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I think a big part of Tesla is plain old dishonesty, or American bragging, if you want to call it that way. Consumers want autonomous self-driving cars. So Tes

I think a big part of Tesla is plain old dishonesty, or American bragging, if you want to call it that way. Consumers want autonomous self-driving cars. So Tesla creates marketing videos and then calls their glorified lane assistance and distance keeping assistant an "autopilot". And now, Tesla buyers are frustrated that the software isn't ready yet, or dying due to bugs in said software. But Tesla gets to dodge legal responsibility by writing into the fine print of their EULA that the so-called "autopilot" isn't actually meant to be used like what autopilot means to most people. If anything, Tesla has amazing marketing.

roenxi 7y ago
> the so-called "autopilot" isn't actually meant to be used like what autopilot means to most people. Given that autopilot for cars doesn't and never has existed it is likely that it means different things to different people. When I'm driving a car, my function is pretty much a glorified lane assist. If it can do that for me then I'm sold on it being an autopilot. I don't need my car to actually be smarter than I am.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  You'd want the car to avoid mistaking reflective surfaces for tunnels. Or not seeing a truck turned sideways due to lack of AI training data. Plus your car should make it easy for you to do the right & safe thing. "The nation’s top safety investigator slammed Tesla on Tuesday for failing to take adequate measures to prevent “foreseeable abuse” of its Autopilot driver-assistance technology" https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-25/tesla-autopilot-crash-hearing https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-25/tesla-auto...
  - roenxi 7y ago
    For one that is changing the subject. For two; proving that a Tesla autopilot caused an accident and the regulators are grumpy isn't evidence of anything. Humans frequently have accidents and regulators are typically grumpy. And the evidence in that article is that the car is basically working on autopilot. So the brand name is quite reasonable. If you expect any transport system not to have accidents you are crazy - all modes of transport have accidents from time to time. Also; a tired point; but Tesla's autopilot is going to learn from each fatal accident. That is a massive difference from humans; who stop learning after fatal accidents. Fatal accidents are not going to be a major long-term problem here which stands in sharp contrast to human drivers. It isn't a particularly bad sign as it means Tesla's autopilot will have learned a valuable lesson due to someone-who-is-not-me's misfortune. I'd happily pay money for that. Deaths from bad human driving are meaningless tragedies. Deaths in a new but engineer-able system are extremely meaningful tragedies and are almost good news for everyone who isn't immediately involved.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      Yes, but how much can a frog really learn. They need to "evolve" new sensors and better onboard processing packages, but these things are expensive.
    - fxtentacle 7y ago
      My prediction is that we'll need GPUs with 60+ GB of memory before self-driving becomes more plausible. So that'll be a completely different hardware than what Tesla currently sells as their "self-driving hardware" package.
      - roenxi 7y ago
        > My prediction is that we'll need GPUs with 60+ GB of memory before self-driving becomes more plausible. Somebody has already linked an article showing that people in these cars are taking their hands off the wheel and playing videogames while 'driving'. These cars are already self-driving by a reasonable standard, and is certainly fairly described as an autopilot system. Your standards aren't normal.
        close04 7y ago
        > These cars are already self-driving by a reasonable standard It's not that others have too high standards, it's that you have low standards and they make basically every mundane thing, that you use every, day a "self-whatever" thing.
        jsight 7y ago
        > Somebody has already linked an article showing that people in these cars are taking their hands off the wheel and playing videogames while 'driving'. That guy died in a car crash while doing that.
        roenxi 7y ago
        Yeah? It isn't reasonable to expect no accidents; so that doesn't really tell us very much. It might be part of a broader pattern or it might not be. But it is evidence that there will be a lot of Tesla drivers out there leaving the car on autopilot which is pretty good support for naming the system 'autopilot'.
dr_dshiv 7y ago
I ride in Teslas when that's what the Uber driver drives. Maybe other cars have the same wow experience, but I don't get picked up in a Porsche or Jaguar. But the wow experience of a Tesla vs a Benz is unquestionable. I don't mind it being called marketing. But I'd call it overall experience design. Or magic. You really feel it!
