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"Move fast and break things." I really don't understand how a company can get away with using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people.

"Move fast and break things." I really don't understand how a company can get away with using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people. It's one thing if it's a website for throwing virtual sheep at another; nobody really cares if your Facebook feed omits an update or two. It's another thing if a software bug means that you die. Or at least it should be - I'm amazed at the number of people who seemingly don't care. I also wonder what this is doing to Tesla's brand reputation. I was just in the market for solar panels and Tesla's offering (both the panels and the solar roof) was very, very attractive on price & aesthetics, but their reliability record with their cars made me think twice about buying a 25+ year product that keeps my home powered and dry.

ericmay 6y ago
Hate to say it but I think you’re in the minority with that opinion. Reaction from most people has been “woah”. Also, there is no moving fast and breaking things here in real terms. Drivers are and have to pay attention while driving, and Tesla is strictly monitoring this with beta. You also specifically have to opt-in to beta software. 99% of Tesla owners do not have this functionality.
- dontcarethrow2 6y ago
  I think we are mainly silenced by the hype folks who can't not tell the rest of the internet about their excitement. I'd like to think OP's opinion is the majority, hard to tell on a startup forum where most folks are hodling TSLA.
  - Smaug123 6y ago
    I would be astonished if a majority of people on HN have Tesla stock, for what it's worth.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      Would you only be astonished if they directly hold it, or also if it's via a fund or three? (I think you're probably right they don't, HN international and diverse enough, but I wouldn't be astonished.)
      - Smaug123 6y ago
        I meant "directly hold" (since I intended to reply to the parent's comment about "hodling").
  - beowulfey 6y ago
    I would guess that most people on here are cautiously optimistic. Given the progress that has been made over the past decade on all things AI my priors are telling me this will eventually work. Note that it doesn’t mean I love it; I just expect that they will figure it out.
- epistasis 6y ago
  This is exactly how tech demos for all sorts of AI have gone for decades: initial impression is "wow, I can't believe it's doing so well!" But the positive impression quickly disipates as there's real world use of the product. Tech demos have a way of setting good impressions that are not realistic. I have a feeling that's exactly what is going on right now, but a few more close calls with crashes and the shine wears off.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Ironically, deep learning might finally be the solution to this, in a convoluted way. Previous AI systems generally fell over when they hit the final 2% of real world scenarios, unable to cope with the explosion of complexity. In contrast, modern AI finally provide a toolkit for "last mile AI" (proverbially speaking), by allowing incorporation of those scenarios without breaking the entire previous model.
    - admax88q 6y ago
      All deep learning implementations to date fail on the last 2% of real world cases. Why would deep learning be the solution for its own shortcomings?
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        Failing on the last 2% (or whatever small number we want to set) isn't a shortcoming of deep learning: it's a shortcoming of all prior knowledge systems. Humans included. And the barrier to surpassing that problem has been hardware (now approaching solving) and calendar- & person-time. The problem with 1970s AI (ingnoring hardware) isn't that we couldn't build useful AI, but that we couldn't afford to build useful AI in most domains. Calendar time costs money. People time costs money. Deep learning and derivates finally provide a solution where we can substitute machine time and data volume for calendar and people time. As a result, we can afford to do things in domains we couldn't before.
        klyrs 6y ago
- cblconfederate 6y ago
  You cant go "woah" for 10 years. SD cars are not delivering. One more death and people will be calling to burn them. One should do sentiment analysis on these discussions threads over the years to see how the attitudes have changed. A much less dangerous version of this was the VR hype train
  - timmytokyo 6y ago
    Tesla's unregulated and (some might say) reckless roll-out of self-driving technology could indeed be the biggest threat to the technology's realization. As you point out, all it will take is a few fatalities for public opinion to harden against self-driving, and laws will start banning or severely restricting it. Rather than being wowed by Tesla's gung-ho approach, boosters of self-driving technology should be angered by it.
    - dcow 6y ago
      I don’t buy the FUD. By all measures driver assist programs make the road safer. These cars are not out on the streets massacring people like human drivers are. So meh.
      - epistasis 6y ago
        What measure are you talking about here? Has Tesla published any stats about FSD? The other stats in this thread make it sound like Tesla is not even the same league as other attempts at driving.
        jiofih 6y ago
        Yes, they have, lots of public data. The latest show that autopilot on is just slightly better than a human re. safety (but Teslas overall are about 10x safer than the average car already).
        epistasis 6y ago
        But we are talking about FSD, not autopilot, a very different beast.
dasudasu 6y ago
This is exactly why regulations such as professional engineering licenses were put into place. You don’t want someone with that mentality building a bridge.
- tpmx 6y ago
  No, this is exactly why vehicle regulations were put into place. Regulate and validate the vehicles and their software updates, not the engineers. Edit: Or get used to our field moving as slowly as the bridge building field.
  - hervature 6y ago
    Huh? Bridges stopped failing when engineers were held responsible. That’s a pretty fast change. Holding people responsible doesn’t decrease or slow down innovation. It alters the incentives to align the innovation with public benefit. If properly caring for society is too slow for you, your part of the problem.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      > Bridges stopped failing when engineers were held responsible. Oh did they? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E2%80%93present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E... Edit: > Holding people responsible doesn’t decrease or slow down innovation. Citation required. This is strongly non-intuitive.
      - josefx 6y ago
        > Oh did they? First one only sagged, no catastrophic failure, no deaths, no injuries. A few more on that list were over a hundred years old. Not sure when he started holding engineers responsible. Then you have the bridges rammed by ships, terrorism, construction accidents, a wooden suspension bridge in the middle of nowhere that had an upper limit of three and was used by seventy, etc. . Seems as if the bridges themselves have held up fairly well.
epanchin 6y ago
It’s strange that people would rather a small chance of crashing themselves, versus a smaller chance of the car crashing for you. If Tesla is going to be a safer driver than me, it’s already a good investment. If a software bug means I die, well, human error might too.
- candiddevmike 6y ago
  I'm less concerned about the Tesla driver dying (since it means they weren't attentively monitoring their car right?) and more concerned about the driver they t-bone or hit head on due to a software bug.
- dtech 6y ago
  That's only the case if this new Autopilot iteration is actually a safer driver. There are many who doubt that.
