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Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

latimes.com

201–210 of 394 posts

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#201
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the track record of Musk, you can see that he promises something futuristic and delivers something conventional but with improvements that's still desirable. Haven't Holmes imitated Jobs but Musk, today she could have been a success story. She should have still promised all your tests from a single drop of blood and keep claiming that it's coming next year and deliver classical machines but with greatl…

I think where we can all agree that Musk is a genius is in seeing where billions of public funds are going to flow, and then positioning himself to be in a position to profit. That was a key difference between Theranos and Tesla/SolarCity. Imagine if Elizabeth Holmes had gotten just a bit luckier with timing and had been around when the COVID pandemic occurred. Not only would she have launched a highly-futuristic COI…

The government spends orders of magnitudes more on health care than green energy every year, both pre- and post-Covid.

The key difference between Theranos and Telsa/SolarCity is that the latter has a real product.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same exact response and cancelled mine around the time of the tweets about the Pelosi attack he made. It’s a shame, we loved our last Tesla but I can’t stand the thought of being associated with him. We were supposed to pick it up the week he made those tweets. I was his former prime target demographic. I feel very strongly about protecting the environment, I hate gasoline engines after working on them most…

> I had the same exact response and cancelled mine around the time of the tweets about the Pelosi attack he made. Sorry to be so blunt, but I find this level of online political attachment to be completely deranged. Either it's a good car or not.

It seems that 5% or more of the country views everything through a binary lens of "Is this something my media and political group will be upset about or not" so if you are a Republican/Fox News person you feel that you should buy a "MyPillow" when buying a pillow.

and if you are part of the Democrat/NYT group buying a "MyPillow" is a bad thing.

To your point, this is crazy because both sides probably buy the exact same Tyson Farms chicken and have spent zero time learning about Tyson's business and labor practices and Tyson executives political beliefs. They are just thinking about which businesses Fox News / NYT has told them to care about.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#203
post #137
post #53

Who would have thought that a camera-only system would struggle to succeed where systems that leverage $20,000 LIDAR sensors and racks of specialized machine learning hardware have met with only limited success?

This whole thread smacks of this type of cynicism - apparently a lot of tech people now really, really hate Elon Musk. Andrej Karpathy addressed this point in his recent Lex Fridman interview - more sensors aren't necessarily better, and for each sensor you introduce a whole host of supply chain issues and physical constraints. By sticking to one sensor type that contains all of the information theoretically necessar…

> Andrej Karpathy addressed this point in his recent Lex Fridman interview - more sensors aren't necessarily better, and for each sensor you introduce a whole host of supply chain issues and physical constraints.

That's a bullshit justification. Going to camera-only and trying to overcome that limitation with "AI" was hubris. All of the competition working on FSD realized cars need more and more varied sensors, not fewer. Humans use a variety of sensors between primary perception and proprioception to drive vehicles.

The biggest problem with camera-only is the system needs to recognize objects to understand them as road hazards. Humans don't need to recognize a thing in the road to think "don't hit that thing". It doesn't matter is an object in the road is a crumpled newspaper, a cinder block, or a cinder block covered in a newspaper, you avoid it all the same. Vision augmented with radar and LiDAR can help just say "that's a thing in the way" more reliably than vision alone. Glints from the setting Sun or windows aren't going to cause radar to think some solid object is no longer a solid object. A bad angle or odd shadow won't cause LiDAR not be able to pull an object from the background.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#204

I’m been on the fsd beta for a long time now and I have to say it’s remarkably improved over the last year. If it continues to improve at this rate for another year it’s going to be pretty useful. I use it to drive around seattle (which is a difficult driving place with randomly followed infrastructure standards and randomly driving drivers and randomly parked cars) and it used to be a death defying gripping of the s…

It's unlikely that the rate of improvement, however you estimate it, will continue at the same rate. This is a Pareto effect, with marginal gains ever more difficult to obtain.

And the edge cases FSD can handle will be impaired by the sensors they do (not) install. While they make a good point that sensor fusion can impair comprehension, the removal of radar makes it hard to avoid the edge cases most calamitous.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#205
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same exact response and cancelled mine around the time of the tweets about the Pelosi attack he made. It’s a shame, we loved our last Tesla but I can’t stand the thought of being associated with him. We were supposed to pick it up the week he made those tweets. I was his former prime target demographic. I feel very strongly about protecting the environment, I hate gasoline engines after working on them most…

From what I've seen there are quite a lot of Tesla drivers in major southern suburbs. Southern suburbs tend to be fairly conservative. Maybe not quite as Trump loving as rural areas. But conservative nonetheless and likely not turned off by Elon's recent emergence as a right wing political figure. Also, if you read enough /r/elonmusk you'll see that a lot of people have bought into Elon's schtick that he's actually j…

Yeah, Emissions reductions will come from lighter cars, not steel cars weighed down with enough battery for ludicrous mode.