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  Pretty much all the Uber Black trips that I took were traditional BMW like the ones that taxis in Germany use. I agree that's boring. But it only is boring because BMW has such a crushing market share that the occasional non-BMW car feels like a breath of fresh air. Tesla feeling nice due to their low market share is, however, the opposite of what this article argues for.
  - lexs 7y ago
    Sidenote: taxis in Germany are typically Mercedes, rarely BMW
- cosmodisk 7y ago
  Why would Tesla be a 'wow'? I take uber once or twice a weak and it'd obviously be a bit of a novelty experience if driver would pick me up with tesla instead of Toyota Prius,but it won't be 'wow'. I can't comment on how good or bad their cars are,as I haven't owned one, however they do look bland to me.
  - codewiz 7y ago
    I was quite wowed when riding in a Tesla for the first time. It feels like a car designed entirely by a tech company as opposed to an incremental improvement over a classic car, or a classic car retrofitted with a bunch of luxury accessories. My only disappointment was that the giant LCD panel in the middle didn't refresh at high frame rate. I hope they fixed that because I'd expect the car from the future to be able to scroll a map smoothly.
    - 7y ago
hoseja 7y ago
The fact that it is an incredibly hard problem that they are making steady progress in and they basically dragged EVs kicking and screaming into public consciousness and wide availability is just a minor detail! Now how are my puts doing...
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  I don't agree. Most of the Tesla's vision processing appears to be AIs trained with census loss, meaning the same stuff that Daimler Benz used in 2004 for their lane assistance systems. I recently gave a "state of the art" talk about optical flow and I found it extremely disappointing that current technology still struggles with recognizing shiny surfaces and fences, despite 16 years of hardware progress. But most AI researchers appear to be more interested in re-inventing the wheel on a GPU instead of doing actual mathematical algorithm research. Tesla is doing marginally better than the average due to their custom hardware, which grants them more than the 10 GB that people using NVIDIA GPUs are limited to. But still, Tesla, Skydio, and NVIDIA appear to be using optical flow AI architectures that are fundamentally incapable of performing well, due to being based on the (mathematically provably wrong) assumption that a scale pyramid works for optical flow detection.
  - xrayarx 7y ago
    Seems like you made a point. Could you provide more details? What are the other options and who is using them?
    - fxtentacle 7y ago
      Sure, I'm happy to discuss AI in more detail. The problem is that pretty much all AIs are built upon the PWC-Net architecture from Nvidia. The solution would be to use a different architecture, but that doesn't fit into GPU. Here's the Sintel ranking: http://sintel.is.tue.mpg.de/results http://sintel.is.tue.mpg.de/results And if you look at the AIs, they all repurpose this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.0237 https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.0237 However, you cannot store one optical flow per pixel, because the solution is not unique. For example, that's why Tesla and Skydio have problems with reflective surfaces. You see both the surface and its reflection move, but the AI can only store 1 result out of those 2 movements. In my opinion, the solution is to use Fourier methods, which were shown to work well in a 2000 dagm paper called minimum values of the structure tensor. But nobody has even attempted to port that to GPU yet or use it as part of AI.
skybrian 7y ago
The neat trick with this marketing is that people apparently don't know what a real autopilot (in an airplane) does. For example, a single-axis autopilot just levels the wings. Some will hold a heading. So it's only misleading due to a common misunderstanding.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  When they introduced it, they called the video "Autopilot: Tesla Self-Driving Demonstration" and it opened with a disclaimer that said "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." That's the buyer expectation for the word "autopilot" that I was referring to. EDIT: Apparently, the sensor package is still called "self-driving hardware", which I'm sure creates a certain expectation if you purchase the "self-driving hardware & autopilot software" bundle.
  - close04 7y ago
    Tesla still explicitly sells "Full Self-Driving Capability" which "Includes the Full Self Driving Computer" [0]. But the disclaimer on the bottom is pretty noncommittal: > "The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience". On one hand "are dependent on" actively avoids stating that they're there but the "billions of miles of experience" is clearly aimed at suggesting to buyers that they are. Which they are not since the car cannot handle many/most situations that a human driver is expected to handle to be called "a driver". [0] https://www.tesla.com/modely/design#autopilot https://www.tesla.com/modely/design#autopilot
- ThePowerOfFuet 7y ago
  An Airbus can fly itself... and land itself. That's autopilot.
  - alpaca128 7y ago
