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I believe you, but I think that misses the point. My takeaway here is that Tesla is just getting started with Autopilot. Despite the hype, this blog post makes

I believe you, but I think that misses the point. My takeaway here is that Tesla is just getting started with Autopilot. Despite the hype, this blog post makes it clear that Autopilot is just a very simple camera based system that requires human monitoring (but is still very useful in my personal experience). Now they are releasing a software update that uses the previously unused radar hardware as well as machine learning to achieve better results. This is exciting because they're going to keep releasing software updates over the air and the software is just going to keep getting better and better. The fact that the hardware is shitty doesn't concern me. Google's self driving car project depends on a Lidar system that costs $75,000 today. That's almost four times what the average car costs, and it doesn't work in bad weather. Regardless of how good Google's software is it could mean nothing if Tesla acheives a similar or better result using cheap commodity hardware. The hardware will only get better over time at the same price. Tesla is in a better position to bring full autonomy to market than anyone else, since they control the hardware, the software, have cars in the field etc. For this reason I wouldn't be surprised if Tesla becomes the first company to break a market capitalization of $1 trillion dollars. Computers gaining the ability to move around the world with drones and autononomous driving will have an economic impact bigger than the introduction of the internet. Where we are now is meaningless. What matters is that Musk has stated the goal and we have something in the field today that can be updated iteratively over time until it's perfect (which will be never). We may not be very far along this journey, but we've taken those hardest first steps towards the next big technological revolution that will once again change everything about how humans live, the implications of which we can't even begin to imagine.

deegles 10y ago
Autopilot will get better and it will be used more, and more people will die. At least until full autonomy. Think about all the weird edge cases that are encountered in distributed systems, and now attach a human life and a 5,000lb car to it. The question is if fewer people will die on a per-mile adjusted basis. Sure, Autopilot is safe 'when used correctly,' but I wouldn't trust someone to maintain 100% attention on driving with it enabled. Maybe for a few cumulative hours. Not for hundreds or maybe thousands of hours. If I'm paying attention and I prevent Autopilot from getting me into an accident, why have it on in the first place? It's supposed to protect me from inattention! (e.g. automatic braking) As it gets better at protecting people from inattention, people will be less attentive, and more will encounter the edge cases that the machine learning models will inevitably have. Don't get me wrong, I love SDCs and the massive impact they will have, I just believe that partial autonomy is unsafe because of the human factor.
- peteretep 10y ago
  Will more people die than would have with AutoPilot?
  - manicdee 10y ago
    If you quintuple the number of Tesla kilometres per year but only triple its safety, you will still have more injuries and fatalities. For every Tesla that is now able to recognise a truck cutting across a highway and brakes in time to avoid a fatal collision you will have new bizarre scenarios like following behind a truck that dislodges overhead objects, which a human would have avoided but a Tesla's computer didn't see, leading to a human getting crushed by a bridge falling down. I would also expect a short learning curve for Teslas to acknowledge the emergency stop water curtain signs. But the short version is yes, SDC will result in more deaths even though they get relatively safer and safer. https://youtu.be/NoTMC-uxJoo https://youtu.be/NoTMC-uxJoo
  - imtringued 10y ago
    Let me ask a different question. For every accident that happens with AutoPilot and a non AutoPilot car, would it have happened if every involved car had AutoPilot?
- vvanders 10y ago
  > If I'm paying attention and I prevent Autopilot from getting me into an accident, why have it on in the first place? Because it takes less mental effort to watch for the exception case rather than constantly adjusting speed/heading/etc. Also something that's rarely mentioned is that in it's current form AP's killer-feature is rush hour traffic. In those situations you're dealing with <20 MPH and tends to be the most mentally taxing. In my small sample set(~30k AP miles) I've found the mental load for driving long distances and rush hour traffic to be significantly less.
