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Tesla Autopilot and Euro NCAP

66 points by camtarn 8y ago

noisy_boy 8y ago
Tesla should just rename their ADS from AutoPilot to CoPilot.
- samfisher83 8y ago
  Its really Lane Keep assist and Dynamic radar cruise control. Its better than most manufacturer's systems.
  - whttheuuu 8y ago
    This isn't true at all with Navigate On AutoPilot which was released a month or so ago. You set your destination on the GPS and it will take you exit-to-exit on highways. This is not lane assist or distance control you see on other cars.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - samfisher83 8y ago
      You still have confirm and requires active human participation. Its not like its really "Auto."
      - moduspol 8y ago
        You actually don't have to confirm if the exit lane is split from your lane, which is pretty common. It will signal for you and get you into the appropriate lane. If reaching your destination requires switching lanes into one that is not split from your own, you'll have to confirm it. But that may change in the upcoming weeks or months.
    - taneq 8y ago
      Bolting a GPS-driven highway exit selection onto LKAS+ACC isn't really hard or risky. Once a control system can reliably keep a car safe in freeway traffic including lane keeping (even near gore points), lane changes, matching speed with traffic, and keeping safe distance from the car in front... just picking an exit given a destination address is the easy bit. It's a classic case of Moravec's paradox.
  - moduspol 8y ago
    It will also change lanes for you if you signal, and wait for a safe opening if necessary.
- sabertoothed 8y ago
  Not that discussion again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot
  - azag0 8y ago
    It doesn’t matter what the technical definition is in aviation. What matters is what expectations about Tesla’s technology it creates for most people.
    - rukittenme 8y ago
      One would argue the point of marketing is to changes people's expectations.
  - simion314 8y ago
    Do you think that most people know how airplanes autopilot works? What people know is that airplanes can drive and land themselves and human pilots are there as backup/safety.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    Euroncap literally flagged it as an issue in their report. So when you say "not that discussion again" are you asking people not to discuss the actual topic of this thread?
- Piskvorrr 8y ago
  That assumes benign intent. All that we have seen so far is a sales pitch finetuned juuuust on the line "we won't say it's autonomous (or that it's not), but we'll nudge suggestively, point and nod." Of course, when anything happens, the old spiel "we didn't actually say it" comes out.
- vinay427 8y ago
  This would have also allowed for more fanfare with a fitting name if/when they eventually release a fully autonomous system.
- ryandrake 8y ago
  Or link it with cruise control like other manufacturers are doing. The general public kind of gets what cruise control Does, and that sets the right expectation. The public really has no idea what an aviation or marine autopilot system is all about.
  - reubenswartz 8y ago
    Yes, having tried it, I'm a big fan, but they should have called it "Ultra Cruise" or something like that.
  - amyjess 8y ago
    I would be OK with regulations requiring them to call it "adaptive cruise control with lane assist" and forbidding automakers from coming up with their own names for it.
- ginko 8y ago
  Isn't the point of a copilot that it can safely fly and land a plane unlike an autopilot.
  - duiker101 8y ago
    Maybe, but I think that's beside the point. The point is that it's about people's perception of what something should do from it's name. And 99% of the people will associate co-* with a help and auto-* with something that can do it on it's own.
  - Someone1234 8y ago
    Planes can land entirely on autopilot. Just requires the airport to have ILS, and a fairly modern autopilot.
    - mnw21cam 8y ago
      Yesbut. It also requires the meat-sack to be sitting in the cockpit telling the autopilot which heading/altitude/waypoint to head to next, listen to ATC instructions, input the correct ILS frequency into the system, etc. And that's when everything goes absolutely fine.
      - Someone1234 8y ago
        Planes can absolutely land themselves. The only point you're making is that an autopilot cannot entirely replace a pilot, but that was never in contention. The poster above claimed an autopilot cannot land, it can, and it does every single day. Additionally ILS frequency can be automatically set via electronic charts, particularly if the flight plan contains the destination runway (which isn't always possible).
        labcomputer 8y ago
        > Planes can absolutely land themselves. No. They can’t. Not unless you have a IIIc approach and autopilot. Those things are not common. If you don’t have both of those things, the pilot must, at minimum, fly the flare (for a IIIb approach, which are somewhat common at large airports). Even if you have a IIIc approach, the pilot still monitors systems, deploys high lift devices and landing gear, makes the go/no decision. There is no reasonable interpretation of “planes can absolutely land themselves” which is in any way true.
- aequitas 8y ago
  Or don't borrow from other industries making meaning ambiguous and just call it for what it is: Driver assist
- jononor 8y ago
  Hopefully one of the (European) consumer protection agencies require them to reduce their misleading marketing soon.
- slg 8y ago
  I understand the argument that Tesla is generally misleading is their selling of Autopilot. I can also understand the argument that no company should be selling this type of semi-autonomous tech that can result in the worst of both human and autonomous driving. But I simply don't understand the argument that the only problem with this feature is the name. It just makes the whole thing seem silly. We already put numerous requirements on people before they are allowed to legally drive. Why are we not blaming drivers for knowing nothing about their cars beyond the simple name of a feature? You literally can't turn the feature on in a Tesla without it warning you about its limitations. Doesn't the driver have some responsibility to pay attention to those warnings or at least spend a few minutes learning about this feature before they trust it with their lives (and the lives of others)?
