8 ms·

Introducing Navigate on Autopilot

70 points by TonnyGaric 8y ago

Theodores 8y ago
Very impressive. However these autopilot features are getting subjectively less impressive as time goes on. I want a bit more 'wow'. Autopilot is not so compelling if you live in Europe with 'analog' roads rather than the mix of well designed, nice and wide 'residential', 'street level' and 'interstate highway' roads that there are in the U.S.A. Reminds me of Space Shuttle launches, at the start of the programme people would be transfixed for hours waiting to see what would happen, a couple of years later it was 'meh', no need to put the TV on. Even if there was a cool spacewalk some of the magic was lost, awe levels dropped from 10/10 to 7/10. Autopilot is a bit like that, kind of need to see it work going through the streets of Paris, Cairo or Bombay for it to be back in the realm of stunningly amazing.
- wffurr 8y ago
  Interesting that you consider US highways and streets to be well designed, given that they are objectively substantially more lethal to their users than European roads.
  - RayVR 8y ago
    In what way are they “objectively substantially more lethal?”
    - wffurr 8y ago
      Double the deaths per VMT. https://www.newsweek.com/2014/04/04/you-drive-american-248061.html https://www.newsweek.com/2014/04/04/you-drive-american-24806...
      - RayVR 8y ago
        I think attributing that to the design of the roads is kinda silly. We have very low standards when it comes to acquiring a license to operate a vehicle.
        wffurr 8y ago
        I think attributing it to any one cause is kind of silly. It's a fact that American cities are much more car centric with higher speeds and fewer areas with traffic calming measures, all of which make the roads much safer. Daily highway driving is much more common for commutes and errands, suburbs have dangerous arterial street designs. I'm sure there's more to it, such as licensing and vehicle safety measures, but American highway design (and making local roads into mini highways) is a part of it. Also the EU measure is EU-wide, and not all countries in the EU are as strict as say Germany for licensing.
  - bane 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
    - wffurr 8y ago
      Yup, sure looks like Europe is substantially safer than the US in that map.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - moogly 8y ago
    There might be additional factors. a) training and education - it is way more difficult and takes longer to get a driver's licence in Western Europe than in the US b) mandatory vehicle inspections - I think this varies by state in the US, but even the strictest state legislation is still less strict than Western European countries when it comes to allowing dangerous vehicles on the roads c) less regulation for truck drivers' work hours - I think in the past decade, sleep deprivation amongst transportation workers and the results thereof has received increasing exposure in the press, which is good, but awareness only goes so far
    - wffurr 8y ago
      Sure. But highway design, car centric cities, and high-speed suburban arterials are a factor as well. The deaths per VMT measure is EU-wide, not just Western Europe.
- antpls 8y ago
  Living in Paris center, I'm convinced it will be the last place where autonomous cars will be allowed. Roads are smalls, the city plan is old, there are experiments with new e-scooters, people don't respect priorities, etc It could only work if ALL vehicles were automated and no human driving was allowed. But even then, walking people will exploit the overly-safe vehicles' decisions and just force the priority (which is probably a good thing to give the city back to walking people). In my opinion, the capital cities won't be the same once autonomous cars are fully developed, there will be probably more public transport, and more car-pool sharing drive services, more escooters, etc. The most interesting long term usage of autonomous driving is on highway and smaller cities than capitals, with less traffic
- dkoston 8y ago
  You’re going to be disappointed for quite some time then. Most of the improvements to autopilot in the near future will be refinement of the cars reactions to sensor data and not new public facing features. They are closing in on the line where regulation does not allow for further “self driving” festures. Having the car change lanes itself is “self driving” and that’s why the driver must initiate the lane change. The same argument can be made about stopping at stop signs and red lights which is the next killer iteration of driver assist. Hopefully there will be enough data collected and good decisions made to allow for iterative improvements to driver assist features which would improve overall traffic safety.
  - danielmg 8y ago
    My 2018 Mercedes E class can do lane changes - I just have to put the signal on and it does the rest. They call it "Drive Pilot". It seems to be just as advanced as Tesla but much less "marketed".
    - dkoston 8y ago
      Yup, Audi offers similar driver assists with lane changes(https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/technology-lexicon-7180/driver-assistance-systems-7184 https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/technology-lexicon-7180/...), Land Rover has lane keeping (https://www.landrover.com/ownership/incontrol/driver-assistance.html https://www.landrover.com/ownership/incontrol/driver-assista...), so do Honda/Acura (https://www.acura.com/rlx/modals/lane-keeping-assist-system-lkas https://www.acura.com/rlx/modals/lane-keeping-assist-system-...) and many more. I agree that Tesla overhypes their system the most and that contributes to consumer confusion. They use the classic Silicon Valley tactic of making their features which are comparable to competitors seem light years ahead through marketing. On one hand, it sucks for consumers, on the other hand, this type of advertising is rampant and they are playing the game. Tesla’s over promising does erode trust. There’s only so many times you can promise stuff that’s obviously overhyped or years out (FSD) before consumers will stop believing the hype. What’s interesting about Tesla is that almost all of their controversy is self inflicted by Elon’s comments. What’s not clear to me is if this is intentional as he wants to stay in the news cycle or if it’s driven by his ego.
Gys 8y ago
> While initially the feature will require drivers to confirm lane changes [...], future versions of Navigate on Autopilot will allow customers to waive the confirmation requirement if they choose to. So at least technology wise my dream becomes true: a car that takes care of the biggest and most boring part of long drives, the highways. Hopefully legislation will follow soon...