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    It clearly isn’t. Everybody should ask themselves, “How often do I have a near-miss on the road that another human in the car with me prevented by warning me?” I’ve had that happen a few times in the decades I’ve been driving. It appears to be a regular occurrence in this software.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  They're selling safety statistics. I find that unethical. You don't say to a widow "but think about how many times I could have killed someone and didn't". Also note the double speak of Musk on the topic.. he was the first to talk (even boast) about how the structural design made the car the safest of all .. but now safety is not as essential, it's ok to have some accidents. And it will improve their machine learning data set right ! /s
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  That would be an argument worth having if a tesla with FSD were actually safer than a comparable modern luxury car driven by someone in the same demographics. Or even just compared to a tesla without FSD. We aren't even at that argument yet.
cwhiz 6y ago
You have to continue to leave your hands on the wheel and pay attention.
- Aeronwen 6y ago
  Just like having a trained bear chauffeur you around. Except people see that as a bad idea.
  - cwhiz 6y ago
    It’s not a public beta. The select few drivers know what they are getting into.
DC-3 6y ago
Thousands of people die each year because of stupid mistakes by human drivers. From a utilitarian perspective, pushing for self driving as fast as possible - in a manner that some might even judge to be reckless - is a net positive.
- gambiting 6y ago
  I'm surprised people have this opinion, on HN out of all places. In my view this technology shouldn't be allowed on public roads at all. Not even a little bit. Either it's 100% safe under all circumstances or it shouldn't be allowed. And Tesla definitely shouldn't be allowed to call it autopilot or "full self driving" when it very clearly isn't. And yes, human drivers might be statistically worse - but just because this might be statistically better(and I'm not even sure that's actually the case here) it doesn't mean it should be allowed.
  - Ecstatify 6y ago
    Should everyone on HN have the same opinion, didn’t get that memo? Nothing is 100% safe. By your logic we’d have no medicine, have you ever read the side effects of some medicines.
    - foepys 6y ago
      > By your logic we’d have no medicine, have you ever read the side effects of some medicines. You picked the worst example possible. Medicine is one of the most tightly regulated fields in the world with huge upfront cost and approval processes spanning years or even decades. E.g. the research and approval process of a new antibiotic costs multiple billion dollars before it can be sold. What you see now wrt the Covid-19 vaccine is an international effort that is fast-tracking everything. Regulators are willing to overlook a lot for it to come to market as fast as possible and it's still taking a year or more before it's approved for use on everybody.
      - jcims 6y ago
        I would actually say it's a very good example. That no matter how tightly and strenuously we regulate the safety of a product, 100% safety is an unattainable goal and that given sufficient benefit there is an acceptable level of risk of grave outcomes, including death. This is from a publication on the risk/benefit evaluation of new medical devices from the FDA: Uncertainty – there is never 100% certainty when determining reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness of a device. However, the degree of certainty of the benefits and risks of a device is a factor we consider when making benefit-risk determinations. pg 11 - https://www.fda.gov/media/99769/download https://www.fda.gov/media/99769/download
kryogen1c 6y ago
> get away with [...] products that can kill people if your moral premise is saving lives, your conclusion does not follow. vehicles are a leading cause of death and injury, so this omelette is worth breaking a few eggs, no? AV has the potential to save a lot of lives. of course, there will be effects in other markets like insurance, new car sales, road repair, junk/salvage yards, tow trucks, etc. what the net economic effect will be is up for debate.
- mdorazio 6y ago
  You're assuming eggs need to be broken in the first place, which is not at all proven. There are more options than what Tesla is doing - just look at Waymo as a counterexample of actually prioritizing safety over public release speed.
  - colinmhayes 6y ago
    If you want the amount of data necessary you do need miles driven. The millions of extra miles may very well be what it takes to put tesla over the edge. Sure you can do that in a controlled environment, but it would take a lot longer, and people would die in the mean time.
    - justapassenger 6y ago
      This argument makes sense, if you can assume that Tesla will actually deliver functional FSD system as a direct result of their approach. There's no data to support it.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    You're claiming "even though Tesla's self driving might be better/safer than human driving today, and will in aggregate save lives over the present state, there's this other approach which could save even more lives!" It's not certain that Waymo's approach will be better, especially at scale (and in cities other than Phoenix). We don't have that kind of data yet. And even if it is better, Tesla's approach is still a pareto improvement over now. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
caditinpiscinam 6y ago
To be a safe driver you have to be able to predict what the people around you are going to do. Simply reacting is not enough. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the guy selling self-driving cars is the same guy who goes around exaggerating the current abilities of AI. I too am shocked that anyone is ok with this, given the auto industry's history of fighting against safety and transparency.
- snuxoll 6y ago
  We humans are terrible at predicting the behavior of other humans, we have unconscious biases and our own behavioral patterns that regularly cause us to misinterpret data and make the wrong decision. Quite honestly an objective AI that also has faster reaction times is likely to be a better driver than any human, it’s just a matter of training data. Note: I’m not going to say Tesla isn’t being at least moderately reckless with its rollout of self-driving features, just that I firmly believe even a less than ideal AI with good enough training and sensor data can trounce the safety record of human drivers.
  - caditinpiscinam 6y ago
    > AI with good enough training This is the crux of the issue. If we had AI that could outperform human drivers and make our roads safer then I'd agree that we should use it. But I see no indication that this is the case, or that it's even technologically possible at this point. Tesla can make whatever claims they want, but until their self driving systems have been independently and rigorously tested they shouldn't be anywhere near public roads. Have such tests happened yet? The article doesn't mention any, so I assume that they haven't.
radu_floricica 6y ago
Obviously I have no idea what's in their heads, but a plausible train of thought goes like: Legal : If you sell it as a drive assist and not a driver replacement, you're off the hook, with a high probability. It's on the drivers if they get complacent. There may even be precedents with similar products for trucks. Moral: pushing this now will very likely kill some people that would otherwise be alive (drivers or pedestrians). But it's very unlikely to be a carnage - I'd dare say even impossible. On the other hand, moving the technology forward and directly into widespread commercial use will save people, and likely even... what's the equivalent word for a "carnage" but where people are saved? Miracle. Branding: well, there you have a real risk. Public opinion is fickle, and a particularly gruesome accident might do some real damage, both to Tesla and to self driving technologies in general. But then, they do have a high risk high reward mentality, and the chance is good that the first bad accident (statistically inevitable) will come after the advantages are proven and well established.