  - simion314 8y ago
    I agree, drivers that do not pay attention share the blame too, but is not fair to blame only the drivers, the "autopilot" requires that the human driver maintain 100% attention but is the system monitoring the driver properly, is it trying the best to keep the driver engaged to the road ? No it does not do that because is not comfortable for the customer, so safety is sacrificed.
sabertoothed 8y ago
Article from October.
- taneq 8y ago
  Man, those six weeks completely changed the self-driving landscape, what with the... um... nah it's about the same but Waymo is now charging for rides.
  - sabertoothed 8y ago
    For those people with shares it matters. New information changes share price. Old information tends to be reflected already.
deleted 8y ago
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ralph84 8y ago
Airplanes have autopilot and no one thinks that means there’s no pilot in front. Sure some drivers test the limit of their Tesla, just like some drivers test the limit of their Porsche or Ferrari.
- tacomonstrous 8y ago
  This is a silly semantic argument. Many people drive cars; very few fly aircraft. The meaning of a word in the second context has little to do with the first.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    Please elaborate. In what more common context does autopilot imply no standby human operator?
    - simion314 8y ago
      It does not mean it must exists for people to know what it means, if I say "teleportation transport" you know what it means without having to seen one working before. Why you don't ask some people what an autopilot capable car should be able to do, then ask what a lane assist capable car should do, then see if the answers match.
      - paulddraper 8y ago
        I didn't say it had to exist. I asked "in what context". If I understand you right, the answer is "in the theoretical context"?
        simion314 8y ago
        Say in movies,books, pop culture context autopilot means something that drives itself.
    - detaro 8y ago
      Standby, yes. Tesla's Autopilot appears to not be able to guarantee that sub-second reactions to random situations aren't necessary, at which point it's IMHO not "standby" anymore. An airliner's autopilot can do this for phases of the flight, backed up by ATC, collision warning systems, height over ground and the relative emptiness of the sky. In other situations, it needs close supervision too, but the first case probably leads the general public to associate the term with "standby".
dmode 8y ago
What a clickbait headline. The trashing is...wait for it.. because of the name Autopilot and because it is too good. Saved you a click
leesec 8y ago
> Overall, the results were satisfying. In Tesla’s case, they were disastrous. And not because ADS don't work, but because apparently they work too well. Misleading title much?
- thumb 8y ago
  I don't know; they seem to be trashing Autopilot plenty in the article.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    I disagree. The article concludes "Tesla's Autopilot is a great technology, perhaps the most advanced ADS on the market". What they are "trashing" seems to be the hyperbolic marketing of Tesla, which I feel at this point has been discussed ad nauseum and has gotten so much press that this just feels like a rehashing of "Tesla greatly oversold this!" that tons of people (myself included) have already commented.
    - tobltobs 8y ago
      It is not only marketing the criticize, also the general handling: "In the small obstacle ‘pot hole’ scenario, all the cars tested allowed the driver to cooperatively steer and manage the situation apart from the Tesla. The Tesla system does not allow the driver to deviate from the lane centering path and will disengage when a driver inputs steering torque."
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
bdz 8y ago
Original article https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/testingautomation/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/testi... Test method and results with links to every model https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/safety-campaigns/2018-automated-driving-tests/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/safety-campaigns/... Tesla (.pdf) https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/41590/euro-ncap-automated-driving-2018-tesla-model-s-datasheet.201810171432105270.pdf https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/41590/euro-ncap-automated-dri...
make3 8y ago
the title is extremely inaccurate
sabareesh 8y ago
Is the author living in some wonderland ? Such a click bait title
jaysonelliot 8y ago
The article claims that the NCAP's problems with automated systems was that "apparently they work too well." It then goes on to enumerate a host of problems with Tesla's Autopilot, including a lack of geofencing, poor monitoring of human attention, "late or no response" to cut-in-and-out scenarios, AutoSteer's resistance to human control, and the system's trouble with some curves, and of course Tesla's inconsistent and confusing messaging about what exactly Autopilot is meant to be. Far from being a "trashing," it sounds like the Euro NCAP did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is to advocate for safety.
- deleted 8y ago
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- fossuser 8y ago
  I really don’t like geofencing or aggressive human attention monitoring so the lack of both of those things are features. The steering wheel attention requests are pretty frequent anyway. The other complaints are largely remedied by being a safe driver - the car says all over the place what the limitations of autopilot are when you go to use it.
  - simion314 8y ago
    Did you read about the case where the driver was sleeping and the car did not stop because it did not realize it? Do you think this is a feature?
    - fossuser 8y ago
      I don’t think that’s what has happening given how much it asks you to touch the wheel. Same thing could happen with cruise control and be even more dangerous.