  - etendue 10y ago
    > In my small sample set(~30k AP miles) I've found the mental load for driving long distances and rush hour traffic to be significantly less. Interesting---how did you measure this?
Animats 10y ago
Volvo is in a much better position. They're going live with 100 human drivers next year, actual customers, not employees, with drivers not required to have their hands on the wheel.[1] This will be enabled only for well-mapped roads in Gothenburg, but they're not all freeways. Volvo's CEO has publicly taken the position that if there's a crash in auto mode, it's Volvo's fault. Volvo uses four cameras (one of which is a trifocal 3D unit), four radars, one LIDAR, and 12 ultrasonic sensors. That's a reasonable sensor suite for this. Tesla has one camera, one radar, and some ultrasonic sensors. Not enough. Volvo is also way ahead on self-driving car commercials.[2] [1] http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/intellisafe/intellisafe-autopilot/this-is-autopilot http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/in... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwKuWz_lkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwKuWz_lkE
- flexie 10y ago
  How would that be a better position than Tesla's? 100 vs 100,000.
  - Too 10y ago
    The 100 sample is supposed to be true automated driving, take me from a to b. Not just the standard Lane keeping, adaptive cruise etc, which is what tesla offers with their "autopilot".
    - jaimex2 10y ago
      Thats great, except Google has already done this.
      - tim333 10y ago
        Google have yet to let the public loose in their cars on their own.
    - flexie 10y ago
      Tesla offers more than that: https://www.google.dk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/08/tesla-model-x-missouri-medical-emergency%3f0p19G=e?client=safari https://www.google.dk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2... And better yet: their 100,000 (soon to be 500,000) autopilots will gather live information from roads from several countries, weather types, etc. even when the cars are manually driven. Every day, Tesla's 100,000 cars will bring as much data for their algorithms as Volvo's 100 cars do in 3 years. Or put in another way: unless Volvo magically have much better programmers than the IT company Tesla, they would need 3 millenia to keep up with Tesla's current fleet of 100,000 data collectors.
amluto 10y ago
> Google's self driving car project depends on a Lidar system that costs $75,000 today. I believe you're multiple orders of magnitude off here. Google's LIDAR is surprisingly cheap. I believe they used expensive Velodyne units in earlier versions. Heck, even brand-new Velodyne devices are only $8k.
- kctess5 10y ago
  I'm not sure of the specifics, but I think it's fancier than the $8000 unit you're referring to. The vpl-16 only has 16 vertical channels. The next up has 32 vertical channels and costs closer to 30k. The biggest one with 64 channels seems to be around 70k.
- irfanka 10y ago
  That's not multiple orders of magnitude; it's, at most, one.
  - amluto 10y ago
    IIRC Google has an in-house unit that is considerably less expensive, at least in the sense that they project it would cost considerably less to manufacture in volume.
- irfanka 10y ago
  That's not multiple orders of magnitude - it's, at most, one.
wibr 10y ago
Tesla definitely used the radar for their autopilot before the update, now they just increased its responsibility. The autopilot still needs the camera, at least for lane detection. They won't be able to achieve similar or better results than Google with the current sensor suite, for example they don't have anything to check for oncoming cars behind the vehicle. No software update can compensate for things that the sensors don't see.
- usaphp 10y ago
  >"for example they don't have anything to check for oncoming cars behind the vehicle" Then how does a line changing feature works? I am pretty sure you need to see cars behind you to safely change lanes?
  - wibr 10y ago
    As far as I know, the driver has to make sure that it's safe to change lanes. Other manufacturers have rear facing radars for this.
    - tatoalo 10y ago
      > "As far as I know, the driver has to make sure that it's safe to change lanes." For safety reason the driver has yet to be sure that no one is approaching you at the moment of changing lane but the system obviously works autonomously, you just have to engage the turn signal. > "Other manufacturers have rear facing radars for this." Tesla have rear radars, otherwise Autolane-changing and Autopark features wouldn't be available to use.
      - wibr 10y ago
        Parking is done with ultrasonic sensors. I am pretty sure that Tesla currently does not have rear radars.

