Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

tomverbeure.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 378 posts

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#311

Post by trogdor »

FireBeyond wrote: post #304
deng wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It already fails in Manhattan. I know that by US standards, the traffic in Manhattan is already considered chaos, but it's usually pretty tame compared to other countries. There are these videos by this HUGE Tesla fanboy, just look here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo_hC84OSwg where at 8:20 it fails to properly deal with a cop car and the fanboy complains that the cop did not obey traffic laws (good luck arguing t…

> the fanboy complains that the cop did not obey traffic laws Emergency responder (fire/paramedic) here. EVIP (Emergency Vehicle Incident Prevention) is a course that in most states, responders are required to take to operate a vehicle in "emergency mode" (i.e. lights, sirens, both). In some states it also serves as a replacement/alternate for requiring a CDL for larger vehicles. In "emergency mode", the vehicle, bas…

>While in emergency mode, the driver of the emergency vehicle is -presumptively liable- for ANY incident that occurs, unless it can be demonstrated otherwise (and even then there is still likely to be contributory liability). This liability is personal and organizational (i.e. I can be personally sued if I hit someone in my ambulance, even going code 3).

I think you are mistaken. Please cite your sources.

Drivers of emergency vehicles must exercise due regard, but as long as they meet that standard, AFAIK they are not liable for accidents they cause while operating with lights and siren, when lights and siren are warranted.

For example, CA Vehicle Code section 17004 provides: “A public employee is not liable for civil damages on account of personal injury to or death of any person or damage to property resulting from the operation, in the line of duty, of an authorized emergency vehicle while responding to an emergency call or when in the immediate pursuit of an actual or suspected violator of the law, or when responding to but not upon returning from a fire alarm or other emergency call.”

There is an exception to the rule: California Vehicle Code 21056 states that CVC 17004 and CVC 21055, “does not relieve the driver of a vehicle from the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons using the highway, nor protect him from the consequences of an arbitrary exercise of the privileges granted in that section.”

The law may be different in other states, but I doubt that your statement of the law is true in any U.S. state. Very curious to learn if I am wrong about that.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#312

Post by belter »

belter wrote: post #252
hankman86 wrote: post #64

They should teach Tesla’s “autopilot” (and its FSD upgrade) in business schools. Turns out you can sustainably push up company valuation on vapourware. You have to wonder if Tesla’s autonomous driving technology was actually ever meant to turn into a product. Or whether it is mostly a tool to justify the lofty Tesla stock price. I very much doubt that it is technologically ahead of its competitors.

> I very much doubt that it is technologically ahead of its competitors. This is where they are as of April 2024: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCLA-EA22002-14498.pd... "ODI completed an extensive body of work via PE21020 and EA22002, which showed evidence that Tesla’s weak driver engagement system was not appropriate for Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities. This mismatch resulted in a critical saf…

And...one more yesterday

"Tesla driver using self-driving mode slammed into police cruiser in Orange County" - https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-13/self-dri...

"Tesla in self-drive mode slams into police car responding to fatal crash": https://youtu.be/ukq6h55GnvE

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#313

Post by davedx »

what-the-grump wrote: post #67
stefanve wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it sounds impressive from a technical point of view it doesn’t say anything about how much better it is or if it is now truly full self driving.

It’s about as shit as the 300k lines of c code. Added with drink spilling acceleration in 12.3.6 for no reason at all. There are major improvements in taking a curve and not scaring the shit out of the driver, much faster basic turn right on stop sign, lane changes when it does it, it’s hard to describe just how smooth they are it’s a little nuts the car just floats over it’s not human, but it really should not have…

> decision logic is shit

And that's the whole problem with it - there isn't really any 'decision logic', it's a giant low level neural network trained on the outputs of human drivers. It understands driving less than GPT understands semantic concepts in language. There's no 'executive' high level control, it's just a big stupid animal brain that reacts to stimuli like 'turn left ahead' or 'car ahead slowing down'.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#314

Post by tim333 »

iknowstuff wrote: post #221
grumbelbart wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "works in limited cases" is absolutely not enough, given what it promises. It drove into static objects a couple of times, killing people. Recent videos still show behavior like speeding through stop signs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGOo06xzCeU&t=990s Meaning that it's really not reliable enough to take your hands off the wheel. Waymo shows that it is possible, with today's technology, to do much much bette…

There are no FSD deaths. Only old Autopilot ones.

Has Tesla actually stated that in a clear manner? They seem a bit cagey about such data.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#315

Post by rcxdude »

l33tman wrote: post #158
ENGNR wrote: post #70

How does Tesla FSD fair against the Waymo self driving taxis? I'm curious about whether self driving is still an impossible task right now, or if it's just a matter of quality between companies - in which case it's possibly a fair bet being made by Telsa execs that they'll bridge the gap given time and money.