- foepys 6y ago
  > Legal : If you sell it as a drive assist and not a driver replacement, you're off the hook, with a high probability In Germany they lost a case about their Autopilot advertisement. So not even legally they are in the clear.
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    What was the case about? If it was in the opposite direction (that they branded a drive assist system as an autopilot) then it might actually help them now. "Look, we even have a court decision saying it's not an autopilot".
- ethbr0 6y ago
  > On the other hand, moving the technology forward and directly into widespread commercial use will save people This is the only rationale I can come up with for Tesla's approach. The tenets go like this: 1) The ultimate realization of self driving will be successful, and will have profoundly positive impacts on society (e.g. safety, urban planning, ease and availability of transportation, economic) 2) The path to that ultimate realization contains many local optima traps 3) The only way to push past those local optima is by acquiring large amount of real world automated driving data, using systems in production From a technical standpoint, I'm disinclined to disagree with them on the necessity of large amounts of real world system behavior data as a key ingredient. Personally, I also think we (humans) have become way too culturally risk adverse. Or, to put the calculus another way: if I have a credible belief that I can save some number of future humans, what is the acceptable moral number of current humans to place at risk and/or kill? Imho, that's a grave, serious decision, but not one to which the morally absolute is "zero, always." From a purely ethical standpoint (leaving legal aside), the crux would seem to be informed users. Not all Tesla drivers are likely capable of understanding the current SotA, and I'd hope (and expect) that Tesla's phased rollout of the beta is informed by previous user interaction with assisted driving.
travisoneill1 6y ago
The only stats I have seen on this show that the autopilot reduces the rate of collisions. So it's not really a product that kills people, but the opposite. The stats came from Tesla, though, so I can't rule out the possibility that they are incorrect.
- mdorazio 6y ago
  Tesla stats are extremely misleading and deliberately slanted toward favoring Tesla. Unfortunately, it's not really possible to find real stats since they're hidden by individual OEMs and insurance companies. But you would need to compare comparably priced modern cars with standard ADAS features to Teslas with Autopilot to get a datapoint worth talking about for the general case. You would also need to look at where Autopilot is engaged (mostly highways where accidents are rare in general) vs. not engaged (mostly city streets where accidents are common) to draw any real conclusions about safety.
  - mlindner 6y ago
    > Tesla stats are extremely misleading and deliberately slanted toward favoring Tesla. Unfortunately, it's not really possible to find real stats since they're hidden by individual OEMs and insurance companies. You realize that those two statements are in conflict with each other right? If they're misleading and favoring Tesla then you need contrary stats to state that. However you state that they're not available, so your previous statement can only be a lie.
    - veggieburglar 6y ago
      Sorry, that’s not a logical conclusion. Just because real stats are hard to come by does not mean that Tesla’s stats are true.
      - hndamien 6y ago
        But it does mean that you don't know that your first statement is true.
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new_realist 6y ago
The underlying motivations explain all: this isn't about improving automobile safety anymore (if it ever was): it's about recognizing deferred revenue from this feature (which has been sold for years) and trying to keep up, from a marketing perspective, with Waymo and Cruise. That's why they're not using trained safety drivers, but fanbois. Waymo is at least as safe as the average human driver, while Tesla has unleashed literally worse-than-drunk drivers upon us all. Heaven help us.
Balgair 6y ago
> ... using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people They aren't just using their own customers, they are using all of us. The cars won't be just crashing into inanimate objects, but school buses and ambulances. The QA is being done to all of us and our loved ones near their cars.
- jojo2333 6y ago
  Still magnitudes safer than human drivers.
  - nutanc 6y ago
    Lets do a simple test: You are in between two walls and there are two straight lanes. Lane 1 has Tesla FSD coming in at full speed. Lane 2 has a human driver coming in at full speed. You can choose to be in one lane. The FSD and the human can both see you only 50 mts out and if they brake as soon as they see you, you will survive. Which lane will you choose?
    - tshaddox 6y ago
      Well, a Model S can just barely stop in 50 meters at 60mph, while some other luxury and sporty cars in the segment can stop in 35 meters or less. And that’s only 60mph, hardly “top speed” or even a normal highway speed. So regardless of driver assistance features, I’d choose a car that at least has a chance to even physically stop assuming instant reflexes. 50 meters is probably a much too small distance for this thought experiment.
      - argomo 6y ago
        I don't know my cars that well, but an alert driver will take at least 300ms to begin reacting. That's over 8m at 60mph (not sure why we're combining unit systems here). So I'll stand in front of the Model S in this particular scenario and hope to get away with 'mere' broken legs/pelvis. Give the human more time and is probably take the human, not because that's necessarily the more reliable option, but because its distribution of outcomes is more well known to me.
gfodor 6y ago
The ethics of this are heavily influenced by how much you believe a) this rollout will result in a net decrease in automobile accidents and b) how much we should assume drivers will both be informed and intervene if the system missteps. If you believe both are unlikely, or you believe engineers should have a "do no harm" based ethics similar to medicine, this would be unacceptable. But if you believe both are highly and/or think engineering ethics should focus on harm minimization, this makes sense to do and under certain assumptions it becomes unethical to not roll it out. As a concrete example: if you assume that 99% of accidents that would be caused by the system will be prevented by driver interventions, and you think overall the system will reduce the likelihood of an accident by 20%, the question you have to ask yourself is: if 1 in 5 people harmed over the next 6 months we could have saved, should we avoid doing so and wait until only 1 in 200 will not be harmed, in part due to their own negligence? As you can see, the assumed probabilities matter a lot, so I'd be curious how one can come up with good projections. The only case where these probabilities don't matter is if you believe that engineers ought to never create harm where none would have existed otherwise, but when it comes to self driving cars, this is an impossibility since it assumes perfect autonomy. In general, if you buy into the theory that "human + AI" is always going to be smarter than just AI, then arguably even in a world with great autonomous driving, the best system will be one that has both an AI and a human. And that is what we have here, so it's more a question of if AI quality is sufficient or if this is just a bad idea in general given the natural tendencies of humans to be poor co-pilots.
