Live data from Hacker News

Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

jalopnik.com

151–160 of 634 posts

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#151
post #55

IMO Tesla would be better if they focused solely on making good EVs, rather than also trying to become the leader in self-driving. I get that they're trying to create a wider moat against their competitors, but if their self-driving software are found to have systematic failure modes in them as these internal docs seem to suggest, then that could very well do more harm to their reputation in the long run.

Elons point on cars being worth 5x as much with self driving shouldn’t be dismissed. If a car that costs $25,000 to manufacture all of a sudden can be driven 40-50 hours a week automatically, how much is that car now worth?

So I totally disagree on that end, as do most investors given teslas enormous valuation.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#152
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a manufacturer is selling millions of cars, I think it's better to judge their safety using statistics rather than some qualitative reasoning. Are Teslas measurably less safe than other cars? I.e. is the accident probability per km driven on a Tesla higher than on another car? I haven't seen any data suggesting that, but I'm happy to be corrected.

The number of accident might be lower (no idea) but still, If I'm responsible of killing/injuring someone with my car, I'll pay the consequences. If Tesla is responsible of killing/injuring someone with their car (when they drive through the autopilot), they must also pay the price (probably damages or jail depending of the situation).

How is that any different from any other product from any other manufacturer, though? Tort law has a thousand year history in our culture. Is there something specific about Tesla that needs something new?

I mean, what you say is sorta specious. Of course that's true, it's always true. The interesting question is "are the cars dangerous?". And the answer seems to be a pretty emphatic no, at this point. So instead everyone wants to argue about abstractions ("they're still liable") or absolutisms ("no failure is acceptable").

And that seems increasingly counterproductive, and frankly to have more to do with the somewhat questionable mental stability of the CEO than to the behavior of the actual products.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#153
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the software. They are trying to make due without the kind of sensors that are required to properly sense the immediate environment (LIDAR)

How expensive is LIDAR even? My xiaomi vacuum has LIDAR.

They were considerably more expensive the first year Tesla FSD was due to be ready by the end of the year. After that I guess it was deemed easier to do magic with some low quality cameras than get certain people to admit they're wrong and change course.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#154
post #55

IMO Tesla would be better if they focused solely on making good EVs, rather than also trying to become the leader in self-driving. I get that they're trying to create a wider moat against their competitors, but if their self-driving software are found to have systematic failure modes in them as these internal docs seem to suggest, then that could very well do more harm to their reputation in the long run.

Eh, Tesla has already shown the world how to make commercially viable EVs. That's a torch the risk averse legacy auto manufacturers can take up, now that Tesla has done the derisking. Now someone needs to prove out self-driving, even at the risk of some short-term reputational harm. I don't think people realize the life-saving potential in solving this problem.

> I don't think people realize the life-saving potential in solving this problem.

They shouldn't be harming lives to pursue this.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#155
post #6

Gatekeep, gaslight, girlboss The official policy to deprive customers and victims of information as much as possible is shocking from the standpoint of being flagrantly, cynically customer-hostile to the point of probable illegality, but it's right out of both Musk's normal playbook and that of his erstwhile colleagues at e.g. Paypal For me, cars cross a very key danger threshold, which I express like this: "I am tru…

When a manufacturer is selling millions of cars, I think it's better to judge their safety using statistics rather than some qualitative reasoning. Are Teslas measurably less safe than other cars? I.e. is the accident probability per km driven on a Tesla higher than on another car? I haven't seen any data suggesting that, but I'm happy to be corrected.

Since Tesla works really hard to hide who is responsible in case of an Autopilot crash, witholds and deletes information as well as deny any responsibility anyways, being just as good as a human driver isn't nearly enough.

Additionally, there's no data because Tesla releases nothing except heavily doctored numbers meant to make them look good. (To Tesla, a crash means airbag deployed. Sorry, random person that got ran over and killed, but you're out of Tesla's statistics)

You can count on Tesla for one thing, and that is to lie.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't tail any car in general. There's a lot more 'real' braking out there than 'phantom' braking.

in most commutes, if your tailing distance is too much, someone will else will come in front of you.

So? Drop back again.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#157
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every customer complaint about unintended acceleration of Teslas was proven in court to be the fault of the customer confusing the pedals. The accelerator pedal has two independent sensors measuring input - they both have to agree, and no input on the brake pedal must be detected for the vehicle to accelerate. They go a step further. They use their cameras to detect the environment and significantly slow down acceler…

Would you have a link to that? I'd be interested to look. As a side note, I've never heard of confusing the pedals as an issue for ANY car, so if Telsa's get people to confuse them enough to bring them to court, it's probably bad design. Edit: The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates 16,000 accidents per year in the United States occur when drivers intend to apply the brake but mistakenly apply…

> As a side note, I've never heard of confusing the pedals as an issue for ANY car

Then you haven't been paying attention around the Toyota acceleration scandal.

Pedal confusion is remarkably common when you buy a new car/use a rental (your feet rely on muscle memory), and it's not uncommon in the elderly.

Most of the Toyota unintended acceleration fits the statistical profile of pedal confusion in the elderly.

However, what Toyota really got whacked for is that when people pulled their software for audit, the software was a disaster and didn't even adhere to basic standards. At that point, it was cheaper for Toyota to just admit fault than go through with a whole lot of court cases that they were likely to lose once a jury got involved.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't tail any car in general. There's a lot more 'real' braking out there than 'phantom' braking.

in most commutes, if your tailing distance is too much, someone will else will come in front of you.

So what.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#159
post #7

Unfortunate thing for Tesla is we have the Affective Fallacy where if we like Tesla we overweight its benefits and underweight its errors.

What's the name for that fallacy where we do not know what went right, and we pessimize to assume the worst? I.E. How many times did Tesla prevent a crash? Assume none?

Don't know that it's a fallacy, it's more that the question you ask is impossible to answer - it's impossible to have a number for how many crashes were prevented. But we do have a number for crashes caused by. So we work off of that - if Telsa want's to argue they are safer, I'd love for them to devise some way to prove it, but I can't see that happening.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You shouldn't tail any car in general. There's a lot more 'real' braking out there than 'phantom' braking.

Sure, but an unexpected full ABS lock when you can see nothing in front of the tesla is going to be yard for most to react quickly too even at a decent distance. 10 second follow distances are only possible in most metros during very light traffic.

Phantom braking is not a full ABS lock type of braking. It’s more like a brake check.
Post reply on HN