Tangentially, but I'm wondering how the calculations really go with the robo-taxis. Taxidrivers here are probably getting $5/h or so and it's a job you can get without any skills at all, you don't need to speak the language and you don't need any tests, you just need to be able to sit down, input stuff on a GPS and drive. So there's an infinity of people to employ if you're a cab company. Neither Waymo nor Tesla want…

It works out pretty well in theory. Even at minimum wage the cost of the driver is a lot of the cost of the taxi ride. It does all hinge on the cost of the vehicles + the cost of monitoring + the cost of maintenance being low enough to offset this though. Cost of vehicle is higher in the case of waymo but even 3x the cost is still useful, cost of monitoring is probably still a bit high at the moment but is the main thrust of improving the tech, and maintenance is not necessarily much worse than a normal taxi.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#316

Post by tim333 »

devnull3 wrote: post #114
deng wrote: post #54

And please keep in mind that this is pretty much in the optimal settings for FSD: great weather, huge streets, everything is as "car friendly" as it gets. I'd like to see FSD navigating an old Italian city, there's just no way. Even in car-friendly Germany you very often have streets with side-parking, which are too narrow to fit two cars, you need to communicate with oncoming cars, for instance by waving or flashing…

> old Italian city Try traffic in India [1][2] If it were a game, then India will be the last boss fight in ultra-hard mode. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnPiP9PkLAs [2] https://youtu.be/WC2FUEmKEu8?t=412

Ho Chi Minh would be quite an interesting challenge https://youtu.be/1ZupwFOhjl4?t=18

I used to bike in that. Not actually quite a bad as it looks but I think it would confuse the FSD.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#317

Post by DennisP »

FireBeyond wrote: post #297
DennisP wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not enough for robotaxis yet, and Tesla doesn't claim that it is. They just think they'll get there. What they do claim is that with human supervision, it lowers the accident rate to one per 5.5 million miles, which is a lot better than the overall accident rate for all cars on the road. And unlike Waymo, it works everywhere. That's worthwhile even if it never improves from here. Fwiw you can take your hands off…

> It's not enough for robotaxis yet, and Tesla doesn't claim that it is. They just think they'll get there. "By 2019 it will be financially irresponsible not to own a Tesla, as you will be able to earn $30K a year by utilizing it as a robotaxi as you sleep." This was always horseshit, and still is: If each Tesla could earn $30K profit a year just ferrying people around (and we'd assume more, in this scenario, because…

They do plan to run their own robotaxis. But there are several million Teslas on the road already. They're just leaving money on the table if they don't make them part of the network, and doing so means they have a chance to hit critical mass without a huge upfront capital expenditure.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#318

Post by tsimionescu »

maxlin wrote: post #293
tsimionescu wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but "we're trying something harder" doesn't mean anything. Waymo is succeeding at a well defined, useful form of driverless tech. They will probably be able to extend this, maybe slowly, to more and more cities. Tesla is failing at everything they're promising, and not delivering anything useful along the way (FSD as it exists today is more dangerous and more demanding than regular driving).

You're comparing a warehouse to a train even talking about Waymo. FSD has no limit. Recently it has been tested around in Europe and Asia, and the existing tech basically "just works" because sensorily and thought-wise it's made to function like the common meatbag between the seat and the wheel, just better. No, making the skyscraper 100 meters higher isn't going to make the train less relevant even though the tracks…

Again, FSD is just not doing anything that interesting. It only handles the easy scenarios, and punts to a driver for everything else, at a moment's notice. And it still constantly fails, per everyone who tries it, in even very simple situations. Look at what this article author found: that's just not something that happens with Waymo or Mercedes.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#319

Post by Grazester »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #238
hankman86 wrote: post #64

They should teach Tesla’s “autopilot” (and its FSD upgrade) in business schools. Turns out you can sustainably push up company valuation on vapourware. You have to wonder if Tesla’s autonomous driving technology was actually ever meant to turn into a product. Or whether it is mostly a tool to justify the lofty Tesla stock price. I very much doubt that it is technologically ahead of its competitors.

Cathy Wood of Ark investments just gave Tesla a $2000 price target on the back of FSD taxi service... That's around a $5T valuation. You have to wonder if she is dumb, or just knows Tesla investors are totally delusional. Or perhaps, when you come upon an OG delusional musk worshipper, and call them out, they can point at their money pile and call you the idiot...

I really think she is a hack

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#320

Post by Veserv »

DennisP wrote: post #157
grumbelbart wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But "works in limited cases" is absolutely not enough, given what it promises. It drove into static objects a couple of times, killing people. Recent videos still show behavior like speeding through stop signs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGOo06xzCeU&t=990s Meaning that it's really not reliable enough to take your hands off the wheel. Waymo shows that it is possible, with today's technology, to do much much bette…

It's not enough for robotaxis yet, and Tesla doesn't claim that it is. They just think they'll get there. What they do claim is that with human supervision, it lowers the accident rate to one per 5.5 million miles, which is a lot better than the overall accident rate for all cars on the road. And unlike Waymo, it works everywhere. That's worthwhile even if it never improves from here. Fwiw you can take your hands off…

Well the recent NHTSA report [1] shows Tesla intentionally falsified those statistics, so we can assume Tesla-derived statements are intentionally deceptive until proven otherwise.

Tesla only counts pyrotechnic deployments for their own numbers which NHTSA states is only ~18% of all crashes which is derived from publicly available datasets. Tesla chooses to not even account for a literal 5x discrepancy derivable from publicly available data. They make no attempt to account for anything more complex or subtle. No competent member of the field would make errors that basic except to distort the conclusions.

The usage of falsified statistics to aggressively push product to the risk of their customers makes it clear that their numbers should not only be ignored, but assumed to be malicious.

[1] https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

Post reply on HN