trimbo 6y ago
> I really don't understand how a company can get away with using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people There's a term for it: "normalization of deviance"[1]. A highly risky thing is done and doesn't fail as early as thought. The people doing it assume that means the risk is lower than they thought, but it's not, and they just happened to get lucky. I'm sure Elon knows this, so probably believes their tech can advance enough before their luck turns. I personally think he's deadly wrong on this, but it seems like a lot of Silicon Valley Tesla owners who sleep or read their phone while on Autopilot accept it at face value. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance
- amelius 6y ago
  > There's a term for it: "normalization of deviance" I believe this is not entirely correct, as the parent talks about how a company can get away with something, while the term you use applies to the company itself. The main question should be: why do we (the government) even allow companies to do something like this?
- kordlessagain 6y ago
  Say his name, Walter Huang
jhoechtl 6y ago
> I really don't understand how a company can get away with using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people. Stuff like that is only possible in the US. Would be unthinkable in the EU. Maybe in UJK but you know, they are no longer ...
- ggreer 6y ago
  In the long term this will cause EU auto makers to get their self driving tech from US companies (either through licensing or partnerships). VW has already partnered with Ford. Most of the other european auto makers are getting their tech from Aptiv. When it comes to self driving, none of the EU car manufacturers can compete with Waymo, GM (Cruise), or Tesla. Even when they manage to build really cool stuff, it gets shut down by regulators.[1] 1. https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/audi-bmw-others-frustrated-hurdles-slowing-launch-self-driving-cars https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/audi-bmw-others-frust...
  - schumajs 6y ago
    Maybe EU auto makers just wait, meaning work on something, until they can put something on the market that works. After watching some hours of youtube footage I can say one thing for sure: Teslas' FSD does not.
    - ggreer 6y ago
      By that time the US companies will have technology with a track record of real world use. The EU companies will have an easier time buying that tech than building their own. This is analogous to banning airplanes until they can be proven safe to fly in. The countries that don’t ban them will lose more lives early on, but they’ll have a technological advantage. The place where this analogy breaks down is that hundreds of people are killed by human driven cars every day. Every year cars kill 120,000 people in the US & Europe. If we can develop and deploy this technology a year sooner, we can save tens of thousands of lives.
  - sidibe 6y ago
    I think only the Tesla approach wouldn't fly in Europe, but trained drivers should hold, last year there was some announcement by Renault and Waymo for something in Paris though hard to tell what it actually meant: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/11/waymo-and-renault-to-explore-autonomous-mobility-route-in-paris-region/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/11/waymo-and-renault-to-explo...
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kanox 6y ago
> I really don't understand how a company can get away with using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people. They already claim that drivers must pay attention to the road in order to prevent accidents and this has been the status-quo in the automotive world for a century or so. Selling products that can kill if misused is not remarkable. This could turn ugly if it's shown that enabling self-driving results in much more accidents but there is no data to support this.
moonbug 6y ago
and that's why it's not allowed in the EU
Draiken 6y ago
Cars driven by humans kill people at a higher rate than this shitty AI, why doesn't anyone care then? I don't understand this point of view. Cars WILL kill people with AI or humans driving. AI is not great right now, but it's already way better than humans in several situations. Then people get spooked by bugs that the AI brings because they're not "normal" accidents, and think it's a bad idea to continue to train the AIs. But why? Why is a "beta" AI killing people worse than the normal everyday drunk/distracted/bored/texting human driver?
- dilyevsky 6y ago
  By “cars kill people” do you mean car defects or human drivers? If former do you have a source for this claim?
  - Draiken 6y ago
    I meant cars driven by humans. Edited right after I posted.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  > AI is not great right now, but it's already way better than humans in several situations. Every stat that I've seen that comes out with the machines better than the people isn't a like-to-like comparison. Every like-to-like comparison I've seen has the machines still worse than people, so we don't even need to have that argument. Beware the propaganda.
  - Draiken 6y ago
    Every stat? Wow. I'd be very interested in reading some of this material if you could link to some. If you take a shitty driver and compare it to an AI, I doubt the AI will perform worse when it comes to preventing accidents. Sure, a skilled human driver will likely perform better than this early stage AI, but if even 1% of the bad drivers out there switch to an AI, that's a net positive in my view. Not to mention all the other risky situations involving alcohol, sleep deprivation, etc. where an automated response can save lives. You didn't address my main point though. Why is a driverless accident worse than a drunk driver?
robertlagrant 6y ago
> they sell products that can kill people All car manufacturers sell products that can kill people.
- nix0n 6y ago
  > All car manufacturers sell products that can kill people. Yes, that's exactly why most of them have much better QA than Tesla.
- decker 6y ago
  The key difference is that only Tesla ships one that will autonomously kill other people.
  - mlindner 6y ago
    Except tons of other manufacturers have SAE level 2 systems that autonomously follow road curves and will fully run into objects that are unexpected. GM Super Cruise will kill people all the same.
    - decker 6y ago
      Super Cruise is geofenced to known highways. What "road curves" are you talking about?
      - robertlagrant 6y ago
        Presumably the curves in roads.
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spicyramen 6y ago
Well, I own a Tesla Model X when I'm with my family I don't engage self driving car mode, nobody force bus to do it. And when I do it is normal situations like 101 Highway
- itsoktocry 6y ago
  >nobody force bus to do it. And where do the other people on the road factor into the decisions of you and your 5000+ lb vehicle?
- 205guy 6y ago
  Just watch out for left-hand exits like the HOV lanes at the Hwy 85 split going southbound. Let's start "Falsehoods self-driving programmers believe about roads:" All highway exits are to the right from the right-hand lane. If the left lane line curves away, the road is curving and you should follow it.
wdr1 6y ago
This comment strikes me as completely disingenuous. (1) None of the companies involved have ever had the motto "move fast & break things." Zuckerberg created that philosophy to Facebook. It's foolish to apply it an entire industry. (2) They are no more "using its customers as QA" than pharmaceutical companies do when gradually ramping up trials that also kill people. There has been heavy testing before this point, and it seems entirely reasonable to scale up testing before a general release.
vaccinator 6y ago
> [...] made me think twice about buying a 25+ year product that keeps my home powered and dry. does it even become profitable before the 25 year mark in the current market?

