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Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

arstechnica.com

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Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#241

Post by mysterydip »

Applejinx wrote: post #172
buggy6257 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 5 year old Subaru has been able to lane keep and auto follow to the point that a 2h drive on the freeway is me tapping the wheel every ten seconds to keep it enabled while I watch for idiots. It has been able to do this since I bought it, and I haven’t paid a dime extra. Car cost 30k.

Same with mine from last year. I don't tap the wheel, but I treat it as 'co-driving' or like the car has its own somewhat fussy opinions on where to be. If I zoom up on another car at a stop it's capable of freaking out and braking, it follows other cars at a good safe distance, and the lane keeping feels like you're holding the car's hand as it goes along, and its attention is generally better than yours. Works for…

I used to have to do semi-regular 8hr interstate drives, and the reduction in cognitive load and mental fatigue as a result of these aids is amazing.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#242

Post by ajross »

breve wrote: post #220
ajross wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... yeah, but the Tesla will do that on an empty road, then approach a slow car from behind and make a lane change decision to pass, then take your next exit and continue on through city streets, through all sorts of traffic conditions, to your destination. And it will monitor your attention with eye tracking instead of making you mess with the wheel. It's absolutely true that the rest of the industry is rolling…

> But no, your Subaru isn't a meaningful competitor. Tesla is a car company. Every car company is a competitor to Tesla. As a legacy EV manufacturer, Tesla is struggling to compete in the current car market. Tesla's sales have declined for the last two years. It's why they're having to squeeze fewer customers for more revenue.

Clearly I needed to be more precise: Tesla's vehicle autonomy features have no meaningful competition in the consumer auto space, period. Anyone who tries to claim otherwise is flogging some kind of angle, generally a political one. And I say this as someone who despises Musk's politics. But the cars his company makes are way, way, way ahead on this particular feature.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#243

Post by dzhiurgis »

Centigonal wrote: post #187
ajross wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, though, the subscription isn't for "Steering Assist", it's for FSD. You don't subscribe to the feature you have on your Corolla, you subscribe to an autonomous navigation solution. This is a pretty boneheaded business decision on Tesla's part. But their technology remains clearly superior.

To underscore this: the boneheaded decision Tesla is making is forcing customers to choose between a $99/mo subscription for FSD, and no ACC or lanekeeping assist otherwise . It's like letting people buy a subscription to the iPhone Pro Max 17 or not have any phone at all. By the way, FSD ("full self-driving") is just as inaccurately named as Autopilot. I don't know why Tesla can't call their technology, like, CyberD…

I think they will release dumbed down fad thats more akin to autopilot but for like $20 per month.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#244

Post by tencentshill »

square_usual wrote: post #165
TacoCommander wrote: post #76

Our 2020 Model S came with Autopilot. It was part of the purchase price. We don't use FSD, we don't use Autopilot either. But I'll be goddamed if he tries to take away something I paid for.

This is only for new cars sold, as they can't take away features that were included in the advertised price for a car when it was sold.

That's true as long a the law is enforced. Which regulator is going to stop them?

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#245

Post by palata »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #225
palata wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every person I know wants a subscription, too. You mean consumer? I genuinely cannot understand why anyone would buy a car or a bed or a fridge that requires a subscription. That's beyond me. I do understand why companies want to screw consumers, obviously.

I meant everyone wants to have a recurring income. After all, we have a recurring need to feed and house ourselves.

Sure, but when you buy a spoon, you expect to own the spoon. You don't pay 1$/month/spoon, do you?

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#246

Post by nradov »

buggy6257 wrote: post #118
Someone1234 wrote: post #96

A new Tesla, without subscription, now has worse Steering Assist than a $22K Toyota Corolla. Back when Autopilot launched, in consumer cars, it was pretty unique. But the market has moved on significantly, and basic Steering Assist/Full-Speed-Range Automatic Cruise Control, are pretty universal features today.

My 5 year old Subaru has been able to lane keep and auto follow to the point that a 2h drive on the freeway is me tapping the wheel every ten seconds to keep it enabled while I watch for idiots. It has been able to do this since I bought it, and I haven’t paid a dime extra. Car cost 30k.

I have a newer Subaru as my daily driver. The EyeSight system is fine for what it is but it's very limited. The lane keep assist doesn't work on curvy roads. If brakes unnecessarily when the car ahead takes a highway exit. It cuts out completely in heavy precipitation where a human driver can still proceed safely at low speed.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#247

Post by idibiks »

shermantanktop wrote: post #221
burningChrome wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was watching OPLive last week. Every week they have a segment called "Triple Play" where they have law enforcement send them videos of crazy chases and other interesting experiences. This last week they had a guy who had completely passed out in his car and was fast asleep at the wheel. A state trooper pulled up alongside it and could see the guy slumped over his wheel. Apparently the car was essentially weaving back…

TIL about Precision Immobilization Technique (PIT). Sounds pretty euphemistic for intentionally crashing into someone at highway speeds. Maybe the average cop has better driving skills than I'm giving them credit for, but...I doubt it...

No, it's literally that. It's super dangerous and the practice of performing it in any but very unusual situations is, to put it mildly, hard to justify on any actual public safety grounds. To the extent the maneuver is a "safe" version of making a car crash, it's (relatively) safe for the cop causing the crash.

A certain segment of the public, plus cops themselves (having significant overlap with that segment), love it though, because they enjoy seeing non-compliance met with life-endangering levels of force and can't understand why any of us wouldn't enjoy it unless we want more crime or something.

So a bunch of suspects who weren't, car chase aside, any imminent danger to anyone, and their possibly-unwilling passengers, end up dead or life-alteringly injured... and so do plenty of people who had nothing to do with any of it. Often over what was originally just e.g. property crime.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#248

Post by piva00 »

gruez wrote: post #215
scottyah wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. There's a CA lawsuit against the FSD name, Tesla has to fix it by Feb 14th (the last day FSD is being sold). I wonder if it'll just be a rebrand for the new service. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/news-and-media/news-releases/d... 2. Elon's Trillion Dollar Payout is tied to a certain number of FSD Subscriptions. 3. Some consumers were sold that they would get hardware upgrades for FSD. I'm pretty sure Tesla would l…

>2. Elon's Trillion Dollar Payout is tied to a certain number of FSD Subscriptions. That wording is misleading because so far as I can tell, that payout is in tranches, and the FSD subscriptions milestone is only tied to one of the tranches. Therefore it's not as if 1 trillion dollars is riding on whether he gets enough FSD subscriptions, only 1/12th of that. https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001318605…

1/12th of that is still US$ 83 billion. Think it's still quite a big incentive to try to juice up the metric.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#249

Post by ajross »

MBCook wrote: post #179
ajross wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, though, the subscription isn't for "Steering Assist", it's for FSD. You don't subscribe to the feature you have on your Corolla, you subscribe to an autonomous navigation solution. This is a pretty boneheaded business decision on Tesla's part. But their technology remains clearly superior.

They can rename it whatever they want. People had a feature for free, now they don’t, because Tesla wants money. “But it’s better…” only if you pay. If you don’t, still gone. What else matters? I see nothing wrong with them offering a cheap(er) FSD option. I object to them removing existing features to force adoption.

> People had a feature for free, now they don’t,

No features are being removed from existing cars. The policy is about what they sell on new ones.

Re: Tesla kills Autopilot, locks lane-keeping behind $99/month fee

#250

Post by square_usual »

tencentshill wrote: post #244
square_usual wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only for new cars sold, as they can't take away features that were included in the advertised price for a car when it was sold.

That's true as long a the law is enforced. Which regulator is going to stop them?

In this case, customers can sue them.
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