    That's a modern autopilot, but those mechanisms were already called that when they were far less complex than Tesla's today. Although it can be argued that with technological progress the meaning of the word has also shifted over time together with the expectations.
darawk 7y ago
Everyone who purchases a Tesla understands the limitations of its autopilot system at this point. So no, that is definitely not a big part of what is driving their success.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  In the original article, the comparison between i3 and Tesla boils down to range and the supposed advantages of the autopilot software. So at the very least, the authors of that article were unaware that the limitations of Tesla's autopilot make it effectively equal to the i3's assistance systems for everyday use.
- ben_w 7y ago
  My sister works in car sales. She’s no idiot, but she talks about self driving cars as if it’s all fully developed. Last time I talked with her, she didn’t know about the SAE levels 0-5. Almost everyone else I talk to outside of software seems to pigeonhole AI as magic — either they’re believers who think it can pass the Turing Test, or they’re non-believers who refuse to accept it can do what is in 2020 the AI equivalent of Hello World. So no, I don’t think most people do know; rather, I think most people either think it’s impossible or perfect already.
pritovido 7y ago
On the other hand there is something very important with new things : Someone takes the risks, stands up and takes the responsibility. This is necessary for human progress. Gutenberg with this idea that will make the investors rich. Colombus stands up and says: I am going to the Indies across the Atlantic, it is going to be easy! Or Magallanes crossing the world, or going to the moon, Knuth creating Latex or the AoCP as a "semester" project, Artificial intelligence would be solved in 10 years... In the end Gutenberg almost bankrupted his inventors and died penniless, Colombus faced riots and almost starved, most of the Magallanes' crew perished, going to the moon took so much more money, Knuth project took his entire life... But the courage paid off for society as a whole because they got involved and took responsibility and risk on their lives. It has always been easier to criticize and risk zero, while cynically putting all progress down. Tesla or Elon is not perfect, but no human being is, if you wait for something new to be perfect before is ready, then you will never get it. Progress is not automatic, needs people that believe on it, probably even delusional people.
- throw7337 7y ago
  Boeing has far safer software, I don't see why Tesla should get a pass. I am a customer not stunt double.
  - varjag 7y ago
    You come up with Boeing as counterexample of software safety, really.
    - Ensorceled 7y ago
      I think they're trolling.
    - throw7337 7y ago
      No, I used it as an example of bad safety. But it is still better. Both autopilots get sometimes confused and drive into solid wall. Boeing did recall, fix the problem and is now trying to restore trust. Tesla just does whoopsie, we are startup, need to fix bugs. Or blames customer: "please do not use our $20k autopilot as an autopilot" If Tesla takes safety seriously, it should at least rename its software.
Shivetya 7y ago
Own a 3, so there is my bias. I doubt the self driving feature drives many sales. It does look flashy and even in its current form it can be very good. Do I think they can deliver self driving cars? No, but I also don't think anyone else can. What they have delivered is a car that can relieve the stress of driving and counter being distracted while driving long distances As far as being frustrated by the software I am more annoyed how long it has taken for quality of life features to get put in, namely my number one complaint is full blue tooth integration with smart phones. While they finally added the ability to navigate a playlist on screen you still cannot select the playlist you want; or any other selection outside the list like artist and album. I dislike their fixation on games and other features only useful while parked. Everyone who has ridden in my car had two comments, first being about how clean the interior looked and second being how it felt when accelerating. Every once in a while I will let the car drive and I explain it as letting your highschool kid drive but you have immediate ability to take control. About the only negative comments I get are the door handles which some say are cool but take use getting to but the top one is always pricing.
- fxtentacle 7y ago
  I was in part reacting to the article, which claims the superiority of the Tesla autopilot over the i3's driving assistance systems. And I just don't see that as much of an everyday advantage or selling point, just like you also pointed out.
- rgoodwintx 7y ago