ericmay 6y ago

Hate to say it but I think you’re in the minority with that opinion. Reaction from most people has been “woah”. Also, there is no moving fast and breaking things here in real terms. Drivers are and have to pay attention while driving, and Tesla is strictly monitoring this with beta. You also specifically have to opt-in to beta software. 99% of Tesla owners do not have this functionality.

dontcarethrow2 6y ago
I think we are mainly silenced by the hype folks who can't not tell the rest of the internet about their excitement. I'd like to think OP's opinion is the majority, hard to tell on a startup forum where most folks are hodling TSLA.
- Smaug123 6y ago
  I would be astonished if a majority of people on HN have Tesla stock, for what it's worth.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    Would you only be astonished if they directly hold it, or also if it's via a fund or three? (I think you're probably right they don't, HN international and diverse enough, but I wouldn't be astonished.)
    - Smaug123 6y ago
      I meant "directly hold" (since I intended to reply to the parent's comment about "hodling").
- beowulfey 6y ago
  I would guess that most people on here are cautiously optimistic. Given the progress that has been made over the past decade on all things AI my priors are telling me this will eventually work. Note that it doesn’t mean I love it; I just expect that they will figure it out.
epistasis 6y ago
This is exactly how tech demos for all sorts of AI have gone for decades: initial impression is "wow, I can't believe it's doing so well!" But the positive impression quickly disipates as there's real world use of the product. Tech demos have a way of setting good impressions that are not realistic. I have a feeling that's exactly what is going on right now, but a few more close calls with crashes and the shine wears off.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Ironically, deep learning might finally be the solution to this, in a convoluted way. Previous AI systems generally fell over when they hit the final 2% of real world scenarios, unable to cope with the explosion of complexity. In contrast, modern AI finally provide a toolkit for "last mile AI" (proverbially speaking), by allowing incorporation of those scenarios without breaking the entire previous model.
  - admax88q 6y ago
    All deep learning implementations to date fail on the last 2% of real world cases. Why would deep learning be the solution for its own shortcomings?
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      Failing on the last 2% (or whatever small number we want to set) isn't a shortcoming of deep learning: it's a shortcoming of all prior knowledge systems. Humans included. And the barrier to surpassing that problem has been hardware (now approaching solving) and calendar- & person-time. The problem with 1970s AI (ingnoring hardware) isn't that we couldn't build useful AI, but that we couldn't afford to build useful AI in most domains. Calendar time costs money. People time costs money. Deep learning and derivates finally provide a solution where we can substitute machine time and data volume for calendar and people time. As a result, we can afford to do things in domains we couldn't before.
      - klyrs 6y ago
cblconfederate 6y ago
You cant go "woah" for 10 years. SD cars are not delivering. One more death and people will be calling to burn them. One should do sentiment analysis on these discussions threads over the years to see how the attitudes have changed. A much less dangerous version of this was the VR hype train
- timmytokyo 6y ago
  Tesla's unregulated and (some might say) reckless roll-out of self-driving technology could indeed be the biggest threat to the technology's realization. As you point out, all it will take is a few fatalities for public opinion to harden against self-driving, and laws will start banning or severely restricting it. Rather than being wowed by Tesla's gung-ho approach, boosters of self-driving technology should be angered by it.
  - dcow 6y ago
    I don’t buy the FUD. By all measures driver assist programs make the road safer. These cars are not out on the streets massacring people like human drivers are. So meh.
    - epistasis 6y ago
      What measure are you talking about here? Has Tesla published any stats about FSD? The other stats in this thread make it sound like Tesla is not even the same league as other attempts at driving.
      - jiofih 6y ago
        Yes, they have, lots of public data. The latest show that autopilot on is just slightly better than a human re. safety (but Teslas overall are about 10x safer than the average car already).
        epistasis 6y ago
        But we are talking about FSD, not autopilot, a very different beast.

dasudasu 6y ago

This is exactly why regulations such as professional engineering licenses were put into place. You don’t want someone with that mentality building a bridge.

tpmx 6y ago
No, this is exactly why vehicle regulations were put into place. Regulate and validate the vehicles and their software updates, not the engineers. Edit: Or get used to our field moving as slowly as the bridge building field.
- hervature 6y ago
  Huh? Bridges stopped failing when engineers were held responsible. That’s a pretty fast change. Holding people responsible doesn’t decrease or slow down innovation. It alters the incentives to align the innovation with public benefit. If properly caring for society is too slow for you, your part of the problem.
  - tpmx 6y ago
    > Bridges stopped failing when engineers were held responsible. Oh did they? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E2%80%93present https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures#2000%E... Edit: > Holding people responsible doesn’t decrease or slow down innovation. Citation required. This is strongly non-intuitive.
    - josefx 6y ago
      > Oh did they? First one only sagged, no catastrophic failure, no deaths, no injuries. A few more on that list were over a hundred years old. Not sure when he started holding engineers responsible. Then you have the bridges rammed by ships, terrorism, construction accidents, a wooden suspension bridge in the middle of nowhere that had an upper limit of three and was used by seventy, etc. . Seems as if the bridges themselves have held up fairly well.

epanchin 6y ago

It’s strange that people would rather a small chance of crashing themselves, versus a smaller chance of the car crashing for you. If Tesla is going to be a safer driver than me, it’s already a good investment. If a software bug means I die, well, human error might too.

candiddevmike 6y ago
I'm less concerned about the Tesla driver dying (since it means they weren't attentively monitoring their car right?) and more concerned about the driver they t-bone or hit head on due to a software bug.
dtech 6y ago
That's only the case if this new Autopilot iteration is actually a safer driver. There are many who doubt that.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  It clearly isn’t. Everybody should ask themselves, “How often do I have a near-miss on the road that another human in the car with me prevented by warning me?” I’ve had that happen a few times in the decades I’ve been driving. It appears to be a regular occurrence in this software.
agumonkey 6y ago
They're selling safety statistics. I find that unethical. You don't say to a widow "but think about how many times I could have killed someone and didn't". Also note the double speak of Musk on the topic.. he was the first to talk (even boast) about how the structural design made the car the safest of all .. but now safety is not as essential, it's ok to have some accidents. And it will improve their machine learning data set right ! /s
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
That would be an argument worth having if a tesla with FSD were actually safer than a comparable modern luxury car driven by someone in the same demographics. Or even just compared to a tesla without FSD. We aren't even at that argument yet.

cwhiz 6y ago

You have to continue to leave your hands on the wheel and pay attention.