- ttarabula 8y ago
  I think this is still a super under appreciated point. The focus is often on full autonomy, but we don't need full autonomy in complex city driving environments to unlock a potential sea change in behavior. Imagine the impact of simply being able to trust your vehicle to do the heavy lifting for an hour to get you from, say, Sacramento to San Francisco, only needing to take control at the highway end points for 30 minutes on each end.
  - cma 8y ago
    Waiving the confirmation still doesn't get you there; you still will have to pay attention the whole time and have hands on the wheel at this point.
    - rohit2412 8y ago
      And then people argue that Tesla does not do deceptive advertisement and everybody knows the legal and technical limitations of autopilot.
- FPGAhacker 8y ago
  You don't think your drive will become even more boring when your car is "doing everything" but you are required to "pay attention and be ready to take over at all times?" I'd agree if you could trust it and didn't have to be actively involved in watching your car drive for you. Sounds pretty boring as is though. Sleep inducing. It'd be like having a normally very reliable chauffeur that would occasionally get horribly confused and do something very wrong, and you had to watch their every move, most of which are perfect, for the remote chance of terrible confusion and be ready to grab the wheel.
amluto 8y ago
> Navigate on Autopilot can be customized to a driver’s preferences, including four settings for speed-based lane changes (Disabled, Mild, Average, or Mad Max). Mad Max is definitely a feature I want self-driving cars to have. </sarcasm>
- nathantotten 8y ago
  No kidding. This does not inspire confidence. v9 already does weird things like show stopped cars bouncing around randomly. This kind of thing along with crazy branding really makes it feel unsafe. It’s one thing that the stereo goes to 11, that’s funny. But I’m not going to die if the stereo has a bug.
  - stephengillie 8y ago
    The stereo only goes to 11? The stereo in my previous car went to 60. What's with all the pop culture references in this car? Is this the Ready Tesla One trim package?
    - nathantotten 8y ago
      There isn’t any relationship between your car’s 60 and Tesla’s 11. Tesla’s volume has more than 11 unique volume settings. https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/reason-why-radio-goes-11 https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/reason-why-radio-goes-...
      - stephengillie 8y ago
        The linked forum post doesn't have any more information than your post, other than confirming the pop culture reference.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  I agree, but to give Elon the benefit of the doubt for a moment, labeling it "Mad Max" may actually discourage people from setting their car to it (as people often perceive themselves to not be reckless), whereas labeling that setting something like "Often" may lead to it being selected more frequently. Of course, this can also backfire if people select "Mad Max" because it's the only one with a funny label.
aerovistae 8y ago
I'd be more impressed by this if they had fixed the problem where the car crashes into barriers at lane divergences. Kind of a turn-off to the whole thing until that's fixed, to be honest. Frankly I don't understand how the company hasn't been buried in lawsuits for this. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/9pkvy0/psa_v9_still_has_barrier_lust/?utm_content=comments&utm_medium=hot&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=teslamotors https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/9pkvy0/psa_v9_...
- dkoston 8y ago
  That actually is a part of v9 autopilot but Tesla is never going to put that in writing. The fixing of bugs like this without admission of guilt isn’t unique to Tesla. Apple, Google, Samsung, and many others do the same. The reason they haven’t been buried in a lawsuit is because these are driver assistance features, not self driving features. It’s the responsibility of the driver to keep control of their car at all times. Arguing that “people think they can drive with their hands off the wheel” isn’t a real legal argument. This is why Tesla warns drivers in documentation that they need to keep control of the car at all times. This is the same legal argument that has caused warnings in microwave manuals about not putting animals inside them to dry them out. Just because someone misinterprets the capabilities of technology they purchase doesn’t mean the technology isn’t doing what it’s designed to do. All self driving cars and driver assistance tools will be imperfect. The question is whether or not they are statistically safer than the average human. If you are an above average driver (by your record, not your impression of yourself), these tools may be unnecessary or may actually be worse for you. It’s the average and below average people that they do wonders for. Please stop using one or two data points to form an opinion about something that has millions and millions of data points.
  - rohit2412 8y ago
    > All self driving cars and driver assistance tools will be imperfect. The question is whether or not they are statistically safer than the average human I disagree. If you're arguiung for driverless cars, the comparison should be with the average driver aided by a driver assistance system.
y0ghur7_xxx 8y ago
> In both of these scenarios, until truly driverless cars are validated and approved by regulators, drivers are responsible for and must remain in control of their car at all times. This makes it sound like it's just a problem with evil legislators not making it legal for Tesla drivers to drive without paying attention. Is this the case?
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  No, it's not. This can be read either as Tesla wants you to read it, that the only reason they're setting it this way is because legislators demand it, or the way you should read it, which is that Tesla will find any possible excuse to blame you for not paying enough attention when the car makes a mistake and kills you.
- omarforgotpwd 8y ago
  It doesn't sound like that to me. It sounds like they are saying that this is NOT a driverless car and you need to pay attention. However, it is a little bit misleading in that this is all Tesla's software can do right now. Even if the regulatory framework was in place, they couldn't just enable it instantly. They have a lot of dev / testing work to do before that happens. But they do have stuff working in the lab that is more capable than what they've released publicly.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

