Master Plan, Part Deux • Hacker News Board

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#561

Post by kybernetikos » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:11 PM UTC

jobead wrote: post #556

kybernetikos wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but in comparison it will never fail as often as human do. Maybe eventually, but what I'm interested in is right now, does the tesla autopilot fail more often than a human driving in similar conditions. My suspicion is that it does.

The data already gathered would indicate that your suspicion is wrong. Currently the US averages 1 fatality for every 89 million miles driven. Autopilot is at almost twice that with only 1 fatality. So autopilot already fails less often than a human. Consider this anecdote: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/756004029239472132 Then rethink if you really believe that this pedestrian deserves to be dead because you do…

Either you've not read my comments in this thread or I've not clearly explained my point.

Your statistic ignores the fact that autopilot is only used in relatively simple situations, and since you're measuring fatalities only, you need to compare it only with cars of equivalent safety ratings.

If you have statistics comparing humans and autopilot in relevant situations I'd be very interested, but the ones you quote are exactly the ones I'm complaining about as being nonrepresentative.

Even considering all miles equally, a rate of 1 per 130 million autopilot miles (a much too small statistic from which to generalise) still does not compare particularly well to a lot of cars driven by humans, e.g. the BMW 7 series.

Incidentally, it's not at all clear that the situation described in your anecdote even involved the autopilot functionality, as it sounds like it was autonomous breaking which is a standard feature on many cars.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#562

Post by nchelluri » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:13 PM UTC

Hermel wrote: post #519

rjdagost wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me- is Tesla a for-profit corporation or are they a non-profit organization? Making a profit is sort of the main point, though obviously not the only point. They've been around since 2003 so it's not like they're a scrappy Y-Combinator incubator company.

Musk founded Tesla with a vision to make the world more sustainable, and not with the vision to become obscenely rich. Being profitable is a means to an end for him, and not the other way around. And that's fine. The founders of a company are free to specify its purpose in the company's articles. There is no legal requirement that says corporations must seek profits.

I hope you don't consider this a nitpick,

> Tesla Motors was incorporated in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning who financed the company until the Series A round of funding.[37] Both men played active roles in the company's early development prior to and after Elon Musk's involvement, with Eberhard the original CEO of Tesla until he was asked to resign in August 2007 by the board of directors.

Musk didn't found Tesla. That's from wikipedia.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#563

Post by bobwaycott » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

sp527 wrote: post #303

jkestner wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abuses? How about "utilizes"? The subsidy is there to get more electric vehicles on the road.

I don't trust the government to manipulate the free market efficiently. It's comprised of hapless morons who don't know what they're doing and whose favor is for sale to the highest bidder. Case in point are the tremendous number of bankrupt alternative energy companies built upon favorable treatment by the government. Market intervention doesn't suddenly become justifiable simply because the outcome of advancing the…

> It's comprised of hapless morons who don't know what they're doing...

This sounds exactly like the free market to me. Hapless morons who don't know what they're doing—but try to reach their goals nonetheless—as far as the eye can see.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#564

Post by webXL » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

sgc wrote: post #410

ams6110 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More electric vehicles will get on the road when there is a realistic economic rationale to buy them. Without the subsidy, an $80,000 car that can only go 200 miles is a lot less appealing.

Hence they are subsidized. People with a bit of forward vision realize that without an economic incentive today, there may not be an economic rationale tomorrow, since the technology will not miraculously develop itself.

> there may not be an economic rationale tomorrow, since the technology will not miraculously develop itself

And if we don't invade country X, it may come back to bite us some day, right? And if we don't prop up the auto industry buying clunkers and robbing shareholders to pay union reps top dollar, people will have to start riding bikes and millions will be out of work, right?

If you're hoping for miracles, the government would be the last place to go looking for them. Necessity is the mother of invention, and while one could argue that our society "needs" this technology just like it "needs" to invade other countries, centralized decision making never leads to optimal outcomes, let alone "miracles".

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#565

Post by logicalmind » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

eyelidlessness wrote: post #250

JeffL wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that would be a good thing? Without need for parking, commercial districts could get denser and denser, and people could have nice large homes far away for cheaper than ever. If the cars aren't causing pollution or gridlock, what's so bad about living in the suburbs?

Suburbs destroy public life, create anxiety and a sense of atomization, and turn natural spaces into scar tissue. Even if you could perfect transportation technology, suburbs are the least optimal configuration for humans to live in the world.

