9 ms·

Tesla Accused of Deception in Promoting Autopilot

142 points by jijojv 8y ago

jijojv 8y ago
The advocacy groups say Tesla’s promotions of Autopilot suggest otherwise and are deceptive. Among the examples cited in the letter is Tesla’s Autopilot website, which proclaims Tesla vehicles have “full self-driving hardware” and contains a video posted that when played begins with text reading “the person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”
grizzles 8y ago
Tesla's lawyers would have this covered. It sounds to me like a bunch of shorts who are sweating Telsa's recent moves to cut production costs and raise the price of the Model S. I hope they get their comeuppance.
- dogma1138 8y ago
  Tesla’s lawyers should’ve advised against marketing a glorified ADAS (and AP 2.0/2.5 was even a pretty bad ADAS for quite a long time) as an autonomous driving solution. They market it as it could be a RoboTaxi, Musk has been saying “autonomous driving is a solved problem” for 4 years now at every opportunity he gets this isn’t really ideal. Tesla’s marketing a side the real problem is the concept of Level 3 autonomy in the first place (on the open roads). Humans can’t operate in a “hands off only” mode and it’s either all in or all out. I’m really hoping that we could get to a good real world all conditions L4/5 (these are the same level of autonomy) before level 3 ones kill enough people to push back autonomous driving 3 decades. Don’t get me wrong in controlled, restricted and enclosed environments for example truck yards, ports, large factories, airports, power stations, mines etc. Level 3 makes a lot of sense if you have predictable routes where trained operators know when they can be hands off and when they cannot be. But this doesn’t and will never work on real roads with real people because eventually everyone gets “comfortable” with such a feature especially when it appears much more capable than it actually is and when Musk and many in the Tesla community make it sound like the only reason why your Tesla isn’t working for Uber whole you are at work is because of pesky regulation.
  - xiphias 8y ago
    We already have L4, Waymo works right now in L4 with real people without any accidents (where Waymo would be clearly at fault). The fact that it isn't yet scaled up (mass production just started few months ago) doesn't mean that it doesn't work.
  - Animats 8y ago
    Tesla only has SAE 2, stay in lane and brake for obstacles (sometimes). They did a few videos of hands-off self-driving in controlled conditions on quiet roads, so they were trying for Level 3, but never really got there.
cma 8y ago
In addition to today's Autopilot, Telsa are charging customers $3,000 for a hypothetical future "Full Self-Driving Capability" feature on the Model 3 and others. > "All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go," Tesla's ordering page says. "Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed." This is very likely to be a huge balance sheet liability and probably won't be a real possibility until the cars are really old and near the end of their life. They don't give a real timetable so maybe they can get by with not delivering it for a couple decades, but it seems like that would land them in some kind of class action legal trouble.
salimmadjd 8y ago
It's not only deceptive but it puts public at risk. The other day I was on 101 in the evening heading south (this is one the main highways in San Francisco Bay Area) where I was behind a Tesla on the fast lane. The Tesla in front of me was acting rather erratic. Fast jolt like corrections once in a while, etc. So I got annoyed by the erratic movements and passed the car. As I passed I glanced over. Sure enough, the driver was on his phone doing something and I'm guessing was relying on the auto pilot.
- madaxe_again 8y ago
  Autopilot is generally pretty smooth - what you describe is more characteristic of texting while driving, which idiots can achieve in any car.
  - sschueller 8y ago
    Yes, but Tesla is giving its owners the false confidence that it is ok to text while driving because the autopilot will drive the car.
    - rightnow 8y ago
      Youre missing the point. If autopilot was on, it would have been smooth.
    - carlmr 8y ago
      What above comment is saying is that the guy was probably not on autopilot and steering erratically himself.
      - saiya-jin 8y ago
        Exactly, drivers that call/text tend to swing randomly outside their lanes, speed up/slow down (if they have some crappy non-cruise control car) etc. Whenever I see this, this is what I expect but check when overtaking whether driver doesn't have any issues (heart attack, epilepsy etc)
synaesthesisx 8y ago
Tesla seriously jumped the gun in marketing their partial autonomy as "Autopilot" when it's still level 3 autonomy at best (requires a human driver to intervene when necessary). Until we leap over the 'uncanny valley' of partial automation and have level 4 autonomy available it would be disingenuous to call such a feature "autopilot".
- icc97 8y ago
  The frustrating part I find is that autopilot for pilots is actually a reasonably good description. Pilots are paid and trained to be alert all the time that autopilot is on. It's also well known that an autopilot in a plane is no AI, it's simply following a course. But I definitely agree it's a disingenuous name. It primarily gives the impression that you can take your hands off. So people will definitely get distracted for up to 6s which from the Uber crash is all it took. Plus beyond that you can have one hand on the steering wheel and be doing anything you want. It's quite damming that even Uber were humble enough to realise how badly their system had failed with the fatal crash but Tesla is doubling down releasing PR statements that try to spin the statistics. I've seen interviews with Musk discussing the crash where he really seems not to be particularly bothered. I can see Tesla putting back self driving by years if a legal clamp down comes. They are the company with by far the most miles driven with a level 3 system, but there's nothing at the moment to suggest that there won't be other crashes in Tesla autopilot cars that won't skew the statistics. I've heard it said that self-driving cars will have to prove they're 10x safer. That takes 1B miles per death to prove. If self-driving is deemed illegal on open roads because of Tesla's recklessness it'll take much longer to prove that it is safer.
