German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving • Hacker News Board

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

#521

Post by maigret » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 6:50 AM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #502

lsh123 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Audi calls it adaptive cruise control which I find correctly describes what it does.

"Adaptive cruise control" sounds like the vechicle is just controlling speed based on the car in front. It does not sound like it implies any type of auto-steering.

Yes, this is exactly what this does. "Lane assist" does the steering.

I think the good think that Tesla does though, is having a simpler package for all of that. German makers can't keep but making 5 different systems that you can (or not) combine so they can charge more $$$.

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

#522

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:00 AM UTC

alasdair_ wrote: post #507

Smoosh wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not really the car design I think it partly is the car design. They were the first manufacturer trying to make a mainstream car which was designed from the ground up to take advantage of being a BEV (for example with batteries flat under the floor). Others always based their electric car upon an existing ICE design despite the ensuing compromises.

This is super important. Most ICE vendors tried to take an existing vehicle, remove the ICE components and shoehorn in an electric motor. Tesla really nailed the “ground up” design (a drag coefficient of 0.24 was almost unbelievable when the model S debuted) and even now the other makers haven’t really caught up.

Volvo ECC from 1992 had 0.23, BMW had a coupe in 1938 with 0.25 and Alfa Romeo achieved 0.26 in 1952.

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

#523

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:10 AM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #463

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hen when they proposed propulsive landing, some NASA experts in the field thought it’d fail. I know one NASA GNC guy who said drone ship landing is impossible. Propulsive landing was not a spacex innovation. They simply picked back up the research agenda of Delta Clipper.

There is one aspect that SpaceX absolutely pioneered: supersonic retropropulsion. NASA was actually planning on testing it as it's needed for landing heavy payloads on Mars, but SpaceX figured it out for "free."

To be honest, SpaceX got a ton of VC money on top of a ton of NASA money on top of a ton of government launch money.

Not saying SpaceX isn't impressive, but without published results it is impossible to tell how economic their tech is, how expensive development and so on.

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

#524

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:18 AM UTC

AgloeDreams wrote: post #332

lazyjones wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 briefl…

That is a pretty good summary. And also where the hype comes in. Every other company or CEO would get nailed to the wall for that, Tesla not so much.

It also shows how VC money and hype can distort competition. Every EV company out there is not just competing with ICEs but also Tesla's inflated pockets. Which, IMHO, stifles innovation in that sector.

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

#525

Post by slavik81 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:31 AM UTC

atonalfreerider wrote: post #288

richardrk wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if that quote supports your argument. Tesla states: "Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment." [0] This sounds very different from "allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations". I have never heard of pilots having their hand and feet on the stick and paddles i…

> I have never heard of pilots having their hand and feet on the stick and paddles in case the airplane make an incorrect maneuver. From the FAA guidlines on Autopilot: > Be ready to fly the aircraft manually to ensure proper course/clearance tracking in case of autopilot failure or misprogramming [0] [0] https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...

The section of that document on "Deciding When To Use the FD/Autopilot" suggests using it for "distracting tasks."

The FAA states that "the FD/autopilot is used to control basic aircraft movement while the pilot focuses attention on tasks such as reviewing charts," which seems quite different from Tesla's autopilot which is "intended for use with a fully attentive driver."

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

#526

Post by Animats » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:35 AM UTC

readams wrote: post #490

ghaff wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given Alphabet/Google's record of shutting down moonshots--or really services more broadly--what are the odds that Waymo is going to be around in a few years, especially if there'a a serious ad-tech fallout? ADDED: Google has been pretty clear that they're only interested in door-to-door self-driving and not in incremental driver assistance or freeway-only hands-off. If that goal turns out to be something for an inde…

Waymo is worth billions, on the order of 30 billion. They will not just shut it down. A sale or spinoff is possible but not a shutdown.

That's all possible future revenue. Currently there is no revenue and no customers. Companies in that state can go to zero very quickly.