Aeronwen 6y ago
Just like having a trained bear chauffeur you around. Except people see that as a bad idea.
- cwhiz 6y ago
  It’s not a public beta. The select few drivers know what they are getting into.

DC-3 6y ago

Thousands of people die each year because of stupid mistakes by human drivers. From a utilitarian perspective, pushing for self driving as fast as possible - in a manner that some might even judge to be reckless - is a net positive.

gambiting 6y ago
I'm surprised people have this opinion, on HN out of all places. In my view this technology shouldn't be allowed on public roads at all. Not even a little bit. Either it's 100% safe under all circumstances or it shouldn't be allowed. And Tesla definitely shouldn't be allowed to call it autopilot or "full self driving" when it very clearly isn't. And yes, human drivers might be statistically worse - but just because this might be statistically better(and I'm not even sure that's actually the case here) it doesn't mean it should be allowed.
- Ecstatify 6y ago
  Should everyone on HN have the same opinion, didn’t get that memo? Nothing is 100% safe. By your logic we’d have no medicine, have you ever read the side effects of some medicines.
  - foepys 6y ago
    > By your logic we’d have no medicine, have you ever read the side effects of some medicines. You picked the worst example possible. Medicine is one of the most tightly regulated fields in the world with huge upfront cost and approval processes spanning years or even decades. E.g. the research and approval process of a new antibiotic costs multiple billion dollars before it can be sold. What you see now wrt the Covid-19 vaccine is an international effort that is fast-tracking everything. Regulators are willing to overlook a lot for it to come to market as fast as possible and it's still taking a year or more before it's approved for use on everybody.
    - jcims 6y ago
      I would actually say it's a very good example. That no matter how tightly and strenuously we regulate the safety of a product, 100% safety is an unattainable goal and that given sufficient benefit there is an acceptable level of risk of grave outcomes, including death. This is from a publication on the risk/benefit evaluation of new medical devices from the FDA: Uncertainty – there is never 100% certainty when determining reasonable assurance of safety and effectiveness of a device. However, the degree of certainty of the benefits and risks of a device is a factor we consider when making benefit-risk determinations. pg 11 - https://www.fda.gov/media/99769/download https://www.fda.gov/media/99769/download

kryogen1c 6y ago

> get away with [...] products that can kill people if your moral premise is saving lives, your conclusion does not follow. vehicles are a leading cause of death and injury, so this omelette is worth breaking a few eggs, no? AV has the potential to save a lot of lives. of course, there will be effects in other markets like insurance, new car sales, road repair, junk/salvage yards, tow trucks, etc. what the net economic effect will be is up for debate.

mdorazio 6y ago
You're assuming eggs need to be broken in the first place, which is not at all proven. There are more options than what Tesla is doing - just look at Waymo as a counterexample of actually prioritizing safety over public release speed.
- colinmhayes 6y ago
  If you want the amount of data necessary you do need miles driven. The millions of extra miles may very well be what it takes to put tesla over the edge. Sure you can do that in a controlled environment, but it would take a lot longer, and people would die in the mean time.
  - justapassenger 6y ago
    This argument makes sense, if you can assume that Tesla will actually deliver functional FSD system as a direct result of their approach. There's no data to support it.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  You're claiming "even though Tesla's self driving might be better/safer than human driving today, and will in aggregate save lives over the present state, there's this other approach which could save even more lives!" It's not certain that Waymo's approach will be better, especially at scale (and in cities other than Phoenix). We don't have that kind of data yet. And even if it is better, Tesla's approach is still a pareto improvement over now. The perfect is the enemy of the good.

caditinpiscinam 6y ago

To be a safe driver you have to be able to predict what the people around you are going to do. Simply reacting is not enough. I don't think that it's a coincidence that the guy selling self-driving cars is the same guy who goes around exaggerating the current abilities of AI. I too am shocked that anyone is ok with this, given the auto industry's history of fighting against safety and transparency.

snuxoll 6y ago
We humans are terrible at predicting the behavior of other humans, we have unconscious biases and our own behavioral patterns that regularly cause us to misinterpret data and make the wrong decision. Quite honestly an objective AI that also has faster reaction times is likely to be a better driver than any human, it’s just a matter of training data. Note: I’m not going to say Tesla isn’t being at least moderately reckless with its rollout of self-driving features, just that I firmly believe even a less than ideal AI with good enough training and sensor data can trounce the safety record of human drivers.
- caditinpiscinam 6y ago
  > AI with good enough training This is the crux of the issue. If we had AI that could outperform human drivers and make our roads safer then I'd agree that we should use it. But I see no indication that this is the case, or that it's even technologically possible at this point. Tesla can make whatever claims they want, but until their self driving systems have been independently and rigorously tested they shouldn't be anywhere near public roads. Have such tests happened yet? The article doesn't mention any, so I assume that they haven't.

radu_floricica 6y ago

Obviously I have no idea what's in their heads, but a plausible train of thought goes like: Legal : If you sell it as a drive assist and not a driver replacement, you're off the hook, with a high probability. It's on the drivers if they get complacent. There may even be precedents with similar products for trucks. Moral: pushing this now will very likely kill some people that would otherwise be alive (drivers or pedestrians). But it's very unlikely to be a carnage - I'd dare say even impossible. On the other hand, moving the technology forward and directly into widespread commercial use will save people, and likely even... what's the equivalent word for a "carnage" but where people are saved? Miracle. Branding: well, there you have a real risk. Public opinion is fickle, and a particularly gruesome accident might do some real damage, both to Tesla and to self driving technologies in general. But then, they do have a high risk high reward mentality, and the chance is good that the first bad accident (statistically inevitable) will come after the advantages are proven and well established.