  Similar comments here with Model 3. In a way it's almost incidental that it's an electric car. When I had a Model S loaner, I was blown away how much they've simplified just from S to 3: wide open interior, reduction in the [already spartan] amount of physical controls. (I also briefly had a Kia loaner for that same visit, and I felt like a monkey trying to operate an Apollo spacecraft, unable to find the switches and dials for everything.) Tesla, whether for cost cutting or genius, simply said "do you really need all of these manual/physical controls, or can it be A) done automatically via software, or B) put onto a single screen?", and it, in my opinion, has worked quite well. Yes the "AI" wipers took time to come around, and you hit the occasional UI bug, but it's far and away a very acceptable trade off for a magnitude more space in the cabin and (if you appreciate such things) clean, simple, lines throughout. Even the silly flip down LED visor mirrors delight people the first time they use them in my car. AP/FSD may never get where they claim, but I've taken many-hundred mile trips with AP on (on highways), and even my drive to work is immensely better with AP in long stretches, so I consider it well worth the [AP] cost. As ridiculous as it sounds, all those micro-movements on the road do add up and take a toll on you during drives. I actually drive fairly conservatively (turning into my "slow lane is fast enough" father), but for demos and when I do really want to pass someone, the acceleration and instant power still marvels. :)
tinco 7y ago
It is about marketing, but not about advertising (or bragging as you call it). Developing and producing electric cars is a lot more expensive, so whatever price bracket you're in, a Tesla is going to have 10-20k of its price go towards making the car move that the other manufacturers don't spend. That's 10k less spent on every other feature of the car. That's why you drop $80k on a Model S, that has the look and feel of a $60K nice car. That cost is already sunk, Tesla can't recuperate that, and everytime electric cars become a little bit more common, the coolness factor of the electric engine decreases which means the value of that sunk cost goes down. There's two things that save Tesla, the first is plain consumer attitude. Some (many?) consumers will simply not buy an ICE car anymore if they can afford not to, which means the other manufacturers have to compete on Tesla's playing field. The second is cheap innovations. Tesla can spend a couple tens of millions, and maybe $1000 in hardware, and get something that looks like an AI into their cars that adds maybe $10k of coolness value. Add fancy doors, a big LCD screen, flush doorhandles, and whatever other little thing you have to spend R&D on anyway because you're a new car manufacturer so everything costs more R&D for you than the establishment, and you close the gap. It's about putting a $80K Tesla next to a $80K Jaguar or whatever, and being able to justify why they cost the same amount of money when the Jaguar is better made. edit: Note this whole story is about the Model S, which was Tesla's bootstrap model. The goal of Tesla is to produce a car that doesn't compete with Jaguar, but with Volkswagen (or Ford).
- lisnake 7y ago
  I can understand developing, but why producing electric cars would be a lot more expensive than ICE cars? Not an expert, but in my opinion in electric cars you can get rid of many components, such as complicated engine, transmission, fuel injection systems, exhaust, etc. This should bring the cost down, with battery being the single most expensive component
  - tinco 7y ago
    The battery yes. Also, an electric motor is simple mechanically, but it is more complex than it looks on the outside. There's a lot going on in their design, and the manufacturing process is complex as well, especially if you need it to be efficient. ICE engines have larger complex elements that can fail for more reasons, but the most complex part is just this big block that they pour into a mold. After that's done you just have to mount all the little components onto it that the suppliers have refined the tolerances on for at least 20 years. But the ICE and the electric engine are just peanuts compared to the material cost of producing these huge batteries.
manigandham 7y ago
Yes, Tesla/Elon has overpromised a lot in marketing. They've also made misteps in finances and trying to invent too much automation for their factories. The cars also continue to have quality issues and are lacking in the (interior) design space. That being said, the customer experience of owning and driving a Tesla far exceeds the traditional options. I fail to find anyone who is unhappy with their purchase. They love their cars and there are still hundreds of features that Tesla has where other manufacturers are barely catching up. Add in the ecosystem of solar/powerwalls and superchargers along with supplying the wider energy market, and this company has a great future ahead.
cptskippy 7y ago
I think you're wrong. I bought one and purposely didn't get autopilot. I'm neither frustrated or dissatisfied with my purchase. It's the best car I have ever experienced and it just keeps getting better.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
fmajid 7y ago
Sure, but keep in mind all the German car makers were complicit in Dieselgate, which is far worse.
smaryjerry 7y ago
I don't think people buying expensive cars are fooled at all into believing autopilot drives itself.
tristanb 7y ago
I have one, i'm not disappointed. It's changed how I drive, and what I do. It's like an ipod to a walkman. I don't care about cars, but i'll never buy another brand until they compete.

