Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

I've been acquainted with a number of engineers at various autonomous vehicle companies and they are some of the most reserved people when it comes to the reality of autonomous driving. Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future.

I think when domain experts speak up like this we should listen. The autonomous vehicle technology seems like it has a long way to go.

FWIW, I work in AV eng/research and have never heard someone say this. Most of the people I know in the space are pretty clear-headed about how dangerous human driving is.

We are generally less optimistic about timing, but that was more true a couple years ago (before all the big cos' 2019 deadlines got pushed back) than it is now. Current timelines seem like an achievable challenge to me, and I don't think I'm unusually optimistic.

Musk's timeline pronouncements, as usual, just aren't taken seriously (and imo hurt the industry's credibility). I like the guy and respect what he's done, but for whatever reason he says really out-there things that are best ignored until he shows the receipts.

This reminds me of the first bubble. Everyone on the inside were looking at each other as stock and salaries skyrocketed thinking this was crazy and unsustainable. But we all just shrugged because there was no stopping the hype train.

Here, anyone even just tangentially involved or know the some details of AI/ML are highly skeptical that Elon's vision of self driving cars will occur in our lifetime. Yet, Elon keeps pitching it, the press runs with it, and the public grabs it up, patiently waiting.

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 but others are catching up. To me it would be a shame if autopilot NHTSA investigation brought Tesla down or a giant class action by everyone who plopped down 10 grand to get full autonomy and it never shows up.

I still can’t get over how deceptive the marketing was on the Autopilot page on Tesla.com

>Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars

>All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.

How was it possible to know in advance what hardware will be required?