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German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

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

#311

Post by bluGill »

wittyreference wrote: post #290
ojnabieoot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla goofed from the beginning by calling tech like "Autosteer" and "Traffic Assisted Cruise Control" under the moniker "Autopilot" I am not accusing you specifically of using weak language, but let's call a spade a spade: it's not a "goof," it's a dangerous and deceptive business practice. It's one that Elon Musk is directly responsible for and directly encouraged with misleading statements where he deliberately…

> let's call a spade a spade: it's not a "goof," it's a dangerous and deceptive business practice There's a very odd tendency for people to engage with corporate PR packages in the same way they engage in interpersonal interactions. In the abstract, sure, they get that it's a crafted artifact meant to maximize profits, but in the immediate sense... they act as though the words have any intrinsic meaning at all rather…

Many companies have learned (the hard way) that public statements are admissible to court. All public statements from most big companies go through many levels of checking to ensure they don't send a wrong message.

I know of one case where the warning label on a lawnmower that rocks can be thrown conflicted with the advertising picture of a kid close to a lawnmower and therefore the company doesn't believe that warning lable. I'm not sure what came of it (probably settled out of court for big $$$). However many companies are careful what they say.

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

#312

Post by Traster »

ping_pong wrote: post #254

His remarks talking about how Level 5 is fundamentally solved should be investigated by the FTC. I think he is purposefully and fraudulently saying that self-driving will be available to get more people to pay the $8000 for the self-driving software "before it goes up". They should make sure his statements are actually true otherwise he would be fined severely because to me, self-driving is decades away still.

Never mind his $8000 self-driving packages, Tesla's share price is where the action is.

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

#313

Post by Dylan16807 »

dmoy wrote: post #213
Dylan16807 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the autopilot on airplanes lie? If you said "misdirection" or something, I would fully understand. But what's untrue about saying that plane autopilot is pretty limited?

It's not telling the whole truth, because the average person doesn't fly planes and has no firm grasp on how extensive a plane's autopilot is, or what the difference in situations is. What they do see is the Tesla marketing videos that hype it up to be better than it actually is. It's lying by omission.

On Tesla's part, it's lying by omission.

In the context of someone using airplane autopilot as a defense of Tesla, they're not omitting anything. So I don't think that's a full answer to my question.

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

#314

Post by ummonk »

Robotbeat wrote: post #275
hef19898 wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly did his companies deliver, that experts said was impossible, in the technological sense I mean? Reusable rockets, deemed possible but not economic due to the low number of launches. SpaceX delivered amazing stuff, so, but nothing impossible. EVs were a thing already 100 years ago, so technically totally feasible, as is mass production. And the battery tech is to large part Panasonic. Still impressive wha…

> What exactly did his companies deliver, that experts said was impossible, in the technological sense I mean? Landing the Falcon 9 booster on a droneship. As a physicist, I never believed it was impossible (the bar for “impossible” is rather high in physics) and yet an expert in the field told me it was!

I mean, people had demonstrated VTOL rocket landings before SpaceX came along. It was obviously just a matter of scaling it up and throwing tons of engineering man hours and test money at it, as SpaceX did.

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

#315

Post by PCChris »

stetrain wrote: post #54
dkonofalski wrote: post #3

I agree with this wholeheartedly, even as a Tesla owner. Tesla goofed from the beginning by calling tech like "Autosteer" and "Traffic Assisted Cruise Control" under the moniker "Autopilot" while shifting everything above that to "Full Self-Driving". They should have called it "CoPilot" since that infers that you're still the driver in charge of controlling the vehicle and it would have had exactly the same reception…

Actually I think the name "Autopilot" is the least troublesome part of the marketing. Other car makers call their systems CoPilot, ProPilot, SuperCruise, whatever and I think the name matters less than the communication and details of using the system. The main Autopilot marketing page shows a video of a Tesla driving itself, says the Driver is there for legal purposes only, and provides no other disclaimers about th…

They do say on the same page you linked that "Current Autopilot features require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous."

