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

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

#541

Post by mathdev » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 10:27 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #386

mathdev wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot really trust a source as biased as NYT on anything about Trump.

Classic ad hominem. They write an article, list their sources and you dismiss it out of hand because of which entity wrote the article. Surely you can do better than that?

Discussing facts with leftists in their own bastion (the HN) is a waste of time. The other poster refuted the central thesis of the article and all they got for it were downvotes.

I think the disconnect between people who get their knowledge of the world from hyperpartisan far-left publications such as NYT and the reality is more important than whether Trump is self-made rich or "inherited-rich" (both being far preferable to "rich-through-civil-service"). That is what I was hinting at.

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

#542

Post by PunchTornado » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 10:52 AM UTC

sjwright wrote: post #508

bdcravens wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even at level 5 (full autonomy with no input needed), when it fails, they'll still blame the driver.

At L5 you can't "blame the driver" because there is no driver.

they'll blame the other driver, the roads, the passengers etc.

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

#543

Post by PunchTornado » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 10:58 AM UTC

grecy wrote: post #491

agakshat wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not a camera-based solution will work reliably in the future is not the issue at hand here. The issue is the vast, vast gap between the current capability of Autopilot vs. what it is marketed as, and how this false advertising can literally kill the average consumer.

> Whether or not a camera-based solution will work reliably in the future is not the issue at hand here. Actually, it is precisely the issue at hand: From the ruling: > The Munich court agreed with the industry body’s assessment and banned Tesla Germany from including “full potential for autonomous driving”.... in its German advertising materials. So Tesla are not allowed to advertise that it has the potential to do…

sort of, but it is the gap that is the issue. Today, tesla seems so far away from that goal that this amounts to false advertising. it's so far that one can actually doubt that they will achieve it in our lifetime.

whether or not you think tesla is close, just drive a tesla on a narrow road in Germany.

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

#544

Post by tweetle_beetle » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:17 AM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #540

buran77 wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit cynical, "single-digit number" of people died simply because they believed the marketing. Ultimately it is their fault for taking the marketing over common sense and legal requirements but you can't handwave it away because "not enough people died". You can't blame a government for intervening to make sure more people don't fall for this kind of deceptive advertising tactics. No car manufacturer today of…

> died simply because they believed the marketing That's really not true. Those are people who consciously chose to ignore numerous warnings presented, both in the marketing (where the exact phrase "requires conscious human attention" is used), and also the warnings of the car itself where it says all the time things like "keep the eyes on the road", "need to stay alert", warnings every 10 seconds, audio signals, tur…

If the messages delivered through marketing channels are different to the ones delivered with a physical product, then that is a problem.

Visit https://www.tesla.com/autopilot and see for yourself how the message changes within a single page.

Yes: "All new Tesla cars come standard with advanced hardware capable of providing Autopilot features today..."

No: "...and full self-driving capabilities in the future—through software updates designed to improve functionality over time."

Yes: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself."

Yes: Video showing self driving car on real roads with no hands on wheel or feet on pedals.

No "Autopilot advanced safety and convenience features are designed to assist you with the most burdensome parts of driving."

Yes: "The system is designed to be able to conduct short and long distance trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat."

Yes: "All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go."

No: "The future use of these features without supervision is dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience, as well as regulatory approval, which may take longer in some jurisdictions."

This is not what I would describe as clear. It's a contrived dance around the truth, designed to help you arrive at a conclusion without ever quite saying it outright - a deliberate marketing strategy. To be honest, combining this with the use of Autopilot with a capital A, we're not that far off subliminal messaging at this point.

A more honest marketing message would improve safety.

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

#545

Post by karolist » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:24 AM UTC

yumraj wrote: post #343

jedberg wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW your friend must have a very heavy foot. My brother-in-law has a Tesla and goes from SJ to LA a few times a year. They make one stop in the middle to supercharge, and use the time to go to the bathroom and have lunch. The car is usually charged before they are done eating. When we caravan, the Tesla is never holding us up.

I really cannot comment on that. My friend I believe has the regular ~250 mile, or so, range Model X, so perhaps your brother-in-law has a longer range, but that still won't explain 3 times vs 1. So, don't know.. Edit: Now self-doubt is creeping in and I wonder if they had gone to Palm Springs and not just LA. The conversation was over a year ago.. Will that result in 3 charges each way? I've never driven to Palm Spr…

WLTP spec ranges favors city driving, in which Tesla has an edge because of the really aggressive recuperation braking. It also factors in highway driving at 90km/h IIRC, which no normal human being drives at. Highway it's actually not anywhere "light-years ahead" from other serious EV attempts like Taycan which does similar Autobahn range with wider tires than a model S.