I'm a bit of a germaphobe, so I may be over-sensationalizing the risk. But high human density seems to be a dangerous living condition in terms of illness. History has shown numerous plagues that have wiped out vast numbers of people living in dense human areas. With the continued resistance and misuse of antibiotics, it seems highly likely that we will see some sort of plague that will impact people in direct proportion to their direct contact with other humans.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#566

Post by Snowdax » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:22 PM UTC

vadym909 wrote: post #540

OliverJones wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm doing business (in my household) with both Tesla and Solar City. I can tell you this about Solar City: They're doing with roofing and power meters what Tesla is doing with vehicles. They're promoting a location-aware distributed electric-distribution grid. We're lucky right now that the government's promotion of PV is putting the burden of power storage on the power-grid operators. Without net metering, this stag…

whats PV

Photovoltaics. AKA Solar panels

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#567

Post by Alupis » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:27 PM UTC

chc wrote: post #355

rjdagost wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you will about their "antiquated" business practices, but Ford consistently does one thing that Tesla never does: it turns a profit

This seems more like a sneer than a legitimate criticism. AFAIK Tesla's business is fundamentally pretty solid. They make a net profit on their cars, but they are currently investing it all into aggressive expansion. Is it surprising that a young, growing company is spending a lot on growth compared to a century-old company? Do you think it would be better for Tesla if they didn't invest in the future?

Unlike Ford, GM, etc... Tesla has a much narrower market potential.

Yes Tesla's cars are "cool" and everybody wants one, but even the new "cheaper" model costs far more than the average person spends on a car. Right now, Tesla caters to the luxury market, and is viewed as a "cool alternative" to more traditional luxury makes.

Ford, Toyota et al, have models that cover just about every price range and every type of customer, from the extreme budget oriented to the extreme luxury sports car fanatic. Toyota owns Scion, Toyota, and Lexus for example - so if you need a car, chances are one of the Toyota offerings will satisfy your needs and budget. This opens the market potential to include just about every person.

The one thing that has worried me about Tesla for a long while, is Musk's claims that next year they'll sell 30% more cars, every year - something that's now proving to be an impossible feat. At some point, they were going to hit a ceiling of maximum potential sales as they attempted to wedge into the already entrenched high-end luxury sports car market - there just aren't enough buyers to keep that growth at these prices.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#568

Post by ajmurmann » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:28 PM UTC

restalis wrote: post #490

tikl1 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are the very definition of imperfection and thinking that you are capable of "correctly using a car" that is, never make the mistake that will cause a terrible accident is a big problem. It's probably why so much people keep resisting evolution like autopilot, they can't admit that even them can someday fail and crash. They believe that if they are good drivers they will avoid it. Sadly very good drivers die e…

"Sadly very good drivers die every day and not only because of someone else's mistake." Indeed, and that may often be because of taking warranted risks. It bothers me that when making comparisons of driving safety people tend to suffer from absence blindness and discount other important things like the death avoidance cases. Let's say you have a bleeding injured person which requires urgent access to a medical facili…

This is a very interesting point and I wonder if this might at some point turn into an advantage once there are enough self driving cars. Here is a potential feature: I am in an emergency and request "emergency override" or whatever you want to call it. Maybe someone pops up on the screen asks a question or not, maybe the override gets activated immediately and deactivated if it gets identified that I don't actually have an emergency. If the override is active the car goes faster and more importantly communicates to other self driving cars what's going on. Other cars will automatically make room like they would for an emergency vehicle. In general how self driving cars react to emergency vehicles of any kind could be so much better than anything we have today.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#569

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:28 PM UTC

logicalmind wrote: post #565

eyelidlessness wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suburbs destroy public life, create anxiety and a sense of atomization, and turn natural spaces into scar tissue. Even if you could perfect transportation technology, suburbs are the least optimal configuration for humans to live in the world.

I'm a bit of a germaphobe, so I may be over-sensationalizing the risk. But high human density seems to be a dangerous living condition in terms of illness. History has shown numerous plagues that have wiped out vast numbers of people living in dense human areas. With the continued resistance and misuse of antibiotics, it seems highly likely that we will see some sort of plague that will impact people in direct propor…

Its not so much the density (which is important) as the cross-contamination. Everybody travels nearly everywhere without so much as a doctor's note. There's no such thing as a quarantined population, nor any attempt to test travelers for dangerous pathogens.

If you moved cattle or poultry around like we move people, you'd get fined and put out of business. Deservedly so, because of the risk of spreading disease and wiping out whole crops of valuable animals. But people, not so important I guess.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#570

Post by Symmetry » Thu, Jul 21, 2016, 3:28 PM UTC

pdq wrote: post #139

I still don't understand the SolarCity part. Tesla is atop the best rated electric cars, and has a good trajectory toward that product line future, with lots of innovation ahead. Successful companies like Apple focus on best-in-class products, so Tesla is smart to continue focusing their resources into those product lines. Meanwhile SolarCity has been burning cash on a consistent basis [1], and is sitting in a hyper…

You can think of a Tesla, to a gross approximation, as a giant battery with some wheels strapped on. Giant batteries are more than anything else crucial to their business and what they spend a lot of time figuring out how to manufacture well. That's why they've gone into the business of selling batteries for temporarily powering homes or letting people store solar energy.

And once you're in the business of selling solar storage batteries it makes some sense to integrate with a solar provider.

But I think you're right in your second paragraph and it might make more sense for Solar City to just be a re-seller of Tesla batteries without Tesla buying them.