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I'm a big Musk fan and think the ambition of his current projects are incredible. But, my fear with Tesla is that the AutoPilot stuff derails and ultimately ki

I'm a big Musk fan and think the ambition of his current projects are incredible. But, my fear with Tesla is that the AutoPilot stuff derails and ultimately kills the company. Not because it lands up being more dangerous than conventional driving but because of the bad image the media could/will paint of the technology as the number of crashes increases. Pushing forward electric cars is important, autonomous driving is going to happen with or without Telsa driving it forward, I don't think electric cars will happen without them getting out the Model 3 and growing their market share appreciably - it would be a shame for that mission to fail because of a feature that is essentially a development of established car technology (cruise control -> cruise control+ -> autonomous). As an aside, if you've not read the articles on Wait But Why[1] on him then I highly recommend setting aside a few hours to do so as they give a clear (if biased) picture of what Musk has set out to do and why. [1] http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m...

Animats 10y ago
Tesla's problem is Musk denying that they have a problem. That's not flying. Tesla needs to immediately issue an over the air update so that after 5 seconds of hands-off-wheel, the vehicle starts to slow down. That will keep the driver in the loop. Longer-term, the radar blind spot at windshield height has to be fixed. They need a vision system and control system which doesn't treat "unrangeable uniform surface" as "no obstacle". And the system should have a database of limited access highways and refuse to engage on anything else. What Tesla has is only good enough for freeway driving, and it needs to refuse to operate on anything else.
- simonbarker87 10y ago
  Agreed, he's a great salesman vision wise but he is not good at crisis management with front line press - his press releases/blog posts are coming over very poorly at the moment. Which comes back to my point that they should be focussing on the electric car aspect, let Ford etc take the lead on consumer autonomous for now and come back once they've proved everyone wrong with electric cars.
  - Animats 10y ago
    Car companies can't "focus". Automotive manufacturing is about doing several hundred things simultaneously yet in a coordinated way. Most YC-type companies don't have that degree of operating complexity.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  What happens if slow down causes a crash? Aren't we back to the same spot we are now?

Animats 10y ago

Tesla's problem is Musk denying that they have a problem. That's not flying. Tesla needs to immediately issue an over the air update so that after 5 seconds of hands-off-wheel, the vehicle starts to slow down. That will keep the driver in the loop. Longer-term, the radar blind spot at windshield height has to be fixed. They need a vision system and control system which doesn't treat "unrangeable uniform surface" as "no obstacle". And the system should have a database of limited access highways and refuse to engage on anything else. What Tesla has is only good enough for freeway driving, and it needs to refuse to operate on anything else.

simonbarker87 10y ago
Agreed, he's a great salesman vision wise but he is not good at crisis management with front line press - his press releases/blog posts are coming over very poorly at the moment. Which comes back to my point that they should be focussing on the electric car aspect, let Ford etc take the lead on consumer autonomous for now and come back once they've proved everyone wrong with electric cars.
- Animats 10y ago
  Car companies can't "focus". Automotive manufacturing is about doing several hundred things simultaneously yet in a coordinated way. Most YC-type companies don't have that degree of operating complexity.
brianwawok 10y ago
What happens if slow down causes a crash? Aren't we back to the same spot we are now?