70 points by TonnyGaric 8y ago

Very impressive. However these autopilot features are getting subjectively less impressive as time goes on. I want a bit more 'wow'. Autopilot is not so compelling if you live in Europe with 'analog' roads rather than the mix of well designed, nice and wide 'residential', 'street level' and 'interstate highway' roads that there are in the U.S.A. Reminds me of Space Shuttle launches, at the start of the programme people would be transfixed for hours waiting to see what would happen, a couple of years later it was 'meh', no need to put the TV on. Even if there was a cool spacewalk some of the magic was lost, awe levels dropped from 10/10 to 7/10. Autopilot is a bit like that, kind of need to see it work going through the streets of Paris, Cairo or Bombay for it to be back in the realm of stunningly amazing.

wffurr 8y ago
Interesting that you consider US highways and streets to be well designed, given that they are objectively substantially more lethal to their users than European roads.
- RayVR 8y ago
  In what way are they “objectively substantially more lethal?”
  - wffurr 8y ago
    Double the deaths per VMT. https://www.newsweek.com/2014/04/04/you-drive-american-248061.html https://www.newsweek.com/2014/04/04/you-drive-american-24806...
    - RayVR 8y ago
      I think attributing that to the design of the roads is kinda silly. We have very low standards when it comes to acquiring a license to operate a vehicle.
      - wffurr 8y ago
        I think attributing it to any one cause is kind of silly. It's a fact that American cities are much more car centric with higher speeds and fewer areas with traffic calming measures, all of which make the roads much safer. Daily highway driving is much more common for commutes and errands, suburbs have dangerous arterial street designs. I'm sure there's more to it, such as licensing and vehicle safety measures, but American highway design (and making local roads into mini highways) is a part of it. Also the EU measure is EU-wide, and not all countries in the EU are as strict as say Germany for licensing.
- bane 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
  - wffurr 8y ago
    Yup, sure looks like Europe is substantially safer than the US in that map.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- moogly 8y ago
  There might be additional factors. a) training and education - it is way more difficult and takes longer to get a driver's licence in Western Europe than in the US b) mandatory vehicle inspections - I think this varies by state in the US, but even the strictest state legislation is still less strict than Western European countries when it comes to allowing dangerous vehicles on the roads c) less regulation for truck drivers' work hours - I think in the past decade, sleep deprivation amongst transportation workers and the results thereof has received increasing exposure in the press, which is good, but awareness only goes so far
  - wffurr 8y ago
    Sure. But highway design, car centric cities, and high-speed suburban arterials are a factor as well. The deaths per VMT measure is EU-wide, not just Western Europe.
antpls 8y ago
Living in Paris center, I'm convinced it will be the last place where autonomous cars will be allowed. Roads are smalls, the city plan is old, there are experiments with new e-scooters, people don't respect priorities, etc It could only work if ALL vehicles were automated and no human driving was allowed. But even then, walking people will exploit the overly-safe vehicles' decisions and just force the priority (which is probably a good thing to give the city back to walking people). In my opinion, the capital cities won't be the same once autonomous cars are fully developed, there will be probably more public transport, and more car-pool sharing drive services, more escooters, etc. The most interesting long term usage of autonomous driving is on highway and smaller cities than capitals, with less traffic
dkoston 8y ago