      - simion314 8y ago
        What do you mean? I imagine the driver was sleeping with the hands on the wheel. IMO this systems that work for 99% of cases but stil require 100% driver attention are dangerous and it should include as much software and hardware to make sure the human is paying attention and not sleeping or watching movies
magic-chicken 8y ago
TL/DR Tesla ADS is the best on the market but it is marketed as an autopilot, which is wrong and caused some overconfident owners to die.
- oblio 8y ago
  Your comment makes it sound like the two mistakes are equivalent. They might have been overconfident, but if the misleading marketing leads to deaths, I don't think the finger should be pointed to "overconfidence".
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    >Your comment makes it sound like the two mistakes are equivalent. It's a TL;DR. Of course it sacrifices nuance for brevity. >They might have been overconfident, but if the misleading marketing leads to deaths, I don't think the finger should be pointed to "overconfidence". I generally agree with you but there is a good argument to be had that the driver is responsible. These were personally owned vehicles, not rentals. It's not like the owners who died didn't have time to become familiar enough with the system to reach the same performance conclusions (i.e. "it's basically just really good lane keeping and adaptive cruise") as Euro NCAP did. I get that products for the general consumer are supposed to be stupid proof but everyone knows that marketing bends the truth by only ever showing the ideal case. Nobody expects fancy AWD and electronic nannies to let them navigate snow covered hairpin roads with 100% accuracy every time like in the car commercials. Nobody expects to rely on automatic braking or cross traffic detection to not get in accidents when backing out of a driveway. The same goes for Tesla's autopilot. It is unreasonable to expect Autopilot to perform the way the marketing implies in 100% of circumstances.
    - simion314 8y ago
      >It's not like the owners who died didn't have time to become familiar enough with the system to reach the same performance conclusions This means if a Tesla kills me in the first 2 weeks I am not responsible since as per your argument I did not had enough time to realize the marketing deception and the actual capabilities of the car, it is not like I was trained like real pilots to drive this specific car model.
openloop 8y ago
Rupert?
jlv2 8y ago
Having used it for about 24K miles, I think Tesla AutoPilot works incredibly well (using software 9.0 and AP2.0 hardware in my Model S). And I'm really glad it isn't crippled with some geofencing that would limit it to where I could enable it. Having said all that, the name is a terrible and implies something it isn't capable of yet. It's a dangerously bad marketing choice.
- deleted 8y ago
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- usaphp 8y ago
  I own latest 5 series bmw and paid for all the driving assistance add-ons, and while the adaptive cruise control is awesome, the line keeping assist is completely useless and works absolutely terrible, not sure who decided to charge money for this incomplete piece of software, it's unusable, my friend has a model X and it's a day and night difference between the two, Tesla autopilot is just in a different league compared to bmw line assist thing.
- Shivetya 8y ago
  I found a use for it where I did not expect. When I took my first big trip with my TM3 I was on a two lane road in Western Ohio at night, in the pouring rain, on a two lane country road. Speed limit was 55mph and while exceeding it it was not uncommon to get passed. The problem I faced was the glare from oncoming cars and trucks some not dimming their lights. So I set AP to the task for keeping me in the lane and when someone came at me too bright to see I could focus on the white lane much and the AP screen at the same time assured I was in my lane. is it perfect, oh hell know. it will do tail of the dragon in North Georgia provided you keep it at the speed limit but it can be a bit sketchy as it likes the center line a bit on two lane roads. I do know its not meant for that but when safe I had to try. General use I mostly rely on traffic aware cruise control to keep a safe distance and speed and do the steering only letting it steer when fumbling for something in the car. edit: on tm3 it can be cancelled by tapping brakes or tapping right stalk up. it is so easy to cancel so I do not understand NCAP's issue there. did they not bother to read on how to cancel it?
decebalus1 8y ago
[meta] Whenever there is something remotely critical of Tesla, the comment section is a mess. Downvotes left-and-right, people are divided on bullshit semantics, etc.. I really don't get why. Same thing (but worse, actually) happens on Reddit. Is Tesla PR so 'well connected' to astroturf basically everywhere or did their marketing succeeded in creating an army of people who emotionally associate Tesla with the future of humanity? It's just a car folks, take a chill pill.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  I don't think Tesla needs to astroturf, they have plenty of supports who will happily defend them for free. Similar things happen in Apple threads, sports threads (elsewhere), and the games console wars. People just don't like their chosen sacred cow getting criticized.
- QuantumGood 8y ago
  You didn't specify which semantics are "bullshit", but I wouldn't lump discussion about autopilot into that. For example, part of the argument over the feature being termed autopilot has been that it supports misleading statements from salespeople—the least "semantic" issue with the name I am aware of. A feature designed to assist in life-or-death situations shouldn't be named in a Darwinian way, harming those who assume more than should be assumed.
ineedasername 8y ago
