Live data from Hacker News

German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

mobile.reuters.com

441–450 of 632 posts

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

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a typical aircraft autopilot, the pilot is allowed to take their hands off the controls. Tesla's manual quite clearly forbids that.

> Tesla's manual quite clearly forbids that. Now. It used to only require you to touch the steering wheel for 1 second every 15 minutes. Until regulators clamped down on that as grossly inadequate.

Is there an archived copy of the manual somewhere that doesn't say to keep your hands on the wheel?

I read it a few years ago and again a few months ago; from what I recall in both cases the manual insisted that drivers keep their hands on the wheels. But this is at odds with how their cars are promoted and evidently programmed. It seems to me that Tesla has been coyly but deliberately encouraging and facilitating a usage pattern which, for legal/liability reasons, they forbid in the manual.

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

#442
post #113
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.tesla.com/de_de/models > Hardware für autonomes Fahren Jedes neue Model S verfügt standardmäßig über modernste Hardware, um die Autopilot-Funktionalität schon heute und vollkommen autonomes Fahren in der Zukunft zu ermöglichen. Software-Updates werden diese Funktionalität im Laufe der Zeit weiter ausbauen und verbessern. > Die Autopilot-Funktionalität ermöglicht dem Fahrzeug automatisches Lenken, Beschleu…

That’s a web site though, not an advertisement. Was asking about advertisements.

In general, for the purposes of regulating advertisement, everything a company says about a product is advertisement. Whether they put it on their website or a billboard is largely irrelevant.

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

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it won't come close to Theranos. Tesla makes real products that are class-leading. Class-leading in what sense(s)? Even if Tesla can't reach level 5, it will be damn close But that's the problem with self-driving cars. Damn close isn't good enough. A miss is as good as a mile. The problem with the self-driving/automation scale is that anything around levels 2-4 probably shouldn't be allowed on public roads, at le…

>But that's the problem with self-driving cars. Damn close isn't good enough. A miss is as good as a mile Maybe close is good enough. The problem as I see it that people usually don't seem to be focused on is that it's impossible for humans to monitor the situation while doing other stuff. You can only do that when you're far away from other things like in a plane or on a boat. How can we simultaneously believe it's…

How can we simultaneously believe it's possible to instantly engage with driving and that people can't be trusted to text or make phone calls while driving?

Exactly. Driving while distracted by phones is well-known to be very dangerous, which is why it's against the law in many places. Encouraging drivers who might need to take over in an emergency to zone out and focus on other activities seems unwise for the same reason. This is why the middle levels on the self-driving scale could be very dangerous.

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

#444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla's manual quite clearly forbids that. Now. It used to only require you to touch the steering wheel for 1 second every 15 minutes. Until regulators clamped down on that as grossly inadequate.

Is there an archived copy of the manual somewhere that doesn't say to keep your hands on the wheel? I read it a few years ago and again a few months ago; from what I recall in both cases the manual insisted that drivers keep their hands on the wheels. But this is at odds with how their cars are promoted and evidently programmed. It seems to me that Tesla has been coyly but deliberately encouraging and facilitating a…

> It seems to me that Tesla has been coyly but deliberately encouraging and facilitating a usage pattern which, for legal/liability reasons, they forbid in the manual.

I'd agree with you there. Same with Summon. "Deal with a fussy child while your car comes to you" says the promotion. Legalese says "must not be distracted (like you might be by a fussy child)".

I'm sure that the manual probably says something exactly like that: "Driver is required to keep hands on the wheel. Your vehicle will warn you to put your hands on the wheel if they are not every fifteen minutes". Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, and don't mind our CEO blatantly not keeping his hands on the wheel in our videos.

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

#445
post #82
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck, in the UK if a medicine is prescription-only you're not allowed to advertise it at all . This is a great improvement, frankly.

> you're not allowed to advertise it at all. You're not allowed to advertise it to the general public. You can still advertise it to prescribers and suppliers. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/advertise-your-medicines > You can’t advertise prescription-only medicines (POMs) to the general public but you can promote them to healthcare professionals and others who can prescribe or supply the product.

The advertising to prescribers is fairly strictly regulated, though; you certainly couldn’t put ‘we anticipate this malaria drug will cure COVID-19’, say.

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

#446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not required to buy the "full self-driving" package when you buy a tesla. It is abundantly clear what the current feature set is. From https://www.tesla.com/autopilot : > Autopilot enables your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically within its lane. Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous.

Requirement to buy has nothing to do with it. The page you linked has a video that says: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself" They also sell a package literally named "Full Self-Driving Capability" Yes, they qualify it in smaller print, in the manual, on the website, etc. But the number of Youtube videos of people showing their car "dri…

Right, the video is a tech demo of FSD. Directly above - the first words on the page - are:

"All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today, and full self-driving capabilities in the future" (emphasis mine)

> They also sell a package literally named "Full Self-Driving Capability"

Yes, and the option explains exactly what's included and what's future: https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#autopilot

> an implication that the car can almost drive itself and is constantly learning and getting better

The car can almost drive itself, with driver supervision. On-ramp to off-ramp autopilot including lane changes and exits is real today. The car is constantly learning and getting better, we get neural network updates pushed to us that improve AP performance roughly monthly.

Frankly your arguments prove the opposite of your point -- I know what AP does, you know what AP does; where are all these plebs that are supposedly being hoodwinked?

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

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile Teslas still drive straight into overturned trucks. To be fair, so do people.

And people driving into things is considered to be a problem, not an insignificant quirk that's almost unworthy of mention.

In 2017, the last year we have data for, 10,230 accidents hit a stationary object, representing 30% of all fatal crashes.

Tesla has had a total of 5 fatal crashes in its history, and only one of them was hitting a stationary object (20%).

So objectively Tesla is doing better than humans.

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

#448
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you driven a modern ICE? I rented a new Honda Accord this weekend. 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, and it's roughly half the price. This isn't to say Teslas aren't impressive, but I do think they're overhyped.

> 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.

> large touchscreen navigation that gets updated continuously

Specifically with the model 3 I think the central touchscreen is awfully placed and dangerous as the driver

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

Tesla has only been promising "FSD" on cars sold after 2016. The service life for most vehicles is on the order of about 10 years or so, meaning I don't think you'll see serious pressure for a class action until the mid 2020's (but I do think it's coming).
Post reply on HN