  - stordoff 8y ago
    For me, it comes down to the fact that replicating the functionality does not replicate the experience. Tesla's Autopilot may well replicate the functionality of an aviation autopilot, but a plane will have less factors to consider (such as proximity of other traffic) and if something does go wrong/there is something the autopilot can't handle there, in most cases, is time for a human pilot to take over. Getting the same level of functionality that works in the air _will_ cause a crash on the ground, but calling it by the same name is going to make people think the _experience_ is the same (i.e. that the vehicle is fine left to its own devices for at least some period of time -- which would require a significantly more complex system on the ground).
MPSimmons 8y ago
I'm at probably 2,000 miles in AP on my Model 3, and at this point, I feel like I'm very knowledgeable about where I can trust AP and where I can't. I do fear that people will give it too much trust in the beginning, and not try to learn how it behaves, because then, it's dangerous. Dying in a Tesla is relatively hard to do, but getting hurt or even just totaling your car because you didn't understand how AP works is bad (and dangerous for others, too!) I feel like maybe they shouldn't turn on AP until TACC has been active for some period of time, so that you can get used to the car and how it behaves. Even now, I am sometimes surprised (like the odd behavior when stopped traffic is ahead of you a ways, and the car right in front of you changes out of your line - your car doesn't notice the stopped traffic, so you have to stop yourself or you would slam into the stopped cars). I have to assume that, at some point, the front facing camera will supplement the radar and say, "hey, that looks like stopped traffic - I should stop", but I can understand, from a software development perspective, why that's a hard problem.
- chli 8y ago
  I don't own a Tesla but from what I understand you can get OTA updates which will change the way the AP is working. So if you need to build a mental model on how to "use" the AP to be safe and then the AP changes without notice I can see how that could end badly...
- confiscate 8y ago
  why would that be a hard problem? Shouldn't it be easy for the radar to detect if there are stopped obstacles ahead? I am not familiar with AP tech. So would appreciate if someone can explain why it's hard to detect stopped objects using radar.
  - icebraining 8y ago
    Not an expert either, but the gist I got from previous threads is that the problem is distinguishing from objects which are obstacles from others which aren't (e.g. because you'll turn before hitting it). According to Techcrunch, that's also what happened in the Uber manslaughter - the system detected the pedestrian but didn't consider her a real obstacle to the car. That said, the impression I get is that Tesla's system is worse than even their initial version (provided by Mobileye).
sschueller 8y ago
I am glad people are starting to see the irresponsibility in some of Teslas Marketing. It was clear from day one that Teslas autopilot is a glorified lane assist and therefore should not be sold as some sort of autonomous ready vehicle. When I first complained about how autopilot was being marketed here on HN, I was down voted and told I don't know what autopilot means.
- masklinn 8y ago
  > When I first complained about how autopilot was being marketed here on HN, I was down voted and told I don't know what autopilot means. Had the exact same experience "any commercial airline pilot knows autopilot doesn't do everything for you !!!one" (which isn't even true, Cat-IIIc ILS autopilots are basically the equivalent of the car being able to do everything outside of leaving your garage and fully automated flight from takeoff to landing included was a thing in 1947: https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1947/1947%20-%201745.html https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1947/1947%20-%2...). One could consider it a difference in what people are talking about: Tesla's tech roughly matches plane autopilot capabilities but not experience, because plane autopilot capabilities are nowhere near sufficient for unassisted autonomous driving (autopilots are assisted by automated ground-control systems amongst others).
  - VBprogrammer 8y ago
    > which isn't even true, Cat-IIIc ILS autopilots are basically the equivalent of the car being able to do everything outside of leaving your garage and fully automated flight from takeoff to landing included was a thing in 1947 Only a fraction of the worlds runways have Cat-IIIc capability. You could argue that a reasonable equivalent in the car world is that it can auto-drive between any two places, so long as those places are on major motorways / interstates. Aircraft autopilots also have no way of avoiding traffic, ATC can't control them directly, and they don't have any automatic ability to do that. On balance I'd say the abilities of Tesla's autopilot are fairly compared to an aircraft autopilot. Unfortunately I think you are correct in that Tesla have marketed the system well beyond those abilities.
  - 8y ago
te_chris 8y ago
This is obvious once you use it.
Animats 8y ago
The advertising is clearly deceptive. Read their marketing materials:[1] "Build upon Enhanced Autopilot and order Full Self-Driving Capability on your Tesla. ... All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination or just home if nothing is on the calendar. Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed. When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you." Tesla does not have that technology. Not even close. Their cars do not have the sensor suite to do it. They did a demo back in 2016 of a limited self-driving capability on quiet roads in Los Altos Hills. They haven't said much since. [1] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- radu_crisan 8y ago
  Did you forget the next paragraph, where they clearly state that it is not yet available? Firsts words are even in bold: "Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval. Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year."