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

#316

Post by AgloeDreams »

awad wrote: post #208
nemothekid wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, and I also adore the cars, my next car will likely be a Tesla and I own the stock. I've spent a lot of time researching the company so I didn't come to this conclusion by being bitter over the company. I think it's important to point out that the success of the company is largely built on the mythos of the man rather than the objective success of the cars. Tesla, earlier this week reached a market cap exceedi…

This isn't a comment on the advertising but I am struck by how Tesla and Elon Musk remind me of Apple and Steve Jobs. Both very divisive companies and leaders prone to downright emotional attacks from one side and staunch defense by the other. While has been quite a bit of hyperbole, overselling, and straight up failure to deliver, you can't dispute that both pushed their respective industries forward almost singleha…

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 product minded people who were interested in going into the weeds of the product but Jobs was focused on the UX but Musk is incredibly focused on being impressed by technical details for either the cool factor or some other detail.

These two both were micromanagers and outspoken leaders but thats where the similarities end. Musk is about his own interests of humor, cool factor, or impression. Jobs was focused on 'best' to a fault. I think the biggest difference between the two is that Jobs had a lot of time to get beat down by failure so he could become humble and learn how to lead people and care. (Not to say he is an insane example of it, I simply mean that early Jobs acted closer to Elon and leadership risk factor. Next changed that.)

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

#317

Post by bluGill »

bdamm wrote: post #299
Aunche wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you driven a modern ICE? I rented a new Honda Accord this weekend. Besides the Model 3's crazy acceleration, and automatic lane changing, I think the Accord matches or exceeds a Model 3 in every single way, and it's roughly half the price. This isn't to say Teslas aren't impressive, but I do think they're overhyped.

Have you driven a Model 3? It's like night and day. Everything that burns gasoline feels like a dinosaur to me now after driving a Model 3. I can't stand renting cars, they are all complete junk compared to my Model 3 at home. I said this to a Hertz in Denver, they gave me their best Jaguar. It stinks, it is slow, it is pathetic. It's basically game over for ICE, and they know it. They have 10-15 years maybe but at t…

Almost everything unsafe about gas cars applies regardless of the power train. The only exception is leaving it running in a closed room (and even there it isn't nearly as bad for a modern car)

Every car I've ever owned had no problem reaching freeway speeds. Even my geo metro which is rightly considered underpowered at best (and mine had a misfire problem). I'm not going to a track so I don't need more speed than is legal.

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

#318

Post by bluGill »

lazyjones wrote: post #243
Aunche wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you driven a modern ICE? I rented a new Honda Accord this weekend. Besides the Model 3's crazy acceleration, and automatic lane changing, I think the Accord matches or exceeds a Model 3 in every single way, and it's roughly half the price. This isn't to say Teslas aren't impressive, but I do think they're overhyped.

> Besides the Model 3's crazy acceleration, and automatic lane changing, I think the Accord matches or exceeds a Model 3 in every single way Except noise, pollution, complexity/maintenance cost, OTA updates, large touchscreen navigation that gets updated continuously, having to visit gas stations etc. etc. ICE is just obsolete technology. Half the performance at 10 times the noise and infinitely more pollution.

Most maintenance costs are the same. Other than oil changes which are cheap enough to not really matter.

Once in a while something goes wrong and is expensive. But I've had electric motors (ie a drill) fail too.

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

#319

Post by ummonk »

atonalfreerider wrote: post #288
richardrk wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if that quote supports your argument. Tesla states: "Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment." [0] This sounds very different from "allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations". I have never heard of pilots having their hand and feet on the stick and paddles i…

> I have never heard of pilots having their hand and feet on the stick and paddles in case the airplane make an incorrect maneuver. From the FAA guidlines on Autopilot: > Be ready to fly the aircraft manually to ensure proper course/clearance tracking in case of autopilot failure or misprogramming [0] [0] https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/handbooks_manuals/a...

Being ready to fly doesn't require keeping your hand and feet on the stick and paddles.

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

#320

Post by Piskvorrr »

jaybeeayyy wrote: post #112
adamjcook wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's dangerous, necessarily, unless you ignore people's personal responsibility in the situation as well. Yes, but let us recognize the stark reality and known limitations of "the people" in the driving public - as Tesla should (and in my opinion did not or does not). Not suggesting you are, but Tesla cannot hand-wave it. While their may be an outsized amount of technical persons here on Hacker News t…

>when my wife and I test drove a Model X in Chicago a few years back, one of the first things that the Tesla salesperson did was to encourage my wife to remove her hands from the steering wheel in Autopilot mode My fiancee was told to do the same thing with her new Toyota Corolla when purchasing it with lane assist...not that it's totally related but sort of enforces your point more that the general public is where t…

Well, even a Ford Model T will not crash immediately if you take your hands off the wheel. "Oh wow, must be self-driving!!!"
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