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Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

nytimes.com

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Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#161

Post by tensor »

EC1 wrote: post #143
jacobolus wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but he also frequently makes false (or at best incredibly misleading) public statements about how far along they are on such projects. (Source: friend-of-a-friend is one of those groaning Tesla engineers.)

What are you trying to accomplish with this line of questioning. Yes, people fail. What's your point?

His original point was that people are crediting Musk with what is actually the success of the engineers working there. The public loves to give credit to figureheads. Naturally, this upsets the people actually doing the innovation who get ignored.

Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#162

Post by EC1 »

tensor wrote: post #161
EC1 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you trying to accomplish with this line of questioning. Yes, people fail. What's your point?

His original point was that people are crediting Musk with what is actually the success of the engineers working there. The public loves to give credit to figureheads. Naturally, this upsets the people actually doing the innovation who get ignored.

That's exactly what I mean. Why state the incredibly obvious? Is there anyone who actually thinks Musk sat there and built the Tesla in his basement? Am I supposed to reach out and personally shake the hands of each engineer?

The engineers "thank you" comes in many forms. The fulfillment of the job. The privilege to work on cutting edge tech. The satisfaction of their customers. Their salary and so on and so forth.

Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#163

Post by henrikschroder »

stevecalifornia wrote: post #29
acadien wrote: post #17

"self-driving car" and "car capable driving itself on highway under optimal conditions" are 2 totally different things. The real excitement comes when I can tell my car to go pick up the kids from school or drop me off at the airport and then drive itself back home. Anyways this is a great step in the right direction but its not the game changing tech we're all waiting for.

I bought a new car in Sept 2014. It uses radar to do adaptive cruise control all the way down to stop and go. It also uses camera's to sense the lanes and steer to keep lane. Also handles emergency braking and people cutting me off. So basically, I choose the on-ramp and off-ramp and the car does the rest on the highway. I feel like it's the midpoint between a manual car and an autonomous car. After a few months of u…

I got a Mercedes E350 with the same thing last year. I got used to those features so fast, it feels like easy-mode driving when the car just wants to stay in the lane and keep the distance of the car in front of.

It does shut off the self-steering after a pretty short while if you don't move the steering wheel, and it doesn't work very well at high speeds, but a traffic jam on the highway is what it's made for.

Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#164

Post by eclipxe »

copperx wrote: post #91
eclipxe wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will to a certain extent. It's a powerful tug on the wheel and will follow the curve all the way through. You still need to keep your hands on the wheel or it yells at you.

Will one hand do?

Yes!

Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#166

Post by theunixbeard »

csours wrote: post #129
cbd1984 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How reliable are Teslas compared to Mercedes S class? Not that being more reliable than a luxury automobile is a huge achievement: http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/01/makes-expensive-car...

Huge number of features = more to go wrong. Cutting edge tech = higher risk. (can be mitigated with engineering discipline) Small production runs = less time to debug production process, which is a 2 edged sword: higher production costs and more built-in defects.

Idiom-related quibble: a "double edged sword" typically refers to something that is both an asset and a liability.

Higher production costs and more built-in defects are two liabilities. A suitable alternative in this case would be a "double whammy". More on that idiom: http://english.stackexchange.com/a/132063

Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#167

Post by eclipxe »

agumonkey wrote: post #146
stevecalifornia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a new car in Sept 2014. It uses radar to do adaptive cruise control all the way down to stop and go. It also uses camera's to sense the lanes and steer to keep lane. Also handles emergency braking and people cutting me off. So basically, I choose the on-ramp and off-ramp and the car does the rest on the highway. I feel like it's the midpoint between a manual car and an autonomous car. After a few months of u…

Didn't know stop and go was already deployed. I wonder how many people use such a system and thus how trusty it feels. I mean, it's kind of a large field-testing of self-driving car logic subset.

It took me a few days to "trust" the stop and go system. It is very disconcerting at first, especially since it tends to brake later than I normally would - I had to learn to "just let go" and now it feels very natural. With that being said, there are situations where I can clearly see traffic far ahead is stopped and I would need to slow down soon - in these cases the stop and go system doesn't react quite fast enough and ends up breaking way too late (and throws up an emergency brake signal). It doesn't ram into the car in front, but it can be scary.

So yeah, not perfect yet, but in 98% of the cases it's amazing.

Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#168

Post by deeviant »

dakrisht wrote: post #112
deeviant wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there are some COTS parts available for various autonomous driving functionality. My Ford fusion does pretty much all of the above, and I do not think Ford implemented everything themselves, and the sensors look very similar to various other implementations from different auto manufacturers.

Your Ford certainly doesn't do even most of the above. Your Ford has pedestrian awareness and active lane departure systems? It has radar to brake and accelerate during traffic? Definitely not.

Yes, it has lane assist(this is resistive rather than active, it stiffens the steering wheel making it harder to move in a direction that leaves the lane, rather that correcting coarse actively), active breaking (with adaptive cruise control, light/sound alerts otherwise) for collisions with car, terrain and pedestrian.

It also has blind spot sensor, adaptive cruise control, driver wakefulness alerts. It's adaptive cruise works beautiful, but unfortunately is designed to cut out below 10 MPH, which is a bit annoying in stop and go traffic. It does do automated parallel parking as well, and it rocks at that, it parks in spots I wouldn't dare.

It really strikes a good balance between relying on human and computer-assist.

Also, I think you have a strange definition of "certainly".

Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#169

Post by robotresearcher »

eru wrote: post #151
agumonkey wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was an article about crash statistics on roads that used to be surrounded by tree lanes [1]. There were as many accidents with or without the trees. Removing the trees avoids the opportunities to crash into them, so now people drive faster and carelessly. I also think stress, in healthy dose, is necessary. I'd bet heavy on decay as a result of removing it. Until the potential self-driving car future where peopl…

Same number of crashes, but people can drive faster? That's a win in my book.

Crash outcomes are worse at high speeds.

Re: Elon Musk: Tesla cars will have “autopilot mode” by summer

#170

Post by dang »

throwaway12347 wrote: post #142
_ZeD_ wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you an engineerer or a seller?

He was a product manager [1]. Before that, he worked as a finance guy [2]. He was not an engineer. [1] https://www.crunchbase.com/person/patrick-breitenbach [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/pbreitenbach

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