  - Negitivefrags 8y ago
    > Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction So the software is ready, it's just those damn regulators that are holding it back. Come on. The way this is phrased makes it sound like the features are just around the corner, not that the software is years from working, if it's even possible at all. I know somebody who was told by a Tesla salesman that "Destination Based Autopilot is only months away". The advertising is absolutely deceptive, and I say this as a Tesla owner and fan of the company.
rifung 8y ago
Frankly I'm surprised it took this long to happen. It's a bit sad that people had to die when we could potentially have prevented it from happening.
dayaz36 8y ago
I like how the only pro Tesla comment in this entire thread is grayed out at the bottom. Not suspicious at all...
danso 8y ago
To be clear, the story here is that a couple of consumer groups have written the FTC to complain about Tesla. That might be enough to get something started, but public complaints != formal investigation. That said, the FTC did successfully order VW to pay $1.2 billion for its diesel shenanigans: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/05/federal-judge-approves-ftc-order-owners-certain-volkswagen-audi https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/05/feder... I get that people respect and are excited by Musk's vision and work, nevermind the cars, but I feel even Tesla fans should be able to agree that the current Autopilot homepage, which is going to be the main info source for Autopilot for anyone not in possession of the owner's manual. Someone at Tesla made the deliberate decision to have the page's headline and very first words be, "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars", followed by a paragraph of text about full-self driving, followed by order buttons for Model S/Model X. The next thing on that page is a video. It's the first and only video on the Autopilot page, and it is a 2016 self-driving demo, that Tesla has (as far as we know) not been able to push to production nor do extensive testing (assuming they test in California, which requires a mileage report). When you buy a Tesla, aren't the purchase options for Autopilot and (future) full-self driving separate options, at a cost of $5000 and $3000, respectively? Yes, buying AP is required to buy FSD. But my point is that Autopilot exists as its own separate feature completely independent of FSD. So to belabor the obvious, why is the only visual demo on Tesla Autopilot a 2016 alpha demo of full self driving? On Youtube I can find plenty of amateur demos of the AP features. What possible reason is there for not creating separate pages for Autopilot and FSD, other than to have consumers conflate the two systems?
edshiro 8y ago
Repeat after me: "Autopilot does not mean autonomous".
jaimex2 8y ago
what ever happened to that coast to coast demo?
pavlov 8y ago
I used to admire what Musk did at Tesla; I even put the $1k down for a Model 3 reservation on the first day over two years ago. Since then I've lost my faith in his honesty. He's been consistently and intentionally misrepresenting what Tesla can deliver and when. Worse, he is taking a page from Donald Trump's playbook. Faced with negative media coverage, Musk is now attacking the media and wants to build a bubble of alternative truth controlled by himself. Rather than fix Tesla's communications, he wants to build some kind of website where "the public can rate the core truth of any article" and shame individual journalists: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999367582271422464 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999367582271422464 Can he be so naïve that he expects an Internet public to arrive at a consensus on complex issues? Of course not, he hasn't been in a coma for the past twenty years. His proposed "Muskopedia" would just end up controlled by online partisans devoted to embellishing his takes. (Reminds me that I should probably take my $1k out. The Model 3 ship date for Europe is still a year away.)
- ameister14 8y ago
  He's been overestimating deliverables for way longer than 2 years
  - pavlov 8y ago
    But I wasn't paying enough attention. To my knowledge he also wasn't trying to build a private media bubble until now.
sureaboutthis 8y ago
And so it begins, the tearing down of a highly successful company.
- AlexandrB 8y ago
  > And so it begins, the tearing down of a highly successful company. Alright. I think it's important to be clear what Tesla is. It's certainly a very promising company, but highly successful? That it is not - at least not yet. Tesla is not profitable, and without electric car subsidies it would be in even worse condition. It has a lot of promise, but has yet to deliver on that promise IMHO.
- frockington 8y ago
  On what metrics is it highly successful? By every standard measure its about as unsuccessful as you can get. Financially they are under water. Their CEO refuses to acknowledge valid investor questions and uses his shares as collateral for private ventures. Announcements such as the semi truck are completely forgotten about and pitched to the side once hype dies down... Where is the silver lining?
agumonkey 8y ago
Good, I like most of what Musk did, but always had issues with bringing semi capable drive assist that clearly made some accident possible. Not causing it, enabling irresponsible behavior and coating their product with glitter in the same time. I don't think it's right for companies to sell that sort of things.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sagebird 8y ago
I agree that deceptive marketing should be punished. With that out of the way, I am genuinely curious: Has you or anyone you know ever believed that Tesla's have autopilot? Anyone I have ever spoken to basically thinks that Teslas have a feature to keep you in the lane -- an advanced cruise control -- and that you must have your hands near the wheel. Please note that even if nobody thought Teslas have autopilot, I still think deceptive marketing should be punished. I'm simply trying to gather some perspective from others, if this is actually a thought that is out there in the wild.