You’re going to be disappointed for quite some time then. Most of the improvements to autopilot in the near future will be refinement of the cars reactions to sensor data and not new public facing features. They are closing in on the line where regulation does not allow for further “self driving” festures. Having the car change lanes itself is “self driving” and that’s why the driver must initiate the lane change. The same argument can be made about stopping at stop signs and red lights which is the next killer iteration of driver assist. Hopefully there will be enough data collected and good decisions made to allow for iterative improvements to driver assist features which would improve overall traffic safety.
- danielmg 8y ago
  My 2018 Mercedes E class can do lane changes - I just have to put the signal on and it does the rest. They call it "Drive Pilot". It seems to be just as advanced as Tesla but much less "marketed".
  - dkoston 8y ago
    Yup, Audi offers similar driver assists with lane changes(https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/technology-lexicon-7180/driver-assistance-systems-7184 https://www.audi-mediacenter.com/en/technology-lexicon-7180/...), Land Rover has lane keeping (https://www.landrover.com/ownership/incontrol/driver-assistance.html https://www.landrover.com/ownership/incontrol/driver-assista...), so do Honda/Acura (https://www.acura.com/rlx/modals/lane-keeping-assist-system-lkas https://www.acura.com/rlx/modals/lane-keeping-assist-system-...) and many more. I agree that Tesla overhypes their system the most and that contributes to consumer confusion. They use the classic Silicon Valley tactic of making their features which are comparable to competitors seem light years ahead through marketing. On one hand, it sucks for consumers, on the other hand, this type of advertising is rampant and they are playing the game. Tesla’s over promising does erode trust. There’s only so many times you can promise stuff that’s obviously overhyped or years out (FSD) before consumers will stop believing the hype. What’s interesting about Tesla is that almost all of their controversy is self inflicted by Elon’s comments. What’s not clear to me is if this is intentional as he wants to stay in the news cycle or if it’s driven by his ego.

Gys 8y ago

> While initially the feature will require drivers to confirm lane changes [...], future versions of Navigate on Autopilot will allow customers to waive the confirmation requirement if they choose to. So at least technology wise my dream becomes true: a car that takes care of the biggest and most boring part of long drives, the highways. Hopefully legislation will follow soon...

ttarabula 8y ago
I think this is still a super under appreciated point. The focus is often on full autonomy, but we don't need full autonomy in complex city driving environments to unlock a potential sea change in behavior. Imagine the impact of simply being able to trust your vehicle to do the heavy lifting for an hour to get you from, say, Sacramento to San Francisco, only needing to take control at the highway end points for 30 minutes on each end.
- cma 8y ago
  Waiving the confirmation still doesn't get you there; you still will have to pay attention the whole time and have hands on the wheel at this point.
  - rohit2412 8y ago
    And then people argue that Tesla does not do deceptive advertisement and everybody knows the legal and technical limitations of autopilot.
FPGAhacker 8y ago
You don't think your drive will become even more boring when your car is "doing everything" but you are required to "pay attention and be ready to take over at all times?" I'd agree if you could trust it and didn't have to be actively involved in watching your car drive for you. Sounds pretty boring as is though. Sleep inducing. It'd be like having a normally very reliable chauffeur that would occasionally get horribly confused and do something very wrong, and you had to watch their every move, most of which are perfect, for the remote chance of terrible confusion and be ready to grab the wheel.