foepys 6y ago
> Legal : If you sell it as a drive assist and not a driver replacement, you're off the hook, with a high probability In Germany they lost a case about their Autopilot advertisement. So not even legally they are in the clear.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  What was the case about? If it was in the opposite direction (that they branded a drive assist system as an autopilot) then it might actually help them now. "Look, we even have a court decision saying it's not an autopilot".
ethbr0 6y ago
> On the other hand, moving the technology forward and directly into widespread commercial use will save people This is the only rationale I can come up with for Tesla's approach. The tenets go like this: 1) The ultimate realization of self driving will be successful, and will have profoundly positive impacts on society (e.g. safety, urban planning, ease and availability of transportation, economic) 2) The path to that ultimate realization contains many local optima traps 3) The only way to push past those local optima is by acquiring large amount of real world automated driving data, using systems in production From a technical standpoint, I'm disinclined to disagree with them on the necessity of large amounts of real world system behavior data as a key ingredient. Personally, I also think we (humans) have become way too culturally risk adverse. Or, to put the calculus another way: if I have a credible belief that I can save some number of future humans, what is the acceptable moral number of current humans to place at risk and/or kill? Imho, that's a grave, serious decision, but not one to which the morally absolute is "zero, always." From a purely ethical standpoint (leaving legal aside), the crux would seem to be informed users. Not all Tesla drivers are likely capable of understanding the current SotA, and I'd hope (and expect) that Tesla's phased rollout of the beta is informed by previous user interaction with assisted driving.

travisoneill1 6y ago

The only stats I have seen on this show that the autopilot reduces the rate of collisions. So it's not really a product that kills people, but the opposite. The stats came from Tesla, though, so I can't rule out the possibility that they are incorrect.

mdorazio 6y ago
Tesla stats are extremely misleading and deliberately slanted toward favoring Tesla. Unfortunately, it's not really possible to find real stats since they're hidden by individual OEMs and insurance companies. But you would need to compare comparably priced modern cars with standard ADAS features to Teslas with Autopilot to get a datapoint worth talking about for the general case. You would also need to look at where Autopilot is engaged (mostly highways where accidents are rare in general) vs. not engaged (mostly city streets where accidents are common) to draw any real conclusions about safety.
- mlindner 6y ago
  > Tesla stats are extremely misleading and deliberately slanted toward favoring Tesla. Unfortunately, it's not really possible to find real stats since they're hidden by individual OEMs and insurance companies. You realize that those two statements are in conflict with each other right? If they're misleading and favoring Tesla then you need contrary stats to state that. However you state that they're not available, so your previous statement can only be a lie.
  - veggieburglar 6y ago
    Sorry, that’s not a logical conclusion. Just because real stats are hard to come by does not mean that Tesla’s stats are true.
    - hndamien 6y ago
      But it does mean that you don't know that your first statement is true.

deleted 6y ago

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new_realist 6y ago

The underlying motivations explain all: this isn't about improving automobile safety anymore (if it ever was): it's about recognizing deferred revenue from this feature (which has been sold for years) and trying to keep up, from a marketing perspective, with Waymo and Cruise. That's why they're not using trained safety drivers, but fanbois. Waymo is at least as safe as the average human driver, while Tesla has unleashed literally worse-than-drunk drivers upon us all. Heaven help us.

Balgair 6y ago

> ... using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people They aren't just using their own customers, they are using all of us. The cars won't be just crashing into inanimate objects, but school buses and ambulances. The QA is being done to all of us and our loved ones near their cars.

jojo2333 6y ago
Still magnitudes safer than human drivers.
- nutanc 6y ago
  Lets do a simple test: You are in between two walls and there are two straight lanes. Lane 1 has Tesla FSD coming in at full speed. Lane 2 has a human driver coming in at full speed. You can choose to be in one lane. The FSD and the human can both see you only 50 mts out and if they brake as soon as they see you, you will survive. Which lane will you choose?
  - tshaddox 6y ago
    Well, a Model S can just barely stop in 50 meters at 60mph, while some other luxury and sporty cars in the segment can stop in 35 meters or less. And that’s only 60mph, hardly “top speed” or even a normal highway speed. So regardless of driver assistance features, I’d choose a car that at least has a chance to even physically stop assuming instant reflexes. 50 meters is probably a much too small distance for this thought experiment.
    - argomo 6y ago
      I don't know my cars that well, but an alert driver will take at least 300ms to begin reacting. That's over 8m at 60mph (not sure why we're combining unit systems here). So I'll stand in front of the Model S in this particular scenario and hope to get away with 'mere' broken legs/pelvis. Give the human more time and is probably take the human, not because that's necessarily the more reliable option, but because its distribution of outcomes is more well known to me.

gfodor 6y ago

The ethics of this are heavily influenced by how much you believe a) this rollout will result in a net decrease in automobile accidents and b) how much we should assume drivers will both be informed and intervene if the system missteps. If you believe both are unlikely, or you believe engineers should have a "do no harm" based ethics similar to medicine, this would be unacceptable. But if you believe both are highly and/or think engineering ethics should focus on harm minimization, this makes sense to do and under certain assumptions it becomes unethical to not roll it out. As a concrete example: if you assume that 99% of accidents that would be caused by the system will be prevented by driver interventions, and you think overall the system will reduce the likelihood of an accident by 20%, the question you have to ask yourself is: if 1 in 5 people harmed over the next 6 months we could have saved, should we avoid doing so and wait until only 1 in 200 will not be harmed, in part due to their own negligence? As you can see, the assumed probabilities matter a lot, so I'd be curious how one can come up with good projections. The only case where these probabilities don't matter is if you believe that engineers ought to never create harm where none would have existed otherwise, but when it comes to self driving cars, this is an impossibility since it assumes perfect autonomy. In general, if you buy into the theory that "human + AI" is always going to be smarter than just AI, then arguably even in a world with great autonomous driving, the best system will be one that has both an AI and a human. And that is what we have here, so it's more a question of if AI quality is sufficient or if this is just a bad idea in general given the natural tendencies of humans to be poor co-pilots.