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

#527

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:35 AM UTC

bananabreakfast wrote: post #470

hef19898 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did his companies deliver, that experts said was impossible, in the technological sense I mean? Reusable rockets, deemed possible but not economic due to the low number of launches. SpaceX delivered amazing stuff, so, but nothing impossible. EVs were a thing already 100 years ago, so technically totally feasible, as is mass production. And the battery tech is to large part Panasonic. Still impressive wha…

This is some serious revisionist history right here. No one was talking about technically possible. We're not discussing space elevators. The key point is combining economic feasibility with the prevailing cultural will. Of course electric cars exist. GM made a bunch of them in the 90s and literally forcibly recalled them and crushed them into tiny cubes in front of their owners. They held a candle light vigil. The d…

So you are saying that before Tesla EVs were not a thing. They were, already during the early day of automobiles. Funny how better electric motors enabled ICE cars and killed EVs.

Before SpaceX, humanity travelled to the moon, shot probes out of the solar system, landed on other planets and moons. We got multiple space stations into orbit. We didn't have reusable rockets so.

And aerospace companies did, in fact, change transportation fundamentally post WWII. Jet engines, passenger jets, the 747, ever decreasing fuel consumption per passenger, ever quieter aircraft.

And the parent was talking about technical impossible. Which clearly it isn't. Never argued against incumbents being unwilling to do certain things. But please stop putting Musk, and people in general, on podests like that.

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

#528

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:37 AM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #461

ummonk wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, people had demonstrated VTOL rocket landings before SpaceX came along. It was obviously just a matter of scaling it up and throwing tons of engineering man hours and test money at it, as SpaceX did.

Oh, absolutely. And yet... the consensus among most of the oldguard was that that approach wouldn't work. Many in the industry thought that reuse had effectively failed due to the lessons of Shuttle and the real future lie in expendables. Additionally, the old guard at NASA that WERE into reuse were generally for single-stage, horizontal landing architectures. In the specific case of the GNC specialist that told me i…

One of the reasons nobody tries seriously before was economics. They came to the conclusion that it was simply cheaper to not reuse boosters due to the overall low number of launches. And whether that is true or not cannot be evaluated without SpaceX results being published.

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

#529

Post by hef19898 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 7:41 AM UTC

benjohnson1707 wrote: post #393

hef19898 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did his companies deliver, that experts said was impossible, in the technological sense I mean? Reusable rockets, deemed possible but not economic due to the low number of launches. SpaceX delivered amazing stuff, so, but nothing impossible. EVs were a thing already 100 years ago, so technically totally feasible, as is mass production. And the battery tech is to large part Panasonic. Still impressive wha…

100 $ / kWh battery packs. Or the range of the Semi, deemed 'physically impossible' by a Daimler exec. Let's see how that goes. Musk's whole point is this: much more things are technologically feasible, but most people / companies limit themselves within apparent constraints. As mentioned: he's a physicist. From a physics standpoint, only a small amount of things are actually impossible. Only the deepest fundamentals…

We are waiting for Level 5 for way longer than 2 years by now. And you don't have to pull the physical impossible argument. EVs were among the first cars built 100 years ago. Reusable boosters were deemed possible but not economic by EASA before SpaceX talked about them.

Musk is constantly moving the goal post, so when he ultimately delivers something one day, people tend to forget how often he didn't deliver in the past. He seems to be the only one to get away with that.

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

#530

Post by mola » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 8:14 AM UTC

awad wrote: post #208

nemothekid wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, and I also adore the cars, my next car will likely be a Tesla and I own the stock. I've spent a lot of time researching the company so I didn't come to this conclusion by being bitter over the company. I think it's important to point out that the success of the company is largely built on the mythos of the man rather than the objective success of the cars. Tesla, earlier this week reached a market cap exceedi…

This isn't a comment on the advertising but I am struck by how Tesla and Elon Musk remind me of Apple and Steve Jobs. Both very divisive companies and leaders prone to downright emotional attacks from one side and staunch defense by the other. While has been quite a bit of hyperbole, overselling, and straight up failure to deliver, you can't dispute that both pushed their respective industries forward almost singleha…

They also pushed a culture of deception and exaggeration. I dunno if iPhones are worth making this behavior normal and even worshipped.

Trump=Elon=Jobs They are all successful bullies and liars. If these are our role models...