142 points by jijojv 8y ago

The advocacy groups say Tesla’s promotions of Autopilot suggest otherwise and are deceptive. Among the examples cited in the letter is Tesla’s Autopilot website, which proclaims Tesla vehicles have “full self-driving hardware” and contains a video posted that when played begins with text reading “the person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

grizzles 8y ago

Tesla's lawyers would have this covered. It sounds to me like a bunch of shorts who are sweating Telsa's recent moves to cut production costs and raise the price of the Model S. I hope they get their comeuppance.

dogma1138 8y ago
Tesla’s lawyers should’ve advised against marketing a glorified ADAS (and AP 2.0/2.5 was even a pretty bad ADAS for quite a long time) as an autonomous driving solution. They market it as it could be a RoboTaxi, Musk has been saying “autonomous driving is a solved problem” for 4 years now at every opportunity he gets this isn’t really ideal. Tesla’s marketing a side the real problem is the concept of Level 3 autonomy in the first place (on the open roads). Humans can’t operate in a “hands off only” mode and it’s either all in or all out. I’m really hoping that we could get to a good real world all conditions L4/5 (these are the same level of autonomy) before level 3 ones kill enough people to push back autonomous driving 3 decades. Don’t get me wrong in controlled, restricted and enclosed environments for example truck yards, ports, large factories, airports, power stations, mines etc. Level 3 makes a lot of sense if you have predictable routes where trained operators know when they can be hands off and when they cannot be. But this doesn’t and will never work on real roads with real people because eventually everyone gets “comfortable” with such a feature especially when it appears much more capable than it actually is and when Musk and many in the Tesla community make it sound like the only reason why your Tesla isn’t working for Uber whole you are at work is because of pesky regulation.
- xiphias 8y ago
  We already have L4, Waymo works right now in L4 with real people without any accidents (where Waymo would be clearly at fault). The fact that it isn't yet scaled up (mass production just started few months ago) doesn't mean that it doesn't work.
- Animats 8y ago
  Tesla only has SAE 2, stay in lane and brake for obstacles (sometimes). They did a few videos of hands-off self-driving in controlled conditions on quiet roads, so they were trying for Level 3, but never really got there.

