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When it gets there, regulatory approval will absolutely be a bottleneck to deployment. They don't say it is a current blocker. And it won't come close to Thera

by gibolt 6y ago

When it gets there, regulatory approval will absolutely be a bottleneck to deployment. They don't say it is a current blocker. And it won't come close to Theranos. Tesla makes real products that are class-leading. Even if Tesla can't reach level 5, it will be damn close and make driving 10-100x safer than just a human.

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago
Sure, but to even mention it now is disingenuous because they’re not even close to having a solution that their own engineering department would be willing to ship. You and I have no idea whether it’s possible to get close to level 5 with their currently shipping hardware. Neither do they. And this stuff about being 10-100x safer than a human is pure fantasy right now. The industry is incredibly far away from that and there’s no evidence to suggest Tesla is years ahead of other teams working on the problem.
- gibolt 6y ago
  10x is within striking distance. Search for Autopilot reporting for the evidence. While it is biased towards highway miles, all the safety features augment the human driver. This will only get better with time. Shipping is different from functional. You don't know what their engineering department thinks. Unless you are an insider, it is hard to guess the timeline, trajectory, or confidence levels.
  - itsoktocry 6y ago
    >Unless you are an insider, it is hard to guess the timeline, trajectory, or confidence levels. You realize that as a public company who is selling this product, they are obligated to spell this out to consumers and shareholders, right? The entire point is for it to be unambiguous.
  - Piskvorrr 6y ago
    Yet you are confident of that "10x" statistic. Therefore: are you a) leaking inside data, or b) pulling numbers out of thin air?
FriendlyNormie 6y ago
10-100x safer? Can Teslas even see in 3D like humans can? Stereoscopic vision is one of the most important parts of driving, otherwise you’re just guessing how close things are.
jowday 6y ago
>When it gets there, regulatory approval will absolutely be a bottleneck to deployment. They don't say it is a current blocker. Elon regularly states that the chief blocker for Tesla is regulatory approval. Meanwhile Teslas still drive straight into overturned trucks.
- jedberg 6y ago
  > Meanwhile Teslas still drive straight into overturned trucks. To be fair, so do people.
  - Piskvorrr 6y ago
    And people driving into things is considered to be a problem, not an insignificant quirk that's almost unworthy of mention.
    - jedberg 6y ago
      In 2017, the last year we have data for, 10,230 accidents hit a stationary object, representing 30% of all fatal crashes. Tesla has had a total of 5 fatal crashes in its history, and only one of them was hitting a stationary object (20%). So objectively Tesla is doing better than humans.
      - abenga 6y ago
        How many miles driven (which is a probably more correct measure of exposure) are represented in the two cases?
      - bleah1000 6y ago
        You also need to figure out how many of those crashes are intentional suicides or a result of something else (such as someone having a heart attack and losing control of their car). Basically, you would need to figure out how many of those accidents hits stationary objects on the highway that are the drivers fault. That's what Tesla cars have done. I don't think those stats are available.
cool_dude85 6y ago
This is an absolute abuse of language. Can I say that my backyard nuclear fusion reactors are held back by regulatory approval? Surely when I finally get around to building a working one, I will have to jump through those pesky hoops.
thrwyoilarticle 6y ago
So then a Covid vaccine is also blocked by regulatory approval. I look forward to teaching my project manager this new definition.
- gibolt 6y ago
  Yes, exactly. Quite a few possibilities are being tested, as in they exist (maybe). It is quite literally being blocked by regulatory approval, with the testing for validity and safety being the approval process.
  - Piskvorrr 6y ago
    Nope. They're being tested for validity, meaning that their existence _as a treatment_ is under test. If it turns out they don't have an effect, will you say "we did have a cure for a moment: leeches; but it was rejected by the regulatory process, therefore bad bureaucrats for showing that it didn't work"? Of course not, that doesn't make sense...if your goal is a cure. (If you're peddling hope, or just looking to make money off quack medicine, OTOH...)
birdyrooster 6y ago
Oh oh I get it, so once the cart is delivered they can go about looking for a horse to drive it.
Silhouette 6y ago
And it won't come close to Theranos. Tesla makes real products that are class-leading. Class-leading in what sense(s)? Even if Tesla can't reach level 5, it will be damn close But that's the problem with self-driving cars. Damn close isn't good enough. A miss is as good as a mile. The problem with the self-driving/automation scale is that anything around levels 2-4 probably shouldn't be allowed on public roads, at least not yet. Basic driver aids, where the driver is always fully engaged but the system can help to avoid mistakes, are proven to improve safety. This is what you get at level 1, and such technologies are already widespread in the industry. If we can ever make a fully autonomous vehicle that can genuinely cope with any driving conditions, so you don't need any driver or controls in the vehicle any more, then obviously this has the potential to beat human drivers. This is level 5. But we don't know how to do this yet, and I have seen absolutely no evidence so far that anyone will know how to do it any time soon either. In between, we have several variations where a human driver is required for some of the monitoring and control of the vehicle but not all. This has some horrible safety implications, particularly around the transitions between human- and vehicle-controlled modes of operation, and around creating a false sense of security for the human driver. The legal small print will probably say that they must remain fully alert and able to take over immediately at any time, but whether it is within human capability to actually do that effectively is an entirely different question. and make driving 10-100x safer than just a human. I've been driving for more than 25 years, and racked up hundreds of thousands of miles behind the wheel. I've never caused an accident, as far as I'm aware. I've never had a ticket. I try to be courteous to my fellow road users and give a comfortable ride to any passengers I have with me. What, in your opinion, would driving 10-100x safer than mine look like? Humans certainly aren't perfect drivers and we have plenty of variation in ability. Things can go wrong, and I'm sure we'd all be happy to see fewer tragedies on our roads. But given the vast amounts of travel we undertake and how many of us do drive, autonomous vehicles will need an extremely good record -- far better than they have so far -- to justify the sort of claim you're making here.
- ummonk 6y ago
  Level 5 isn't the only safe level. Level 4 is safe too - e.g. a car that is fully capable of driving itself without human monitoring in slow stop and go traffic on a highway. Levels 2 and 3 are the danger zone (and it worries me that car systems have gone ahead from level 1 to level 2, as having the human steer ensures driver attentiveness which is harder to maintain when the car does lane centering for you).

