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Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

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Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#71

Post by wutbrodo »

shagie wrote: post #26
wutbrodo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already limitations by road condition. This level of control over the operating environment is part of why so many services are targeting robotaxis as their initial product.

Would a robotaxi in Detroit, Chicago, or Minneapolis in the winter be viable? I'm thinking about those roads where it's nominally a two lane in each direction, but the snow banks make it a 1.5 lane in each direction (if that). Where one doesn't start into the intersection when the light turns green - to give any cars that have the need to slide through. And likewise the ability for the robotaxi to realize "well, I've…

That's my point. Presumably Detroit doesn't have winter driving conditions in the summer, in which case robotaxis are feasible seasonally, or when there hasn't been rain/freezing conditions for X # of days, etc. Determining a bound on operating conditions is a far easier problem than making a car that drives itself.

Before launching in any city, you have to validate that you can handle the idiosyncrasies of its driving environment. Perhaps the business side decides that Detroit isn't worth launching in, but is drivable 200 days/yr and that's enough to warrant launching an intermittently-available service.

My ultimate point is that AVs can cover a lot of ground from a business perspective without getting to full universal-availability. This is helped along by a combination of validating each city independently[1], limiting operating conditions, and safe-fallback teleoperation for occasional use.

Validating a 2021 AV in a snowy environment isn't an inherently harder problem than validating a 2016 AV in a normal environment (with a safety driver), and a similar approach will be applicable.

[1] Presumably less and less narrowly each time

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#72

Post by ObserverNeutral »

hodder wrote: post #32

Fake it til you make it is fine with startups, however with publicly traded securities it is fraud. Elon Musk gets away with a lot of things that most capital markets participants would be imprisoned for. I'd certainly be in jail if I did half the BS he does on an almost daily basis. Yet, this fake it til you make model has enabled reflexivity in the growth and stock price allowing Tesla and other Musk ventures to gr…

> Yet, this fake it til you make model has enabled reflexivity in the growth and stock price allowing Tesla and other Musk ventures to grow and accomplish a lot with amazing speed.

But once you are a company that size the goal is to grow and accomplish amazing stuff but with great margins.

Tesla has essentially arrived at destination with regards to MarketCap, it won't become a 5 trillion dollar company. Nobody will. There is such a thing as the Sherman Act and Antitrust.

Tesla still lags behind in every other metric (especially margins) compared to similar companies of that size.

Seems to me Musk will have to work a whole lot just deliver and thus mantain the current valuation and his level of net worth right now.

Alternatively he could get to 5 trillions by promising new products at an increasingly higher rate and thus avoiding the antitrust laws. Those laws were written for a company which actually has a market dominance, not a company which has a stock market dominance based on the promises of the CEO and people believing in it and buying the stock.

I think from what we've seen, he's going in this direction exactly, he'll keep inflating the bubble that's for sure. He only has one gear

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#73

Post by 908B64B197 »

prima_cookie wrote: post #30
908B64B197 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an incredibly hard problem to solve. The Boring Company might be onto something. These tunnels are a very controlled environment, highly predictable. If they can be be made cheaper it might just be the initial "killer app" of self-driving cars.

if it's just fixed route stuff why not just build more advanced subways/underground trains? not that boring couldn't make that cheaper and faster to do the whole 2/4 door cars in a tunnel thing feels weird to me I'm not trying to contrarian or anything but most of my life those have been my primary mode of transportation and it's worked out great especially if you throw a bike or now I guess a e-scooter into the mix

I think the Boring idea is that at the end of the trip you still have your car. So suburb to suburb works.

> why not just build more advanced subways/underground trains?

The train business is horrible to be in. Just look at Bombardier Transportation/Alstom. City A in State B and country C decides it needs a new train. The existing infrastructure was all custom-made in the 60's. Bombardier/Alstom has to design a mostly custom train for it. Everyone bike shed on the design. Then, because it's a government project, and State B financed some of it there's a clause in the contract that is must be manufactured in State B of Country C. Not only is a new production line (manufacturing hell) for the almost completely custom design required, they must also set shop in this new jurisdiction and work their supply chain around that. Ribbon cutting ceremony, positive polls for reelection.

Few years later, City D in State E of Country Z wants a new train system. The whole process starts all over again. Can't just retool the existing plant in State B of Country C, it has to be a new one too in State E of Country Z, or a local manufacturing partner (ribbon cutting ceremony obliges). Meanwhile the press in State B of Country C gets angry as workers are laid off since there's no more work to be done.

By using standard road vehicles, Musk eliminates one of the biggest cost. It's all off the shelf stuff that's user-supplied.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#74

Post by dntrkv »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #19
mrtksn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, I used to ride an autonomous vehicle every day in London. DLR is autonomous, the catch is - it has its own lane and it’s on rails. Also, someone sits in the car during rush hours, just in case. Here’s how it looks to be in the front car of the train when there’s a supervisor: https://imgur.com/geFIidK Outside of the rush hour, that lid is closed and it feels like the Half-Life train at beginning of the…

We could've vastly expanded a lot of train systems with the amount of money that's been burned trying to make cars drive themselves. Unfortunately, most new transportation methods that are not trains are just attempts to build trains, while claiming they are not trains and will cost less than trains. But inevitably end up costing as much as trains. Trains.

> We could've vastly expanded a lot of train systems with the amount of money that's been burned trying to make cars drive themselves.