roenxi 7y ago

> the so-called "autopilot" isn't actually meant to be used like what autopilot means to most people. Given that autopilot for cars doesn't and never has existed it is likely that it means different things to different people. When I'm driving a car, my function is pretty much a glorified lane assist. If it can do that for me then I'm sold on it being an autopilot. I don't need my car to actually be smarter than I am.

fxtentacle 7y ago
You'd want the car to avoid mistaking reflective surfaces for tunnels. Or not seeing a truck turned sideways due to lack of AI training data. Plus your car should make it easy for you to do the right & safe thing. "The nation’s top safety investigator slammed Tesla on Tuesday for failing to take adequate measures to prevent “foreseeable abuse” of its Autopilot driver-assistance technology" https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-25/tesla-autopilot-crash-hearing https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-02-25/tesla-auto...
- roenxi 7y ago
  For one that is changing the subject. For two; proving that a Tesla autopilot caused an accident and the regulators are grumpy isn't evidence of anything. Humans frequently have accidents and regulators are typically grumpy. And the evidence in that article is that the car is basically working on autopilot. So the brand name is quite reasonable. If you expect any transport system not to have accidents you are crazy - all modes of transport have accidents from time to time. Also; a tired point; but Tesla's autopilot is going to learn from each fatal accident. That is a massive difference from humans; who stop learning after fatal accidents. Fatal accidents are not going to be a major long-term problem here which stands in sharp contrast to human drivers. It isn't a particularly bad sign as it means Tesla's autopilot will have learned a valuable lesson due to someone-who-is-not-me's misfortune. I'd happily pay money for that. Deaths from bad human driving are meaningless tragedies. Deaths in a new but engineer-able system are extremely meaningful tragedies and are almost good news for everyone who isn't immediately involved.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    Yes, but how much can a frog really learn. They need to "evolve" new sensors and better onboard processing packages, but these things are expensive.
  - fxtentacle 7y ago
    My prediction is that we'll need GPUs with 60+ GB of memory before self-driving becomes more plausible. So that'll be a completely different hardware than what Tesla currently sells as their "self-driving hardware" package.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      > My prediction is that we'll need GPUs with 60+ GB of memory before self-driving becomes more plausible. Somebody has already linked an article showing that people in these cars are taking their hands off the wheel and playing videogames while 'driving'. These cars are already self-driving by a reasonable standard, and is certainly fairly described as an autopilot system. Your standards aren't normal.
      - close04 7y ago
        > These cars are already self-driving by a reasonable standard It's not that others have too high standards, it's that you have low standards and they make basically every mundane thing, that you use every, day a "self-whatever" thing.
      - jsight 7y ago
        > Somebody has already linked an article showing that people in these cars are taking their hands off the wheel and playing videogames while 'driving'. That guy died in a car crash while doing that.
        roenxi 7y ago
        Yeah? It isn't reasonable to expect no accidents; so that doesn't really tell us very much. It might be part of a broader pattern or it might not be. But it is evidence that there will be a lot of Tesla drivers out there leaving the car on autopilot which is pretty good support for naming the system 'autopilot'.

dr_dshiv 7y ago

I ride in Teslas when that's what the Uber driver drives. Maybe other cars have the same wow experience, but I don't get picked up in a Porsche or Jaguar. But the wow experience of a Tesla vs a Benz is unquestionable. I don't mind it being called marketing. But I'd call it overall experience design. Or magic. You really feel it!