Their most important point stems from the name: "Autopilot". That right there begins the host of issues that arose from how Tesla marketed their features in a way that oversold them. And I am genuinely impressed by what Tesla has accomplished with their system, it's just that it's safe use-cases are much, much narrower a true "autopilot" I wonder if there is even a safe "in between" phase between normal driving and truly, fully self-driving vehicles. Or will many people put too much trust in the tech to make it a safer alternative until it's much more mature. Think of airplane pilots, where "autopilot" is also not really a fully self-flying/landing/takeoff system: they have tons of specialized training to hammer home the limitations and work safely within the system. There's even a body of research literature on the topic of when too much automation makes pilots too complacent, and decades of engineering with that problem in mind. It all just makes me think that Waymo may have it right in not targeting any type of transitional state between traditional and full automation.
- labcomputer 8y ago
  To be fair, the Tesla Autopilot functions at a higher than an aviation autopilot. In aviation, an autopilot follows a fixed path and makes no attempt to avoid other aircraft or terrain. There is no such thing as an automated takeoff. Automated landings, in practice, require the pilot to hand-fly the last part of the approach (except at a fleetingly small number of airports with cat IIIc approaches, where a ground navaid, not GPS, provides a high precision signal to guide the autopilot). State of the art automation of aircraft speed consists of the pilot dialing a different speed to the autothrottle, which is effectively a traditional, non-adaptive cruise control.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  > I wonder if there is even a safe "in between" phase between normal driving and truly, fully self-driving vehicles. Or will many people put too much trust in the tech to make it a safer alternative until it's much more mature. the prevailing opinion on this forum seems to be that these semi-autonomous driver aids are inherently unsafe because the driver inevitably stops paying attention. but are they actually worse that a typical human driving manually? I know we've seen a bunch of high-profile news stories about tesla autopilot malfunctions and inattentive safety drivers, but is there any real data to suggest that these systems are as bad as portrayed?
njarboe 8y ago
Tesla is going a different route to full automation than any other company. They seem to think the fastest way to full automation is going to be a gradual progression from where they are now (low level SAE 3) to level 4/5. Most others, and most importantly the leader Waymo (Google (Alphabet)), have decided the human society can't handle the risks of a level 3 system and won't deploy cars with those features. Waymo seems to have got to level 4 for the driving conditions around Phoenix so they are now starting to deploy the system to the public. At level 3 humans aren't driving the car but are suppose to pay attention so that they can take over if a problem arises. In general humans are not good at that task. Some of them will fail at it, the car will crash, people will get hurt/die, and maybe in this "safety first" world, automatic driving gets a bad name and is "set back" a decade. Elon Musk has stated that he believes more in a "safety third" kind of philosophy. In an interview I saw he stated that with his kids he tells them that "don't panic" is a good first principle for dealing with life and "safety" would probably go third. It's important but not the prime directive of life. What is second is still up for consideration. So the love/hate for Tesla's Autopilot strategy probably comes down to how you feel about risking people's lives to possibly save many more. Here is a question to ask yourself. If Tesla's autocar strategy causes 100 deaths of people who volunteer to take the risk before really good automation is developed, but Tesla's courage/recklessness has a 50% chance of saving a million (choose your own number) lives due to the speed-up of the implementation of self driving cars, would you support that? I would and so would many others, but many would not. This is a deep difference in values and that is why I think there is so much love/hate around the issue. Maybe Tesla wants to call it Autopilot because they hope they can incrementally improve it so that someday they get to level 4/5 and won't have the need to change the name at some arbitrary place along the way to full autopilot competency. Cruise control was a bit of a misnomer also but people seem to be fine with the word at this point.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  Autopilot is level 2 autonomy. Noone has level 3 autonomy, yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_driving_system#Levels_of_automation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_driving_system#Level... Level 2 – Partial automation The driver must be able to control the vehicle if corrections are needed, but the driver is no longer in control of the speed and steering of the vehicle.[6] Parking assistance is an example of a system that falls into this category[7] along with Tesla's autopilot feature.[8] A system that falls into this category is the DISTRONIC PLUS system created by Mercedes-Benz.[9] It is important to note the driver must not be distracted in Level 0 to Level 2 modes.
deleted 8y ago
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YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
This is going to be controversial perhaps, so I apologise in advance, but I'm continuously struck by the tendency of the tech industry (some sectors of it anyway) to overstate matters. Tesla's driver assistance system is an "autopilot"; Waymo's rides with human (safety) drivers are "autonomous"; DeepMind's AlphaZero that plays chess, Go and shogi [1] is a "general-purpose game playing agent"; Google translate that uses English as an intermediary language has developed an "interlingua". I really don't get how this works. To me all this sounds like completely ridiculous. Yet, some of those claims appear in actual publications, in high profile journals. Otherwise, people fall over each other to buy that hot AI stuff. I mean, what the hell? Perhaps we must persist in educating people about the abilities, and limitations, of current technology? ______________ [1] And nothing else. Not even tick-tack-toe. It has a model of a board with squares and of pieces making chess-like moves, so it can't deal with anything else.