by gibolt 6y ago

SheinhardtWigCo 6y ago

Sure, but to even mention it now is disingenuous because they’re not even close to having a solution that their own engineering department would be willing to ship. You and I have no idea whether it’s possible to get close to level 5 with their currently shipping hardware. Neither do they. And this stuff about being 10-100x safer than a human is pure fantasy right now. The industry is incredibly far away from that and there’s no evidence to suggest Tesla is years ahead of other teams working on the problem.

gibolt 6y ago
10x is within striking distance. Search for Autopilot reporting for the evidence. While it is biased towards highway miles, all the safety features augment the human driver. This will only get better with time. Shipping is different from functional. You don't know what their engineering department thinks. Unless you are an insider, it is hard to guess the timeline, trajectory, or confidence levels.
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >Unless you are an insider, it is hard to guess the timeline, trajectory, or confidence levels. You realize that as a public company who is selling this product, they are obligated to spell this out to consumers and shareholders, right? The entire point is for it to be unambiguous.
- Piskvorrr 6y ago
  Yet you are confident of that "10x" statistic. Therefore: are you a) leaking inside data, or b) pulling numbers out of thin air?

FriendlyNormie 6y ago

10-100x safer? Can Teslas even see in 3D like humans can? Stereoscopic vision is one of the most important parts of driving, otherwise you’re just guessing how close things are.

jowday 6y ago

>When it gets there, regulatory approval will absolutely be a bottleneck to deployment. They don't say it is a current blocker. Elon regularly states that the chief blocker for Tesla is regulatory approval. Meanwhile Teslas still drive straight into overturned trucks.