fxtentacle 7y ago
Pretty much all the Uber Black trips that I took were traditional BMW like the ones that taxis in Germany use. I agree that's boring. But it only is boring because BMW has such a crushing market share that the occasional non-BMW car feels like a breath of fresh air. Tesla feeling nice due to their low market share is, however, the opposite of what this article argues for.
- lexs 7y ago
  Sidenote: taxis in Germany are typically Mercedes, rarely BMW
cosmodisk 7y ago
Why would Tesla be a 'wow'? I take uber once or twice a weak and it'd obviously be a bit of a novelty experience if driver would pick me up with tesla instead of Toyota Prius,but it won't be 'wow'. I can't comment on how good or bad their cars are,as I haven't owned one, however they do look bland to me.
- codewiz 7y ago
  I was quite wowed when riding in a Tesla for the first time. It feels like a car designed entirely by a tech company as opposed to an incremental improvement over a classic car, or a classic car retrofitted with a bunch of luxury accessories. My only disappointment was that the giant LCD panel in the middle didn't refresh at high frame rate. I hope they fixed that because I'd expect the car from the future to be able to scroll a map smoothly.
  - 7y ago

hoseja 7y ago

The fact that it is an incredibly hard problem that they are making steady progress in and they basically dragged EVs kicking and screaming into public consciousness and wide availability is just a minor detail! Now how are my puts doing...

fxtentacle 7y ago
I don't agree. Most of the Tesla's vision processing appears to be AIs trained with census loss, meaning the same stuff that Daimler Benz used in 2004 for their lane assistance systems. I recently gave a "state of the art" talk about optical flow and I found it extremely disappointing that current technology still struggles with recognizing shiny surfaces and fences, despite 16 years of hardware progress. But most AI researchers appear to be more interested in re-inventing the wheel on a GPU instead of doing actual mathematical algorithm research. Tesla is doing marginally better than the average due to their custom hardware, which grants them more than the 10 GB that people using NVIDIA GPUs are limited to. But still, Tesla, Skydio, and NVIDIA appear to be using optical flow AI architectures that are fundamentally incapable of performing well, due to being based on the (mathematically provably wrong) assumption that a scale pyramid works for optical flow detection.
- xrayarx 7y ago
  Seems like you made a point. Could you provide more details? What are the other options and who is using them?
  - fxtentacle 7y ago
    Sure, I'm happy to discuss AI in more detail. The problem is that pretty much all AIs are built upon the PWC-Net architecture from Nvidia. The solution would be to use a different architecture, but that doesn't fit into GPU. Here's the Sintel ranking: http://sintel.is.tue.mpg.de/results http://sintel.is.tue.mpg.de/results And if you look at the AIs, they all repurpose this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.0237 https://arxiv.org/abs/1709.0237 However, you cannot store one optical flow per pixel, because the solution is not unique. For example, that's why Tesla and Skydio have problems with reflective surfaces. You see both the surface and its reflection move, but the AI can only store 1 result out of those 2 movements. In my opinion, the solution is to use Fourier methods, which were shown to work well in a 2000 dagm paper called minimum values of the structure tensor. But nobody has even attempted to port that to GPU yet or use it as part of AI.

skybrian 7y ago

The neat trick with this marketing is that people apparently don't know what a real autopilot (in an airplane) does. For example, a single-axis autopilot just levels the wings. Some will hold a heading. So it's only misleading due to a common misunderstanding.

fxtentacle 7y ago
When they introduced it, they called the video "Autopilot: Tesla Self-Driving Demonstration" and it opened with a disclaimer that said "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." That's the buyer expectation for the word "autopilot" that I was referring to. EDIT: Apparently, the sensor package is still called "self-driving hardware", which I'm sure creates a certain expectation if you purchase the "self-driving hardware & autopilot software" bundle.
- close04 7y ago
  Tesla still explicitly sells "Full Self-Driving Capability" which "Includes the Full Self Driving Computer" [0]. But the disclaimer on the bottom is pretty noncommittal: > "The activation and use of these features are dependent on achieving reliability far in excess of human drivers as demonstrated by billions of miles of experience". On one hand "are dependent on" actively avoids stating that they're there but the "billions of miles of experience" is clearly aimed at suggesting to buyers that they are. Which they are not since the car cannot handle many/most situations that a human driver is expected to handle to be called "a driver". [0] https://www.tesla.com/modely/design#autopilot https://www.tesla.com/modely/design#autopilot
ThePowerOfFuet 7y ago
An Airbus can fly itself... and land itself. That's autopilot.
- alpaca128 7y ago
  That's a modern autopilot, but those mechanisms were already called that when they were far less complex than Tesla's today. Although it can be argued that with technological progress the meaning of the word has also shifted over time together with the expectations.