Also emissions reductions doesn’t come from selling more private vehicles.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#206
post #19

Well fortunately Tesla has a laser-focused CEO that is devoting his time to making sure a feature which he clearly stated was absolutely critical is being responsibly developed and marketed. Really grateful for that—I’d hate to think this publicly traded company that had a sky-high valuation that was, in part, based off this promise was being led by somebody who is off in the weeds worried about social media or somet…

At this point I'd imagine Tesla is better off with Musk being distracted by his shiny new toy. Though I'd be concerned about the effect he is having on their brand image. Even two years ago I was on the verge of buying a Tesla but ended up cancelling my order in large part because I just couldn't stand the obnoxiousness of Elon and he has gotten orders of magnitude worse since then. His new "demographic"/cult also se…

Of course your option has nothing to do with him exposing all the censorship that was going on at twitter.

Amazing how much a group of people have gone from loving him to hating him because he is allowing free speech.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is totally fine if you don't like Elon, but in the real world there isn't an EV that is cheap and available and has a good charging network. The ID4 is decent but that company was started by actual Hitler and Nazis, so if you are interested in not buying from companies that have a history of evil leadership that one isn't a good option. And gas cars are not good for CO2 emissions, so sometimes you have to accept t…

Interestingly I did end up buying an ID4 and it's been great for a full year now. It's not perfect but I like that is has more of a "traditional" interior compared to Tesla, which felt kind of like a giant tablet with a car-shaped case around it. That design was already making me hesitant and Elon with his endless stream of nonsense was the straw that broke the camels back so to speak.

Ironically the VW CEO that is responsible for the ID4 asked Elon to explain to his executives how to make EVs. https://electrek.co/2021/10/16/vw-ceo-herbert-diess-invites-...

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#208
post #19

Well fortunately Tesla has a laser-focused CEO that is devoting his time to making sure a feature which he clearly stated was absolutely critical is being responsibly developed and marketed. Really grateful for that—I’d hate to think this publicly traded company that had a sky-high valuation that was, in part, based off this promise was being led by somebody who is off in the weeds worried about social media or somet…

At this point I'd imagine Tesla is better off with Musk being distracted by his shiny new toy. Though I'd be concerned about the effect he is having on their brand image. Even two years ago I was on the verge of buying a Tesla but ended up cancelling my order in large part because I just couldn't stand the obnoxiousness of Elon and he has gotten orders of magnitude worse since then. His new "demographic"/cult also se…

You're lucky. My family (father, sister, etc) have pretty much fully outfitted themselves in Teslas, but hate Musk. They could stand him enough before, but now they are ready to move on to Lucid or anyone else really. I'm glad I never pulled the trigger -- Musk just always came across as extra creepy too me.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#209
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing that this publicly traded company hasn’t loaned out employees to other unrelated businesses which happen to be owned by their CEO. I’d that happened, I would worry about the distraction being more widespread than just the CEO.

Employees at Musk companies have the freedom to moonlight, or even transfer entirely. Tesla benefits from SpaceX materials engineering, for example. Tesla now effectively has access to a massive comms/PR engine, with far more reach than traditional advertising, without paying gatekeepers. Ford spends $2B a year on advertising. Elon can reply directly to Tesla owners.

Their more I interested in DMs and inside info on ad buys

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point I'd imagine Tesla is better off with Musk being distracted by his shiny new toy. Though I'd be concerned about the effect he is having on their brand image. Even two years ago I was on the verge of buying a Tesla but ended up cancelling my order in large part because I just couldn't stand the obnoxiousness of Elon and he has gotten orders of magnitude worse since then. His new "demographic"/cult also se…

He does run a cult. My father finds Musk entirely reputable. I am currently subject to at least a 30 minute call a day from him, a retired model S owner, who has nothing left in his life other than the Tesla. The calls are 30 minutes of him reeling off Tesla PR bollocks. He chased everyone he knew away, speaks of nothing else and cannot see reason or error in this or any of Musk's things. He thinks the Twitter thing…

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