deegles 10y ago

Autopilot will get better and it will be used more, and more people will die. At least until full autonomy. Think about all the weird edge cases that are encountered in distributed systems, and now attach a human life and a 5,000lb car to it. The question is if fewer people will die on a per-mile adjusted basis. Sure, Autopilot is safe 'when used correctly,' but I wouldn't trust someone to maintain 100% attention on driving with it enabled. Maybe for a few cumulative hours. Not for hundreds or maybe thousands of hours. If I'm paying attention and I prevent Autopilot from getting me into an accident, why have it on in the first place? It's supposed to protect me from inattention! (e.g. automatic braking) As it gets better at protecting people from inattention, people will be less attentive, and more will encounter the edge cases that the machine learning models will inevitably have. Don't get me wrong, I love SDCs and the massive impact they will have, I just believe that partial autonomy is unsafe because of the human factor.

peteretep 10y ago
Will more people die than would have with AutoPilot?
- manicdee 10y ago
  If you quintuple the number of Tesla kilometres per year but only triple its safety, you will still have more injuries and fatalities. For every Tesla that is now able to recognise a truck cutting across a highway and brakes in time to avoid a fatal collision you will have new bizarre scenarios like following behind a truck that dislodges overhead objects, which a human would have avoided but a Tesla's computer didn't see, leading to a human getting crushed by a bridge falling down. I would also expect a short learning curve for Teslas to acknowledge the emergency stop water curtain signs. But the short version is yes, SDC will result in more deaths even though they get relatively safer and safer. https://youtu.be/NoTMC-uxJoo https://youtu.be/NoTMC-uxJoo
- imtringued 10y ago
  Let me ask a different question. For every accident that happens with AutoPilot and a non AutoPilot car, would it have happened if every involved car had AutoPilot?
vvanders 10y ago
> If I'm paying attention and I prevent Autopilot from getting me into an accident, why have it on in the first place? Because it takes less mental effort to watch for the exception case rather than constantly adjusting speed/heading/etc. Also something that's rarely mentioned is that in it's current form AP's killer-feature is rush hour traffic. In those situations you're dealing with <20 MPH and tends to be the most mentally taxing. In my small sample set(~30k AP miles) I've found the mental load for driving long distances and rush hour traffic to be significantly less.
- etendue 10y ago
  > In my small sample set(~30k AP miles) I've found the mental load for driving long distances and rush hour traffic to be significantly less. Interesting---how did you measure this?

Animats 10y ago

Volvo is in a much better position. They're going live with 100 human drivers next year, actual customers, not employees, with drivers not required to have their hands on the wheel.[1] This will be enabled only for well-mapped roads in Gothenburg, but they're not all freeways. Volvo's CEO has publicly taken the position that if there's a crash in auto mode, it's Volvo's fault. Volvo uses four cameras (one of which is a trifocal 3D unit), four radars, one LIDAR, and 12 ultrasonic sensors. That's a reasonable sensor suite for this. Tesla has one camera, one radar, and some ultrasonic sensors. Not enough. Volvo is also way ahead on self-driving car commercials.[2] [1] http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/intellisafe/intellisafe-autopilot/this-is-autopilot http://www.volvocars.com/intl/about/our-innovation-brands/in... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwKuWz_lkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJwKuWz_lkE

flexie 10y ago
How would that be a better position than Tesla's? 100 vs 100,000.
- Too 10y ago
  The 100 sample is supposed to be true automated driving, take me from a to b. Not just the standard Lane keeping, adaptive cruise etc, which is what tesla offers with their "autopilot".
  - jaimex2 10y ago
    Thats great, except Google has already done this.
    - tim333 10y ago
      Google have yet to let the public loose in their cars on their own.
  - flexie 10y ago
    Tesla offers more than that: https://www.google.dk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/08/tesla-model-x-missouri-medical-emergency%3f0p19G=e?client=safari https://www.google.dk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2... And better yet: their 100,000 (soon to be 500,000) autopilots will gather live information from roads from several countries, weather types, etc. even when the cars are manually driven. Every day, Tesla's 100,000 cars will bring as much data for their algorithms as Volvo's 100 cars do in 3 years. Or put in another way: unless Volvo magically have much better programmers than the IT company Tesla, they would need 3 millenia to keep up with Tesla's current fleet of 100,000 data collectors.

amluto 10y ago

> Google's self driving car project depends on a Lidar system that costs $75,000 today. I believe you're multiple orders of magnitude off here. Google's LIDAR is surprisingly cheap. I believe they used expensive Velodyne units in earlier versions. Heck, even brand-new Velodyne devices are only $8k.

kctess5 10y ago
I'm not sure of the specifics, but I think it's fancier than the $8000 unit you're referring to. The vpl-16 only has 16 vertical channels. The next up has 32 vertical channels and costs closer to 30k. The biggest one with 64 channels seems to be around 70k.
irfanka 10y ago
That's not multiple orders of magnitude; it's, at most, one.
- amluto 10y ago
  IIRC Google has an in-house unit that is considerably less expensive, at least in the sense that they project it would cost considerably less to manufacture in volume.
irfanka 10y ago
That's not multiple orders of magnitude - it's, at most, one.

wibr 10y ago

Tesla definitely used the radar for their autopilot before the update, now they just increased its responsibility. The autopilot still needs the camera, at least for lane detection. They won't be able to achieve similar or better results than Google with the current sensor suite, for example they don't have anything to check for oncoming cars behind the vehicle. No software update can compensate for things that the sensors don't see.

usaphp 10y ago
>"for example they don't have anything to check for oncoming cars behind the vehicle" Then how does a line changing feature works? I am pretty sure you need to see cars behind you to safely change lanes?
- wibr 10y ago
  As far as I know, the driver has to make sure that it's safe to change lanes. Other manufacturers have rear facing radars for this.
  - tatoalo 10y ago
    > "As far as I know, the driver has to make sure that it's safe to change lanes." For safety reason the driver has yet to be sure that no one is approaching you at the moment of changing lane but the system obviously works autonomously, you just have to engage the turn signal. > "Other manufacturers have rear facing radars for this." Tesla have rear radars, otherwise Autolane-changing and Autopark features wouldn't be available to use.
    - wibr 10y ago
      Parking is done with ultrasonic sensors. I am pretty sure that Tesla currently does not have rear radars.