amluto 8y ago

> Navigate on Autopilot can be customized to a driver’s preferences, including four settings for speed-based lane changes (Disabled, Mild, Average, or Mad Max). Mad Max is definitely a feature I want self-driving cars to have. </sarcasm>

nathantotten 8y ago
No kidding. This does not inspire confidence. v9 already does weird things like show stopped cars bouncing around randomly. This kind of thing along with crazy branding really makes it feel unsafe. It’s one thing that the stereo goes to 11, that’s funny. But I’m not going to die if the stereo has a bug.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  The stereo only goes to 11? The stereo in my previous car went to 60. What's with all the pop culture references in this car? Is this the Ready Tesla One trim package?
  - nathantotten 8y ago
    There isn’t any relationship between your car’s 60 and Tesla’s 11. Tesla’s volume has more than 11 unique volume settings. https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/reason-why-radio-goes-11 https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/reason-why-radio-goes-...
    - stephengillie 8y ago
      The linked forum post doesn't have any more information than your post, other than confirming the pop culture reference.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
I agree, but to give Elon the benefit of the doubt for a moment, labeling it "Mad Max" may actually discourage people from setting their car to it (as people often perceive themselves to not be reckless), whereas labeling that setting something like "Often" may lead to it being selected more frequently. Of course, this can also backfire if people select "Mad Max" because it's the only one with a funny label.

aerovistae 8y ago

I'd be more impressed by this if they had fixed the problem where the car crashes into barriers at lane divergences. Kind of a turn-off to the whole thing until that's fixed, to be honest. Frankly I don't understand how the company hasn't been buried in lawsuits for this. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/9pkvy0/psa_v9_still_has_barrier_lust/?utm_content=comments&utm_medium=hot&utm_source=reddit&utm_name=teslamotors https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/9pkvy0/psa_v9_...

dkoston 8y ago
That actually is a part of v9 autopilot but Tesla is never going to put that in writing. The fixing of bugs like this without admission of guilt isn’t unique to Tesla. Apple, Google, Samsung, and many others do the same. The reason they haven’t been buried in a lawsuit is because these are driver assistance features, not self driving features. It’s the responsibility of the driver to keep control of their car at all times. Arguing that “people think they can drive with their hands off the wheel” isn’t a real legal argument. This is why Tesla warns drivers in documentation that they need to keep control of the car at all times. This is the same legal argument that has caused warnings in microwave manuals about not putting animals inside them to dry them out. Just because someone misinterprets the capabilities of technology they purchase doesn’t mean the technology isn’t doing what it’s designed to do. All self driving cars and driver assistance tools will be imperfect. The question is whether or not they are statistically safer than the average human. If you are an above average driver (by your record, not your impression of yourself), these tools may be unnecessary or may actually be worse for you. It’s the average and below average people that they do wonders for. Please stop using one or two data points to form an opinion about something that has millions and millions of data points.
- rohit2412 8y ago
  > All self driving cars and driver assistance tools will be imperfect. The question is whether or not they are statistically safer than the average human I disagree. If you're arguiung for driverless cars, the comparison should be with the average driver aided by a driver assistance system.

y0ghur7_xxx 8y ago

> In both of these scenarios, until truly driverless cars are validated and approved by regulators, drivers are responsible for and must remain in control of their car at all times. This makes it sound like it's just a problem with evil legislators not making it legal for Tesla drivers to drive without paying attention. Is this the case?

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
No, it's not. This can be read either as Tesla wants you to read it, that the only reason they're setting it this way is because legislators demand it, or the way you should read it, which is that Tesla will find any possible excuse to blame you for not paying enough attention when the car makes a mistake and kills you.
omarforgotpwd 8y ago
It doesn't sound like that to me. It sounds like they are saying that this is NOT a driverless car and you need to pay attention. However, it is a little bit misleading in that this is all Tesla's software can do right now. Even if the regulatory framework was in place, they couldn't just enable it instantly. They have a lot of dev / testing work to do before that happens. But they do have stuff working in the lab that is more capable than what they've released publicly.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]