darawk 7y ago

Everyone who purchases a Tesla understands the limitations of its autopilot system at this point. So no, that is definitely not a big part of what is driving their success.

fxtentacle 7y ago
In the original article, the comparison between i3 and Tesla boils down to range and the supposed advantages of the autopilot software. So at the very least, the authors of that article were unaware that the limitations of Tesla's autopilot make it effectively equal to the i3's assistance systems for everyday use.
ben_w 7y ago
My sister works in car sales. She’s no idiot, but she talks about self driving cars as if it’s all fully developed. Last time I talked with her, she didn’t know about the SAE levels 0-5. Almost everyone else I talk to outside of software seems to pigeonhole AI as magic — either they’re believers who think it can pass the Turing Test, or they’re non-believers who refuse to accept it can do what is in 2020 the AI equivalent of Hello World. So no, I don’t think most people do know; rather, I think most people either think it’s impossible or perfect already.

pritovido 7y ago

On the other hand there is something very important with new things : Someone takes the risks, stands up and takes the responsibility. This is necessary for human progress. Gutenberg with this idea that will make the investors rich. Colombus stands up and says: I am going to the Indies across the Atlantic, it is going to be easy! Or Magallanes crossing the world, or going to the moon, Knuth creating Latex or the AoCP as a "semester" project, Artificial intelligence would be solved in 10 years... In the end Gutenberg almost bankrupted his inventors and died penniless, Colombus faced riots and almost starved, most of the Magallanes' crew perished, going to the moon took so much more money, Knuth project took his entire life... But the courage paid off for society as a whole because they got involved and took responsibility and risk on their lives. It has always been easier to criticize and risk zero, while cynically putting all progress down. Tesla or Elon is not perfect, but no human being is, if you wait for something new to be perfect before is ready, then you will never get it. Progress is not automatic, needs people that believe on it, probably even delusional people.

throw7337 7y ago
Boeing has far safer software, I don't see why Tesla should get a pass. I am a customer not stunt double.
- varjag 7y ago
  You come up with Boeing as counterexample of software safety, really.
  - Ensorceled 7y ago
    I think they're trolling.
  - throw7337 7y ago
    No, I used it as an example of bad safety. But it is still better. Both autopilots get sometimes confused and drive into solid wall. Boeing did recall, fix the problem and is now trying to restore trust. Tesla just does whoopsie, we are startup, need to fix bugs. Or blames customer: "please do not use our $20k autopilot as an autopilot" If Tesla takes safety seriously, it should at least rename its software.

Shivetya 7y ago

Own a 3, so there is my bias. I doubt the self driving feature drives many sales. It does look flashy and even in its current form it can be very good. Do I think they can deliver self driving cars? No, but I also don't think anyone else can. What they have delivered is a car that can relieve the stress of driving and counter being distracted while driving long distances As far as being frustrated by the software I am more annoyed how long it has taken for quality of life features to get put in, namely my number one complaint is full blue tooth integration with smart phones. While they finally added the ability to navigate a playlist on screen you still cannot select the playlist you want; or any other selection outside the list like artist and album. I dislike their fixation on games and other features only useful while parked. Everyone who has ridden in my car had two comments, first being about how clean the interior looked and second being how it felt when accelerating. Every once in a while I will let the car drive and I explain it as letting your highschool kid drive but you have immediate ability to take control. About the only negative comments I get are the door handles which some say are cool but take use getting to but the top one is always pricing.