66 points by camtarn 8y ago

noisy_boy 8y ago

Tesla should just rename their ADS from AutoPilot to CoPilot.

samfisher83 8y ago
Its really Lane Keep assist and Dynamic radar cruise control. Its better than most manufacturer's systems.
- whttheuuu 8y ago
  This isn't true at all with Navigate On AutoPilot which was released a month or so ago. You set your destination on the GPS and it will take you exit-to-exit on highways. This is not lane assist or distance control you see on other cars.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - samfisher83 8y ago
    You still have confirm and requires active human participation. Its not like its really "Auto."
    - moduspol 8y ago
      You actually don't have to confirm if the exit lane is split from your lane, which is pretty common. It will signal for you and get you into the appropriate lane. If reaching your destination requires switching lanes into one that is not split from your own, you'll have to confirm it. But that may change in the upcoming weeks or months.
  - taneq 8y ago
    Bolting a GPS-driven highway exit selection onto LKAS+ACC isn't really hard or risky. Once a control system can reliably keep a car safe in freeway traffic including lane keeping (even near gore points), lane changes, matching speed with traffic, and keeping safe distance from the car in front... just picking an exit given a destination address is the easy bit. It's a classic case of Moravec's paradox.
- moduspol 8y ago
  It will also change lanes for you if you signal, and wait for a safe opening if necessary.
sabertoothed 8y ago
Not that discussion again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot
- azag0 8y ago
  It doesn’t matter what the technical definition is in aviation. What matters is what expectations about Tesla’s technology it creates for most people.
  - rukittenme 8y ago
    One would argue the point of marketing is to changes people's expectations.
- simion314 8y ago
  Do you think that most people know how airplanes autopilot works? What people know is that airplanes can drive and land themselves and human pilots are there as backup/safety.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  Euroncap literally flagged it as an issue in their report. So when you say "not that discussion again" are you asking people not to discuss the actual topic of this thread?
Piskvorrr 8y ago
That assumes benign intent. All that we have seen so far is a sales pitch finetuned juuuust on the line "we won't say it's autonomous (or that it's not), but we'll nudge suggestively, point and nod." Of course, when anything happens, the old spiel "we didn't actually say it" comes out.
vinay427 8y ago
This would have also allowed for more fanfare with a fitting name if/when they eventually release a fully autonomous system.
ryandrake 8y ago
Or link it with cruise control like other manufacturers are doing. The general public kind of gets what cruise control Does, and that sets the right expectation. The public really has no idea what an aviation or marine autopilot system is all about.
- reubenswartz 8y ago
  Yes, having tried it, I'm a big fan, but they should have called it "Ultra Cruise" or something like that.
- amyjess 8y ago
  I would be OK with regulations requiring them to call it "adaptive cruise control with lane assist" and forbidding automakers from coming up with their own names for it.
ginko 8y ago
Isn't the point of a copilot that it can safely fly and land a plane unlike an autopilot.
- duiker101 8y ago
  Maybe, but I think that's beside the point. The point is that it's about people's perception of what something should do from it's name. And 99% of the people will associate co-* with a help and auto-* with something that can do it on it's own.
- Someone1234 8y ago
  Planes can land entirely on autopilot. Just requires the airport to have ILS, and a fairly modern autopilot.
  - mnw21cam 8y ago
    Yesbut. It also requires the meat-sack to be sitting in the cockpit telling the autopilot which heading/altitude/waypoint to head to next, listen to ATC instructions, input the correct ILS frequency into the system, etc. And that's when everything goes absolutely fine.
    - Someone1234 8y ago
      Planes can absolutely land themselves. The only point you're making is that an autopilot cannot entirely replace a pilot, but that was never in contention. The poster above claimed an autopilot cannot land, it can, and it does every single day. Additionally ILS frequency can be automatically set via electronic charts, particularly if the flight plan contains the destination runway (which isn't always possible).
      - labcomputer 8y ago
        > Planes can absolutely land themselves. No. They can’t. Not unless you have a IIIc approach and autopilot. Those things are not common. If you don’t have both of those things, the pilot must, at minimum, fly the flare (for a IIIb approach, which are somewhat common at large airports). Even if you have a IIIc approach, the pilot still monitors systems, deploys high lift devices and landing gear, makes the go/no decision. There is no reasonable interpretation of “planes can absolutely land themselves” which is in any way true.
aequitas 8y ago
Or don't borrow from other industries making meaning ambiguous and just call it for what it is: Driver assist
jononor 8y ago
Hopefully one of the (European) consumer protection agencies require them to reduce their misleading marketing soon.
slg 8y ago
I understand the argument that Tesla is generally misleading is their selling of Autopilot. I can also understand the argument that no company should be selling this type of semi-autonomous tech that can result in the worst of both human and autonomous driving. But I simply don't understand the argument that the only problem with this feature is the name. It just makes the whole thing seem silly. We already put numerous requirements on people before they are allowed to legally drive. Why are we not blaming drivers for knowing nothing about their cars beyond the simple name of a feature? You literally can't turn the feature on in a Tesla without it warning you about its limitations. Doesn't the driver have some responsibility to pay attention to those warnings or at least spend a few minutes learning about this feature before they trust it with their lives (and the lives of others)?
- simion314 8y ago
  I agree, drivers that do not pay attention share the blame too, but is not fair to blame only the drivers, the "autopilot" requires that the human driver maintain 100% attention but is the system monitoring the driver properly, is it trying the best to keep the driver engaged to the road ? No it does not do that because is not comfortable for the customer, so safety is sacrificed.

