you when it is disengaging, so you have to be available, but you don't have to monitor actively at all time and with your full focus (as-if you fly manually) that it is working correctly and be able to disengage it yourself.

Tesla "autopilot" does not take care of the aviate equivalent. It is believed so imperfect that you are supposed to stay extremely vigilant at all time, keep your hands on the wheel, look at the road as-if you were actually fully manually driving, and disengage it yourself if it attempts to kill you (or somebody else).

My own judgment is that it is not an autopilot, by the most common parallel possible (with the autopilot of a plane). And again, that's probably not even very important. If most of the public believe a car autopilot is supposed not only to "aviate"-equivalent perfectly, but maybe even navigate on top of that, then Tesla, not even having reached the first part fully, should be just careful a little and chose some other wording.

They don't, because they are completely playing on that. I found it even more than dishonest; I found it unethical.

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

#425

Post by detaro »

maxharris wrote: post #389
detaro wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's "the coming years"? 5 years after they first made the claim? 5 years from now? 5 years from 5 years from now?

2024. Cathie Wood's bull case for everything going right for Tesla is 24k/share in 2024. She also breaks out everything else, shows what happens to the share price if autonomy doesn't happen, or if they don't keep building gigafactories, etc.

Everything going right for Tesla would have been Elon's 2015 prediction of "in two years" coming true in 2017/18 ;)

Do you have a link that explains why the predictions now will be better? I haven't seen much to suggest it, but also honestly kinda stopped paying attention.

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

#426

Post by rsynnott »

wittyreference wrote: post #290
ojnabieoot wrote: post #21

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…

> 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…

> rather than a PR-crafted artifact vetted by legal, compliance

I mean, if THIS was vetted by legal and compliance, they’re, er, probably not very good.

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

#427

Post by ashtonkem »

Animats wrote: post #238
FartyMcFarter wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The main Autopilot marketing page shows a video of a Tesla driving itself, says the Driver is there for legal purposes only This alone feels like lawsuit-bait. I'm surprised it took this long for the courts to get involved.

Tesla’s Chief Executive Elon Musk said this month the electric car manufacturer was close to making its cars capable of automated driving without any need for driver input, so-called Level 5 autonomy. Yeah, right. Tesla has only Level 2 self-driving. They've never demonstrated Level 3 outside a video of a demo in Palo Alto. They wouldn't even let the press take a ride. Google/Waymo has hundreds of self-driving vehicl…

I’m genuinely surprised there hasn’t been a class action lawsuit over selling “full self driving” on Tesla vehicles. That’s been going on long enough to tip over from “over-optimistic” to “straight forward fraud”.

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

#428

Post by rsynnott »

drcross wrote: post #184
dave5104 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>But Musk as a human isn't so great. I would be very hesitant to criticise someone who has arguably done/will do more for the continuation for humanity than anyone else who has ever lived. Maybe it's your definition of "isn't great" that needs re-calibration.

Impressive case of Poe’s Law here.

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

#429

Post by FireBeyond »

lazyjones wrote: post #397
foepys wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> After about 20mph tire noise drowns out engine noise. This has been claimed over and over and is possibly true in some test scenarios but not in any real situation. Noise is additive, the engine noise may not be clearly audible, but tire+engine noise is always louder than just tire noise. And any time an ICE actually revs up, it's clearly audible at any high speed.

My supercharged V8 5.0L Jaguar would be an absolute disappointment to anyone expecting much in the way of engine noise. The sound dampening in the engine compartment is far better than any car I've had before, and the cabin has adaptive noise canceling specifically for engine / road noise.

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

#430

Post by ashtonkem »

LoSboccacc wrote: post #408
amznthrwaway wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've also been promising full autonomy for five years straight. The wording of "Current autopilot features" is intended to help deceive the public into thinking that full autonomy is coming next year.

> next year this year https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/07/09/elon-mu...

If you buy Tesla or Musk’s promises on when FSD will arrive, then I have a bridge for sale. They’ve been promising that “soon” for a long time now.
Post reply on HN