cma 8y ago

In addition to today's Autopilot, Telsa are charging customers $3,000 for a hypothetical future "Full Self-Driving Capability" feature on the Model 3 and others. > "All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go," Tesla's ordering page says. "Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed." This is very likely to be a huge balance sheet liability and probably won't be a real possibility until the cars are really old and near the end of their life. They don't give a real timetable so maybe they can get by with not delivering it for a couple decades, but it seems like that would land them in some kind of class action legal trouble.

salimmadjd 8y ago

It's not only deceptive but it puts public at risk. The other day I was on 101 in the evening heading south (this is one the main highways in San Francisco Bay Area) where I was behind a Tesla on the fast lane. The Tesla in front of me was acting rather erratic. Fast jolt like corrections once in a while, etc. So I got annoyed by the erratic movements and passed the car. As I passed I glanced over. Sure enough, the driver was on his phone doing something and I'm guessing was relying on the auto pilot.

madaxe_again 8y ago
Autopilot is generally pretty smooth - what you describe is more characteristic of texting while driving, which idiots can achieve in any car.
- sschueller 8y ago
  Yes, but Tesla is giving its owners the false confidence that it is ok to text while driving because the autopilot will drive the car.
  - rightnow 8y ago
    Youre missing the point. If autopilot was on, it would have been smooth.
  - carlmr 8y ago
    What above comment is saying is that the guy was probably not on autopilot and steering erratically himself.
    - saiya-jin 8y ago
      Exactly, drivers that call/text tend to swing randomly outside their lanes, speed up/slow down (if they have some crappy non-cruise control car) etc. Whenever I see this, this is what I expect but check when overtaking whether driver doesn't have any issues (heart attack, epilepsy etc)

synaesthesisx 8y ago

Tesla seriously jumped the gun in marketing their partial autonomy as "Autopilot" when it's still level 3 autonomy at best (requires a human driver to intervene when necessary). Until we leap over the 'uncanny valley' of partial automation and have level 4 autonomy available it would be disingenuous to call such a feature "autopilot".

icc97 8y ago
The frustrating part I find is that autopilot for pilots is actually a reasonably good description. Pilots are paid and trained to be alert all the time that autopilot is on. It's also well known that an autopilot in a plane is no AI, it's simply following a course. But I definitely agree it's a disingenuous name. It primarily gives the impression that you can take your hands off. So people will definitely get distracted for up to 6s which from the Uber crash is all it took. Plus beyond that you can have one hand on the steering wheel and be doing anything you want. It's quite damming that even Uber were humble enough to realise how badly their system had failed with the fatal crash but Tesla is doubling down releasing PR statements that try to spin the statistics. I've seen interviews with Musk discussing the crash where he really seems not to be particularly bothered. I can see Tesla putting back self driving by years if a legal clamp down comes. They are the company with by far the most miles driven with a level 3 system, but there's nothing at the moment to suggest that there won't be other crashes in Tesla autopilot cars that won't skew the statistics. I've heard it said that self-driving cars will have to prove they're 10x safer. That takes 1B miles per death to prove. If self-driving is deemed illegal on open roads because of Tesla's recklessness it'll take much longer to prove that it is safer.
- stordoff 8y ago
  For me, it comes down to the fact that replicating the functionality does not replicate the experience. Tesla's Autopilot may well replicate the functionality of an aviation autopilot, but a plane will have less factors to consider (such as proximity of other traffic) and if something does go wrong/there is something the autopilot can't handle there, in most cases, is time for a human pilot to take over. Getting the same level of functionality that works in the air _will_ cause a crash on the ground, but calling it by the same name is going to make people think the _experience_ is the same (i.e. that the vehicle is fine left to its own devices for at least some period of time -- which would require a significantly more complex system on the ground).

MPSimmons 8y ago

I'm at probably 2,000 miles in AP on my Model 3, and at this point, I feel like I'm very knowledgeable about where I can trust AP and where I can't. I do fear that people will give it too much trust in the beginning, and not try to learn how it behaves, because then, it's dangerous. Dying in a Tesla is relatively hard to do, but getting hurt or even just totaling your car because you didn't understand how AP works is bad (and dangerous for others, too!) I feel like maybe they shouldn't turn on AP until TACC has been active for some period of time, so that you can get used to the car and how it behaves. Even now, I am sometimes surprised (like the odd behavior when stopped traffic is ahead of you a ways, and the car right in front of you changes out of your line - your car doesn't notice the stopped traffic, so you have to stop yourself or you would slam into the stopped cars). I have to assume that, at some point, the front facing camera will supplement the radar and say, "hey, that looks like stopped traffic - I should stop", but I can understand, from a software development perspective, why that's a hard problem.