sabertoothed 8y ago

Article from October.

taneq 8y ago
Man, those six weeks completely changed the self-driving landscape, what with the... um... nah it's about the same but Waymo is now charging for rides.
- sabertoothed 8y ago
  For those people with shares it matters. New information changes share price. Old information tends to be reflected already.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ralph84 8y ago

Airplanes have autopilot and no one thinks that means there’s no pilot in front. Sure some drivers test the limit of their Tesla, just like some drivers test the limit of their Porsche or Ferrari.

tacomonstrous 8y ago
This is a silly semantic argument. Many people drive cars; very few fly aircraft. The meaning of a word in the second context has little to do with the first.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Please elaborate. In what more common context does autopilot imply no standby human operator?
  - simion314 8y ago
    It does not mean it must exists for people to know what it means, if I say "teleportation transport" you know what it means without having to seen one working before. Why you don't ask some people what an autopilot capable car should be able to do, then ask what a lane assist capable car should do, then see if the answers match.
    - paulddraper 8y ago
      I didn't say it had to exist. I asked "in what context". If I understand you right, the answer is "in the theoretical context"?
      - simion314 8y ago
        Say in movies,books, pop culture context autopilot means something that drives itself.
  - detaro 8y ago
    Standby, yes. Tesla's Autopilot appears to not be able to guarantee that sub-second reactions to random situations aren't necessary, at which point it's IMHO not "standby" anymore. An airliner's autopilot can do this for phases of the flight, backed up by ATC, collision warning systems, height over ground and the relative emptiness of the sky. In other situations, it needs close supervision too, but the first case probably leads the general public to associate the term with "standby".

dmode 8y ago

What a clickbait headline. The trashing is...wait for it.. because of the name Autopilot and because it is too good. Saved you a click

leesec 8y ago

> Overall, the results were satisfying. In Tesla’s case, they were disastrous. And not because ADS don't work, but because apparently they work too well. Misleading title much?

thumb 8y ago
I don't know; they seem to be trashing Autopilot plenty in the article.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I disagree. The article concludes "Tesla's Autopilot is a great technology, perhaps the most advanced ADS on the market". What they are "trashing" seems to be the hyperbolic marketing of Tesla, which I feel at this point has been discussed ad nauseum and has gotten so much press that this just feels like a rehashing of "Tesla greatly oversold this!" that tons of people (myself included) have already commented.
  - tobltobs 8y ago
    It is not only marketing the criticize, also the general handling: "In the small obstacle ‘pot hole’ scenario, all the cars tested allowed the driver to cooperatively steer and manage the situation apart from the Tesla. The Tesla system does not allow the driver to deviate from the lane centering path and will disengage when a driver inputs steering torque."
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bdz 8y ago

Original article https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/testingautomation/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/press-media/press-releases/testi... Test method and results with links to every model https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/safety-campaigns/2018-automated-driving-tests/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/safety-campaigns/... Tesla (.pdf) https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/41590/euro-ncap-automated-driving-2018-tesla-model-s-datasheet.201810171432105270.pdf https://cdn.euroncap.com/media/41590/euro-ncap-automated-dri...

make3 8y ago

the title is extremely inaccurate

sabareesh 8y ago

Is the author living in some wonderland ? Such a click bait title

jaysonelliot 8y ago

The article claims that the NCAP's problems with automated systems was that "apparently they work too well." It then goes on to enumerate a host of problems with Tesla's Autopilot, including a lack of geofencing, poor monitoring of human attention, "late or no response" to cut-in-and-out scenarios, AutoSteer's resistance to human control, and the system's trouble with some curves, and of course Tesla's inconsistent and confusing messaging about what exactly Autopilot is meant to be. Far from being a "trashing," it sounds like the Euro NCAP did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is to advocate for safety.