fxtentacle 7y ago
I was in part reacting to the article, which claims the superiority of the Tesla autopilot over the i3's driving assistance systems. And I just don't see that as much of an everyday advantage or selling point, just like you also pointed out.
rgoodwintx 7y ago
Similar comments here with Model 3. In a way it's almost incidental that it's an electric car. When I had a Model S loaner, I was blown away how much they've simplified just from S to 3: wide open interior, reduction in the [already spartan] amount of physical controls. (I also briefly had a Kia loaner for that same visit, and I felt like a monkey trying to operate an Apollo spacecraft, unable to find the switches and dials for everything.) Tesla, whether for cost cutting or genius, simply said "do you really need all of these manual/physical controls, or can it be A) done automatically via software, or B) put onto a single screen?", and it, in my opinion, has worked quite well. Yes the "AI" wipers took time to come around, and you hit the occasional UI bug, but it's far and away a very acceptable trade off for a magnitude more space in the cabin and (if you appreciate such things) clean, simple, lines throughout. Even the silly flip down LED visor mirrors delight people the first time they use them in my car. AP/FSD may never get where they claim, but I've taken many-hundred mile trips with AP on (on highways), and even my drive to work is immensely better with AP in long stretches, so I consider it well worth the [AP] cost. As ridiculous as it sounds, all those micro-movements on the road do add up and take a toll on you during drives. I actually drive fairly conservatively (turning into my "slow lane is fast enough" father), but for demos and when I do really want to pass someone, the acceleration and instant power still marvels. :)

tinco 7y ago

It is about marketing, but not about advertising (or bragging as you call it). Developing and producing electric cars is a lot more expensive, so whatever price bracket you're in, a Tesla is going to have 10-20k of its price go towards making the car move that the other manufacturers don't spend. That's 10k less spent on every other feature of the car. That's why you drop $80k on a Model S, that has the look and feel of a $60K nice car. That cost is already sunk, Tesla can't recuperate that, and everytime electric cars become a little bit more common, the coolness factor of the electric engine decreases which means the value of that sunk cost goes down. There's two things that save Tesla, the first is plain consumer attitude. Some (many?) consumers will simply not buy an ICE car anymore if they can afford not to, which means the other manufacturers have to compete on Tesla's playing field. The second is cheap innovations. Tesla can spend a couple tens of millions, and maybe $1000 in hardware, and get something that looks like an AI into their cars that adds maybe $10k of coolness value. Add fancy doors, a big LCD screen, flush doorhandles, and whatever other little thing you have to spend R&D on anyway because you're a new car manufacturer so everything costs more R&D for you than the establishment, and you close the gap. It's about putting a $80K Tesla next to a $80K Jaguar or whatever, and being able to justify why they cost the same amount of money when the Jaguar is better made. edit: Note this whole story is about the Model S, which was Tesla's bootstrap model. The goal of Tesla is to produce a car that doesn't compete with Jaguar, but with Volkswagen (or Ford).

lisnake 7y ago
I can understand developing, but why producing electric cars would be a lot more expensive than ICE cars? Not an expert, but in my opinion in electric cars you can get rid of many components, such as complicated engine, transmission, fuel injection systems, exhaust, etc. This should bring the cost down, with battery being the single most expensive component
- tinco 7y ago
  The battery yes. Also, an electric motor is simple mechanically, but it is more complex than it looks on the outside. There's a lot going on in their design, and the manufacturing process is complex as well, especially if you need it to be efficient. ICE engines have larger complex elements that can fail for more reasons, but the most complex part is just this big block that they pour into a mold. After that's done you just have to mount all the little components onto it that the suppliers have refined the tolerances on for at least 20 years. But the ICE and the electric engine are just peanuts compared to the material cost of producing these huge batteries.

manigandham 7y ago

Yes, Tesla/Elon has overpromised a lot in marketing. They've also made misteps in finances and trying to invent too much automation for their factories. The cars also continue to have quality issues and are lacking in the (interior) design space. That being said, the customer experience of owning and driving a Tesla far exceeds the traditional options. I fail to find anyone who is unhappy with their purchase. They love their cars and there are still hundreds of features that Tesla has where other manufacturers are barely catching up. Add in the ecosystem of solar/powerwalls and superchargers along with supplying the wider energy market, and this company has a great future ahead.

cptskippy 7y ago

I think you're wrong. I bought one and purposely didn't get autopilot. I'm neither frustrated or dissatisfied with my purchase. It's the best car I have ever experienced and it just keeps getting better.

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fmajid 7y ago

Sure, but keep in mind all the German car makers were complicit in Dieselgate, which is far worse.

smaryjerry 7y ago

I don't think people buying expensive cars are fooled at all into believing autopilot drives itself.

tristanb 7y ago

I have one, i'm not disappointed. It's changed how I drive, and what I do. It's like an ipod to a walkman. I don't care about cars, but i'll never buy another brand until they compete.