chli 8y ago
I don't own a Tesla but from what I understand you can get OTA updates which will change the way the AP is working. So if you need to build a mental model on how to "use" the AP to be safe and then the AP changes without notice I can see how that could end badly...
confiscate 8y ago
why would that be a hard problem? Shouldn't it be easy for the radar to detect if there are stopped obstacles ahead? I am not familiar with AP tech. So would appreciate if someone can explain why it's hard to detect stopped objects using radar.
- icebraining 8y ago
  Not an expert either, but the gist I got from previous threads is that the problem is distinguishing from objects which are obstacles from others which aren't (e.g. because you'll turn before hitting it). According to Techcrunch, that's also what happened in the Uber manslaughter - the system detected the pedestrian but didn't consider her a real obstacle to the car. That said, the impression I get is that Tesla's system is worse than even their initial version (provided by Mobileye).

sschueller 8y ago

I am glad people are starting to see the irresponsibility in some of Teslas Marketing. It was clear from day one that Teslas autopilot is a glorified lane assist and therefore should not be sold as some sort of autonomous ready vehicle. When I first complained about how autopilot was being marketed here on HN, I was down voted and told I don't know what autopilot means.

masklinn 8y ago
> When I first complained about how autopilot was being marketed here on HN, I was down voted and told I don't know what autopilot means. Had the exact same experience "any commercial airline pilot knows autopilot doesn't do everything for you !!!one" (which isn't even true, Cat-IIIc ILS autopilots are basically the equivalent of the car being able to do everything outside of leaving your garage and fully automated flight from takeoff to landing included was a thing in 1947: https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1947/1947%20-%201745.html https://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1947/1947%20-%2...). One could consider it a difference in what people are talking about: Tesla's tech roughly matches plane autopilot capabilities but not experience, because plane autopilot capabilities are nowhere near sufficient for unassisted autonomous driving (autopilots are assisted by automated ground-control systems amongst others).
- VBprogrammer 8y ago
  > which isn't even true, Cat-IIIc ILS autopilots are basically the equivalent of the car being able to do everything outside of leaving your garage and fully automated flight from takeoff to landing included was a thing in 1947 Only a fraction of the worlds runways have Cat-IIIc capability. You could argue that a reasonable equivalent in the car world is that it can auto-drive between any two places, so long as those places are on major motorways / interstates. Aircraft autopilots also have no way of avoiding traffic, ATC can't control them directly, and they don't have any automatic ability to do that. On balance I'd say the abilities of Tesla's autopilot are fairly compared to an aircraft autopilot. Unfortunately I think you are correct in that Tesla have marketed the system well beyond those abilities.
- 8y ago

te_chris 8y ago

This is obvious once you use it.

Animats 8y ago

The advertising is clearly deceptive. Read their marketing materials:[1] "Build upon Enhanced Autopilot and order Full Self-Driving Capability on your Tesla. ... All you will need to do is get in and tell your car where to go. If you don’t say anything, the car will look at your calendar and take you there as the assumed destination or just home if nothing is on the calendar. Your Tesla will figure out the optimal route, navigate urban streets (even without lane markings), manage complex intersections with traffic lights, stop signs and roundabouts, and handle densely packed freeways with cars moving at high speed. When you arrive at your destination, simply step out at the entrance and your car will enter park seek mode, automatically search for a spot and park itself. A tap on your phone summons it back to you." Tesla does not have that technology. Not even close. Their cars do not have the sensor suite to do it. They did a demo back in 2016 of a limited self-driving capability on quiet roads in Los Altos Hills. They haven't said much since. [1] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
radu_crisan 8y ago
Did you forget the next paragraph, where they clearly state that it is not yet available? Firsts words are even in bold: "Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval. Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year."
- Negitivefrags 8y ago
  > Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction So the software is ready, it's just those damn regulators that are holding it back. Come on. The way this is phrased makes it sound like the features are just around the corner, not that the software is years from working, if it's even possible at all. I know somebody who was told by a Tesla salesman that "Destination Based Autopilot is only months away". The advertising is absolutely deceptive, and I say this as a Tesla owner and fan of the company.

rifung 8y ago

Frankly I'm surprised it took this long to happen. It's a bit sad that people had to die when we could potentially have prevented it from happening.