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fossuser 8y ago
I really don’t like geofencing or aggressive human attention monitoring so the lack of both of those things are features. The steering wheel attention requests are pretty frequent anyway. The other complaints are largely remedied by being a safe driver - the car says all over the place what the limitations of autopilot are when you go to use it.
- simion314 8y ago
  Did you read about the case where the driver was sleeping and the car did not stop because it did not realize it? Do you think this is a feature?
  - fossuser 8y ago
    I don’t think that’s what has happening given how much it asks you to touch the wheel. Same thing could happen with cruise control and be even more dangerous.
    - simion314 8y ago
      What do you mean? I imagine the driver was sleeping with the hands on the wheel. IMO this systems that work for 99% of cases but stil require 100% driver attention are dangerous and it should include as much software and hardware to make sure the human is paying attention and not sleeping or watching movies

magic-chicken 8y ago

TL/DR Tesla ADS is the best on the market but it is marketed as an autopilot, which is wrong and caused some overconfident owners to die.

oblio 8y ago
Your comment makes it sound like the two mistakes are equivalent. They might have been overconfident, but if the misleading marketing leads to deaths, I don't think the finger should be pointed to "overconfidence".
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >Your comment makes it sound like the two mistakes are equivalent. It's a TL;DR. Of course it sacrifices nuance for brevity. >They might have been overconfident, but if the misleading marketing leads to deaths, I don't think the finger should be pointed to "overconfidence". I generally agree with you but there is a good argument to be had that the driver is responsible. These were personally owned vehicles, not rentals. It's not like the owners who died didn't have time to become familiar enough with the system to reach the same performance conclusions (i.e. "it's basically just really good lane keeping and adaptive cruise") as Euro NCAP did. I get that products for the general consumer are supposed to be stupid proof but everyone knows that marketing bends the truth by only ever showing the ideal case. Nobody expects fancy AWD and electronic nannies to let them navigate snow covered hairpin roads with 100% accuracy every time like in the car commercials. Nobody expects to rely on automatic braking or cross traffic detection to not get in accidents when backing out of a driveway. The same goes for Tesla's autopilot. It is unreasonable to expect Autopilot to perform the way the marketing implies in 100% of circumstances.
  - simion314 8y ago
    >It's not like the owners who died didn't have time to become familiar enough with the system to reach the same performance conclusions This means if a Tesla kills me in the first 2 weeks I am not responsible since as per your argument I did not had enough time to realize the marketing deception and the actual capabilities of the car, it is not like I was trained like real pilots to drive this specific car model.

openloop 8y ago

Rupert?

jlv2 8y ago

Having used it for about 24K miles, I think Tesla AutoPilot works incredibly well (using software 9.0 and AP2.0 hardware in my Model S). And I'm really glad it isn't crippled with some geofencing that would limit it to where I could enable it. Having said all that, the name is a terrible and implies something it isn't capable of yet. It's a dangerously bad marketing choice.

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usaphp 8y ago
I own latest 5 series bmw and paid for all the driving assistance add-ons, and while the adaptive cruise control is awesome, the line keeping assist is completely useless and works absolutely terrible, not sure who decided to charge money for this incomplete piece of software, it's unusable, my friend has a model X and it's a day and night difference between the two, Tesla autopilot is just in a different league compared to bmw line assist thing.
Shivetya 8y ago
I found a use for it where I did not expect. When I took my first big trip with my TM3 I was on a two lane road in Western Ohio at night, in the pouring rain, on a two lane country road. Speed limit was 55mph and while exceeding it it was not uncommon to get passed. The problem I faced was the glare from oncoming cars and trucks some not dimming their lights. So I set AP to the task for keeping me in the lane and when someone came at me too bright to see I could focus on the white lane much and the AP screen at the same time assured I was in my lane. is it perfect, oh hell know. it will do tail of the dragon in North Georgia provided you keep it at the speed limit but it can be a bit sketchy as it likes the center line a bit on two lane roads. I do know its not meant for that but when safe I had to try. General use I mostly rely on traffic aware cruise control to keep a safe distance and speed and do the steering only letting it steer when fumbling for something in the car. edit: on tm3 it can be cancelled by tapping brakes or tapping right stalk up. it is so easy to cancel so I do not understand NCAP's issue there. did they not bother to read on how to cancel it?

decebalus1 8y ago

[meta] Whenever there is something remotely critical of Tesla, the comment section is a mess. Downvotes left-and-right, people are divided on bullshit semantics, etc.. I really don't get why. Same thing (but worse, actually) happens on Reddit. Is Tesla PR so 'well connected' to astroturf basically everywhere or did their marketing succeeded in creating an army of people who emotionally associate Tesla with the future of humanity? It's just a car folks, take a chill pill.

Someone1234 8y ago
I don't think Tesla needs to astroturf, they have plenty of supports who will happily defend them for free. Similar things happen in Apple threads, sports threads (elsewhere), and the games console wars. People just don't like their chosen sacred cow getting criticized.
QuantumGood 8y ago
You didn't specify which semantics are "bullshit", but I wouldn't lump discussion about autopilot into that. For example, part of the argument over the feature being termed autopilot has been that it supports misleading statements from salespeople—the least "semantic" issue with the name I am aware of. A feature designed to assist in life-or-death situations shouldn't be named in a Darwinian way, harming those who assume more than should be assumed.