I'd like to see the numbers on that. Given the cost for the CHSR is around $100B, I don't think that statement is true. The bigger issue here is the US's inability to build fast trains, affordably, and on a reasonable timeline.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#75

Post by oeuhoenth »

vladf wrote: post #53
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could've vastly expanded a lot of train systems with the amount of money that's been burned trying to make cars drive themselves. Unfortunately, most new transportation methods that are not trains are just attempts to build trains, while claiming they are not trains and will cost less than trains. But inevitably end up costing as much as trains. Trains.

Is this really true? To be able to build a track you need to have government-level authority (e.g., in GP's example, to build something on its own lane in the road, or to displace people in homes in the way of the track). However, the entities funding SDCs are private.

Having dedicated tracks solve a lot of problems for autonomous vehicles.

Governments already claim a monopoly on roads in most places. Imagine if those roads had some sort of cheap embedded track that a number of vehicles could latch onto. Then you just need some sort of computer to coordinate the vehicles using the track, and understanding where the vehicles are on the track.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#76

Post by barbazoo »

QuercusMax wrote: post #55
barbazoo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future. I'm less worried about the autonomous vehicle I might be driving and more about the ones others are driving. Here's an idea, how about being able to geofence a neighborhood as "<= Level 3 autonomy only". I'm only somewhat joking. I know it smells of NIMBY but it might be useful around schools, daycares, etc.

Based on how I've seen humans drive their vehicles for school dropoffs and pickups in San Jose, I would much prefer robots.

Not the kind of "robots" we have right now I think.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#77

Post by azinman2 »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #60
S_A_P wrote: post #8

This is my single biggest beef with Elon and Tesla. From the jump I think that the name overstates the ability of the vehicles. I think his tweets have been consistently optimistic regarding timelines to the point of hyperbole. I agree that autonomy is a worthwhile goal, but I think the real selling point of a Tesla is that they were until recently the best electric car you can buy. That still may be the case today b…

I think it's the best car you can buy, electric or otherwise. That's why it baffles me that Musk feels the need to consistently lie about autonomy, because the car is already great without it, and the "intelligent cruise control" which the car does have is convenient and as good as anybody else's. It's as if Apple made the best computers--which some people think they still do--but Tim Cook was tweeting every day abou…

Ego? Surrounded by yes-men (I’m guessing)?

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#78

Post by zaptrem »

irthomasthomas wrote: post #54

Someone is criticising Musk? He's obviously a pedo guy and a polluting BMW driver. I shall send my people to reeducate him. No need for this to be front page. /s I joke, but seriously, how long can this Musk worship go on? Musk invested in Tesla AFTER Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning built the Roadster. He later sued them for founder status and ousted the real founders from their own company. It's now almost 20 ye…

Do you have a source on the Roadster issue? Per Wikipedia:

> Musk took an active role within the company and oversaw Roadster product design at a detailed level, but was not deeply involved in day-to-day business operations.[12] Eberhard acknowledged that Musk was the person who insisted from the beginning on a carbon-fiber-reinforced polymer body and that Musk led design of components ranging from the power electronics module to the headlamps and other styling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.

Do you have a source on your company founding point?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com

I don’t have time to keep going through this, but even the tone of your whole post is extremely smarmy/troll-like. Usually discourse here is a little more polite.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#79

Post by bluGill »

amelius wrote: post #59
irthomasthomas wrote: post #54

Someone is criticising Musk? He's obviously a pedo guy and a polluting BMW driver. I shall send my people to reeducate him. No need for this to be front page. /s I joke, but seriously, how long can this Musk worship go on? Musk invested in Tesla AFTER Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning built the Roadster. He later sued them for founder status and ousted the real founders from their own company. It's now almost 20 ye…

> Tesla is still a (...) company that has not had one profitable year Isn't this true of most growing companies? Like Amazon, Uber, YouTube (now Google), etc.

Do they ever become profitable?

I believe Amazon finally has. I don't know about YouTube, but I suspect they are. Uber has a bad business model and so won't (unless their raise prices)

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#80

Post by rsj_hn »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #60
S_A_P wrote: post #8

This is my single biggest beef with Elon and Tesla. From the jump I think that the name overstates the ability of the vehicles. I think his tweets have been consistently optimistic regarding timelines to the point of hyperbole. I agree that autonomy is a worthwhile goal, but I think the real selling point of a Tesla is that they were until recently the best electric car you can buy. That still may be the case today b…

I think it's the best car you can buy, electric or otherwise. That's why it baffles me that Musk feels the need to consistently lie about autonomy, because the car is already great without it, and the "intelligent cruise control" which the car does have is convenient and as good as anybody else's. It's as if Apple made the best computers--which some people think they still do--but Tim Cook was tweeting every day abou…

I don't think Musk is intentionally lying about autonomy, this is just his worldview. He truly believes that strong AI is just around the corner and it poses an existential threat to the human race, and by the same token, of course we'll have full self-driving cars as soon as just a few small kinks are ironed out. These beliefs stem from a very strong worldview, and are not attempts at stock price manipulation or some kind of investor scam. Musk is convinced that there isn't a very big difference between the human brain and the tech inside GPUs combined with some matrix multiplication and training data, and these differences, to the degree they exist, are easily bridged with a bit of software. That's a core element of his beliefs.

What is more interesting is why he hasn't learned that his worldview is so fundamentally wrong. And for that, I would say that it's hard for very rich and successful people to acknowledge they are so completely wrong about important things.

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