dayaz36 8y ago

I like how the only pro Tesla comment in this entire thread is grayed out at the bottom. Not suspicious at all...

danso 8y ago

To be clear, the story here is that a couple of consumer groups have written the FTC to complain about Tesla. That might be enough to get something started, but public complaints != formal investigation. That said, the FTC did successfully order VW to pay $1.2 billion for its diesel shenanigans: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/05/federal-judge-approves-ftc-order-owners-certain-volkswagen-audi https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/05/feder... I get that people respect and are excited by Musk's vision and work, nevermind the cars, but I feel even Tesla fans should be able to agree that the current Autopilot homepage, which is going to be the main info source for Autopilot for anyone not in possession of the owner's manual. Someone at Tesla made the deliberate decision to have the page's headline and very first words be, "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars", followed by a paragraph of text about full-self driving, followed by order buttons for Model S/Model X. The next thing on that page is a video. It's the first and only video on the Autopilot page, and it is a 2016 self-driving demo, that Tesla has (as far as we know) not been able to push to production nor do extensive testing (assuming they test in California, which requires a mileage report). When you buy a Tesla, aren't the purchase options for Autopilot and (future) full-self driving separate options, at a cost of $5000 and $3000, respectively? Yes, buying AP is required to buy FSD. But my point is that Autopilot exists as its own separate feature completely independent of FSD. So to belabor the obvious, why is the only visual demo on Tesla Autopilot a 2016 alpha demo of full self driving? On Youtube I can find plenty of amateur demos of the AP features. What possible reason is there for not creating separate pages for Autopilot and FSD, other than to have consumers conflate the two systems?

edshiro 8y ago

Repeat after me: "Autopilot does not mean autonomous".

jaimex2 8y ago

what ever happened to that coast to coast demo?

pavlov 8y ago

I used to admire what Musk did at Tesla; I even put the $1k down for a Model 3 reservation on the first day over two years ago. Since then I've lost my faith in his honesty. He's been consistently and intentionally misrepresenting what Tesla can deliver and when. Worse, he is taking a page from Donald Trump's playbook. Faced with negative media coverage, Musk is now attacking the media and wants to build a bubble of alternative truth controlled by himself. Rather than fix Tesla's communications, he wants to build some kind of website where "the public can rate the core truth of any article" and shame individual journalists: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999367582271422464 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999367582271422464 Can he be so naïve that he expects an Internet public to arrive at a consensus on complex issues? Of course not, he hasn't been in a coma for the past twenty years. His proposed "Muskopedia" would just end up controlled by online partisans devoted to embellishing his takes. (Reminds me that I should probably take my $1k out. The Model 3 ship date for Europe is still a year away.)

ameister14 8y ago
He's been overestimating deliverables for way longer than 2 years
- pavlov 8y ago
  But I wasn't paying enough attention. To my knowledge he also wasn't trying to build a private media bubble until now.

sureaboutthis 8y ago

And so it begins, the tearing down of a highly successful company.

AlexandrB 8y ago
> And so it begins, the tearing down of a highly successful company. Alright. I think it's important to be clear what Tesla is. It's certainly a very promising company, but highly successful? That it is not - at least not yet. Tesla is not profitable, and without electric car subsidies it would be in even worse condition. It has a lot of promise, but has yet to deliver on that promise IMHO.
frockington 8y ago
On what metrics is it highly successful? By every standard measure its about as unsuccessful as you can get. Financially they are under water. Their CEO refuses to acknowledge valid investor questions and uses his shares as collateral for private ventures. Announcements such as the semi truck are completely forgotten about and pitched to the side once hype dies down... Where is the silver lining?

agumonkey 8y ago

Good, I like most of what Musk did, but always had issues with bringing semi capable drive assist that clearly made some accident possible. Not causing it, enabling irresponsible behavior and coating their product with glitter in the same time. I don't think it's right for companies to sell that sort of things.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sagebird 8y ago

I agree that deceptive marketing should be punished. With that out of the way, I am genuinely curious: Has you or anyone you know ever believed that Tesla's have autopilot? Anyone I have ever spoken to basically thinks that Teslas have a feature to keep you in the lane -- an advanced cruise control -- and that you must have your hands near the wheel. Please note that even if nobody thought Teslas have autopilot, I still think deceptive marketing should be punished. I'm simply trying to gather some perspective from others, if this is actually a thought that is out there in the wild.