ineedasername 8y ago

Their most important point stems from the name: "Autopilot". That right there begins the host of issues that arose from how Tesla marketed their features in a way that oversold them. And I am genuinely impressed by what Tesla has accomplished with their system, it's just that it's safe use-cases are much, much narrower a true "autopilot" I wonder if there is even a safe "in between" phase between normal driving and truly, fully self-driving vehicles. Or will many people put too much trust in the tech to make it a safer alternative until it's much more mature. Think of airplane pilots, where "autopilot" is also not really a fully self-flying/landing/takeoff system: they have tons of specialized training to hammer home the limitations and work safely within the system. There's even a body of research literature on the topic of when too much automation makes pilots too complacent, and decades of engineering with that problem in mind. It all just makes me think that Waymo may have it right in not targeting any type of transitional state between traditional and full automation.

labcomputer 8y ago
To be fair, the Tesla Autopilot functions at a higher than an aviation autopilot. In aviation, an autopilot follows a fixed path and makes no attempt to avoid other aircraft or terrain. There is no such thing as an automated takeoff. Automated landings, in practice, require the pilot to hand-fly the last part of the approach (except at a fleetingly small number of airports with cat IIIc approaches, where a ground navaid, not GPS, provides a high precision signal to guide the autopilot). State of the art automation of aircraft speed consists of the pilot dialing a different speed to the autothrottle, which is effectively a traditional, non-adaptive cruise control.
leetcrew 8y ago
> I wonder if there is even a safe "in between" phase between normal driving and truly, fully self-driving vehicles. Or will many people put too much trust in the tech to make it a safer alternative until it's much more mature. the prevailing opinion on this forum seems to be that these semi-autonomous driver aids are inherently unsafe because the driver inevitably stops paying attention. but are they actually worse that a typical human driving manually? I know we've seen a bunch of high-profile news stories about tesla autopilot malfunctions and inattentive safety drivers, but is there any real data to suggest that these systems are as bad as portrayed?

njarboe 8y ago

Tesla is going a different route to full automation than any other company. They seem to think the fastest way to full automation is going to be a gradual progression from where they are now (low level SAE 3) to level 4/5. Most others, and most importantly the leader Waymo (Google (Alphabet)), have decided the human society can't handle the risks of a level 3 system and won't deploy cars with those features. Waymo seems to have got to level 4 for the driving conditions around Phoenix so they are now starting to deploy the system to the public. At level 3 humans aren't driving the car but are suppose to pay attention so that they can take over if a problem arises. In general humans are not good at that task. Some of them will fail at it, the car will crash, people will get hurt/die, and maybe in this "safety first" world, automatic driving gets a bad name and is "set back" a decade. Elon Musk has stated that he believes more in a "safety third" kind of philosophy. In an interview I saw he stated that with his kids he tells them that "don't panic" is a good first principle for dealing with life and "safety" would probably go third. It's important but not the prime directive of life. What is second is still up for consideration. So the love/hate for Tesla's Autopilot strategy probably comes down to how you feel about risking people's lives to possibly save many more. Here is a question to ask yourself. If Tesla's autocar strategy causes 100 deaths of people who volunteer to take the risk before really good automation is developed, but Tesla's courage/recklessness has a 50% chance of saving a million (choose your own number) lives due to the speed-up of the implementation of self driving cars, would you support that? I would and so would many others, but many would not. This is a deep difference in values and that is why I think there is so much love/hate around the issue. Maybe Tesla wants to call it Autopilot because they hope they can incrementally improve it so that someday they get to level 4/5 and won't have the need to change the name at some arbitrary place along the way to full autopilot competency. Cruise control was a bit of a misnomer also but people seem to be fine with the word at this point.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
Autopilot is level 2 autonomy. Noone has level 3 autonomy, yet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_driving_system#Levels_of_automation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_driving_system#Level... Level 2 – Partial automation The driver must be able to control the vehicle if corrections are needed, but the driver is no longer in control of the speed and steering of the vehicle.[6] Parking assistance is an example of a system that falls into this category[7] along with Tesla's autopilot feature.[8] A system that falls into this category is the DISTRONIC PLUS system created by Mercedes-Benz.[9] It is important to note the driver must not be distracted in Level 0 to Level 2 modes.

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YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

This is going to be controversial perhaps, so I apologise in advance, but I'm continuously struck by the tendency of the tech industry (some sectors of it anyway) to overstate matters. Tesla's driver assistance system is an "autopilot"; Waymo's rides with human (safety) drivers are "autonomous"; DeepMind's AlphaZero that plays chess, Go and shogi [1] is a "general-purpose game playing agent"; Google translate that uses English as an intermediary language has developed an "interlingua". I really don't get how this works. To me all this sounds like completely ridiculous. Yet, some of those claims appear in actual publications, in high profile journals. Otherwise, people fall over each other to buy that hot AI stuff. I mean, what the hell? Perhaps we must persist in educating people about the abilities, and limitations, of current technology? ______________ [1] And nothing else. Not even tick-tack-toe. It has a model of a board with squares and of pieces making chess-like moves, so it can't deal with anything else.