jedberg 6y ago
> Meanwhile Teslas still drive straight into overturned trucks. To be fair, so do people.
- Piskvorrr 6y ago
  And people driving into things is considered to be a problem, not an insignificant quirk that's almost unworthy of mention.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    In 2017, the last year we have data for, 10,230 accidents hit a stationary object, representing 30% of all fatal crashes. Tesla has had a total of 5 fatal crashes in its history, and only one of them was hitting a stationary object (20%). So objectively Tesla is doing better than humans.
    - abenga 6y ago
      How many miles driven (which is a probably more correct measure of exposure) are represented in the two cases?
    - bleah1000 6y ago
      You also need to figure out how many of those crashes are intentional suicides or a result of something else (such as someone having a heart attack and losing control of their car). Basically, you would need to figure out how many of those accidents hits stationary objects on the highway that are the drivers fault. That's what Tesla cars have done. I don't think those stats are available.

cool_dude85 6y ago

This is an absolute abuse of language. Can I say that my backyard nuclear fusion reactors are held back by regulatory approval? Surely when I finally get around to building a working one, I will have to jump through those pesky hoops.

thrwyoilarticle 6y ago

So then a Covid vaccine is also blocked by regulatory approval. I look forward to teaching my project manager this new definition.

gibolt 6y ago
Yes, exactly. Quite a few possibilities are being tested, as in they exist (maybe). It is quite literally being blocked by regulatory approval, with the testing for validity and safety being the approval process.
- Piskvorrr 6y ago
  Nope. They're being tested for validity, meaning that their existence _as a treatment_ is under test. If it turns out they don't have an effect, will you say "we did have a cure for a moment: leeches; but it was rejected by the regulatory process, therefore bad bureaucrats for showing that it didn't work"? Of course not, that doesn't make sense...if your goal is a cure. (If you're peddling hope, or just looking to make money off quack medicine, OTOH...)

birdyrooster 6y ago

Oh oh I get it, so once the cart is delivered they can go about looking for a horse to drive it.

Silhouette 6y ago

And it won't come close to Theranos. Tesla makes real products that are class-leading. Class-leading in what sense(s)? Even if Tesla can't reach level 5, it will be damn close But that's the problem with self-driving cars. Damn close isn't good enough. A miss is as good as a mile. The problem with the self-driving/automation scale is that anything around levels 2-4 probably shouldn't be allowed on public roads, at least not yet. Basic driver aids, where the driver is always fully engaged but the system can help to avoid mistakes, are proven to improve safety. This is what you get at level 1, and such technologies are already widespread in the industry. If we can ever make a fully autonomous vehicle that can genuinely cope with any driving conditions, so you don't need any driver or controls in the vehicle any more, then obviously this has the potential to beat human drivers. This is level 5. But we don't know how to do this yet, and I have seen absolutely no evidence so far that anyone will know how to do it any time soon either. In between, we have several variations where a human driver is required for some of the monitoring and control of the vehicle but not all. This has some horrible safety implications, particularly around the transitions between human- and vehicle-controlled modes of operation, and around creating a false sense of security for the human driver. The legal small print will probably say that they must remain fully alert and able to take over immediately at any time, but whether it is within human capability to actually do that effectively is an entirely different question. and make driving 10-100x safer than just a human. I've been driving for more than 25 years, and racked up hundreds of thousands of miles behind the wheel. I've never caused an accident, as far as I'm aware. I've never had a ticket. I try to be courteous to my fellow road users and give a comfortable ride to any passengers I have with me. What, in your opinion, would driving 10-100x safer than mine look like? Humans certainly aren't perfect drivers and we have plenty of variation in ability. Things can go wrong, and I'm sure we'd all be happy to see fewer tragedies on our roads. But given the vast amounts of travel we undertake and how many of us do drive, autonomous vehicles will need an extremely good record -- far better than they have so far -- to justify the sort of claim you're making here.

ummonk 6y ago
Level 5 isn't the only safe level. Level 4 is safe too - e.g. a car that is fully capable of driving itself without human monitoring in slow stop and go traffic on a highway. Levels 2 and 3 are the danger zone (and it worries me that car systems have gone ahead from level 1 to level 2, as having the human steer ensures driver attentiveness which is harder to maintain when the car does lane centering for you).