trimbo 6y ago

> I really don't understand how a company can get away with using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people There's a term for it: "normalization of deviance"[1]. A highly risky thing is done and doesn't fail as early as thought. The people doing it assume that means the risk is lower than they thought, but it's not, and they just happened to get lucky. I'm sure Elon knows this, so probably believes their tech can advance enough before their luck turns. I personally think he's deadly wrong on this, but it seems like a lot of Silicon Valley Tesla owners who sleep or read their phone while on Autopilot accept it at face value. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

amelius 6y ago
> There's a term for it: "normalization of deviance" I believe this is not entirely correct, as the parent talks about how a company can get away with something, while the term you use applies to the company itself. The main question should be: why do we (the government) even allow companies to do something like this?
kordlessagain 6y ago
Say his name, Walter Huang

jhoechtl 6y ago

> I really don't understand how a company can get away with using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people. Stuff like that is only possible in the US. Would be unthinkable in the EU. Maybe in UJK but you know, they are no longer ...

ggreer 6y ago
In the long term this will cause EU auto makers to get their self driving tech from US companies (either through licensing or partnerships). VW has already partnered with Ford. Most of the other european auto makers are getting their tech from Aptiv. When it comes to self driving, none of the EU car manufacturers can compete with Waymo, GM (Cruise), or Tesla. Even when they manage to build really cool stuff, it gets shut down by regulators.[1] 1. https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/audi-bmw-others-frustrated-hurdles-slowing-launch-self-driving-cars https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/audi-bmw-others-frust...
- schumajs 6y ago
  Maybe EU auto makers just wait, meaning work on something, until they can put something on the market that works. After watching some hours of youtube footage I can say one thing for sure: Teslas' FSD does not.
  - ggreer 6y ago
    By that time the US companies will have technology with a track record of real world use. The EU companies will have an easier time buying that tech than building their own. This is analogous to banning airplanes until they can be proven safe to fly in. The countries that don’t ban them will lose more lives early on, but they’ll have a technological advantage. The place where this analogy breaks down is that hundreds of people are killed by human driven cars every day. Every year cars kill 120,000 people in the US & Europe. If we can develop and deploy this technology a year sooner, we can save tens of thousands of lives.
- sidibe 6y ago
  I think only the Tesla approach wouldn't fly in Europe, but trained drivers should hold, last year there was some announcement by Renault and Waymo for something in Paris though hard to tell what it actually meant: https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/11/waymo-and-renault-to-explore-autonomous-mobility-route-in-paris-region/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/10/11/waymo-and-renault-to-explo...

deleted 6y ago

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kanox 6y ago

> I really don't understand how a company can get away with using its customers as QA when they sell products that can kill people. They already claim that drivers must pay attention to the road in order to prevent accidents and this has been the status-quo in the automotive world for a century or so. Selling products that can kill if misused is not remarkable. This could turn ugly if it's shown that enabling self-driving results in much more accidents but there is no data to support this.

moonbug 6y ago

and that's why it's not allowed in the EU

Draiken 6y ago

Cars driven by humans kill people at a higher rate than this shitty AI, why doesn't anyone care then? I don't understand this point of view. Cars WILL kill people with AI or humans driving. AI is not great right now, but it's already way better than humans in several situations. Then people get spooked by bugs that the AI brings because they're not "normal" accidents, and think it's a bad idea to continue to train the AIs. But why? Why is a "beta" AI killing people worse than the normal everyday drunk/distracted/bored/texting human driver?

dilyevsky 6y ago
By “cars kill people” do you mean car defects or human drivers? If former do you have a source for this claim?
- Draiken 6y ago
  I meant cars driven by humans. Edited right after I posted.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
> AI is not great right now, but it's already way better than humans in several situations. Every stat that I've seen that comes out with the machines better than the people isn't a like-to-like comparison. Every like-to-like comparison I've seen has the machines still worse than people, so we don't even need to have that argument. Beware the propaganda.
- Draiken 6y ago
  Every stat? Wow. I'd be very interested in reading some of this material if you could link to some. If you take a shitty driver and compare it to an AI, I doubt the AI will perform worse when it comes to preventing accidents. Sure, a skilled human driver will likely perform better than this early stage AI, but if even 1% of the bad drivers out there switch to an AI, that's a net positive in my view. Not to mention all the other risky situations involving alcohol, sleep deprivation, etc. where an automated response can save lives. You didn't address my main point though. Why is a driverless accident worse than a drunk driver?

robertlagrant 6y ago

> they sell products that can kill people All car manufacturers sell products that can kill people.

nix0n 6y ago
> All car manufacturers sell products that can kill people. Yes, that's exactly why most of them have much better QA than Tesla.
decker 6y ago
The key difference is that only Tesla ships one that will autonomously kill other people.
- mlindner 6y ago
  Except tons of other manufacturers have SAE level 2 systems that autonomously follow road curves and will fully run into objects that are unexpected. GM Super Cruise will kill people all the same.
  - decker 6y ago
    Super Cruise is geofenced to known highways. What "road curves" are you talking about?
    - robertlagrant 6y ago
      Presumably the curves in roads.

deleted 6y ago

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spicyramen 6y ago

Well, I own a Tesla Model X when I'm with my family I don't engage self driving car mode, nobody force bus to do it. And when I do it is normal situations like 101 Highway

itsoktocry 6y ago
>nobody force bus to do it. And where do the other people on the road factor into the decisions of you and your 5000+ lb vehicle?
205guy 6y ago
Just watch out for left-hand exits like the HOV lanes at the Hwy 85 split going southbound. Let's start "Falsehoods self-driving programmers believe about roads:" All highway exits are to the right from the right-hand lane. If the left lane line curves away, the road is curving and you should follow it.

wdr1 6y ago

This comment strikes me as completely disingenuous. (1) None of the companies involved have ever had the motto "move fast & break things." Zuckerberg created that philosophy to Facebook. It's foolish to apply it an entire industry. (2) They are no more "using its customers as QA" than pharmaceutical companies do when gradually ramping up trials that also kill people. There has been heavy testing before this point, and it seems entirely reasonable to scale up testing before a general release.

vaccinator 6y ago

> [...] made me think twice about buying a 25+ year product that keeps my home powered and dry. does it even become profitable before the 25 year mark in the current market?