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

#546

Post by bosie » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:27 AM UTC

waterhouse wrote: post #460

AgloeDreams wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steve Jobs didn't go off talking about how the stock is overvalued and go off producing short shorts as a joke. He had numerous notes of how he didn't care about what the competitors or nay-sayers said. Job's jabs at others (flash, app store rejections) were generally marketing, breif, and thought through. He almost never talked about future products and would often say 'let's see what the future holds'. Both are pro…

A thought comes to mind: Twitter wasn't a thing for most of Steve Jobs's career. (Looking at Wiki pages, Jobs's time at Apple was 1976-1985, then 1997-2011; Twitter was created in 2006.) Meanwhile, my impression is that most of Musk's antics occur on Twitter. If Steve Jobs grew up in the Twitter age, would he have done that kind of stuff too? A Quora answer says Jobs didn't make any social media accounts at all, usin…

Musk isn't some young kid but a 49 year old. 2 years ago he baselessly accused a rescue diver as a pedophile and doubled down on it in court. For some reason, I doubt Steve Jobs would have done that. I don't know what "kind of personality" this is but if you have that kind of personality (CEO or not), yes, stay away from Twitter and all social media. Though that wouldn't be your biggest problem anyways.

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

#547

Post by karolist » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:36 AM UTC

vvanders wrote: post #143

nemothekid wrote: post #105

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…

Remove autopilot from a Model S and it's still a hell of a car. Just from a pure driving dynamics a mechanical engine can't touch a VFD in terms of power dynamics and range(which is also why Diesel-Electric locomotives use them). Don't disagree on the autopilot, the killer app has always been for me stop-and-go traffic where the speeds are lower and the sensors need to do less vision and more radar based.

Diesel-Electric locomotives do it that way because there's no clutch mechanism that would sustain the load being put on it, they have to use the magnetism for load coupling.

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

#548

Post by emn13 » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:42 AM UTC

buran77 wrote: post #538

MereInterest wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (their fault, I understand) Humans are horrendous at maintaining constant attention to a task that only requires sporadic attention. If there is a human in the control loop, then it needs to take into account human limitations. Therefore, I'd be very hesitant to assign these as being the fault of the passenger who happens to be sitting in a driver seat.

I am honestly not sure how to interpret your comment but I'll try to respond. The fault is not with the AP. That's just a computer doing what it was programmed to do. It's with how the system is presented by the people selling it. The marketing is intentionally deceptive for profit and people died for believing it. And Germany didn't ban the system, they banned the deception. If Wells Fargo or Comcast did the same pi…

I think the parent poster is trying to make the point that it's unreasonable to ask people to pay attention.

In any case the fault is most certainly not merely marketing, it's a fundamental design flaw. You cannot expect people to maintain constant attention when that attention almost never leads to anything; people simply aren't capable of that. That's also why similarly "boring" tasks are so failure prone (e.g. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2017/11/09/tsa...) and why all kinds of creative measures are needed if you really need people to stare at stuff looking for black swans until their eyes glaze over.

Better marketing is not a solution to that problem. That's merely a solution to the fraudulent advertising (also worth solving - sure!)

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

#549

Post by bluGill » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:51 AM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #370

bluGill wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car companies have always been build engines and assembly of body organizations, buying other parts from whoever. Each is a bit different but nothing new about not owning all the technology. If it isn't a competitive advantage why bother?

I appreciate your comment on competitive advantage. What would it be in Tesla's case? It's not really the car design or assembly. I know they tried to play "disrupt" games with throwing software at the production line but I understand it didn't go well. Couple things that come to mind: 1) SV software culture, kinda coming from Musk. This helps with battery pack management (important), electric motor control (importan…

Someday the sv go fast and break things culture will get them into trouble. The more careful Detroit culture gets into trouble often for unsafe cars.

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

#550

Post by ghaff » Wed, Jul 15, 2020, 11:55 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #526

readams wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It probably wouldn't go to zero. The IP and other assets are likely worth something to an automaker or auto supplier. But that number would doubtless be a lot less than valuation based on being the pre-eminent self-driving company in the very near future.